and beautiful, the plaything of another; or if, like Leila, disease or years had fretted her beauty, to eke out the weary, wistless, hopeless lot of a household slave. [Sidenote: The use of wine.] Relaxation of manners is significantly marked by the frequent notice of punishment for drunkenness. There are not wanting instances of even governors deposed for the offence. Omar was rigorous in imposing the legal penalty. He did not shrink from commanding that stripes should be inflicted, even upon his own son and his boon companions, for the use of wine. At Damascus, the scandal grew to such a height that Abu Obeida had to summon a band of the citizens, with the heroes Dhirâr and Abu Jandal at their head, for the offence. Hesitating in such a case to enforce the law, he acquainted Omar with the circumstances, and begged that the offenders, being penitent, might be forgiven. An angry answer came: ‘Gather an assembly,’ he wrote in the stern language of his early days;--‘gather an assembly, and bring them forth. Then ask, ‘_Is wine lawful, or is it forbidden?_ If they say _forbidden_, lay eighty stripes upon each one of them; if they say _lawful_, then behead them every one.’ They confessed that it was forbidden, and submitted themselves to the ignominious punishment.[412] [Sidenote: Influence of female slavery in the family.] The weakness for wine may have been a relic of ‘the days of Ignorance,’ when the poet sang ‘Bury me under the roots of the juicy vine.’ But there were influences altogether new at work in the vast accession to the households of believers everywhere of captive women from other lands. Greek, Persian, and Egyptian maidens abounded in every harem. The Jews and Christians amongst them might retain their ancestral faith, whether in freedom or bondage, whether as concubines or married to their masters; and with their ancestral faith retain much also of the habits of their fatherland; and the same may be said of the heathen bondmaids from Africa and the Parsee slave-girls from Persia, even if outwardly converted to the Moslem faith. The countless progeny of such alliances, though ostensibly bred in the creed and practice of Islam, must have inherited much of the nationality of the mothers by whom they were nursed and brought up. The crowded harem, with its Divine sanction of servile concubinage, was also an evil school for the rising generation. Wealth, luxury, and idleness were under such circumstances provocative of a licence and indulgence which too often degenerated into debauchery. [Sidenote: Intemperance, dissipation, and depravity.]