On the other hand, it is to be remembered that this avoidance of marriage and its responsibilities was no new thing in the Roman Empire. For centuries the State had been alarmed at the growth of an unwillingness, manifested especially in the higher orders of society, to undertake the duties of parentage. Special bounties and immunities from taxation were offered to the fathers even of three children; checks were placed upon divorce; taxes were levied upon the obstinate bachelor and widower who clung to what he called the blessings of detached irresponsibility (_præmia orbitatis_). These laws were all based on the theory that it is a man’s civic duty to marry and give sons and daughters to the service of his country, and we find one of the Panegyrists declaring them to be the very foundation of the State, because they supply a nursery of youth and a constant flow of manly vigour to the Roman armies.[151] Yet so powerful were the attractions of a childless life (_prævalida orbitate_—_Tac._, _Ann._, iii., 25) that the whole series of Julian laws on this subject had proved of little value, and Tacitus had declared that the remedy was worse than the disease. The motives of the luxurious voluptuary or the fastidious cynic were widely different from those of the Christian enthusiast for bodily purity, but by a curious irony they were directed towards the same object—the avoidance of matrimony. ----- Footnote 151: _Vere dicuntar esse fundamenta rei publicæ, quia seminarium juventutis et quasi fontem humani roboris semper Romanis exercitibus ministrarunt_ (_Pan. Vet._, vi., 2). -----