The best ages of Greece and Rome exhibit to us an extreme severity against breaches of good morals. So long as the body of laws framed by Lycurgus remained in force at Sparta, prostitution was unknown there. The laws of Solon followed up immoral men with an inexorable rigour, by requiring a public examination into the morals of those who were looking forward to public appointments; they degraded public officials of every rank discovered in a brothel, and declared the citizen who had been seen there a single time unworthy to serve his country. Independently of the archon commissioned to try these matters, every Athenian had the right and the obligation of prosecuting for the prostitution of a woman or of a child; in certain cases the criminals were put to death. Prostitutes, banished from society, wore a peculiar uniform. We observe similar regulations existing in the Roman republic, where the censor of morals degraded dissolute functionaries, and branded the citizen with disgrace who made prostitutes of his slaves or freed women-servants. Panders could not make over their property, nor sue in law, nor be sworn, nor retain legal authority over their children. Every harbourer and accomplice of a prostitute was condemned to the same punishment as herself. This wise legislation did not survive the ruin of liberty, and profligacy was the fruit of the system of governing which substituted the informer for the censor. When the world-wide Roman empire had perished through excess of sensual gratification, Christianity caused the old laws to be resuscitated; and Constantine, Theodosius, and Justinian put them in practice in Gaul; the last-mentioned ruler put panders to death. These measures corresponded in other things, for Gaul, to the mind of the Germans who, after dragging through a horse-pond _men_ convicted of prostitution, threw a hurdle on their bodies and sunk them to the bottom of the slough.[18] With the same penalties, Charlemagne subsequently punished prostitutes, their accomplices and harbourers, who were all whipped together. Our parliaments condemned those who paid for prostitution to a whipping, to temporary transportation, to the galleys, to fine, to confiscation of their property, and to the iron collar. St. Louis, who had shielded the _destitution_ of women against profligacy, had incorrigible girls and _the gentlemen, their accomplices_, publicly flogged _with the same whip_. Philip the Bold, following up his father’s work, assigned to prostitution specific districts within which it was to be strictly confined. Charles V. likewise contributed to the moral amelioration of the nation; but, in the following reign, the precarious position of women, the effect of the war, and the excesses of the troops, again plunged France into serious profligacy.