[557] “One of the most emphatic as well as one of the earliest extant assertions of the duty of charity to the human race occurs in the treatise of Cicero upon duties.”--LECKY, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 240. [558] _De Off._ iii. 5. [559] _Ibid._ iii. xi. [560] _Ibid._ i. 16. [561] _De Finibus_, v. 23. [562] _Meditations_, vi. 44. This and the following citations are from Long’s translation, 2d ed. [563] _Ibid._ iv. 23. The moral element in the conception of the universal city must not be overlooked. There was implied in it the idea of universal brotherhood, of the ethical oneness of mankind. The creation and promulgation of this conception was one of the great services which Stoicism rendered to civilization. [564] _Ibid._ iii. 4. [565] _Ibid._ viii. 59. [566] This subject is dealt with by Lecky, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, pp. 295 ff.; Bryce, _Studies in History and Jurisprudence_, vol. ii, essay xi, “The Law of Nature.” [567] Bryce, _Studies in History and Jurisprudence_ (1901), vol. ii, p. 143. [568] Sophocles, _Antigone_. [569] Commenting on the consequences of the inspiration of Roman law by this doctrine of Stoicism, Lecky says: “To the Stoics and the Roman lawyers is mainly due the clear recognition of the existence of a law of nature above and beyond all human enactments, which has been the basis of the best moral and of the most influential, though most chimerical, political speculations of later ages, and the renewed study of Roman law was an important element in the revival that preceded the Reformation” (_History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 297). [570] _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 129. Lecky instances (vol. i, p. 292) three ways in which Stoicism worked for good in the Empire: (1) it raised up good emperors; (2) it led men to engage in the public service; and (3) it rendered the law more catholic and humane. [571] Dill, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_ (1904), p. 376. [572] “In the Stoic emperors ... we find probably the earliest example of great moral principles applied to legislation on a large scale.”--CLIFFORD, _Lectures and Essays_, vol. ii, p. 108. [573] Public feeling in regard to the exercise of the _patria potestas_ had been slowly changing during the centuries. Seneca relates (_De Clem._ i. 14) how within his memory the people furiously assaulted in the Forum a certain knight because he had whipped his son to death. [574] “The alleviations of slavery by the imperial law are essentially traceable to the influence of the Greek view.”--MOMMSEN, _Roman Provinces_ (1887), vol. i, p. 296. [575] “The majority of the free population had probably either themselves been slaves, or were descended from slaves.”--LECKY, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 237. [576] Dill, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_ (1904), p. 3. [577] Lecky, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 312.