As the laws of the Twelve Tables represented the earliest fight against privilege, it would be too much to expect that they should contain any amelioration of the statute which gave the father the right to sell or kill his children. Even the language of the laws, in the fragments which have come down to us, shows in rugged, concise, and sternly imperative style that the law gained the respect in which it eventually came to be held, by no soft or easy methods.[329] “If the complainant summon the defendant before the magistrate, he shall go; if he do not go, the plaintiff may call a bystander to witness, and take him by force;” this is the first section of the first paragraph of the laws of the Twelve Tables. Where there was so much sternness, and where every family was presided over by a parent who had the right to inflict death as a punishment for disobedience, the disciplinary attitude of the Roman mind naturally became such, no matter what it had been in the beginning, that tender or human emotions had but little place. It is not surprising therefore that the one extract of the laws of the Twelve Tables, relating to our subject, should deal curiously, abruptly, and sharply with the power of the father to sell his son, a power that was diminished only after the son’s spirit must have been entirely extinguished. _Si pater filium ter venum duit, filius a patre liber esto_—if a father sells his son three times, let the son then go free of the father. In other words, three times did the father have the right to dispose of his son as a slave; and, while a slave might purchase his freedom, by paying his master, the son of a Roman citizen did not become free until the father had abused his right and misused the _potestas_ three times.[330] One sees the Rome of the Republic in the plays of Terence and Plautus, and the attitude of the parents toward exposure is vividly shown in the _Heautontimorumenos_ of the former. Nearly always the exposed child died. Occasionally some escaped through the tenderness or cupidity of some passer-by who would pick up an exposed child either out of pity or for the material profit that came with the possession. Sometimes mothers who were obliged to obey the orders of their husbands, arranged to have their children rescued. The comedy of Terence goes to show what the attitude of the father was under such circumstances. It is indeed, as De Gour says, “a chapter of the morals of the Greeks and Romans seen in action.” Chremes, departing on a long voyage, orders his wife, Sostrata, who is about to have a child, to expose the child if it should turn out to be a girl. In obeying this order, she hopefully places a ring with the child. Years later she meets the child at a bath and is given (by her own daughter) a ring to guard. Sostrata recognizes the ring and when she sees her husband the following dialogue ensues: SOS. (_turning ’round_). Ha! my husband! CHREM. Ha! my wife! SOS. I was looking for you.