A drunken man taking the entire _via_ in his navigation—to the amusement of the crowd; a member of the city guard hurrying some offender to the court; or, reclining in his _lectica_, a noble, carried by six uniformed slaves, his other numerous attendants clearing the way for him—all these added to the noise and confusion—while through it all children crowded the curb with their games. Such was the Rome that Augustus found, its proud citizens masters of the world, luxurious, sensual, disdainful of the very idea of duty, idling days away while they scoffed at marriage. But the foreigners, the freedmen, and the slaves married, and when the burden of a new child was too much for the small income made by amusing or serving some Roman citizen, the little newcomer was thrown into the Tiber or left unmarked on a busy thoroughfare. One of the first undertakings of Augustus was to try to remedy these evil conditions by laws and fiscal measures, his principal endeavour being to put an end to the corruption of morals and the exhaustion of the legitimate population. From the day of the battle of Actium (B. C. 31) when the Roman world practically lay at his feet, Octavius, or Augustus as he was afterward called, while gratifying his ambition in adding to his power, studiously and ostentatiously observed the forms of popular government. In this he was paying heed to the fate of his uncle and also conciliating the people, though with every ingratiating move he increased his power. One of the first laws he proposed was the _lex Julia_ (_de maritandis ordinibus_) which was rejected by the _comitia tributa_, B. C. 18, but was adopted in A.D. 4. To this was added as a supplement the _lex Papia Poppæa_, the two being known as the _lex Julia et Papia_ or as _novæ leges_, or simply _leges_, the latter reference indicating that they were referred to as the laws _par excellence_. Not only marriage, but everything connected with it was treated in these two laws, which really constituted a code, the most extensive after the laws of the Twelve Tables.