These laws made a great impression on Roman society. How completely customs had swung to extremes since the days of Romulus is shown in this _lex Papia_, as Gaius calls it. Instead of securing the father in his right over the life of children, as the stern head of the house who might decide at will whether he should let his offspring live, the law now decreed that it was through the children that he gained a status in the community. Persons who were not married and had no children were unable to inherit; the unmarried person not being able to take any part of what had been left to him, and the married person without children (_orbus_) being able to take only one half.[342] Among the provisions of the _lex Julia_, or the _leges_, were those entitling that candidate for office who had the greatest number of children to preference. Of the two consuls it was decreed that he should be the senior whose children were the most numerous; a relief from all personal taxes and burdens was granted to citizens who had three children if they lived in Rome, four if they lived in Italy, and five if they lived in the provinces. With the establishment of the _caduca_, by which there was instituted a punishment for sterility and a reward for legitimate procreation, it can be seen that there would follow some diminution in the number of children exposed, though according to Tacitus,[343] “marriages and the rearing of children did not become more frequent, so powerful are the attractions of the childless state.” By giving the people, or the common treasury, the benefit of the clause forfeiting the inheritance on account of sterility, the law was recognizing the _populus_ as the common father, a legal concept that is becoming more and more the attitude of the twentieth century, and was then first trenchantly expressed. Suppressed in part by the constitution of Caracalla as to the privileges of paternity to the claim upon the _caduca_, and by Constantine as to the penalties for celibacy, these laws were not completely and textually abrogated until Justinian. They were the beginning, however, of the new movement; out of the degeneration and degradation of the waning days of the Republic there had come at least this forward step, though the patricians complained that these provisions gave rise to despised informers and opportunities for tyrannical misuse of power.