Another evidence of the humanity of Nerva was the fact that he prohibited the making of eunuchs, a practice that had met with the disfavour of the Emperor Domitian years before, and a practice that led the Pope Clement XIV., to decree, centuries later, that no more _castrats_ should sing in churches. And these things he did when the extravagance of his predecessors had made it necessary for him to sell the imperial furniture and jewels in order to replenish the treasury. One of his coins shows him seated in the _curule_ chair, dispensing charity to a boy and girl, the mother standing near, with the legend “Tutela Italia.” One need only to read the gentle replies of the Emperor Trajan to the younger Pliny, to see that, in that reign at least, there was a great change and that the conception of duty in the modern sense was creeping into a military world. Pliny himself, in a letter to Cannius, describes how he settled five hundred thousand sesterces (about $20,000) on the city of Como for the maintenance of children, “who were born of good families”—an act as traceable to the growing protective tendency as to Pliny’s patriotism and love of glory. According to the tablet of Velia[346] to the Emperor Trajan, the landed proprietors of the place received on mortgage at five per cent.,[347] less than half the usual rate of that time, what would be about $50,000 of our money, the interest of which was to go to the maintenance of three hundred poor children. The means employed to help parents and prevent them from exposing their children were skilfully contrived. Through the municipality, Trajan lent money to certain proprietors to improve their land, and the interest paid on this loan constituted a benevolent fund by which the children were taken care of, or rather, by which their parents were rewarded for not murdering them. From the table of Velia we learn also that fifty-one proprietors of that section received on land twelve times the value of the loan, or 1,116,000 sesterces ($52,820) the annual interest of which, 55,800 sesterces ($2,650), constituted a fund for the support of three hundred children, two hundred and sixty-four boys and thirty-six girls. The boys received annually 192 sesterces, and the girls 144 sesterces. Illegitimate children were given less, the boys 144 sesterces, and the girls 120 sesterces, although in the tablet there were only two illegitimate children, one boy and one girl. The fact that the number of girls assisted was only one-tenth the number of boys, goes to show, that this new institution was not due so much to the fact that the sentiment of charity had infiltrated through pagan society, as to the fact that pagan society was endeavouring to repair the ravages of degenerate and pauperistic days, shown in the diminution of the class of freedmen in Rome.[348]