“No less imperiously did A. Fulvius, one of the Senatorian Order, keep back his son from going into the field, than Scaurus chid his for running away. For he caused his son, eminent among his equals for his wit, learning, and beauty, to be put to death because he took part with Catiline, being seduced by ill-counsel; having brought him back by force, as he was going to Catiline’s army, and uttering these words before his death, that he ‘did not beget him to join with Catiline against his country, but to serve his country against Catiline.’ He might have kept him till the heat of the war had been over, but that would have been only the act of a cautious, this was the deed of a severe father.” The father who was brought before Hadrian under the old conditions would have been honoured—he had killed a son who befouled his name. Nevertheless this man was ordered to be deported, “because he had killed as a thief rather than as one using the power (_jure_) of father; _nam patria potestas in pietate debet, non atrociate consistere_.”[351] Whatever the excuse given, he was punished. That he had not observed the forms in killing his son by calling a consultation of the members of his family, was the nominal reason for punishing him, but the unchecked power of the father over the life of his children, even when they had become adults, was ended. Modern sensibility will be shocked at the thought that there had been sufficient social “advance” for distinct places to become established for the exposure of children. But advance it was when no longer were children left in unfrequented highways, no longer were they thrown into the Tiber. There were two places where it was the custom to leave abandoned children. One was near the Velabrum, a street on the western slope of the Aventine Hill between the Vicus Tuscus and the Forum Boarium where the oil dealers and the cheese mongers made a practice of selling their wares; and the other, in the vegetable market, where there rose a column round which the children were placed. Because of this practice, according to Festus, the column was called the Lactaria.[352] It was said that courtesans favoured the Velabrum. What happened to the children even in this “advanced” age was doubtless little different from the treatment they received when they were found on the highways. The elder Seneca has given a vivid account of the practice of the day in the “Thirty-third Controversy,” book five, headed “Debilitans Expositos.”[353] Difficult as it is to believe that the people who eventually charged themselves with the rearing of the foundlings made a business of mutilating them, there is no doubt but that such was the case. In the “Controversy” of Seneca the question is whether those who mutilated exposed children have done a wrong toward the State. The debate is opened by Porcius Latro, who asks if after having suffered the misfortune of being exposed, it is not a piece of good luck to have someone find them.