Under Antoninus’s philosophic successor the alimentary institution was further developed, Marcus Aurelius showing his interest by putting the supervision under a person of prætorian or consular rank.[360] He upheld the rights of children, going one step further in the direction of freedom by ending the tyrannical power of the father to oblige his son to put away his wife, if the latter were disagreeable to the head of the family. With Marcus Aurelius vanished the humane emperors—they had reigned long. Culminating in his beneficent sway the Stoic philosophy, from Aristotle to Marcus Aurelius, kept developing, in the midst of surroundings the least encouraging. The Stoics, with their ideas of humanity, of mutual good will and moral equality, arrived at almost the same conclusions regarding religion and the same sentiment regarding humanity as did the followers of the Christian religion, although working from an entirely different source. The one reached its conclusion through the medium of patrician orators, philosophers, and emperors, the other through the slaves, the distressed, and those for whom life faced an unbroken wall. From Aurelius to Septimus Severus there is little but bloodshed in Roman history. The selection of Papinian, the greatest of Roman jurists, as his adviser is in a way the greatest claim to fame that Severus has.[361] Among his many laws was one that permitted the sons of a condemned criminal to retain the rights the father had over freedmen, which was considered a great indulgence—_benignissime rescripsit_. He condemned to temporary exile the woman who, by practising abortion, had deprived her husband of the hope of children. Of the bloody reign of Caracalla it is to be noted principally that he changed the _lex Julia_ in such a way as to deprive paternity of its privileges. Those who were not married (_cœlebs_) and those who were married and had no children (_orbus_) suffered in regard to their inheritances as they had under the old law, but Caracalla filled his treasury by sweeping into the _fiscus_ all the _caduca_.