The ancient Greeks regarded marriage as a matter not merely of private, but also of public interest. This was particularly the case at Sparta, where criminal proceedings might be taken against those who married too late, and against those who did not marry at all. In Solon’s legislation marriage was also placed under the inspection of the State, and, at Athens, persons who did not marry might be prosecuted, although the law seems to have grown obsolete in later times. But independently of public considerations, there were private reasons which made marriage an obligation.[827] Plato remarks that every individual is bound to provide for a continuance of representatives to succeed himself as ministers of the Divinity;[828] and Isaeus says, “All they who think their end approaching, look forward with a prudent care that their houses may not become desolate, but that there may be some person to attend to their funeral rites, and to perform the legal ceremonies at their tombs.”[829] To the Roman citizen, as Mommsen observes, a house of his own and the blessing of children appeared the end and essence of life;[830] and Cicero’s treatise ‘De Legibus’—a treatise which generally reproduces, in a philosophic form, the ancient laws of Rome—contains a law, according to which the Censors had to impose a tax upon unmarried men.[831] But in later periods, when sexual morality reached a very low ebb in Rome, celibacy—as to which grave complaints were made as early as 520 B.C.—naturally increased in proportion, especially among the well-off classes. Among these, marriage came to be regarded as a burden which people took upon themselves at the best in the public interest. Indeed, how it fared with marriage and the rearing of children, is shown by the Gracchan agrarian laws, which first placed a premium thereon;[832] whilst, later on, the _Lex Julia et Papia Poppæa_ imposed various penalties on those who lived in a state of celibacy after a certain age,[833]—but with little or no result.[834] Again, the Germans, as described by Cæsar, accounted it in the highest degree scandalous to have intercourse with the other sex before the twentieth year.[835] Tacitus also asserts that the young men married late, and the maidens did not hurry into marriage.[836] But it seems probable that at a later age celibacy was almost unknown among the Germans, except in the case of women who had once lost their reputation, for whom neither beauty, youth, nor riches could procure a husband.[837] As for the Slavs, it should be observed that, among the Russian peasantry celibacy is even now unheard of.[838] When a youth reaches the age of eighteen, he is informed by his parents that he ought to marry at once.[839]