But we may learn how strong was the moral sentiment of the Roman people from the very stringent decree which the senate issued on motion of the Consul Postumius, and from the indiscriminate executions of parties implicated in the mysterious rites.[73] Other evidences of the purity of Roman morals might be found, if they were wanting, in the remarkable fidelity with which the Vestals observed their oaths; in the tone of the speeches of the statesmen of the time; in the high character sustained by such matrons as the mother of the Gracchi; and, finally, in the legislation of Augustus, which professed rather to affirm and improve the old laws than to introduce new principles. As we approach the Christian era the picture gradually darkens. Civil wars are usually fatal to private virtue: it is not to be doubted that the age of Sylla and Clodius was by no means a moral one. Sylla, the dictator, openly led a life of scandalous debauchery; Clodius, the all-powerful tribune, is accused by Cicero of having seduced his three sisters.[74] Soldiers who had made a campaign in profligate Greece or voluptuous Asia naturally brought home with them a taste for the pleasures they had learned to enjoy abroad. Scipio's baths were dark: through narrow apertures just light enough was admitted to spare the modesty of the bathers; but into the baths which were erected in the later years of the Republic the light shone as into a chamber.[75] Even Sylla, debauched as he was, did not think it safe to abdicate power without legislative effort to purify the morals he had so largely contributed to corrupt by his example.[76] Of the Augustan age, and the two or three centuries which followed, we are enabled to form a close and comprehensive idea. Our information ceases to be meagre; on some points, indeed, it is only too abundant. The object of the Julian laws was to preserve the Roman blood from corruption, and still farther to degrade prostitutes. These aims were partially attained by prohibiting the intermarriage of citizens with the relatives or descendants of prostitutes; by exposing adulterers to severe penalties, and declaring the tolerant husband an accomplice; by laying penalties on bachelors and married men without children; by prohibiting the daughters of equestrians from becoming prostitutes.[77] Tiberius, from his infamous retreat at Capreæ, sanctioned a decree of the senate which enhanced the severity of the laws against adultery. By this decree it was made a penal offense for a matron of any class to play the harlot, and her lover, the owner of the house where they met, and all persons who connived at the adultery, were declared equally culpable. It seems to have been not uncommon for certain married women to inscribe themselves on the ædile's list as prostitutes, and to occupy a room at the houses of ill fame. This was pronounced a penal offense; and every encouragement was held out, both to husbands and to common informers, to prosecute.[78]