“the man who takes away marriage from the human race takes away the household, takes away the State, takes away the human race.” The opinions of Musonius and the Stoics greatly influenced subsequent legislation in regard to marriage. But this is an obscure and disputable subject, and we can refer here only to the commencement of legislation on marriage. It was the Emperor Augustus who first drew up laws in regard to it. Before his time marriage was deemed essentially a private transaction, and no enactments had taken place in reference to it except as to the disposition of dowries. Family councils controlled it, and, like all other private acts, it was subject to the judgment of the Censors, who in this matter followed prevalent opinion. The prevailing opinion was that all Romans were bound to marry. The Censors put the question to every Roman, “On your word of honour have you a wife?” If the answer was in the negative the Censor weighed all the circumstances of the case, and, if he deemed the man negligent of his duty, he imposed on him a fine called _uxorium_. From the earliest times it had been reckoned a Roman’s imperative duty to marry. Dionysius embodies this practice in the statement that the “ancient law compelled all adults to marry.” The historians mention several instances in which the penalty for neglect of this custom was imposed by the Censors.[106] We are told[107] that the Censors, M. Furius Camillus and M. Postumius Albinus, in 403 B.C., obliged all who had reached old age without marrying to pay a sum of money to the public treasury, and Valerius Maximus, in stating this fact, puts into their mouths words to the following effect: “As nature imposes on man the necessity of being born, so it imposes on him the obligation to produce birth, and your parents bind you by maintaining you to the obligation of maintaining their grandchildren. In addition to this, fortune has given you a long period to listen to her appeals to you to perform this duty, while, in the meantime, your years have wasted away, and you have remained without the name of either husband or father. Go, then, and pay the knotty coin which will be useful to a numerous posterity.” We need place no implicit belief in the exact details of this narrative, and Plutarch may be nearer the truth when he relates that the Censors induced, either by persuasion or penalties, the unmarried Romans of their day to wed the women who had been made widows by the devastating wars of Veii. But, whatever may have been the particular occurrences, there can be no doubt that the sentiments put by Maximus into the mouths of the Censors were the genuine sentiments of the Roman people, and they continued to be the same till the latest days of the Republic. We are told[108] that Quintus Metellus in his censorship, the date of which is uncertain, but it was either 131 B.C. or 101 B.C.--according as we accept the statement of Livy that it was