Quintus Metellus Macedonicus, or the statement of Gellius that it was Quintus Metellus Numidicus--urged that all should be forced to marry _liberorum creandorum causa_, and delivered a speech on marriage which Augustus[109] deemed so convincing that he read it aloud in the Senate, and drew the attention of the people to it by edict. And Cicero, in his treatise ‘De Legibus,’[110] makes it part of the duty of Censors to prevent people being bachelors. There would not be the same obligation on females to marry, but it is likely that every Roman citizen girl married. It is probable that the number of the females was not so great as that of the males. Every father had the right to expose his children, and, while he had no reason to make away with his male children, the necessity of providing dowries for females would induce him to think seriously before he took up and reared the female children that were born to him. This, then, was the state of matters in the best times of the Republic; but this state was changed by the violent civil wars that preceded the establishment of the Empire. Then the great families of the commonwealth were decimated and family ties broken up. A feeling of the utter uncertainty of life and an indifference to its continuance pervaded all classes. Moreover, luxurious habits had become prevalent. Formerly sons with their wives lived in the house of their father, and constituted, in fact as in law, one family. Instances of this conjoint family life are recorded so late as the second century B.C. But now the expense of bringing up a family had come to be felt by many as a burden, and the trouble of family cares was regarded as an encroachment on the enjoyments of life. And hence arose an unwillingness to marry. People saw no good and felt no pride in having families. Their children might be a curse to them, or they might be exposed to lives of poverty, accusations, harassment, and proscription--lives, in fact, which were miseries, and not blessings. But Augustus held that the prevalence of such sentiments and practices was fatal to the welfare of a State, and the special circumstances of the time made them peculiarly dangerous to Rome. For the State had suffered enormous loss by its civil wars. Appian[111] asserts that at the census of Julius Cæsar it was said that the population was only half of what it had been before these wars. Dio Cassius[112] describes the scarcity of the population as terrible, and the number of women had decreased. Friedländer[113] estimates the free population of Rome in 5 B.C., omitting senators, knights, and soldiers, as consisting of 320,000 males and 265,600 females.