The Lex de maritandis ordinibus, which was no doubt embodied in the Lex Papia Poppæa, brings to light a new phase of Roman life. Distinctions had arisen among the Roman citizens, and more anxiety was felt to maintain the honour and purity of the highest of these classes than to preserve the ordinary Roman citizen from the outside world. Senators were forbidden to marry freedwomen, but all other citizens were allowed to marry them, owing to the scarcity of free women, but prohibited from marrying prostitutes, procuresses, condemned criminals, and actresses. The legislation of Augustus in regard to marriage has generally been regarded as a failure. Horace celebrated the success of the Lex Julia de adulterio cohibendo in Ode iv. 5:-- “Nullis polluitur casta domus stupris, Mos et lex maculosum edomuit nefas”-- words which seem to me to prove that the accounts of the degeneracy of the women were grossly exaggerated--for no legislation could produce effects in any way approaching to those described by Horace, if the evil were deeply seated. From Horace’s words we may gather that the law had some good effect; and the prominence of the Lex Papia Poppæa in the discussions of jurists, renders it likely that it continued to act for some time with considerable force. The general effect of legislation based on it, and of the course of events, was to alter the basis of the Roman State, and to make the individual, and not the family, the unit. Husband and wife became more closely connected together, the wife becoming to some extent the heir of the husband, and her children being entitled to inherit her property. But causes were working, in combination with the aversion to marriage, which rendered the Lex Papia Poppæa nugatory. In the Christian Church arose an inordinate estimate of the virtue of celibacy. A large family came to be regarded almost as a disgrace, as a proof of lasciviousness. And thus, when Constantine, a Christian Emperor, ascended the throne, he abolished most of the pains and penalties of celibacy and childlessness, and Justinian abolished all the clauses that dealt with inheritance. BOOK III. THE POSITION AND INFLUENCE OF WOMEN IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY. CHAPTER I. HIGH POSITION OF WOMEN AND THEIR SUBSEQUENT DEGRADATION.