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him to make a salve of honey and the blood of a white cock, and anoint his eyes for three days; that he applied it, and recovered his sight, and came to the temple and returned public thanks to the god, and that this happened in the time of Antoninus Pius. See Harduin on Pliny, N. H. xxix. 38. *

He ordered that no woman of reputation should be årrested and forced out of her house for debt.

Th. L. i. Tit. x. p. 57.

Cod.

He made a law against delators, after his victory over Maxentius, with a view to settle peace and tranquillity at Rome. He ordered such offenders to have their tongues cut out. Illud sane et ex hac lege et aliis nonnullis discimus, Constantinum pœnas acerbissimas legibus indixisse, si quisquam principum, ut―vitia frangeret. Gothofred, ad Cod. Th. L. x. Tit. x. p. 431.

He published an edict by which he declared himself ever ready to receive and hear any complaints against his officers, governors, and counsellors of state, which should be well-grounded, and promised not only to do justice to the sufferers, but to recompence them for their pains. Cod. Th. Chron. p. 25.

He made a law to punish adultery with death, which had not been a capital crime, in that sense before in the Roman empire. See the first Volume of these Remarks, p. 163. and Gothofred ad Cod. Th. L. xi. Tit. xxxvi. p. 295.

He repealed the Papian law. One of the corruptions which soon crept into the church, was a fanatical notion concerning celibacy, the recommending it too much, and the requiring it of several; for which the civil magistrate ought to have reprimanded and checked the ecclesiastics. The fathers began from early times to talk weakly and injudiciously upon this subject,

VOL. II.

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ject, and to cry up a single life beyond measure. gustus, to people the empire, exhausted by civil wars, and to restrain several abuses, made a law de maritandis ordinibus, which was called Lex Julia, and another called Lex Papia Poppaea, in which he encouraged, and enforced matrimony by rewards to those who should comply, and by heavy penalties on the disobedient. It may be right, where the exigencies of the state cannot be pleaded to the contrary, to leave persons more liberty in this than was granted to them by the laws of Augustus; but the good of civil society certainly requires that marriage be permitted to all, that it be accounted honourable, that it be attended with some privileges, and that the parents of a numerous family be considered, employed, and recompensed, cæteris paribus, beyond others, and in many cases have the preference. So thought, and so acted the wise Romans, when they were in their most flourishing condition; but in the time of Constantine notions were entertained, which afterwards helped to fill the world with drones, mendicants, fanatics, and imaginary dæmoniacs, not to mention other bad consequences. Ambrose affirms that Alexandria, Afric, and the east, where there was the greatest number of religious virgins, were therefore more populous than other countries, De Virg. iii. See Sozom. i. 9.

He restrained and discouraged, but did not absoFutely forbid and suppress, the Pagan practice of sacrificing, and consulting the entrails of victims by the Haruspices.

The priests of the River-God Nile were Androgyni. Constantine commanded this scandalous order of priesthood to be suppressed. Euseb. Vit. Const. iv.

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What

What could be the reason for which the Egyptians honoured their favourite God in this ridiculous and obscene manner? I shall here offer a conjecture about it: Quum multi Di Paganorum utriusque sexus sive appernes putarentur, Nilum inter eos fuisse numeratum minime mirum est. Ille Egyptum rigat et serit, tanquam mas: ejus autem limus sole calefactus et fruges et animalia parit: hoc femineum. Colebatur itaque vel ab androgynis, vel forsan ab impuris nebulonibus qui muliebria patiebantur.

The temple of Venus in Phoenice was a school of such sort of debauchery, and therefore destroyed by Constantine.

Lucus hic erat ac delubrum, quod non in media urbe, nec in foro aut plateis positum erat cujusmodi multa visuntur in civitatibus, ornamenti causa ambitiose constructa, sed devium procul a trivis et publico calle, fœdissimo Dæmoni quem Venerem appellant, in parte verticis Libani montis consecratum. Erat illic schola quædam nequitiæ, omnibus obscenis hominibus, et qui corpus suum omni licentia corruperant, aperta. Quippe effeminati quidam, et femince potius dicendi quam viri, sexus sui gravitate abdicata * muliebria patientes, Dæmonem placabant. Adhæc illegitimi concubitus et adulteria, fæœdaque et nefaria flagitia eo in templo, tanquam in loco ab omni lege ac rectore vacuo, peragebantur. Euseb. Laud. Const. viii. p. 736.

When Eusebius says, θηλείᾳ νόσῳ τὴν δαίμονα ἐλεῶνιο, he borrows this expression from Herodotus, ενέσκηψε ὁ Θεὸς Ixuar voor. immisit ipsis Venus morbum femineum, I. 105. p. 44. But θήλεια νόσος in Herodotus means τὰ καλαμήνια, and they who think that it means something else, or something

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Θηλείᾳ νόσῳ τὴν δαίμονα λεοντα

something worse, are mistaken. See the commentators on Longimus, who greatly admires this modest and polite periphrasis of the historian; and an epistle of Musgrave de hemorragis menstruis virorum, in the Philosoph. Trans. MDCCI, p. 864.

μη

Bacchis was αρρενόθηλυς. Διονύσῳ τῷ γύνιδι—ἀφιέρωσαν ἐκπλησίαν, τὸ καταγέλασον καὶ ἀνδρόγυνον ἐν αὐτῇ ἱδρύσαντες ἄγαλμα. Ecclesiam Baccho Gunidi consecrarunt, simulacro ejus ridiculo et androgyno in ea collocato. Theodoret iii. 7. Jupiter ανδρόξυνος γίνεται, εἰ καὶ μὴ τὴν γαςέρα, ἀλλὰ γῆν τὸν ' δὰν κυοφορῶν, ἵνα καὶ ταῦτα παρὰ φύσιν αὐτῷ πράτζολο. κ καὶ τὸ διθύραμβον κύημα ανδρόξυνον γενόμενον ἑκατέραν ἐνύβρισε φύσιν. αndrogynus factus est, non in utero quidem sed in femore fætum gestans, ut et ista præter naturam ab eo committerentur. Unde ortus Bacchus ipse quoque androgynus, utrumque sexum contumelia affecit. Evagrius i. 11.

It appears from one of his laws, that the Pagans attempted sometimes to compel the Christians to join with them in acts of religion. He ordered such offenders to be bastinadoed, or if they were rich to be fined; which was not amiss.

By a law which condemns magic arts exercised to the hurt of others, he permits charms, and incantations, and such sort of tricks, intended for harmless or good purposes.

He made laws for the religious observation of Sunday, Euseb. Vit. Const. iv. 18. Sozom. i. 8.

Sicut indignissimum videbatur, diem Solis, veneratione sui celebrem, altercantibus jurgiis et noxiis partium contentionibus occupari, ita gratum ac jucundum est, eo die quæ sunt maxima votiva compleri: atque ideo emancipandi et manumittendi die festo cuncti licentiam habeant, et super his rebus actus non prohibeantur. Cod. Th. L. ii. Tit. viii. p. 118.

Before

Before this law, he had given one, which runs thus: Omnes judices urbaneque plebes, et cunctarum artium, officia venerabili die solis quiescant. Ruri tamen positi agrorum culturæ libere licenterque inserviant: quonium frequenter evenit, ut non aptius alio die frumenta sulcis, aut vinece scrobibus mandentur, ne occasione momenti pereat commoditas cœlesti provisione concessa. Cod. L. iii. Tit. xiii. 3.

Compare this with Virgil, Georg. i. 268, whom the legislator seems to have had in view:

Quippe etiam festis quædam exercere diebus Fas et jura sinunt. Rivos deducere nulla Religio vetuit, segeti prætendere sepem, Insidias avibus moliri, incendere vepres, Balantumque gregem fluvio mersure salubri. Scævola, consultus quid feris agi liceret, respondit, Quod omissum noceret. Macrobius Saturn. i. 16.

The emperor Leo repealed this law of Constantine, and published one more strict, Constit. liv.

Gothofred in his notes on the Theod. Code gives us the laws for the observation of Sunday, made from A. D. 321. to A. D. 425. by Constantine, Valentinian I. and II. and Theodosius I. and II.

He obliged his soldiers to repeat on Sundays a prayer addressed to the one only God. The Christians would have died a thousand deaths, rather than have addressed a prayer to Jupiter; and therefore this may be looked upon as a sort of violence offered to the consciences of the Pagans; but it must be considered that the pagans in general, the Roman soldiers in particular, were hardly troubled with pious scruples of this kind. They who used to worship their own worthless emperors living or dead, and their own standards, were not men who would have accounted

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