xposed than his fortune
to the abuse of paternal power. Yet his life might be adverse to the
interest or passions of an unworthy father: the same crimes that flowed
from the corruption, were more sensibly felt by the humanity, of the
Augustan age; and the cruel Erixo, who whipped his son till he expired,
was saved by the emperor from the just fury of the multitude. [109] The
Roman father, from the license of servile dominion, was reduced to the
gravity and moderation of a judge. The presence and opinion of Augustus
confirmed the sentence of exile pronounced against an intentional
parricide by the domestic tribunal of Arius. Adrian transported to
an island the jealous parent, who, like a robber, had seized the
opportunity of hunting, to assassinate a youth, the incestuous lover of
his step-mother. [110] A private jurisdiction is repugnant to the spirit
of monarchy; the parent was again reduced from a judge to an accuser;
and the magistrates were enjoined by Severus Alexander to hear his
complaints and execute his sentence. He could no longer take the life
of a son without incurring the guilt and punishment of murder; and the
pains of parricide, from which he had been excepted by the Pompeian law,
were finally inflicted by the justice of Constantine. [111] The same
protection was due to every period of existence; and reason must applaud
the humanity of Paulus, for imputing the crime of murder to the father
who strangles, or starves, or abandons his new-born infant; or exposes
him in a public place to find the mercy which he himself had denied.
But the exposition of children was the prevailing and stubborn vice of
antiquity: it was sometimes prescribed, often permitted, almost always
practised with impunity, by the nations who never entertained the Roman
ideas of paternal power; and the dramatic poets, who appeal to the human
heart, represent with indifference a popular custom which was palliated
by the motives of economy and compassion. [112] If the father could
subdue his own feelings, he might escape, though not the censure, at
least the chastisement, of the laws; and the Roman empire was stained
with the blood of infants, till such murders were included, by
Valentinian and his colleagues, in the letter and spirit of the
Cornelian law. The lessons of jurisprudence [113] and Christianity had
been insufficient to eradicate this inhuman practice, till their gentle
influence was fortified by the terrors of capital punishment.