t
frequent, condemns the criminals, ad gladium, ludi damnationem, (Ulpian,
de Officio Proconsulis, l. viii. in Collatione Legum Mosaic. et Rom.
tit. xi p. 235.)]

A sin, a vice, a crime, are the objects of theology, ethics, and
jurisprudence. Whenever their judgments agree, they corroborate each
other; but, as often as they differ, a prudent legislator appreciates
the guilt and punishment according to the measure of social injury. On
this principle, the most daring attack on the life and property of a
private citizen is judged less atrocious than the crime of treason or
rebellion, which invades the majesty of the republic: the obsequious
civilians unanimously pronounced, that the republic is contained in the
person of its chief; and the edge of the Julian law was sharpened by
the incessant diligence of the emperors. The licentious commerce of the
sexes may be tolerated as an impulse of nature, or forbidden as a source
of disorder and corruption; but the fame, the fortunes, the family of
the husband, are seriously injured by the adultery of the wife. The
wisdom of Augustus, after curbing the freedom of revenge, applied to
this domestic offence the animadversion of the laws: and the guilty
parties, after the payment of heavy forfeitures and fines, were
condemned to long or perpetual exile in two separate islands. [189]
Religion pronounces an equal censure against the infidelity of the
husband; but, as it is not accompanied by the same civil effects,
the wife was never permitted to vindicate her wrongs; [190] and the
distinction of simple or double adultery, so familiar and so important
in the canon law, is unknown to the jurisprudence of the Code and the
Pandects. I touch with reluctance, and despatch with impatience, a more
odious vice, of which modesty rejects the name, and nature abominates
the idea. The primitive Romans were infected by the example of the
Etruscans [191] and Greeks: [192] and in the mad abuse of prosperity
and power, every pleasure that is innocent was deemed insipid; and the
Scatinian law, [193] which had been extorted by an act of violence,
was insensibly abolished by the lapse of time and the multitude of
criminals. By this law, the rape, perhaps the seduction, of an ingenuous
youth, was compensated, as a personal injury, by the poor damages of ten
thousand sesterces, or fourscore pounds; the ravisher might be slain by
the resistance or revenge of chastity; and I wish to believe, that at
Rome, as