ator. Graec. tom. iii. p. 21--184.)]

[Footnote 195: A crowd of disgraceful passages will force themselves
on the memory of the classic reader: I will only remind him of the cool
declaration of Ovid:-- Odi concubitus qui non utrumque resolvant. Hoc
est quod puerum tangar amore minus.]

[Footnote 196: Aelius Lampridius, in Vit. Heliogabal. in Hist. August p.
112 Aurelius Victor, in Philippo, Codex Theodos. l. ix. tit. vii. leg.
7, and Godefroy's Commentary, tom. iii. p. 63. Theodosius abolished the
subterraneous brothels of Rome, in which the prostitution of both sexes
was acted with impunity.]

Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.--Part VIII.

A new spirit of legislation, respectable even in its error, arose in the
empire with the religion of Constantine. [197] The laws of Moses were
received as the divine original of justice, and the Christian princes
adapted their penal statutes to the degrees of moral and religious
turpitude. Adultery was first declared to be a capital offence: the
frailty of the sexes was assimilated to poison or assassination, to
sorcery or parricide; the same penalties were inflicted on the passive
and active guilt of paederasty; and all criminals of free or servile
condition were either drowned or beheaded, or cast alive into the
avenging flames. The adulterers were spared by the common sympathy of
mankind; but the lovers of their own sex were pursued by general and
pious indignation: the impure manners of Greece still prevailed in the
cities of Asia, and every vice was fomented by the celibacy of the
monks and clergy. Justinian relaxed the punishment at least of female
infidelity: the guilty spouse was only condemned to solitude and
penance, and at the end of two years she might be recalled to the
arms of a forgiving husband. But the same emperor declared himself the
implacable enemy of unmanly lust, and the cruelty of his persecution can
scarcely be excused by the purity of his motives. [198] In defiance
of every principle of justice, he stretched to past as well as future
offences the operations of his edicts, with the previous allowance of a
short respite for confession and pardon. A painful death was inflicted
by the amputation of the sinful instrument, or the insertion of sharp
reeds into the pores and tubes of most exquisite sensibility; and
Justinian defended the propriety of the execution, since the criminals
would have lost their hands, had they been convicted of sa