tant 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 and Greeks: and in
the mad abuse of prosperity and power, every pleasure that is innocent
was deemed insipid; and the Scatinian law, 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 in Athens, the voluntary and effeminate
deserter of his sex was degraded from the honors and the rights of a
citizen. But the practice of vice was not discouraged by the severity
of opinion: the indelible stain of manhood was confounded with the
more venial transgressions of fornication and adultery, nor was the
licentious lover exposed to the same dishonor which he impressed on the
male or female partner of his guilt. From Catullus to Juvenal, the poets
accuse and celebrate the degeneracy of the times; and the reformation
of manners was feebly attempted by the reason and authority of the
civilians till the most virtuous of the Caesars proscribed the sin
against nature as a crime against society.

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. 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