it entailed on the offender, were of a nature peculiarly disgraceful. The passages are so offensively constructed by the impure imaginations of the writers, that delicacy will not admit of their being cited; it must be sufficient to refer to them. See Plautus, in his Pœnulus, scen. 2. act 4, ver. 40; where his Syncerastus is introduced, saying, Facio," &c. Phædrus, Fab. xi. lib. iii., which proves the rule, Quæ venit ex merito deformitas dolenda venit," as consolation to the eunuch, still marking a certain painful demembration as the punishment of this offence. See also Horace, Sat. 2. lib. 1. ver. 44.*

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Terence, however, whether he felt on this occasion more modesty than Plautus, certainly refrains from those offensive minutiae of description, which deform the pages of the other writers. He speaks of the criminal, as bound hand and foot, and prepared to receive the customary punishment of adulterers. ("Pars quâ peccatum est resecari.”)†

Valerius Maximus relates two examples of this punishment.‡

* Plautus, in his Pœnulus, scen. 2. act 4, ver. 40. Phædrus, Fab. xi. lib. 3. Horace, Sat. 2. lib. 1. ver. 44. Terence. Eunuchus, Act v. Scene v. verse 3.

"Minitatur quod machis solet.”

Val. Max. lib. vi. cap. i. n. 13.

Diodorus Siculus mentions, that the ancient laws of Egypt made the same provision, though it was for the rape of a virgin, or the violation of a woman, (προσέταξαν αποκοπτεσθαι τα αίδοια.) The punishment of Adultery was to the adulterer whipping, and to the adulteress, cutting off her nose, in order, doubtless, that such a mutilation of her features might prevent the inducement of a repetition of the crime.

Probably, this severe, but not inappropriate punishment (the loss of the offending member) was one rather permitted to be inflicted by the indignant and injured husband, who might have discovered the guilty parties in the act, than one prescribed and executed by the laws. At the same time, it must be remarked, that some nations, in legislating on these subjects, have awarded this as the punishment of less injurious criminal indulgences. It certainly was the penalty attached in the criminal code of Justinian, to those found guilty of sodomitical practices, and the reasoning by which Zoneras justifies it, as " pœnam plane convenientem," by analogy to the punishment of sacrilege, "Quid enim? Si sacrilegium commississent nonne eis manus amputassem," &c. makes the explanation of the infliction sufficiently plain. On the same analogy, one of King Edgar's

laws made the punishment for defamation, cutting out the defamer's tongue.

The mutilation of the face is also alluded to by Martial, in the epigram, beginning, Quis tibi persuasit nares abscindere macho?" &c.

A mode of punishment adopted in the case of the female offender, and which prevailed among the Romans till the time of Theodosius, is mentioned by the historian Socrates; but it was one, at which the very feelings, which dictate the punishment of the crime at all, must experience the most revolting disgust.*

If, says he, a woman was taken in Adultery, the Romans did not punish her by preventing the repetition of the crime, as in the case of the man, (the difference of sex requiring this distinction,) but by the greatest provocations of her lust, for they shut the criminal up in a narrow lodge, and there compelled her to take her fill of these abominable pleasures, by prostituting herself to all comers, however base or vile and to make every one apprized of the the execution of the punishment, little bells were rung during the time of execution. This abominable custom, however, the Emperor Theodosius very properly abolished.

The personal mutilations, also, did not con

* Soc. lib. v. cap. 18.

tinue beyond the time of the Emperors. They made way for even more severe penalties, as the increase of the crime had probably called for such; for Rome, in the after ages, appears to have been characterized by a profligacy, as extensive as was her dominion.

Some writers have indeed said, that capital punishments were inflicted on this and other crimes, in the earlier ages of the Roman Empire; that Adultery, or the drinking of wine, (which the Greeks would allow as the least of all crimes,) were both punished with death, as the greatest offences that woman could be guilty of; for that Romulus looked upon Adultery as the source of impudence, and drunkenness of Adultery.

The slightest approach to this last mentioned vice in their women, was peculiarly obnoxious to the Roman people, and subjected them to severe visitation.

Pliny says, it was enough to have tasted wine, or to have stolen the key of the cellar. Nat. Hist. xiv. 14.

It was a custom among them, at marriages, for the bride to salute the attendants, in order to convince them, by her breath, of her innocence of any imputation of drinking strong liquors; so severely was this offence reprobated. Perhaps our own custom of the minister saluting the bride, still retained in many country parishes, is a remnant of this, or rather, perhaps, merely an expression of pastoral benediction and christian kindness.

Both these offences continued for a long time to be punished by the Romans without mercy; and to this cause has been attributed the absence of any separation of husband and wife among the Romans, for many years. Taylor, in his comment on the civil law, says, the length of time has shown the goodness of the law concerning women, for it is allowed, that during the space of five hundred and twenty years, no marriage was ever dissolved at Rome. But we remark more on this shortly. If the laws of Rome did indeed make this provision, they seemed to have had a beneficial operation, as a restraint; but it is certain, that there is no record of the infliction of such a punishment; and it is doubted, whether it existed as a capital crime, previously to the Christian Emperors.

*

In a case of suspected crime, the husband, together with the relations of the wife, were appointed her judges. This was a sort of domestic tribunal, erected among the Romans, having its chief cognizance over the manners of the people, for the power of the Censors was not of equal extent with that of the Archons in Greece, and this was one mode of investigating Adultery. Montesquieu remarks,

Taylor's Elements of Roman Civil Law.