Note 255-9 — Chapter III

Even in the year 131 B. C., the censor Metellus demanded that citizens should, for political reasons be compelled to marry. (Livy, LIX, Sueton., Oct. 89.) Aes uxorium for bachelors. (Valer. Max., II, 9, I.) Cæsar distributed land by way of preference among those who had three or more children. (Sueton., Cæs. 20.) Augustus' celebrated Lex Julia et Papia Poppæa sought to urge even widows to marry again in opposition to the moral public conscience. (Partly augendo ærario: Tacit., Ann., III, 25.) Dio Cass., LVI, 1 ff. Trajan did more yet, inasmuch as he gave great assistance to impoverished parents, even of the highest classes, to enable them to educate their children. Sub te liberos tollere libet, expedit! (Plin., Paneg., 26.) Of what little assistance all this really was, Tacitus, Ann., III, 25, IV, 16, and Plin., Epist. IV, 15, bear witness. If, under the Cæsars, the damage done to the childless in the case of inheritance was a frequent motive of divorce (Friedländer, Sittengeschichte I, 389), the L. Julia, in fact, operated in a direction contrary to that in which it was intended to work.