26 MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY 



the scarcity of free women was responsible in part 

 for the evil, which in that event may still be regarded 

 as Nature's penalty for a vicious law. 



The Eoman civilisation followed closely the lines 

 of the Greek, the austere manners of the republic 

 giving place to the grossest license under the empire. 

 It is no part of our task to describe the frightful 

 iniquities of Eome in the time of the Csesars — the 

 public orgies of vice and the shameless obscenity of 

 literature. We refer to this subject only to say that 

 from these evils good resulted in a strangely unforeseen 

 manner, and that they were the cause of what may 

 be regarded as an important step in evolution as 

 affecting marriage and the constitution of society. 

 Eoman marriage, like the Greek, began by being a 

 civil obligation, a means of recruiting the population 

 of the state with citizens of pure extraction. Two 



this event," the writer observes, "the most astonishing in history, 

 may long continue obscure, but in following step by step a degenera- 

 tion which lasted a thousand years, in seeing in their works of art 

 the plastic talent of the Greeks grow stiff and lifeless, their imagi- 

 nation become stunted, and their great men dwindle into medioc- 

 rities, we seem to feel beneath the visible and palpable facts with 

 which alone historians concern themselves, the slow, steady opera- 

 tion of natural causes among these millions of human beings who 

 deteriorated without knowing it, each generation transmitting to 

 its successor in an increasing measure the germs of decay. " 



