ROME IN THE FIRST CENTURY. 
311 
INSTITUTIONS BY GEOWTH AND BY CEEATION. 
SYLLABUS OF LECTURE BY MR. D. D. DOBELL. 
(Read 16th January, 1890.) 
The two schools of thought. The problem. Only civil institu- 
tions now referred to. Persistency of bad institutions and customs. 
Polyandry ; descent traceable only from mothers, and little regard 
for family life. Patriarchal system, and great regard for family 
life : customary laws, status, polygamy, and domestic slavery. 
The caste system. The village commune system. Voting by 
acclamation. Emergence in Western Europe by battle and effort 
from the stationary life and its unconscious inactivity, despair, and 
wretchedness. Decay of feudalism and chivalry. Encroach- 
ments on commons and waste. Sovereign trading companies. 
Diplomacy. Domicile. Objection to foreigners. English jury 
system. Fiction of original compact. Influence of climate over- 
rated. The metaphorical growth and the actual creation of 
institutions on models. 
SOCIAL AND MORAL CONDITION OF EOME IN 
THE FIEST CENTUEY. 
SYLLABUS OF LECTURE BY MR. F. H. COLSON, M.A. 
(Read 23rd January, 1890.) 
Ordinary view of Eoman society. Its supposed wholesale de- 
pravity. Difficulties of the view. Tendency of modern historians 
to modify it. Evidences for a moral condition of Eome : (1) 
scandalous stories of the Imperial Court; (2) moral tone of 
the denunciations of their times in Eoman authors ; (3) great 
Eoman writers. The first class of evidence not so valuable as 
usually supposed — points rather to pessimism than corruption. 
vol. x. z 
