§ 1. The prudence of the prince and of the whole commonwealth, justice, and the virtues connected with them have been discussed; it follows that I deliver precepts concerning temperance, which is especially concerned with moderating pleasures by reason. Its principal parts are chastity and sobriety; gentleness and clemency are annexed to it. These must be discussed in order.
I join chastity and modesty, although the former restrains lust, while the latter removes the signs of wantonness through shame. The thing itself altogether teaches that lust and every incitement to lust must be removed from the commonwealth. Distinguished is Agapetus’s precept and his serious admonition to his prince:
Βασιλέα σε κατ’ ἀλήθειαν ὁρίζομαι, ὡς βασιλεύειν, καὶ κρατεῖν, τῶν ἡδονῶν δυνάμενον, καὶ τὸν στέφανον τῆς σωφροσύνης ἀναδήσαμενον.
I define you as an emperor in truth, since you are able to rule and hold pleasures under your power, and are bound with the diadem of temperance.
§ 2. Reader, I beg you—whether concern for the court and princely counsels occupies you, or you deliver your opinion among fellow senators—I beg you not to pass over this part of the discussion as though it pertained only to churches and monasteries. It is of principal concern to the commonwealth that both princes and private persons live chastely and modestly. The causes and origins of wars and tumults, and the manifold occasions for overturned kingdoms, have very frequently been lust. Seditions arise from injustice, fear, and contempt. Aristotle says in Book V of the Politics, Chapter X:
Τῆς δὲ ἀδικίας μάλιστα δι’ ὕβριν.
But out of every kind of injury, they arise especially on account of insult. Of the attacks that are made upon kings or tyrants, some are made upon the body and head of the princes themselves,
and others upon the principality. Those which are made on account of insult pertain to the body. Since insults have many kinds and many parts, each of them arouses anger. Indeed, of those who become angry, almost all invade another for the sake of avenging an injury received, not for the sake of preeminence.
For example, the attack upon the Pisistratids was made because they had affected Harmodius’s sister with disgrace and dishonor and had attempted to inflict sexual violation upon Harmodius. For Harmodius attacked them because of his sister, Aristogiton because of Harmodius. Men also plotted against Periander, tyrant of Ambracia, because, while they were drinking together, he asked a boy who was with him and whom he kept among his delights whether he was already pregnant by him. Violence was inflicted upon Philip by Pausanias because Philip had permitted him to be affected with insult and dishonor by Attalus without punishment; upon Amyntas, surnamed the Little, by Derdas, because Amyntas had boasted that he had enjoyed his youthful age; and upon the eunuch by Evagoras the Cyprian. For because that man’s wife had been taken from him by the eunuch’s son, he killed him as though he had received an insult.
Many attacks were also made upon certain monarchs because they had taken chastity from someone by violating his body—for example, Crateus’s attack upon Archelaus. For Crateus always bore it gravely and painfully that Archelaus had intercourse with him for the sake of violation. And so, although the following pretext was far slighter and this cause less weighty, it was nevertheless sufficiently suitable and just: that Archelaus had given him in marriage none of the daughters whom he had promised to give him. Rather, he betrothed the elder to the king of Elimea while entangled in the war which he waged with Sirras and Arrhabaeus, but the younger to Amyntas’s son, thinking that by this arrangement the latter, especially since he had been born from Cleopatra, would by no means dissent from him. But the origin of the estrangement from the prince was that Crateus had borne it grievously that he had submitted to his lust in sexual matters.
Hellanocrates of Larissa attacked him together with Crateus and for the same cause. For when he saw that he was not recalled from exile by the man to whom he had given the flower of his age to be used and enjoyed, especially since Archelaus had promised that he would do this, he judged that the intimacy with him had been instituted not because of amorous desire but for the sake of insult. Parrhon and Heraclides of Aenus killed Cotys, avenging an injury to their father. Adamas abandoned Cotys and revolted from him because he judged himself affected with insult in having been castrated by him when he was a boy.
It is indeed so. A foreign woman overturned Troy. Lavinia in turn delivered Italy, and in turn incestuous marriage-beds, to the descendants of Troy. A stranger’s love crushed the newness of the Punic kingdom and its rising citadels, and delivered them into the hands of the barbarian Hiarbas.
That virtue was rare among the nations. Therefore, when Valerius invokes it, he scarcely finds where it may have a place: “Whence,” he says in Book VI, Chapter I, “shall I invoke you, Chastity, the principal support equally of men and women? For you inhabit the hearths of Vesta consecrated by ancient religion. You lie upon the couches of Capitoline Juno. By constant station you frequent the summit of the palace, the august household gods, and the most sacred marriage-bed of the Julian clan. By your protection the insignia of boyhood are defended. Out of regard for your divinity, the uncorrupted flower of youth remains. With you as guardian, the matron’s robe is esteemed. Be present, therefore, and acknowledge what you yourself wished to be done.” But chastity wanders far from these things.
The cause of so great an evil is that God delivered them into passions of dishonor. For such grave vices followed idolatry. Tertullian explained this in his book On Modesty, Chapter V, where he places fornication midway between idolatry and murder: “There is also a dignity of evil in that it is placed at the summit or in the midst of the worst things. I behold a certain pomp and raised platform of adultery: on this side a procession led by the idolatry which precedes it; on that side an escort furnished by the murder which follows it. Without doubt, it has taken its seat worthily between the two most eminent pinnacles of crimes, and through their midst it has filled, as though vacant, a place of equal authority in guilt. Who will tear it, enclosed by such sides and supported by such ribs, from the body of the things adhering to it—from the bond of neighboring crimes, from the embrace of kindred wicked deeds—so as to separate it alone for the fruit of repentance? Will not idolatry on this side and murder on that side detain it? And if they have any voice, they will cry out: ‘This wedge is ours; this joining is ours. We are marked off by idolatry; with it distinguishing us, we are joined. We attend upon it as it shines forth from our midst. Divine Scripture has embodied us together; the letters themselves are our glues; now it cannot exist without us. I indeed, idolatry, very frequently supply occasion for adultery. My groves know, and my mountains, and living waters, and the very temples in cities, how much we procure for the overthrow of chastity.’” Thus idolatry was the common bawd of the world, the procuress of lusts, and the violator of marriages.
§ 3. But Seneca is the best witness to the morals of his own time, in Book III of On Benefits, Chapter VI: “Then he does not desire it to become known to all how many are ungrateful, for the multitude of sinners will take away shame from the thing, and a common curse will cease to be regarded as a disgrace. Does any woman now blush at divorce, after certain illustrious and noble women reckon their years not by the number of consuls but by the number of husbands, and depart for the sake of marriage and marry for the sake of divorce? That was feared so long as it was rare; but because no public records were without divorce, by often hearing of it they learned to do it. Is there now any shame in adultery, after matters have reached such a point that no woman has a husband except to provoke her adulterer? Chastity is a proof of ugliness. What woman will you find so wretched, so sordid, that a single pair of adulterers is enough for her, unless she has divided the hours among individual men and the day is not sufficient for all; unless she has been carried to one and remained with another? She is uncultivated and old-fashioned who does not know that the adultery of one man is called marriage. Just as shame for these offenses has now vanished after the practice wandered more widely, so you will make the ungrateful more numerous and more daring if they begin to count themselves.” Histories teach that what Seneca says is truth, not hyperbole.
Thus, under such morals, the mass of so great an empire could not stand. And although, through the zeal of brave and sometimes prudent emperors—Vespasian, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines—it moved its arms, at last it grew languid and served barbarians.
Therefore, let those who deny that chastity is necessary to rulers, and who do not disapprove the Babylonians, Corinthians, and Sybarites, look upon the transformations not of one commonwealth but of the whole world. After all flesh of the primeval world had corrupted its way, the cataclysm destroyed it by inundation. The sorrowful monuments of the Sodomites and Gomorrheans remain to the present day. The destructions of the Midianites and Benjaminites are recalled daily. A son rebelled against David the adulterer. At Rome kingship ended through adultery, and the decemvirate was abolished through lust. Every age has had lusts and punishments for lusts. The immodesty of the Sybarites was punished with such severity by the Crotoniats that “Sybaritic evils” passed from it into a proverb. Lacedaemon paid grievous penalties for impious lust when its strength was worn down in the battle of Leuctra. The Volsinians were thus reduced to servitude. Philip of Macedon was killed because he did not avenge the obscene injury inflicted by Attalus. Bryas was stripped of command because of violence inflicted upon another’s betrothed. Antiochus, king of Syria, called θεὸς, “God,” was killed by Laodice because he had married Berenice. Ptolemy Philopator perished after being attacked by plots even from his wife. Antoninus
Verus, poured out into wandering lusts, was killed with poison by his wife Lucilla. Fredegund, his mistress, killed Chilperic, king of France and infamous for adulteries, through Landeric. Julian, a nobleman, attacked Roderic, king of the Goths in Spain and the violator of his daughter, with a most grievous war; for after the Saracens and Moors had been brought into alliance, the Goths conquered, and seven hundred thousand human beings slain, the Spains were oppressed by the harshest and most enduring servitude, into which one man’s lust cast them. Why should I recall the Sicilian Vespers, in which the Gauls were slain as though in a single hour, and the right to the kingdom was transferred to Constance, Frederick’s wife? A great disaster was inflicted upon a most noble kingdom when it was deprived of the strength of that island. The cause was the wantonness of governors and soldiers.
Therefore divine justice, always vigilant as the avenger of luxury, rises vehemently against lusts even in this life. “Adultery and fornication are a fire consuming even to destruction and rooting out all offspring,” Job 31. “He who is an adulterer, through want of heart, will destroy his own soul, and he gathers dishonor to himself, and his reproach will not be blotted out,” Proverbs 6. And Wisdom 3: “The children of adulterers will come to destruction, and the seed of an unlawful bed will be exterminated.” Certainly Scripture most frequently recalls this also among the causes of perishing Israel. For this vice is foul, and because nature is prone to it, it is always punished by God with great examples. But because my business is not only with pious governors of the commonwealth and their counsels, but also with atheists and those whom advantage alone, or reason of state, moderates in delivering an opinion and making laws, let us explain the cause itself why lust is so harmful.
§ 4. The stimulus toward pleasures is sharp, and it belongs to a brave and prudent man to be an enemy to the sweet evil. Love and desire are vehement; they never lay down hope; whatever is preserved they desire more. That flame at first warms with a slight fire, but presently burns out the whole of virtue and the spirit. It never stops at what is lawful, never at what is small; it purchases unlawful things with money, life, and reputation. And if any other vice does so, this one certainly passes most quickly into a monster. Shame forbids the recollection of the deeds of the ancients and their monstrous lusts.
During Julian’s reign, the inhabitants of Arethusa and Heliopolis showed themselves most cruel toward virgins because the virgins had been taught chastity by Christian governors. The cause of such great cruelty among the Heliopolitans was that the virgins were forbidden to prostitute themselves to those they met before they were given in marriage, for they had formerly employed that law. They were therefore borne against chastity with a rage so great as was not fitting even for punishing lusts. And so what Cicero admonishes in Book IV of the Tusculan Disputations is especially forceful here: “He who has hurled himself headlong cannot hold himself back when he wishes.” Bodies given to a precipice have no command of themselves. If lust has hurled the spirit headlong, the choice of crime indeed remains in the falling man’s liberty, but it is a wretched choice, which by its impulse urges on the ruin rather than struggles against it.
Therefore, since this evil is violent and, if it falls upon powerful men, most insulting, great harms must necessarily arise from it. For the good which is taken away—namely, chastity—is regarded as the greatest. Mortals can bear two things with the greatest difficulty: losses and contempt.
Lost money is mourned with true tears.
In the deaths of parents, spouses, brothers, and relatives, rehearsed and often feigned tears flow; no one has mourned shipwrecks, the destruction of villas, or the confiscation of a patrimony with a hired mourner going before. True grief has sufficient strength for tears. And so, on account of adverse things which they see others enjoy, human beings retain anger either perpetually or for a very long time, and, though it has been effaced, sometimes renew it by sight and hearing.
They receive contempt of themselves, and especially insult joined with loss, much more harshly. They interpret the supreme insult to have been done to themselves in the chastity of themselves or their people being taken away, because they value it highly—or at least wish to be seen to value it highly—and because it is infamous to be negligent concerning the chastity of one’s own people. Virginius killed his daughter, whom Appius Claudius sought for violation after judgment had been given against her liberty and for her enslavement, and judged it better to be the killer of a chaste daughter than the father of a corrupted one. With the same spirit, Pontius Aufidianus killed his daughter, corrupted by her tutor, after he had taken punishment from the corrupter. Publius Maenius punished a freedman who had given his daughter a kiss. Nor was Roman severity so great only toward chastity itself. Publius Atilius Philiscus, who had himself made shameful gain, nevertheless killed his daughter when she was discovered in violation: thus, once a victim of lusts himself, he nevertheless exacted chastity from his daughter. Quintus Fabius Maximus, accusing his son of doubtful chastity, brought it about that by voluntary withdrawal he avoided his father’s sight. Scantinius, tribune of the plebs, because he solicited the son of Marcus Claudius Marcellus for violation, was condemned by the Roman people upon one witness. Gnaeus Sergius also paid the penalties for a lustful intention, for he was condemned by the Quirites because of money promised to a matron. The master of Titus Veturius, by then made a slave from the son of a commander, was led to prison by a decree of the Senate. Gaius Pescennius, a man illustrious through many offices, was compelled to die in prison because of an unspeakable violation. Laetorius Mergus, a military tribune accused upon a solicitation to violation, withdrew himself from judicial inquiry and punished the attempted crime by voluntary death.
Nor were these things done only in a better commonwealth and under a stricter discipline. Even when morals had already been corrupted, Marius pronounced that Gaius Luscius, his sister’s son, who had been killed by the soldier Plotius on account of an attempted violation—and indeed a tribune killed by his own soldier—had been slain lawfully. Certainly he was worthy of seven consulships, if only for this judgment. Sempronius Musca caught Gaius Gallus in adultery and cut him down with scourges. Gaius Memmius beat Lucius Octavius with cords. Carbo Accienus, caught by Vibienus, and likewise Pontius, caught by Publius Cernius, were castrated.
These are examples of Roman chastity, in which commonwealth public honor long flourished beyond that of other nations. Afterward all things were overturned: after Curio, son of a most grave father, incurred sixty million sesterces of another’s debt through injury to noble young men; after Clodius, having bought the court and committed violation, escaped the penalties of adultery; after Gemellus, a court attendant, invited the consul and tribunes and established a brothel in his house, in which he prostituted Rome’s freeborn but degenerate blood; after Catiline killed his only son so that he might obtain marriage with Aurelia Orestilla.
§ 5. Nor was chastity of less value among foreign nations. After their husbands had been slain in battle, the wives of the Teutons asked Marius that they too be given to the Vestal virgins to cultivate virginity; when this was denied, they killed themselves, for they regarded chastity as preferable to life. This is less marvelous in Hippo, a Greek woman, who cast herself into the sea lest she be made a mockery. Democles, fleeing the lust of Demetrius Poliorcetes, plunged himself into a boiling cauldron. The Athenian daughters of Phaedo, after their father had been killed, embraced one another and cast themselves into a well, lest
they be compelled to live unchastely. Timoclea did better: she cast her violator into a well. Brasilla of Dyrrachium, by a chaste deception, lured a soldier to his own death, lest she suffer violence. Sophronia, a Roman woman, forestalled the injury of Maxentius with a sword. Fifty Spartan virgins preferred to die rather than endure the insulting lust of the Messenians. Digna, a woman of Aquileia, when Attila occupied the city, leapt from a window into the river flowing past. Pelagia, together with her mother and sister, underwent the same fate for chastity. I omit Camma, Panthea, the wife of Orgiagon the Gallograecian, Cyane, Valetia the Tuscan, Chiomara, and others concerning whom Plutarch and others write—especially since Christian virgins and matrons surpass them, for whom the cry “Christians to the lion!” was welcome, but “the virgin to the procurer!” was horrifying. I do not bring forward so many armies of virgins fighting more bravely for chastity than any legions, lest political writers judge that I wish to construct a Parthenon, not a city.
I wished to establish only this: violated chastity has customarily been avenged with a grave penalty. For every family is inflamed to avenge a sexual violation, and anger scarcely ever comes to rest unless blood has been shed. And there is scarcely any father or brother who would not bear more patiently that his sister be led to the funeral pyre than to dishonor. From this cause, therefore, great disasters and conspiracies must arise. This is so not only if the powerful sin in this matter, but also if private or very lowly persons do so, should either no penalty or a light one be inflicted for the fault, and much more if it is passed over in silence.
§ 6. The second cause is that by that vice men’s prudence, sagacity, and care for the future are blunted. This one thing is most pernicious to the commonwealth. Nothing is so deadly to minds as lust. “The lust of luxury,” says Augustine, “claims the whole body, inward and outward, for itself, and moves the whole man, with affection of the mind and appetite of the flesh joined together, so that pleasure follows, greater than all pleasures of the body; yet its extremity is reached in such a manner that almost all the sharpness and vigilance of thought is obstructed.” And so, in a commonwealth in which shame is oppressed and luxury exults freely with the reins given to it, there is a great number of the blind, the ecstatic, and the stupid. Good and brave counsels are rare.
For not even Solomon himself, after he gave himself to lusts, reigned wisely and politically; and for that reason he was greatly hated by everyone. “Your father,” says the people, “placed a most harsh yoke upon us.” And the foolish young man admits: “And now my father placed a heavy yoke upon you”; and: “My father cut you with whips, but I shall beat you with scorpions.” Behold what lust did—how it struck the art of ruling out of the wisest man, so that he did not even instruct his son rightly. A blind love inheres in all vices, as Claudian truly says in Against Eutropius:
But because a blind love inheres in vices, every future thing
Is despised, and present things commend their brief fruit.
And lust, heedless of loss, rushes into what is forbidden.
§ 7. Minerva is fashioned chaste, and the Muses virgins, because chastity is not only the companion of wisdom but also its cause and preserver. Nor is this so only by divine ordinance, which did not will to send the pure light of wisdom into souls contaminated by luxury; nature too teaches it. For those whose minds are occupied by the enticements of shameful acts cannot conceive serious thoughts concerning studies. So many comedies, both ancient and modern, teach men to love, yet they present to us no young lover who is prudent; or, if they attribute prudence to him, they also make him a conqueror of love and a hater of the brothel.
§ 8. The third cause is that there is not, in a ruined city, that vigor and strength of bodies which exists in one well regulated in its morals. Brave and rustic Persians conquered the Babylonians—men, to say it in a word, fit for prostitutes. The rustic hardiness of the Macedonians conquered the Persians when they had now been enervated; the Romans, while lusts had not yet become common, conquered those enfeebled Macedonians; the Heruli, Goths, Huns, and others of the barbarians conquered the Romans, until they too succumbed to men stronger than themselves. Diogenes sharply and cynically objected to the Greeks that, while they lived, they caused their bodies to putrefy by baths and lust, but when the same bodies were dead, they seasoned them with spices and ointments against putrefaction. It is an altogether inverted concern: to putrefy the living, and at great expense to dry the dead.
§ 9. Finally, where there is little regard for shame and chastity, the whole commonwealth must necessarily be badly administered. For marriages are uncertain; every offspring either is spurious or is held to be so. For if a daughter will never be able to name her mother’s adulterers without drawing breath thirteen times, as it is in the Satire, who will believe that she was born of a lawful marriage-bed? From this it also happens that very many flee marriages, not from love of chastity but from the liberty of whoring, and then truly because they fear men lying in wait to take their own place in marriage.
Seneca relates that in his time the corruption at Rome had been so great that no woman married except in order to provoke her adulterer. “Messalina,” says Dio, “a lustful and intemperate woman, also compelled the other women to live luxuriously and wantonly; and she brought it about that many women in the palace, in the presence and sight of their husbands, had intercourse with adulterers. She herself esteemed their husbands and increased them in honors and dignities; but she hated the others who did not permit it, and destroyed them by every means.” Who, under such an emperor and such an Augusta, mistress of the emperor, would have wished to take a wife? Therefore let the commonwealth defend chastity publicly and privately, and repress and restrain luxury and lust. Many things avail for this purpose, but especially those which I shall set forth.
§ 10. Let that care, I say, be public; for it is of greater importance that a city be cleansed of evil morals than of infected bodies. Yet no contagion is more ready to spread than in this part. The loss of shame is the most certain parent of every crime. And license permitted by laws brings not satiety but incitement. Morals are easily changed for the worse; the severity of laws scarcely ever turns vices toward the good. When shame has perished, it does not know how to return. Therefore, unless public authority, seriously armed by laws and penalties, opposes lusts and makes ready the fasces and axes, every disgrace and horror will overflow, and the city will be a great brothel.
When Stratonicus had departed from Heraclea, he kept looking back as though anxious, and did all the things done by those who do not wish to be seen. When his companions wondered, he replied that he feared lest someone see him departing from a brothel. For those who leave a brothel are ashamed of the crime committed.
§ 11. Therefore let the insolence of lusts be restrained by severity of laws. Examples are not lacking. Jovianus enacted by a capital law that anyone who looked upon a sacred virgin with an unchaste gaze should be punished. And Title 11, §1, On Extraordinary Crimes: “Solicitors of others’ marriages, likewise disturbers of marriages, even if they cannot obtain the effect of their crime, are punished on account of the intention of pernicious lust.” And §2: “He who, after a boy has been led away or his companion corrupted, has persuaded him to sexual violation, or has importuned a woman or girl, or has done anything for the sake of unchastity, furnished a house—or, according to others, a gift—and given a price by which he might persuade him, is punished, when the crime has been completed,
with death; when it has not been completed, he is deported to an island. Corrupted companions are visited with the supreme punishment.”
The humanity of the Theodosian and Valentinian laws also comes to the aid of those whom another’s wickedness compelled to be unchaste: “If fathers and masters acting as procurers impose upon their daughters or maidservants the necessity of sinning, let the daughters and maidservants, after imploring the help of bishops, be released from every necessity of their miseries.” Let the prince follow the prescriptions of the divine laws in his city.
I see that adulteries were once checked by severe laws. In our Germany, after her hair had been cut off, an adulteress was beaten with whips, naked, through the entire village; and, execrable and hateful to everyone, she was consumed by grief and want of food. The ancient Romans strove to remove the seedbeds of every lust in the very blade of grass; for it was a capital offense for a woman to have drunk wine. They thought that shame would be cheap to her who, although she was otherwise weak in judgment, had by drunkenness—or certainly by the danger of drunkenness—made a path for unchastity. The Pisidians were more lenient: after placing the adulteress together with the adulterer upon an ass, they led them about for some days for everyone to ridicule. The Arabs punished adultery with death, and the Egyptians with a thousand blows; but they cut off the adulteress’s nose, so that she who had been an enticement to another’s crime by her beauty, and had prostituted her own chastity, would displease by deformity.
Formerly many nations had no laws concerning chastity. They say that Hyettus the Argive was the first to carry a law against adulterers, after he had killed Molurus, whom he had discovered in adultery with his wife, and had received a part of Orchomenus in Attica. They say that Draco the Athenian imitated him; he was said, on account of his severity, to have written his laws in blood. Zaleucus, lawgiver of the Locrians, deprived adulterers of their eyes. Deservedly, for the eyes are leaders in love and impose upon the mind. And so, when his son had offended against his father’s law, the indulgent father divided the penalty and, as Aelian relates:
ὑπὲρ τὸ ἕτερον τῶν τοῦ παιδὸς ὀφθαλμῶν, ἀντιδιδόναι τὸ ἑαυτοῦ, ἵνα μὴ ὁ νεανίσκος τυφλωθῇ τελείως.
In place of one of his son’s eyes, he gave his own in exchange, so that the young man might not be blinded completely.
Plato advises that the inflamed impulse of lust must be moderated by reason and restrained by fear of the laws. In Book IX of The Laws, he condemns with death not only inverted lust and adultery, but every resort to prostitutes. He concedes to a husband the right of life over an adulterer—a deed which our laws also do not punish, for they remit penalties to righteous grief. The same is also permitted to a father against the corrupter of his daughter, yet in such a manner that he does not spare his daughter either. The Gortynians led an adulterer crowned with wool to the magistrate, and thereafter held him forever incapable of bearing witness. The people of Lepreum led adulterers into the forum, led them about for three days, and rendered them contemptible for their whole lives. The Romans ordered adulteresses to go about wearing the toga.
The Athenians’ punishment of persons guilty of adultery was foul and not well ordained according to the gravity of a well-ordered commonwealth. The rich redeemed themselves with money; the punishment of the poor was
παρατιλμός, καὶ ἀποῤῥαφανίδωσις,
plucking out the hair and rhaphanidosis—the insertion of a radish—which contained more disgrace and foulness than befitted a grave people. Among the Parthians, adulteries were punished most gravely; they generally shut their wives and other women inside the house.
§ 12. Therefore let public power restrain lusts by laws in all citizens. Let it not imitate the Spartans, who at first lacked those laws. Plutarch tells the matter thus in his Laconic Sayings: In Lycurgus’s times such great chastity of wives existed among everyone, and they were so far removed from that shameful conduct which afterward became prevalent, that formerly it was incredible that the crime of adultery could be found among the Spartans. A saying is reported of Geradas, a man of the greatest antiquity at Sparta. When a certain guest asked him what penalties adulterers paid among the Spartans—for he saw nothing concerning this enacted by Lycurgus—he replied, “There is no adulterer among us, my friend.” When the other rejoined, “What, then, if one should arise?” “He will give,” he said, “a bull so great that, with its neck stretched beyond Taygetus, it may drink from the Eurotas.” And when the other said with a laugh that it was impossible for so great a bull to be found, Geradas replied, “And by what means could an adulterer arise at Sparta, where riches, delights, and artificial adornment of the body are held to be a disgrace; but modesty, moderation, and the observance of obedience owed to the magistrates are, on the contrary, accounted an honor and a praise?”
But that praise was brief. For Aristotle is the authority, in Book II of the Politics, Chapter IX, that they were ruled by their wives and that the license of the women from that city was extreme:
Διὸ παρὰ τοῖς Λάκωσι τοῦθ’ ὑπῆρχε, καὶ πολλὰ διῳκεῖτο ὑπὸ τῶν γυναικῶν ἐπὶ τῆς ἀρχῆς αὐτῶν. καίτοι τί διαφέρει γυναικὸς ἄρχειν ἢ τοὺς ἄρχοντας ὑπὸ τῶν γυναικῶν ἄρχεσθαι; ταὐτὸ γὰρ συμβαίνει.
The wives of the Spartans administered many things; but it is all the same whether wives govern the commonwealth or command those who govern it. For the same outcome occurs in either case.
But, in general, the chastity of the Spartans is rendered suspect to me. Certainly Helen was twice abducted in heroic times. She was led away by Alexander the Phrygian only with her own consent. Then Euripides deservedly reproaches them that a virgin cannot be chaste at Sparta, since virgins are accustomed to wrestle with young men beside the Eurotas. But there is greater testimony in Aristotle, Book II, Chapter IX of the Politics:
Ἔτι δὲ ἡ περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας ἄνεσις, καὶ πρὸς τὴν προαίρεσιν τῆς πολιτείας βλαβερά, καὶ πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν πόλεως· ὥσπερ γὰρ οἰκίας μέρος ἀνὴρ καὶ γυνή, δῆλον ὅτι καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἐγγὺς τοῦ δίχα διῃρῆσθαι δεῖ νομίζειν, εἴς τε τὸ τῶν ἀνδρῶν πλῆθος καὶ τὸ τῶν γυναικῶν, ὥστε ἐν ὅσαις πολιτείαις φαύλως ἔχει τὸ περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας, τὸ ἥμισυ τῆς πόλεως εἶναι δεῖ νομίζειν ἀνομοθέτητον· ὅπερ ἐκεῖ συμβέβηκεν. ὅλην γὰρ τὴν πόλιν ὁ νομοθέτης εἶναι βουλόμενος καρτερικήν, κατὰ μὲν τοὺς ἄνδρας φανερός ἐστι τοιοῦτος ὤν, ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν γυναικῶν ἐξημέληκεν. ζῶσι γὰρ ἀκολάστως πρὸς ἅπασαν ἀκολασίαν, καὶ τρυφερῶς.
Moreover, indulgence and leniency toward women is useless and harmful both to the design which they formed concerning the administration of their commonwealth and to the happiness of the city. For just as the parts of a house are man and woman, so plainly one ought also to judge that a city is divided into two equal parts, into the multitude of men and of women. Therefore, in whatever forms of administering a commonwealth that which pertains to women is badly ordered, in them one must judge that half the city is not regulated by laws, as happened there. For although the lawgiver wished the whole city to be strong and robust for enduring and bearing labors, in the men he plainly attained what he wished; but toward the women he showed himself negligent. For they live intemperately and luxuriously, let loose and poured forth, plainly, toward every kind of intemperance.
At first many things were permitted to the women because the men were living far from home on account of the Arcadian and Messenian war. Lycurgus wished to subject them to laws, but they protested; and so he was compelled to desist from his undertaking, as Aristotle relates in the same place. From this fountain innumerable evils arose: for both the Helots frequently rebelled, and the citizens were reduced to a great paucity, and the very land also came together into the vast estates of very few men. This ἀνομία, “lawlessness,” therefore brought destruction upon the Spartans. For I would not judge the men good in that city where the wickedness of the women is free. From this there also arose greater crimes τῶν παιδεραστῶν, “of the pederasts.”
Therefore that city perished through a scarcity of laws. In the Roman commonwealth the laws, conquered by vices, yielded. The emperor Alexander did not dare to prohibit male prostitutes; Philip, however, abolished them in the year of the Lord 249. So great
was the departure even from the ancient morals of the gentiles.
§ 13. But enactments of laws profit little unless they are guarded by the vigilance of magistrates. The proverb of the Greeks is true:
Ἰσχυρόν ὁ νόμος ἐστίν, ἂν ἄρχοντ’ ἔχοι.
A law is a strong thing if it has a ruler to assist it. For if Neronian luxury reigns, if Gaius erects a brothel in the palace, if Messalina compels, what will wretched laws be able to do? Who will condemn what the emperor does? Who will flee what the wife of Augustus commands? The laws are holy, but Maxentius compels matrons to death through fear of disgrace. What will laws avail while that man reigns who pardoned only those who confessed unchastity, because he thought that no one could live chastely? Therefore let there be an example in the prince and in the leading men, through which the laws may acquire authority and force. Let not even prostitutes now proclaim:
Happy are the ages which oppose you
With morals; let Rome now possess shame.
This is a danger to everyone; but when so favored an evil, drawing authority from the foremost men, has driven out shame, it cannot be excluded by any force. Now, indeed, as formerly too, punishment rages more against the weaker sex. But the law and obligation are equal on both sides. Pope Innocent truly says, as it stands in Cause 32, Question 5: “The Christian religion condemns adultery by an equal rule in either sex. But women do not easily accuse their husbands of adultery, and hidden sins do not have vengeance. Men, however, have been accustomed more freely to denounce adulterous wives before priests. And therefore, when their crime has been disclosed, communion is denied to women. But while the deed of men remains hidden, no one easily abstains on the basis of suspicions; yet he will certainly be removed if his crime is uncovered. For since the cause is equal, the principle of vengeance sometimes comes to rest when proof is lacking.”
§ 14. There is also great weight in public morals and practices. If you wish minds to be chaste, take care that things whose poisons reach the mind do not meet their eyes or ears. The habit of hearing and seeing also takes to itself license for doing. There is no need to educate people for wickedness: without an evil example they are teachable, and contrariwise they are teachable through good examples. What does it profit to prescribe right things privately if the public discipline is such as could soften even Lycurgus? Private evils can be corrected; public evils wish to be cultivated. From this come the destructions of cities.
From this look broadly upon the flourishing cities
Which luxury once overturned. Surely neither the anger of the gods,
Nor weapons, nor enemies harm as much as pleasure alone,
Gliding into souls.
Therefore, when luxury, the public dissuader from what is honorable, has grown strong, all things yield and the commonwealth perishes.
For luxury overturns other kingdoms through vices,
And pride through hatreds. Thus the Spartan, wickedly raised aloft,
Overturned Athens, and he himself fell in the same way before Thebes; thus the Mede
Took the reins from the Assyrian, and the Persian took them from the Mede;
The Macedonian subjected the Persian, himself destined to yield
To the Romans: these things were confirmed by the Sibyl’s auguries.
First delights, soon satiety, then violence, and finally destruction broke out in cities. Certainly, when Diogenes was returning from Lacedaemon to Athens and was asked where he was going and whence, he replied, “From men to women.”
It therefore falls to the commonwealth to remove from its midst every incitement to luxury, such as unchaste spectacles, dangerous dances, lascivious public displays of women, and much more houses of prostitution and brothels. The reasoning of those who judge that worse things are prevented by those public pleasures is most wicked. Wherever those things have grown strong, every most shameful act is perpetrated. Flight consults best for chastity. But flight cannot exist if the incitements of lust are public; if one must be blind in order not to see evil; if in porticoes, in the forum, and in the streets everything abounds in shameful things; if, as Pliny says in Book XXXI, Chapter I, it pleases men to conceal lusts in drinking vessels; if enticing images are placed with impunity in the sight of the young. Poison is not publicly sold; toxins of souls are sold in the marketplaces of Christians, while the magistrate does not prohibit it.
That magistrate who passes over unspeakable things in silence will pay the penalties. If you learned that your daughter had bought those shameful images, to be instilled into her thought through the pigment of colors, you would blaze up with deserved indignation. If anyone related those things in the presence of your children, you would appoint a day for his trial as a corrupter of youth. Is it a greater thing to disclose them by words, or to place them before faithful eyes so that they may adhere more tenaciously? Everyone sees this; your own people see it; those who will relate it to your people see it.
§ 15. Nor should enticements alone be removed; impediments and reins should also be placed upon luxury. Let everyone be occupied with serious thought, works, and labors; let idleness be banished. Love reigns in an empty breast. Movement and activity do not admit so biting a rust. Leisure always gives a changeable mind, rarely a good one. Love is idle; it occupies the lazy. This vice is dispersed by business; true care disperses so vain an anxiety. Certainly Theophrastus defines love thus:
Ἔρως πάθος ἐστὶ ψυχῆς σχολαζούσης.
Love is a passion, or disease, of a soul living idly. The cause, therefore, of so many evils—and the first cause—is the neglect of the nobility, while they neither educate nor harden their sons for honorable labors, but lead them to dishonorable amusements. Hence
from the tender nail they contemplate wickedness
and incestuous loves.
And so, although these desires belong to all human beings and are conquered with difficulty—“Every evil,” says Cyprian in On the Good of Chastity, “is conquered more easily than pleasures, because whatever the former is, it is horrible; but the latter is enticing”—nevertheless they belong especially to the rich, because idleness and kindling are present. Then, after the rich, they belong to able-bodied beggars who live for the day. For since they act without any care, are often filled by the benevolence of men, are wicked through habit and association, and strike against shameful things with their eyes and ears, they must necessarily be exercised very frequently in playful and never serious thoughts, whose image is readier to hand and whose pleasure is more titillating. Such men must be driven to labors not only for other causes but also on account of their morals. Nor will the magistrate regard this as a small thing. The same vices exist in rags and purple; the same lust exists in a jewel and in filth.
Augustine rightly says in On the Honesty of Women, Chapter II: “Among all the contests of Christians, only the battles of chastity are hard, where the fight is daily and the victory rare. For chastity has been allotted a grave enemy, whom it resists daily and always fears.”
§ 16. Let the commonwealth also lay up with deep attention what the holy fathers prescribe to individuals: namely, that the first titillations of the devil must be opposed. Cyprian says this in On Fasting. “Lest the tares of wickedness grow, they must be crushed in the seed,” says Jerome on Ecclesiastes, Chapter IX. Therefore, from a high watchtower,
let the helmsman look ahead to the coming storm, draw in the sails, and draw up the ship. If new actors are being prepared, if new theaters, if foreign luxury of clothing, if new contrivances of foods are breaking in, let him resist seriously while these things have not yet occupied the houses of the powerful. If the prince desires to be chaste, let him be sober and withdraw from the body the material of so grave a conflagration. This is Ambrose’s counsel in Book I, Chapter XIV of On Penance: “Lust is a grave fire, and therefore let us not give it the nourishment of luxury. Lust is fed by banquets, nourished by delights, kindled by wine, and set aflame by drunkenness. For wine and youth are a double conflagration of pleasure.” Why do we add oil to the flame? Thus Saint Benedict, Bernard, Francis, Martinian the Hermit, and innumerable others fled wine as poison and satiety as a plague.
Boldly, O prince, cut down the growing forest of luxury; take away occasions, remove the instruments of lusts and the allurements of delights, although the city may appear less cultivated and less opulent, although something may be lost to the treasury. Frugal moderation is preferable to lavish and luxurious riches. Conquered Greece weakened its conquerors; Asia, reduced to a province, laid them prostrate.
§ 17. But nothing assists chastity as much as care for religion. It raises minds to God daily; it considers eternal goods and punishments. He who in prison is condemned to an evil lodging already looks upon the cross or pyre before his eyes; he whose doubtful life shipwrecks batter; he who grows pale in battle—fear strikes every lustful thought from him. In the same way, faith in and dread of eternal punishment extinguish the ardor of pleasures as it creeps upon him with an alluring agitation.
Antonius of Siena tells of a distinguished man of his own order, that is, of the order of Saint Dominic, against whose chastity a wicked she-wolf laid snares. He constructed two blazing pyres and cast himself upon one of them; if that little bed pleased her, he said that he invited the woman to the shameful deed. For that crime which the punishment of eternal fire would follow deserved to be perpetrated in fire. Other things are sometimes too small to be able to withstand the impulse of the most vehement delight; love sends many into dangers. The Daunian youth fixes his gaze upon the virgin and burns more keenly for arms. He too despised death who, swimming across the Hellespont, more frenzied than the very waves, prayed:
Spare me while I come; drown me while I return.
Hence the Church numbers so many thousands of chaste persons, so many armies of virgins. Deservedly the Christian religion glories in chastity as a distinguished token of truth. For how many thousands of virgins could have escaped torments and death on condition of marriage, and nevertheless preferred chastity? No torments could compel those weak in sex and age, and placed in the midst of enticements, to admit enticing pleasures. How, then, are you a participant in the grace of God if you are so conquered by the sweetness of lusts that you pursue delight even through dangers?
And nevertheless there are men who, on account of the incontinence of the wicked, do not hesitate to pollute cities with brothels, as though graver harms were avoided by a smaller loss. They permit fornication among Christians lest men blaze up into adulteries, incests, and other disgraceful deeds. It is an error, and indeed a grave one; for in that license the wicked receive their first lessons, so that they dare greater things. In no vaulted chamber is there fornication alone. Marriages are violated there too. Nowhere are there greater dangers for matrons than where prostitutes instruct the young.
Around the year of Christ 437, under the Augusti Theodosius and Valentinian, Florentinus, a most illustrious man and most worthy of command, greatly desired procurers to be expelled. When losses to the treasury were raised as an objection—for the procurers paid a tax—he repaired the loss by a substitute payment from his own estate, so that as much as was lost to the empire through those plagues having been driven away might be supplied from private revenue. It was a great praise to have consulted for public chastity by losses of his own. But by how much greater was the shame of having accepted the tax of procurers from a most holy man? Let us not marvel at our own times: the men are new, the vices old. Gold is given to the empire so that there may be no procurers; gold is accepted so that victims of public lusts may not be exposed for sale.
Would that kings constantly follow either the sanctity of married life or celibate purity. There are many examples among Christians: Wenceslaus, king of Bohemia, concerning whom Dubravius writes; Casimir, son of Casimir III, king of Poland; Emeric, son of Stephen V, king of the Hungarians; Edward, king of England; Henry I, head of our commonwealth. Wonder comes upon one at so many royal virgins of such admirable holiness; from them there is an easy conjecture concerning the others. I shall report the catalogue from Book XXII, Chapter II, On the Signs of the Church, by Bozio, whose words are these:
“Perpetual virginity of mind and body, dedicated to God, is a divine gift; but it is by far the most divine if there is joined to it, in addition, not some middling but a most excellent preeminence of the remaining virtues. The North produced very many such women, from which region it followed the Roman pontiff. Of this kind were Milburga, Mildreda, and Miluida, daughters of Merualdus, concerning whom Polydore writes in Book IV. There was Fara, abbess of the monastery of Hibrigensis, who flourished in the year 640; Francongota in 660; Edilberga, daughter of Anna, king of the East Angles; Itta, together with her daughter Gertrude, foundress of the monastery of Nivelles, in 650; Edilburga, abbess of the monastery of Beretingensis; Edeldrudis, daughter of Ana, king of the Angles, in 680; Hilda, daughter of the nephew of Edwin, king of the Angles, in 630; Irmina, daughter of King Dagobert, foundress of the monastery which is called Horreum, or commonly Oeren, at Trier, in the year 710; Modesta of Trier in 680; Severa, abbess of Saint Symphorian at Trier; Athela, daughter of King Dagobert and abbess of a certain monastery at Trier; Thecla the Englishwoman, abbess of the monastery which her brother Boniface, archbishop of Mainz, built in Germany near the Main at Eizingen; Lioba the Englishwoman, who presided over the monastery which the same prelate founded at Bischofsheim in the year 730; Amalberga, whom King Charles frequently and ardently sought as a wife, in 772; Anastasia and Basilissa, abbesses of Horreum at Trier in 760 and 780; Mathilda, sister of Emperor Henry I and Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, abbess of Saint Servatius in Saxony, in 990; Wiborada, a nun of Saint Gall, in 920; Walburga the Englishwoman, abbess at Heidenheim in Eichstätt and sister of Saint Willibald, in 750; Benedicta, abbess in the convent of Suvestris; Notburgis, nun of the Capitol at Cologne; Hadeloga, abbess of the monastery of Rinchingensis; Landrada of Liège; Waldrudis of Mons; Gladesindis of Metz; Lutrudis of Corvey; Cecilia, abbess in Suvestris; the empress Richardis, who, after the death of Charles the Fat, her husband, devoted herself to Christ and presided over sacred virgins; Jutta, sister of Count Meginhard of Sponheim, in 1136; Hildegard, admirable disciple of Jutta, in 1160; Elisabeth, abbess in the monastery of Schönau, in 1165.
“Adelaide, abbess of Vilich in the time of Heribert, archbishop of Cologne; Surius reports her life, Volume VII, February 5.
“Brigid the Scot, in the year 518 or 522; Surius, Volume I, February 1.
“Catherine the Swede, daughter of Saint Bridget, in the year 1381; Surius, Volume II, March 22.
“Elisabeth, daughter of the king of Hungary; Volume VI, November 19.
Ermelende, virgin; Volume V, October 29.
Hedwig, duchess of Poland; Volume V, October 15.
Hunegundis; Volume IV, August 25.
Landrada; Volume IV, July 8.
Margaret, daughter of the king of Hungary; January 28, Volume I.
Margaret, queen of Scotland; Volume III, June 10.
Mary of Oignies; Volume III, June 23.
Maxellendis, virgin and martyr; Volume IV, July 30.
Monegundis; Volume IV, July 2.
Noilburgis; Volume V, October 31.
Liduvina; Volume II, April 14.
Ludmilla, duchess of Bohemia and martyr; Volume VII, September 16.
Lutgardis; Volume III, June 16.
Lutrudis; Volume V, September 22.
Opportuna, virgin; Volume II, April 22.
Ositha, virgin and martyr; Volume V, October 7.
Richardis Martianensis; Volume III, May 12.
Walburga; Volume III, May.
Bridget the Swede.”
The East and Greece formerly possessed some such women; but now whom can they name? Whom could Africa produce as her own? Whom Muscovy?
Virgins excelling at once in sanctity, learning, and published writings: those virgins or women who brought to light, in published writings, most illustrious monuments of a manly and not effeminate genius were at once admirable and most highly praised in every memory of mortals. But those women, for the most part—if assemblies alien from us produced any—were given over to lust or some vice. For that poet did not sing foolishly in the third Satire that a woman did not please him
who, with speech whirled around, twists
a clipped enthymeme.
But Germany and the North brought to light not only certain learned women, but also most incorrupt guardians of inviolate virginity, and, beyond this, women most preeminent in divine virtues and most illustrious in sanctity. For such were those five whom we mentioned in Sign 37, On the Spirit of Prayers, Book IX, Chapter XII: Hrotsvitha, Elisabeth, Hildegard, Gertrude, Mechthild, and Bridget the Swede, although the last was a widow.
Therefore it is especially to be wondered at that, after so many thousands of years have now elapsed, not even one woman similar to these virgins can be produced from the whole North before the northern peoples obeyed the pontiff. Indeed, from the whole world not even one virgin can be named of whom there exist books of such great piety and learning for every method of rightly ordering life and forming morals as exist from these virgins. Was it not, therefore, an excellent thing to have obeyed the popes? Is anything similar found among any heretics who have ever existed? Let all Greece, mistress and parent of the best disciplines, be summoned, and let her bring forth, if indeed she can, a woman of her own whose writings of such great piety exist, sealed by most illustrious and divine examples of morals and an innocent life. Will Germany, Saxony, Scotland, and Sweden therefore surpass the nurse and mother of the good arts? Certainly so. Go now, and call the northern peoples barbarians. Are those barbarians among whom there are such virgins and women? Call them barbarians as much as you wish: those barbarians will surpass the wisest of all mortals. Of so great importance, plainly, is obedience to the Roman pontiff.
When the Christian commonwealth has considered these things, let it exhort itself with Saint Augustine’s argument: “Will you not be able to do what these men and these women did?” But I am pleased to transcribe the whole passage from Confessions VIII, Chapter XIII: “There appeared from that direction toward which I had turned my face and into which I trembled to pass the chaste dignity of continence, serene and not dissolute in her cheerfulness, honorably enticing me to come and not to doubt, and extending toward me, to receive and embrace me, pious hands filled with flocks of good examples. There were so many boys and girls, there much youth and every age, and grave widows and aged virgins; and in them all continence herself was by no means barren. And she laughed at me with an exhortatory ridicule, as if she said, ‘Will you not be able to do what these men and these women did? Or indeed are these men and these women able in themselves, and not in the Lord their God? The Lord their God gave me to them. Why do you stand in yourself, and do not stand? Cast yourself upon him; do not fear. He will not withdraw himself so that you fall. Cast yourself securely; he will receive you and save you.’”
And if not everyone can do what these men and these women did, because the struggle of perpetual virginity is great, its glory distinguished, and the prerogative of its crown exceptional, will they not at least be able to confine and moderate their desires by the laws of sacred marriage?
I shall close with the judgment of Saint Jerome in Book III Against Jovinian: it is the voice of a most learned man that chastity must above all be retained, since when it has been lost every virtue collapses. In this lies the sovereignty of womanly virtues. It commends a poor woman, exalts a rich one, redeems one who is deformed, adorns one who is beautiful. It deserves well of ancestors, whose blood it does not corrupt by a furtive offspring; well of children, who need neither blush concerning their mother nor doubt concerning their father; well, above all, of herself, whom it vindicates from the dishonor of an alien body. There is no greater calamity of captivity than to be dragged to another’s lust. Act bravely, O prince; act through laws. Christians can live chastely, so many thousands of whom have met death for chastity.
Let chastity be preserved with great zeal, lest there be not a city but a conflux of bastards and degenerates.