The Romans are not an artistic
people; they require no more of their children than that they know how
to read, write, and reckon; neither music nor poetry is taught them.
They are brought up to be sober, silent, modest in their demeanor, and
obedient.
=The Father of the Family.=--The master of the house was called by the
Romans the father of the family. The paterfamilias is at once the
proprietor of the domain, the priest of the cult of the ancestors, and
the sovereign of the family. He reigns as master in his house. He has
the right of repudiating his wife, of rejecting his children, of
selling them, and marrying them at his pleasure. He can take for
himself all that belongs to them, everything that his wife brings to
him, and everything that his children gain; for neither the wife nor
the children may be proprietors. Finally he has over them all[116] the
"right of life and death," that is to say, he is their only judge. If
they commit crime, it is not the magistrate who punishes them, but the
father of the family who condemns them. One day (186 B.C.) the Roman
Senate decreed the penalty of death for all those who had participated
in the orgies of the cult of Bacchus.
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