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16Among the laws that Augustus enacted was one which provided that those who had bribed anyone in order to gain office should be debarred from office for five years. He laid heavier assessments upon the unmarried men and upon the women without husbands, and on the other hand offered prizes for marriage and the begetting of children. 2And since among the nobility there were far more males than females, he allowed all who wished, except the senators, to marry freedwomen, and ordered that their offspring should be held legitimate.
3Meanwhile a clamor arose in the senate over the disorderly conduct of the women and of the young men, this being alleged as a reason for their reluctance to enter into the marriage relation; and when they urged him to remedy this abuse also, with ironical allusions to his own intimacy with many women, 4he at first replied that the most necessary restrictions had been laid down and that anything further could not possibly be regulated by decree in similar fashion. Then, when he was driven into a corner, he said: “You yourselves ought to admonish and command your wives as you wish; that is what I do.” 5When they heard that, they plied him with questions all the more, wishing to learn what the admonitions were which he professed to give Livia. He accordingly, though with reluctance, made a few remarks about women’s dress and their other adornment, about their going out and their modest behaviour, not in the least concerned that his actions did not lend credence to his words. 6Another instance of such inconsistency had occurred while he was censor. Some one brought before him a young man who had taken as his wife a married woman with whom he had previously committed adultery, and made ever so many accusations against the man, and Augustus was at a loss what to do, not daring to overlook the affair nor yet to administer any rebuke. At length, though with difficulty, he recovered himself and said: “Our factious quarrels have borne many terrible fruits; let us, then, forget them and give our attention to the future, that nothing of the sort may occur again.” 7Inasmuch, too, as certain men were betrothing themselves to infant girls and thus enjoying the privileges granted to married men, but without rendering the service expected of them, he ordered that no betrothal should be valid if the man did not marry within two years of such betrothal,—that is, that the girl must in every case be at least ten years old at her betrothal if the man was to derive any advantages from it, since, as I have stated, girls are held to have reached the marriageable age on the completion of twelve full years.
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