commanded that children which had been sold as slaves by their father from poverty, should be free, and that without indemnity to the pui'chasers ; and Justinian in 529 gave all exposed children without exception their freedom.' ' Even a council at Toledo in 398 conceded so far on this point as to decree, can. 17 : "Si quis habens uxorem fidelis concubinam habeat, non commiinicet. Cete- rum is, qui non habet uxorem et pro uxore concubinam habeat, a communione nou repellatur, tantum ut unius mulieris aut uxoris aut concubinas, ut ei placueiit, sit con- junctione contentus. Alias vero vivens abjiciatur donee desinat et per pojniteutiam revertatur." ^ Cod. Theod. iii. 7, 2 ; C. Justin, i. 9, G. A proposal of marriage to a nun was even punished with death (ix. 25, 2). ^ A.D. 318; Valentinian did the same in 374. Cod. Theod. ix. tit. 14 and 15. Comp. the Pandects, lib. xlviii. tit. 8, 1. ix. ' Cod. Theod. iii. 3, 1 ; Cod. Just. iv. 43, 1 ; viii. 52, 3. Gibbon says : " The Roman empire was stained with the blood of infants, till such murders were in- cluded, by Valentinian and his colleagues, in the letter and spirit of the Cornelian law. The lessons of jurisprudence and Christianity had been inefficient to eradicate this inhuman practice, till their gentle influence was fortified by the terrors of capital punishment." § 20, SOCIAL REFORMS. 116 § 20. Social Reforms. The Institution of Slavery. 4. The institution of slavery ' remained throughout the em- pire, and is recognized in the laws of Justinian as altogether legitimate.^ The Justinian code rests on the broad distinction of the Iiumaii race into freemen and slaves. It declares, in- deed, the natural equality of men, and so far rises above the theory of Aristotle, who regards certain races and classes of men as irrevocably doomed, by their physical and intellec- tual inferiority, to perpetual servitude ; but it destroys the practical value of this concession by insisting as sternly as ever on the inferior legal and social condition of the slave, by degrading his marriage to the disgrace of concubinage, by re- fusing him all legal remedy in case of adultery, by depriving him of all power over his children, by making him an article of merchandise like irrational beasts of burden, whose transfer from vender to buyer was a legal transaction as valid and frequent as the sale of any other property. The purchase and sale of slaves for from ten to seventy pieces of gold, according to their age, strength, and training, was a daily occurrence.' The number was not limited ; many a master owning even two or three thousand slaves. The barbarian codes do not essentially differ in this respect from the Roman. They, too, recognize slavery as an ordinary condition of mankind, and the slave as a marketable com- modity. All captives in war became slaves, and thousands of human lives were thus saved from