You are murderers, wilfully smothering the vital flame

What makes a people — and what promotes their continuation? To the Emperor Augustus, Roman men who refused to marry are no better than brutes, thieves, and murderers.

What makes a people — and what promotes their continuation? 

In his Second Speech to the Unmarried Gallants, Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of Rome, explicitly ties the strength of the empire to the strength of its families. To encourage family formation, the emperor passed a series of unpopular marriage laws that, among other things, benefit parents and punish the childless in the city’s public sphere.

Last week’s post documented Augustus’ first speech praising married men and the many benefits of marriage and family. This week, his second speech to unmarried men is an admonition. To Augustus, Roman men who refuse to marry are no better than brutes, thieves, and murderers of Rome, for both groups spurn the good of Rome in favor of the pursuit of selfish passions. The building of strong Roman families is the bedrock upon which the good of Rome, its preservation and protection, is predicated. Such is the duty of all peoples to their respective tribes – and we too fail today.

The inherent tension between duty and personal desire is nowhere clearer than between the freedom commonly experienced in singleness and the responsibility necessitated by marriage. Although these are not mutually exclusive, our society increasingly shuns the latter and fails to recognize the strength marriage brings to person and nation. That was true in Ancient Rome and is true still today as we see the age at which people marry increase and the number of children produced decrease. Augustus does not deny the difficulties of marriage and family, but emphasizes how much grander and more significant is the reward.

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I Am at a stand how to address my self to you; shall I call you Citizens? You have done your part for the ruining of the City; shall I call you men? will you own you deserve the name? Shall I call you Romans? you blush not to take the ready way to blot that name from under Heaven: I confess my self in some confusion, when I consider how ye are endeavouring to frustrate all the designs that I have managed on the most mature deliberation, for the peopling of Rome; I am sorry I have so many to speak to, that are like to bring a multitude to a few. You regard not the care the higher Powers have taken to plant the Roman name, you value not the blood of your Fathers shed to preserve it, and postpone all things to a humour, which one age would confute by sad experience. Were the Commonalty infected with this, as with many other of your Vices, what would become of Rome, nay, of the world of men? You are some of our principal branches, and voluntary barrenness can be none of your glories; the People imitate you, and Posterity may deservedly brand you, if you shew them the way to ruin; either all will do as you do, if not, your vitious singularity renders you justly odious; you deserve to be hist off the stage of the world, that will alone act such unbecoming parts; nay, you deserve their rage, that will trample on what is so sacred in the eyes of all men else; but if you find a croud of followers, the next age will follow your memory with millions of Curses.

You’ll say, it will be no hurt for us to live as we list; so may the Robbers plead, their number is not great; the Serpent in the egg deserves to die: But what is theft, nay, a cluster of the greatest crimes to yours? You are murderers, wilfully smothering the vital flame; you are unnatural to Parents, not perpetuating their name and honour, and all for a Miss, to whom you give for your pleasure, what she spends on others that please her better. You are unjust to the higher Powers, robbing them of their most pleasing offering, a succession of rational creatures to adore them; if your way take, their Temples as well as our Houses will be empty; our Romulus and his followers stole forreign Virgins for their Wives, and you neglect our own. Wives were the cause of, and Wives obtained, made the Peace in the famous Sabine War. Those old things you despise, but so you cast contempt on the actions of your Fathers.

And for what is this Confusion? Will you profess Chastity as vestal Virgins? then with them you should die if you offend; but I know, none of you live without your Woman, both at bed and board; all this you propose to your selves, is to range wildly, it’s an ungoverned brutishness you plead for, or rather to have liberty to fill the City with jealousie and murders: if these bounds you will not be contained in, Why may not the Thief break over all hedges of the Law, that keep him from your Riches? No mans propriety in his Estate, hath a more rational foundation, than that in his Wife.

Gentlemen, if my words wound you, think how much deeper your deeds have wounded me; those antient Laws of Wedlock I found when I first took up this Scepter, and will as soon suffer that, as them, to fall to the ground. Remember you live in a Society, and are not lawless, and your Obedience I expect to this of all my Laws; enforce not the State to employ your slaves to get children for you, and continue the name of Romans.

But I blush for you, I have spoke nothing out of hatred to you, but as your Emperor, that would have (you grow good, and) thousands like you. Go home, take Wives, and with joynt prayers adore the God of Families, try the ways of vertue, and you’ll need no more Speeches from Augustus.

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