In the character of the Roman there was but little of tenderness.

The well-being of the state caused him his keenest anxiety.

One of the laws of the twelve tables, the "Coelebes Prohibito," compelled the citizen of manly vigor to satisfy the promptings of nature in the arms of a lawful wife, and the tax on bachelors is as ancient as the times of Furius Camillus.

"There was an ancient law among the Romans," says Dion Cassius, lib.

xliii, "which forbade bachelors, after the age of twenty-five, to enjoy equal political rights with married men.