n and authority of the civilians till the most
virtuous of the Caesars proscribed the sin against nature as a crime
against society.

A new spirit of legislation, respectable even in its error, arose in the
empire with the religion of Constantine. The laws of Moses were received
as the divine original of justice, and the Christian princes adapted
their penal statutes to the degrees of moral and religious turpitude.
Adultery was first declared to be a capital offence: the frailty of the
sexes was assimilated to poison or assassination, to sorcery or
parricide; the same penalties were inflicted on the passive and active
guilt of pederasty, and all criminals of free or servile condition were
either drowned or beheaded, or cast alive into the avenging flames. The
adulterers were spared by the common sympathy of mankind; but the lovers
of their own sex were pursued by general and pious indignation: the
impure manners of Greece still prevailed in the cities of Asia, and
every vice was fomented by the celibacy of the monks and clergy.

Justinian relaxed the punishment at least of female infidelity: the
guilty spouse was only condemned to solitude and penance, and at the end
of two years she might be recalled to the arms of a forgiving husband.
But the same Emperor declared himself the implacable enemy of unmanly
lust, and the cruelty of his persecution can scarcely be excused by the
purity of his motives. In defiance of every principle of justice he
stretched to past as well as future offences the operations of his
edicts, with the previous allowance of a short respite for confession
and pardon. A painful death was inflicted by the amputation of the
sinful instrument, or the insertion of sharp reeds into the pores and
tubes of most exquisite sensibility; and Justinian defended the
propriety of the execution, since the criminals would have lost their
hands had they been convicted of sacrilege. In this state of disgrace
and agony two bishops, Isaiah of Rhodes and Alexander of Diospolis, were
dragged through the streets of Constantinople, while their brethren were
admonished by the voice of a crier to observe this awful lesson, and not
to pollute the sanctity of their character. Perhaps these prelates were
innocent. A sentence of death and infamy was often founded on the slight
and suspicious evidence of a child or a servant; the guilt of the green
faction, of the rich, and of the enemies of Theodora was presumed by the
judges,