Immorality, cruelty and oppression
In that pagan environment, the situation of women was appalling. In general they had almost no rights, and were practically considered slaves of their husbands, that is, when they had the privilege of being married.
The religions themselves, even the most elevated ones, led women — and naturally men as well — into great depravity. That of the Chaldeans, for example, was sinister and corrupt, featuring lubricous practices in the temples. The Phoenician religion also incited the degradation of women.
Herodotus is among those who furnish us with information on the “sacred prostitution” practiced in the temples of Babylonia, Assyria, Greece, Cyprus and in other places. The “priestesses” frequently entered the temple while still very young, given over by their own parents. The famous “Code of Hammurabi,” promulgated by this king of Babylonia (circa 1793 to 1750 B.C.), dedicates some passages to the regulation of this practice.
The cult of Cybele and Attis, which originated in Phrygia and spread to Greece and Rome, led to scabrous practices in public. Since Attis had mutilated himself, losing his masculinity, his celebrations included the auto-mutilation of many men carried out in the midst of a delirious multitude that danced and howled while deafening music was played on flutes, cymbals and drums.
Greece had numerous temples dedicated to Venus, but not one consecrated to legitimate love between spouses. Once a year, Athens and other cities held an event in which an enormous phallic sculpture was borne in procession. Men and women went through the streets, singing, leaping and dancing around this idol.
Oppression of women
Feminine honour was being damaged by the custom of polygamy which was generalized in many regions, while, in other places, polyandry was in force. Equally degrading was incest, especially common in Persia, but also in Greece.
In India, among the cruel pagan practices spanning millennia, custom demanded that the widow be burned alongside the body of her husband.
The Code of Hammurabi is replete with norms that reflect the state of the oppression of women in ancient civilizations; women were often punished with death, slavery or repudiation.
Even in Rome and Greece, ancient laws with regard to woman were inequitable, and even persons such as the austere Cato favoured grave injustices in this respect. In Athens, to prevent partiality toward daughters in questions of inheritance, the law fell into an even greater aberration in encouraging incest to resolve such problems, even demanding the destruction of two already constituted homes, if need be.
In Rome, during the era in which the Good News of Jesus Christ was being preached, the institution of the family found itself in a grave crisis. Abortion and child abandonment reached shocking proportions. The birth-rate decreased. Wealthy men preferred to remain single and surround themselves with innumerable slave women rather than subject themselves to the inconveniences of marriage.
The situation of children before the all-powerful state
There was no individual liberty in Greece and in Rome as their admirers would have us believe: the citizen lived in virtue of the State. In his Republic, Plato himself professed an all-powerful State, and even Aristotle considered it the supreme ideal.
The Greco-Roman family was also totalitarian from certain perspectives. Thus, Roman law gave a dictatorial power to the pater familias. In Greece, similar laws were in vigour. The father had the right to reject his newborn son, or to sell him as a slave. He could also condemn his wife, son, daughter, or any other dweller in his house to death — the sentence being executed without delay; the State authorities did not interfere.
In Sparta, comments Coulanges, “the State had the right not to tolerate that its citizens be deformed or ill-constituted. It therefore ordered the father to whom such a child was born, to make it die.” According to the same author, this law was equally found in the ancient codes of Rome and even Aristotle and Plato included this practice in their legislative proposals.
In Carthage and Phoenicia, children were offered in sacrifice to the idols; in Rome and Greece they were used in divination rites. In various places, children and adolescents could be punished with death for a misdeed committed by the father.
At the same time that the State gave the father unlimited power at home, it tyrannically controlled him in the education of his sons. Among the Greeks, the State was the absolute master of education, and Plato justifies this, since “the parents should not be free to send or not send their sons to masters that the city chooses, because children belong less to their parents than to the city.” The State considered that the body and soul of each citizen belonged to it, and assumed the child when it had completed seven years of age.
Pitiless and widespread slavery
Slavery was such an accepted institution in the ancient world that slaves commonly made up the majority of the population. In Rome, in the time of Augustus, more than a third of the population was constituted of slaves.
The owner of a slave had over total rights over him. A slave was not, properly speaking, a man; he was a thing, res mancipi. The owner not only had the right to cohabitate with the wife of his slave without committing adultery, but also to do as he wished with his children, and if he wounded or killed them he committed no wrong.
In Roman law there were clauses concerning slaves that sparked great cruelties. In the time of Nero, for example, a high-standing magistrate was assassinated by one of his slaves. “The Senator, after long discussion, decided to apply the old law to all the servants of the house, which condemned, to the torture of the cross, all of the slaves who had not had the shrewdness to protect their master. There were such popular protests at this terrible sentence that the 400 condemned had to be executed under army guard.”
slavery,
There have always been one or another slave-owner who treated his slaves humanely or ― more rarely ― with respect, but it would be naive to think that this was the typical attitude.
(To be continued …. )
The full document may be found here:
http://www.arautos.org/desagravo/?lang=en
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Msgr. João Scognamiglio Clá Dias, EP, is Honorary Canon of the Papal Basilica Saint Mary Major in Rome, Supernumerary Apostolic Protonotary, Doctor of Canon Law from the Angelicum, Master of Educational Psychology from the Catholic University of Columbia, Doctor Honoris Causa from the Italo-Brazilian University, Member of the Thomas Aquinas International Society (SITA) and of the Pontifical Academy of the Immaculata, Founder and Superior General of three entities of Pontifical Right: International Association of the Faithful, Heralds of the Gospel; Clerical Society of Apostolic Life, Virgo Flos Carmeli; and the Society of Apostolic Life, Regina Virginum.
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