At the head of these may be placed (taking
them in their order of time) the three great
examples—too familiar to need more than
mention—the judgment of Solomon, that of Daniel
(not to be confounded with the prophet) in the
case of Susannah, and that of the Saviour in
regard to the woman taken in adultery. This
was the crowning instance. It needed more
than man to avert from a criminal thus convicted
her merited doom. He called the "inner
witness" to her aid; and, as she went forth—it is
to be hoped, indeed, "to sin no more"—one feels
that the calm sorrowful majesty of that forgiveness
must have been more heart-piercing than
the severest sentence of the law.

Analogous to such appeals are those addressed
to another deeply rooted sentiment—the sense
of shame. A wise self-knowledge prompted the
warlike Spartans to substitute for city walls and
bulwarks, the arms and courage of their citizens.
Cowardice, in that age one of the worst of
crimes, was visited with a punishment seemingly
slight, in reality terrible. It was pronounced
degrading to seek alliance with one who had
proved recreant. He was compelled to wear
garments of a particular hue; his beard was
shaven on one side only; and any one meeting
him in a public path was at liberty to strike him,
without suffering retort in act or word.

After Leuctra, where the Spartans were
defeated by the Thebans under Epaminondas, a
curious difficulty arose. So large a part of the
Spartan force had participated in a disgraceful
flight, that the Ephori—those noble upright
magistrates who held with an equal hand
the balance between kingly power and popular
liberty—were at a loss how to deal with so vast
a body of offenders. In their perplexity they
referred the matter to Agesilas, who decreed
for the integrity of the law, but added that it
should be regarded as having "slept" on the day
of Leuctra, to awake with renewed vigour and
vigilance on the morrow! By this clever "dodge"
the law was vindicated and the self-respect of
the twenty thousand runaways preserved.

Zeleucus, the Locrian, seems to have been
another student of human nature. He enacted
that an adulterer should lose both eyes. Among
the first transgressors was his own son. Zeleucus
condemned him, but requested and obtained
permission to save one of his son's eyes at the cost
of one of his own. What adulterous Locrian,
after that, could look in his judge's disfigured
face and seek remission?

It was Zeleucus who ordained that any one
who proposed to change a law should appear
with a rope round his neck, prepared to be
strangled where he stood, in the event of his
amendment not being carried. The revival of
this ancient custom would lend a sensational
interest to the legal debates of our own time.

Some of the decrees of Zeleucus, though wise,
were mild, not to say jocose. We have called
him a close student of human nature, and he
certainly had unexpected ways of arriving at its
inner sanctuaries. His citizens—the ladies
especially—were becoming too luxurious. He
was urged to follow the example of neighbouring
states, and exact penalties against excessive
show. These, he saw, had not always answered
their end. Fines and confiscations might be
defied, because they carried with them no element
of shame. He adopted a different course. He
decreed that no woman of condition should
appear in public with more than one attendant,
unless she were drunk. That she should not
quit the city at night, unless for the purpose of
keeping a secret assignation. That she should
wear no gold spangles nor embroidery on her
garments, unless it were her intention to lead an
abandoned life. Following this principle, Henry
the Fourth of France issued an edict limiting the
use of hair-nets to women of shameless life,
"such" (it was added) "being below our
legislative care."

The Locrian dandies of the day were
forbidden to sport jewellery, or wear the costly
stuffs of Miletus, unless bound for some resort
of vice and infamy.

By the agency of these wise yet gentle laws
Zeleucus succeeded in establishing modesty for
licence, virtue for immorality, simplicity for
luxury and the corrupt manners which
invariably follow in its train.

A curious escape from a judicial difficulty
was that resorted to by the Areopagus, to which
renowned tribunal Dolabella, when pro-consul
of Asia, referred a question he found himself
unable to decide: A Smyrniote woman was
accused before him of the murder of her husband,
in revenge for the latter's having slain a son of
hers by a former marriage. Here was a dilemma.
He could not acquit a convicted murderess, and
yet shrank from condemning a mother whom
love for her offspring had betrayed into crime.
The laws allowed no mitigated penalties. He
sent the case to the Areopagus, who, equally
perplexed, tided over the difficulty by directing
the criminal to come up for judgment in—one
hundred years. The Emperor Claudius, who was
certainly no Solomon, nevertheless pronounced a
judgment which might bear a parallel with that of
the wise king. A mother who disavowed her son
was cited by the latter before the imperial seat.
The evidence proved conflicting. Claudius cut
the Gordian knot by ordering the woman to
marry the young complainant. This unexpected
decree awoke the inner witness. The mother
confessed her son.

Pedro the Cruel's judgment in the case of a
tiler, is deserving of remembrance. While
pursuing his calling on the roof of a lofty mansion,
the man lost his balance, and, after clinging some
agonised moments to a slight projection, let go
his hold, and fell into the street. As fate would
have it, he dropped plump upon an individual
unluckier than himself, who was passing at that
inopportune moment, and was killed on the
spot: the tiler himself sustaining no serious
injury. The son of the man who was killed
commenced a process against him who had
fallen: and the case was brought before the
king, who decreed that the tiler should be
absolved from all demands. Leave, however,
was reserved for the plaintiff, if he pleased, to
jump from an elevation equal to that from which