26.5. 5. Cases in which we may judge by the Principles of the civil Law in
limiting the Principles of the Law of Nature.
An Athenian law obliged children to provide for their fathers when fallen into poverty;
[5]
it excepted those who were born of a courtesan,
[6]
those whose chastity had been infamously prostituted by their father, and those to whom he had
not given any means of gaining a livelihood.
[7]
The law considered that, in the first case, the father being
uncertain, he had rendered the natural obligation precarious; that in
the second, he had sullied the life he had given, and done the greatest
injury he could do to his children in depriving them of their
reputation; that in the third, he had rendered insupportable a life
which had no means of subsistence. The law suspended the natural
obligation of children because the father had violated his; it looked
upon the father and the son as no more than two citizens, and determined
in respect to them only from civil and political views; ever considering
that a good republic ought to have a particular regard to manners. I am
apt to think that Solon's law was a wise regulation in the first two
cases, whether that in which nature has left the son in ignorance with
regard to his father, or that in which she even seems to ordain he
should not own him; but it cannot be approved with respect to the third,
where the father had only violated a civil institution.
Footnotes
[[6]]
Under pain of infamy, another under pain of imprisonment.
[7]
Ibid., and Gallien, in Exhort. ad Art., 8.
