Sir: I am sorry I did not check the Cato
reference, but allowing Thomas Wteclej mann's correction (Letters, 23 JanuarY), still do not think that making his male slaves pay his female slaves for sex makes Cato a hero of the women's liberation movement, or advances his claim to be a de' cent human being. As for what was or was not typical of Roman slave-owners, Mrde Ste Croix's evidence is too massive to be disallowed. I am delighted that Mr Wiedenta°11 `hesitates to argue that ancient slave/ wasn't horrible', though he seems to trelli: ble on the brink of doing so. If he really needs convincing, let him live as my slay! under Roman conditions for one month: I have a suitable shed. Mr de Ste Croix is blamed, and so an11' for not taking time off to praise early Chas" tianjty for attempting to suppress infarl.,; ticide. But the argument that the Christian Church as a visible institution was in some ways deplorable is based not only on the tolerance of slavery. In the first years of „ freedom of the Church, the Christian authorities moved from being victims of torture to being torturers. That is, both by liberal and by Christian standards, distress- ing and filthy behaviour. No? Even on the precise point of infanticide, which is really not the alternative to slavery' pace Mr Wiedemann, there are some paradoxes. 'We condemn and utterly repro- bate that abuse by which children still-bor° from their mother's womb are sometime; taken to church and left on certain days an t nights at the images of saints, children ad first cold and rigid as sticks, then softerle., by the heat of coals, candles or lamps, until a pink colour appears on the brow an blood runs from the nose, some of the!' sweat round the navel and the veins of their brow and forehead and neck pulse a little, sometimes their eyes open and shut, vad breath comes from their nostrils, enough to move a feather, and the children are 01°, baptised and later buried in consecrate' Church ground.' This document comes 'Ex statutis synodalibus Guidonis Episcopi Lingon011: sis, editio anno 1479'. The visible, instItil tional Church is not always very nice.
Peter Levi
Austins Farm, Stonesfield, Oxford
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