Bachelor: Encyclopedia II - Bachelor - Penal laws and customs

Bachelor - Penal laws and customs

Bachelors, in the sense of unmarried men, have in many countries been subjected to penal laws. At Sparta, citizens who remained unmarried after a certain age suffered various penalties. They were not allowed to witness the gymnastic exercises of the maidens; and during winter they were compelled to march naked round the market-place, singing a song composed against themselves and expressing the justice of their punishment. The usual respect of the young to the old was not paid to bachelors.

At Athens there was no definite legislation on this matter; but certain minor laws are evidently dictated by a spirit akin to the Spartan doctrine. At Rome, though there appear traces of some earlier legislation in the matter, the first clearly known law is that called the Lex Julia, passed about 18 BC. It does not appear to have ever come into full operation; and in AD 9 it was incorporated with the Lex Papia et Poppaea, the two laws being frequently cited as one, Lex Julia et Papia Poppaea. This law, while restricting marriages between the several classes of the people, laid heavy penalties on unmarried persons, gave certain privileges to those citizens who had several children, and finally imposed lighter penalties on married persons who were childless.

Isolated instances of such penalties occur during the middle ages, e.g. by a charter of liberties granted by Matilda I, countess of Nevers, to Auxerre in 1223, an annual tax of five solidi is imposed on any man qui non habet uxorem et est bache-larius. In Great Britain there has been no direct legislation bearing on bachelors; but, occasionally, taxes have been made to bear more heavily on them than on others. Instances of this are an Act passed in 1695; the tax on servants, 1785; and the income tax, 1798.

In some cultures, the "punishment" of bachelors is no more than a teasing game. In small towns in Germany, for example, men who are still unmarried on their 30th birthday are made to sweep the stairs of the town hall until kissed by a virgin.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Penal laws and customs", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki