Religion was the glue that cemented the people together and gave the early Roman society an extremely high degree of asabiya. The cohesiveness of the society was so high that until the first century B.C. Romans did not need a police force to keep public order. The internally motivated discipline of early Romans, the formalized and ritualized behaviors of their culture, was enough to maintain public order. Punishment for many transgressions was a public declaration that the perpetrator acted dishonorably. According to Tacitus, for example, the only penalty suffered by a prostitute was the shame
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