SOCIAL LIFE AT ROME IN THE AGE OF CICERO

BY W. WARDE FOWLER, M. A. 

 'Ad illa mihi pro se quisque acriter intendat animum, quae vita, quae mores fuerint. '--LIVY, _Praefatio_. 

AMICO VETERRIMO

I. A. STEWART

ROMAE PRIMUM VISAE

COMES MEMOR

D. D. D. 

PREFATORY NOTE

This book was originally intended to be a companion to ProfessorTucker's _Life in Ancient Athens_, published in Messrs. Macmillan'sseries of Handbooks of Archaeology and Art; but the plan was abandonedfor reasons on which I need not dwell, and before the book was quitefinished I was called to other and more specialised work. As itstands, it is merely an attempt to supply an educational want. At ourschools and universities we read the great writers of the last age ofthe Republic, and learn something of its political and constitutionalhistory; but there is no book in our language which supplies a pictureof life and manners, of education, morals, and religion in thatintensely interesting period. The society of the Augustan age, whichin many ways was very different, is known much better; and of late myfriend Professor Dill's fascinating volumes have familiarised us withthe social life of two several periods of the Roman Empire. But theage of Cicero is in some ways at least as important as any period ofthe Empire; it is a critical moment in the history of Graeco-Romancivilisation. And in the Ciceronian correspondence, of more than ninehundred contemporary letters, we have the richest treasure-house ofsocial life that has survived from any period of classical antiquity. 

Apart from this correspondence and the other literature of the time, my mainstay throughout has been the _Privatleben der Römer_ ofMarquardt, which forms the last portion of the great _Handbuch derRömischen Altertümer_ of Mommsen and Marquardt. My debt is great alsoto Professors Tyrrell and Purser, whose labours have provided us witha text of Cicero's letters which we can use with confidence; thecitations from these letters have all been verified in the new Oxfordtext edited by Professor Purser. One other name I must mention withgratitude. I firmly believe that the one great hope for classicallearning and education lies in the interest which the unlearned publicmay be brought to feel in ancient life and thought. We have just lostthe veteran French scholar who did more perhaps to create andmaintain such an interest than any man of his time; and I gladly hereacknowledge that it was Boissier's _Cicéron et ses amis_ that in myyounger days made me first feel the reality of life and characterin an age of which I then hardly knew anything but the perplexingpolitical history. 

I have to thank my old pupils, Mr. H. E. Mann and Mr. Gilbert Watson, for kind help in revising the proofs. 

W. W. F. 

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

TOPOGRAPHICAL

Virgil's hero arrives at Rome by the Tiber: we follow his example;justification of this; view from Janiculum and its lessons; advantagesof the position of Rome, for defence and advance; disadvantages as tocommerce and salubrity; views of Roman writers; a walk through thecity in 50 B. C. ; Forum Boarium and Circus maximus; Porta Capena; viaSacra; summa sacra via and view of Forum; religious buildings ateastern end of Forum; Forum and its buildings in Cicero's time; ascentto the Capitol; temple of Jupiter and the view from it. 

CHAPTER II

THE LOWER POPULATION

Spread of the city outside original centre; the plebs dwelt mainlyin the lower ground; little known about its life: indifferenceof literary men; housing: the insulae; no sign of home life; badcondition of these houses; how the plebs subsisted; vegetarian diet;the corn supply and its problems; the corn law of Gaius Gracchus;results, and later laws; the water-supply; history of aqueducts;employment of the lower grade population; aristocratic contempt forretail trading; the trade gilds; relation of free to slave labour;bakers; supply of vegetables; of clothing; of leather; of iron, etc. ;gave employment to large numbers; porterage; precarious condition oflabour; fluctuation of markets; want of a good bankruptcy law. 

CHAPTER III

THE MEN OF BUSINESS AND THEIR METHODS

Meaning of equester ordo; how the capitalist came by his money;example of Atticus; incoming of wealth after Hannibalic war;suddenness of this; rise of a capitalist class; the contractors; thepublic contracting companies; in the age and writings of Cicero; theirpolitical influence; and power in the provinces; the bankers andmoney-lenders; origin of the Roman banker; nature of his business;risks of the money-lender; general indebtedness of society; Cicero'sdebts; story of Rabirius Postumus; mischief done by both contractorsand money-lenders. 

CHAPTER IV

THE GOVERNING ARISTOCRACY

The old noble families; their exclusiveness; Cicero's attitudetowards them; new type of noble; Scipio Aemilianus: his "circle"; itsinfluence on the Ciceronian age in (1) manners; (2) literary capacity;(3), philosophical receptivity; Stoicism at Rome; its influence on thelawyers; Sulpicius Rufus, his life and work; Epicureanism, its generaleffect on society; case of Calpurnius Piso; pursuit of pleasure andneglect of duty; senatorial duties neglected; frivolity of the youngerpublic men; example of M. Caelius Rufus; sketch of his life andcharacter; life of the Forum as seen in the letters of Caelius. 

CHAPTER V

MARRIAGE AND THE ROMAN LADY

Meaning of matrimonium: its religious side; shown from the oldestmarriage ceremony; its legal aspect; marriage cum manu abandoned;betrothal; marriage rites; dignified position of Roman matron; theideal materfamilias; change in the character of women; its causes; theladies of Cicero's time; Terentia; Pomponia; ladies of society andculture: Clodia; Sempronia; divorce, its frequency; a wonderful Romanlady: the Laudatio Turiae; story of her life and character as recordedby her husband. 

CHAPTER VI

THE EDUCATION OF THE UPPER CLASSES

An education of character needed; Aristotle's idea of education;little interest taken in education at Rome; biographies silent;education of Cato the younger; of Cicero's son and nephew; Varroand Cicero on education; the old Roman education of the body andcharacter; causes of its breakdown; the new education under Greekinfluence; schools, elementary; the sententiae in use in schools;arithmetic; utilitarian character of teaching; advanced schools;teaching too entirely linguistic and literary; assumption of togavirilis; study of rhetoric and law; oratory the main object; resultsof this; Cicero's son at the University of Athens: his letter to Tiro. 

CHAPTER VII

THE SLAVE POPULATION

The demand for labour in second century B. C. ; how it was supplied; theslave trade; kidnapping by pirates, etc. ; breeding of slaves; pricesof slaves; possible number in Cicero's day; economic aspect ofslavery: did it interfere with free labour?; no apparent rivalrybetween them; either in Rome; or on the farm; the slave-shepherdsof South Italy; they exclude free labour; legal aspect of slavery:absolute power of owner; prospect of manumission; political results ofslave system; of manumission; ethical aspect: destruction of familylife; no moral standard; effects of slavery on the slave-owners. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE HOUSE OF THE RICH MAN IN TOWN AND COUNTRY

Out-of-door life at Rome; but the Roman house originally a home;religious character of it; the atrium and its contents; development ofatrium: the peristylium; desire for country houses: crowding at Rome;callers, clients, etc. ; effects of this city life on the individual;country house of Scipio Africanus; watering-places in Campania;meaning of villa in Cicero's time: Hortensius' park; Cicero's villas:Tusculum; Arpinum; Formiae; Puteoli; Cumae; Pompeii; Astura; constantchange of residence, and its effects. 

CHAPTER IX

THE DAILY LIFE OF THE WELL-TO-DO

Roman division of the day; sun-dials; hours varied according to theseason; early rising of Romans; want of artificial light; Cicero'searly hours; early callers; breakfast, followed by business; morningin the Forum; lunch (prandium); siesta; the bath; dinner: its hourbecomes later; dinner-parties: the triclinium; drinking after dinner;Cicero's indifference to the table; his entertainment of Caesar atCumae. 

CHAPTER X

HOLIDAYS AND PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS

The Italian festa, ancient and modern; meaning of the word feriae;change in its meaning; holidays of plebs; festival of Anna Perenua;The Saturnalia; the ludi and their origin; ludi Romani and plebeii;other ludi; supported by State; by private individuals; admissionfree; Circus maximus and chariot-racing; gladiators at funeral games;stage-plays at ludi; political feeling expressed at the theatre;decadence of tragedy in Cicero's time; the first permanent theatre, 55B. C. ; opening of Pompey's theatre; Cicero's account of it; the greatactors of Cicero's day: Aesopus; Roscius; the farces; Publilius Syrusand the mime. 

CHAPTER XI

RELIGION

Absence of real religious feeling; neglect of worship, except in thefamily; foreign cults, e. G. Of Isis; religious attitude of Cicero andother public men: free thought, combined with maintenance of the iusdivinum; Lucretius condemns all religion as degrading: his failure toproduce a substitute for it; Stoic attitude towards religion: Stoicismfinds room for the gods of the State; Varro's treatment of theology onStoic lines; his monotheistic conception of Jupiter Capitolinus;the Stoic Jupiter a legal rather than a moral deity; Jupiter in theAeneid; superstition of the age; belief in portents, visions, etc. ;ideas of immortality; sense of sin, or despair of the future. 

EPILOGUE

INDEX

ILLUSTRATIONS

PLAN OF HOUSE OF THE SILVER WEDDING AT POMPEII

MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE POSITION OF CICERO'S VILLAS

PLAN OF THE VILLA OF DIOMEDES AT POMPEII

PLAN OF A TRICLINIUM

MAP

ROME IN THE LAST YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC _At end of Volume_

Translations of passages in foreign languages in this book will befound in the Appendix following page 362. 

CHAPTER I

TOPOGRAPHICAL

The modern traveller of to-day arriving at Rome by rail drives to hishotel through the uninteresting streets of a modern town, and thencefinds his way to the Forum and the Palatine, where his attentionis speedily absorbed by excavations which he finds it difficult tounderstand. It is as likely as not that he may leave Rome without oncefinding an opportunity of surveying the whole site of the ancientcity, or of asking, and possibly answering the question, how itever came to be where it is. While occupied with museums andpicture-galleries, he may well fail "totam aestimare Romam. "[1]Assuming that the reader has never been in Rome, I wish to transporthim thither in imagination, and with the help of the map, by anentirely different route. But first let him take up the eighth book ofthe _Aeneid_, and read afresh the oldest and most picturesque of allstories of arrival at Rome;[2] let him dismiss all handbooks from hismind, and concentrate it on Aeneas and his ships on their way from thesea to the site of the Eternal City. 

Virgil showed himself a true artist in bringing his hero up the Tiber, which in his day was freely used for navigation up to and even abovethe city. He saw that by the river alone he could land him exactlywhere he could be shown by his friendly host, almost at a glance, every essential feature of the site, every spot most hallowed byantiquity in the minds of his readers. Rowing up the river, whichgraciously slackened its swift current, Aeneas presently caught sightof the walls and citadel, and landed just beyond the point wherethe Aventine hill falls steeply almost to the water's edge. Here inhistorical times was the dockyard of Rome; and here, when the poet wasa child, Cato had landed with the spoils of Cyprus, as the nearestpoint of the river for the conveyance of that ill-gotten gain to thetreasury under the Capitol. [3] Virgil imagines the bank clothed withwood, and in the wood--where afterwards was the Forum Boarium, acrowded haunt--Aeneas finds Evander sacrificing at the Ara maxima ofHercules, of all spots the best starting-point for a walk through theheart of the ancient city. To the right was the Aventine, rising toabout a hundred and thirty feet above the river, and this was thefirst of the hills of Rome to be impressed on the mind of thestranger, by the tale of Hercules and Cacus which Evander tells hisguest. In front, but close by, was the long western flank of thePalatine hill, where, when the tale had been told and the rites ofHercules completed, Aeneas was to be shown the cave of the Lupercal;and again to the left, approaching the river within two hundred yards, was the Capitol to be:

 Hinc ad Tarpeiam sedem et Capitolia ducit, Aurea nunc, olim silvestribus horrida dumis. 

Below it the hero is shown the shrine of the prophetic nymph Carmenta, with the Porta Carmentalis leading into the Campus Martius; then thehollow destined one day to be the Forum Romanum, and beyond it, inthe valley of the little stream that here found its way down from theplain beyond, the grove of the Argiletum. Here, and up the slope ofthe Clivus sacer, with which we shall presently make acquaintance, were the lowing herds of Evander, who then takes his guest to reposefor the night in his own dwelling on the Palatine, the site of themost ancient Roman settlement. [4]

What Evander showed to his visitor, as we shall presently see, comprised the whole site of the heart and life of the city as it wasto be, all that lay under the steep sides of the three almost isolatedhills, the Capitoline, Palatine, and Aventine. The poet knew that heneed not extend their walk to the other so-called hills, which comedown as spurs from the plain of the Campagna, --Quirinal, Esquiline, Caelian. Densely populated as those were in his own day, they were notessential organs of social and politics life; the pulse of Rome was tobe felt beating most strongly in the space between them and the riverwhere too the oldest and most cherished associations of the Romanpeople, mythical and historical, were fixed. I propose to take thereader, with a single deviation, over the same ground, and to ask himto imagine it as it was in the period with which we are concerned inthis book. But first, in order to take in with eye and mind the wholecity and its position, let us leave Aeneas, and crossing to the rightbank of the Tiber by the Pons Aemilius, [5] let us climb to the fort ofthe Janiculum, an ancient outwork against attack from the north, byway of the via Aurelia, and here enjoy the view which Martial has madeforever famous:

 Hinc septem dominos videre montes Et totam licet aestimare Romam, Albanos quoque Tusculosque colles Et quodcunque iacet sub urbe frigus. 

No one who has ever stood on the Janiculum, and looked down on theriver and the city, and across the Latin plain to the Alban mountainand the long line of hills--the last spurs of the Apennines--enclosingthe plain to the north, can fail to realise that _Rome was originallyan outpost of the Latins_, her kinsmen and confederates, against thepowerful and uncanny Etruscan race who dwelt in the undulating hillcountry to the north. The site was an outpost, because the threeisolated hills make it a natural point of defence, and of attacktowards the north if attack were desirable; no such point of similarvantage is to be found lower down the river, and if the city had beenplaced higher up, Latium would have been left open to attack, --thethree hills would have been left open to the enemy to gain a firmfooting on Latin soil. It was also, as it turned out, an admirablebase of operations for carrying on war in the long and narrowpeninsula, so awkward, as Hannibal found to his cost, for working outa definite plan of conquest. From Rome, astride of the Tiber, armiescould operate on "interior lines" against any combination--couldstrike north, east, and south at the same moment. With Latium faithfulbehind her she could not be taken in the rear; the unconquerableHannibal did indeed approach her once on that side, but fell awayagain like a wave on a rocky shore. From the sea no enemy everattempted to reach her till Genseric landed at Ostia in A. D. 455. 

Thus it is not difficult to understand how Rome came to be the leadingcity of Latium; how she came to work her conquering way into Etruriato the north, the land of a strange people who at one time threatenedto dominate the whole of Italy; how she advanced up the Tiber valleyand its affluents into the heart of the Apennines, and southward intothe Oscan country of Samnium and the rich plain of Campania. A glanceat the map of Italy will show us at once how apt is Livy's remark thatRome was placed in the centre of the peninsula. [6] That peninsulalooks as if it were cleft in twain by the Tiber, or in other words, the Tiber drains the greater part of central Italy, and carries thewater down a well-marked valley to a central point on the westerncoast, with a volume greater than that of any other river south of thePo. A city therefore that commands the Tiber valley, and especiallythe lower part of it, is in a position of strategic advantage withregard to the whole peninsula. Now Rome, as Strabo remarked, was theonly city actually situated on the bank of the river; and Rome was notonly on the river, but from the earliest times astride of it. She heldthe land on both banks from her own site to the Tiber mouth at Ostia, as we know from the fact that one of her most ancient priesthoods[7]had its sacred grove five miles down the river on the northern bank. Thus she had easy access to the sea by the river or by land, and anopen way inland up the one great natural entrance from the sea intocentral Italy. [8] Her position on the Tiber is much like that ofHispalis (Seville) on the Baetis, or of Arles on the Rhone, citiesopening the way of commerce or conquest up the basins of two greatrivers. In spite of some disadvantages, to be noticed directly, therewas no such favourable position in Italy for a virile people apt tofight and to conquer. Capua, in the rich volcanic plain of Campania, had far greater advantages in the way of natural wealth; but Capua wastoo far south, in a more enervating climate, and virility was neverone of her strong points. Corfinium, in the heart of the Apennines, once seemed threatening to become a rival, and was for a time thecentre of a rebellious confederation; but this city was too near theeast coast--an impossible position for a pioneer of Italian dominion. Italy looks west, not east; almost all her natural harbours are on herwestern side; and though that at Ostia, owing to the amount of siltcarried down by the Tiber, has never been a good one, it is the onlyport which can be said to command an entrance into the centre of thepeninsula. 

No one, however, would contend that the position of Rome is an idealone. Taken in and by itself, without reference to Italy and theMediterranean, that position has little to recommend it. It is too farfrom the sea, nearly twenty miles up the valley of a river with aninconveniently rapid current, to be a great commercial or industrialcentre; and such a centre Rome has never really been in the wholecourse of her history. There are no great natural sources of wealth inthe neighbourhood--no mines like those at Laurium in Attica, no vastexpanse of corn-growing country like that of Carthage. The river toowas liable to flood, as it still is, and a familiar ode of Horacetells us how in the time of Augustus the water reached even to theheart of the city. [9] Lastly, the site has never really been a healthyone, especially during the months of July and August, [10] which arethe most deadly throughout the basin of the Mediterranean. Pestilenceswere common at Rome in her early history, and have left their mark inthe calendar of her religious festivals; for example, the Apollinegames were instituted during the Hannibalic war as the result of apestilence, and fixed for the unhealthy month of July. Foreigners fromthe north of Europe have always been liable to fever at Rome; invadersfrom the north have never been able to withstand the climate for long;in the Middle Ages one German army after another melted away under herwalls, and left her mysteriously victorious. 

There are some signs that the Romans themselves had occasionalmisgivings about the excellence of their site. There was a tradition, that after the burning of the city by the Gauls, it was proposed thatthe people should desert the site and migrate to Veii, the conqueredEtruscan city to the north, and that it needed all the eloquence ofCamillus to dissuade them. It has given Livy[11] the opportunity ofputting into the orator's mouth a splendid encomium on the city andits site; but no such story could well have found a place in Romanannals if the Capitol had been as deeply set in the hearts of thepeople as was the Acropolis in the hearts of the Athenians. At a latertime of deep depression Horace[12] could fancifully suggest that theRomans should leave their ancient home like the Phocaeans of old, andseek a new one in the islands of the blest. Some idea was abroad thatCaesar had meant to transfer the seat of government to Ilium, andafter Actium the same intention was ascribed to Augustus, probablywithout reason; but the third ode of Horace's third book seems toexpress the popular rumour, and in an interesting paper Mommsen[13]has stated his opinion that the new master of the Roman world mayreally have thought of changing the seat of government to Byzantium, the supreme convenience and beauty of which were already beginning tobe appreciated. [14]

Virgil, on the other hand, though he came from the foot of the Alpsand did not love Rome as a place to dwell in, is absolutely true tothe great traditions of the site. For him "rerum facta est pulcherrimaRoma" (_Georg_. Ii. 534); and in the _Aeneid_ the destiny of Rome isso foretold and expressed as to make it impossible for a Roman readerto think of it except in connexion with the city. He who needs to beconvinced of this has but to turn once more to the eighth _Aeneid_, and to add to the charming story of Aeneas' first visit to the sevenhills, the splendid picture of the origin and growth of Roman dominionengraved on the shield which Venus gives her son. Cicero again, thoughhe was no Roman by birth, was passionately fond of Rome, and in histreatise _de Republica_, praised with genuine affection her "nativapraesidia. "[15] He says of Romulus, "that he chose a spot abounding insprings, healthy though in a pestilent region; for her hills are opento the breezes, yet give shade to the hollows below them. " And Livy, in the passage already quoted, in language even more perfect thanCicero's, wrote of all the advantages of the site, ending bydescribing it as "regionum Italiae medium, ad incrementum urbis natumunice locum. " It is curious that all these panegyrics were written bymen who were not natives of Rome; Virgil came from Mantua, Livy fromPadua, Cicero from Arpinum. They are doubtless genuine, though insome degree rhetorical; those of Cicero and Livy can hardly be calledstrictly accurate. But taken together they may help us to understandthat fascination of the site of Rome, to which Virgil gave suchinimitable expression. 

On this site, which once had been crowded only when the Roman farmershad taken refuge within the walls with their families, flocks, andherds on the threatening appearance of an enemy, by the time of Ciceroan enormous population had gathered. Many causes had combined to bringthis population together, which can be only glanced at here. As inEurope and America at the present day, so in all the Mediterraneanlands since the age of Alexander, there had been a constantlyincreasing tendency to flock into the towns; and the rise of hugecities, such as Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage, Corinth, or Rhodes, with all the inevitably ensuing social problems and complications, isone of the most marked characteristics of the last three centuriesB. C. In Italy in particular, apart from the love of a pleasant sociallife free from manual toil, with various convenient resorts andamusements, the long series of wars had served to increase thepopulation, in spite of the constant loss by the sword or pestilence;for the veteran soldier who had been serving, perhaps for years, beyond sea, found it hard to return to the monotonous life ofagriculture, or perhaps found his holding appropriated by somepowerful landholder with whom it would be hopeless to contestpossession. The wars too brought a steadily increasing populationof slaves to the city, many of whom in course of time would bemanumitted, would marry, and so increase the free population. Theseare only a few of the many causes at work after the Punic wars whichcrammed together in the site of Rome a population which, in the latterpart of the last century B. C. , probably reached half a million or evenmore. [16]

Let us now descend from the Janiculum, and try to imagine ourselves inthe Rome of Cicero's time, say in the last year of the Republic, 50B. C. , as we walk through the busy haunts of this crowded population. We will not delay on the right bank of the Tiber, which had probablylong been the home of tradesmen in their gilds, [17] and where fartherdown the rich were buying land for gardens[18] and suburban villas;but cross by the Pons Aemilius, with the Tiber island on our left, andthe opening of the Cloaca maxima, which drained the water from theForum, facing us, as it still does, a little to our right. We findourselves close to the Forum Boarium, an open cattle-market, withshops (tabernae) all around it, as we know from Livy's record ofa fire here, which burnt many of these shops and much valuablemerchandise. [19] Here by the river was in fact the market in themodern sense of the word; the Forum Romanum, which we are making for, was now the centre of political and judicial business, and of sociallife. 

We might go direct to the great Forum, up the Velabrum, or valley(once a marsh), right in front of us between the Capitol on the leftand the Palatine on the right. But as we look in the latter direction, we are attracted by a long low erection almost filling the spacebetween the Palatine and the Aventine, and turning in that directionwe find ourselves at the lower end of the Circus Maximus, which asyet is the chief place of amusement of the Roman people. Two famousshrines, one at each end of it, remind us that we are on historicground. At the end where we stand, and where are the _carceres_, thestarting-point for the competing chariots, was the Ara maxima ofHercules, which prompted Evander to tell the tale of Cacus to hisguest; at the other end was the subterranean altar of Consus theharvest-god, with which was connected another tale, that of the rapeof the Sabines. All the associations of this quarter point to theagricultural character of the early Romans; both cattle and harvestinghave their appropriate myth. But nothing is visible here now, exceptthe pretty little round temple of a later date, which is believed tohave been that of Portunus, the god of the landing-place from theriver. [20]

The Circus, some six hundred yards long, at the time of Cicero wasstill mainly a wooden erection in the form of a long parallelogram, with shops or booths sheltering under its sides; we shall visit itagain when dealing with the public entertainments. [21] Above it on theright is the Aventine hill, a densely populated quarter of the lowerclasses, crowned with the famous temple of Diana, a deity speciallyconnected with the plebs. [22] The Clivus Patricius led up to thistemple; down this slope, on the last day of his life, Gaius Gracchushad hurried, to cross the river and meet his murderers in the grove ofFurrina, of which the site has lately been discovered. If we were toascend it we should see, on the river-bank below and beyond it, the warehouses and granaries for storing the corn for the city'sfood-supply, which Gracchus had been the first to extend and organise. 

But to ascend the Aventine would take us out of our course. Pushingon to the farther end of the Circus, where the chariots turned at the_metae_, we may pause a moment, for in front of us is a gate in thecity wall, the Porta Capena, by which most travellers from the south, using the via Appia or the via Latina, would enter the city. [23]Outside the wall there was then a small temple of Mars, from which theprocession of the Equites started each year on the Ides of Quinctilis(July) on its way to the Capitol, by the same route that we are aboutto take. We shall also be following the steps of Cicero on the happyday September 4, 57 B. C. , when he returned from exile. "On my arrivalat the Porta Capena, " he writes to Atticus, "the steps of the templeswere already crowded from top to bottom by the populace; they showedtheir congratulations by the loudest applause, and similar crowds andapplause followed me right up to the Capitol, and in the Forum and onthe Capitol itself there was again a wonderful throng" (_ad Att. _ iv. 1). 

We are now, as the map will show, at the south-eastern angle of thePalatine, of which, in fact, we are making the circuit;[24] a and herewe turn sharp to the left, by what is now the via di San Gregorio, along a narrow valley or dip between the Palatine and Caelianhills--the latter the first we have met of the "hills" which are notisolated, but spurs of the plain of the Campagna. The Caelian need notdetain us; it was thickly populated towards the end of the Republicanperiod, but was not a very fashionable quarter, nor one of the chiefhaunts of social life. It held many of those large lodging-houses(insulae) of which we shall hear more in the next chapter; one ofthese stood so high that it interfered with the view of the augurtaking the auspices on the Capitol, and was ordered to be pulleddown. [25] Going straight on reach the north-eastern angle of thePalatine, where now stands the arch of Constantine, with the Colosseumbeyond it, and turning once more to the left, we begin to ascend agentle slope which will take us to a ridge between the Palatine andthe Esquiline[26]--another of the spurs of the plain beyond--known bythe name of the Velia. And now we are approaching the real heart ofthe city. 

At this point starts the Sacra via, [27] so called because it is theway to the most sacred spots of the ancient Roman city, --the templesof Vesta and the Penates, and the Regia, once the dwelling of the Rex, now of the Pontifex Maximus; and it will lead us, in a walk of abouteight hundred yards, through the Forum to the Capitol. It varied inbreadth, and took by no means a straight course, and later on wascrowded, cramped, and deflected by numerous temples and otherbuildings; but as yet, so far as we can guess, it was fairly free andopen. We follow it and ascend the slope till we come to a point knownas the _summa sacra via_, just where the arch of Titus now stands, andwhere then was the temple of Jupiter Stator, and where also a shrineof the public Penates and another of the Lares (of which no trace isnow left) warn us that we are close on the penetralia of the RomanState. Here a way to the left leads up to the Palatine the residencethen of many of the leading men of Rome, Cicero being one of them. 

But our attention is not long arrested by these objects; it is soonriveted on the Forum below and in front of us, to which the Sacred Wayleads by a downward slope, the Clivus sacer. At the north-western endit is closed in by the Capitoline hill, with its double summit, thearx to the right, and the great temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minervafacing south-east towards the Aventine. It is of this view thatVirgil must have been thinking when he wrote of the happy lot of thecountryman who

 nec ferrea iura insanumque forum aut populi tabularia vidit. [28]

For the Forum is crowded with bustling human figures, intent on thebusiness of politics, or of the law-courts (ferrea iura), or ofmoney-making, and just beyond it, immediately under the Capitol, arethe record-offices (tabularia) of the Roman Empire. The whole Sacravia from this point is crowded; here Horace a generation later was tomeet his immortal "bore, " from whom he only escaped when the "ferreaiura" laid a strong hand on that terrible companion. Down below, atthe entrance to the Forum by the arch of Fabius (fornix Fabiana), thejostling was great. "If I am knocked about in the crowd at the arch, "says Cicero, to illustrate a point in a speech of this time, "I do notaccuse some one at the top of the via Sacra, but the man who jostlesme. "[29]

The Forum--for from this point we can take it all in, geologically andhistorically--lies in a deep hollow, to the original level of whichexcavation has now at last reached. This hollow was formed by a streamwhich came down between the Esquiline and the Quirinal beyond it, and made its exit towards the river on the other side by way of theVelabrum. As the city extended itself, amalgamating with anothercommunity on the Quirinal, this hollow became a common meeting-placeand market, and the stream was in due time drained by that Cloacawhich we saw debouching into the Tiber near the bridge we crossed. The upper course of this stream, between Esquiline and Quirinal, is adensely populated quarter known as the Argiletum, and higher up as theSubura, [30] where artisans and shops abounded. The lower part of itscourse, where it has become an invisible drain, is also a crowdedstreet, the vicus Tuscus, leading to the Velabrum, and so to ourstarting-point at the Forum Boarium. 

Let us now descend the Clivus sacer, crossing to the right-hand sideof the slope, which the via Sacra now follows, and reach the Forum bythe fornix Fabiana. Close by to our left is the round temple ofVesta, where the sacred fire of the State is kept ever burning by itsguardians, the Vestal Virgins, and here too is their dwelling, theAtrium Vestae, and also that of the Pontifex Maximus (Regia), in whosepotestas they were; these three buildings, then insignificant to lookat, constituted the religious focus of the oldest Rome. [31] A littlefarther again to the left is the temple of Castor and the spring ofJuturna, lately excavated, where the Twins watered their steeds afterthe battle of the lake Regillus. In front of us we can see over theheads of the crowd the Rostra at the farther end of the Forum, wherean orator is perhaps addressing a crowd (_contio_) on some politicalquestion of the moment, and giving some occupation to the idlersin the throng; and to the right of the Rostra is the Comitiumor assembling-place of the people, with the Curia, the ancientmeeting-hall of the senate. In Cicero's day the mere shopman had beengot rid of from the Forum, and his place is taken by the banker andmoney-lender, who do their business in _tabernae_ stretching in rowsalong both sides of the open space. Much public business, judicial andother, is done in the Basilicae, --roofed halls with colonnades, ofwhich there are already five, and a new one is arising on the southside, of which the ground-plan, as it was extended soon afterwards byJulius Caesar, is now completely laid bare. But it is becoming evidentthat the business of the Empire cannot be much longer crowded intothis narrow space of the Forum, which is only about two hundred yardslong by seventy; and the next two generations will see new Foralaid out larger and more commodious, by Julius and Augustus in thedirection of the Quirinal. 

Now making our way towards the Capitol, we pass the famous temple orrather gate of the double-headed Janus, standing at the entranceto the Forum from the Argiletum and the Porta Esquilina; then theComitium and Curia (which last was burnt by the mob in 52 B. C. , at thefuneral of Clodius), and reach the foot of the Clivus Capitolinus, just where was (and is) the ancient underground prison, calledTullianum, from the old word for a spring (_tullus_), the scene of thedeaths of Jugurtha and many noble captives, and of the Catilinarianconspirators on December 5, 63. Here the via Sacra turns, in front ofthe temple of Concordia, to ascend the Capitol. Behind this temple, extending farther under the slope, is the Tabularium, alreadymentioned, which is still much as it was then; and below us to thesouth is the temple of Saturnus, the treasury (_aerarium_) of theRoman people. Thus at this end of the Forum, under the Capitol, are the whole set of public offices, facing the ancient religiousbuildings around the Vesta temple at the other end. 

The way now turns again to the right, and reaches the depressionbetween the two summits of the Capitoline hill. Leaving the arx on theleft, we reach by a long flight of steps the greatest of all Romantemples, placed on a long platform with solid substructures ofEtruscan workmanship, part of which is still to be seen in the gardenof the German Embassy. The temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, withhis companions Juno and Minerva, was in a special sense the religiouscentre of the State and its dominion. Whatever view he might take ofthe gods and their cults, every Roman instinctively believed that thisgreat Jupiter, above all other deities, watched over the welfare ofRome, and when a generation later Virgil placed the destiny of Rome'smythical hero in the hands of Jupiter, every Roman recognised in thishis own inherited conviction. Here, on the first day of their office, the higher magistrates offered sacrifice in fulfilment of the vows oftheir predecessors, and renewed the same vows themselves. The consulabout to leave the city for a foreign war made it his last duty tosacrifice here, and on his return he deposited here his booty. Herecame the triumphal procession along the Sacred Way, the conqueringgeneral attired and painted like the statue of the god within thetemple; and upon the knees of the statue he placed his wreath oflaurel, rendering up to the deity what he had himself deigned tobestow. Here too, from a pedestal on the platform, a statue of Jupiterlooked straight over the Forum, [32] the Curia, and the Comitium; andCicero could declare from the Rostra, and know that in so declaring hewas touching the hearts of his hearers, that on that same day on whichit had first been so placed, the machinations of Catiline and hisconspirators had been detected. [33] "Ille, ille Iupiter restitit;ille Capitolium, ille haec templa, ille cunctam urbem, ille vos omnessalvos esse voluit. "

The temple had been destroyed by fire in the time of Sulla, and itsrestoration was not as yet finally completed at the time of ourimaginary walk. [34] It faced towards the river and the Aventine, i. E. South-east, according to the rules of augural lore, like all Romanpublic buildings of the Republican period. From the platform on whichit stands we look down on the Forum Boarium, from which we started, connected with the Forum by the Velabrum and the vicus Tuscus; andmore to the right below us is the Campus Martius, with access to thecity by that Porta Carmentalis which Evander showed to Aeneas. Thisspacious exercise-ground of Roman armies is already beginning to bebuilt upon; in fact the Circus Flaminius has been there for more thana century and a half, and now the new theatre of Pompeius, the firststone theatre in Rome, rises beyond it towards the Vatican hill. Butthere is ample space left; for it is nearly a mile from the Capitolto that curve of the Tiber above which the Church of St. Peter nowstands; and on this large expanse, at the present day, the greaterpart of a population of nearly half a million is housed. I do notpropose to take the reader farther. We have been through the heart of thecity, as it was at the close of the Republican period, and from theplatform of the great temple we can see all else that we need to keepin mind in these chapters. 

CHAPTER II

THE LOWER POPULATION (PLEBS URBANA)

The walk we have been taking has led us only through the heart ofthe city, in which were the public buildings, temples, basilicas, porticos, etc. , of which we hear so much in Latin literature. It wason the hills which are spurs of the plain beyond, and which look downover the Forum and the Campus Martius, the Caelian, Esquiline, andQuirinal, with the hollows lying between them, and also on theAventine by the river, that the mass of the population lived. The mostancient fortification of completed Rome, the so-called Servian walland _agger_, enclosed a singularly large space, larger, we are told, than the walls of any old city in Italy;[35] it is likely that agood part of this space was long unoccupied by houses, and served toshelter the cattle of the farmers living outside, when an enemy wasthreatening attack. But in Cicero's time, as to-day, all this spacewas covered with dwellings; and as the centre of the city came to beoccupied with public buildings, erected on sites often bought fromprivate owners, the houses were gradually pushed out along the roadsbeyond the walls. Exactly the same process has been going on forcenturies in the University city of Oxford where the erection ofcolleges gradually absorbed the best sites within the old walls, sothat many of the dwelling-houses are now quite two miles from thecentre of the city. The fact is attested for Rome by the famousmunicipal law of Julius Caesar, which directs that for a mile outsidethe gates every resident is to look after the repair of the road infront of his own house. [36]

As a general rule, the heights in Rome were occupied by the betterclass of residents, and the hollows by the lower stratum ofpopulation. This was not indeed entirely so, for poor people no doubtlived on the Aventine, the Caelian, and parts of the Esquiline. Butthe Palatine was certainly an aristocratic quarter; the Carinae, theheight looking down on the hollow where the Colosseum now stands, hadmany good houses, e. G. Those of Pompeius and of Quintus Cicero, andwe know of one man of great wealth, Atticus, who lived on theQuirinal. [37] It was in the narrow hollows leading down from theseheights to the Forum, such as the Subura between Esquiline andQuirinal, and the Argiletum farther down near the Forum, that we meetin literature what we may call the working classes; the Argiletum, forexample, was famous both for its booksellers and its shoemakers, [38]and the Subura is the typical street of tradesmen. And no doubt thebig lodging-houses in which the lower classes dwelt were to be foundin all parts of Rome, except the strictly aristocratic districts likethe Palatine. 

The whole free population may roughly be divided into three classes, of which the first two, constituting together the social aristocracy, were a mere handful in number compared with the third. At the top ofthe social order was the governing class, or _ordo senatorius_: thencame the _ordo equester_, comprising all the men of business, bankers, money-lenders, and merchants (_negotiatores_) or contractors for theraising of taxes and many other purposes (_publicani_). Of these twoupper classes and their social life we shall see something in laterchapters; at present we are concerned with the "masses, " at least320, 000 in number, [39] and the social problems which their existencepresented, or ought to have presented, to an intelligent Romanstatesman of Cicero's time. 

Unfortunately, just as we know but little of the populous districts ofRome, so too we know little of its industrial population. The upperclasses, including all writers of memoirs and history, were notinterested in them. There was no philanthropist, no devoted inquirerlike Mr. Charles Booth, to investigate their condition or try toameliorate it. The statesman, if he troubled himself about them atall, looked on them as a dangerous element of society, only to beconsidered as human beings at election time; at all other times merelyas animals that had to be fed, in order to keep them from becoming anactive peril. The philosopher, even the Stoic, whose creed was by farthe most ennobling in that age, seems to have left the dregs of thepeople quite out of account; though his philosophy nominally took thewhole of mankind into its cognisance, it believed the masses to bedegraded and vicious, and made no effort to redeem them. [40] The Stoicmight profess the tenderest feeling towards all mankind, as Cicerodid, when moved by some recent reading of Stoic doctrine; he might saythat "men were born for the sake of men, that each should help theother, " or that "Nature has inclined us to love men, for this is thefoundation of all law";[41] but when in actual social or politicalcontact with the same masses Cicero could only speak of them withcontempt or disgust. It is a melancholy and significant fact that whatlittle we do know from literature about this class is derived from thepart they occasionally played in riots and revolutionary disorders. It is fortunately quite impossible that the historian of the futureshould take account of the life of the educated and wealthy only; butin the history of the past and especially of the last three centuriesB. C. , we have to contend with this difficulty, and can only now andthen find side-lights thrown upon the great mass of mankind. Thecrime, the crowding, the occasional suffering from starvation andpestilence, in the unfashionable quarters of such a city as Rome, these things are hidden from us, and rarely even suggested by thehistories we commonly read. 

The three questions to which I wish to make some answer in thischapter are: (1) how was this population housed? (2) how was itsupplied with food and clothing? and (3) how was it employed?

1. It was of course impossible in a city like Rome that each man, married or unmarried, should have his own house; this is not so evenin the great majority of modern industrial towns, though we in Englandare accustomed to see our comparatively well-to-do artisans dwellingin cottages spreading out into the country. At Rome only the wealthyfamilies lived in separate houses (_domus_), about which we shall havesomething to say in another chapter. The mass of the population lived, or rather ate and slept (for southern climates favour an out-of-doorlife), in huge lodging-houses called islands (_insulae_), because theywere detached from other buildings, and had streets on all sides ofthem, as islands have water. [42] These _insulae_ were often three orfour stories high;[43] the ground-floor was often occupied by shops, kept perhaps by some of the lodgers, and the upper floors by singlerooms, with small windows looking out on the street or into aninterior court. The common name for such a room was _coenaculum_, ordining-room, a word which seems to be taken over from the _coenaculum_of private houses, i. E. An eating-room on the first floor, where therewas one. Once indeed we hear of an _aedicula_, in an insula, which wasperhaps the equivalent of a modern "flat"; it was inhabited by a youngbachelor of good birth, M. Caelius Rufus, the friend of Cicero, andin this case the insula was probably one of a superior kind. [44]The common lodging-house must have been simply a rabbit-warren, thecrowded inhabitants using their rooms only for eating and sleeping, while for the most part they prowled about, either idling or gettingsuch employment as they could, legitimate or otherwise. 

In such a life there could of course have been no idea of home, or ofthat simple and sacred family life which had once been the ethicalbasis of Roman society. [45] When we read Cicero's thrilling languageabout the loss of his own house, after his return from exile, and thenturn to think of the homeless crowds in the rabbit-warrens of Rome, wecan begin to feel the contrast between the wealth and poverty of thatday. "What is more strictly protected, " he says, "by all religiousfeeling, than the house of each individual citizen? Here is his altar, his hearth, here are his Di Penates: here he keeps all the objectsof his worship and performs all his religious rites: his house isa refuge so solemnly protected, that no one can be torn from it byforce. "[46] The warm-hearted Cicero is here, as so often, dreamingdreams: the "each individual citizen" of whom he speaks is the citizenof his own acquaintance, not the vast majority, with whom his minddoes not trouble itself. 

These insulae were usually built or owned by men of capital, and wereoften called by the names of their owners. Cicero, in one of hisletters, [47] incidentally mentions that he had money thus invested;and we are disposed to wonder whether his insulae were kept in goodrepair, for in another letter he happens to tell his man of businessthat shops (tabernae) belonging to him were tumbling down andunoccupied. It is more than likely that many of the insulae were badlybuilt by speculators, and liable to collapse. The following passagefrom Plutarch's _Life of Crassus_ suggests this, though, if Plutarchis right, Crassus did not build himself, but let or sold his sites andbuilders to others: "Observing (in Sulla's time) the accidents thatwere familiar at Rome, conflagrations and tumbling down of housesowing to their weight and crowded state, he bought slaves who werearchitects and builders. Having collected these to the number of morethan five hundred, it was his practice to buy up houses on fire, andhouses next to those on fire: for the owners, frightened and anxious, would sell them cheap. And thus the greater part of Rome fell intothe hands of Crassus: but though he had so many artisans, he built nohouse except his own, for he used to say that those who were fond ofbuilding ruined themselves without the help of an enemy. "[48] Thefall of houses, and their destruction in the frequent fires, becamefamiliar features of life at Rome about this time, and are alluded toby Catullus in his twenty-third poem, and later on by Strabo in hisdescription of Rome (p. 235). It must indeed have often happened thatwhole families were utterly homeless;[49] and in those days therewere no insurance offices, no benefit societies, no philanthropicinstitutions to rescue the suffering from undeserved misery. As weshall see later on, they were constantly in debt, and in the hands ofthe money-lender; and against his extortions their judicial remedieswere most precarious. But all this is hidden from our eyes: only nowand again we can hear a faint echo of their inarticulate cry for help. 

2. The needs of these poorer classes in respect of food and drink werevery small; it was only the vast number of them that made the supplydifficult. The Italians, like the Greeks, [50] were then as now almostentirely vegetarians; cattle and sheep were used for the productionof cheese, leather, and wool or for sacrifices to the gods; the onlyanimal commonly eaten, until luxury came in with increasing wealth, was the pig, and grain and vegetables were the staple food of the poorman, both in town and country. Among the lesser poems ascribed toVirgil there is one, the _Moretum_, which gives a charming picture ofthe food-supply of the small cultivator in the country. He rises veryearly, gropes his way to the hearth, and stirs the embers into flame:then takes from his meal-bin a supply of grain for three days andproceeds to grind it in a hand-mill, knead it with water, shape itinto round cakes divided into four parts like a "hot-cross bun, " and, with the help of his one female slave, to bake these in the embers. Hehas no sides of smoked bacon, says the poet, hanging from his roof, but only a cheese, so to add to his meal he goes into his garden andgathers thence a number of various herbs and vegetables, which he thenmakes into the hotch-potch, or _pot-au-feu_ which gives the name tothe poem. This bit of delicate genre-painting, which is as good in itsway as anything in Crabbe's homely poems, has indeed nothing to tellus of life in an insula at Rome; but it may serve to show what was theordinary food of the Italian of that day. [51] The absence of the sidesof bacon ("durati sale terga suis, " line 57) is interesting. No doubtthe Roman took meat when he could get it; but to have to subsist onit, even for a short time, was painful to him, and more than onceCaesar remarks on the endurance of his soldiers in submitting to eatmeat when corn was not to be had. [52]

The corn which was at this time the staple food of the Romans of thecity was wheat, and wheat of a good kind; in primitive times it hadbeen an inferior species called _far_, which survived in Cicero's dayonly in the form of cakes offered to the gods in religious ceremonies. The wheat was not brought from Italy or even from Latium; what eachItalian community then grew was not more than supplied its owninhabitants, [53] and the same was the case with the country villasof the rich, and the huge sheep-farms worked by slaves. By far thegreater part of Italy is mountainous, and not well suited to theproduction of corn on a large scale; and for long past other causeshad combined to limit what production there was. Transport too, whether by road or river, was full of difficulty, while on the otherhand a glance at the map will show that the voyage for corn-shipsbetween Rome and Sicily, Sardinia, or the province of Africa (theformer dominion of Carthage), was both short and easy--far shorter andeasier than the voyage from Cisalpine Gaul or even from Apulia, wherethe peninsula was richest in good corn-land. So we are not surprisedto find that, according to tradition, which is fully borne out by morecertain evidence, [54] corn had been brought to Rome from Sicily asearly as 492 B. C. To relieve a famine, or that since Sicily, Sardinia, and Africa had become Roman provinces, their vast productive capacitywas utilised to feed the great city. 

Nor indeed need we be surprised to find that the State has taken overthe task of feeding the Roman population, and of feeding it cheaply, if only we are accustomed to think, not merely to read, about life inthe city at this period. Nothing is more difficult for the ordinaryreader of ancient history than to realise the difficulty of feedinglarge masses of human beings, whether crowded in towns or soldiers inthe field. Our means of transport are now so easily and rapidly setin action and maintained, that it would need a war with some greatsea-power to convince us that London or Glasgow might, under certainuntoward circumstances, be starved; and as our attention has neverbeen drawn to the details of food-supply, we do not readily see whythere should have been any such difficulty at Rome as to call for theintervention of the State. Perhaps the best way to realise the problemis to reflect that every adult inhabitant needed about four and a halfpecks of corn per month, or some three pounds a day; so that if thepopulation of Rome be taken at half a million in Cicero's time, amillion and a half pounds would be demanded as the daily consumptionof the people. [55] I have already said that in the last threecenturies B. C. There was a universal tendency to leave the country forthe towns; and we now know that many other cities besides Romenot only felt the same difficulty, but actually used the sameremedy--State importation of cheap corn. [56] Even comparatively smallcities like Dyrrhachium and Apollonia in Epirus, as Caesar tells uswhile narrating his own difficulty in feeding his army there, used forthe most part imported corn. [57] And we must remember that while someof the greatest cities on the Mediterranean, such as Alexandria andAntioch, were within easy reach of vast corn-fields, this was not thecase with Rome. Either she must organise her corn-supply on a securebasis, or get rid of her swarms of poor inhabitants; the latteralternative might have been possible if she had been willing to letthem starve, but probably in no other way. To attempt to put them outupon the land again was hopeless; they knew nothing of agriculture, and were unused to manual labour, which they despised. 

Thus ever since Rome had been a city of any size it had been the dutyof the plebeian aediles to see that it was adequately supplied withcorn, and in times of dearth or other difficulty these magistrates hadto take special measures to procure it. With a population steadilyrising since the war with Hannibal, and after the acquisition of twocorn-growing provinces, to which Africa was added in 146 B. C. , it wasnatural that they should turn their attention more closely to theresources of these; and now the provincial governors had to see thatthe necessary amount of corn was furnished from these provinces at afixed price, and that a low one. [58] In 123 B. C. Gaius Gracchus tookthe matter in hand, and made it a part of his whole far-reachingpolitical scheme. The plebs urbana had become a very awkward elementin the calculations of a statesman, and to have it in a state ofstarvation, or even fearing such a state, was dangerous in theextreme, as every Roman statesman had to learn in the course of thetwo following centuries. The aediles, we may guess, were quite unequalto the work demanded of them; and at times victorious provincialgovernors would bring home great quantities of corn and give it awaygratis for their private purposes, with bad results both economicand moral. Gracchus saw that the work of supply needed thoroughorganisation in regard to production, transport, warehousing, andfinance, and set about it with a delight in hard work such as no Romanstatesman had shown before, believing that if the people could befed cheaply and regularly, they would cease to be "a troublesomeneighbour. "[59] We do not know the details of his scheme oforganisation except in one particular, the price at which the cornwas to be sold per _modius_ (peck): this was to be six and one-third_asses_, or rather less than half the normal market-price of the day, so far as it can be made out. Whether he believed that the cost ofproduction could be brought down to this level by regularity of demandand transport we cannot tell; it seems at any rate probable that hehad gone carefully into the financial aspect of the business. [60] Butthere can hardly be a doubt that he miscalculated, and that the resultof the law by which he sought to effect his object was a yearlyloss to the treasury, so that after his time, and until his law wasrepealed by Sulla, the people were really being fed largely at theexpense of the State, and thus lapsing into a state of semipauperism, with bad ethical consequences. 

One of these consequences was that inconsiderate statesmen would onlytoo readily seize the chance of reducing the price of the corn stilllower, as was done by Saturninus in 100 B. C. , for political purposes. To prevent this Sulla abolished the Gracchan system _in toto_; but itwas renewed in 73 B. C. , and in 58 the demagogue P. Clodius made thedistribution of corn gratuitous. In 46 Caesar found that no less than320, 000 persons were receiving corn from the State for nothing; by abill, of which we still possess a part, [61] he reduced the number to150, 000, and by a rigid system of rules, of which we know something, contrived to ensure that it should be kept at that point. With thepolicy of Augustus and his successors in regard to the corn-supply(_annona_) I am not here concerned; but it is necessary to observethat with the establishment of the Empire the plebs urbana ceased tobe of any importance in politics, and could be treated as a pettedpopulation, from whom no harm was to be expected if they were keptcomfortable and amused. Augustus seems to have found himself compelledto take up this attitude towards them, and he was able to do sobecause he had thoroughly reorganised the public finance and knew whathe could afford for the purpose. But in time of Cicero the people werestill powerful legislation and elections, and the public finance wasdisorganised and in confusion; and the result was that the corn-supplywas mixed up with politics, [62] and handled by reckless politiciansin a way that was as ruinous to the treasury as it was to the moralwelfare of the city. The whole story, from Gracchus onwards, is awholesome lesson on the mischief of granting "outdoor relief" in anyform whatever, without instituting the means of inquiry into eachindividual case. Gracchus' intentions were doubtless honest and good;but "ubi semel recto deerratum est, in praeceps pervenitur. "

The drink of the Roman was water, but he mixed it with wine wheneverhe had the chance. Fortunately for him he had no other intoxicatingdrink; we hear neither of beer nor spirits in Roman literature. Italywas well suited to the cultivation of the vine; and though down to thelast century of the Republic the choice kinds of wine came chieflyfrom Greece, yet we have unquestionable proof that wine was made inthe neighbourhood of Rome at the very outset of Roman history. In theoldest religious calendar[63] we find two festivals called Vinalia, one in April and the other in August; what exactly was the relation ofeach of them to the operations of viticulture is by no means clear, but we know that these operations were under the protection ofJupiter, and that his priest, the Flamen Dialis, offered to him thefirst-fruits of the vintage. The production of rough wine must indeedhave been large, for we happen to know that it was at times remarkablycheap. In 250 B. C. , in many ways a wonderfully productive year, winewas sold at an _as_ the _congius_, which is nearly three quarts;[64]under the early Empire Columella (iii. 3. 10) reckoned the amphora(nearly 6 gallons) at 15 sesterces, i. E. About eightpence That thecommon citizen did expect to be able to qualify his water with wineseems proved by a story told by Suetonius, that when the peoplecomplained to Augustus that the price of wine was too high, hecurtly and wisely answered that Agrippa had but lately given them anexcellent water-supply. [65] It looks as though they were claiming tohave wine as well as grain supplied them by the government at a lowprice or gratuitously; but this was too much even for Augustus. Forhis water the Roman, it need hardly be said, paid nothing. On thewhole, at the time of which we are speaking he was fairly wellsupplied with it; but in this, as in so many other matters of urbanadministration, it was under Augustus that an abundant supply wasfirst procured and maintained by an excellent system of management. Frontinus, to whose work _de Aqueductibus_ we owe almost all that weknow about the Roman water-supply, tells us that for four hundred andforty-one years after the foundation of the city the Romans contentedthemselves with such water as they could get from the Tiber, fromwells, and from natural springs, and adds that some of the springswere in his day still held in honour on account of their health-givingqualities. [66] Cicero describes Rome, in his idealising way, as "locumfontibus abundantem, " and twenty-three springs are known to haveexisted; but as early 312 B. C. It was found necessary to seekelsewhere for a purer and more regular supply. More than six milesfrom Rome, on the via Collatina, springs were found and utilised forthis purpose, which have lately been re-discovered at the bottom ofsome stone quarries; and hence the water was brought by undergroundpipes along the line of the same road to the city, and through it tothe foot of the Aventine, the plebeian quarter. This was the AquaAppia, named after the famous censor Appius Claudius Caecus, whomMommsen has shown to have been a friend of the people. [67] Forty yearslater another censor, Manius Curius Dentatus, brought a second supply, also by an underground channel, from the river Anio near Tibur(Tivoli), the water of which, never of the first quality, was used forthe irrigation of gardens and the flushing of drains. In 144 B. C. It was found that these two old aqueducts were out of repair andinsufficient, and this time a praetor, Q. Marcius Rex (probablythrough the influence of a family clique), was commissioned to setthem in order and to procure a fresh supply. He went much farther thanhis predecessors had gone for springs, and drew a volume of excellentand clear cold water from the Sabine hills beyond Tibur, thirty-sixmiles from the city, which had the highest reputation at all times;and for the last six miles of its course it was carried above groundupon a series of arches. [68] One other aqueduct was added in 125 B. C. The Aqua Tepula, so called because its water was unusually warm; andthe whole amount of water entering Rome in the last century of theRepublic is estimated at more than 700, 000 cubic metres per diem, which would amply suffice for a population of half a million. At thepresent day Rome, with a population of 450, 000, receives from allsources only 379, 000. [69] Baths, both public and private, were alreadybeginning to come into fashion; of these more will be said lateron. The water for drinking was collected in large _castella_, orreservoirs, and thence distributed into public fountains, of whichone still survives--the "Trofei di Mario, " in the Piazza VittorioEmmanuele on the Esquiline. [70] When the supply came to be largeenough, the owners of insulae and domus were allowed to have waterlaid on by private pipes, as we have it in modern towns; but it is notcertain when this permission was first given. 

3. But we must return to the individual Roman of the masses, whom wehave now seen well supplied with the necessaries of life, and tryto form some idea of the way in which he was employed, or earned aliving. This is by no means an easy task, for these small people, aswe have already seen, did not interest their educated fellow-citizens, and for this reason we hear hardly anything of them in the literatureof the time. Not only a want of philanthropic feeling in theirbetters, but an inherited contempt for all small industry and retaildealing, has helped to hide them away from us: an _inherited_contempt, because it is in fact a survival from an older socialsystem, when the citizen did not need the work of the artisan andsmall retailer, but supplied all his own wants within the circle ofhis household, i. E. His own family and slaves, and produced on hisfarm the material of his food and clothing. And the survival was allthe stronger, because even in the late Republic the abundant supply ofslaves enabled the man of capital still to dispense largely with theservices of the tradesman and artisan. 

Cicero expresses this contempt for the artisan and trading classes inmore than one striking passage. One, in his treatise on Duties, isprobably paraphrased from the Greek of Panaetius, the philosopher whofirst introduced Stoicism to the Romans, and modified it to suittheir temperament, but it is quite clear that Cicero himself entirelyendorses the Stoic view. "All gains made by hired labourers, " he says, "are dishonourable and base, for what we buy of them is their labour, not their artistic skill: with them the very gain itself does butincrease the slavishness of the work. All retail dealing too may beput in the same category, for the dealer will gain nothing exceptby profuse lying, and nothing is more disgraceful than untruthfulhuckstering. Again, the work of all artisans (_opifices_) is sordid;there can be nothing honourable in a workshop. "[71]

If this view of the low character of the work of the artisan andretailer should be thought too obviously a Greek one, let the readerturn to the description by Livy[72]--a true gentleman--of the loworigin of Terentius Varro, the consul who was in command at Cannae; heuses the same language as Cicero. "He sprang from an origin not merelyhumble but sordid: his father was a butcher, who sold his own meat, and employed his son in this slavish business. " The story may not betrue, and indeed it is not a very probable one, but it well representsthe inherited feeling towards retail trade of the Roman of the higherclasses of society, --a feeling so tenacious of life, that even inmodern England, where it arose from much the same causes as in theancient world, it has only within the last century begun to dieout. [73]

Yet in Rome these humble workers existed and made a living forthemselves from the very beginning, as far as we can guess, of realcity life. They are the necessary and inevitable product of the growthof a town population, and of the resulting division of labour. Thefollowing passage from a work on industrial organisation in Englandmay be taken as closely representing the same process in earlyRome:[74] "The town arose as a centre in which the surplus produce ofmany villages could be profitably disposed of by exchange. Tradethus became a settled occupation, and trade prepared the way forthe establishment of the handicrafts, by furnishing capital for thesupport of the craftsmen, and by creating a regular market for theirproducts. It was possible for a great many bodies of craftsmen, --theweavers, tailors, butchers, bakers, etc. , to find a livelihood, eachcraft devoting itself to the supply of a single branch of those wantswhich the village household had attempted very imperfectly to satisfyby its own labours. "

As in mediaeval Europe, so in early Rome, the same conditions producedthe same results: we find the craftsmen of the town forming themselvesinto _gilds_, not only for the protection of their trade, but from anatural instinct of association, and providing these gilds, on themodel of the older groups of family and gens, with a religious centreand a patron deity. The gilds (_collegia_) of Roman craftsmen wereattributed to Numa, like so many other religious institutions; theyincluded associations of weavers, fullers, dyers, shoemakers, doctors, teachers, painters, etc. , [75] and were mainly devoted to Minerva asthe deity of handiwork. "The society that witnessed the coming ofMinerva from Etruria . .. Little knew that in her temple on theAventine was being brought to expression the trade-union idea. "[76]These _collegia opificum_, most unfortunately, pass entirely outof our sight, until they reappear in the age of Cicero in a verydifferent form, as clubs used for political purposes, but composedstill of the lowest strata of the free population (_collegiasodalicia_). [77] The history and causes of their disappearance andmetamorphosis are lost to us; but it is not hard to guess that themain cause is to be found in the great economic changes that followedthe Hannibalic war, --the vast number of slaves imported, andthe consequent resuscitation of the old system of the economicindependence of the great households; the decay of religious practice, which affected both public and private life in a hundred differentways; and that steady growth of individualism which is characteristicof eras of town life, and especially of the last three centuries B. C. It is curious to notice that by the time these old gilds emerge intolight again as clubs that could be used for political purposes, a newsource of gain, and one that was really sordid, had been placed withinthe reach of the Roman plebs urbana: it was possible to make money byyour vote in the election of magistrates. In that degenerate when thevast accumulation of capital made it possible for a man to purchasehis way to power, in spite of repeated attempts to check the evil bylegislation, the old principle of honourable association was used tohelp the small man to make a living by choosing the unprincipled andoften the incompetent to undertake the government of the Empire. 

Apart, however, from such illegal means of making money, there wasbeyond doubt in the Rome of the last century B. C. A large amount ofhonest and useful labour done by free citizens. We must not run awaywith the idea that the whole labour of the city was performed byslaves, who ousted the freeman from his chance of a living. There wasindeed a certain number of public slaves who did public work for theState; but on the whole the great mass of the servile populationworked entirely within the households and on the estates of the rich, and did not interfere to any sensible degree with the labour of thesmall freeman. As has been justly observed by Salvioli, [78] never atany period did the Roman proletariat complain of the competition ofslave labour as detrimental to its own interests. Had there been noslave labour there, the small freeman might indeed have had a widerfield of enterprise, and have been better able to accumulate a smallcapital by undertaking work for the great families, which was done, as it was, by their slaves. But he was not aware of this, and the twokinds of labour, the paid and the unpaid, went on side by side withoutactive rivalry. No doubt slavery helped to foster idleness, as it didin the Southern States of America before the Civil War;[79] no doubtthere were plenty of idle ruffians in the city, ready to steal, to murder, or to hire themselves out as the armed followers of apolitical desperado like Clodius; but the simple necessities of thelife of those who had no slaves of their own gave employment, we maybe certain, to a great number of free tradesmen and artisans andlabourers of a more unskilled kind. 

To begin with, we may ask the pertinent question, how the corn soldcheap by the State was made into bread for the small consumer. Plinygives us very valuable information, which we may accept as roughlycorrect, that until the year 171 B. C. There were no bakers inRome. [80] "The Quirites, " he says, "made their own bread, which wasthe business of the women, as it is still among most peoples. " Thedemand which was thus supplied by a new trade was no doubt caused bythe increase of the lower population of the city, by the return of oldsoldiers, often perhaps unmarried, and by the manumission of slaves, many of whom would also be inexperienced in domestic life and itsneeds; and we may probably connect it with the growth of the system ofinsulae, the great lodging-houses in which it would not be convenienteither to grind your corn or to bake your bread. So the bakers, called_pistores_ from the old practice of pounding the grain in a mortar(_pingere_), soon became a very important and flourishing section ofthe plebs, though never held in high repute; and in connexion with thedistributions of corn some of them probably rose above the level ofthe small tradesman, like the _pistor redemptor_, Marcus VergiliusEurysaces, whose monument has come down to us. [81] It should be notedthat the trade of the baker included the grinding of the corn; therewere no millers at Rome. This can be well illustrated from thenumerous bakers' shops which have been excavated at Pompeii. [82] Inone of these, for example, we find the four mills in a large apartmentat the rear of the building, and close by is the stall for the donkeysthat turned them, and also the kneading-room, oven, and store-room. Small bakeries may have had only hand-mills, like the one with whichwe saw the peasant in the _Moretum_ grinding his corn; but the donkeywas from quite early times associated with the business, as we knowfrom the fact that at the festival of Vesta, the patron deity of allbakers, they were decorated with wreaths and cakes. [83]

The baking trade must have given employment to a large number ofpersons. So beyond doubt did the supply of vegetables, which werebrought into the city from gardens outside, and formed, after thecorn, the staple food of the lower classes. We have already seenin the _Moretum_ the countryman adding to his store of bread by ahotch-potch made of vegetables, and the reader of the poem will havebeen astonished at the number mentioned, including garden herbs forflavouring purposes. The ancients were fully alive to the value ofvegetable food and of fruit as a healthy diet in warm climates, andthe wonderfully full information we have on this subject comes frommedical writers like Galen, as well as from Pliny's _Natural History_, and from the writers on agriculture. The very names of some Romanfamilies, e. G. The Fabii and Caepiones, carry us back to a time whenbeans and onions, which later on were not so much in favour, were aregular part of the diet of the Roman people. The list of vegetablesand herbs which we know of as consumed fills a whole page inMarquardt's interesting account of this subject, and includes mostof those which we use at the present day. [84] It was only when theconsumption of meat and game came in with the growth of capitaland its attendant luxury, that a vegetarian diet came to be at alldespised. This is another result of the economic changes caused by theHannibalic war, and is curiously illustrated by the speech of the cookof a great household in the _Pseudolus_ of Plautus, who prides himselfon not being as other cooks are, who make the guests into beasts ofthe field, stuffing them with all kinds of food which cattle eat, andeven with things which cattle would refuse![85] we may take it that atall times the Roman of the lower class consumed fruit and vegetableslargely, and thus gave employment to a number of market-gardeners andsmall purveyors. Fish he did not eat; like meat, it was too expensive;in fact fish-eating only came in towards the end of the republicanperiod, and then only as a luxury for those who could afford to keepfish-ponds on their estates. How far the supply of other luxuries, such as butchers' meat, gave employment to freemen, is not very clear;and perhaps we need here only take account of such few other products, e. G. Oil and wine, as were in universal demand, though not alwaysprocurable by the needy. There were plenty of small shops in Romewhere these things were sold; we have a picture of such a shop(_caupona_) in another of the minor Virgilian poems, the _Copa_, i. E. Hostess, or perhaps in this case the woman who danced and sang for theentertainment of the guests. She plied her trade in a smoky tavern(fumosa taberna), all the contents of which are charmingly describedin the poem. [86]

Let us now see how the other chief necessity of human life, the supplyof clothing, gave employment to the free Roman shopkeeper. 

The clothing of the whole Roman population was originally woollen;both the outer garment, the _toga_, the inner (_tunica_) were of thismaterial, and the sheep which supplied it were pastured well andconveniently in all the higher hilly regions of Italy. Othermaterials, linen, cotton, and silk, came in later with the growthof commerce, but the manufacture of these into clothing was chieflycarried on by slaves in the great households, and we need not takeany account of them here. The preparation of wool too was in wellregulated households undertaken even under the Empire by the womenof the family, including the materfamilias herself, and in many aninscription we find the _lanificium_ recorded as the honourablepractice of matrons. [87] But as in the case of food, so with thesimple material of clothing, it was soon found impossible in a cityfor the poorer citizens to do all that was necessary within theirown houses; this is proved conclusively by the mention of gilds offullers[88] (_fullones_) among those traditionally ascribed to Numa. Fulling is the preparation of cloth by cleansing in water after ithas come from the loom; but the fuller's trade of the later republicprobably often comprised the actual manufacture of the wool forthose who could not do it themselves. He also acted as the washer ofgarments already in use, and this was no doubt a very important partof his business, for in a warm climate heavy woollen material isnaturally apt to get frequently impure and unwholesome. Soap wasnot known till the first century of the Empire, and the process ofcleansing was all the more lengthy and elaborate; the details of theprocess are known to us from paintings at Pompeii, where they adornthe walls of fulleries which have been excavated. A plan of one ofthem will be found in Mau's _Pompeii_, p. 388. The ordinary woollengarments were simply bleached white, not dyed; and though dyers arementioned among the ancient gilds by Plutarch, it is probable that hemeans chiefly fullers by the Greek word [_Greek: Bapheis_]. 

Of the manufacture of leather we do not know so much. This, like thatof wool, must have originally been carried on in the household, butit is mentioned as a trade as early as the time of Plautus. [89] Theshoemakers' business was, however, a common one from the earliesttimes, probably because it needs some technical skill and experience;the most natural division of labour in early societies is sure toproduce this trade. The shoemakers' gild was among the earliest, and had its centre in the _atrium sutorium_;[90] and the individualshoemakers carried on their trade in booths or shops. The Roman shoe, it may be mentioned here, was of several different kinds, accordingto the sex, rank, and occupation of the wearer; but the two mostimportant sorts were the _calceus_, the shoe worn with the toga in thecity, and the mark of the Roman citizen; and the _pero_ or high boot, which was more serviceable in the country. 

Among the old gilds were also those of the smiths (_fabri ferrarii_)and the potters (_figuli_), but of these little need be said here, for they were naturally fewer in number than the vendors of food andclothing, and the raw material for their work had, in later times atleast, to be brought from a distance. The later Romans seem to haveprocured their iron-ore from the island of Elba and Spain, Gaul, and other provinces, [91] and to have imported ware of all kinds, especially the finer sorts, from various parts of the Empire; thecommoner kinds, such as the _dolia_ or large vessels for storing wineand oil, were certainly made in Rome in the second century B. C. , forCato in his book on agriculture[92] remarks that they could be bestprocured there. But both these manufactures require a certain amountof capital, and we may doubt whether the free population was largelyemployed in them; we know for certain that in the early Empirethe manufacture of ware, tiles, bricks, etc. , was carried on bycapitalists, some of them of noble birth, including even Emperorsthemselves, and beyond doubt the "hands" they employed were chieflyslaves. [93]

But industries of this kind may serve to remind us of another kind ofemployment in which the lower classes of Rome and Ostia may have foundthe means of making a living. The importation of raw materials, andthat of goods of all kinds, which was constantly on the increasethroughout Roman history, called for the employment of vast numbers ofporters, carriers, and what we should call dock hands, working bothat Ostia, where the heavier ships were unladed or relieved of part oftheir cargoes in order to enable them to come up the Tiber, [94] andalso at the wharves at Rome under the Aventine. We must also rememberthat almost all porterage in the city had to be done by men, with theaid of mules or donkeys; the streets were so narrow that in trying topicture what they looked like we must banish from our minds thecrowds of vehicles familiar in a modern city. Julius Caesar, in hisregulations for the government of the city of Rome, forbade waggons tobe driven in the streets in the day-time. [95] Even supposing that alarge amount of porterage was done by slaves for their masters, we mayreasonably guess that free labour was also employed in this way atRome, as was certainly the case at Ostia, and also at Pompeii, wherethe pack-carriers (_saccarii_) and mule-drivers (_muliones_) are amongthe corporations of free men who have left in the form of _graffiti_appeals to voters to support a particular candidate for election to amagistracy. [96]

Thus we may safely conclude that there was a very considerable amountof employment in Rome available for the poorer citizens, quite apartfrom the labour performed by slaves. But before closing this chapterit is necessary to point out the precarious conditions under whichthat employment was carried on, as compared with the industrialconditions of a modern city. It is true enough that the factory systemof modern times, with the sweating, the long hours of work, and theunwholesome surroundings of our industrial towns, has produced muchmisery, much physical degeneracy; and we have also the problem of theunemployed always with us. But there were two points in which thecondition of the free artisan and tradesman at Rome was far worsethan it is with us, and rendered him liable to an even more hopelesssubmersion than that which is too often the fate of the modernwage-earner. 

First, let us consider that markets, then as now, were liable tofluctuation, --probably more liable then than now, because thesupply both of food and of the raw material of manufacture was moreprecarious owing to the greater difficulties of conveyance. Tradewould be bad at times, and many things might happen which would compelthe man with little or no capital to borrow money, which he could onlydo on the security of his stock, or indeed, as the law of Rome stillrecognised, of his person. Money-lenders were abundant, as we shallfind in the next chapter, interest was high, and to fall intothe hands of a money-lender was only another step on the way todestruction. At the present day, if a tradesman fails in business, hecan appeal to a merciful bankruptcy law, which gives him every chanceto satisfy his creditors and to start afresh; or in the case of asingle debt, he can be put into a county court where every chance isgiven him to pay it within a reasonable time. All this machinery, mostof which (to the disgrace of modern civilisation) is quite recent indate was absent at Rome. The only magistrates administering the civillaw were the praetors, and though since the reforms of Sulla therewere usually eight of these in the city, we can well imagine how hardit would be for the poor debtor in a huge city to get his affairsattended to. Probably in most cases the creditor worked his will withhim, took possession of his property without the interference of thelaw, and so submerged him, or even reduced him to slavery. If he choseto be merciful he could go to the praetor, and get what was called a_missio in bona_, i. E. A legal right to take the whole of his debtor'sproperty, waiving the right to his person. And it must be noted thatno more humane law of bankruptcy was introduced until the time ofAugustus. No wonder that at least three times in the last centuryof the Republic there arose a cry for the total abolition of debts(_tabulae novae_): in 88 B. C. , after the Social War; in 63, duringCicero's consulship, when political and social revolutionary projectswere combined in the conspiracy of Catiline; and in 48, when theeconomic condition of Italy had been disturbed by the Civil War, andCaesar had much difficulty in keeping unprincipled agitators fromapplying violent and foolish remedies. But to this we shall return inthe next chapter. 

Secondly, let us consider that in a large city of to-day the personand property of all, rich or poor are adequately protected by a soundsystem of police and by courts of first instance which are sittingevery day. Assault and murder, theft and burglary, are exceptional. Itmight be going too far to say that at Rome they were the rule; but itis the fact that in what we may call the slums of Rome there was nomachinery for checking them. No such machinery had been invented, because according to the old rules of law, still in force, a fathermight punish his children, a master his slaves, and a murderer orthief might be killed by his intended victim if caught red-handed. This rude justice would suffice in a small city and a simple socialsystem; but it would be totally inadequate to protect life andproperty in a huge population, such as that of the Rome of the lastcentury B. C. Since the time of Sulla there had indeed been courts forthe trial of crimes of violence, and at all times the consuls withtheir staff of assistants had been charged with the peace of the city;but we may well ask whether the poor Roman of Cicero's day couldreally benefit either by the consular imperium or the action of theSullan courts. A slave was the object of his master's care, andtheft from a slave was theft from his owner, --if injured or murderedsatisfaction could be had for him. But in that age of slack and sordidgovernment it is at least extremely doubtful whether either the personor the property of the lower class of citizen could be said to havebeen properly protected in the city. And the same anarchy prevailedall over Italy, --from the suburbs of Rome, infested by robbers, tothe sheep-farm of the great capitalist, where the traveller might bekidnapped by runaway slaves, to vanish from the sight of men withoutleaving a trace of his fate. 

It is the great merit of Augustus that he made Rome not only a city ofmarble, but one in which the person and property of all citizenswere fairly secure. By a new and rational bankruptcy law, and by awell-organised system of police, he made life endurable even for thepoorest. If he initiated a policy which eventually spoilt and degradedthe Roman population, if he failed to encourage free industry aspersistently as it seems to us that he might have done, he may perhapsbe in some degree excused, as knowing the conditions and difficultiesof the problem before him better than we can know them. 

CHAPTER III

THE MEN OF BUSINESS AND THEIR METHODS

The highest class in the social scale at Rome was divided, roughlyrather than exactly, into two sections, according as they did or didnot aim at being elected to magistracies and so entering the senate. To the senatorius ordo, which will be dealt with in the next chapter, belonged all senators, and all sons of senators whether or no they hadas yet been elected to the quaestorship, which after Sulla was themagistracy qualifying for the senate. But outside the senatorial ranksthere were numbers of wealthy and well educated men, most of whomwere engaged in one way or another in business; by which term is heremeant, not so much trading and mercantile operations, as banking, money-lending, the undertaking of State contracts, and the raising oftaxes. The general name for this class was, strange to say, equites, or knights, as they are often but unfortunately called in modernhistories of Rome. They were in fact at this time the most unmilitarypart of the population, and they inherited the title only because theproperty qualification for the equites equo privato, i. E. The cavalrywho served with their horses, had been taken as the qualification alsofor equestrian judices, to whom Gaius Gracchus had given the decisionof cases in the quaestio de repetundis. [97] This law of Gracchus hadhad the result of constituting an ordo equester alongside of the ordosenatorius, with a property qualification of 400, 000 sesterces, orabout £3200, not of income but of capital. Any one who had this sumcould call himself an eques, provided he were not a senator, even ifhe had never served in the cavalry or mounted a horse. 

We are concerned here with the business which these men carried on, not with their history as a body in the State; this latter difficultsubject has been handled by Dr. Greenidge in his _Roman PublicLife_, and by many other writers. We have to take them here as therepresentatives of capital and the chief uses to which it was put inthe age of Cicero; for, as a matter of fact, they were then doing byfar the greatest part of the money-making of the Empire. They were notindeed always doing it for themselves; they often represented men ofsenatorial rank, and acted as their agents in the investment of moneyand in securing the returns due. For the senator was not allowed, bythe strict letter of the law, to engage in business which would takehim out of Italy;[98] his services were needed at home, and if indeedhe had performed his proper work with industry and energy he nevercould have found time to travel on his own business. At the time ofwhich we are speaking there were ways in which he could escapefrom his duties, --ways only too often used; but many senators didundoubtedly employ members of the equestrian order to transact theirbusiness abroad, so that it is not untrue to say that the equiteshad in their hands almost the whole of the monetary business of theEmpire. 

The property qualification may seem to us small enough, but it is ofcourse no real index to the amount of capital which a wealthy equesmight possess. Nothing is more astonishing in the history of the lastcentury of the republic than the vast sums of money in the hands ofindividuals, and the enormous sums lent and borrowed in private by themen whose names are familiar to us as statesmen. It is told of Caesarthat as a very young man he owed a sum equivalent to about £280, 000;of Crassus that he had 200 million sesterces invested in landalone. [99] Cicero, though from time to time in difficulties, alwaysfound it possible to borrow the large sums which he spent on houses, libraries, etc. These are men of the ordo senatorius; of the equitesproper, the men who dealt rather in lending than borrowing, we havenot such explicit accounts, because they were not in the same degreebefore the public. But of Atticus, the type of the best and highestsection of the ordo equester, and of the amount and the sources of hiswealth, we happen to know a good deal from the little biography of himwritten by his contemporary and friend Cornelius Nepos, taken togetherwith Cicero's numerous letters to him. His father had left him themoderate fortune of £16, 000. With this he bought land, not in Italybut in Epirus, where it was probably to be had cheap. The profitsarising from this land, with which he took no doubt much trouble andpains, he invested again in other ways. He lent money to Greek cities:to Athens indeed without claiming any interest; to Sicyon without muchhope of repayment; but no doubt to many others at a large profit. Healso undertook the publishing of books, buying slaves who were skilledcopyists; and in this, as in so many other ways, his friendship was ofinfinite value to Cicero. When we reflect that every highly educatedman at this time owned a library and wished to have the last newbook, we can understand how even this business might be extensive andprofitable, and are not astonished to find Cicero asking Atticus tosee that copies of his Greek book on his own consulship were to be hadin Athens and other Greek towns. [100] This shrewd man also invested ingladiators, whom he could let out at a profit, as no doubt he wouldlet out his library slaves. [101] Lastly, he owned houses in Rome; infact he must have been making money in many different ways, spendinglittle himself, and attending personally and indefatigably to all hisbusiness, as indeed with true and disinterested friendship heattended to that of Cicero In him we see the best type of the Romanbusinessman: not the bloated millionaire living in coarse luxury, butthe man who loved to be always busy for himself or his friends, andwhose knowledge of men and things was so thorough that he could makea fortune without anxiety to himself or discomfort to others. Whatamount of capital he realised in these various ways we do not know, but the mass of his fortune came to him after he had been pursuingthem for many years, in the form of a legacy from an uncle. This unclewas a typical capitalist and money-lender of a much lower and coarsertype than his nephew; Nepos aptly describes him as "familiarem L. Luculli, divitem, _difficillima natura_. " The nephew was the only manwho could get on with this Peter Featherstone of Roman life, and thissimple fact tells us as much about the character and disposition ofAtticus as anything in Cicero's correspondence with him. The happyresult was that his uncle left him a sum which we may reckon at about£80, 000 (_centies sestertium_), [102] and henceforward he may bereckoned, if not as a millionaire, at any rate as a man of largecapital, soundly invested and continually on the increase. 

There is no doubt then as to the fact of the presence of capital on alarge scale in the Rome of the last century B. C. , or of the businesstalents of many of its holders, or again of the many profitable waysin which it might be invested. But in order to learn a little more ofthe history of capital at Rome, which is of the utmost importance fora proper understanding not only of the economic, but of the social andethical characteristics of the age, it is necessary to go as far backas the war with Hannibal at least. 

That there had been surplus capital in the hands of individuals longbefore the war with Hannibal is a well known fact, proved by the oldRoman law of debt, and by the traditions of the unhappy relationsof debtor and creditor. But in order not to go back too far, we maynotice a striking fact which meets us at the very outset of thatmomentous war. In 215 B. C. , and again the next year, the treasury wasalmost empty; then for the first time, so far as we know, privateindividuals came to the rescue, and lent large sums to the State;[103]these were partners in certain associations to be described later onin this chapter, which had made money by undertaking State contractsin the previous wars. The presence of Hannibal in Italy strained theresources of the State to the utmost in every way; it cut the Romansoff from their supply of the precious metals, forced them to reducethe weight of the _as_ to one ounce, and, curiously enough, also toissue gold coins for the first time, --a measure probably taken onaccount of the dearth of silver, --and to make use of the uncoined goldin the treasury or in private hands. At the end of the war the supplyof silver was recovered; henceforward all reckonings were made insilver, and the gold coinage was not long continued. 

At this happy time, when Rome felt that she could breathe again afterthe final defeat of her deadly enemy, began the great inpouring ofwealth of which the capitalism of Cicero's time is the direct result. The chief sources of this wealth, so far as the State was concerned, were the indemnities paid by conquered peoples, especially Carthageand Antiochus of Syria, and the booty brought home by victoriousgenerals. Of these Livy has preserved explicit accounts, and the bestexample is perhaps that of the booty brought by Scipio Asiaticusfrom Asia Minor in 189 B. C. , of which Pliny remarks that it firstintroduced luxury into Italy. [104] It has been roughly computed thatthe total amount from indemnities may be taken at six million of ourpounds, in the period of the great wars of the second century B. C. , and from booty very much the same sum. Besides this we have to takeaccount of the produce of the Spanish silver mines, of which theRomans came into possession with the Carthaginian dominions in Spain;the richest of these were near Carthago Nova, and Polybius tells usthat in his day they employed 40, 000 miners, and produced an immenserevenue. [105]

All this went into the aerarium, except what was distributed out ofthe booty to the soldiers, both Romans and socii, the former naturallytaking as a rule double the amount paid to the latter. But the influxof treasure into the State coffers soon began to tell upon thefinancial welfare of the whole citizen community; the most strikingproof of this is the fact that, in 167 B. C. , after the secondMacedonian war, the _tribulum_ or property-tax was no longer imposedupon all citizens. Henceforward the Roman citizen had hardly anyburdens to bear except the necessity of military service, and thereare very distinct signs that he was beginning to be unwilling tobear even that one. He saw the prominent men of his time enrichingthemselves abroad and leading luxurious lives, and the spirit of easeand idleness began inevitably to affect him too. Polybius indeed, writing about 140-130 B. C. , declines to state positively that thegreat Romans were corrupt or extortionate, [106] and those who were hisintimate friends, Aemilius Paullus and his sons, were distinguishedfor their "abstinentia": but the mere occurrence of this word"abstinentia" in the epitomes of Livy's lost books which dealt withthis time, betrays the fact too obviously. In 149 was passed thefirst of the long series of laws intended, but in vain, to check thetendency of provincial governors to extort money from their subjects;and as this law established for the first time a standing court to tryoffences of this kind, the inference is inevitable that such offenceswere common and on the increase. 

The remarkable fact about this inpouring of wealth is itsextraordinary suddenness. Within the lifetime of a single individual, Cato the Censor, who died an old man in 149 B. C. , the financialcondition of the State and of individuals had undergone a completechange. Cato loved to make money and knew very well how to do it, ashis own treatise on agriculture plainly shows; but he wished to do itin a legitimate way, and to spend profitably the money he made, andhe spared no pains to prevent others from making it illegally andspending it unprofitably. He saw clearly that the sudden influx ofwealth was disturbing the balance of the Roman mind, and that thedesire to make money was taking the place of the idea of duty to theState. He knew that no Roman could serve two masters, Mammon and theState, and that Mammon was getting the upper hand in his views oflife. If the accumulation of wealth had been gradual instead ofsudden, natural instead of artificial, this could hardly havehappened; as in England from the fourteenth century onwards, thesteady growth of capital would have produced no ethical mischief, nofalse economic ideas, because it would have been an _organic_ growth, resting upon a sound and natural economic basis. [107] As the Frenchhistorian has said with singular felicity, [108] "Money is like waterof a river: if it suddenly floods, it devastates; divide it into athousand channels where it circulates quietly, and it brings life andfertility to every spot. "

It was in this period of the great wars, so unwholesome and perilouseconomically, that the men of business, as defined at the beginning ofthis chapter--the men of capital outside the ordo senatorius--firstrose to real importance. In the century that followed, and as we seethem more especially in Cicero's correspondence, they became a greatpower in the State, and not only in Rome, but in every corner of theEmpire. We have now to see how they gained this importance andthis power, and what use they made of their capital and theiropportunities. This is not usually explained or illustrated in theordinary histories of Rome, yet it is impossible without explaining itto understand either the social or the public life of the Rome of thisperiod. 

The men of business may be divided into two classes, according as theyundertook work for the State or on their own account entirely. It doesnot follow that these two classes were mutually exclusive; a man mightvery well invest his money in both kinds of undertaking, but these twokinds were totally distinct, and called by different names. A publicundertaking was called _publicum_, [109] and the men who undertook it_publicani_; a private undertaking was _negotium_, and all privatebusiness men were known as _negotiatores_. The publicani were alwaysorganised in joint-stock companies (_societates publicanorum_);the negotiatores might be in private partnership with one or morepartners, [110] but as a rule seem to have been single individuals. Wewill deal first with the publicani. 

In a passage of Livy quoted just now it is stated that at thebeginning of the Hannibalic war money was advanced to the State bysocietates publicanorum; Livy also happens to mention that three ofthese competed for the privilege. Thus it is clear that the system ofgetting public work done by contract was in full operation before thatdate, together with the practice on the part of the contractors ofuniting in partnerships to lessen the risk. System and practice areequally natural, and it needs but a little historical imagination torealise their development. As the Roman State became involved in warsleading to the conquest of Italy, and in due time to the acquisitionof dominions beyond sea, armies and fleets had to be equipped andprovisioned, roads had to be made, public rents to be got in, newbuildings to be erected for public convenience or worship, corn had tobe procured for the growing population, and, above all, taxes hadto be collected both in Italy and in the provinces as these wereseverally acquired. [111] The government had no apparatus for carryingout these undertakings itself; it had not, as we have, separatedepartments or bureaux with a permanent staff of officials attached toeach, and even if it had been so provided, it would still havefound it most convenient, as modern governments also do, to get thenecessary work carried out in most cases by private contractors. Everyfive years the censors let the various works by auction to contractingcompanies, who engaged to carry them out for fixed sums, and make whatprofit they could out of the business (_censoria locatio_). This savedan immense amount of trouble to the senate and magistrates, who wereusually busily engaged in other matters; nor was there at first anyharm in the system, so long as the Romans were morally sound, andincapable of jobbing or scamping their work. The very fact that theyunited into companies for the purpose of undertaking these contractsshows that they were aware of the risk involved, and wished as far aspossible to neutralise it; it did not mean greed for money, but ratheranxiety not to lose the capital invested. 

But as Rome advanced her dominion in the second century B. C. , andhad to see to an ever-increasing amount of public business, it wasdiscovered that the business of contracting was one which might indeedbe risky, but with skill and experience, and especially with a trifleof unscrupulousness, might be made a perfectly safe and payinginvestment. This was especially the case with the undertakings forraising the taxes in the newly acquired provinces as well as in Italy, more particularly in those provinces, viz. Sicily and Asia, which paidtheir taxes in the form of tithe and not in a lump sum. The collectionof these revenues could be made a very paying concern seeing that itwas not necessary to be too squeamish about the rights and claims ofthe provincials. And, indeed, by the time of the Gracchi all thesejoint-stock companies had become the one favourite investment inwhich every one who had any capital, however small, placed it withouthesitation. Polybius, who was in Rome at this time for several years, and was thoroughly acquainted with Roman life, has left a valuablerecord in his sixth book (ch. Xvii. ) of the universal demand forshares in these companies; a fact which proves that they were believedto be both safe and profitable. 

These societates were managed by the great men of business, as ourjoint-stock companies are directed by men of capital and consequence. Polybius tells us that among those who were concerned, some took thecontracts from the censors: these were called _mancipes_, becausethe sign of accepting the contract at the auction was to hold up thehand. [112] Others, Polybius goes on, were in association with thesemancipes, and, as we may assume, equally responsible with them; thesewere the _socii_. It was of course necessary that security should begiven for the fulfilment of the contract, and Polybius does not omitto mention the _praedes_ or guarantors[113]. Lastly, he says thatothers again gave their property on behalf of these official membersof the companies, or in their name, for the public purpose in hand. These last words admit of more than one interpretation, but as in thesame passage Polybius tells us that all who had any money put it intothese concerns, we may reasonably suppose that he means to indicatethe _participes_, or small holders of shares, which were called_partes_, or if very small, _particulae_[114]. The socii andparticipes seem to be distinguished by Cicero in his Verrine orations(ii. 1. 55), where he quotes an addition made by Verres illegally aspraetor to a lex censoria: "qui de censoribus redemerit, eum socium neadmittito neve partem dato. " If this be so, we may regard the sociusas having a share both in the management and the liability, while theparticeps merely put his money into the undertaking[115]. The actualmanagement, on which Polybius is silent, was in Rome in the hands of a_magister_, changing yearly, like the magistrates of the State, andin the provinces of a _pro-magister_ answering to the pro-magistrate, with a large staff of assistants[116]. Communications betweenthe management at home and that in the provinces were kept up bymessengers (_tabellarii_), who were chiefly slaves; and it isinteresting incidentally to notice that these, who are constantlymentioned in Cicero's letters, also acted as letter-carriers forprivate persons to whom their employers were known. 

Such a business as this, involving the interests of so many citizens, must have necessitated something very like the Stock Exchange orBourse of modern times; and in fact the basilicas and porticoes whichwe met with in the Forum during our walk through Rome did actuallyserve this purpose. [117] The reader of Cicero's letters will havenoticed how often the Forum is spoken of as the centre of life atRome--going down to the Forum was indeed the equivalent of "going intothe City, " as well as of "going down to Westminster. " All who hadinvestments in the societates would wish to know the latest newsbrought by _tabellarii_ from the provinces, e. G. Of the state of thecrop in Sicily or Asia, or of the disposition of some provincialgovernor towards the publicani of his province, or again of theapproach of some enemy, such as Mithridates or Ariovistus, who bydefeating a Roman army might break into Roman territory and destroythe prospects of a successful contractual enterprise. AssuredlyCicero's love for the Forum was not a political one only; he loved itindeed as the scene of his great triumphs as an advocate, but alsono doubt because he was concerned in some of the companies which hadtheir headquarters there. When urging the people to give Pompeiusextraordinary powers to drive Mithridates out of reach of Roman Asia, where he had done incalculable damage, he dwells both with knowledgeand feeling on the value of the province, not only to the State, butto innumerable private citizens who had their money invested in itsrevenues[118]. "If some, " he pleads, "lose their whole fortunes, they will drag many more down with them. Save the State from such acalamity: and believe me (though you see it well enough) that thewhole system of credit and finance which is carried on here at Rome inthe Forum, is inextricably bound up with the revenues of the Asiaticprovince. If those revenues are destroyed, our whole system of creditwill come down with a crash. See that you do not hesitate for a momentto prosecute with all your energies a war by which the glory of theRoman name, the safety of our allies, our most valuable revenues, and the fortunes of innumerable citizens, will be effectuallypreserved. [119]"

This is a good example of the way in which political questions mightbe decided in the interests of capital, and it is all the morestriking, because a few years earlier Sulla had done all he could toweaken the capitalists as a distinct class. Pompeius went out withabnormal powers, and might be considered for the time as theirrepresentative; the result in this case was on the whole good, for thework he did in the East was of permanent value to the Empire. But theconstitution was shaken and never wholly recovered, and nothing thathe was able to do could restore the unfortunate province of Asiato its former prosperity. Four years later the company which hadcontracted for raising the taxes in the province sought to repudiatetheir bargain. This was disgraceful, as Cicero himself expresslysays;[120] but it is quite possible that they had great difficultyin getting the money in, and feared a dead loss, [121] owing tothe impoverishment of the provincials. This matter again led to apolitical crisis; for the senate, urged by Cato, was disposed torefuse the concession, and the alliance between the senatorial classand the business men (_ordinum concordia_), which it had been Cicero'sparticular policy to confirm, in order to mass together all men ofproperty against the dangers of socialism and anarchy, was therebythreatened so seriously that it ceased to be a factor in politics. 

These companies and their agents were indeed destined to be a thorn inCicero's side as a provincial governor himself. When called upon torule Cilicia in 51 B. C. He found the people quite unable to pay theirtaxes and driven into the hands of the middleman in order to doso;[122] his sympathies were thus divided between the unfortunateprovincials, for whom he felt a genuine pity, and the interests ofthe company for collecting the Cilician taxes, and of those who hadinvested their money in its funds. In his edict, issued before hisentrance into the province, he had tried to balance the conflictinginterests; writing of it to Atticus, who had naturally as a capitalistbeen anxious to know what he was doing, he says that he is doing allhe can for the publicani, coaxing them, praising them, yielding tothem--but taking care that they do no mischief;[123] words whichperhaps did not altogether satisfy his friend. All honest provincialgovernors, especially in the Eastern provinces, which had been thescene of continual wars for nearly three centuries, found themselvesin the same difficulty. They were continually beset by urgent appealson behalf of the tax-companies and their agents--appeals madewithout a thought of the condition of a province or its tax-payingcapacity--so completely had the idea of making money taken possessionof the Roman mind. Among the letters of Cicero are many such appeals, sent by himself to other provincial governors, some of them while hewas himself in Cilicia. We may take two as examples, before bringingthis part of our subject to a close. 

The first of these letters is to P. Silius Nerva, propraetor ofBithynia, a province recently added to the Empire by Pompeius. Cicerohere says that he is himself closely connected with the partnersin the company for collecting the pasture-dues (scriptura) of theprovince, "not only because that company as a body is my client, butalso because I am very intimate with most of the individual partners. "Can we doubt that he was himself a shareholder? He urges Nerva to doall he can for Terentius Hispo, the pro-magister of the company, and to try to secure for him the means of making all the necessaryarrangements with the taxed communities--relying, we are glad to find, on the tact and kindness of the governor. [124] The second letter, tohis own son-in-law, Furius Crassipes, quaestor of Bithynia, shall bequoted here in full from Mr. Shuckburgh's translation:[125]

"Though in a personal interview I recommended as earnestly as I couldthe publicani of Bithynia, and though I gathered that by your owninclination no less than from my recommendation, you were anxious topromote the advantage of that company in every way in your power, Ihave not hesitated to write you this, since those interested thoughtit of great importance that I should inform you what my feelingtowards them was. I wish you to believe that, while I have ever hadthe greatest pleasure in doing all I can for the order of publicanigenerally, yet this particular company of Bithynia has my specialgood wishes. Owing to the rank and birth of its members, this companyconstitutes a very important part of the state: for it is made up ofmembers of the other companies: and it so happens that a very largenumber of its members are extremely intimate with me, and especiallythe man who is at present at the head of the business, P. Rupilius, its pro-magister. Such being the case, I beg you with more than commonearnestness to protect Cn. Pupius, an employé of the company, [126] byevery sort of kindness and liberality in your power, and to secure, asyou easily may, that his services shall be as satisfactory as possibleto the company, while at the same time securing and promoting theproperty and interests of the partners--as to which I am well awarehow much power a quaestor possesses. You will be doing me in thismatter a very great favour, and I can myself from personal experiencepledge you my word that you will find the partners of the Bithyniacompany gratefully mindful of any services you can do them. "

If Cicero, the most tender-hearted of Roman public men, could urgethe claims of the companies so strongly, and, as in this last letter, without any allusion to the interests of the province and its people, we may well imagine how others, less scrupulous, must have combinedwith the capitalists to work havoc in regions that only needed peaceand mild government to recover from centuries of misery. Such a letteris the best comment we can have on the pernicious system of raisingtaxes by contract--a system which was to be modified, regulated, andeventually reduced to harmless dimensions under the benevolent andscientific government of the early Empire. 

We must now turn to the other department of the activity of the men ofbusiness, that of banking and money-lending (_negotiatores_). 

On the north or sunny side of the Forum we noticed in our walk roundthe city the shops of the bankers (_tabernae argentariae_). The _argentarii_ were originally, as their name suggests, onlymoney-changers, a class of small business men that arose in responseto a need felt as soon as increasing commerce and extended empirebrought foreign coin in large quantities to Rome. The Italiancommunities outside the Roman State issued their own coinage untilthey were admitted to the civitas after the Social War, --a fact whichalone is sufficient to show the need of men who made it their businessto know the current value of various coins in Roman money; and asRome became involved in the affairs of the East, there were alwayscirculating in the city the tetradrachms of Antioch and Alexandria, the Rhodian drachmas, and the cistophori of the kings of Pergamus, afterwards coined in the province of Asia. [127] No doubt themoney-changing business was a profitable one, and itself led to theformation of capital which could be used in taking deposits and makingadvances; and, as Professor Purser puts it, [128] the mere possessionof a quantity of coin for purposes of change would be likely todevelop spontaneously the profession of banking. In the same way the_nummularii_, or assayers of the coin, having a mass of it in theirhands, would tend to develop a private business as well as theirofficial public one. All these, argentarii or nummularii, might becalled _foeneratores_, from the interest (_foenus_) which they chargedin their transactions. The profession was a respectable one, forhonesty and exactness in accounts were absolutely necessary to successin it. [129] If the reader will turn to Cicero's speech in defenceof Caecina (6. 16), he will find these accounts appealed to, thoughapparently not actually produced in court; but in the _Noctes Atticae_of Aulus Gellius (xiv. 2) a judge who is describing a civil case whichcame before him, mentions, among the documents produced, _mensaerationes_, i. E. The accounts kept by the banker. 

Your argentarius seems to have been ready to undertake for you almostall that a modern banker will do for his customer. He would takedeposits of money, either for the depositor's use or to bear interest, and would make payments on his behalf on receipt of a written order, answering to our cheque;[130] this was a practice probably introducedfrom Greece, for in the Eastern Mediterranean the whole business ofcredit and exchange had long been reduced to a system. Again, if youwished to be supplied with money during a journey, or to pay a sum toany one at a distance, e. G. In Greece or Asia, your argentariuswould arrange it for you by giving you letters of credit or bills ofexchange on a banker at such towns as you might mention, and so saveyou the trouble of carrying a heavy weight of coin with you. When, Cicero sent his son to the University of Athens, he wished to givehim a generous allowance, --too generous, as we should think, for itamounted to about £640 a year, --and he asked Atticus whether it couldbe managed for him by _permutatio_, i. E. Exchange, and received anaffirmative answer[131]. So too when his beloved freedman secretaryTiro fell ill of fever at Patrae, Cicero finds it easy to get a localbanker there to advance him all the money he needed, and to pay thedoctor, engaging himself to repay the money to any agent whom thebanker might name[132]. 

Your argentarius would also attend for you, or appoint an agent toattend, at any public auction in which you were interested as selleror purchaser, and would pay or receive the money for you, --a practicewhich must have greatly helped him in getting to know the currentvalue of all kinds of property, and indeed in learning to understandhuman nature on its business side. In the passage from the _proCaecina_ quoted just now, a lady, Caesennia, wished to buy an estate;she employs an agent, Aebutius, no doubt recommended by her banker, and to him the estate is knocked down. He undertakes that theargentarius of the vendor, who is present at the auction, shall bepaid the value, and this is ultimately done by Caesennia, and the sumentered in the banker's books (tabulae). 

But perhaps the most important part of the business was the findingmoney for those who were in want of it, i. E. Making advances oninterest. The poor man who was in need of ready money could get itfrom the argentarius in coin if he had any security to offer, and, as we saw in the last chapter, might get entangled more and morehopelessly in the nets of the money-lender. Whether the sameargentarius did this small business and also the work of supplying therich man with credit, we do not know; it may have been the case thatthe great money-lenders like Atticus themselves employed argentarii, and so kept them going. That Atticus would undertake, anyhow, for afriend like Cicero, any amount of money-finding, we know well frommany letters of Cicero, written when he was anxious to buy a pieceof land at any cost on which to erect a shrine to his beloveddaughter[133]; and we may be pretty sure that Atticus could not havedone all that Cicero importunately pressed upon him if he had not hada number of useful professional agents at command. From these sameletters we also learn that finding money by no means necessarily meantfinding coin; in a society where every one was lending or borrowing, and probably doing both at the same time, what actually passed waschiefly securities, mortgages, debts, and so on. If you wanted to handover a hundred thousand or so to a creditor, what your agent had asoften as not to do was to persuade that creditor to accept as paymentthe debts owing to yourself from others, i. E. You would hand over tohim, if he would accept them, the bonds or other securities given youby your own debtors. [134]

It is plain then that the money-lenders had an enormous business, evenin Rome alone, and risky as it undoubtedly was, it must often havebeen a profitable one. And it was not only at Rome that men wereborrowing and lending, but over the whole Empire. For reasons which itwould need an economic treatise to explain, private men, cities, andeven kings were in want of money; it was needed to meet the increasedcost of living and the constantly increasing standard of living amongthe educated;[135] it was needed by the cities of Greece and the Eastto repair the damages done in the wars of the last three hundredyears; it was needed by the poorer provincials to pay the taxes forwhich neither the publicani nor the Roman government could afford towait; and it was needed by the kings who had come within the dismalshadow of the Roman Empire, in order to carry on their own government, or to satisfy the demands of the neighbouring provincial governor, orto bribe the ruling men at Rome to get some decree passed in theirfavour. Cicero, at the end of his life, looking back to his ownconsulship in 63, says that at no time in his recollection was thewhole world in such a condition of indebtedness, [136] and in a famouspassage in his second Catilinarian oration he has drawn a picture ofthe various classes of debtors in Rome and Italy at that time (_Cat. _ii. § 18 foll. ). He tells us of those who have wealth and yet will notpay their debts; of those who are in debt and look to a revolution toabsolve them; of the veterans of the Sullan army, settled in coloniessuch as Faesulae, who had rushed into debt in order to live luxuriouslives; of old debtors of the city, getting deeper and deeper into thequagmire, who joined the conspiracy as a last desperate venture. Therewas in fact in that famous year a real social fermentation going on, caused by economic disturbance of the most serious kind; the germs ofthe disease can be traced back to the Hannibalic war and its effectson Italy, but all the symptoms had been continually exacerbated by thenegligence and ignorance of the government, and brought to a head bythe Social and Civil Wars in 90-82 B. C. In 63 the State escaped aneconomic catastrophe through the vigilance of Cicero and the allianceof the respectable classes under his leadership. In 49, and again in48, it escaped a similar disaster through the good sense of Caesar andhis agents, who succeeded in steering between Scylla and Charybdis bysaving the debtors without ruining the lenders. [137]

Wonderful figures are given by later writers, such as Plutarch, of thedebts and loans of the great men of this time, and they may stand asgiving us a general impression of private financial recklessness. Butthe only authentic information that has come down to us is whatCicero drops from time to time in his correspondence about his ownaffairs, [138] and even this needs much explanation which we are unableto apply to it. What is certain is that Cicero never had more than avery moderate income on which he could depend, and that at times hewas hard up for money, especially of course after his exile and theconfiscation of his property; and that on the other hand he never hadany difficulty in getting the sums he needed, and never shows thesmallest real anxiety about his finances. His profession as abarrister only brought him a return indirectly in the form of anoccasional legacy or gift, since fees were forbidden by a lex Cincia;his books could hardly have paid him, at least in the form of money;his inherited property was small, and his Italian villas were notprofitable farms, nor was it the practice to let such country houses, as we do now, when not occupying them; he declined a provincialgovernment, the usual source of wealth, and when at last compelledto undertake one, only realised what was then a paltry sum, --some£17, 500, all of which, while in deposit at Ephesus, was seized bythe Pompeians in the Civil War. [139] Yet even early in life he couldafford the necessary expenses for election to successive magistracies, and could live in the style demanded of an important public man. Immediately after his consulship he paid £28, 000 for Crassus' houseon the Palatine, and it is here that we first discover how he managedsuch financial operations. Here are his own words in a letter to afriend of December 62 B. C. :[140] "I have bought the house for 3, 500sestertia . .. So you may now look on me as so deeply in debt as to beeager to join a conspiracy if any one would admit me! . .. Money isplentiful at 6 per cent, and the success of my measures (in theconsulship) has caused me to be regarded as a good security. "

The simple fact was that Cicero was always regarded as a safe man tolend money to, by the business men and the great capitalists; partlybecause he was an honest man, --a _vir bonus_ who would never dream ofrepudiation or bankruptcy; partly because he knew every one, and hada hundred wealthy friends besides the lender of the moment and amongthem, most faithful of all, the prudent and indefatigable Atticus. Undoubtedly then it was by borrowing, and regularly paying intereston the loans, that he raised money whenever he wanted it. He may haveoccasionally made money in the companies of tax-collectors; we haveseen that he probably had shares in some of their ventures. But thereis no clear evidence in his letters of this source of wealth, [141] andthere is abundant evidence of the borrowing. After his return fromexile, though the senate had given him somewhat meagre compensationfor the loss of his property, he began at once to borrow and to build:"I am building in three places, " he writes to his brother, [142] "andam patching up my other houses. I live somewhat more lavishly than Iused to do; I am obliged to do so. " Here again we know from whom heborrowed, --it was this same brother, who of course had no more certainincome than his own, probably less. But he had been governor of Asiafor three years (61-58 B. C. ), and must have realised large sums evenin that exhausted province; and at this moment he was legatus toPompeius as special commissioner for organising the supply ofcorn, and thus was in immediate contact with one of the greatestmillionaires of the day. In order to repay his brother all Marcushad to do was to borrow from other friends. "In regard to money I amcrippled. But the liberality of my brother I have repaid, in spite ofhis protests, by the aid of my friends, that I might not be drainedquite dry myself" (_ad Att. _ iv. 3). Two years later an unwary readermight feel some astonishment at finding that Quintus himself was nowdeep in debt;[143] but as he continues to read the correspondence hisastonishment will vanish. With the prospect before him of a prolongedstay in Gaul with Caesar, Quintus might doubtless have borrowed to anyextent; and in fact with Caesar's help--the proceeds of the Gallicwars--both brothers found themselves in opulence. The Civil War, andthe repayment of his debts to Caesar, nearly ruined Marcus towards theend of his life, but nothing prevented his contriving to find moneyfor any object on which he had set his heart; when in his grief forthe loss of his daughter he wishes to buy suburban gardens where ashrine to her memory may (strange to say) attract public notice, hetells Atticus to buy what is necessary _at any cost_. "Manage thebusiness your own way; do not consider what my purse demands--aboutthat I care nothing--but what I _want_. "[144]

Such being the financial method of Cicero and his brother, we cannotbe surprised to find that the younger generation of the familyfollowed faithfully in the footsteps of their elders. We have seenthat the young Marcus had a large allowance at Athens and on the wholehe seems to have kept fairly well within it, in spite of some trouble;but his cousin the younger Quintus, coming to see his uncle inDecember 45, showed him a gloomy countenance, and on being asked themeaning of it, said that he was going with Caesar to the Parthian warin order to avoid his creditors, and presumably to make money to paythem with. [145] He had not even enough money for the journey out. Hisuncle did not offer to give him any, but he does not seem to havethought very seriously of the young man's embarrassments. 

One more example of the financial dealings of the business men of thisextraordinary age, and we will bring this chapter to an end. It is astory which has luckily been preserved in Cicero's speech in defenceof a certain Rabirius Postumus in the year 54, who was accused underCaesar's law de pecuniis repetundis (extortion in the provinces). Itis a remarkable revelation of all the most striking methods of makingand using money in the last years of the Republic. 

The father of this Rabirius, says Cicero, had been a distinguishedmember of the equestrian order, and "fortissimus et maximuspublicanus"; not greedy of money, but most liberal to his friends--inother words, he was not a miser, for that character was rare in thisage, but lent his money freely in order to acquire influence andconsideration. The son took up the same line of business, and engagedin a wide sphere of financial operations. He dealt largely in thestock of the tax-companies; he lent money to cities in severalprovinces; he lent money to Ptolemy Auletes, King of Egypt, bothbefore he was expelled from his kingdom by sedition, and afterwardswhen he was in Rome in 59 and 58, intriguing to induce the senateto have him restored. Rabirius never doubted that he would be sorestored, and seems to have failed to see the probability of such apolicy being contested or quarrelled about, as actually happened inthe winter of 57-56. He lent, and persuaded his friends to lend:[146]he represented the king's cause as a good investment; and then, likethe investing agent of to-day who slips so easily from carelessnessinto crime, he had to go on lending more and more, because he fearedthat if he stopped the king might turn against him. 

He had staked the mass of his substance on a desperate venture. Buttime went on and Ptolemy was not restored, and without the revenues ofhis kingdom he of course could not pay his creditors. At last, at theend of the year 56, Gabinius, then governor of Syria, had pressureput on him by the creditors--among them perhaps both Caesar andPompeius--to march into Egypt without the authority of the senate. Hetook Rabirius with him, and, in order to secure the repayment, the latter was made superintendent (dioikaetaes) of the Egyptianrevenues[147]. Unluckily for him, his wily debtor did after all turnagainst him, and he escaped from Egypt with difficulty and with theloss of all his wealth. When Gabinius was accused de repetundis andfound guilty of accepting enormous sums from Ptolemy, Rabirius wasinvolved in the same prosecution as having received part of the money;Cicero defended him, and as it seems with success, on the plea thatequites were not liable to prosecution under the lex Julia. Towardsthe end of his speech he drew a clever picture of his unlucky client'smisfortunes, and declared that he would have had to quit the Forum, i. E. To leave the Stock Exchange in disgrace, if Caesar had not cometo his rescue by placing large sums at his disposal. 

What Rabirius did was simply to gamble on a gigantic scale, and getothers to gamble with him. The luck turned against him, and he cameutterly to grief. There seems indeed to have been a perfect passionfor dealing with money in this wild way among the men of wealth andinfluence; it was the fancy of the hour, and no disgrace attached toit if a man could escape ruin. Thus the vast capital accumulated--thesources of which were almost entirely in the provinces and thekingdoms on the frontiers--was hardly ever used productively. It neverreturned to the region whence it came, to be used in developingits resources; the idea of using it even in Italy for industrialundertakings was absent from the mind of the gambler. Those numberlessvillas, of which we shall speak in another chapter, were homes ofluxury and magnificence, not centres of agricultural industry. Thereare indeed some signs that in this very generation the revival ofItalian agriculture was beginning, and more especially the cultivationof the olive and the vine; Varro, some twenty years later, could claimthat Italy was the best cultivated country in the world. [148] It maybe that the din of the "insanum forum" and its wild speculation hasprevented our hearing of the quiet efforts in the country to putcapital to a legitimate productive use. But of the social life of thecity the Forum was the heart, and of any prudent or scientific use ofcapital the Forum knew hardly anything. 

Of the two classes of business men we have been describing, thetax-farmers and the money-lenders, it is hard to say which wrought themost mischief in the Empire; they played into each other's hands inwringing money out of the helpless provincials. Together too they didincalculable harm, morally and socially, among the upper strata ofRoman society at home. Economic maladies react upon the mental, andmoral condition of a State. Where the idea of making money for itsown sake, or merely for the sake of the pleasure derivable fromexcitement, is paramount in the minds of so large a section ofsociety, moral perception quickly becomes warped. The sense of justicedisappears, because when the fever is on a man he does not stop to askwhether his gains are ill-gotten; and in this age the only restrictionon the plundering of the subjects of the Empire was a legal one, andthat of no great efficacy. There are many repulsive things in theexquisite poetry of Catullus, but none of them jar on the modern mindquite so sharply as his virulent attacks on a provincial governor inwhose suite he had gone to Bithynia in the hope of enriching himself, and under whose just administration he had failed to do so. Thereis lost also the sense of a duty arising out of the possession ofwealth--the feeling that it should do some good in the world, or atleast be in part applied to some useful purpose. Lastly, the excitingpursuit of wealth helps to produce a curious restlessness andinstability of character, of which we have many examples in the agewe are studying. "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel, " are wordsthat might be applied to many a young man among Cicero's acquaintance, and to many women also. 

No sudden operation could cure these evils--they needed the carefuland gradual treatment of a wise physician. As in so many other ways, so here Augustus showed his wonderful instinct as a social reformer. The first requisite of all was an age of comparative peace--a healthyatmosphere in which the patient could recover his natural tone. Nextin importance was the removal of the incitement to enrich yourself andto spend illegally or unprofitably, and the revival of a sense of dutytowards the State and its rulers. Provincial governors were mademore really responsible, and a scientific census revealed the actualtax-paying capacity of the provincials; tax-farming was more closelysuperintended and gradually disappeared. It is true enough that evenunder the Empire great fortunes were made and lost, but the gamblingspirit, the wild recklessness in monetary dealings, are not met withagain. The Roman Forum ceased to be insane, and Italy became once morethe home of much happy and useful country life. The passionate andreckless self-consciousness of Catullus is succeeded in the nextgeneration by the calm sweet hopefulness of Virgil; in passing fromthe one poet to the other, we feel that we are leaving behind us anage of over-sensitive self-seeking and entering on one in which dutyand honour, labour on the land and hard work for the State, may bereckoned as things more likely to make life worth living than all theaccumulated capital of a Crassus. 

CHAPTER IV

THE GOVERNING ARISTOCRACY

Above the men of business of equestrian rank, in social standingthough not necessarily in wealth, there was in Cicero's time anaristocracy which a Roman of that day would perhaps have found it alittle difficult to explain or define to a foreigner. Fortunately allforeigners coming to Rome would know what was meant by the senate, the great council which received envoys from all nations outside theEmpire; and the stranger might be told in the first place that allmembers of that august assembly, with their families, were consideredas elevated above the equestrian order, and as forming the main bodyof the aristocracy proper. But if the informant were by chance aconservative Roman of old family, he might proceed to qualify thisdefinition. "There are now in the senate, " he might say, "plenty ofmen who are only there because they have held the quaestorship, whichSulla made the qualification for a seat, and there are many equiteswhom Sulla made into senators by the form of a vote of the people;such men, even the great orator Cicero himself, I do not reckon asreally members of the nobility, because they do not belong to oldfamilies who have done the State good service in past time. They haveno images of their ancestors in their houses; they come from municipaltowns, or spring from some low family in the city; they may haveraised themselves by their talents, perhaps only by their money, but they have no guarantee of antiquity, their names are not in ourannals. All we true conservative Romans (and a, Roman is hardly aRoman if not conservative) profoundly believe that a man whose familyhas once attained to high public honour and done good public service, will be a safer person to elect as a magistrate than one whose familyis unknown and untried--a belief which is surely based on a truth ofhuman nature. I should count a man who happens not to be in the senatehimself, for want of wealth or inclination, but whose family has itsimages and its traditions of great ancestors, as far more truly an"optimate" than most of these new men. Fortunately our most famousfamilies, whose names are known all over the Empire, are still to befound in the senate, and indeed form a powerful body there, capable ofresisting to the last the revolutionary dangers that threaten us. Thepeople still elect to magistracies the Aemilii, Lutatii, Claudii, Cornelii, Julii, and many more families that have been famous in ourhistory, and will, I trust, continue to elect them so long as ourRepublic lasts. "[149]

There was indeed a glamour about these splendid names, as there isabout the titles of our ancient noble families; their holders mayalmost be said to have claimed high office as a right, like the Whigfamilies Of the Revolution for a century after their triumph. Thoughwe may use the word in a wider sense in this chapter, these grand oldfamilies were the true aristocracy, and inspired just that respect inthe minds of men outside their circle which is still so familiar to usin England. Cicero was to such men an "outsider, " a _novus homo_; andthe close reader of Cicero's letters, if he is looking out (as heshould be) for Cicero's constantly changing attitude of mind as headdresses himself to various correspondents, cannot fail to see howcomparatively awkward and stilted he often is when writing to one ofthese great nobles, with whom he has never been really intimate; andhow easily his pen glides along when he is letting himself talk toAtticus, or Poetus, or M. Marius, men who were outside the pale ofnobility. It is true that he is sometimes embarrassed in other wayswhen writing to great personages, as, for example, Lentulus Spinther, consul in 57, or to Appius Claudius, consul in 53; but had they beenmen of his own kind he never would have felt that embarrassment in thesame degree. When writing to such men he rarely or never indulgesin those little sportive jokes or allusions which enliven his moreintimate correspondence, nor does he tell the truth so strictly, forthey might not always care to hear it. 

Here is a specimen which will give some idea of his manner in writingto an aristocrat: he is congratulating L. Aemilius Paullus, whosecured his election to the consulship in the summer of 51 B. C. :

"Though I never doubted that the Roman people, considering youreminent services to the Republic and _the splendid position of yourfamily_, would enthusiastically elect you consul by a unanimous vote, yet I felt extreme delight when the news reached me; and I praythe gods to render your official career fortunate, and to make theadministration of your office worthy of your own position and _thatof your ancestors_. .. . And would that it had been in my power to havebeen at home to see that wished-for day, and to have given you thesupport which your noble services and kindness to me deserved! Butsince the unexpected and unlooked-for accident of my having to takea province has deprived me of that opportunity, yet, that I may beenabled to see you as consul actually administering the state in amanner worthy of your position, I earnestly beg you to take care toprevent my being treated unfairly, or having additional time addedto my year of office. If you do that, you will abundantly crown yourformer acts of kindness to me. "[150]

This Aemilius Paullus, like Spinther and many others, belonged toa respectable but somewhat characterless type of aristocrat; theseformed a considerable and a powerful section of the senate, where theywere an obstacle to reform and administrative efficiency. They werereally a survival from the old type of Roman noble, which had doneexcellent work in its day; men in whom the individual had been kept instrict subordination to the State, and whose personal idiosyncrasiesand ambitions only excited suspicion. But towards the end of theRepublican period the individual had free play; at no time in ancienthistory do we meet with so many various and interesting kinds ofindividuality, even among the nobilitas itself. This is not merely theresult of the abundant literature in which their traits have come downto us; it was a fact of the age, in which the idea of the State hadfallen into the background, and the individual found no restrainton his thoughts and little on his actions, no hindrance to thedevelopment of his capacity either for good or evil. Sulla, Catiline, Pompeius, Cato, Clodius, Caesar, all have their markedcharacteristics, familiar to all who read the history of the Romanrevolution. Caesar is the most remarkable example of strong characteramong the men of high aristocratic descent, and it is interesting tonotice how entirely he was without the exclusive tendency which weassociate with aristocrats. He was intimate with men of all ranks; hisclosest friends seem to have been men who were noble. While the higharistocrats looked down as a rule on Cicero the novus homo, and forsome years positively hated him[151], Caesar, though differing fromhim _toto coelo_ in politics, was always on pleasant terms of personalintercourse with him; he had a charm of manner, a literary taste, anda genuine admiration for genius, which was invariably irresistibleto the sensitive "novus homo. " With Pompey, though he trusted himpolitically as he never trusted Caesar, Cicero was never so intimate. They had not the same common interests; Cicero could laugh at Pompeybehind his back, but hardly once in his correspondence does he attemptto raise a jest about Caesar. 

Thus in the governing or senatorial aristocracy we find men of a greatvariety of character, from the old-fashioned nobilis, exclusive insociety and obstructive in politics, to the man of individual geniusand literary ability, whether of blue blood like Caesar, or likeCicero the scion of a municipal family which has never gained orsought political distinction. But for the purposes of this chapterwe may discern and discuss two main types of character in thisaristocracy: first, that on which the new Greek culture had worked toadvantage, not destroying the best Roman qualities, but drawing theminto usefulness in new ways; secondly, that on which the same culturehad worked to its harm by taking advantage of weak points in the Romanarmour, sapping the true Roman quality without substituting any otherexcellence. We will briefly trace the growth of these two types, andtake an example of each among Cicero's intimate friends, not fromthe famous personages familiar to every one, but from eminent andinteresting men of whom the ordinary student knows comparativelylittle. 

Ever since the Hannibalic war, and probably even before it, Romannobles had felt the power of Greek culture; they had begun to think, to learn about peoples who were different from themselves in habitsand manners, and to advance, the best of them at least, in wisdom andknowledge; and this is true in spite of the unquestioned fact that itwas in this same era that the seeds were sown of moral and politicaldegeneracy. We shall have abundant opportunity of noting the effectsof this degeneracy in the last age of the Republic, but it is pleasantto dwell for a moment on that more wholesome Greek influence whichenticed the finer minds among the Roman nobility into a new region ofculture, stimulating thought and strengthening the springs of conduct. 

Even the old Cato himself, most rigid of Roman conservatives, was notunmoved by this influence, [152] and it was to him that Rome owed theintroduction of Ennius, the greatest literary figure of that age, intoRoman society[153]. But the first genuine example of the new culture, of the Hellenic enthusiasm of the age, is to be found in AemiliusPaullus, the conqueror of Macedonia, a true Roman aristocrat who wasdelighted to learn from Greeks. Plutarch's _Life_ of this man is avaluable record of the tendencies of the time. After his failure toobtain a second consulship, Plutarch tells us[154] that he retiredinto private life, devoting himself to religious duties and to theeducation of his children, training these in the old Roman habits inwhich he had himself been trained, but also in Greek culture, and thatwith even greater enthusiasm. He had about them Greek teachers, notonly of grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy, but of the fine arts, andeven of out-door pursuits, such as hunting (to which the Romans werenot greatly addicted), and of the care of horses and dogs; and he madea point of being present himself at all their exercises, bodily andmental. The result of this wholesome Xenophontic education is seen inhis son, the great Scipio Aemilianus, who was adopted into the familyof the Scipios in the lifetime of his father. Whatever view we maytake of this great man's conduct in war and politics, there can hardlybe a doubt that the Romans themselves were right in treasuring hismemory as one of the best of their race. When we put all the facts ofhis life together, from his early youth, of which his friend Polybiushas left us a most beautiful picture, [155] to his sudden and probablyviolent death in the maturity of his powers, we are compelled tobelieve that he was really a man of wide sympathies, a strong sense ofjustice which guided him steadily through good report and ill, perfectpurity of life, and hatred of all that was low and bad, whetherin rich or poor. He was not, like his father, a Roman aristocratpatronising Greek culture;[156] in him we see a perfectly naturaland mature combination of the noblest qualities of the Roman and thewholesomest qualities of the Greek. "It was an awakening truth, "says a great authority, "in the minds of Romans like Scipio, thatintellectual culture must be built upon a foundation of moralrectitude: and such a foundation they could find in the storehouse oftheir own domestic traditions. "[157] When Cicero, who held him tobe the greatest of Romans, wrote his dialogue on the State (_deRepublica_), with the new idea pervading it of the moral and politicalascendancy of a single man, he made Scipio the hero and the oneascendant figure in his work, and ended it with an imitation of thePlatonic "myth, " in the form of a "dream of Scipio. "

Scipio gathered round him a circle of able and cultured men, bothRoman and Greek, including almost every living Roman of ability, andamong the Greeks the historian Polybius and the philosopher Panaetius, of whom we shall have more to learn in the course of this volume. Ofthis circle the best and ablest men of Cicero's earlier days werementally the children, and his own views both of literature andpolitics were largely formed upon the Scipionic tradition. Indeed tounderstand the mental and moral furniture of the Roman mind in theCiceronian age, it is absolutely necessary to study that of thegeneration which made that mind what it was; but here space can onlybe found to point out how the enlightenment of the Scipionic circleopened out new ways in manners, in literature, in philosophicalreceptivity, and lastly in the study of the law, which was destined tobe Rome's greatest contribution to civilisation. 

Manners, the demeanour of the individual in social intercourse, are avaluable index, if not an entirely conclusive one, of the mental andmoral tone of society in any age. Ease and courteousness of bearingmean, as a rule, that the sense of another's claims as a human beingare always present to the mind. Whatever be the shortcomings of thelast age of the Republic, we must give due credit to the fact that intheir outward demeanour towards each other the educated men of thatage almost invariably show good breeding. It is true enough thatpublic vituperation, in senate or law-courts, was a fact of every day, and the wealth of violent personal abuse which a gentleman like Cicerocould expend on one whom for the time he hated, or who had donehim some wrong, passes all belief. [158] But the history of thisvituperation is a curious one; it was a traditional method of hostileoratory, and sprang from an old Roman root, the tendency to defamationand satire, which may itself be attributed in part to the Italiancustom of levelling abuse at a public man (e. G. At his triumph) inorder to avert evil from him. [159] To single out a man's personalugliness, to calumniate his ancestry in the vilest terms, --these werelittle more than traditional practices, oratorical devices, which therhetorical education of the day encouraged, and which no one tookvery seriously. [160] But we are concerned in this chapter mainly withprivate life; and there we find almost universal consideration andcourtesy. In the whole of the Ciceronian correspondence there ishardly a letter that does not show good breeding, and there are manythat are the natural result of real kindly feeling and true sympathy. 

A good example of the best type of Roman manners is to be found inPlutarch's _Life_ of Gaius Gracchus, the younger contemporary ofScipio, who had married his sister. Plutarch draws a picture of him sovivid that by common consent it is ascribed to the memoirs of some onewho knew him. "In all his dealings with men, " says the biographer, "hewas always dignified yet always courteous"; that is, while he inspiredrespect, men felt also that he would do anything in his power forthem. That this was said of him by a Roman, and not invented for himby Plutarch, seems probable because the combination is one peculiarlyRoman; so Livy, when he wishes to describe the finest type of Romancharacter, says that a certain man was "haud minus libertatis alienaequam suae dignitatis memor. "[161] This same combination meets us alsoin the little pictures of the social life of cultivated men whichCicero has left us in some of his dialogues. There the speakers areusually of the nobility, often distinguished members of senatorialfamilies, as in the _de Oratore_, where the chief _personae_ areCrassus, Antonius, and Scaevola, the conservative triumvirate of theday. They all seem grave, or but seldom gently jocular, respectful toeach other, and perhaps a trifle tedious; they never quarrel, howeverdeeply they may differ, and we may guess that they did not hold theiropinions strongly enough to urge them to open rupture. We seem to seethe same grave faces, with rather noses and large mouths, which meetus in the sculptures of Augustus' Ara Pacis, [162]--full of dignity, but a little wanting in animation. 

There is one singular exception to the good manners of the period; butas the result rather of affectation than of nature, it may help toprove our rule. Again and again in Plutarch's _Life_ of Cato theyounger the mention of his rudeness proves the strength of thetradition about him. It was said that this lost him the consulship, as he declined to make himself agreeable in the style expected fromcandidates[163]. Even in a letter to Cicero, an old friend, though notactually rude, he is absurdly patronising and impertinent to a manmany years his senior, and writes in very bad taste. Probably theenmity between him and Caesar arose or was confirmed in this way, as Cato always made a point of being rudest to those whom he mostdisliked. He fancied that he was imitating his great ancestor, andasserting the virtue of good old Roman bluntness against modern Greekaffectation; he did not in the least see that he was himself a curiousexample of Roman affectation, shown up by the real amenities ofintercourse, for which Romans had largely to thank Greece[164]. 

In literature too the average capacity of this aristocracy was high, though the greatest literary figures of the age, if we except Caesar, do not, strictly speaking, belong to it; Cicero was a novus homo, andLucretius and Catullus were not of the senatorial order. But the neweducation, as we shall see later on, was admirably calculated totrain men in the art of speaking and writing, if not in the habit ofindependent thinking; and among the nobles who reaped the full fruitsof this education every one could write in Latin and probably alsoin Greek, and if he aimed at public distinction, could speak withoutdisgracing himself in the senate and the courts. Oratory was, in fact, the staple product of the age, and the chief _raison d'être_ of itsliterary activity. Long ago the practice had begun of writing outsuccessful speeches delivered in the senate, in the courts, or atfunerals; the means of publication were easy, as a consequence of thenumber of Greek slaves who could act as copyists, and thus oratoryformed the basis of a prose literature which is essentiallyRoman, [165] rooted in the practical necessities of the life of theRoman noble, though deeply tinged with the Greek ideas and forms ofexpression acquired in the process of education in vogue. Treatises onrhetoric, the art of effective expression in prose, form an importantpart of it; two of them still survive from the time of Sulla, --the_Rhetorica ad Herennium_ of an unknown author, and Cicero's earlytreatise _de Inventione_. Later on Cicero wrote his admirable dialogue_de Oratore_ and other works on the same subject, ending with his_Brutus_, a catalogue raisonnée, invaluable to us, of all the greatRoman orators down to his own time. 

In history writing the standard was not so high. The rhetoricaleducation made men good professional orators, but indifferent anddilettante historians, and the example of more accurate historicalinvestigation and reflection set by Polybius was not followed, exceptperhaps by Caelius Antipater in the Gracchan age. [166] History wasaffected for the worse by the rhetorical art, as indeed poetry wasdestined also to be; Sallust, though we owe much to him, was in factan amateur, who thought more of style and expression than of truthand fact. Caesar, who did not profess to be a historian, but only toprovide the materials for history, [167] stands alone in making factsmore important than words, and rarely troubles his reader withspeeches or other rhetorical superfluities. [168] Biographies andautobiographies were fashionable; of the former only those ofCornelius Nepos, one of Cicero's many friends, have come down to us, and none of the latter, but we know a long list of eminent men whowrote their own memoirs, including Catulus the elder, Rutilius thefamous victim of equestrian judges, Sulla, and Lucullus. But far aboveall other prose writers of the age stand two men, neither of themRoman by birth, but yet members of the senatorial order; the one a manof encyclopaedic learning, with what we may almost call a scientificinterest in the subjects which he treated in awkward and homely Latin, the other a man of comparatively little learning, but gifted with soexquisite a sense of the beautiful in expression, and at the sametime with a humanity so real and in that day so rare, that it is notwithout good cause that he has recently been called the most highlycultured man of all antiquity. [169] Of Varro's numerous works we haveunluckily but few survivals; of Cicero's we have still such a massas will for ever provide ample material for studying the life, themanners, the thought of his day. 

A large part of this mass consists of the correspondence of which weare making such frequent use in these chapters. Letter-writing isperhaps the most pleasing and genuine of all the literary activitiesof the time; men took pains to write well, yet not with any definiteprospect of publication, such as was the motive a century later inthe days of Seneca and Pliny. The nine hundred and odd letters of theCiceronian collection are most of them neither mere communicationsnor yet rhetorical exercises, but real letters, the intercourse ofintimate friends at a distance, in which their inmost thoughts canoften be seen. Cicero is indeed apt to become rhetorical even in hisletters, when writing under excitement about politics; but the mostdelightful letters in the collection are those in which he writesto his friends in happy and natural language of his daily life andoccupations, his books, his villas, his children, his joys andsorrows. It is strange that the great historian of Rome in our timeentirely failed to see the charm and the value of these letters, as ofall Cicero's writings; his countrymen have now agreed to differ fromhim, and to restore a great writer to his true position. 

In philosophical receptivity too the brightest and finest minds amongthis aristocracy show an ability which is almost astonishing, when weconsider that there had been no education in Rome worth the name untilthe second century B. C. [170] I use the word receptivity, because theRomans of our period never really learnt to think for themselves; theynever grappled with a problem, or struck out a new line of thought. But so far as we can judge by Cicero's philosophical works, the onlyones of his age which have come down to us, the power to read withunderstanding and to reproduce with skill was unquestionably of a highorder. The opportunities for study were not wanting; private librarieswere numerous, and all Cicero's friends who had collected books wereglad to let him have the use of them. [171] Greek philosophers wereoften domesticated in wealthy families, and could discourse with thestatesman when he had leisure from public business. Much of this wasno more than fashion, and real endeavour and earnestness were rare;but the fact remains that one philosophical system, more especially onits ethical side, took real possession of the best type of Roman mind, and had permanent and saving influence on it. 

Stoicism was brought to Rome by Panaetius of Rhodes, the intimatefriend of Scipio, a mild and tactful Greek whose Rhodian birth gavehim perhaps some advantage in associating with the old allies of hisstate. He came to Rome at a critical moment, when even the best menwere drifting into pure material self-seeking; and the results of histeaching were during two centuries so wholesome and inspiring that wemay almost think of him as a missionary. The ground had been preparedfor him in some sense by Polybius, who introduced him to Scipio andhis circle, and who was then engaged in writing his history. FromPolybius the Romans, the best of them at least, first learnt torealise their own empire and the great change it had wrought in theworld; to think about what they had done and the qualities thatenabled them to do it. From Panaetius they were to learn aphilosophical creed which might direct and save them in the future, which might serve as ballast in public and private life, just when theship was beginning to drift in moral helplessness. He was the founderof a school of practical wisdom, singularly well adapted to the Romancharacter and intellect, which were always practical rather thanspeculative; and far better suited to ordinary human life than the oldrigid and austere Stoic ethics, of which the younger Cato was theonly eminent Roman disciple. From what we know of Panaetius' ethicalteaching, --and in the first two books of Cicero's work, _de Officiis_, we have a fairly complete view of it, --we do not find the old doctrinethat absolute wisdom and justice are the only ends to pursue, andeverything else indifferent; a doctrine which put the old-fashionedStoic out of court in public life. The relative element, the useful, played a great part in the teaching of Panaetius. Though his systemis based on the highest principles to which moral teaching could thenappeal, it did not exclude the give and take, the compromise withoutwhich no practical man of affairs can make way, nor yet the wealth andbodily comforts that secure leisure for thought. [172]

Panaetius' mission was carried on by another Rhodian philosopher, thefamous Posidonius, who lived long enough to know Cicero himselfand many of his contemporaries; a man less inspiring perhaps thanPanaetius, but of greater knowledge and attainment; a traveller, geographer, and a man of the world, whose writings on many subjects, though lost to us, really lie at the back of a great part of the Romanliterary output of his time. [173] He was the disciple of Panaetius;envoy from Rhodes to Rome in the terrible year 86; and later on theinmate of Roman families, and the admired friend of Cicero Pompeius, and Varro. Philosophy was only one of the many pursuits of thisextraordinary man, whose literary and historical influence can betraced in almost every leading Roman author for a century at least;but his philosophical importance was during his lifetime perhapspredominant. The generation that knew him was rich in Stoics; forexample, Aelius Stilo, the master of Varro, "doctissimus eorumtemporum, " as Gellius calls him;[2] Rutilius, who was mentioned justnow as having written memoirs; and among others probably the greatlawyer Mucius Scaevola. Cato, as we have seen, was not a follower ofthe Roman school of Stoicism, but of the older and uncompromisingdoctrine; but Cicero, though never a professed Stoic, was reallydeeply influenced, and towards the end of his life almost fascinated, by a creed which suited his humanity while it stimulated his instinctfor righteousness. [174] And, like Cicero, many other men of seriouscharacter felt the power of Stoicism almost unconsciously, withoutopenly professing it. 

Stoicism then was in several ways congenial to the Roman spirit, butin one direction it had an inspiring influence which has been oflasting moment to the world. Up to the time of Panaetius and theScipionic circle the Roman idea and study of law had been of a crabbedpractical character, wanting in breadth of treatment, destitute of anyphilosophical conception of the moral principles which lie behind alllaw and government. The Stoic doctrine of universal law ruling theworld--a divine law, emanating from the universal Reason--seems tohave called up life in these dry bones. It might be held by a RomanStoic that human law comes into existence when man becomes aware ofthe divine law, and recognises its claim upon him. Morality is thusidentical with law in the widest sense of the word, for both areequally called into being by the Right Reason, which is the universalprimary force. [175] It is not possible here to show how this grand andelevating idea of law may have affected Roman jurisprudence, but wewill just notice that the first quasi-philosophical treatment of lawis found following the age of Panaetius and the Scipionic circle; thatthe phrase _ius gentium_ then begins to take the meaning of generalprinciples or rules common to all peoples, and founded on "naturalreason";[176] and that this led by degrees to the later idea of theLaw of Nature, and to the cosmopolitanism of the Roman legal system, which came to embrace all peoples and degrees in its rational andbeneficent influence. If the Greek had a genius for beauty, and theJew for righteousness, the Roman had a genius for law; and the powerof Stoicism in ennobling and enriching his native conception of it isprobably not to be easily over-estimated. 

Thus behind the stormy scenes of public life in this period there is aprocess going on which will be of value not only to the Roman Empirebut to modern civilisation. It was carried on more especially by twomen of the highest character, Q. Mucius Scaevola, Cicero's adviserin his early days, and often his model in later life; and ServiusSulpicius Rufus, his exact contemporary and lifelong friend. NeitherScaevola nor Sulpicius were, so far as we know, professed disciplesof Stoicism; but that they applied perhaps half unconsciously theprinciples of Stoicism to their own legal studies is almost certain. The combination of legal training and Stoic influence (whether director unconscious) seems to have been capable of bringing the Romanaristocratic character to a high pitch of perfection; and it will bepleasant to take this friend of Cicero, whose public career we canclearly trace, and one or two of whose letters we still possess, asour example of a really well spent life in an age when time and talentwere constantly abused and wasted. 

Sulpicius and Cicero were born in the same year, 106; they went handin hand in early life, and remained friends till their deaths in 43, Sulpicius dying a few months before Cicero. They were both attachedin early youth to the Scaevola just mentioned, the first of the greatseries of scientific Roman lawyers. But the consulship of Ciceromade a wide divergence in their lives. In that year Sulpicius was acandidate for the consulship and failed; and then, resigning furtherattempts to obtain the highest honour, he retired for the next twelveyears into private life, devoting himself to the work which has madehis name immortal. His writings are lost; nothing remains of them buta few chance fragments and allusions; but he was reckoned the secondof the great writers on legal subjects, and it is probable that hecontributed as much as any of them to the work of making Romanlaw what it has been as a power in the world, a factor in moderncivilisation. For he treated it, as his friend said of him, [177] withthe hand and mind of an artist, laying out his whole subject anddistributing it into its constituent parts, by definition andinterpretation making clear what seemed obscure, and distinguishingthe false from the true in legal principle. In the splendid panegyricpronounced on him in the senate after his death, [178] Cicero againemphatically declared him to be unrivalled in jurisprudence. Inbeautiful but untranslatable language he claims that he was "non magisiuris consultus, quam iustitiae, "--an encomium which all greatlawyers might well envy; he aimed rather at enabling men to be rid oflitigation than at encouraging them to engage in it. 

From such passages we might conjecture, even if we knew nothingmore about him, that Sulpicius was a man of very fine clay, of real_humanitas_ in the widest sense of that expressive word; and thisis entirely borne out in other ways. [179] Emerging at last fromretirement, he stood again for the consulship in 52 B. C. , and waselected. The year of his office, 51, was the first in which theenemies of Caesar, with Cato at their head, began to attack hisposition and clamour for his recall from his command; this violenthostility Sulpicius tried, not without temporary success, to restrain, and the fact that a man of so just a mind should have taken thisline is one of the best arguments for the reasonableness of Caesar'scause. [180] When war broke out he was greatly perplexed how to act;his breadth of view made decision difficult, and he seems to havebeen at all times more a student than a man of action. With someheart-burnings he joined Caesar in the struggle, and accepted from himthe government of Achaia; it was at this time that he wrote the famousletter of consolation to Cicero on the death of his beloved daughterTullia, which is full of true feeling and kindliness, though evidentlycomposed with effort, if not with difficulty. After Caesar's death heof course acted with Cicero against Antony, and in the spring of43, making always for peace and good-will, he gave his life for hiscountry in a way that claims our admiration more really than thesuicide of Cato the professional Stoic; he headed an embassy toAntony, though dangerously ill at the time, and died in this lasteffort to obtain a hearing for the voice of justice. He has a_monumentum aere perennius_ in the speech of his old friend urging thesenate to vote him a public funeral and a statue, as one who had laiddown his life for his country. 

We must now turn to consider how the mischievous side of the new Greekculture, in combination with other tendencies of the time, found itsway into weak points in the armour of the Roman aristocracy. 

The pursuit of ease and pleasure, to which the attainment of wealthand political power were too often merely subordinated, is a leadingcharacteristic of the time. It is seen in many different forms, inmany different types of character; but at the root of the wholecorruption is the spirit of the coarser side of Epicureanism. As withRoman Stoicism, so too with Roman Epicureanism, it is not so much theprofessed holding of philosophical tenets that affected life; in thecase of the latter system, it was the coincidence of its popularitywith the decay of the old Roman faith and morality, and with theabnormal opportunities of self-indulgence. Cato as a professed Stoic, Lucretius as an enthusiastic Epicurean, stand quite apart fromthe mass of men who were actuated one way or the other by thesephilosophical creeds. The majority simply played with the philosophy, while following the natural bent of their individual character; butsuch dilettanteism was often quite enough to affect that characterpermanently for good or evil. 

"Epicureanism popularised inevitably turns to vice. " Was it reallypopular at Rome? Cicero tells us in a valuable passage[181] that oneAmafinius had written on it, and that a great number of copies of hisbook were sold, partly because the arguments were easy to follow, partly because the doctrine was pleasant, and partly too because menfailed to get hold of anything better. The date of this Amafinius isuncertain, but it is probable that Cicero is here speaking of thelatter part of the second century B. C. ; and he goes on to say thatother writers took up the same line of teaching, and established itover the whole of Italy (Italiam totam occupaverunt). If this wasin the time of the Social and Civil Wars, of the proscriptions, ofincreasing crime and self-seeking, we can well understand that thedoctrine was popular. We have a remarkable example of it in the lifeof a public man of Cicero's own time, the object of the most envenomedinvective that he ever uttered. [182] We cannot believe a tithe of whathe says about this man, Calpurnius Piso, consul in 58; but in thisparticular matter of the damage done him by Epicurean teaching we haveindependent evidence which confirms it. Piso, then a young man, madeacquaintance with a Greek of this school of thought, learnt from himthat pleasure was the sole end of life, and failing to appreciate thetrue meaning and bearing of the doctrine, fell into the trap. It wasa dangerous doctrine, Cicero says, for a youth of no remarkableintelligence; and the tutor, instead of being the young man's guide tovirtue, was used by him as an authority for vice. [183] This Greek wasa certain Philodemus, a few of whose poems are preserved in the _GreekAnthology_; and a glance at them will show at once how dangerous sucha man would be as the companion of a Roman youth. He may not himselfhave been a bad man--Cicero indeed rather suggests the contrary, calling him _vere humanus_--but the air about him was poisonous. Inhis pupil, if we can trust in the smallest degree the picture drawn ofhim by Cicero, we may see a specimen of the young men of the age whosetalents might have made them useful in the world, but for the strengthof the current that drew them into self-indulgence. 

Not only the pursuit of pleasure, but its correlative, the avoidanceof work and duty, can be abundantly illustrated in this age; and thistoo may have had a subtle connexion with Epicurean teaching, which hadalways discouraged the individual from distraction in the service ofthe State, as disturbing to the free development of his own virtue. Sulla did much hard work, but made the serious blunder of retiring toenjoy himself just when his new constitutional machinery needed themost careful watching and tending. Lucullus, after showing a wonderfulcapacity for work and a greater genius for war than perhaps any man ofhis time, retired from public life as a millionaire and a quietist, to enjoy the wealth that has become proverbial, and a luxury that isastonishing, even if we make due allowance for the exaggeration of ouraccounts of it. To his library we have already been introduced; thosewho would see him in his banqueting-hall, or rather one of the manyin his palace, may turn to the fortieth chapter of Plutarch's mostinteresting _Life_ of him, and read the story there told of the dinnerhe gave to Cicero and Pompeius in the "Apollo" dining-room. [184]

The same cynical carelessness about public affairs and neglect ofduty, as compared with private ease or advantage, seems to have beencharacteristic of the ordinary senator. Active and busy in his owninterest, he was indifferent to that of the State. There are distinctsigns that the attendance in the senate was not good. When Cicero wasaway in Cilicia his correspondent writes of difficulties in gettingtogether a sufficient number even for such important business as thesettlement of provincial governments. [185] On the other hand, muchprivate business was done, and many jobs perpetrated, in a thinsenate; in 66 a tribune proposed that no senator should be dispensedfrom the action of a law unless two hundred were present. [186] It wasin such a thin senate, we may be sure, that the virtuous Brutus wasdispensed from the law which forbade lending to foreign borrowers inRome, and thus was enabled to lend to the miserable Salaminians ofCyprus at 48 per cent, and to recover his money under the bond. [187]Writing to his brother in December 57, Cicero speaks of business donein a senate full for the time of year, which was midwinter, justbefore the Saturnalia, when only two hundred were present out of aboutsix hundred. In February 54, a month when the senate had always muchbusiness to get through, it was so cold one day that the few memberspresent clamoured for dismissal and obtained it. [188] And when thesenate did meet there was a constant tendency to let things go. Noreform of procedure is mentioned as even thought of, at a time whenit was far more necessary than in our Parliament; business was talkedabout, postponed obstructed, and personal animosities and privateinterests seem, so far as we can judge from the correspondence of thetime, to have been predominant. With wearisome iteration the lettersspeak of nothing done, of business postponed, or of the passing ofsome senatus consultum, the utter futility of which is obvious evennow. [189] Even the magistrates seem to have been growing careless; wehear of a praetor presiding in the court de repetundis who had nottaken the trouble to acquaint himself with the text of the law whichgoverned its procedure;[190] and that praetors were worse thancareless about their action in civil cases is proved by another law ofthe same tribune Cornelius mentioned just now, "that praetors shouldabide by the rules laid down in their edicts. "[191]

But all these futilities, and much of the same kind outside of thesenate, together with the quarrels of individuals, the chances andincidents of elections, and all such gossip as forms the staplecommodity of the society papers of to-day, were a source of infinitedelight to another type of pleasure-loving public man, the last to beillustrated here. 

If the older noble families were apathetic and idle, there were plentyof young men, rising most often from the class below, whose minds wereintensely active--active in the pursuit of pleasure, but pleasure inthe comparatively harmless form of amusement and excitement. One ofthese, the son of a banker at Puteoli, Marcus Caelius Rufus, standsout as a living portrait in his own letters to Cicero, of which nofewer than seventeen are preserved. [192] Of his early years too weknow a good deal, told us in the speech in defence of him spoken byCicero in the year 56; and these combined sources of information makehim the most interesting figure in the life of his age. M. Boissierhas written a delightful essay on him in his _Cicéron et ses amis_, and Professor Tyrrell has done the like in the introduction to thefourth volume of his edition of Cicero's letters; but they havetreated him less as a type of the youth of his day than as the friendand pupil of Cicero. Caelius will always repay fresh study; he wasamusing and interesting to his contemporaries, and so he will be forever to us. He is a veritable Proteus--you never know what shape hewill take next;

 Omnia transformat sese in miracula rerum----

we can trace no less than six such transformations in the story ofhis life. And this instability, let us note at once, was not therestlessness of a jaded _roué_, but the coruscation of a clever mindwholly without principle, intensely interested in his _monde_, in thelife in which he moved, with all its enjoyment and excitement. 

Caelius' father brought his son to Cicero, as soon as he had takenhis toga virilis, to study law and oratory, and Cicero was evidentlyattracted by the bright and lively boy; he never deserted him, andthe last letter of Caelius to his old preceptor was written only justbefore his own sad end. But Cicero was not the man to keep an unstablecharacter out of mischief; he loved young men, especially clever ones, and was apt to take an optimistic view of them, as he did of his ownson and nephew. Caelius, always attracted by novelty, left Cicero andattached himself to Catiline; and for this vagary, as well as for hisown want of success in controlling his pupil, Cicero rather awkwardlyand amusingly apologises in the early chapters of his speech in hisdefence. Wild oats must be sown, he says; when a youth has given fullfling to his propensities to vice, they will leave him, and he maybecome a useful citizen, --a dangerous view of a preceptor's duty, which reminds us of the treatment, of the boy Nero by his philosopherguardian long afterwards. [193]

Caelius escaped the fate of Catiline and his crew only to fall intothe hands of another clique not less dangerous for his moral welfare. He became one of a group of brilliant young men, among whom wereprobably Catullus and Calvus the poets, who were lovers, andpassionate lovers, of the infamous Clodia; they were needy, she foundthem money, and they hovered about her like moths about a candle. Insuch a life of passion and pleasure quarrels were inevitable. If theLesbia of Catullus be Clodia, as we may believe, she had thrown thepoet over with a light heart. It was apparently of his own free willthat Caelius deserted her: in revenge she turned upon him with anaccusation of theft and attempt to poison. What truth there was in thecharges we do not really know, but Cicero defended him successfully, and in this way we come to know the details of this unsteady life. 

In gratitude, and possibly in shame, Caelius now returned to his oldfriend, and abandoned the whole ring of his vicious companions fordiligent practice in the courts, where he obtained considerable fameas an orator. A fragment of a speech of his preserved by Quintilianshows, as Professor Tyrrell observes, wonderful power of graphicand picturesque utterance. [194] Cicero, writing of him after hisdeath, [195] says that he was at this time on the right side inpolitics, and that as tribune of the plebs in 56 he successfullysupported the good cause, and checked revolutionary and seditiousmovements. All was going well with him until Cicero went as governorto Cilicia in 51. Cicero seems to have felt complete confidencein him, and invited him to become his confidential politicalcorrespondent; fifteen out of his seventeen letters were written inthis capacity. These letters show us the man as clearly as if we hadhis diary before us. Caelius is no idle scamp or lazy Epicurean; hismind is constantly active: nothing escapes his notice: the minutestand most sordid things delight him. He is bright, happy, witty, frivolous, and doubtless lovable. It is amusing to see how Cicerohimself now and again catches the infection, and tries (in vain) towrite in the same frivolous manner. [196] Caelius has some politicalinsight; he sees civil war approaching, but he takes it all as a game, and on the eve of events which were to shake the world he trifleswith the symptoms as though they were the silliest gossip of thecapital. [197] In none of these letters is there the smallest vestigeof principle to be found. On the very eve of civil war he tellsCicero[198] that as soon as war breaks out the right thing to do is tojoin the stronger side. Judging Caesar's side to be the stronger, hejoined it accordingly, and did his best to induce Cicero to do thesame. As M. Boissier happily says, he never cared to "ménager sestransitions. "

He had, however, to discover that if to change over to Caesar was thesafer course, to turn a political somersault once more, to try andundermine the work of the master, meant simply ruin. We have the storyof his sixth and last transformation from Caesar himself, who was not, however, in Italy at the time. [199] Credit in Italy had been seriouslyupset by the outbreak of Civil War, and Caesar had been at much painsto steady it by an ordinance which has been alluded to in the lastchapter. [200] In 48 Caelius was praetor; in the master's absence hesuddenly took up the cause of the debtors, and tried to evoke appealsagainst the decisions of his colleague Trebonius, --a great lawyer anda just man. Failing in this, he started as a downright revolutionary, proposing first the abolition of house-rent, and finally the abolitionof all debts; and Milo, in exile at Massilia, was summoned to helphim to raise Italy against Caesar. This was too much, and both werequickly caught and killed as they were stirring up gladiators andother slave-bands among the latifundia of South Italy. 

Caelius' letters give us a chance of seeing what that life of theForum really was which so fascinated the young men of the day, andsome of the old, such as Cicero himself. We can see these childrenplaying on the very edge of the crater, like the French noblessebefore the Revolution. In both cases there was a semi-consciousnessthat the eruption was not far off, --but they went on playing. What wasit that so greatly amused and pleased them?

What Caelius is always writing of is mainly elections and canvassing, accusations and trials, games and shows. Elections he treats as puresport, as a kind of enjoyable gambling, or as a means of spiting someone whom you want to annoy. With elections accusations were oftenconnected: if a man were accused before his election he could notcontinue to stand; if condemned after it he was disqualified; herewere ways in which personal spite might deprive him of success at thelast moment. [201] Accusations, too were of course the best means bywhich an ambitious young man could come to the front. The whole numberof trials mentioned by Caelius is astonishing; sometimes there is sucha complication of them as is difficult to follow. Every one is readyto lay an accusation, without the smallest regard for truth. YoungAppius Claudius accuses Servilius, and makes a mess of the attack, while the praetor mismanages the conduct of the trial, so that nothingcomes of it; but finally Appius is himself accused by the Servilii_de vi_, in order to keep him from further attacks on Servilius![202]Appius the father quarrelled with Caelius and egged on others toaccuse him, though he was curule aedile at the time. "Their impudencewas so boundless that they secured that an information should belaid against me for a very serious crime (under the Scantinian law). Scarcely had Pola got the words out of his mouth, when I laid aninformation under the same law against the censor, Appius. I never sawa more successful stroke!"[203]

Of the games, and the panthers to be exhibited at them, about whichCaelius is for ever worrying his friend in Cilicia, we shall seesomething in another chapter. There is plenty of other gossip in theseletters, and gossip often about unsavoury matters which need not benoticed here. It lets in a flood of light upon the causes of thegeneral incompetence and inefficiency; the life of the Forum was ademoralising one:

 Uni se atque eidem studio omnes dedere et arti uerba dare ut caute possint, pugnare dolose: blanditia certare, bonum simulare uirum se: insidias facere, ut si hostes sint omnibus omnes. [204]

From what has been said in this sketch it should be clear that we havein the aristocracy of this period a complicated society, the variousaspects of which can hardly be united in a single picture. It ispartly a hereditary aristocracy, with all the pride and exclusivenessof a group of old families accustomed to power and consequence. It isin the main a society of gentlemen, dignified in manner, and kindlytowards each other, and it is also a society of high culture andliterary ability, though poor in creative genius, and unimaginative. On the other hand, it is a class which has lost its interest inthe State, and is energetic only when pursuing its own interests:pleasure-loving, luxurious, gossiping, trifling with serious matters, short-sighted in politics because anxious only for personal advance. "Rari nantes in gurgite vasto" are the men who are really in earnest, but they are there; we must not forget that in Lucretius and Cicerothis society produced one of the greatest poets and one of the mostperfect prose writers that the world treasures; in Sulpicius a lawyerof permanent value to humanity, and in Caesar not only an author and ascholar but a man of action unrivalled in capacity and industry. 

CHAPTER V

MARRIAGE: AND THE ROMAN LADY

In order to appreciate the position of women of various types in thesociety we are examining, it is necessary to make it clear what Romanmarriage originally and ideally meant. In any society, it will befound that the position and influence of woman can be fairly welldiscerned from the nature of the marriage ceremony and the conditionsunder which it is carried out. At Rome, in all periods of her history, a _iustum matrimonium_, i. E. A marriage sanctioned by law andreligion, and therefore entirely legal in all its results, was amatter of great moment, not to be achieved without many forms andceremonies. The reason for this elaboration is obvious, at any rateto any one who has some acquaintance with ancient life in Greece orItaly. As we shall see later on, the house was a residence for thedivine members of the family, as well as the human; the entrance, therefore, of a bride into the household, --of one, that is, who had nopart nor lot in that family life--meant some straining of the relationbetween the divine and human members. The human part of the familybrings in a new member, but it has to be assured that the divine partis willing to accept her before the step taken can be regarded ascomplete. She has to enter the family in such a way as to be able toshare in its sacra, i. E. In the worship of the household spirits, the ancestors in their tombs, or in any special cult attached to thefamily. In order to secure this eligibility, she was in the earliesttimes subjected to a ceremony which was clearly of a sacramentalcharacter, and which had as its effect the transference of the bridefrom the hand (manus) of her father, i. E. From absolute subjection tohim as the head of her own family, to the hand of her husband, i. E. Toabsolute subjection to him as the head of her new family. 

This sacramental ceremony was called _confarreatio_, because a sacredcake, made of the old Italian grain called _far_, and offered toJupiter Farreus, [205] was partaken of by bride and bridegroom, in thepresence of the Pontifex Maximus, the Flamen Dialis, and ten otherwitnesses. At such a ceremony the auspices had of course been taken, and apparently a victim was also slain, and offered probably to Ceres, the skin of which was stretched over two seats (sellae), on which thebride and bridegroom had to sit. [206] These details of the early formof patrician marriage are only mentioned here to make the religiouscharacter of the Roman idea of the rite quite plain; in other words, to prove that the entrance of a bride into a family from outside wasa matter of very great difficulty and seriousness, not to be achievedwithout special aid and the intervention of the gods. We may evengo so far as to say that the new materfamilias was in some sorta priestess of the household, and that she must undergo a solemninitiation before assuming that position. And we may still furtherillustrate the mystical religious nature of the whole rite, ifwe remember that throughout Roman history no one could hold thepriesthood of Jupiter (flaminium diale), or that of Mars or Quirinus, or of the Rex sacrorum, who had not been born of parents wedded byconfarreatio, and that in each case the priest himself must be marriedby the same ceremony. [207] This last mentioned fact may also serve toremind us that it was not only the family and its sacra, its life andits maintenance, that called for the ceremonies making up a iustummatrimonium, but also the State and its sacra, its life and itsmaintenance. [208] As confarreatio had as its immediate object theproviding of a materfamilias fully qualified in all her variousfunctions, and as its further object the providing of persons legallyqualified to perform the most important sacra of the state; somarriage, in whatever form, had as its object at once the maintenanceof the family and its sacra and the production of men able to servethe State in peace and war. To be a Roman citizen you must be theproduct of a iustum matrimonium. From this initial fact flow all the_iura_ or rights which together make up citizenship; whether theprivate rights, which enable you to hold and transfer and to inheritproperty under the shelter of the Roman law, [209] or the publicrights, which protect your person against violence and murder, andenable you to give your vote in the public assembly and to seekelection to magistracies. [210]

Marriage then was a matter of the utmost importance in Roman life, andin all the forms of it we find this importance marked by due solemnityof ritual. In two other forms, besides confarreatio, the bride couldbe brought under the hand of her husband, viz. , _coemptio_ and _usus_, with which we are not here specially concerned; for long before thelast century of the Republic all three methods had become practicallyobsolete, or were only occasionally used for particular purposes. Inthe course of time it had been found more convenient for a woman toremain after her marriage in the hand of her father, or if he weredead, in the "tutela" of a guardian (tutor), than to pass into thatof her husband; for in the latter case her property became absolutelyhis. The natural tendency to escape from the restrictions of marital_manus_ may be illustrated by a case such as the following: a womanunder the _tutela_ of a guardian wishes to marry; if she does so, andpasses under the _manus_ of her husband, her _tutor_ loses all controlover her property, which may probably be of great importance forthe family she is leaving; he therefore naturally objects to such amarriage, and urges that she should be married without _manus_. [211]In fact the interests of her own family would often clash with thoseof the one she was about to enter, and a compromise could be effectedby the abandonment of marriage _cum manu_. 

Now this, the abandonment of marriage _cum manu_, means simply thatcertain legal consequences of the marriage ceremony were dropped, and with them just those parts of the ceremony which produced theseconsequences. Otherwise the marriage was absolutely as valid for allpurposes private and public as it could be made even by confarreatioitself. The sacramental part was absent, and the survival of thefeatures of marriage by purchase, which we may see in the form ofcoemptio, was also absent; but in all other respects the marriageceremony was the same as in marriage _cum manu_. It retained allessential religious features, losing only a part of its legalcharacter. It will be as well briefly to describe a Roman wedding ofthe type common in the last two centuries of the Republic. 

To begin with, the boy and girl--for such they were, as we should lookon them, even at the time of marriage--have been betrothed, in allprobability, long before. Cicero tells us that he betrothed hisdaughter Tullia to Calpurnius Piso Frugi early in 66 B. C. ; themarriage took place in 63. Tullia seems to have been born in 76, sothat she was ten years old at the time of betrothal and thirteen atthat of marriage. This is probably typical of what usually happened;and it shows that the matter was really entirely in the hands of theparents. It was a family arrangement, a _mariage de convenance_, as has been and is the practice among many peoples, ancient andmodern. [212] The betrothal was indeed a promise rather than a definitecontract, and might be broken off without illegality; and thus ifthere were a strong dislike on the part of either girl or boy a way ofescape could be found. [213] However this may be, we may be sure thatthe idea of the marriage was not that of a union for love, though itwas distinguished from concubinage by an "affectio maritalis" as wellas by legal forms, and though a true attachment might, and often did, as in modern times in like circumstances, arise out of it. It was theidea of the service of the family and the State that lay at the rootof the union. This is well illustrated, like so many other Romanideas, in the _Aeneid_ of Virgil. Those who persist in looking onAeneas with modern eyes, and convict him of perfidy towards Dido, forget that his passion for Dido was a sudden one, not sanctioned bythe gods or by favourable auspices, and that the ultimate union withLavinia, for whom he forms no such attachment, was one which wouldrecommend itself to every Roman as justified by the advantage to theState. The poet, it is true, betrays his own intense humanity inhis treatment of the fate of Dido, but he does so in spite of histheme, --the duty of every Roman to his family and the State. A Romanwould no doubt fall in love, like a youth of any other nation, but hispassion had nothing to do with his life of duty as a Roman. This ideaof marriage had serious consequences, to which we shall return lateron. 

When the day for the wedding arrives, our bride assumes her bridaldress, laying aside the toga praetexta of her childhood and dedicatingher dolls to the Lar of her family; and wearing the reddish veil(_flammeum_) and the woollen girdle fastened with a knot called theknot of Hercules, [214] she awaits the arrival of the bridegroom inher father's house. Meanwhile the auspices are being taken;[215] inearlier times this was done by observing the flight of birds, but nowby examination of the entrails of a victim, apparently a sheep. Ifthis is satisfactory the youthful pair declare their consent to theunion and join their right hands as directed by a pronuba, i. E. Amarried woman, who acts as a kind of priestess. Then after anothersacrifice and a wedding feast, the bride is conducted from her oldhome to that of her husband, accompanied by three boys, sons of livingparents, one carrying a torch while the other two lead her by eitherhand; flute-players go before, and nuts are thrown to the boys. This_deductio_, charmingly described in the beautiful sixty-fifth poem ofCatullus, is full of interesting detail which must be omitted here. When the bridegroom's house is reached, the bride smears the doorpostswith fat and oil and ties a woollen fillet round each: she isthen lifted over the threshold, is taken by her husband into thepartnership of fire and water--the essentials of domestic life--andpasses into the atrium. The morrow will find her a materfamilias, sitting among her maids in that atrium, or in the more privateapartments behind it:

 Claudite ostia, virgines Lusimus satis. At boni Coniuges, bene vivite, et Munere assiduo valentem Exercete iuventam. 

Even the dissipated Catullus could not but treat the subject ofmarriage with dignity and tenderness, and in this last stanza of hispoem he alludes to the duties of a married pair in language whichwould have satisfied the strictest Roman. He has also touched anotherchord which would echo in the heart of every good citizen, in thedelicious lines which just precede those quoted, and anticipate thechild--a son of course--that is to be born, and that will lie inhis mother's arms holding out his little hands, and smiling on hisfather. [216] Nothing can better illustrate the contrast in the mindof the Roman between passionate love and serious marriage than acomparison of this lovely poem with those which tell the sordidtale of the poet's intrigues with Lesbia (Clodia). The beauty and_gravitas_ of married life as it used to be are still felt and stillfound, but the depths of human feeling are not stirred by them. Lovelies beyond, is a fact outside the pale of the ordered life of thefamily or the State. 

No one who studies this ceremonial of Roman marriage, in the light ofthe ideas which it indicates and reflects, can avoid the conclusionthat the position of the married woman must have been one ofsubstantial dignity, calling for and calling out a corresponding typeof character. Beyond doubt the position of the Roman materfamilias wasa much more dignified one than that of the Greek wife. She was farindeed from being a mere drudge or squaw; she shared with her husbandin all the duties of the household, including those of religion, andwithin the house itself she was practically supreme. [217] She lived inthe atrium, and was not shut away in a women's chamber; she nursed herown children and brought them up; she had entire control of the femaleslaves who were her maids; she took her meals with her husband, butsitting, not reclining, and abstaining from wine; in all practicalmatters she was consulted, and only on questions political orintellectual was she expected to be silent. When she went out arrayedin the graceful _stola matronalis_, she was treated with respect, and the passers-by made way for her; but it is characteristic ofher position that she did not as a rule leave the house without theknowledge of her husband, or without an escort. [218]

In keeping with this dignified position was the ideal character of thematerfamilias. Ideal we must call it, for it does not in all respectscoincide with the tradition of Roman women even in early times; butwe must remember that at all periods of Roman history the woman whosememory survives is apt to be the woman who is not the ideal matron, but one who forces herself into notice by violating the traditions ofwomanhood. The typical matron would assuredly never dream of playinga part in history; her influence was behind the scenes, and thereforeproportionally powerful. The legendary mother of Coriolanus (theVolumnia of Shakespeare), Cornelia the mother of the Gracchi, Aurelia, Caesar's mother, and Julia his daughter, did indirectly play a fargreater part in public life than the loud and vicious ladies who haveleft behind them names famous or infamous; but they never claimed therecognition of their power. 

This peculiar character of the Roman matron, a combination of dignity, industry, and practical wisdom, was exactly suited to attract theattention of a gentle philosopher like Plutarch, who loved, withgenuine moral fervour, all that was noble and honest in human nature. Not only does he constantly refer to the Roman ladies and theircharacter in his _Lives_ and his _Morals_, but in his series of morethan a hundred "Roman questions" the first nine, as well as manyothers, are concerned with marriage and the household life; and inhis treatise called _Coniugalia praecepta_ he reflects many ofthe features of the Roman matron. From him, in Sir Thomas North'stranslation, Shakespeare drew the inspiration which enabled him toproduce on the Elizabethan stage at least one such typical matron. InCoriolanus he has followed Plutarch so closely that the reader mayalmost be referred to him as an authority; and in the contrast betweenthe austere and dignified Volumnia and the passionate and voluptuousCleopatra of the later play, the poet's imagination seems to have beenguided by a true historical instinct. 

We need not doubt that the austere matron of the old type survivedinto the age we are specially concerned with; but we hardly comeacross her in the literature of the time, just because she was livingher own useful life, and did not seek publicity. Chance has indeedpreserved for us on stone the story of a wonderful lady, whose earlyyears of married life were spent in the trying time of the civil warsof 49-43 B. C. , and who, if a devoted husband's praises are to betrusted, as indeed they may be, was a woman of the finest Roman cast, and endowed with such a combination of practical virtues as we shouldhardly have expected even in a Roman matron. But we shall return tothis inscription later on. 

The ladies whom we meet with in Cicero's letters and in the otherliterature of the last age of the Republic are not of this type. Sincethe second Punic war the Roman lady has changed, like everything elseRoman. It is not possible here to trace the history of the changein detail, but we may note that it seems to have begun within thehousehold, in matters of dress and expense, and later on affected thelife and bearing of women in society and politics. Marriages cum manubecame unusual: the wife remained in the potestas of her father, whoin most cases, doubtless, ceased to trouble himself about her, and asher property did not pass to her husband, she could not but obtain anew position of independence. Women began to be rich, and in theyear 169 B. C. A law was passed (lex Voconia) forbidding women of thehighest census[219] (who alone would probably be concerned) to inheritlegacies. Even before the end of the great war, and when privateluxury would seem out of place, it had been proposed to abolish theOppian law, which placed restrictions on the ornaments and apparel ofwomen; and in spite of the vehement opposition of Cato, then a youngman, the proposal was successful. [220] At the same time divorce, whichhad probably never been impossible though it must have been rare, [221]began to be a common practice. We find to our surprise that thevirtuous Aemilius Paullus, in other respects a model paterfamilias, put away his wife, and when asked why he did so, replied that a womanmight be excellent in the eyes of her neighbours, but that only ahusband could tell where the shoe pinched. [222] And in estimating thechanged position of women within the family we must not forget thefact that in the course of the long and unceasing wars of the secondcentury B. C. , husbands were away from home for years together, and ininnumerable cases must have perished by the sword or pestilence, orfallen into the hands of an enemy and been enslaved. It was inevitablethat as the male population diminished, as it undoubtedly did inthat century, the importance of woman should proportionately haveincreased. Unfortunately too, even when the husbands were at home, their wives sometimes seem to have wished to be rid of them. In 180B. C. The consul Piso was believed to have been murdered by his wife, and whether the story be true or not, the suspicion is at leastsignificant. [223] In 154 two noble ladies, wives of consulares, wereaccused of poisoning their husbands and put to death by a council oftheir own relations. [224] Though the evidence in these cases is notby any means satisfactory, yet we can hardly doubt that there was atendency among women of the highest rank to give way to passion andexcitement; the evidence for the Bacchanalian conspiracy of 186 B. C. , in which women played a very prominent part, is explicit, and showsthat there was a "new woman" even then, who had ceased to be satisfiedwith the austere life of the family and with the mental comfortsupplied by the old religion, and was ready to break out intorecklessness even in matters which were the concern of the State. [225]That they had already begun to exercise an undue influence over theirhusbands in public affairs seems suggested by old Cato's famous dictumthat "all men rule over women, we Romans rule over all men, and ourwives rule over us. "[226]

But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the men themselveswere not equally to blame. Wives do not poison their husbands withoutsome reason for hating them, and the reason is not difficult to guess. It is a fact beyond doubt that in spite of the charm of family life asit has been described above, neither law nor custom exacted conjugalfaithfulness from a husband. [227] Old Cato represents fairly well theold idea of Roman virtue, yet it is clear enough, both from Plutarch's_Life_ of him (e. G. Ch. Xxiv. ) and from fragments of his own writings, that his view of the conjugal relation was a coarse one, --that helooked on the wife rather as a necessary agent for providing the Statewith children than as a helpmeet to be tended and revered. And thisbeing so, we are not surprised to find that men are already beginningto dislike and avoid marriage; a most dangerous symptom, with which acentury later Augustus found it impossible to cope. In the year 131, just after Tiberius Gracchus had been trying to revive the populationof Italy by his agrarian law, Metellus Macedonicus the censor did whathe could to induce men to marry "liberorum creandorum causa"; and afragment of a speech of his on this subject became famous afterwards, as quoted by Augustus with the same object. It is equallycharacteristic of Roman humour and Roman hardness. "If we could dowithout wives, " he said to the people, "we should be rid of thatnuisance: but since nature has decreed that we can neither livecomfortably with them nor live at all without them, we must e'en lookrather to our permanent interests than to a passing pleasure. "[228]

Now if we take into account these tendencies, on the part both of menand women in the married state, and further consider the stormyand revolutionary character of the half century that succeeded theGracchi, --the Social and Civil Wars, the proscriptions of Marius andSulla, --we shall be prepared to find the ladies of Cicero's time by nomeans simply feminine in charm or homely in disposition. Most of themare indeed mere names to us, and we have to be careful in weighingwhat is said of them by later writers. But of two or three of them wedo in fact know a good deal. 

The one of whom we really know most is the wife of Cicero, Terentia:an ordinary lady, of no particular ability or interest, who may standas representative of the quieter type of married woman. She lived withher husband about thirty years, and until towards the end of thatperiod, a long one for the age, we find nothing substantial againsther. If we had nothing but Cicero's letters to her, more than twentyin number, and his allusions to her in other letters, we shouldconclude that she was a faithful and on the whole a sensible wife. Butmore than once he writes of her delicate health, [229] and as the poorlady had at various times a great deal of trouble to go through, it isquite possible that as she grew older she became short in her temper, or trying in other ways to a husband so excitable and vacillating. Wefind stories of her in Plutarch and elsewhere which represent her asshrewish, too careful of her own money, and so on;[230] but facts areof more account than the gossip of the day, and there is not a sign inthe letters that Cicero disliked or mistrusted her until the year 47. Had there really been cause for mistrust it would have slipped out insome letter to Atticus. Then, after his absence during the war, he seems to have believed that she had neglected himself and hisinterests: his letters to her grow colder and colder, and the last isone which, as has been truly said, a gentleman would not write tohis housekeeper. The pity of it is that Cicero, after divorcing her, married a young and rich wife, and does not seem to have behaved verywell to her. In a letter to Atticus (xii. 32) he writes that Publiliawanted to come to him with her mother, when he was at Astura devotinghimself to grief for his daughter, and that he had answered that hewished to be let alone. The letter shows Cicero at his worst, for onceheartless and discourteous; and if he could be so to a young lady whowished to do her duty by him, what may he not have been to Terentia? Isuspect that Terentia was quite as much sinned against as sinning;and may we not believe that of the innumerable married women whowere divorced at this time some at least were the victims of theirhusbands' callousness rather than of their own shortcomings?

The wife of Cicero's brother Quintus does, however, seem to have beena difficult person to get on with. She was a sister of Atticus, butshe did not share her brother's tact and universal good-will. MarcusCicero has recorded (_ad Att. _ v. I) a scene in which her ill-temperwas so ludicrous that the divorce which took place afterwards needs noexplanation. The two brothers were travelling together, and Pomponiawas with them; something had irritated her. When they stopped to lunchat a place belonging to Quintus at Arcanum, he asked his wife toinvite the ladies of the party in. "Nothing, as I thought, could bemore courteous, and that too not only in the actual words, but in hisintention and the expression of his face. But she, in the hearing ofus all, exclaimed, 'I am only a stranger here!'" Apparently she hadnot been asked by her husband to see after the luncheon; this had beendone by a freedman, and she was annoyed. "There, " said Quintus, "thatis what I have to put up with every day!" When he sent her dishes fromthe triclinium, where the gentlemen were having their meal, she wouldnot taste them. This little domestic contretemps is too good to beneglected, but we must turn to women of greater note and character. 

Terentia and Pomponia and their kind seem to have had nothing in theway of "higher education, " nor do their husbands seem to have expectedfrom them any desire to share in their own intellectual interests. Notonce does Cicero allude to any pleasant social intercourse in whichhis wife took part; and, to say the truth, he would probably haveavoided marriage with a woman of taste and knowledge. There were suchwomen, as we shall see, probably many of them; ever since the incomingof wealth and of Greek education, of theatres and amusements and allthe pleasant out-of-door life of the city, what was now coming to becalled _cultus_ had occupied the minds and affected the habits ofRoman ladies as well as men. Unfortunately it was seldom that it wasfound compatible with the old Roman ideal of the materfamilias andher duties. The invasion of new manners was too sudden, as was thecorresponding invasion of wealth; such a lady as Cornelia, the famousmother of the Gracchi, "who knew what education really meant, who hadlearned men about her and could write well herself, and yet couldcombine with these qualities the careful discharge of the dutiesof wife and mother, "[231]--such ladies must have been rare, and inCicero's time hardly to be found. More and more the notion gainedground that a clever woman who wished to make a figure in society, tobe the centre of her own _monde_, could not well realise her ambitionsimply as a married woman. She would probably marry, play fast andloose with the married state, neglect her children if she had any, andafter one or two divorces, die or disappear. So powerfully did thisidea of the incompatibility of culture and wifehood gain possessionof the Roman mind in the last century B. C. , that Augustus found hisstruggle with it the most difficult task he had to face; in vain heexiled Ovid for publishing a work in which married women are mostfrankly and explicitly left out of account, while all that isattractive in the other sex to a man of taste and education is assumedto be found only among those who have, so far at least, eschewed theduties and burdens of married life. The culta puella and the cultuspuer of Ovid's fascinating yet repulsive poem[232] are the products ofa society which looks on pleasure, not reason or duty, as the mainend of life, --not indeed pleasure simply of the grosser type, but thegratification of one's own wish for enjoyment and excitement, withouta thought of the misery all around, or any sense of the self-respectthat comes of active well-doing. 

The most notable example of a woman of _cultus_ in Cicero's day wasthe famous Clodia, the Lesbia (as we may now almost assume) whofascinated Catullus and then threw him over. She had been married to aman of family and high station, Metellus Celer, who had died, strangeto say, without divorcing her. She must have been a woman of greatbeauty and charm, for she seems to have attracted round her a littlecôterie of clever young men and poets, to whom she could lend money oraccord praise as suited the moment. Whether Cicero himself had oncecome within reach of her attractions, and perhaps suffered by them, isan open question, and depends chiefly on statements of Plutarch whichmay (as has been said above) have no better foundation than the gossipof society. But we know how two typical young men of the time, Caeliusand Catullus, flew into the candle and were singed; we know howfiercely she turned on Caelius, exposing herself and him without amoment's hesitation in a public court; and we know how cruelly shetreated the poet, who hated her for it even while he still lovedher:[233]

 Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris; Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. 

CATULL. 85. 

She was, as M. Boissier has well said, [234] the exact counterpartof her still more famous brother: "Elle apportait dans sa conduiteprivée, dans ses engagements d'affection, les mêmes emportements etles mêmes ardeurs que son frère dans la vie publique. Prompte à tousles excès et ne rougissant pas de les avouer, aimant et haïssant avecfureur, incapable de se gouverner et détestant toute contrainte, ellene démentait pas cette grande et fière famille dont elle descendait. "All this is true; we need not go beyond it and believe the worst thathas been said of her. 

We have just a glimpse of another lady of _cultus_, but only aglimpse. This was Sempronia, the wife of an honest man and the motherof another;[235] but according to Sallust, who introduces her to us asa principal in the conspiracy of Catiline, she was one of those whofound steady married life incompatible with literary and artistictastes. "She could play and dance more elegantly than an honest womanshould . .. She played fast and loose with her money, and equally sowith her good fame. "[236] She had no scruples, he says, in denying adebt, or in helping in a murder: yet she had plenty of _esprit_, couldwrite verses and talk brilliantly, and she knew too how to assume anair of modesty on occasion. Sallust loved to colour his portraitshighly, and in painting this woman he saw no doubt a chance ofliterary effect; but that she was really in the conspiracy we cannotdoubt, and that she had private ends to gain by it is also probable. She seems to be the first of a series of ladies who during the nextcentury and later were to be a power in politics, and most of whomwere at least capable of crime, public and private. There is indeedone instance a few years earlier of a woman exercising an almostsupreme influence in the State, and a woman too of the worst kind. Plutarch tells us in the most explicit way that when Lucullus in 75B. C. Was trying to secure for himself the command against Mithridates, he found himself compelled to apply to a woman named Praecia, whosesocial gifts and good nature gave her immense influence, which sheused with the pertinacity peculiar to such ladies. Her reputation, however, was very bad, and among other lovers she had enslavedCethegus (afterwards the conspirator), whose power at the time wasimmense at Rome. Thus, says Plutarch, the whole power of the Statefell into the hands of Praecia, for no public measure was passed ifCethegus was not for it, in other words, if Praecia did not recommendit to him. If the story be true, as it seems to be, Lucullus gainedher over by gifts and flattery, and thus Cethegus took up his causeand got him the command. [237]

Even if we put aside as untrustworthy a great deal of what is told usof the relations of men and women in this period, it must be confessedthat there is quite sufficient evidence to show that they were loosein the extreme, and show an altogether unhealthy condition of familyand social life. The famous tigress of the story of Cluentius, Sassia, as she appears in Cicero's defence of him, was beyond doubt a criminalof the worst kind, however much we may discount the orator's rhetoric;and her case proves that the evil did not exist only at Rome, but wasto be found even in a provincial town of no great importance. Divorcewas so common as to be almost inevitable. Husbands divorcedtheir wives on the smallest pretexts, and wives divorced theirhusbands. [238] Even the virtuous Cato seems to have divorced his wifeMarcia in order that Hortensius should marry her, and after some yearsto have married her again as the widow of Hortensius, with a largefortune. [239] Cicero himself writes sometimes in the lightest-heartedway of conjugal relations which we should think most serious;[240]and we find him telling Atticus how he had met at dinner the actressCytheris, a woman of notoriously bad character. "I did not know shewas going to be there, " he says, "but even the Socratic Aristippushimself did not blush when he was taunted about Lais. "[241] Caesar'sreputation in such matters was at all times bad, and though many ofthe stories about him are manifestly false, his conquest by Cleopatrawas a fact, and we learn with regret that the Egyptian queen wasliving in a villa of his in gardens beyond the Tiber during the year46, when he was himself in Rome. 

It will be a relief to the reader, after spending so much time in thisunwholesome atmosphere, to turn for a moment in the last place to arecord, unique and entirely credible, of a truly good and wholesomewoman, and of a long period of uninterrupted conjugal devotion. Aboutthe year 8 B. C. , not long before Ovid wrote those poems in whichmarried life was assumed to be hardly worth living, a husband inhigh life at Rome lost the wife who had for forty-one years been hisfaithful companion in prosperity, his wise and courageous counsellorin adversity. He recorded her praises and the story of her devotion tohim in a long inscription, placed, as we may suppose, on the wall ofthe tomb in which he laid her to rest, and a most fortunate chance haspreserved for us a great part of the marble on which this inscriptionwas engraved. It is in the form of a laudatio, or funeral encomium;yet we cannot feel sure that he actually delivered it as a speech, for throughout it he addresses, not an audience, but the lost wifeherself, in a manner unique among such documents of the kind as havecome down to us. He speaks to her as though she were still living, though passed from his sight; and it is just this that makes it morereal and more touching than any memorial of the dead that has comedown to us from either Italy or Greece. [242]

In such a record names are of no great importance; it is no greatmisfortune that we do not know quite for certain who this man and hiswife were. But there is a very strong probability that her name wasTuria, and that he was a certain Q. Lucretius Vespillo, who servedunder Pompeius in Epirus in 48 B. C. , whose romantic adventures in theproscriptions of 43 are recorded by Appian, [243] and who eventuallybecame consul under Augustus in 19 B. C. We may venture to use thesenames in telling the remarkable story. For telling it here no apologyis needed, for it has never been told in English as a whole, so far asI am aware. 

It begins when the pair were about to be married, probably in 49 B. C. , and with a horrible family calamity, not unnatural at the moment ofthe outbreak of a dangerous civil war. Both Turia's parents weremurdered suddenly and together at their country residence--perhaps, as Mommsen suggested, by their own slaves. Immediately afterwardsLucretius had to leave with Pompeius' army for Epirus, and Turia wasleft alone, bereft of both her parents, to do what she could to securethe punishment of the murderers. Alone as she was, or aided only by amarried sister, she at once showed the courage and energy which areobvious in all we hear of her. She seems to have succeeded in trackingthe assassins and bringing them to justice: "even if I had been theremyself, " says her husband, "I could have done no more. "

But this was by no means the only dangerous task she had to undertakein those years of civil war and insecurity. When Lucretius left herthey seem to have been staying at the villa where her parents had beenmurdered; she had given him all her gold and pearls, and kept himsupplied in his absence with money, provisions, and even slaves, whichshe contrived to smuggle over sea to Epirus. [244] And during the marchof Caesar's army through Italy she seems to have been threatened, either in that villa or another, by some detachment of his troops, andto have escaped only through her own courage and the clemency of onewhose name is not mentioned, but who can hardly be other than thegreat Julius himself, a true gentleman, whose instinct and policyalike it was throughout this civil war to be merciful to opponents. 

A year later, while Lucretius was still away, yet another peril cameupon her. While Caesar was operating round Dyrrhachium, there was adangerous rising in Campania and Southern Italy, for which our giddyfriend Caelius Rufus was chiefly responsible; gladiators and ruffianlyshepherd slaves were enlisted, and by some of these the villa whereshe was staying was attacked, and successfully defended by her--somuch at least it seems possible to infer from the fragment recentlydiscovered. 

One might think that Turia had already had her full share of troubleand danger, but there is much more to come. About this time she had todefend herself against another attack, not indeed on her person, buton her rights as an heiress. An attempt was made by her relations toupset her father's will, under which she and Lucretius were appointedequal inheritors of his property. The result of this would have beento make her the sole heiress, leaving out her husband and hermarried sister; but she would have been under the legal _tutela_ orguardianship of persons whose motive in attacking the will was toobtain administration of the property. [245] No doubt they meant toadminister it for their own advantage; and it was absolutely necessarythat she should resist them. How she did it her husband does not tellus, but he says that the enemy retreated from his position, yieldingto her firmness and perseverance (constantia). The patrimonium came, as her father had intended, to herself and her husband; and he dwellson the care with which they dealt with it, he exercising a _tutela_over her share, while she exercised a _custodia_ over his. Verytouchingly he adds, "but of this I leave much unsaid, lest I shouldseem to be claiming a share in the praise that is due to you alone. "

When Lucretius returned to Italy, apparently pardoned by Caesarfor the part he had taken against him, the marriage must have beenconsummated. Then came the murder of the Dictator, which plunged Italyonce more into civil war, until in 43 Antony Octavian and Lepidus madetheir famous compact, and at once proceeded to that abominable work ofproscription which made a reign of terror at Rome, and spilt muchof the best Roman blood. The happiness of the pair was suddenlydestroyed, for Lucretius found himself named in the fatal lists. [246]He seems to have been in the country, not far from Rome, when hereceived a message from his wife, telling him of impending peril thathe might have to face at any moment, and warning him strongly againsta certain rash course--perhaps an attempt to escape to Sextus Pompeiusin Sicily, a course which cost the lives of many deluded victims. She implored him to return to their own house in Rome, where she haddevised a secure hiding-place for him. She meant no doubt to die withhim there if he were discovered. 

He obeyed his good genius and made for Rome, by night it would seem, with only two faithful slaves. One of these fell lame and had tobe left behind; and Lucretius, leaning on the arm of the other, approached the city gate. Suddenly they became aware of a troop ofsoldiers issuing from it, and Lucretius took refuge in one of the manytombs that lined the great roads outside the walls. They had not beenlong in this dismal hiding when they were surprised by a party oftomb-wreckers--ghouls who haunted these roads by night and lived byrobbing tombs or travellers. Luckily they wanted rather to rob than tomurder, and the slave gave himself up to them to be stripped, whilehis master, who was no doubt disguised, perhaps as a slave, contrivedto slip out of their hands and reached the city gate safely. Here hewaited, as we might expect him to do, for his brave companion, andthen succeeded in making his way into the city and to his house, wherehis wife concealed him between the roof and the ceiling of one oftheir bedrooms, until the storm should blow over. 

But neither life nor property was safe until some pardon andrestitution were obtained from one at least of the triumvirs. When atlast these were conceded by Octavian, he was himself absent in thecampaign that ended with Philippi, and Lepidus was consul in chargeof Rome. To Lepidus Turia had to go, to beg the confirmation ofOctavian's grace, and this brutal man received her with insult andinjury. She fell at his feet, as her husband describes with bitterindignation, but instead of being raised and congratulated, she washustled, beaten like a slave, and driven from his presence. Buther perseverance had its ultimate reward. The clemency of Octavianprevailed on his return to Italy, and this treatment of a lad; wasamong the many crimes that called for the eventual degradation ofLepidus. 

This was the last of their perilous escapes. A long period of happymarried life awaited them, more particularly after the battle ofActium, when "peace and the republic were restored. " One thing onlywas wanting to complete their perfect felicity--they had no children. It was this that caused Turia to make a proposal to her husband which, coming from a truly unselfish woman, and seen in the light of Romanideas of married life, is far from unnatural; but to us it must seemastonishing, and it filled Lucretius with horror. She urged that heshould divorce her, and take another wife in the hope of a son andheir. If there is nothing very surprising in this from a Roman pointof view, it is indeed to us both surprising and touching that sheshould have supported her request by a promise that she would be asmuch a mother to the expected children as their own mother, and wouldstill be to Lucretius a sister, having nothing apart from him, nothingsecret, and taking away with her no part of their inheritance. 

To us, reading this proposal in cold blood just nineteen hundred yearsafter it was made, it may seem foolishly impracticable; to her, whosewhole life was spent in unselfish devotion to her husband's interests, whose warm love for him was always mingled with discretion, it wassimply an act of pietas--of wifely duty. Yet he could not for a momentthink so himself: his indignation at the bare idea of it lives forever on the marble in glowing words. "I must confess, " he says, "thatthe anger so burnt within me that my senses almost deserted me: thatyou should ever have thought it possible that we could be separatedbut by death, was most horrible to me. What was the need of childrencompared with my loyalty to you: why should I exchange certainhappiness for an uncertain future? But I say no more of this: youremained with me, for I could not yield without disgrace to myself andunhappiness to both of us. The one sorrow that was in store for me wasthat I was destined to survive you. "

These two, we may feel sure, were wholly worthy of each other. Whatshe would have said of him, if he had been the first to go, we canonly guess; but he has left a portrait of her, as she lived and workedin his household, which, mutilated though it is, may be inadequatelyparaphrased as follows:

"You were a faithful wife to me, " he says, "and an obedient one: youwere kind and gracious, sociable and friendly: you were assiduous atyour spinning (lanificia): you followed the religious rites of yourfamily and your state, and admitted no foreign cults or degraded magic(superstitio): you did not dress conspicuously, nor seek to makea display in your household arrangements. Your duty to our wholehousehold was exemplary: you tended my mother as carefully as if shehad been your own. You had innumerable other excellences, in commonwith all other worthy matrons, but these I have mentioned werepeculiarly yours. "

No one can study this inscription without becoming convinced that ittells an unvarnished tale of truth--that here was really a rare andprecious woman; a Roman matron of the very best type, practical, judicious, courageous, simple in her habits and courteous to all herguests. And we feel that there is one human being, and one only, of whom she is always thinking, to whom she has given her wholeheart--the husband whose words and deeds show that he was whollyworthy of her. 

CHAPTER VI

THE EDUCATION OF THE UPPER CLASSES

From what has been said in preceding chapters of the duties and thehabits of the two sections of the upper stratum of society, it willreadily be inferred that the kind of education called for was onemainly of character. In these men, whether for the work of business orof government, what was wanted was the will to do well and justly, and the instinctive hatred of all evil and unjust dealing. Such aneducation of the will and character is supplied (whatever be itsshortcomings in other ways) by our English public school education, for men whose work in life is in many ways singularly like that of theRoman upper classes. Such an education, too, was outlined by Aristotlefor the men of his ideal state; and Mr. Newman's picture of theprobable results of it is so suggestive of what was really needed atRome that I may quote it here. [247]

"As its outcome at the age of twenty-one we may imagine a bronzed andhardy youth, healthy in body and mind, able to bear hunger and hardphysical labour . .. Not untouched by studies which awake in men theinterest of civilised beings, and prepare them for the right use ofleisure in future years, and though burdened with little knowledge, possessed of an educated sense of beauty, and an ingrained love ofwhat is noble and hatred of all that is the reverse. He would bemore cultivated and human than the best type of young Spartan, morephysically vigorous and reverential, though less intellectuallydeveloped, than the best type of young Athenian--a nascent soldier andservant of the state, not, like most young Athenians of ability, anascent orator. And as he would be only half way through his educationat an age when many Greeks had finished theirs, he would be moreconscious of his own immaturity. We feel at once how different hewould be from the clever lads who swarmed at Athens, youths with aninfinite capacity for picking holes, and capable of saying somethingplausible on every subject under the sun. "

If we note, with Mr. Newman, that Aristotle here makes if anything toolittle of intellectual training (as indeed may also be said of ourown public schools), and add to his picture something more of thatknowledge which, when united with an honest will and healthy body, will almost infallibly produce a sound judgment, we shall have a typeof character eminently fitted to share in the duties and the trials ofthe government of such empires as the Roman and the British. But atRome, in the age of Cicero, such a type of character was rare indeed;and though this was due to various causes, some of which have beenalready noticed, --the building up of a Roman empire before the Romanswere ripe to appreciate the duties of an imperial state, and thesudden incoming of wealth in an age when the idea of its productiveuse was almost unknown, --yet it will occur to every reader that theremust have been also something wrong in the upbringing of the youth ofthe upper classes to account for the rarity of really sound character, for the frequent absence of what we should call the sense of duty, public and private. I propose in this chapter to deal with thequestion of Roman education just so far as to show where in Cicero'stime it was chiefly defective. It is a subject that has been verycompletely worked out, and an excellent summary of the results willbe found in the little volume on Roman education written by the lateProfessor A. S. Wilkins, just before his lamented death: but he wasdescribing its methods without special reference to its defects, andit is these defects on which I wish more particularly to dwell. [248]

Let us notice, in the first place, how little is said in theliterature of the time, including biographies, of that period of lifewhich is now so full of interest to readers of memoirs, so full ofinterest to ourselves as we look back to it in advancing years. Itmay be that we now exaggerate the importance of childhood, but it isequally certain that the Romans undervalued the importance of it. Itmay be that we over-estimate the value of our public-school life, butit is certain that the Romans had no such school life to be proud of. Biography was at this time a favourite form of literature, and some ofthe memoirs then written were available for use by later writers, suchas Valerius Maximus, Suetonius, and Plutarch; yet it is curious howlittle has come down to us of the childhood or boyhood of the greatmen of the time. Plutarch indeed was deeply interested in education, including that of childhood, and we can hardly doubt that he wouldhave used in his Roman Lives any information that came in his way. Hedoes tell us something, for which we are eternally indebted to him, ofold Cato's method of educating his son, [249] and something too, in his_Life of Aemilius Paullus_, [250] of the education of the eldest son ofthat family, the great Scipio Aemilianus. But in each of these Liveswe shall find that this information is used rather to bring out thecharacter of the father than to illustrate the upbringing of the son;and as a rule the Lives begin with the parentage of the hero, and thenpass on at once to his early manhood. 

The Life of the younger Cato, however, is an exception to the rule, which we must ascribe to the attraction which all historians andphilosophers felt to this singular character. Plutarch knew the naiueand character of Cato's paedagogus, Sarpedon, [251] and tells us thathe was an obedient child, but would ask for the reason of everything, in those questions beginning with "why" which are often embarrassingto the teacher. Two stories in the second and third chapters of thisLife are also found in that insipid medley of fact and fable drawnup in the reign of Tiberius, by Valerius Maximus, for educationalpurposes;[252] a third, which is peculiarly significant, and seems tobear the stamp of truth, is only to be found in Plutarch. I give ithere in full:

"On another occasion, when a kinsman on his birthday invited some boysto supper and Cato with them, in order to pass the time they played ina part of the house by themselves, younger and older together: and thegame consisted of accusations and trials, and the arresting of thosewho were convicted. Now one of the boys convicted, who was of ahandsome presence, being dragged off by an older boy to a chamber andshut up, called on Cato for aid. Cato seeing what was going on came tothe door, and pushing through those who were posted in front of itto prevent him, took the boy out; and went off home with him in apassion, accompanied by other boys. "

This is a unique picture of the ways and games of boys in the lastcentury of the Republic. Like the children of all times, they play atthat in which they see their fathers most active and interested; andthis particular game must have been played in the miserable years ofthe civil wars and the proscriptions, as Cato was born in 95 B. C. Whether the part played by Cato in the story be true or not, thelesson for us is the same, and we shall find it entirely confirmedin the course of this chapter. The main object of education was themastery of the art of oratory, and the chief practical use of thatart was to enable a man to gain a reputation as an advocate in thecriminal courts. [253]

Cicero had one boy, and for several years two, to look after, one hisown son Marcus, born in 65 B. C. , and the other Quintus, the son ofhis brother, a year older. Of these boys, until they took the togavirilis, he says hardly anything in his letters to Atticus, thoughAtticus was the uncle of the elder boy. Only when his brother Quintuswas with Caesar in Gaul do we really begin to hear anything aboutthem, and even then more than once, after a brief mention of the youngQuintus, he goes off at once to tell his brother about the progressof the villas that are being built for him. But it is clear that thefather wished to know about the boy as well as about the villas;[254]and in one letter we find Cicero telling Quintus that he wishes toteach his boy himself, as he has been teaching his own son. "I'll dowonders with him if I can get him to myself when I am at leisure, forat Rome there is not time to breathe (nam Romae respirandi non estlocus). "[255] It is clear that the boys, who were only eleven andtwelve in this year 54, were being educated at home, and as clear toothat Cicero, who was just then very much occupied in the courts, hadno time to attend to them himself. Young Quintus, we hear, gets onwell with his rhetoric master; Cicero does not wholly approve thestyle in which he is being taught, and thinks he may be able to teachhim his own more learned style, though the boy himself seems to preferthe declamatory method of the teacher. [256] The last entry in theseletters to the absent father is curious:[257] "I love your Cicero ashe deserves and as I ought. But I am letting him leave me, because Idon't want to keep him from his masters, and because his mother isgoing away, --and without her I am nervous about his greediness!" Up tothis point he has written in the warmest terms of the boy, but here, as so often in Cicero's letters about other people, disapprobation isbarely hinted in order not to hurt the feelings of his correspondent. 

The one thing that is really pleasing in these allusions is thegenuine desire of both parents that their boys shall be of gooddisposition and well educated. But of real training or of homediscipline we unluckily get no hint. We must go elsewhere for whatlittle we know about the training of children. Let us now turn tothis for a while, remembering that it means parental example andthe discipline of the body as well as the acquisition of elementaryknowledge. Unfortunately, no book has survived from that age in whichthe education of children was treated of. Varro wrote such a book, but we know of it little more than its name, _Catus, sive de liberiseducandis_. [258] In the fourth book of his _de Republica_ Cicero seemsto have dealt with "disciplina puerilis, " but from the few fragmentsthat survive there is little to be learnt, and we may be pretty surethat Cicero could not write of this with much knowledge or experience. The most famous passage is that in which he quotes Polybius as blamingthe Romans for neglecting it;[259] certainly, he adds, they neverwished that the State should regulate the education of children, orthat it should be all on one model; the Greeks took much unnecessarytrouble about it. The Greeks of his own time whom Cicero knew did notinspire him with any exalted idea of the results of Greek education;but we should like to know whether in this book of his work on theState he did not express some feeling that on the children themselves, and therefore on their training, the fortunes of the State depend. Such had been the feeling of the old Romans, though their State laiddown no laws for education, but trusted to the force of tradition andcustom. Old Cato believed himself to be acting like an old Roman whenhe looked after the washing and dressing of his baby, and guided thechild with personal care as he grew up, writing books for his use inlarge letters with his own hand. [260] But since Cato's day the ideaof the State had lost strength; and this had an unfortunate effecton education, as on married life. The one hope of the age, the Stoicphilosophy, was concerned with those who had attained to reason, i. E. To those who had reached their fourteenth year; in the Stoic viewthe child was indeed potentially reasonable, and thus a subject ofinterest, but in the Stoic ethics education does not take a veryprominent place. [261] We are driven to the conclusion that a realinterest in education as distinct from the acquisition of knowledgewas as much wanting at Rome in Cicero's day as it has been till latelyin England; and that it was not again awakened until Christianity hadmade the children sacred, not only because the Master so spoke ofthem, but because they were inheritors of eternal life. 

Yet there had once been a Roman home education admirably suitedto bring up a race of hardy and dutiful men and women. It was aneducation in the family virtues, thereafter to be turned to accountin the service of the State. The mother nursed her own children andtended them in their earliest years. Then followed an education whichwe may call one in bodily activity, in demeanour, in religion, and induty to the State. It is true that we have hardly any evidence of thisbut tradition; but when Varro, in one of the precious fragments of hisbook on education, describes his own bringing up in his Sabine home atReate, we may be fairly sure that it adequately represents that ofthe old Roman farmer. [262] He tells us that he had a single tunicand toga, was seldom allowed a bath, and was made to learn to ridebareback--which reminds us of the life of the young Boer of theTransvaal before the late war. In another fragment he also tells usthat both boys and girls used to wait on their parents at table. [263]Cato the elder, in a fragment preserved by Festus, [264] says thathe was brought up from his earliest years to be frugal, hardy, andindustrious, and worked steadily on the farm (in the Sabine country), in a stony region where he had to dig and plant the flinty soil. Thetradition of such a healthy rearing remained in the memory of theRomans, and associated itself with the Sabines of central Italy, thetype of men who could be called _frugi_:

 rusticorum mascula militum proles, Sabellis docta ligonibus versare glebas et severae matris ad arbitrium recisos portare fustis. [265]

It was an education also in demeanour, and especially inobedience[266] and modesty. In that chapter of Plutarch's _Life ofCato_ which has been already quoted, after describing how the fathertaught his boy to ride, to box, to swim, and so on, he goes on, "Andhe was as careful not to utter an indecent word before his son, as hewould have been in the presence of the Vestal Virgins. " The _pudor_ ofchildhood was always esteemed at Rome: "adolescens pudentissimus" isthe highest praise that can be given even to a grown youth;[267] andthere are signs that a feeling survived of a certain sacredness ofchildhood, which Juvenal reflects in his famous words, "Maxima debeturpuero reverentia. " The origin of this feeling is probably to be foundin the fact that both boys and girls were in ancient times broughtup to help in performing the religious duties of the household, ascamilli and camillae (acolytes); and this is perhaps the reason whythey wore, throughout Roman history, the toga praetexta with thepurple stripe, like magistrates and sacrificing priests. [268] It ishardly necessary to say that this religious side of education was aneducation in the practice of cult, and not in any kind of creed orideas about the gods; but so far as it went its influence was good, asinstilling the habit of reverence and the sense of duty from a veryearly age. Though the Romans of Cicero's time had lost their oldconviction of the necessity of propitiating the gods of the State, itis probable that the tradition of family worship still survived in themajority of households. 

Again, we may be sure that the idea of duty to the State was notomitted in this old-fashioned education. Cato wrote histories for hisson in large letters, "so that without stirring out of the house, he might gain a knowledge of the illustrious actions of the ancientRomans, and of the customs of his country": but it is significant thatin the next two or three generations the writers of annals took toglorifying--and falsifying--the achievements of members of their ownfamilies, rather than those of the State as a whole. Boys learnt theXII Tables by heart, and Cicero tells us that he did this in his ownboyhood, though the practice had since then been dropped. [269] Thatancient code of law would have acted, we may imagine, as a kind ofcatechism of the rules laid down by the State for the conduct of itscitizens, and as a reminder that though the State had outgrown therough legal clothing of its infancy, it had from the very beginningundertaken the duty of regulating the conduct of its citizens in theirrelations with each other. Again, when a great Roman died, it is saidto have been the practice for parents to take their boys to hear thefuneral oration in praise of one who had done great service to theState. [270]

All this was admirable, and if Rome had not become a great imperialstate, and if some super-structure of the humanities could have beenadded in a natural process of development, it might have continuedfor ages as an invaluable educational basis. But the conditions underwhich alone it could flourish had long ceased to be. It is obviousthat it depended entirely on the presence of the parents and theirinterest in the children; as regards the boys it depended chiefly onthe father. Now ever since the Roman dominion was extended beyond sea, i. E. Ever since the first two Punic wars, the father of a family mustoften have been away from home for long periods; he might have toserve in foreign wars for years together, and in numberless casesnever saw Italy again. Even if he remained in Rome, the everincreasing business of the State would occupy him far more thanwas compatible with a constant personal care for his children. Theconscientious Roman father of the last two centuries B. C. Must havefelt even more keenly than English parents in India the sorrow ofparting from their children at an age when they are most in need ofparental care. We have to remember that in Cicero's day letter-writinghad only recently become possible on an extended scale through theincreasing business of the publicani in the provinces (see above, p. 74); the Roman father in Spain or Asia seldom heard of what his wifeand children were doing, and the inevitable result was that he beganto cease to care. In fact more and more came to depend on the mothers, as with our own hard-working professional classes; and we have seenreason to believe that in the last age of the Republic the averagemother was not too often a conscientious or dutiful woman. Theconstant liability to divorce would naturally diminish her interest inher children, for after separation she had no part or lot in them. Andthis no doubt is one reason why at this particular period we hear solittle of the life of children. There is indeed no reason to supposethat they themselves were unhappy; they had plenty of games, whichwere so familiar that the poets often allude to them--hoops, tops, dolls, blind man's buff, and the favourite games of "nuts" and"king. "[271] But the real question is not whether they could enjoytheir young life, but whether they were learning to use their bodiesand minds to good purpose. 

When a boy was about seven years old, the question would arise inmost families whether he should remain at home or go to an elementaryschool. [272] No doubt it was usually decided by the means at thecommand of the parents. A wealthy father might see his son through hiswhole education at home by providing a tutor (paedagogus), and moreadvanced teachers as they were needed. Cato indeed, as we have seen, found time to do much of the work himself, but he also had a slavewho taught his own and other children. Aemilius Paullus hadseveral teachers in his house for this purpose, under his ownsuperintendence. [273] Cicero too, as we have seen, seems to haveeducated his son at home, though he himself is said to have attended aschool. But we may suppose that the ordinary boy of the upper classeswent to school, under the care of a paedagogus, after the Greekfashion, rising before daylight, and submitting to severe discipline, which, together with the absolute necessity for a free Roman ofattaining a certain level of acquirement, effectually compelled him tolearn to read, write, and cipher. [274] This elementary work musthave been done well; we hear little or nothing of gross ignorance orneglected education. 

There were, however, very serious defects in this system of elementaryeducation. Not only the schoolmaster himself, but the paedagogus whowas responsible for the boy's conduct, was almost always either aslave or a freedman; and neither slave nor freedman could be an objectof profound respect for a Roman boy. Hence no doubt the necessity ofmaintaining discipline rather by means of corporal punishment (towhich the Romans never seem to have objected, though Quintiliancriticises it)[275] than by moral force; a fact which is attested bothin literature and art. The responsibility again which attached to thepaedagogus for the boy's morals must have been another inducement tothe parents to renounce their proper work of supervision. [276] Andonce more, the great majority of teachers were Greeks. As the boy wasborn into a bilingual Graeco-Roman world, of which the Greeks were theonly cultured people, this might seem natural and inevitable; but weknow that in his heart the Roman despised the Greek. Of witnesses intheir favour we might expect Cicero to be the strongest, but Cicerooccasionally lets us know what he really thinks of their moralcharacter. In a remarkable passage in his speech for Flaccus, whichis fully borne out by remarks in his private letters, he says that hegrants them all manner of literary and rhetorical skill, but thatthe race never understood or cared for the sacred binding force oftestimony given in a court of law. [277] Thus the Roman boy was in theanomalous position of having to submit to chastisement from men whomas men he despised. Assuredly we should not like our public schoolboysto be taught or punished by men of low station or of an inferiorstandard of morals It is men, not methods, that really tell ineducation; the Roman schoolboy needed some one to believe in some oneto whom to be wholly loyal; the very same overpowering need whichwas so obvious in the political world of Rome in the last centuryB. C. [278]

Of this elementary teaching little need be said here, as it did notbear directly on life and conduct. There is, however, one feature ofit which may claim our attention for a moment. Both in reading andwriting, and also for learning by heart, _sententiae_ [Greek: gnomai]were used, which remind us of our copy-book maxims. Of these we have alarge collection, more than 700, selected from the mimes of PubliliusSyrus, who came to Rome from Syria as a slave in the age of which weare writing, and after obtaining his freedom gained great reputationas the author of many popular plays of this kind, in which hecontrived to insert these wise saws and maxims. It is not likely thatthey found their way into the schools all at once, but in the earlyEmpire we find them already alluded to as educational material bySeneca the elder, [279] and we may take them as a fair example of themaxims already in use in Cicero's time, making some allowance fortheir superior neatness and wisdom. Here are a few specimens, takenalmost at random; it will be seen that they convey much shrewd goodsense, and occasionally have the true ring of humanity as well as theflavour of Stoic _sapientia_. I quote from the excellent edition byMr. Bickford-Smith. [280]

 Avarus ipse miseriae causa est suae. Audendo virtus crescit, tardando timor. Cicatrix conscientiae pro vulnere est. Fortunam[281] citius reperias quam retineas. Cravissima est probi hominis iracundia. Homo totiens moritur, quotiens amittit suos. Homo vitae commodatus, non donatus est. Humanitatis optima est certatio. Iucundum nil est, nisi quod reficit varietas. Malum est consilium quod mutari non potest. Minus saepe pecces, si scias quod nescias. Perpetuo vincit qui utitur clementia. Qui ius iurandum servat, quovis pervenit. Ubi peccat aetas maior, male discit minor. 

I have quoted these to show that Roman children were not withoutopportunity even in early schooldays of laying to heart much thatmight lead them to good and generous conduct in later life, as well asto practical wisdom. But we know the fate of our own copy-book maxims;we know that it is not through them that our children become good menand women, but by the example and the un-systematised precepts ofparents and teachers. No such neat [Greek gnomai] can do much goodwithout a sanction of greater force than any that is inherent inthem and such a sanction was not to be found in the ferula of thegrammaticus or the paedagogus. Once more it is men and not methodsthat supply the real educational force. 

Probably the greatest difficulty which the Roman boy had to face inhis school life was the learning of arithmetic; it was this, we mayimagine, that made him think of his master, as Horace did of theworthy Orbilius, [282] as a man of blows (plagosus). This is not theplace to give an account of the methods of reckoning then used; theywill be found fully explained in Marquardt's _Privatleben_, and compressed into a page by Professor Wilkins in his _RomanEducation_[283]. It is enough to say that they were as indispensableas they were difficult to learn. "An orator was expected, according toQuintilian (i. 10. 35), not only to be able to make his calculationsin court, but also to show clearly to his audience how he arrived athis results. " From the small inn-keeper to the great capitalist, everyman of business needed to be perfectly at home in reckoning sums ofmoney. The magistrates, especially quaestors and aediles, had staffsof clerks who must have been skilled accountants; the provincialgovernors and all who were engaged in collecting the tributes of theprovinces, as well as in lending the money to enable the tax-payers topay (see above, 71 foll. ), were constantly busy with their ledgers. The humbler inhabitants of the Empire had long been growing familiarwith the Roman aptitude for arithmetic. [284]

 Grais ingenium, Grais dedit ore rotundo Musa loqui, praeter laudem nullius avaris. Romani pueri longis rationibus assem discunt in partes centum diducere. "Dicat films Albini: si de quincunce remota est uncia, quid superat? poteras dixisse. " "triens. " "eu! rem poteris servare tuam. "[285]

This familiar passage may be quoted once more to illustrate thepractical nature of the Roman school teaching and the ends which itwas to serve. Utilitarian to the backbone, the ordinary Roman, likethe ordinary British, parent, wanted his son to get on in life; itwas only the parent of a higher class who sacrificed anything to theMuses, and then chiefly because in a public career it was _de rigueur_that the boy should not be ignorant or boorish. 

When the son of well-to-do parents had mastered the necessaryelements, he was advanced to the higher type of school kept by a_grammaticus_, and there made his first real acquaintance withliterature; and this was henceforward, until he began to studyrhetoric and philosophy, the staple of his work. We may note, by theway, that science, i. E. The higher mathematics and astronomy, was reckoned under the head of philosophy, while medicine andjurisprudence had become professional studies, [286] to learn which itwas necessary to attach yourself to an experienced practitioner, aswith the art of war In the grammar schools, as we may call them, thecourse was purely literary and humanistic, and it was conducted bothin Greek and Latin, but chiefly in Greek, as a natural result of thecomparative scantiness of Latin literature. [287] Homer, Hesiod, andMenander were the favourite authors studied; only later on, after thefull bloom of the Augustan literature, did Latin poets, especiallyVirgil and Horace, take a place of almost equal importance. The studyof the Greek poets was apparently a thorough one. It included theteaching of language, grammar, metre, style, and subject matter, andwas aided by reading aloud, which was reckoned of great importance, and learning by heart, on the part of the pupils. In the discussionof the subject matter any amount of comment was freely allowed tothe master, who indeed was expected to have at his fingers' endsexplanations of all sorts of allusions, and thus to enable the boys topick up a great deal of odd knowledge and a certain amount of history, mixed up of course with a large percentage of valueless mythology. "In grammaticis, " says Cicero, "poetarum pertractatio, historiarumcognitio, verborum interpretatio, pronuntiandi quidam sonus. "[288] Themethod, if such it can be called, was not at all unlike that pursuedin our own public schools, Eton, for example, before new methods andsubjects came in. Its great defect in each case was that it gave butlittle opportunity for learning to distinguish fact from fancy, or acquiring that scientific habit of mind which is now becomingessential for success in all departments of life, and which at Romewas so rare that it seems audacious to claim it even for such a man ofaction as Caesar, or for such a man of letters as Varro. In Englandthis defect was compensated to some extent by the manly tone of schoollife, but at Rome that side of school education was wanting, and theresult was a want of solidity both intellectual and moral. 

The one saving feature, given a really good and high-minded teacher, might be the appeal to the example of the great and good men of thepast, both Greek and Roman, and the study of their motives in action, in good fortune and ill. This is the kind of teaching which we findillustrated in the book of Valerius Maximus, which has already beenalluded to, who takes some special virtue or fine quality as thesubject of most of his chapters, [289]--fortitudo, patientia, abstinentia, moderatio, pietas erga parentes, amicitia, and so on, and illustrates them by examples and stories drawn mainly from Romanhistory, partly also from Greek. This kind of appeal to the young mindwas undoubtedly good, and the finest product of the method is theimmortal work of Plutarch, the Lives of the great men of Greece andRome, drawn up for ethical rather than historical purposes. But hereagain we must note a serious drawback. Any one who turns over thepages of Valerius will see that these stories of the great men of thepast are so detached from their historical surroundings that theycould not possibly serve as helps in the practical conduct of life;they might indeed do positive mischief, by leading a shallow reasonerto suppose that what may have been justifiable at one time and undercertain circumstances, regicide, for example, or exposure of oneselfin battle, is justifiable at all times and in all circumstances. Suchan appeal failed also by discouraging the habit of thinking about thefacts and problems of the day; and right-minded men like Cicero andCato the younger both suffered from this weakness of a purely literaryearly training. Another drawback is that this teaching inevitablyexaggerated the personal element in history, at the very time too whenpersonalities were claiming more than their due share of the world'sattention; and thus the great lessons which Polybius had tried toteach the Graeco-Roman world, of seeking for causes in historicalinvestigation, and of meditating on the phenomena of the world youlive in, were passed over or forgotten. 

But so far as the study of language, of artistic diction, ofelocution, and intelligent reading could help a boy to prepare himselffor life, this education was good; more especially good as laying afoundation for the acquirement of that art of oratory which, from oldCato's time onwards, had been the chief end to be aimed at by allintending to take part in public life. Cato indeed had well said tohis son, "Orator est, Marce fili, vir bonus dicendi peritus, "[290]thus putting the ethical stamp of the man in the first place; andhis "rem tene, verba sequentur" is a valuable bit of advice for alllearners and teachers of literature. But more and more the end of alleducation had come to be the art of oratory, and particularly the artas exercised in the courts of law, where in Cicero's time neithertruth nor fact was supreme, and where the first thing required wasto be a clever speaker, --a vir bonus by all means if you were sodisposed. But to this we shall return directly. 

In such schools, if he were not educated at home, the boy remainedtill he was invested with the toga virilis, or pura. In the lateRepublic this usually took place between the fourteenth andseventeenth years;[291] thus the two young Ciceros seem both to havebeen sixteen when they received the toga virilis, while Octavian andVirgil were just fifteen, and the son of Antony only fourteen. Informer times it seems probable that the boy remained "praetextatus"till he was seventeen, the age at which he was legally capable ofmilitary service, and that he went straight from the home to thelevy;[292] in case of severe military pressure, or if he wished ithimself, he might begin his first military exercises and even hisactive service, in the praetexta. But as in so many other ways, sohere the life of the city brought about a change; in a city boys areapt to develop more rapidly in intelligence if not in body, and as thetoga virilis was the mark of legal qualification as a man, they mightbe of more use to the family in the absence of the father if investedwith it somewhat earlier than had been the primitive custom. But therewas no hard and fast rule; boys develop with much variation bothmentally and physically, and, like the Eton collar of our ownschoolboys, the toga of childhood might be retained or droppedentirely at the discretion of the parents. 

There is, however, a great difference in the two cases in regardto the assumption of the manly dress. With us it does not meanindependence; as a rule the boy remains at school for a year or two atleast under strict discipline. At Rome it meant, on the contrary, thathe was "of age, " and in the eye of the law a man, capable of lookingafter his own education and of holding property. This was a survivalfrom the time when at the age of puberty the boy, as among allprimitive peoples, was solemnly received into the body of citizens andwarriors; and the solemnity of the Roman ceremony fully attests this. After a sacrifice in the house, and the dedication of his boyish togaand bulla to the Lar familiaris, he was invested with the plain togaof manhood (libera, pura), and conducted by his father or guardian, accompanied (in characteristic Roman fashion, see below, p. 271)by friends and relations, to the Forum, and probably also to thetabularium under the Capitol, where his name was entered in the listof full citizens. [293]

With the new arrangement, under which boys might become legally menat an earlier age than in the old days, it is obvious that there mustoften have been an interval before they were physically or mentallyqualified for a profession. As the sole civil profession to which boysof high family would aspire was that of the bar, a father would sendhis son during that interval to a distinguished advocate to be takenas a pupil. Cicero himself was thus apprenticed to Mucius Scaevola theaugur: and in the same way the young Caelius, as soon as he had takenhis toga virilis, was brought by his father to Cicero. The relationbetween the youth and his preceptor was not unlike that of the_contubernium_ in military life, in which the general to whom a ladwas committed was supposed to be responsible for his welfare andconduct as well as for his education in the art of war: thus Cicerosays of Caelius[294] that at that period of his life no one ever sawhim "except with his father or with me, or in the very well-conductedhouse of M. Crassus" (who shared with Cicero in the guardianship). "Fuit assiduus mecum, " he says a little farther on. This kind ofpupilage was called the _tirocinium fori_, in which a lad should bepursuing his studies for the legal profession, and also his bodilyexercises in the Campus Martius, so that he might be ready to servein the army for the single campaign which was still desirable if notabsolutely necessary. When he had made his first speech in a court oflaw, he was said _tirocinium ponere_, [295] and if it were a success, he might devote himself more particularly henceforward to the art andpractice of oratory. No doubt all really ambitious young men, whoaimed at high office and an eventual provincial government, would, like Caesar, endeavour to qualify themselves for the army as well asthe Forum. Cicero, however, whose instincts were not military, servedonly in one campaign, at the age of seventeen, and apparently headvised Caelius to do no more than this. Caelius served underQ. Pompeius proconsul of Africa, to whom he was attached as_contubernalis_, choosing this province because his father had estatesthere. [296] It was only on his return with a good character fromPompeius that he proceeded to exhibit his skill as an orator byaccusing some distinguished person--in this case the Antonius who wasafterwards consul with Cicero. [297]

To attain the skill in oratory which would enable the pupil to makea successful appearance in the Forum, he must have gone through anelaborate training in the art of rhetoric. Cicero does not tell uswhether he himself gave Caelius lessons in rhetoric, or whether hesent him to a professional teacher; he had himself written a treatiseon a part of the subject--the _de Inventione_ of 80 B. C. , the earliestof all his prose works--and was therefore quite able to give thenecessary instruction if he found time to do so. It is not the objectof this chapter to explain the meaning of rhetoric as the Graeco-Romanworld then understood it, or the theory of a rhetorical education;for this the reader must be referred to Professor Wilkins' littlebook, [298] or, better still, to the main source of our knowledge, the_Institutio Oratoris_ of Quintilian. Something may, however, be saidhere of the view taken of a rhetorical training by Cicero himself, very clearly expressed in the exordium of the treatise just mentioned, and often more or less directly reiterated in his later and moremature works on oratory. 

"After much meditation, " he says, "I have been led to the conclusionthat wisdom without eloquence is of little use to a state, whileeloquence without wisdom is often positively harmful, and never of anyvalue. Thus if a man, abandoning the study of reason and duty, whichis always perfectly straight and honourable, spends his whole time inthe practice of speaking, he is being brought up to be a hindranceto his own development, and a dangerous citizen. " This reminds us ofCato's saying that an orator is "vir bonus dicendi peritus. " Lessstrongly expressed, the same view is also found in the exordium ofanother and more mature treatise on rhetoric, by an author whose nameis unknown, written a year or two before that of Cicero: "Non enimparum in se fructus habet copia dicendi et commoditas orationis, sirecta intelligentia et definita animi moderatione gubernetur. "[299]We may assume that in Cicero's early years the best men felt that therhetorical art, if it were to be of real value to the individual andthe state, must be used with discretion, and accompanied by high aimsand upright conduct. 

Yet within a generation of the date when these wise words werewritten, the letters of Caelius show us that the art was used utterlywithout discretion, and to the detriment both of state and individual. The high ideal of culture and conduct had been lost in the actualpractice of oratory, in a degenerate age, full of petty ambitionsand animosities. We ourselves know only too well how a thing good initself as a means is apt to lose its value if raised into the place ofan end;--how the young mind is apt to elevate cricket, football, golf, into the main object of all human activity. So it was with rhetoric;it was the indispensable acquirement to enable a man to enjoythoroughly the game in the Forum, and thus in education it became thestaple commodity. The actual process of acquiring it was no doubt anexcellent intellectual exercise, --the learning rules of composition, the exercises in applying these rules, i. E. The writing of themes oressays (proposita, communes loci), in which the pupil had "to find andarrange his own facts, "[300] and then the declamatio, or exercise inactual speaking on a given subject, which in Cicero's day was calledcausa, and was later known as controversia. [301] Such practice musthave brought out much talent and ingenuity, like that of our owndebating societies at school and college. But there were two greatdefects in it. First, as Professor Wilkins points out, the subjectsof declamation were too often out of all relation to real life, e. G. Taken from the Greek mythology; or if less barren than usual, were farmore commonplace and flat than those of our debating societies. Toharangue on the question whether the life of a lawyer or a soldier isthe best, is hardly so inspiring as to debate a question of the dayabout Ireland or India, which educates in living fact as well as inthe rules of the orator's art. Secondly, the whole aim and object ofthis "finishing" portion of a boy's education was a false one. Eventhe excellent Quintilian, the best of all Roman teachers, believedthat the statesman (civilis vir) and the orator are identical: thatthe statesman must be vir bonus because the vir bonus makes the bestorator; that he should be sapiens for the same reason. [302] And theobject of oratory is "id agere, ut iudici quae proposita fuerint, vera et honesta _videantur_":[303] i. E. The object is not truth, butpersuasion. We might get an idea of how such a training would failin forming character, if we could imagine all our liberal educationsubordinated to the practice of journalism. But fortunately for us, inthis scientific age, words and the use of words no longer serve as thebasis of education or as the chief nurture of young life. We need tosee facts, to understand causes, to distinguish objective truth fromtruth reflected in books. But the perfect education must be a skilfulmingling of the two methods; and it may be as well to take care thatwe do not lose contact with the best thoughts of the best men, becausethey are contained in the literature we show some signs of neglecting. We may say of science what Cicero said of rhetoric, that it cannot dowithout sapientia. 

Of schools of philosophy I have already said something in the lastchapter, and as the study of philosophy was hardly a part of theregular curriculum of education properly so called, I shall pass itover here. The philosopher was usually to be found in wealthy houses, and if he were a wholesome person, and not a Philodemus, he mightassuredly exercise a good influence on a young man. Or a youth mightgo to Athens or Rhodes or to some other Greek city, to attend thelectures of some famous professor. Cicero heard Phaedrus the Epicureanat Rome and then Philo the Academician, who had a lasting influence onhis pupil, and then, at the age of twenty-seven, went to Greece fortwo years, studying at Athens, Rhodes, and elsewhere. Caesar also wentto Rhodes, and he and Cicero both attended the lectures of Molo inrhetoric, in which study, as well as in philosophy, lectures were tobe heard in all the great Greek cities. [304] Cicero sent his own sonto "the University in Athens" at the age of twenty, giving him anample allowance and doubtless much good advice. The young man soonoutran his allowance and got into debt; the good advice he seems tohave failed to utilise, and in fact gave his father considerableanxiety. 

The following letter, which seems to show that a youth who hadexcellent opportunities might still be lacking in principle andself-control, is the only one which survives of the letters ofundergraduates of that day. It was written by the young Cicero, afterhe had repented and undertaken to reform, not to his father himself, but to the faithful friend and freedman of his father, Tiro, whoafterwards edited the collection of letters in which he insertedit. [305] It is on the whole a pleasing letter, and seems to show realaffection for Tiro, who had known the writer from his infancy. It isa little odd in the choice of words, perhaps a trifle rhetorical. Thereader shall be left to decide for himself whether it is perfectlystraight and genuine. In any case it may aptly conclude this chapter. 

"I had been anxiously expecting letter-carriers day after day, when atlast they arrived forty-six days after they left you. Their arrivalwas most welcome to me. I took the greatest possible pleasure inthe letter of the kindest and best beloved of fathers, but your owndelightful letter put the finishing touch to my joy. So I no longerrepent of dropping letter-writing for a time, but am rather glad I didso, for my silence has brought me a great reward in your kindness. Iam very glad indeed that you accepted my excuse without hesitation. 

"I am sure, my dearest Tiro, that the reports about me which reach youanswer your best wishes and hopes. I will make them good, and I willdo my best that this beginning of a good report about me may daily berepeated. So you may with perfect confidence fulfil your promise ofbeing the trumpeter (buccinator) of my reputation. For the errors ofmy youth have caused me so much remorse and suffering, that it is notonly my heart that shrinks from what I did--my very ears abhor themention of it. I know for a fact that you have shared my trouble andsorrow, and I don't wonder; you always wished me to do well not onlyfor my sake but for your own. So as I have been the means of givingyou pain, I will now take care that you shall feel double joy on myaccount. 

"Let me tell you that my attachment to Cratippus is that of a sonrather than a pupil: I enjoy his lectures, but I am especially charmedby his delightful manners. I spend whole days with him, and often partof the night, for I get him to dine with me as often as I can. We havegrown so intimate that he often drops in upon us unexpectedly while weare at dinner, lays aside the stiff air of a philosopher, and joinsin our jests with the greatest good will. He is such a man, sodelightful, so distinguished, that you ought to make his acquaintanceas soon as ever you can. As for Bruttius, I never let him leave me. He is a man of strict and moral life, as well as being the mostdelightful company. Surely it is not necessary that in our dailyliterary studies there should never be any fun at all. I have taken alodging close to him, and as far as I can with my pittance I subsidisehis narrow means. I have also begun practising declamation in Greekwith Cassius; in Latin I like having my practice with Bruttius. Myintimate friends and daily company are those whom Cratippus broughtwith him from Mitylene, --good scholars, of whom he has the highestopinion. I also see a great deal of Epicrates the leading man atAthens, and Leonides, and people of that sort. So now you know how Iam going on. 

"You say something in your letter about Gorgias. The fact is that Ifound him very useful in my daily practice of declamation, but I putmy father's injunctions before everything else, and he had writtentelling me to give up Gorgias at once. I wouldn't shilly-shally aboutit, for fear my making a fuss might put some suspicion in my father'shead. Moreover it occurred to me that it would be offensive for meto express an opinion on a decision of my father's. However, yourinterest and advice are welcome and acceptable. 

"Your apology for want of time I readily accept, for I know how busyyou always are. I am very glad you have bought an estate, and you havemy best wishes for the success of your purchase. Don't be surprised atmy congratulations coming at this point in my letter, for it was atthe corresponding point in yours that you told me of this. You mustdrop your city manners (urbanitates); you are a 'rusticus Romanus!'How clearly I see your dearest face before me at this moment! I seemto see you buying things for the farm, talking to your bailiff, savingthe seeds at dessert in your cloak. But as to the matter of money, Iam sorry I was not there to help you. Don't doubt, my dear Tiro, about my helping you in the future, if fortune will but stand by me, especially as I know that this estate has been bought for our mutualadvantage. As to my commissions about which you are taking trouble, many thanks! I beg you to send me a secretary at the firstopportunity, if possible a Greek: for he will save me much trouble incopying out notes. Above all, take care of your health, that we mayhave some literary talk together some day. I commend Anteros to you. Adieu. "

CHAPTER VII

THE SLAVE POPULATION

In the last age of the Republic the employment of slave labour reachedits high-water mark in ancient history. [306] We have already met withevidence of this in examining the life of the upper classes; in thepresent chapter we must try to sketch, first, the conditions underwhich it was possible for such a vast slave system to arise andflourish, and secondly, the economical and ethical results of itboth in city and country. The subject is indeed far too large andcomplicated to be treated in a single short chapter, but our objectthroughout this book is only to give such a picture of society ingeneral as may tempt a student to further and more exact inquiry. 

We have seen that the two upper classes of society were engaged inbusiness of various kinds, and especially in banking and carryingout public contracts, or in the work of government, and in Italianagriculture. All this business, public and private, called for avast amount of labor, and in part, of skilled labour; the great menprovided the capital, but the details of the work, as it had graduallydeveloped since the war with Hannibal, created a demand for workmenof every kind such as had never before been known in the Graeco-Romanworld. Clerks, accountants, messengers, as well as operatives, werewanted both by the Government and by private capitalists. In thehouseholds of the rich the great increase of wealth and luxury hadled to a constant demand for helps of all kinds, each with a certainamount of skill in his own particular department; and on the estatesin the country, which were steadily growing bigger, and were tendingto be worked more and more on capitalistic lines, labour, both skilledand unskilled, was increasingly required. Thus the demand for labourwas abnormally great, and had been created with abnormal rapidity, and the supply could not possibly be provided by the free populationalone. The lower classes of city and country were not suited to thework wanted, either by capacity or inclination. It was not for a freeRoman to be at the beck and call of an employer, like the clerks andunderlings of to-day, or to act as servant in a great household; andfor a great part of the necessary work he was not sufficiently welleducated. Far less was it possible for him to work on the greatcattle-runs. And the State wanted the best years of his life forservice in the army, which, as has been well remarked, was the realindustry of the Roman freeman. But luckily in one sense, and inanother unluckily, for Rome, there was an endless supply of labourto be had, of every quality and capacity, for the very same abnormalcircumstances which had created the demand also provided the supply. The great wars and the wealth accruing from them in various ways hadproduced a capitalist class in need of labour, and also created aslave-market on a scale such as the world has never known before orsince. 

Ever since the time of Alexander and the wars of his successors witheach other and their neighbours, it is probable that the supply ofcaptives sold as slaves had been increasing; and in the second centuryB. C. The little island of Delos had come to be used as a convenientcentre for the slave trade. Strabo tells us in a well-known passagethat 10, 000 slaves might be sold there in a single day. [307] But Romeherself was in the time of Cicero the great emporium for slaves; thewars which were most productive of prisoners had been for long in thecentre and the west of the Mediterranean basin. All armies sent outfrom Rome were accompanied by speculators in this trade, who boughtthe captives as they were put up to auction after a battle, and thenundertook the transport to Rome of all who were suited for employmentin Italy or were not bought up in the province which was the seat ofwar. The enormous number of slaves thus made available, even if wemake allowance for the uncertainty of the numbers as they havecome down to us, surpasses all belief; we may take a few examples, sufficient to give some idea of a practice which had lasting andlamentable results on Roman society. 

After the campaign of Pydna and the overthrow of the Macedoniankingdom, Aemilius Paullus, one of the most humane of Romans, sold intoslavery, under orders from the senate, 150, 000 free inhabitants ofcommunities in Epirus which had sided with Perseus in the war. [308]After the war with the Cimbri and Teutones, 90, 000 of the latter and60, 000 of the former are said to have been sold;[309] and though thenumbers may be open to suspicion, as they amount again to 150, 000, thefact of an enormous capture is beyond question. Caesar, like AemiliusPaullus one of the most humane of Romans, tells us himself that on asingle occasion, the capture of the Aduatuci, he sold 53, 000 prisonerson the spot. [310] And of course every war, whether great or small, while it diminished the free population by slaughter, pestilence, orcapture, added to the number of slaves. Cicero himself, afterhis campaign in Cilicia and the capture of the hill strongholdPindonissus, did of course as all other commanders did; we catch aglimpse of the process in a letter to Atticus: "mancipia venibantSaturnalibus tertiis. "[311] It is hardly necessary to point out thatwe should be getting our historical perspective quite wrong if weallowed ourselves to expect in these cultured Roman generals anysign of compassion for their victims; it was a part of their mentalinheritance to look on men who had surrendered as simply booty, theproperty of the victors; Roman captives would meet with the same fate, and even for them little pity was ever felt. When Caesar in 49 withina few months dismissed two surrendered armies of Roman soldiers, onceat Corfinium and again in Spain, he was doubtless acting from motivesof policy, but the enslavement of Roman citizens by their fellowswould, we may hope, have been repugnant to him, if not to his ownsoldiers. [312]

War then was the principal source of the supply of slaves, but it wasnot the only one. When a slave-trade is in full swing, it will befostered in all possible ways. Brigandage and kidnapping were rifeall over the Empire and in the countries beyond its borders in thedisturbed times with which we are dealing. The pirates of Cilicia, until they were suppressed by Pompeius in 66, swarmed all over theMediterranean, and snapped up victims by raids even on the coasts ofItaly, selling them in the market at Delos without hindrance. Cicero, in his speech in support of the appointment of Pompey, mentions thatwell-born children had been carried off from Misenum under the veryeyes of a Roman praetor. [313] Caesar himself was taken by them when ayoung man, and only escaped with difficulty. In Italy itself, wherethere was no police protection until Augustus took the matter in hand, kidnapping was by no means unknown; the _grassatores_, as they werecalled, often slaves escaped from the prisons of the great estates, haunted the public roads, and many a traveller disappeared in thisway and passed the rest of his life in a slave-prison. [314] Varro, in describing the sort of slaves best suited for work on the greatsheep-runs, says that they should be such as are strong enough todefend the flocks from wild beasts and brigands--the latter doubtlessquite as ready to seize human beings as sheep and cattle. Andslave-merchants seem to have been constantly carrying on their tradein regions where no war was going on, and where desirable slaves couldbe procured; the kingdoms of Asia Minor were ransacked by them, andwhen Marius asked Nicomedes king of Bithynia for soldiers during thestruggle with the Cimbri, the answer he got was that there were noneto send--the slave-dealers had been at work there. [315] Every one willremember the line of Horace in which he calls one of these wretches a"king of Cappadocia. "[316]

There were two other sources of the slave supply of which howeverlittle need be said here, as the contribution they made wascomparatively small. First, slaves were bred from slaves, and on ruralestates this was frequently done as a matter of business. [317] Varrorecommends the practice in the large sheep-farms, [318] under certainconditions; and some well-known lines of Horace suggest that onsmaller farms, where a better class of slaves would be required, thesehome-bred ones were looked on as the mark of a rich house, "ditisexamen domus. "[319] Secondly, a certain number of slaves had becomesuch under the law of debt. This was a common source of slavery in theearly periods of Roman history, but in Cicero's day we cannot speak ofit with confidence. We have noticed the cry of the distressed freemenof the city in the conspiracy of Catiline, which looks as though theold law were still put in force; and in the country there are signsthat small owners who had borrowed from large ones were in Varro'stime in some modified condition of slavery, [320] surrendering theirlabour in lieu of payment. But all these internal sources of slaveryare as nothing compared with the supply created by war and theslave-trade. 

This supply being thus practically unlimited, prices ran comparativelylow, and no Roman of any considerable means at all need be, or was, entirely without slaves. He had only to go, or to send his agent, toone of the city slave-markets, such as the temple of Castor, [321]where the slave-agents (mangones) exhibited their "goods" under thesupervision of the aediles; there he could pick out exactly the kindof slave he wanted at any price from the equivalent of £10 upwards. The unfortunate human being was exhibited exactly as horses are now, and could be stripped, handled, trotted about, and treated with everykind of indignity, and of course the same sort of trickery went on inthese human sales as is familiar to all horse-dealers of the presentday. [322] The buyer, if he wanted a valuable article, a Greek, forexample, who could act as secretary or librarian, like Cicero'sbeloved Tiro, or even a household slave with a special character forskill in cooking or other specialised work of a luxurious family, would have to give a high price; even as long ago as the time of theelder Cato a very large sum might be given for a single choice slave, and Cato as censor in 184 attempted to check such high prices byincreasing the duties payable on the sales. [323] Towards the closeof the Republican period we have little explicit evidence of prices;Cicero constantly mentions his slaves, but not their values. Doubtlessfor fancy articles huge prices might be demanded; Pliny tells us thatAntony when triumvir bought two boys as twins for more than £800apiece, who were no doubt intended for handsome pages, perhaps toplease Cleopatra. [324] But there can be no doubt that ordinary slavescapable of performing only menial offices in town or country were tobe had at this time quite cheap, and the number in the city alone musthave been very great. 

It is unfortunately quite impossible to make even a probable estimateof the total number in Rome; the data are not forthcoming. Beloch[325]remarks aptly that though some families owned hundreds of slaves, thenumber of such families was not large, quoting the words of Philippus, tribune in 104 B. C. , to the effect that there were not more thantwo thousand persons of any substance in the State. [326] The greatmajority of citizens living in Rome had, he thinks, no slaves. He isforced to take as a basis of calculation the proportion of bond tofree in the only city of the Empire about which we have certaininformation on this point; at Pergamum there was one slave to two freepersons. [327] Assuming the whole free population to have been abouthalf a million in the time of Augustus, or rather more, includingperegrini, he thus arrives at a slave population of something like280, 000; this may not be far off the mark, but it must be rememberedthat it is little more than a guess. 

What has been said above will have given the reader some idea of theconditions of life which created a great demand for labour in thelast two centuries B. C. , and of the circumstances which produced anabundant supply of unfree labour to satisfy that demand. I proposenow to treat the whole question of Roman slavery from three points ofview, --the economic, the legal, and the ethical. In other words, wehave to ask: (1) how the abundance of slave labour affected the socialeconomy of the free population; (2) what was the position of the slavein the eye of the law, as regards treatment and chance of manumission;(3) what were the ethical results of this great slave system, both onthe slaves themselves and on their masters. 

1. From an economical point of view the most interesting question iswhether slave labour seriously interfered with the development of freeindustry; and unfortunately this question is an extremely difficultone to answer. We can all guess easily that the opportunities of freelabour must have been limited by the presence of enormous numbers ofslaves; but to get at the facts is another matter. In regard to ruralslavery we have some evidence to go upon, as we shall see directly, and this has of late been collected and utilised; but as regardslabour in the city no such research has as yet been made, [328] and thematerial is at once less fruitful and more difficult to handle. A fewwords on this last point must suffice here. 

We have seen in Chapter II. That there was plenty of employment atRome for freemen. Friedländer, than whom no higher authority can bequoted for the social life of the city, goes so far as to assert thateven under the early Empire a freeman could always obtain work if hewished for it;[329] and even if we take this as a somewhat exaggeratedstatement, it may serve to keep us from rushing to the other extremeand picturing a population of idle free paupers. In fact we are boundon general evidence to assume for our own period that he is in themain right; the poor freeman of Rome had to live somehow, and thecheap corn which he enjoyed was not given him gratis until a few yearsbefore the Republic came to an end. [330] How did he get the money topay even the sum of six asses and a third for a modius of corn, or topay for shelter and clothing, which were assuredly not to be had fornothing? We know again, that the gilds of trades (see above, p. 45)continued to exist in the last century of the Republic, [331] thoughthe majority had to be suppressed owing to their misuse as politicalclubs. Supposing that the members of these collegia were smallemployers of labour, it is reasonable to assume that the labour theyemployed was at least largely free; for the capital needed to invest, at some risk, in a sufficient number of slaves, who would have to behoused and fed, and whose lives would be uncertain in a crowded andunhealthy city, could not, we must suppose, be easily found by suchmen. Here and there, no doubt, we find traces of slave labour infactories, e. G. As far back as the time of Plautus, if we can take himas writing of Rome rather than translating from the Greek:

 An te ibi vis inter istas versarier Prosedas, pistorum amicas, reginas alicarias, Miseras schoeno delibutas servilicolas sordidas?[332]

 _Poenulus_, 265 foll. 

But on the whole, we may with all due caution, in default of completeinvestigation of the question, assume that the Roman slaves wereconfined for the most part to the great and rich families, and werenot used by them to any great extent in productive industry, butin supplying the luxurious needs of the household[333]. In allprobability research will show that free labour was far more availablethan we are apt to think. We hear of no outbreak of feeling againstslave labour, which might suggest a rivalry between the two. Slave labour, we may think, had filled a gap, created by abnormalcircumstances, and did not oust free labour entirely; but it tendedconstantly to cramp it, and doubtless started notions of work ingeneral which helped to degrade it[334]. Those immense _familiaeurbanae_, of which the historian of slavery has given a detailedaccount in his second volume[335], belong rather to the early Empirethan to the last years of the Republic--the evidence for them isdrawn chiefly from Seneca, Juvenal, Tacitus, Martial, etc. ; but suchevidence as we have for the age of Cicero seems to suggest that thevast palaces of the capitalists, which Sallust describes as beingalmost like cities[336], were already beginning to be served by afamilia urbana which rendered them almost independent of any aid fromwithout by labour or purchase. Not only the ordinary domestic helpersof all kinds, but copyists, librarians, paedagogi as tutors for thechildren, and even doctors might all be found in such households ina servile condition, without reckoning the great numbers who seemto have been always available as escorts when the great man wastravelling in Italy or in the provinces. Valerius Maximus tellsus[337] that Cato the censor as proconsul of Spain took only threeslaves with him, and that his descendant Cato of Utica during theCivil Wars had twelve; as both these men were extremely frugal, we canform an idea from this passage both of the increasing supply of slavesand of the far larger escorts which accompanied the ordinary wealthytraveller. 

As regards the familia rustica, the working population of the farm, the evidence is much more definite. The old Roman farm, in which thepaterfamilias lived with his wife, children, and slaves, was, nodoubt, like the old English holding in a manor, for the most partself-sufficing, doing little in the way of sale or purchase, andworked by all the members of the familia, bond and free. In the middleof the second century B. C. , when Cato wrote his treatise on husbandry, we find that a change has taken place; the master can only pay thefarm an occasional visit, to see that it is being properly managed bythe slave steward[338] (vilicus), and the business is being run uponcapitalistic lines, i. E. With a view to realising the utmost possibleprofit from it by the sale of its products. Thus Cato is mostparticular in urging that a farm should be so placed as to have easycommunication with market towns, where the wine and oil could be sold, which were the chief products, and where various necessaries could bebought cheap, such as pottery and metal-work of all kinds. [339] Thusthe farm does not entirely depend on the labour of its own familia;nevertheless it rests still upon an economic basis of slave labour. For an olivetum of 240 jugera Cato puts the necessary hands asthirteen in number, all non-free; for a vineyard of 100 jugera atsixteen; and these figures are no doubt low, if we remember hischaracter for parsimony and profit-making. [340] Free labour was to behad, and was occasionally needed; at the very outset of his workCato (ch. 4) insists that the owner should be a good and friendlyneighbour, in order that he may easily obtain, not only voluntaryhelp, but hired labourers (operarii). These were needed especially atharvest time, when extra hands were wanted, as in our hop-gardens, forthe gathering of olives and for the vintage. Sometimes the work waslet out to a contractor, and he gives explicit directions (in chs. 144and 145) for the choice of these and the contracts to be made withthem; whether in this case the contractor (redemptor) used entirelyfree or slave labour does not appear distinctly, but it seems clearthat a proportion at least was free. [341] What the free labourers didat other times of the year, whether or no they were small cultivatorsthemselves, Cato does not tell us. 

For the age with which we are more specially concerned, we have theevidence of Varro's three books on husbandry, written in his old age, after the fall of the Republic. Here we find the economic condition ofthe farm little changed since the time of Cato. The permanent labouris non-free, but in spite of the vast increase in the servile labouravailable in Italy, there is still a considerable employment offreemen at certain times, on all farms where the olive and vine werethe chief objects of culture. In the 17th chapter of his first book, in which he gives interesting advice for the purchase of suitableslaves, he begins by telling us that all land is cultivated eitherby slaves or freemen, or both together, and the free are of threekinds, --either small holders (pauperculi) with their children; orlabourers who live by wage (conducticii), and are especially needed inhay harvest or vintage; or debtors who give their labour as paymentfor what they owe (obaerati). [342] Varro too, like Cato, recognisesthe necessity of purchasing many things which cannot well bemanufactured on a farm of moderate size, and thus the landowner may inthis way also have been indirectly an employer of free labour; but sofar as possible the farm should supply itself with the materialsfor its own working, [343] for this gives employment to the slavesthroughout the year, --and they should never be allowed to beidle. [344]

Thus it is abundantly clear that even in the time of Cicero there wasa certain demand for free labour in the ordinary Italian oliveyard andvineyard, and that the necessary supply was forthcoming, though thepermanent industrial basis was non-free, and the tendency was to useslave-labour more exclusively. The rule that the slave cannot beallowed to be unemployed was a most important factor in the economicaldevelopment, and drove the landowner, who never seems to have had anydoubt about the comparative cheapness of slave-labour, [345] graduallyto make his farm more and more independent of all aid from outside. Inthe work of Columella, written towards the end of the first centuryA. D. , it is plain that the work of the farm is carried on moreexclusively by slave-labour than was the case in the last twocenturies B. C. [346]

To this not unpleasant picture of the conditions of Italianagricultural slavery a few words must be added about the greatpastoral farms of Southern Italy. If a man invested his capital in acomparatively small estate of olives and vineyards, such as that whichCato treats of, and which seems to have been his own; or even in alatifundium of the kind which Varro more vaguely pictures, containingalso parks and game and a moderate amount of pasture, he would needslaves mainly of a certain degree of skill. But on the largest areasof pasture, chiefly in the hill districts of Southern Italy, wherethere was little cultivation except what was necessary for theconsumption of the slaves themselves, these were the roughest andwildest type of bondsmen. The work was that of the American ranche, the life harsh, and the workmen dangerous. It was in these districtsand from these men that Spartacus drew the material with which he madehis last stand against Roman armies in 72-71 B. C. ; and it was inthis direction that Caelius and Milo turned in 48 B. C. In quest ofrevolutionary and warlike bands. These roughs could even be used asgalley-slaves; more than once in the Commentaries on the Civil WarCaesar tells us that his opponents drafted them into the vessels whichwere sent to relieve the siege of Massilia[347]. It was here too, inthe neighbourhood of Thurii, that a bloody fight took place betweenthe slaves of two adjoining estates, strong men of courage, as Cicerodescribes them, of which we learn from the fragments of his lostspeech _pro Tullio_. They were of course armed, and as we mayguess from Varro's remarks on the kind of slaves suitable forshepherding, [348] this was usually the practice, in order to defendthe flocks from wild beasts and robbers, particularly when they weredriven up to summer pasture (as they still are) in the saltus ofthe Apennines. The needs of these shepherds would be small, and thelatifundia of this kind were probably almost self-sufficing, no freelabour being required. After their day's work the slaves were fed andlocked up for the night, and kept in fetters if necessary;[349] theywere in fact simply living tools, to use the expression of Aristotle, and the economy of such estates was as simple as that of a workshop. The exclusion of free labour is here complete: on the agriculturalestates it was approaching a completion which it fortunately neverreached. Had it reached that completion, the economic influence ofslavery would have been altogether bad; as it was, the introductionof slave-labour on a large scale did valuable service to Italianagriculture in the last century B. C. By contributing the material forits revival at a time when the necessary free labour could not havebeen found. However lamentable its results may have been in otherways, especially on the great pastures, the economic history of Italy, when it comes to be written, will have to give it credit for anappreciable amount of benefit. 

2. The legal and political aspect of slavery. A slave was in the eyeof the law not a _persona_, but a _res_, i. E. He had no rights as ahuman being, could not marry or hold property, but was himself simplya piece of property which could be conveyed (res mancipi)[350]. Duringthe Republican period the law left him absolutely at the disposal ofhis master, who had the power of life and death (jus vitae necisque)over him, and could punish him with chastisement and bonds, and usehim for any purpose he pleased, without reference to any higherauthority than his own. This was the legal position of all slaves; butit naturally often happened that those who were men of knowledge orskill, as secretaries, for example, librarians, doctors, or evenas body-servants, were in intimate and happy relations with theirowners[351], and in the household of a humane man no well-conductedslave need fear bodily degradation. Cicero and his friend Atticus bothhad slaves whom they valued, not only for their useful service, butas friends. Tiro, who edited Cicero's letters after his death, and towhom we therefore owe an eternal debt of gratitude, was the objectof the tenderest affection on the part of his owner, and the lettersaddressed to him by the latter when he was taken ill at Patrae in 50B. C. Are among the most touching writings that have come down to usfrom antiquity. "I miss you, " he writes in one of them[352], "yes, butI also love you. Love prompts the wish to see you in good health: theother motive would make me wish to see you as soon as possible, --andthe former one is the best. " Atticus, too, had his Tiro, Alexis, "imago Tironis, " as Cicero calls him in a letter to his friend, [353]and many others who were engaged in the work of copying andtranscribing books, which was one of Atticus' many pursuits. All suchslaves would sooner or later be manumitted, i. E. Transmuted from a_res_ to a _persona_; and in the ease with which this process oftransmutation could be effected we have the one redeeming point of thewhole system of bondage. According to the oldest and most efficientform (vindicta), a legal ceremony had to be gone through in thepresence of a praetor; but the praetor could easily be found, andthere was no other difficulty. This was the form usually adopted by anowner wishing to free a slave in his own lifetime; but great numberswere constantly manumitted more irregularly, or by the will of themaster after his death. [354]

Thus the leading facts in the legal position of the Roman slave weretwo: (1) he was absolutely at the disposal of his owner, the law neverinterfering to protect him; (2) he had a fair prospect of manumissionif valuable and well-behaved, and if manumitted he of course became aRoman citizen (libertus or libertinus) with full civil rights, [355]remaining, however, according to ancient custom, in a certain positionof moral subordination to his late master, owing him respect, and aidif necessary. Let us apply these two leading facts to the conditionsof Roman life as we have already sketched them. We shall find thatthey have political results of no small importance. 

First, we must try to realise that the city of Rome contained atleast 200, 000 human beings over whom the State had no direct controlwhatever. All such crimes, serious or petty, as are now tried anddisposed of in our criminal courts, were then, if committed by aslave, punishable only by the master; and in the majority of cases, ifthe familia were a large one, they probably never reached his ears. The jurisdiction to which the slave was responsible was a private one, like that of the great feudal lord of the Middle Ages, who had his ownprison and his own gallows. The political result was much the same ineach case. Just as the feudal lord, with his private jurisdiction andhis hosts of retainers, became a peril to good government and nationalunity until he was brought to order by a strong king like our HenryII. Or Henry VII. , so the owner of a large familia of many hundredsof slaves may almost be said to have been outside of the State;undoubtedly he became a serious peril to the good order of thecapital. The part played by the slaves in the political disturbancesof Cicero's time was no mean one. One or two instances will show this. Saturninus, in the year 100, when attacked by Marius under ordersfrom the senate, had hoisted a pilleus, or cap of liberty which theemancipated slave wore, as a signal to the slaves of the city thatthey might expect their liberty if they supported him;[356] and Mariusa few years later took the same step when himself attacked by Sulla. Catiline, in 63, Sallust assures us, believed it possible to raise theslaves of the city in aid of his revolutionary plans, and they flockedto him in great numbers; but he afterwards abandoned his intention, thinking that to mix up the cause of citizens with that of slaveswould not be judicious. [357] It is here too that the gladiator slavesfirst meet us as a political arm; Cicero had the next spring to defendP. Sulla on the charge, among others, of having bought gladiatorsduring the conspiracy with seditious views, and the senate had todirect that the bands of these dangerous men should be dispersed toCapua and other municipal towns at a distance. Later on we frequentlyhear of their being used as private soldiery, and the government inthe last years of the Republic ceased to be able to control them. [358]Again, in defending Sestius, Cicero asserts that Clodius in histribunate had organised a levy of slaves under the name of collegia, for purposes of violence, slaughter, and rapine; and even if thisis an exaggeration, it shows that such proceedings were not deemedimpossible. [359] And apart from the actual use of slaves forrevolutionary objects, or as private body-guards, it is clear fromCicero's correspondence that as an important part of a great man'sretinue they might indirectly have influence in elections and onother political occasions. Quintus Cicero, in his little treatise onelectioneering, [360] urges his brother to make himself agreeable tohis tribesmen, neighbours, clients, freedmen, and even slaves, "fornearly all the talk which affects one's public reputation emanatesfrom domestic sources. " And Marcus himself, in the last letter hewrote before he fled into exile in 58, declares that all his friendsare promising him not only their own aid, but that of their clients, freedmen, and slaves, --promises which doubtless might have been kepthad he stayed to take advantage of them. [361]

The mention of the freedmen in this letter may serve to remind us ofthe political results of manumission, the second fact in the legalaspect of Roman slavery. The most important of these is the rapidimportation of foreign blood into the Roman citizen body, which longbefore the time of Cicero largely consisted of enfranchised slaves ortheir descendants; it was to this that Scipio Aemilianus alluded inhis famous words to the contio he was addressing after his return fromNumantia, "Silence, ye to whom Italy is but a stepmother" (Val. Max. 6. 2. 3). Had manumission been held in check or in some waysuperintended by the State, there would have been more good than harmin it. Many men of note, who had an influence on Roman culture, werelibertini, such as Livius Andronicus and Caecilius the poets; Terence, Publilius Syrus, whose acquaintance we made in the last chapter; Tiroand Alexis, and rather later Verrius Flaccus, one of the most learnedmen who ever wrote in Latin. But the great increase in the number ofslaves, and the absence of any real difficulty in effecting theirmanumission, led to the enfranchisement of crowds of rascals ascompared with the few valuable men. The most striking example is theenfranchisement of 10, 000 by Sulla, who according to custom tookhis name Cornelius, and, though destined to be a kind of militaryguarantee for the permanence of the Sullan institutions, only becamea source of serious peril to the State at the time of Catiline'sconspiracy. Caesar, who was probably more alive to this kind ofsocial danger than his contemporaries, sent out a great number oflibertini, --the majority, says Strabo, of his colonists, --to his newfoundation at Corinth[362]. But Dionysius of Halicarnassus, writingin the time of Augustus, when he stayed some time in Rome, draws aterrible picture of the evil effects of indiscriminate manumission, unchecked by the law[363]. 

"Many, " he says, "are indignant when they see unworthy men manumitted, and condemn a usage which gives such men the citizenship of asovereign state whose destiny is to govern the world. As for me, Idoubt if the practice should be stopped altogether, lest greater evilshould be the result; I would rather that it should be checked as faras possible, so that the state may no longer be invaded by men of suchvillainous character. The censors, or at least the consuls, shouldexamine all whom it is proposed to manumit, inquiring into theirorigin and the reasons and mode of their enfranchisement, as in theirexamination of the equites. Those whom they find worthy of citizenshipshould have their names inscribed on tables, distributed among thetribes, with leave to reside in the city. As to the crowd of villainsand criminals, they should be sent far away, under pretext of foundingsome colony. "

These judicious remarks of a foreigner only expressed what wasprobably a common feeling among the best men of that time. Augustusmade some attempt to limit the enfranchising power of the owner; butthe Leges Aelia Sentia and Furia Caninia do not lie within the compassof this book. No great success could attend these efforts; theabnormal circumstances which had brought to Rome the great familiaeof slaves reacted inevitably upon the citizen body itself through theprocess of manumission. Rome had to pay heavily in this, as in so manyother ways, for her advancement to the sovereignty of the civilisedworld. I may be allowed to translate the eloquent words in whichthe French historian of slavery, in whose great work the history ofancient slavery is treated as only a scholar-statesman can treat it, sums up this aspect of the subject:

"Emancipation, prevalent as it might appear to be towards thebeginning of the Empire, was not a step towards the suppression ofslavery, but a natural and inevitable sequence of the institutionitself, --an outlet for excess in an epoch overabundant in slaves: ameans of renewing the mass, corrupted by the deleterious influenceof its own condition, before it should be totally ruined. As water, diverted from its free course, becomes impure in the basin whichimprisons it, and when released, will still retain its impurity; soit is not to be thought that instincts perverted by slavery, habitsdepraved from childhood, could be reformed and redressed in the slaveby a tardy liberation. Thrust into the midst of a society itselfvitiated by the admixture of slavery, he only became moreunrestrainedly, more dangerously bad. Manumission was thus no remedyfor the deterioration of the citizens: it was powerless even to betterthe condition of the slave. "[364]

3. The ethical aspect of Roman slavery. What were the moral effects ofthe system (1) on the slaves themselves; (2) on the freemen who ownedthem?

First, as regards the slaves themselves, there are two facts to befully realised; when this is done, the inferences will be sufficientlyobvious. Let us remember that by far the greater number of theslaves, both in the city and on the land, were brought from countriesbordering on the Mediterranean, where they had been living in somekind of elementary civilisation, in which the germs of furtherdevelopment were present in the form of the natural ties of race andkinship and locality, of tribe or family or village community, andwith their own religion, customs, and government. Permanent captivityin a foreign land and in a servile condition snapped these ties onceand for all. To take a single appalling instance, the 150, 000 humanbeings who were sold into slavery in Epirus by the conqueror of Pydna, or as many of them as were transported out of their own country--andthese were probably the vast majority, --were thereby deprived for therest of their lives of all social and family life, of their ancestralworship, in fact of everything that could act as a moral tie, as arestraining influence upon vicious instincts. With the lamentableeffect of this on the regions thus depopulated we are not hereconcerned, but it was beyond doubt most serious, and must be takeninto account in reckoning up the various causes which later on broughtabout the enfeeblement of the whole Roman Empire. [365] The point forus is that a large proportion of the population of Rome and of Italywas now composed of human beings destitute of all natural means ofmoral and social development. The ties that had been once brokencould never be replaced. There is no need to dwell on the inevitableresult, --the introduction into the Roman State of a poisonous elementof terrible volume and power. 

The second fact that we have to grasp is this. In the old days, whensuch slaves as there then were came from Italy itself, and workedunder the master's own eye upon the farm, they might and did shareto some extent in the social life of the family, and even in itsreligious rites, and so might under favourable circumstances comewithin the range of its moral influences[366]. But towards the closeof the Republican period those moral influences, as we have seen, were fast vanishing in the majority of families which possessed largenumbers of slaves. The common kind of slave in the city, who was notattached to his owner as was a man of culture like Tiro, had no moralstandard except implicit obedience; the highest virtue was to obeyorders diligently, and fear of punishment was the only sanction of hisconduct. The typical city slave, as he appears in Plautus, though byno means a miserable being without any enjoyment of life, is a liarand a thief, bent on overreaching, and destitute of a conscience[367]. We need but reflect that the slave must often have had to do vilethings in the name of his one virtue, obedience, to realise thatthe poison was present, and ready to become active, in every Romanhousehold. "Nec turpe est quod dominus iubet. "[368]

On the latifundia in the country the master was himself seldomresident, and the slaves were under the control of one or more oftheir own kind, promoted for good conduct and capacity. The slaves ofthe great sheep and cattle farms were, as we saw, of the wildestsort, and we may judge of their morality by the story of theSicilian slave-owner who, when his slaves complained that they wereinsufficiently clothed, told them that the remedy was to rob thetravellers they fell in with. [369] The _ergastula_, where slaves werehabitually chained and treated like beasts, were sowing the seedsof permanent moral contamination in Italy. [370] But on the smallerestates of olive-yard and vineyard their condition was better, anda humane owner who chose his overseers carefully might possiblyreproduce something of the old feeling of participation in the life aswell as the industry of the economic unit. In an interesting chapterVarro advises that the vilicus should be carefully selected, andshould be conciliated by being allowed a wife and the means ofaccumulating a property (_peculium_); he even urges that he shouldenforce obedience rather by words than blows. [371] But of thecondition of the ordinary slave on the farm this is the only hint hegives us, and it never seems to have occurred to him, or to any otherRoman of his day, that the work to be done would be better performedby men not deprived by their condition of a moral sense; that slavelabour is unwillingly and unintelligently rendered, because thelabourer has no hope, no sense of dutiful conduct leading him torejoice in the work of his hands. Nor did any writer recognise thefact that slaves were potentially moral beings, until Christianitygave its sanction to dutiful submission as an act of morality thatmight be consecrated by a Divine authority. [372]

Lastly, it is not difficult to realise the mischievous effects of sucha slave system as the Roman upon the slave-owning class itself. Eventhose who themselves had no slaves would be affected by it; forthough, as we have seen, free labour was by no means ousted by it, it must have helped to create an idle class of freemen, with all itsmoral worthlessness. Long ago, in his remarkable book on _The SlavePower_ in America before the Civil War, Professor Cairnes drew astriking comparison between the "mean whites" of the Southern States, the result of slave labour on the plantations, and the idle populationof the Roman capital, fed on cheap corn and ready for any kind ofrowdyism. [373] But in the case of the great slave-owners the mischiefwas much more serious, though perhaps more difficult to detect. Themaster of a horde of slaves had half his moral sense paralysed, because he had no feeling of responsibility for so many of those withwhom he came in contact every day and hour. When most members of aman's household or estate are absolutely at his mercy, when he has nofeeling of any contractual relation with them, his sense of duty andobligation is inevitably deadened, even towards others who are notthus in his power. Can we doubt that the lack of a sense of justiceand right dealing, more especially towards provincials, but alsotowards a man's fellow-citizens, which we have noticed in the twoupper sections of society, was due in great part to the constantexercise of arbitrary power at home, to the habit of looking upon themen who ministered to his luxurious ease as absolutely without claimupon his respect or his benevolence? or that the recklessness of humanlife which was shown in the growing popularity of bloody gladiatorialshows, and in the incredible cruelty of the victors in the CivilWars, was the result of this unconscious cultivation, from childhoodonwards, of the despotic temper?[374] Even the best men of the age, such as Cicero, Caesar, Lucretius, show hardly a sign of any sympathywith, or interest in, that vast mass of suffering humanity, both bondand free with which the Roman dominion was populated; to disregardmisery, except when they found it among the privileged classes, hadbecome second nature to them. We can better realise this if we reflectthat even at the present day, in spite of the absence of slavery andthe presence of philanthropical societies, the average man of wealthgives hardly more than a passing thought to the discomfort anddistress of the crowded population of our great cities. The ordinarycallousness of human nature had, under the baleful influence ofslavery, become absolute blindness, nor were men's eyes to be openeduntil Christianity began to leaven the world with the doctrine ofuniversal love. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE HOUSE OF THE RICH MAN, IN TOWN AND COUNTRY

We saw that the poorer classes in Rome were lodged in huge _insulae_, and enjoyed nothing that can be called home life. The wealthyfamilies, on the other hand, lived in _domus_, i. E. Separatedwellings, accommodating only one family, often, even in theCiceronian period, of great magnificence. But even these great houseshardly suggest a life such as that which we associate with the wordhome. As Mr. Tucker has pointed out in the case of Athens, [375] thewarmer climates of Greece and Italy encouraged all classes to spendmuch more of their time out of doors and in public places than wedo; and the rapid growth of convenient public buildings, porticoes, basilicas, baths, and so on, is one of the most striking features inthe history of the city during the last two centuries B. C. Augustus, part of whose policy it was to make the city population comfortableand contented, carried this tendency still further, and under theEmpire the town house played quite a subordinate part in Romansocial life. The best way to realise this out-of-door life, lazy andsociable, of the Augustan age, is to read the first book of Ovid's_Ars Amatoria_, --a fascinating picture of a beautiful city and itspleasure-loving inhabitants. But with the Augustan age we are not hereconcerned. 

Yet the Roman house, like the Italian house in general, was in originand essence really a home. The family was the basis of society, and bythe family we must understand not only the head of the house withhis wife, children, and slaves, but also the divine beings who dweltthere. As the State comprised both human and divine inhabitants, soalso did the house, which was indeed the germ and type of the State. Thus the house was in those early times not less but even more than ahouse is for us, for in it was concentrated all that was dear tothe family, all that was essential to its life, both natural andsupernatural. And the two--the natural and supernatural--were notdistinct from each other, but associated, in fact almost identical;the hearth-fire was the dwelling of Vesta, the spirit of the flame;the Penates were the spirits of the stores on which the familysubsisted, and dwelt in the store-cupboard or larder; thepaterfamilias had himself a supernatural side, in the shape of hisGenius; and the Lar familiaris was the protecting spirit of thefarmland, who had found his way into the house in course of time, perhaps with the slave labourers, who always had a share in hisworship. [376]

It would probably be unjust to the Roman of the late Republic toassume that this beautiful idea of the common life of the human anddivine beings in a house was entirely ignored or forgotten by him. Nodoubt the reality of the belief had vanished; it could not be said ofthe city family, as Ovid, said of the farm-folk:[377]

 ante focos olim scamnis considere longis mos erat _et mensae credere adesse deos_. 

The great noble or banker of Cicero's day could no longer honestlysay that he believed in the real presence of his family deities; thekernel of the old feeling had shrunk away under the influence of Greekphilosophy and of new interests in life, new objects and ambitions. But the shell remained, and in some families, or in moments of anxietyand emotion, even the old feeling of _religio_ may have returned. Cicero is appealing to a common sentiment, in a passage alreadyonce quoted (_de Domo_, 109), when he insists on the real religiouscharacter of a house: "his arae sunt, his foci, his di penates: hissacra, religiones, caerimoniae continentur. " And this was in the heartof the city; in the country-house there was doubtless more leisure andopportunity for such feeling. In the second century B. C. Old Cato haddescribed the paterfamilias, on his arrival at his farm from thecity, saluting the Lar familiaris before he goes about his round ofinspection; and even Horace hardly shows a trace of the agnostic whenhe pictures the slaves of the farm, and the master with them, sittingat their meal in front of the image of the Lar[378]. We may perhapsguess that with the renewal of the love of country life, and withthat revival of the cultivation of the vine and olive, and indeed ofhusbandry in general, which is recognisable as a feature of the lastyears of the Republic, and which is known to us from Varro's workon farming, and from Virgil's _Georgics_, the old religion of thehousehold gained a new life. 

It is not necessary here to give any detailed account of the shapeand divisions of a Roman house of the city; full and excellentdescriptions may be found in Middleton's article "Domus" in the_Dictionary of Antiquities_, and in Lanciani's _Ruins and Excavationsof Ancient Rome_; and to these should be added Mau's work on Pompeii, where the houses were of a Roman rather than a Greek type. What we areconcerned with is the house as a home or a centre of life, and it isonly in this aspect of it that we shall discuss it here. 

The oldest Italian dwelling was a mere wigwam with a hearth in themiddle of the floor, and a hole at the top to let the smoke out. Butthe house of historical times was rectangular, with one central roomor hall, in which was concentrated the whole indoor life of thefamily, the whole meaning and purpose of the dwelling. Here the humanand divine inhabitants originally lived together. Here was the hearth, "the natural altar of the dwelling-room of man, " as Aust beautifullyexpresses it;[379] this was the seat of Vesta, and behind it was the_penus_ or store-closet, the seat of the Penates; thus Vesta and thePenates are in the most genuine sense the protecting and nourishingdeities of the household. Here, too, was the Lar of the familia withhis little altar, behind the entrance, and here was the _lectusgenialis_, [380] and the Genius of the paterfamilias. As you lookedinto the atrium, after passing the _vestibulum_ or space betweenstreet and doorway, and the _ostium_ or doorway with its _janua_, yousaw in front of you the impluvium, into which the rainwater fell fromthe _compluvium_, i. E. The square opening in the roof with slopingsides; on either side were recesses (_alae_), which, if the familywere noble, contained the images of the ancestors. Opposite you wasanother recess, the _tablinum_, opening probably into a little garden;here in the warm weather the family might take their meals. 

This is the atrium of the old Roman house, and to understand thathouse nothing more is needed. And indeed architecturally, the atriumnever lost its significance as the centre of the house; it is to thehouse as the choir is to a cathedral. [381] And it is easy to see hownaturally it could develop into a much more complicated but convenientdwelling; for example, the alae could be extended to form separatechambers or sleeping-rooms, the tablinum could be made into apermanent dining-room, or such rooms could be opened out on eitherside of it. A second story could be added, and in the city, wherespace was valuable, this was usually the case. The garden could beconverted, after the Greek fashion, and under a Greek name, into a_peristylium_, i. E. An open court with a pretty colonnade round it, and if there were space enough, you might add at the rear of thisagain an _exedra_, or an _oecus_, i. E. Open saloons convenient formany purposes. Thus the house came to be practically divided into twoparts, the atrium with its belongings, i. E. The Roman part, and theperistylium with its developments, forming the Greek part; and thehouse reflects the composite character of Roman life in its laterperiod, just as do Roman literature and Roman art. The Roman part wasretained for reception rooms, and the Lar, the Penates, and Vesta, with their respective seats, retired into the new apartments forprivacy. When the usual crowd of morning callers came to wait upon agreat man, they would not as a rule penetrate farther than the atrium, and there he might keep them waiting as long as he pleased. The Greekpart of the house, the peristylium and its belongings, was reservedfor his family and his most intimate friends. In Pompeii, which was anold Greek town with Roman life and habits superadded, we find atriumand peristylium both together as early as the second century B. C. [382]At what period exactly the house of the noble in Rome began thus todevelop is not so certain. But by the time of Cicero every good domushad without doubt its private apartments at the rear, varying in shapeand size according to the ground on which the house stood. [383]

The accompanying plan will give a sufficiently clear idea of thedevelopment of the domus from the atrium, and its consequent divisioninto two parts; it is that of "the house of the silver wedding" atPompeii. 

[Illustration: PLAN OF THE HOUSE OF THE SILVER WEDDING. From Mau's_Pompeii_. ]

But in spite of all the convenience and comfort of the fully developeddwelling of the rich man at Rome, there was much to make him sigh fora quieter life than he could enjoy in the noisy city. He mightindeed, if he could afford it, remove outside the walls to a "domussuburbana, " on one of the roads leading out of Rome, or on the hilllooking down on the Campus Martius, like the house of Sallust thehistorian, with its splendid gardens, which still in part exists inthe dip between the Quirinal and the Pincian hills. [384] But nowherewithin three miles or more of Rome could a man lose his sense of beingin a town, or escape from the smoke, the noise, the excitement of thestreets. After what has been said in previous chapters, thecrowd in the Forum and its adjuncts can be left to the reader'simagination; but if he wishes to stimulate it, let him lookat the seventh chapter of Cicero's speech for Plancius, wherethe orator makes use of the jostling in the Forum as anillustration so familiar that none can fail to understand it. [385] Arelief, of which a figure is given in Burn's _Roman Literature andRoman Art_, p. 79, gives a good idea of the close crowding, though nodoubt it was habitual with Roman artists to overcrowd their sceneswith human figures. Even as early as the first Punic war a lady couldcomplain of the crowded state of the Forum, and, with the grim humourpeculiar to Romans, could declare that her brother, who had just losta great number of Roman lives in a defeat by the Carthaginians, oughtto be in command of another fleet in order to relieve the city of moreof its surplus population. What then must the Forum have been twocenturies later, when half the business of the Empire was dailytransacted there! And even outside the walls the trouble did notcease; all night long the wagons were rolling into the city, whichwere not allowed in the day-time, at any rate after Caesar's municipallaw of 46 B. C. Like the motors of to-day, one might imagine that theirnoise would depreciate the value of houses on the great roads. Thecallers and clients would be here of a morning, as in the house withinthe walls; the bore might be met not only in the Via Sacra, likeHorace's immortal friend, but wherever the stream of life hurried withits busy eddies[386]. Lucilius drew a graphic picture of this feverishlife, which is fortunately preserved; it refers of course to a timebefore Cicero's birth (Fragm. 9, Baehrens):

 nunc vero a mani ad noctem, festo atque profesto, totus item pariter populus, plebesque patresque, iactare indu foro se omnes, decedere nusquam: uni se atque eidem studio omnes dedere et arti, verba dare ut oaute possint, pugnare dolose: blanditia certare, bonum simulare virum se: insidias facere, ut si hostes sint omnibus omnes. 

That this exciting social atmosphere, with its jostling andover-reaching in the Forum, and its callers and dinner-parties in thehouse, had some sinister influence on men's tempers and nerves, therecan be no doubt. Cicero dearly loved the life of the city, but he paidfor it by a sensibility which is constantly apparent in his letters, and diminished his value as a statesman. When he wrote from Cilicia tohis more youthful friend Caelius, urging him to stick to the city, inwords that are almost pathetic, it never occurred to him that he wasprescribing exactly that course of treatment which had done himselfmuch damage[387]. The clear sight and strong nerve of Caesar, ascompared with so many of his contemporaries, was doubtless largely dueto the fact that between 70 and 50 B. C. , i. E. In the prime of life, hespent some twelve of the twenty years in the fresher air of Spain andGaul. Some men were fairly worn out with dissipation and the resultingennui, and could get no relief even in a country villa. Lucretius hasdrawn a wonderful picture of such an unfortunate, who hurries fromRome into the country, and finding himself bored there almost as soonas he arrives, orders out his carriage to return to the city. To filloneself with good things, yet never to be satisfied (explere bonisrebus, satiareque nunquam), was even for the true Epicurean a mostdismal fate. [388]

But there was at this time, and had been for many generations, agenuine desire to escape at times from town to country; and Cicero, inspite of his pathetic exhortation to Caelius, was himself a keenlover of the ease and leisure which he could find only in hiscountry-houses. The first great Roman of whom we know that he had arural villa, not only or chiefly for farming purposes, but as a refugefrom the city and its tumult, was Scipio Africanus the elder. Hisvilla at Liternum on the Campanian coast is described by Seneca in his86th epistle; it was small, and without the comforts and conveniencesof the later country-house; but its real significance lies not so muchin the increasing wealth that could make a residence possible withouta farm attached to it, but in the growing sense of individuality thatmade men wish for such a retreat. There are other signs that Scipiowas a man of strong personality, unlike the typical Roman of his day;he put a value upon his own thoughts and habits, apart from his dutyto the State, and retired to Liternum to indulge them. The youngerScipio too (Aemilianus), though no blood-relation of his, had the sameinstinct, but in his case it was rather the desire for leisure andrelaxation, --the same love of a real holiday that we all know so wellin our modern life. "Leisure, " says Cicero, is not "contentio animised relaxatio"; and in a charming passage he goes on to describeScipio and Laelius gathering shells on the sea-shore, and becomingboys again (repuerascere). [389] This desire for ease and relaxation, for the chance of being for a while your true self, --a self worthsomething apart from its existence as a citizen, is apparent in theRoman of Cicero's day, and still more in the hard-working functionaryof the Empire. Twice in his life the morbid emperor Tiberius shrankfrom the eyes of men, once at Rhodes and afterwards at Capreae, --amelancholy recluse worn out by hard work. 

Everyman had to provide his own "health resort" in those days: therewas nothing to correspond to the modern hotel. Even at the greatluxurious watering-places on the Campanian coast, Baiae and Bauli, thehouses, so far as we know, were all private residences. [390] I do notpropose to include in this chapter any account of these centres ofluxury and vice, which were far indeed from giving any rest or reliefto the weary Roman; the society of Baiae was the centre of scandal andgossip, where a woman like Clodia, the Lesbia of Catullus, could livein wickedness before the eyes of all men. [391] Let us turn to a moreagreeable subject, and illustrate the country-house and the countrylife of the last age of the Republic by a rapid visit to Cicero'sown villas. This has fortunately been made easy for us by the verydelightful work of Professor O. E. Schmidt, whose genuine enthusiasmfor Cicero took him in person to all these sites, and inspired him towrite of them most felicitously. [392]

There being no hotels, among which the change-loving Roman of Cicero'sday could pick and choose a retreat for a holiday, he would buy a sitefor a villa first in one place, then in another, or purchase one readybuilt, or transform an old farm-house of his own into a residence with"modern requirements. " In choosing his sites he would naturally looksouthwards, and find what he sought for either in the choicer parts ofLatium, among the hills and woods of the Mons Albanus and Tusculum, or in the rich Campanian land, the paradise of the lazy Roman; in thelatter case, he would like to be close to the sea on that deliciouscoast, and even in Latium there were spots where, like Scipio andLaelius, he might wander on the sea-shore. All this country to thesouth was beginning to be covered with luxurious and convenienthouses; in the colder and mountainous parts of central Italy the villawas still the farm-house of the older useful type, of which the objectwas the cultivation of olive and vine, now coming into fashion, aswe have already seen. For Cicero and his friends the word _villa_ nolonger suggested farming, as it invariably did for the old Roman, andas we find it in Cato's treatise on agriculture; it meant gardens, libraries, baths, and collections of works of art, with plenty ofconvenient rooms for study or entertainment. Sometimes the gardenmight be extended into a park, with fishponds and great abundance ofgame; Hortensius had such a park near Laurentum, fifty jugera enclosedin a ring-fence, and full of wild beasts of all sorts and kinds. Varrotells us that the great orator would take his guests to a seat on aneminence in this park, and summon his "Orpheus" thither to sing andplay: at the sound of the music a multitude of stags, boars, and otheranimals would make their appearance--having doubtless been trainedto do so by expectation of food prepared for them. [393] Such was thetaste of the great master of "Asiatic" eloquence. We are reminded ofthe fairy tale of the Emperor of China and the mechanical nightingale. 

His great rival in oratory had simpler tastes, in his country life asin his rhetoric. Cicero had no villa of the vulgar kind of luxury; hepreferred to own several of moderate comfort rather than one or two ofsuch magnificence. He had in all six, besides one or two propertieswhich were bought for some special temporary object; and it isinteresting to see what relation these houses had to his life andhabits. At no point could he afford to be very far from Rome, or froma main road which would take him there easily. The accompanying littlemap will show that all his villas lay on or near to one or other ofthe two great roads that led southwards from the capital. The viaLatina would take him in an hour or two to Tusculum, where, sincethe death of Catulus in 68, he owned the villa of that excellentaristocrat. [394] The site of the villa cannot be determined withcertainty, but Schmidt gives good reasons for believing that it waswhere we used formerly to place it, on the slope of the hill aboveFrascati. That it really stood there, and not in the hollow byGrottaferrata, [395] we would willingly believe, for no one whohas ever been there can possibly forget the glorious view or therefreshing air of those flowery slopes. No wonder the owner was fondof it. He tells Atticus, when he first came into possession of it, that he found rest there from all troubles and toils (_ad Att. _ i. 5. 7. ), and again that he is so delighted with it that when he getsthere he is delighted with himself too (_ad Att. _ i. 6). Much of hisliterary work was done here, and he had the great advantage ofbeing close to the splendid library of Lucullus' neighbouringvilla, which was always open to him. [396] At Tusculum he spentmany a happy day, until his beloved daughter died there in 45, after which he would not go there for some time; but he got the betterof this sorrow, and loved the place to the end of his life. 

[Illustration: MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE POSITION OF CICERO'S VILLAS. ]

If this villa was where we hope it was, the great road passed at nogreat distance from it, in the valley between Tusculum and the MonsAlbanus; and by following this for some fifty miles to the south-eastthrough Latium, Cicero would strike the river Liris not far fromFregellae, and leaving the road there, would soon arrive at his nativeplace Arpinum, and his ancestral property. For this old home he alwayshad the warmest affection; of no other does he write in languageshowing so clearly that his heart could be moved by natural beauty, especially when combined with the tender associations of hisboyhood[397]. In the charming introduction to the second book ofhis work _de Legibus_ (on the Constitution), he dwells with genuinedelight on this feeling and these associations; and there too we geta hint of what Dr. Schmidt tells us is the peculiar charm of thespot, --the presence and the sound of water; for if he is right, thevilla was placed between two arms of the limpid little river Fibrenus, which here makes a delta as it joins the larger Liris[398]. 

But of this house we know for certain neither the site nor theplan, --not so much indeed as we know about a villa of the brotherQuintus, not far away, the building of which is described with suchexactness in a letter written to the absent owner[399], that Schmidtthinks himself justified in applying it by analogy to the villa ofthe elder brother. But such reasoning is hardly safe. What we do knowabout the old house is that it was originally a true villa rustica, --ahouse with land cultivated by the owner that Cicero's father, who hadweak health and literary tastes, had added to it considerably, andthat Cicero himself had made it into a comfortable country residence, with all necessary conveniences. He did not farm the ancestral landattached to it, either himself or by a bailiff, but let it in smallholdings[400] (praediola), and we could wish that he had told ussomething of his tenants and what they did with the land. It was not, therefore, a real farm-house, but a farm-house made into a pleasantresidence, like so many manor-houses still to be seen in England. Its atrium had no doubt retired (so to speak) into the rear of thebuilding, and had become a kitchen, and you entered, as in mostcountry-houses of this period, through a vestibule directly into aperistyle: some idea of such an arrangement may be gained from theaccompanying ground-plan of the villa of Diomedes just outsidePompeii, which was a city house adapted to rural conditions (villapseudurbana). [401]

If Cicero wished to leave Arpinum for one of his villas on theCampanian coast, he would simply have to follow the valley of theLiris until it reached the sea between Minturnae and Formiae, and atthe latter place, a lively little town with charming views over thesea, close to the modern Gaeta, he would find another house of hisown, --the next he added to his possessions after he inherited Arpinum. Formiae was a very convenient spot; it lay on the via Appia, and wasthus in direct communication both with Rome and the bay of Naples, either by land or sea. When Cicero is not resting, but on the move orexpecting to be disturbed, he is often to be found at Formiae, as inthe critical mid-winter of 50-49 B. C. ; and here at the end of March49 he had his famous interview with Caesar, who urged him in vain toaccompany him to Rome. Here he spent the last weary days of his life, and here he was murdered by Antony's ruffians on December 7, 43. 

[Illustration: PLAN OF THE VILLA OF DIOMEDES. From Man's _Pompeii_. ]

This villa was in or close to the little town, and therefore did notgive him the quiet he liked to have for literary work. It would seemthat the _bore_ existed elsewhere than at Rome; for in a short letterwritten from Formiae in April 59, he tells Atticus of his troublesof this kind: "As to literary work, it is impossible! My house is abasilica rather than a villa, owing to the crowds of visitors fromFormiae . .. C. Arrius is my next door neighbour, or rather he almostlives in my house, and even declares that his reason for not going toRome is that he may spend whole days with me here philosophising. Andthen, if you please, on the other flank is Sebosus, that friend ofCatulus! Which way am I to turn? I declare that I would go at once toArpinum, if this were not the most, convenient place to await yourvisit: but I will only wait till May 6: you see what bores arepestering my poor ears. "[402]

But his Campanian villas would be almost as easy to reach as Arpinum, if he wished to escape from Formiae and its bores. To the nearest ofthese, the one at or near Cumae, it was only about forty miles' drivealong the coast road, past Minturnae, Sinuessa, and Volturnum, allfamiliar halting-places. Of this "Cumanum, " however, we know verylittle: that volcanic region has undergone such changes that wecannot recover the site, and its owner never seems to have felt anyparticular attachment to it. It was in fact too near Baiae and Baulito suit a quiet literary man; the great nobles in their vast luxuriouspalaces were too close at hand for a _novus homo_ to be perfectlyat his ease there. Yet near the end of his life Cicero added tohis possessions another property in this neighbourhood, at or nearPuteoli, which was now fast becoming a city of great importance; butthis can be explained by the fact that a banker of Puteoli namedCluvius, an old friend of his, had just died and divided his propertyby will between Caesar and Cicero, --truly a tremendous will! Ciceroseems to have purchased Caesar's share, and to have looked on theproperty as a good investment. He began to build a villa here, but hadlittle chance of using it. It may have been here that he entertainedCaesar and his retinue at the end of the year 45, [403] as described byhim in the famous letter of December 21 (_ad Att_. Xiii. 52); when twothousand men had somehow to be provided for, and in spite of literaryconversation, Cicero could write that his guest was not exactly onewhom you would be in a hurry to see again. 

Across the bay, and just within view from the higher ground betweenBaiae and Cumae, lay the little town of Pompeii, under the sleepingVesuvius. Here, probably just outside the town, Cicero had a villa ofwhich he seems to have been really fond, and the society of a quietand gentle friend, M. Marius. Whether we can find the remains of thisvilla among the excavations of Pompeii is very doubtful: but ourexcellent guide Schmidt assures us that he has good reason forbelieving that one particular house, just outside the city on the leftside of the road in front of the Porta Herculanea, which has for novery convincing reason ever since its excavation in 1763 been calledthe Villa di Cicerone, really is the house we wish it to be. But alas!an honest man must confess that the identification wants certainty, and the chance of finding any object or inscription which may confirmit is now very small. 

If Cicero were summoned suddenly back to Rome for business, forensicor political, he would hasten first to Formiae and sleep there, andthence hurry, by the via Appia and the route so well known to usfrom Horace's journey to Brundisium, to another house in the littlesea-coast town of Antium. This was his nearest seaside residence, andhe often used it when unable to go far from Rome. After the death ofhis daughter in 45 he seems to have sold this house to Lepidus, and, unable to stay at Tusculum, where she died, he bought a small villaon a little islet called Astura, on the very edge of the Pomptinemarshes, and in that melancholy and unwholesome neighbourhood hepassed whole days in the woods giving way to his grief. Yet it wasa "locus amoenus, et in mari ipso, qui et Antio et Circeiis aspicipossit. [404]" It suited his mood, and here he stayed long, writingletter after letter to Atticus about the erection of a shrine to thelost one in some gardens to be purchased near Rome. 

This sketch of the country-houses of a man like Cicero may help usto form some idea of the changeful life of a great personage of theperiod. He did not look for the formation of steady permanent habitsin any one place or house; from an early age he was accustomed totravel, going to Greece or Asia Minor for his "higher education, "acting perhaps as quaestor, and again as praetor or consul, in someprovince, then returning to Rome only to leave it for one or other ofhis villas, and rarely settling down in one of these for any length oftime. It was not altogether a wholesome life, so far as the mindwas concerned; real thought, the working out of great problems ofphilosophy or politics, is impossible under constant change of scene, and without the opportunity of forming regular habits. [405] And thefact is that no man at this time seriously set himself to think outsuch problems. Cicero would arrive at Tusculum or Arpinum with somenecessary books, and borrowing others as best he could, would sit downto write a treatise on ethics or rhetoric with amazing speed, havingan original Greek author constantly before him. At places like Baiaeserious work was of course impossible, and would have been ridiculed. There was no original thinker in this age. Caesar himself was probablymore suited by nature to reason on facts immediately before him thanto speculate on abstract principles. Varro, the rough sensible scholarof Sabine descent, was a diligent collector of facts and traditions, but no more able to grapple hard with problems of philosophy ortheology than any other Roman of his time. The life of the averagewealthy man was too comfortable, too changeable, to suggest thedesirability of real mental exertion. 

Nor has this life any direct relation to material usefulness and theproductive investment of capital. Cicero and his correspondents nevermention farming, never betray any interest in the new movement, if such there was, for the scientific cultivation of the vine andolive. [406] For such things we must go to Varro's treatise, written, some years after Cicero's death, in his extreme old age. In the thirdbook of that invaluable work we shall find all we want to know aboutthe real _villa rustica_ of the time, --the working farm-house with itswine-vats and olive-mills, like that recently excavated at Boscorealenear Pompeii. Yet it would be unfair to such men as Cicero and hisfriends, the wiser and quieter section of the aristocracy, to calltheir work altogether unproductive. True, it left little permanentimpress on human modes of thought; it wrought no material change forthe better in Italy or the Empire. We may go so far as to allowthat it initiated that habit of dilettantism which we find alreadyexaggerated in the age lately illuminated for us by Professor Dill inhis book on _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_, and far moreexaggerated in the last age of Roman society, which the same authorhas depicted in his earlier work. But it may be doubted whether underany circumstances the Romans could have produced a great prophet or agreat philosopher; and the most valuable work they did was ofanother kind. It lay in the humanisation of society by the rationaldevelopment of law, and by the communication of Greek thought andliterature to the western world. This was what occupied the best daysof Cicero and Sulpicius Rufus and many others; and they succeeded atthe same time in creating for its expression one of the most perfectprose languages that the world has ever known or will know. They didit too, helping each other by kindly and cheering intercourse, --the_humanitas_ of daily life. It is exactly this humanitas that thenorthern mind of Mommsen, in spite of its vein of passionate romance, could not understand; all the softer side of that pleasant existenceamong the villas and statues and libraries was to him simplycontemptible. Let us hope that he has done no permanent damage tothe credit of Cicero, and of the many lesser men who lived the samehonourable and elegant life. 

CHAPTER IX

THE DAILY LIFE OF THE WELL-TO-DO

Before giving some account of the way in which a Roman ofconsideration spent his day in the time of Cicero, it seems necessaryto explain briefly how he reckoned the divisions of the day. 

The old Latin farmer knew nothing of hours or clocks. He simply wentabout his daily work with the sun and the light as guides, rising ator before sunrise, working till noon, and, after a meal and a rest, resuming his work till sunset. This simple method of reckoning wouldsuffice in a sunny climate, even when life and business became morecomplicated; and it is a fact that the division of the day into hourswas not known at Rome until the introduction of the sun-dial in 263B. C. [407] We may well find it hard to understand how such business asthe meeting of the senate, of the comitia, or the exercitus, couldhave been fixed to particular times under such circumstances; perhapsthe best way of explaining it is by noting that the Romans were veryearly in their habits, and that sunrise is a point of time aboutwhich there can be no mistake[408]. But in any case the date of theintroduction of the sun-dial, which almost exactly corresponds withthe beginning of the Punic wars and the vast increase of civilbusiness arising out of them, may suggest at once the primitivecondition of the old Roman mind and habit, and the way in which theRomans had to learn from other peoples how to save and arrange thetime that was beginning to be so precious. 

This first sun-dial came from Catina in Sicily, and was thereforequite unsuited to indicate the hours at Rome. Nevertheless Romecontrived to do with it until nearly a century had elapsed; at last, in 159 B. C. , a dial calculated on the latitude of Rome was placed bythe side of it by the censor Q. Marcius Philippus. These two dialswere fixed on pillars behind the Rostra in the Forum, the mostconvenient place for regulating public business, and there theyremained even in the time of Cicero[409]. But in the censorship nextfollowing that of Philippus the first water-clock was introduced; thisindicated the hours both of day and night, and enabled every one tomark the exact time even on cloudy days[410]. 

Thus from the time of the Punic wars the city population reckoned timeby hours, i. E. Twelve divisions of the day; but as they continued toreckon the day from sunrise to sunset on the principle of the oldagricultural practice, these twelve hours varied in length atdifferent times of the year. In mid-winter the hours were only aboutforty-four minutes in length, while at mid-summer they were aboutseventy-five, and they corresponded with ours only at the twoequinoxes. [411] This, of course, made the construction of accuratedials and water-clocks a matter of considerable difficulty. It is notnecessary here to explain how the difficulties were overcome; thereader may be referred to the article "Horologium" in the _Dictionaryof Antiquities_, and especially to the cuts there given of the dialfound at Tusculum in 1761. [412]

Sun-dials, once introduced with the proper reckoning for latitude, soon came into general use, and a considerable number still survivewhich have been found in Rome. In a fragment of a comedy by an unknownauthor, ascribed to the last century B. C. , Rome is described as "fullof sun-dials, "[413] and many have been discovered in other Romantowns, including several at Pompeii. But for the ordinary Roman, whopossessed no sun-dial or was not within reach of one, the dayfell into four convenient divisions, as with us it falls intothree, --morning, afternoon, and evening. As they rose much earlierthan we do, the hours up to noon were divided into two parts: (1)_mane_, or morning, which lasted from sunrise to the beginning of thethird hour, and (2) _ad meridiem_, or forenoon; then followed _demeridie_, i. E. Afternoon, and _suprema_, from about the ninth ortenth hour till sunset. The authority for these handy divisions isCensorinus, _De die natali_ (23. 9, 24. 3). There seems to be nodoubt that they originated in the management of civil business, andespecially in that of the praetor's court, which normally began at thethird hour, i. E. The beginning of ad meridiem, and went on till thesuprema (tempestas diei), which originally meant sunset, but by a lexPlaetoria was extended to include the hour or two before dark. 

The first thing to note in studying the daily life at Rome is that theRomans, like the Greeks, were busy much earlier in the morning thanwe are. In part this was the result of their comfortable southernclimate, where the nights are never so long as with us, and where theearly mornings are not so chilly and damp in summer or so coldin winter. But it was probably still more the effect of the veryimperfect lighting of houses, which made it difficult to carry onwork, especially reading and writing, after dark, and suggested earlyretirement to bed and early rising in the morning. The streets, wemust remember, were not lighted except on great occasions, and it wasnot till late in Roman history that public places and entertainmentscould be frequented after dark. In early times the oil-lamp with awick was unknown, and private houses were lighted by torches and rudecandles of wax or tallow. [414] The introduction of the use of oliveoil, which was first imported from Greece and the East and thenproduced in Italy, brought with it the manufacture of lamps of variouskinds, great and small; and as the cultivation of the valuable tree, so easily grown in Italy, increased in the last century B. C. , [415] theoil-lamp became universal in houses, baths, etc. Even in the small oldbaths of Pompeii there were found about a thousand lamps, obviouslyused for illumination after dark. [416] But in spite of this and of theinvention of candelabra for extending the use of candles, it was neverpossible for the Roman to turn night into day as we do in our moderntown-life. We must look on the lighting of the streets as quite anexceptional event. This happened, for example, on the night of thefamous fifth of December 63 B. C. , when Cicero returned to his houseafter the execution of the conspirators; people placed lamps andtorches at their doors, and women showed lights from the roofs of thehouses. 

An industrious man, especially in winter, when this want of artificiallight made time most valuable, would often begin his work beforedaylight; he might have a speech to prepare for the senate, or a brieffor a trial, or letters to write, and, as we shall see, as soon as thesun had well risen it was not likely that he would be altogether hisown master. Thus we find Cicero on a February morning writing to hisbrother before sunrise, [417] and it is not unlikely that the sorenessof the eyes of which he sometimes complains may have been the resultof reading and writing before the light was good. In his countryvillas he could do as he liked, but at Rome he knew that he would havethe "turba salutantium" upon him as soon as the sun had risen. Cicerois the only man of his own time of whose habits we know much, but inthe next generation Horace describes himself as calling for pen andpaper before daylight, and later on that insatiable student the elderPliny would work for hours before daylight, and then go to the EmperorVespasian, who was also a very early riser. [418] After sunrise thewhole population was astir; boys were on their way to school, andartisans to their labour. 

If Horace is not exaggerating when he says (_Sat. _ i. 1. 10) thatthe barrister might be disturbed by a client at cock-crow, Cicero'sstudies may have been interrupted even before the crowds came; butthis could hardly happen often. As a rule it was during the first twohours (_mane_) that callers collected. In the old times it had beenthe custom to open your house and begin your business at daybreak, andafter saluting your familia and asking a blessing of the householdgods, to attend to your own affairs and those of your clients. [419]Although we are not told so explicitly, we must suppose that the samepractice held good in Cicero's time; under the Empire it is familiarto all readers of Seneca or Martial, but in a form which was open tomuch criticism and satire. The client of the Empire was a degradedbeing; of the client in the last age of the Republic we only know thathe existed, and could be useful to his _patronus_ in many ways, --inelections and trials especially;[420] but we do not hear of hispressing himself on the attention of his patron every morning, orreceiving any "sportula. " All the same, the number of persons, whetherclients in this sense or in the legal sense, or messengers, men ofbusiness, and ordinary callers, who would want to see a man likeCicero before he left his house in the morning, would beyond doubt beconsiderable. Otherwise they would have to catch him in the street orForum; and though occasionally a man of note might purposely walk inpublic in order to give his clients their chance, Cicero makes itplain that this was not his way. [421]

Within these two first hours of daylight the busy man had to find timefor a morning meal; the idle man, who slept later, might postponeit. This early breakfast, called _ientaculum_[422], answered to the"coffee and roll" which is usual at the present day in all Europeancountries except our own, and which is fully capable of supportingeven a hard-working man for several hours. It is, indeed, quitepossible to do work before this breakfast; Antiochus, the greatdoctor, is said by Galen to have visited such of his patients as livednear him before his breakfast and on foot[423]. But as a rule the mealwas taken before a busy man went out to his work, and consisted ofbread, either dipped in wine or eaten with honey, olives, or cheese. The breakfast of Antiochus consisted, for example, of bread and Attichoney. 

The meal over, the man of politics or business would leave his house, outside which his clients and friends or other hangers-on would bewaiting for him, and proceed to the Forum, --the centre, as we haveseen, of all his activity--accompanied by these people in a kind ofprocession. Some would go before to make room for him, while othersfollowed him; if bent on election business, he would have experiencedhelpers, [424] either volunteers or in his pay, to save him from makingblunders as to names and personalities, and in fact to serve himin conducting himself towards the populace with the indispensable_blanditia_. [425] Every Roman of importance liked to have, and usuallyhad, a train of followers or friends in descending to the Forum of amorning from his house, or in going about other public business; whatQ. Cicero urges on his brother in canvassing for the consulship mayhold good in principle for all the public appearances of apublic man, --"I press this strongly on you, always to be with amultitude. "[426] It may perhaps be paralleled with the love of theRoman for processions, e. G. The lustrations of farm, city, andarmy, [427] and with his instinctive desire for aid and counsel inall important matters both of public and private life, shown in theconsilium of the paterfamilias and of the magistrate. Examples areeasy to find in the literature of this period; an excellent one is thegraphic picture of Gaius Gracchus and his train of followers, whichPlutarch has preserved from a contemporary writer. "The peoplelooked with admiration on him, seeing him attended by crowds ofbuilding-contractors, artificers, ambassadors, magistrates, soldiers, and learned men, to all of whom he was easy of access; while hemaintained his dignity, he was gracious to all, and suited hisbehaviour to the condition of every individual; thus he proved thefalsehood of those who called him tyrannical or arrogant. "[428]

Arrived at the Forum, if not engaged in a trial, or summoned to ameeting of the senate, or busy in canvassing, he would mingle with thecrowd, and spend a social morning in meeting and talking with friends, or in hearing the latest news from the provinces, or in occupyinghimself with his investments with the aid of his bankers and agents. This is the way in which such a sociable and agreeable man as Cicerowas loved to spend his mornings when not deep in the composition ofsome speech or book, --and at Rome it was indeed hardly possible forhim to find the time for steady literary work. It was this social lifethat he longed for when in Cilicia; "one little walk and talk withyou, " he could write to Caelius at Rome, "is worth all the profits ofa province. "[429] But it was also this crowded and talkative Forumthat Lucilius could describe in a passage already quoted, as teemingwith men who, with the aid of hypocrisy and blanditia, spent theday from morning till night in trying to get the better of theirfellows. [430]

After a morning spent in the Forum, our Roman might return home intime for his lunch (_prandium_), which had taken the place of theearly dinner (_cena_) of the olden time. Exactly the same thingaffected the hours of these meals as has affected those of our ownwithin the last century or so; the great increase of public businessof all kinds has with us pushed the time of the chief meal later andlater, and so it was at Rome. The senate had an immense amount ofbusiness to transact in the two last centuries B. C. , and the increasein oratorical skill, as well as the growing desire to talk in public, extended its sittings sometimes till nightfall. [431] So too with thelaw-courts, which had become the scenes of oratorical display, andoften of that indulgence in personal abuse which has great attractionsfor idle people fond of excitement. Thus the dinner hour had come tobe postponed from about noon to the ninth or even the tenth hour, [432]and some kind of a lunch was necessary. We do not hear much of thismeal, which was in fact for most men little more than the "snack"which London men of business will take standing at a bar; nor do weknow whether senators and barristers took it as they sat in the curiaor in court, or whether there was an adjournment for purposesof refreshment. Such an adjournment seems to have taken placeoccasionally at least, during the games under the Empire, forSuetonius (_Claud. _ 34) tells us that Claudius would dismiss thepeople to take their prandium and yet remain himself in his seat. Ajoke of Cicero's about Caninius Rebilus, who was appointed consul byCaesar on the last day of the year 45 at one o'clock, shows that theusual hour for the prandium was about noon or earlier; "under theconsulship of Caninius, " he wrote to Curius, "no one ever tookluncheon. "[433]

After the prandium, if a man were at home and at leisure, followed thesiesta (_meridiatio_). This is the universal habit in all southernclimates, especially in summer, and indeed, if the mind and bodyare active from an early hour, a little repose is useful, if notnecessary, after mid-day. Busy men however like Cicero could notalways afford it in the city, and we find him noting near the end ofhis life, when Caesar's absolutism had diminished the amount of hiswork both in senate and law-courts, that he had taken to the siestawhich he formerly dispensed with. [434] Even the sturdy Varro in hisold age declared that in summer he could not possibly do without hisnap in the middle of the day. [435] On the other hand, in the famousletter in which Cicero describes his entertainment of Caesar inmid-winter 45 B. C. , nothing is said of a siesta; the Dictator workedtill after mid-day, then walked on the shore, and returned, not for anap but for a bath. [436]

Caesar, as he was Cicero's guest, must have taken his bath in thevilla, probably that at Cumae (see above, p. 257). Most well-appointedprivate houses had by this time a bath-room or set of bath-rooms, providing every accommodation, according to the season and the tasteof the bather. This was indeed a modern improvement; in the old daysthe Romans only washed their arms and legs daily, and took a bathevery market-day, i. E. Every ninth day. This is told us in an amusingletter of Seneca's, who also gives a description of the bath in thevilla of the elder Scipio at Liternum, which consisted of a singleroom without a window, and was supplied with water which was oftenthick after rain. [437] "Nesciit vivere, " says Seneca, in ironicalallusion to the luxury of his own day. In Cicero's time every villadoubtless had its set of baths, with at least three rooms, --the_apodyterium_, _caldarium_, and _tepidarium_, sometimes also an openswimming-bath, as in the House of the Silver Wedding at Pompeii. [438]In Cicero's letter to his brother about the villa at Arcanum, hementions the dressing-room (apodyterium) and the caldarium or hot-airchamber, and doubtless there were others. Even in the villa rustica ofBoscoreale near Pompeii, which was a working farm-house, we find thebath-rooms complete, provided, that is, with the three essentials ofdressing-room, tepid-room, and hot-air room. [439] Caesar probably, asit was winter, used the last of these, took in fact a Turkish bath, aswe should call it, and then went into a tepidarium, where, as Cicerotells us, he received some messenger. Here he was anointed (unctus), i. E. Rubbed dry from perspiration, with a strigil on which oil wasdropped to soften its action. [440] When this operation was over, aboutthe ninth hour, which in mid-winter would begin about half-past one, he was ready for the dinner which followed immediately. [441] This wemay take as the ordinary winter dinner-hour in the country; in summerit would be an hour or so later. In an amusing story given as arhetorical illustration in the work known as _Rhetorica ad Herennium_, iv. 63, the guests (doomed never to get their dinner that day exceptin an inn) are invited for the tenth hour. But in the city it musthave often happened that the hour was later, owing to the press ofbusiness. For example, on one occasion when the senate had beensitting _ad noctem_, Cicero dines with Pompeius after its dismissal(_ad Fam_. I. 2. 3). Another day we find him going to bed after hisdinner, and clearly not for a siesta, which, as we saw, he never hadtime to take in his busy days; this, however, was not actually in Romebut in his villa at Formiae, where he was at that time liable to muchinterruption from callers (_ad Att_. Ii. 16). Probably, like mostRomans of his day, he had spent a long time over his dinner, talkingif he had guests, or reading and thinking if he were alone or with hisfamily only. 

The dinner, _cena_, was in fact the principal private event of theday; it came when all business was over, and you could enjoy theprivacy of family life or see your friends and unbend with them. At noother meal do we hear of entertainment, unless the guests were ona journey, as was the case at the lunch at Arcanum when Pomponia'stemper got the better of her (see above, p. 52). Even dinner-partiesseem to have come into fashion only since the Punic wars, with laterhours and a larger staff of slaves to cook and wait at table. In theold days of household simplicity the meals were taken in the atrium, the husband reclining on a _lectus_, [442] the wife sitting by hisside, and the children sitting on stools in front of them. The slavestoo in the olden time took their meal sitting on benches in theatrium, so that the whole familia was present. This means that thedinner was in those days only a necessary break in the intervals ofwork, and the sitting posture was always retained for slaves, i. E. Those who would go about their work as soon as the meal was over. Columella, writing under the early Empire, urges that the vilicus oroverseer should sit at his dinner except on festivals; and Cato theyounger would not recline after the battle of Pharsalia for therest of his life, apparently as a sign that life was no longerenjoyable. [443]

But after the Second Punic war, which changed the habits of the Romanin so many ways, the atrium ceased to be the common dining-place, andspecial chambers were built, either off the atrium or in the interiorpart of the house about the peristylium, or even upstairs, for theaccommodation of guests, who might be received in different rooms, according to the season and the weather. [444] These _triclinia_ wereso arranged as to afford the greatest personal comfort and the bestopportunities for conversation; they indicate clearly that dinner isno longer an interval in the day's work, but a time of repose and easeat the end of it. The plan here given of a triclinium, as described byPlutarch, in his _Quaestiones conviviales_, Lectus medius. +--------------------------------+----------------+ Chief | | | Guest | | | Lectus | | | Summus +-----------------+--------------+ | H | | | | | | | | Lectus | | Mensa | | Imus | | | | | +--------------+ | | | +----------------+ | | | | | | | | +-----------------+

 PLAN OF A TRICLINIUM. 

will show this sufficiently without elaborate description; but it isnecessary to notice that the host always or almost always occupied thecouch marked H on the plan, while the one immediately above him, i. E. No. 3 of the _lectus medius_, was reserved for the most importantguest, and called _lectus consularis_. Plutarch's account, and alittle consideration, will show that the host was thus well placed forthe superintendence of the meal, as well as for conversation with hisdistinguished guest; and that the latter occupied what Plutarch callsa free corner, so that any messengers or other persons needing to seehim could get access to him without disturbing the party. [445] Thenumber that could be accommodated, nine, was not only a sacred andlucky one, but exactly suited for convenience of conversation andattendance. Larger parties were not unheard of, even under theRepublic, and Vitruvius tells us that some dining-rooms were fittedwith three or more triclinia; but to put more than three guests on asingle couch, and so increase the number, was not thought courteous orwell-bred. Among the points of bad breeding which Cicero attributes tohis enemy Calpurnius Piso, the consul of 58, one was that he put fiveguests to recline on a single couch, while himself occupying onealone; so Horace:

 Saepe tribus lectis videas cenare quaternos. [446]

As the guests were made so comfortable, it may be supposed that theywere not in a hurry to depart; the mere fact that they were reclininginstead of sitting would naturally dispose them to stay. The tricliniawere open at one end, i. E. Not shut up as our dining-rooms are, andthe air would not get close and "dinnery. " Cicero describes oldCato[447] (no doubt from some passage in Cato's writings) as remainingin conversation at dinner until late at night. The guests would arrivewith their slaves, who took off their walking shoes, if they had comeon foot, and put on their sandals (_soleae_): each wore a festivedress (_synthesis_), of Greek origin like the other features of theentertainment, and there was no question of changing these again in ahurry. Nothing can better show the difference between the old Romanmanners and the new than the character of these parties; they arethe leisurely and comfortable rendezvous of an opulent and educatedsociety, in which politics, literature or philosophy could bediscussed with much self-satisfaction. That such discussion did not gotoo deeply into hard questions was perhaps the result of the comfort. 

There was of course another side to this picture of the evening of aRoman gentleman. There was a coarse side to the Roman character, andin the age when wealth, the slave trade, and idle habits encouragedself-indulgence, meals were apt to become ends in themselves insteadof necessary aids to a wholesome life. The ordinary three parts orcourses (_mensae_) of a dinner, --the gustatio or light preliminarycourse, the cena proper, with substantial dishes, and the dessert ofpastry and fruit, could be amplified and extended to an unlimitedextent by the skill of the slave-cooks brought from Greece and theEast (see above, p. 209); the gourmand had appeared long beforethe age of Cicero and had been already satirised by Lucilius andVarro. [448] Splendid dinner-services might take the place of theold simple ware, and luxurious drapery and rugs covered the couchesinstead of the skins of animals, as in the old time. [449] Vulgarityand ostentation, such as Horace satirised, were doubtless too often tobe met with. Those who lived for feasting and enjoyment would invitetheir company quite early in the day (tempestativum convivium) andcarry on the revelry till midnight. [450] And lastly, the practice ofdrinking wine after dinner (_comissatio_), simply for the sake ofdrinking, under fixed rules according to the Greek fashion, familiarto us all in the _Odes_ of Horace, had undoubtedly begun some timebefore the end of the Public. In the Actio prima of his Verrineorations Cicero gives a graphic picture of a convivium beginningearly, where the proposal was made and agreed to that the drinkingshould be "more graeco. "[451]

But it would be a great mistake to suppose that this kind ofself-indulgence was characteristic of the average Roman life of thisage. The ordinary student is liable to fall into this error becausehe reads his Horace and his Juvenal, but dips a very little wayinto Cicero's correspondence; and he needs to be reminded that thesatirists are not deriding the average life of the citizen, any morethan the artists who make fun of the foibles of our own day in thepages of _Punch_. Cicero hardly ever mentions his meals, his cookery, or his wine, even in his most chatty letters; such matters did notinterest him, and do not seem to have interested his friends, so faras we can judge by their letters. In one amusing letter to Poetus, hedoes indeed tell him what he had for dinner at a friend's house, butonly by way of explaining that he had been very unwell from eatingmushrooms and such dishes, which his host had had cooked in order notto contravene a recent sumptuary law. [452] The Letters are worth farmore as negative evidence of the usual character of dinners thaneither the invectives (vituperationes) against a Piso or an Antony, or the lively wit of the satirists. Let us return for an instant, inconclusion, to that famous letter, already quoted, in which Cicerodescribes the entertainment of Caesar at Cumae in December, 45. It contains an expression which has given rise to very mistakenconclusions both about Caesar's own habits and those of his day. Aftertelling Atticus that his guest sat down to dinner when the bath wasover he goes on: "[Greek: Emetikaen] agebat; itaque et edit et bibit[Greek: adeos] et iucunde, opipare sane et apparate, nec id solum, sed

 bene cocto condito, sermone bono, et si quaeri, libenter. "

Even good scholars used formerly to make the mistake of supposing thatCaesar, a man habitually abstemious, or at least temperate, had madeup his mind to over-eat himself on this occasion, as he was intendingto take an emetic afterwards. And even now it may be as well to pointout that medical treatment by a course of emetics was a perfectly wellknown and valued method at this time;[453] that Caesar, whose healthwas always delicate, and at this time severely tried, was then underthis treatment, and could therefore eat his dinner comfortably, without troubling himself about what he ate and drank: and that theapt quotation from Lucilius, and the literary conversation which (soCicero adds) followed the dinner, prove beyond all question that thiswas no glutton's meal, but one of that ordinary and rational type, inwhich repose and pleasant intercourse counted for more than the mereeating and drinking. 

No more work seems to have been done after the cena was over and theguests had retired. We found Cicero on one occasion going to bed soonafter the meal; and, as he was up and active so early in the morning, we may suppose that he retired at a much earlier hour than we do. Butof this last act of the day he tells us nothing. 

CHAPTER X

HOLIDAYS AND AMUSEMENTS

The Italian peoples, of all races, have always had a wonderfulcapacity for enjoying themselves out of doors. The Italian _festa_of to-day, usually, as in ancient times, linked to some religiousfestival, is a scene of gaiety, bright dresses, music, dancing, bonfires, races, and improvisation or mummery; and all that we know ofthe ancient rural festivals of Italy suggests that they were of muchthe same lively and genial character. Tibullus gives us a good idea ofthem:

 "Agricola assiduo primum satiatus aratro Cantavit oerto rustica verba pede; Et satur arenti primum est modulatus avena Carmen, ut ornatos diceret ante decs; Agricola et minio suffusus, Bacche, rubenti Primus inexperta duxit ab arte choros. "[454]

It would be easy to multiply examples of such merry-making from thepoets of the Augustan age, nearly all of whom were born and bred inthe country, and shared Virgil's tenderness for a life of honest workand play among the Italian hills and valleys. But in this chapter weare to deal with the holidays and enjoyments of the great city, andthe rural festivals are only mentioned here because almost all thecharacteristics of the urban holiday-making are to be found in germthere. The Roman calendar of festivals has its origin in the regularlyrecurring rites of the earliest Latin husbandman. As the city grew, these old agricultural festivities lost of course much of their nativesimplicity and naïveté; some of them survived merely as religious orpriestly performances, some became degraded into licentious enjoyment;but the music and dancing, the gay dresses, the racing, the mummingor acting, are all to be found in the city, developed in one form oranother, from the earliest to the latest periods of Roman history. 

The Latin word for a holiday was _feriae_, a term which belongs to thelanguage of religious law (_ius divinum_). Strictly speaking, it meansa day which the citizen has resigned, either wholly or in part, to theservice of the gods. [455] As of old on the farm no work was to be doneon such days, so in the city no public business could be transacted. Cicero, drawing up in antique language his idea of the ius divinum, writes thus of feriae: "Feriis iurgia amovento, easque in familiis, operibus patratis, habento": which he afterwards explains as meaningthat the citizen must abstain from litigation, and the slave beexcused from labour. [456] The idea then of a holiday was much the sameas we find expressed in the Jewish Sabbath, and had its root also inreligious observance. But Cicero, whether he is actually reproducingthe words of an old law or inventing it for himself, was certainlynot reflecting the custom of the city in his own day; no such rigidobservance of a rule was possible in the capital of an Empire suchas the Roman had become. Even on the farm it had long ago been foundnecessary to make exceptions; thus Virgil tells us:[457]

 "Quippe etiam festis quaedam exercere diebus Fas et iura sinunt: rivos deducere nulla Religio vetuit, segeti praetendere saepem, Insidias avibus moliri, incendere vepres, Balantumque gregem fluvio mersare salubri. "

So too in the city it was simply impossible that all work shouldcease on feriae, of which there were more than a hundred in the year, including the Ides of every month and some of the Kalends and Nones. As a matter of fact a double change had come about since the city andits dominion began to increase rapidly about the time of the Punicwars. First, many of the old festivals, sacred to deities whosevogue was on the wane, or who had no longer any meaning for a citypopulation, as being deities of husbandry, were almost entirelyneglected: even if the priests performed the prescribed rites, no oneknew and no one cared, [458] and it may be doubted whether the Statewas at all scrupulous in adhering to the old sacred rules as tothe hours on which business could be transacted on such days. [459]Secondly, certain festivals which retained their popularity had beenextended from one day to three or more, in one or two cases, as weshall see, even to thirteen and fifteen days, in order to givetime for an elaborate system of public amusement consisting ofchariot-races and stage-plays, and known by the name of _ludi_, or, asat the winter Saturnalia, to enable all classes to enjoy themselvesduring the short days for seven mornings instead of one. Obviouslythis was a much more convenient and popular arrangement than to haveyour holidays scattered about over the whole year as single days; andit suited the rich and ambitious, who sought to obtain popular favourby shows and games on a grand scale, needing a succession of severaldays for complete exhibition. So the old religious word feriae becomesgradually supplanted, in the sense of a public holiday of amusement, by the word _ludi_, and came at last to mean, as it still does inGermany, the holidays of schoolboys. [460] These ludi will form thechief subject of this chapter; but we must first mention one or twoof the old feriae which seem always to have remained occasions ofholiday-making, at any rate for the lower classes of the population. 

One of these occurred on the Ides of March, and must have been goingon at the moment when Caesar was assassinated in 44 B. C. It was thefestival of Anna Perenna, a mysterious old deity of "the ring of theyear. " The lower class of the population, Ovid tells us, [461] streamedout to the "festum geniale" of Anna, and spent the whole day in theCampus Martius, lying about in pairs of men and women, indulgingin drinking and all kinds of revelry. Some lay in the open; someconstructed tents, or rude huts of boughs, stretching their togas overthem for shelter. As they drank they prayed for as many years of lifeas they could swallow cups of wine. The usual characteristics of theItalian _festa_ were to be found there: they sang anything they hadpicked up in the theatre, with much gesticulation ("et iactant facilesad sua verba manus"), and they danced, the women letting down theirlong hair. The result of these performances was naturally that theyreturned home in a state of intoxication, which roused the mirth ofthe bystanders. Ovid adds that he had himself met them so returning, and had seen an old woman pulling along an old man, both of themintoxicated. There may have been other popular "jollifications" ofthis kind, for example at the Neptunalia on July 23, where we find thesame curious custom of making temporary huts or shelters;[462] butthis is the only one of which we have any account by an eye-witness. Of the famous Lupercalia in February, and some other festivals whichneither died out altogether nor were converted into ludi, we only knowthe ritual, and cannot tell whether they were still used as popularholidays. 

One famous festival of the old religious calendar did, however, alwaysremain a favourite holiday, viz. The Saturnalia on December 17, which was by common usage extended to seven days in all. [463] It wasprobably the survival of a mid-winter festivity in the life of thefarm, at a time when all the farm work of the autumn was over, and when both bond and free might indulge themselves in unlimitedenjoyment. Such ancient customs die hard, or, as was the case with theSaturnalia, never die at all; for the same features are still to befound in the Christmas rejoicings of the Italian peasant. Every oneknows something of the character of this holiday, and especially ofthe entertainment of slaves by their masters, [464] which has manyparallels in Greek custom, and has been recently supposed to have beenborrowed from the Greeks. Various games were played, and among themthat of "King, " at which we have seen the young Cato playing with hisboy companions. [465] Seneca tells us that in his day all Rome seemedto go mad on this holiday. 

But we must now turn to the real _ludi_, organised by the State on alarge and ever increasing scale. The oldest and most imposing of thesewere the Ludi Romani or Magni, lasting from September 5 to September19 in Cicero's time. These had their origin in the return of avictorious army at the end of the season of war, when king or consulhad to carry out the vows he had made when entering on his campaign. The usual form of the vow was to entertain the people on his return, in honour of Jupiter, and thus they were originally called ludi_votivi_, before they were incorporated as a regularly recurringfestival. After they became regular and annual, any entertainmentvowed by a general had to take place on other days; thus in the year70 B. C. Pompey's triumphal ludi votivi immediately preceded the LudiRomani of that year, [466] giving the people in all some thirty days ofholiday. The centre-point, and original day, of the Ludi Romani wasthe Ides (13th) of September, which was also the day of the epulumJovis, [467] and the dies natalis (dedication day) of the Capitolinetemple of Jupiter; and the whole ceremonial was closely connected withthat temple and its great deity. The triumphal procession passed alongthe Sacra via to the Capitol, and thence again to the Circus Maximus, where the ludi were held. The show must have been most imposing;first marched the boys and youths, on foot and on horseback, then thechariots and charioteers about to take part in the racing, with crowdsof dancers and flute-players, [468] and lastly the images of theCapitoline deities themselves, carried on _fercula_ (biers). All suchshows and processions were dear to the Roman people, and this seems tohave become a permanent feature of the Ludi Romani, whether or no anactual triumph was to be celebrated, and also of some other ludi, e. G. The Apollinares and the Megalenses. [469] Thus the idea was kept upthat the greatness and prosperity of Rome were especially due toJupiter Optimus Maximus, who, since the days of the Tarquinii, hadlooked down on his people from his temple on the Capitol. [470]

The Ludi Plebeii in November seem to have been a kind of plebeianduplicate of the Ludi Romani. As fully developed at the end of theRepublic, they lasted from the 4th to the 17th; their centre-point andoriginal day was the Ides (13th), on which, as on September 13, therewas an epulum Jovis in the Capitol. [471] They are connected with thename of that Flaminius who built the circus Flaminius in the CampusMartius in 220 B. C. , the champion of popular rights, killed soonafterwards at Trasimene; and it is probable that his object inerecting this new place of entertainment was to provide a convenientbuilding free of aristocratic associations. But unfortunately we knowvery little of the history of these ludi. 

If we may suppose that the Ludi Plebeii were instituted just beforethe second Punic war, it is interesting to note that three other greatludi were organised in the course of that war, no doubt with theobject of keeping up the drooping spirits of the urban population. TheLudi Apollinares were vowed by a praetor urbanus in 212, when thefate of Rome was hanging in the balance, and celebrated in the CircusMaximus: in 208 they were fixed to a particular day, July 13, andeventually extended to eight, viz. July 6-13. [472] In 204 wereinstituted the Ludi Megalenses, to celebrate the arrival in Rome ofthe Magna Mater from Pessinus in Phrygia, i. E. On April 4; but theludi were eventually extended to April 10. [473] Lastly, in 202 theLudi Ceriales, which probably existed in some form already, were madepermanent and fixed for April 19: they eventually lasted from the 12thto the 19th. [474] After the war was over we only find one more set ofludi permanently established, viz. The Florales, which date from 173. The original day was April 28, which had long been one of coarseenjoyment for the plebs; like the other ludi, these too were extended, and eventually reached to May 3. [475] April, we may note, was a monthchiefly consisting of holidays: the Ludi Megalenses, Ceriales, andFlorales occupied no less than seventeen of its twenty-nine days. 

When Sulla wished to commemorate his victory at the Colline gate, heinstituted Ludi Victoriae on November I, the date of the battle, andthese seem to have been kept up after most of Sulla's work had beendestroyed; they are mentioned by Cicero in the passage quoted abovefrom the Verrines, as Ludi Victoriae, but we hear comparatively littleof them. 

Before we go on to describe the nature of these numerousentertainments, it may be as well to realise that the spectators hadnothing to pay for them; they were provided by the State free of cost, as being part of certain religious festivals which it was the dutyof the government to keep up. Certain sums were set aside for thispurpose, differing in amount from time to time; thus in 217 B. C. , forthe Ludi Romani, on which up to that time 200, 000 sesterces (£16, 600)had been spent, the sum of 333, 333-1/3 sest. Was voted, because thenumber three had a sacred signification, and the moment was one ofextreme peril for the State. [476] On one occasion only before the endof the Republic do we hear of any public collection for the ludi; in186 B. C. Pliny tells us that every one was so well off, owing no doubtto the enormous amount of booty brought from the war in the East, thatall subscribed some small sum for the games of Scipio Asiaticus. [477]There was no doubt a growing demand for magnificence in the shows, andthus it came about that the amount provided by the State had to besupplemented. But the usual way of supplementing it was for themagistrate in charge of the ludi to pay what he could out of his ownpurse, or to get his friends to help him; and as all the ludi exceptthe Apollinares were in charge of the aediles, it became the practicefor these, if they aspired to reach the praetorship and consulship, tovie with each other in the recklessness of their expenditure. As earlyas 176 B. C. The senate had tried to limit this personal expenditure, for Ti. Sempronius Gracchus as aedile had that year spent enormoussums on his ludi, and had squeezed money (it does not appear how) outof the subject populations of Italy, as well as the provinces, toentertain the Roman people. [478] But naturally no decrees of thesenate on such matters were likely to have permanent effect; the greatfamilies whose younger members aimed at popularity in this way werefar too powerful to be easily checked. In the last age of the Republicit had become a necessary part of the aedile's duty to supplement theState's contribution, and as a rule he had to borrow heavily, and thusto involve himself financially quite early in his political career. Inhis _de Officiis_, [479] writing of the virtue of _liberalitas_, Cicerogives a list of men who had been munificent as aediles, including theelder and younger Crassus, Mucius Scaevola (a man, he says, of greatself-restraint), the two Lueulli, Hortensius, and Silanus; and addsthat in his own consulship P. Lentulus outdid all his predecessors, and was imitated by Scaurus in 58 B. C. [480] Cicero himself had toundertake the Ludi Romani, Megalenses, and Florales in his aedileship;how he managed it financially he does not tell us. [481] Caesarundoubtedly borrowed largely, for his expenditure as aedile wasenormous, [482] and he had no private fortune of any considerableamount. 

Our friend Caelius Rufus was elected curule aedile while he was incorrespondence with Cicero, and his letters give us a good idea of thecondition of the mind of an ambitious young man who is bent on makingthe most of himself. He is in a continual state of fidget about hisgames; he has set his heart on getting panthers to exhibit and hunt, and urges Cicero in letter after letter to procure them for him inCilicia. "It will be a disgrace to you, " he writes in one of them, "that Patiscus has sent ten panthers to Curio, and that you should notsend me ten times as many. "[483] The provincial governor, he urges, can do what he pleases; let Cicero send for some men of Cibyra, lethim write to Pamphylia, where they are most abundant, and he will getwhat he wants, or rather what Caelius wants. Even after a letter fullof the most important accounts of public business, including copies ofsenatus consulta (ad Fam. Viii. 8), he harks back at the end to theinevitable panthers. Cicero tells Atticus that he rebuked Caelius forpressing him thus hard to do what his conscience could not approve, and that it was not right, in his opinion, for a provincial governorto set the people of Cibyra hunting for panthers for Roman games. [484]From the same passage it would seem that Caelius had also been urginghim to take other steps in his province of which he disapproved, nodoubt with the same object of raising money for the ludi. This letterto Caelius is not extant, but we may believe that Cicero had thecourage to reprove his old pupil, and that the constant worrying forpanthers was more than even his amiability could stand. But otherswere less sensitive; and it is a well known fact in natural historythat the Roman games had a powerful effect, from this time forwards, in diminishing the numbers of wild animals in the countries borderingon the Mediterranean, and in bringing about the extinction of species. In our own day the same work is carried on by the big-game sportsman, somewhat farther afield; the pleasure of slaughter being now confinedto the few rich and adventurous, who shoot for their own delectation, and not to make a London holiday. 

Thus to all his ludi the citizen had the right of admission freeof cost. [485] An Englishman may find some difficulty at first inrealising this; it is as if cricket and football matches and theatresin London were open to the public gratis, and the cost provided by theLondon County Council. Yet it is not difficult to understand how theRoman government drifted into a practice which was eventually found tohave such unfortunate results. It has already been explained that ludiwere originally attached to certain religious festivals, which it wasthe duty of the State and its priests and magistrates to maintain. TheRomans, like all Italians, loved shows and out-of-door enjoyment, and as the population increased and became more liable to excitementduring the stress of the great wars with Carthage, it became necessaryto keep them cheerful and in good humour by developing the old ludiand instituting new ones, for which it would have been contrary to allprecedent to make them pay. The government, as we may guess from thehistory of the ludi which has just been sketched, seems to have beencareful at first not to go too far with this policy, and it was sometime before any ludi but the Romani were made annual and extended tothe length they eventually reached. But the sudden increase of wealthafter the great struggle was over was answerable for this, as forso many other damaging tendencies. We have seen that the peoplethemselves in 186 were able and willing to contribute; and now it waspossible for aediles to invest their capital in popular undertakingswhich might, later on, pay them well by carrying them on to highermagistracies and provincial governorships, where fresh fortunes mightbe made. The evil results are, of course, as obvious here as in theparallel case of the corn-supply (see above, p. 34); enormous amountsof capital were used unproductively, and the people were graduallyaccustomed to believe that the State was responsible for theirenjoyment as well as their food. But we must be most careful not tojump to the conclusion that this was due to any deliberate policy onthe part of the Roman government. They drifted into these dangerousshoals in spite of the occasional efforts of intelligent steersmen;and it would indeed have needed a higher political intelligence thanwas then and there available, to have fully divined the direction ofthe drift and the dangers ahead of them. 

We must now turn in the last place to consider the nature of theentertainments, and see whether there was any improving or educationalinfluence in them. 

These had originally consisted entirely of shows of a militarycharacter, as we have seen in the case of the Ludi Romani, andespecially of chariot-racing in the old Circus Maximus. The Romansseem always to have been fond of horses and racing, though theynever developed a large or thoroughly efficient cavalry force. Itis probable that the position of the Circus Maximus in the vallisMurcia[486] was due to horse-racing near the underground altar ofConsus, a harvest deity, and the oldest religious calendar hasEquirria (horse-races) on February 27 and March 14, no doubt inconnexion with the preparation of the cavalry for the coming seasonof war. And in the very curious ancient rite known as "the Octoberhorse, " there was a two-horse chariot-race in the Campus Martius, whenthe season of arms was over, and the near horse of the winning pairwas sacrificed to Mars[487]. The Ludi Romani consisted chiefly ofchariot-races until 364 B. C. (when plays were first introduced), together with other military evolutions or exercises, such perhaps asthe ludus Troiae of the Roman boys, described by Virgil in the fifthAeneid. Of the Ludi Plebeii we do not know the original character, butit is likely that these also began with _circenses_, the regular wordfor chariot-races. The Ludi Cereales certainly included circenses, andplays are only mentioned as forming part of their programme under theEmpire; but on the last day, April 19, there was a curious practice ofletting foxes loose in the Circus Maximus with burning firebrands tiedto their tails[488], --a custom undoubtedly ancient, which may havesuggested the _venationes_ (hunts) of later times, for one of whichCaelius wanted his panthers. Of the other three ludi, Apollinares, Megalenses, and Florales, we only know that they included bothcircenses and plays; we must take it as probable that the former werein their programme from the first. There is no need to describehere in detail the manner of the chariot-racing. We can picture toourselves the Circus Maximus filled with a dense crowd of some 150, 000people, [489] the senators in reserved places, and the consul or othermagistrate presiding; the chariots, usually four in number, painted atthis time either red or white, with their drivers in the same colours, issuing from the carceres at the end of the circus next to the ForumBoarium and the river, and at the signal racing round a course ofabout 1600 yards, divided into two halves by a spina; at the fartherend of this the chariots had to turn sharply and always with a certainamount of danger, which gave the race its chief interest. Sevencomplete laps of this course constituted a missus or race, [490] andthe number of races in a day varied from time to time, according tothe season of the year and the equipment of the particular ludi. Therivalry between factions and colours, which became so famous lateron and lasted throughout the period of the Empire, was only justbeginning in Cicero's time. We hear hardly anything of such excitementin the literature of the period; we only know that there were alreadytwo rival colours, white and red, and Pliny tells us the strangestory that one chariot-owner, a Caecina of Volaterrae, used to bringswallows into the city smeared with his colour, which he let loose tofly home and so bear the news of a victory. [491] Human nature in bigcities seems to demand some such artificial stimulus to excitement, and without it the racing must have been monotonous; but of bettingand gambling we as yet hear nothing at all. Gradually, as vast sumsof money were laid out by capitalists and even by senators upon thehorses and drivers, the colour-factions increased in numbers, andtheir rivalry came to occupy men's minds as completely as do now thechances of football teams in our own manufacturing towns. [492]

Exhibitions of gladiators (_munera_) did not as yet take place at ludior on public festivals, but they may be mentioned here, because theywere already becoming the favourite amusement of the common people;Cicero in the _pro Sestio_[493] speaks of them as "that kind ofspectacle to which all sorts of people crowd in the greatestnumbers, and in which the multitude takes the greatest delight. "The consequence was, of course, that candidates for election tomagistracies took every opportunity of giving them; and Cicero himselfin his consulship inserted a clause in his _lex de ambitu_ forbiddingcandidates to give such exhibitions within two years of theelection. [494] They were given exclusively by private individuals upto 105 B. C. , either in the Forum or in one or other circus: in thatyear there was an exhibition by the consuls, but there is someevidence that it was intended to instruct the soldiers in the betteruse of their weapons. This was a year in which the State was in soreneed of efficient soldiers; Marius was at the same time introducing anew system of recruiting and of arming the soldier, and we are toldthat the consul Rutilius made use of the best gladiators that were tobe found in the training-school (ludus) of a certain Scaurus, to teachthe men a more skilful use of their weapons. [495] If gladiators couldhave been used only for a rational purpose like this, as skilfulswordsmen and military instructors, the State might well havemaintained some force of them. But as it was they remained in privatehands, and no limit could be put on the numbers so maintained. Theybecame a permanent menace to the peace of society, as has already beenmentioned in the chapter on slavery. Their frequent use in funeralgames is a somewhat loathsome feature of the age. These funeral gameswere an old religious institution, occurring on the ninth day afterthe burial, and known as Ludi Novemdiales; they are familiar to everyone from Virgil's skilful introduction of them, as a Roman equivalentfor the Homeric games, in the fifth Aeneid, on the anniversary of thefuneral of Anchises. Virgil has naturally omitted the gladiators; butlong before his time it had become common to use the opportunity ofthe funeral of a relation to give munera for the purpose of gainingpopularity. [496] A good example is that of young Curio, who in 53 B. C. Ruined himself in this way. Cicero alludes to this in an interestingletter to Curio. [497] "You may reach the highest honours, " he says, "more easily by your natural advantages of character, diligence, andfortune, than by gladiatorial exhibitions. The power of giving themstirs no feeling of admiration in any one: it is a question of meansand not of character: and there is no one who is not by this timesick and tired of them. " To Cicero's refined mind they were naturallyrepugnant; but young men like Curio, though they loved Cicero, werenot wont to follow his wholesome advice. [498]

We turn now to the dramatic element in the ludi, chiefly with theobject of determining whether, in the age of Cicero, it was of anyreal importance in the social life of the Roman people. The Romanstage had had a great history before the last century B. C. , into whichit is not necessary here to enter. It had always been possible withoutdifficulty for those who were responsible for the ludi to put onthe stage a tragedy or comedy either written for the occasion orreproduced, with competent actors and the necessary music; and thereseems to be no doubt that both tragedies and comedies, whether adaptedfrom the Greek (fabulae palliatae) or of a national character (fab. Togatae), were enjoyed by the audiences. In the days of the Punic warsand afterwards, when everything Greek was popular, a Roman audiencecould appreciate stories of the Greek mythology, as presented in thetragedies of Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius, if without learning to readin them the great problems of human life, at least as spectacles ofthe vicissitudes of human fortune; and had occasionally listened to atragedy, or perhaps father a dramatic history, based on some familiarlegend of their own State. And the conditions of social life in Romeand Athens were not so different but that in the hands of a realgenius like Plautus the New Athenian comedy could come home to theRoman people, with their delight in rather rough fun and comicalsituations: and Plautus was followed by Caecilius and the more refinedTerence, before the national comedy of Afranius and others establisheditself in the place of the Greek. It is hardly possible to avoid theconclusion that in those early days of the Roman theatre the audienceswere really intelligent, and capable of learning something from thepieces they listened to, apart from their natural love of a show, ofall acting, and of music. [499]

But before the age with which this book deals, the long successionof great dramatic writers had come to an end. Accius, the nephew ofPacuvius, had died as a very old man when Cicero was a boy;[500] andin the national comedy no one had been found to follow Afranius. Thetimes were disturbed, the population was restless, and continuallyincorporating heterogeneous elements: much amusement could be found inthe life of the Forum, and in rioting and disorder; gladiatorial showswere organised on a large scale. To sit still and watch a good playwould become more tiresome as the plebs grew more restless, andprobably even the taste of the better educated was degenerating asthe natural result of luxury and idleness. Politics and politicalpersonages were the really exciting features of the time, and thereare signs that audiences took advantage of the plays to express theirapproval or dislike of a statesman. In a letter to Atticus, writtenin the summer of 59, [501] the first year of the triumvirate, Cicerodescribes with enthusiasm how at the Ludi Apollinares the actorDiphilus made an allusion to Pompey in the words (from an unknowntragedy then being acted), "Nostra miseria tu es--Magnus, " and wasforced to repeat them many times. When he delivered the line

 "Eandem virtutem istam veniet tempus cum graviter gemes, "

the whole theatre broke out into frantic applause. So too in awell-known passage of the speech _pro Sestio_ he tells from hearsayhow the great tragic actor Aesopus, acting in the Eurysaces of Accius, was again and again interrupted by applause as he cleverly adapted thewords to the expected recall from exile of the orator, his personalfriend. [502] The famous words "Summum amicum, summo in bello, summoingenio praeditum, " were among those which the modest Cicero tells uswere taken up by the people with enthusiasm, --greatly, without doubt, to the detriment of the play. The whole passage is one of greatgraphic power, and only fails to rouse us too to enthusiasm when wereflect that Cicero was not himself present. 

From this and other passages we have abundant evidence that tragedieswere still acted; but Cicero nowhere in his correspondence, where wemight naturally have expected to find it, nor in his philosophicalworks, gives us any idea of their educational or aesthetic influenceeither on himself or others. He is constantly quoting the old plays, especially the tragedies, and knows them very well: but he quotes themalmost invariably as literature only. Once or twice, as we shall see, he recalls the gesture or utterance of a great actor, but as a rule heis thinking of them as poetry rather than as plays. It may be notedin this connexion that it was now becoming the fashion to write playswithout any immediate intention of bringing them on the stage. We readwith astonishment in a letter of Cicero to his brother Quintus, thenin Gaul, that the latter had taken to play-writing, and accomplishedfour tragedies in sixteen days, and this apparently in the course ofthe campaign. [503] One, the _Erigona_, was sent to his brother fromBritain, and lost on the way. We hear no more of these plays, andhave no reason to suppose that they were worthy to survive. No man ofliterary eminence in that day wrote plays for acting, and in fact theonly person of note, so far as we know, who did so, was the youngerCornelius Balbus, son of the intimate friend and secretary of Caesar. This man wrote one in Latin about his journey to his native townof Gades, had it put on the stage there, and shed tears during itsperformance. [504]

When we hear of plays being written without being acted, and oftragedies being made the occasion of expressing political opinions, we may be pretty sure that the drama is in its nonage. An interestingproof of the same tendency is to be found in the first book of the_Ars Amatoria_ of Ovid, though it belongs to the age of Augustus. Inthis book Ovid describes the various resorts in the city where theyouth may look out for his girl; and when he comes to the theatre, draws a pretty picture of the ladies of taste and fashion crowdingthither, --but

 Spectatum veniunt: veniunt spectentur ut ipsae. 

And then, without a word about the play, or the smallest hint that heor the ladies really cared about such things, he goes off into thefamiliar story of the rape of the Sabine women, supposed to have takenplace when Romulus was holding his ludi. 

It is curious, in view of what thus seems to be a flagging interestin the drama as such, to find that the most remarkable event in thetheatrical history of this time is the building of the first permanentstone theatre. During the whole long period of the popularity ofthe drama the government had never consented to the erection of apermanent theatre after the Greek fashion; though it was impossible toprohibit the production of plays adapted from the Greek, there seemsto have been some strange scruple felt about giving Rome this outwardtoken of a Greek city. Temporary stages were erected in the Forumor the circus, the audience at first standing, but afterwardsaccommodated with seats in a _cavea_ of wood erected for the occasion. The whole show, including play, actors, and pipe-players[505] toaccompany the voices where necessary, was contracted for, like allsuch undertakings, [506] on each occasion of Ludi scaenici beingproduced. At last, in the year 154 B. C. , the censors had actuallyset about the building of a theatre, apparently of stone, when thereactionary Scipio Nasica, acting under the influence of a temporaryanti-Greek movement, persuaded the senate to put a stop to thissymptom of degeneracy, and to pass a decree that no seats were infuture to be provided, "ut scilicet remissioni animorum standivirilitas propria Romanae gentis iuncta esset. "[507] Whether thisextraordinary decree, of which the legality might have been questioneda generation later, had any permanent effect, we do not know;certainly the senators, and after the time of Gaius Gracchus theequites, sat on seats appropriated to them. But Rome continued tobe without a stone theatre until Pompey, in the year of his secondconsulship, 55 B. C. , built one on a grand scale, capable of holding40, 000 people. Even he, we are told, could not accomplish this withoutsome criticism from the old and old-fashioned, --so lasting was theprejudice against anything that might seem to be turning Rome into aGreek city. [508] There was a story too, of which it is difficult tomake out the real origin, that he was compelled by popular feelingto conceal his design by building, immediately behind the theatre, atemple of Venus Victrix, the steps of which were in some way connectedwith his auditorium. [509] The theatre was placed in the CampusMartius, and its shape is fairly well known to us from fragments ofthe Capitoline plan of the city;[510] adjoining it Pompey also builta magnificent _porticus_ for the convenience of the audience, anda _curia_, in which the senate could meet, and where, eleven yearslater, the great Dictator was murdered at the feet of Pompey's statue. 

In spite of the magnificence of this building, it was by no meansdestined to revive the earlier prosperity of the tragic and comicdrama. Even at the opening of it the signs of degeneracy are apparent. Luckily for us Cicero was in Rome at the time, and in a letter to afriend in the country he congratulates him on being too unwell to cometo Rome and see the spoiling of old tragedies by over-display. [511]"The ludi, " he says, "had not even that charm which games on amoderate scale generally have; the spectacle was so elaborate as toleave no room for cheerful enjoyment, and I think you need feel noregret at having missed it. What is the pleasure of a train of sixhundred mules in the Clytemnestra (of Accius), or three thousand bowls(craterae) in the Trojan Horse (of Livius), or gay-coloured armour ofinfantry and cavalry in some mimic battle? These things roused theadmiration of the vulgar: to you they would have brought no delight. "This ostentatious stage-display finds its counterpart to some extentat the present day, and may remind us also of the huge orchestras ofblaring sound which are the delight of the modern composer and themodern musical audience. And the plays were by no means the only partof the show. There were displays of athletes; but these never seem tohave greatly interested a Roman audience, and Cicero says that Pompeyconfessed that they were a failure; but to make up for that there werewild-beast shows for five whole days (_venationes_)--"magnificent, "the letter goes on, "no one denies it, yet what pleasure can it beto a man of refinement, when a weak man is torn by a very powerfulanimal, or a splendid animal is transfixed by a hunting-spear? . .. Thelast day was that of the elephants, about which there was a good dealof astonishment on the part of the vulgar crowd, but no pleasurewhatever. Nay, there was even a feeling of compassion aroused bythem, and a notion that this animal has something in common withmankind. "[512] This last interesting sentence is confirmed by apassage in Pliny's _Natural History_, in which he asserts that thepeople were so much moved that they actually execrated Pompey. [513]The last age of the Republic is a transitional one, in this, as inother ways; the people are not yet thoroughly inured to bloodshedand cruelty to animals, as they afterwards became when deprived ofpolitical excitements, and left with nothing violent to amuse them butthe displays of the amphitheatre. 

Earlier in this same letter Cicero had told his friend Marius that onthis occasion certain old actors had re-appeared on the stage, who, as he thought, had left it for good. The only one he mentions is thegreat tragic actor Aesopus, who "was in such a state that no one couldsay a word against his retiring from the profession. " At one importantpoint his voice failed him. This may conveniently remind us thatAesopus was the last of the great actors of tragedy, and that his bestdays were in the early half of this century--another sign of the decayof the legitimate drama. He was an intimate friend of Cicero, and froma few references to him in the Ciceronian writings we can form someidea of his genius. In one passage Cicero writes of having seen himlooking so wild and gesticulating so excitedly, that he seemed almostto have lost command of himself. [514] In the description, alreadyquoted from the speech _pro Sestio_, of the scene in the theatrebefore his recall from exile, he speaks of this "summus artifex" asdelivering his allusions to the exile with infinite force and passion. Yet the later tradition of his acting was rather that he was seriousand self-restrained; Horace calls him _gravis_, and Quintilian toospeaks of his _gravitas_. [515] Probably, like Garrick, he was capableof a great variety of moods and parts. How carefully he studied thevarieties of gesticulation is indicated by a curious story preservedby Valerius Maximus, that he and Roscius the great comedian used togo and sit in the courts in order to observe the action of the oratorHortensius. [516]

Roscius too was an early intimate friend of Cicero, who, like Caesar, seems to have valued the friendship of all men of genius, withoutregard to their origin or profession. Roscius seems to have been afreedman;[517] his great days were in Cicero's early life, and he diedin 61 B. C. , to the deep grief of all his friends. [518] So wonderfullyfinished was his acting that it became a common practice to call anyone a Roscius whose work was more than usually perfect. He never couldfind a pupil of whom he could entirely approve; many had good points, but if there were a single blot, the master could not bear it. [519]In the _de Oratore_ Cicero tells us several interesting things abouthim, --how he laid the proper emphasis on the right words, reservinghis gesticulation until he came to them; and how he was never so muchadmired when acting with a mask on, because the expression of his facewas so full of meaning[520]. 

In Cicero's later years, when Roscius was dead and Aesopus retired, wehear no more of great actors of this type. With these two remarkablemen the great days of the Roman drama come to an end, and henceforwardthe favourite plays are merely farces, of which a word must here besaid in the last place. 

The origin of these farces, as indeed of all kinds of Latin comedy, and probably also of the literary satura, is to be found in the jokesand rude fun of the country festivals, and especially perhaps, asHorace tells us of the harvest amusements[521]:

 Fescennina per hunc inventa licentia morem Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit, Libertasque recurrentis accepta per annos Lusit amabiliter, etc. 

 _Epist_. Ii. 1. 145 foll. 

These amusements were always accompanied with the music and dancingso dear to the Italian peoples, and it is easy to divine how they mayhave gradually developed into plays of a rude but tolerably fixedtype, with improvised dialogue, acted in the streets, or later in theintervals between acts at the theatre, and eventually as afterpieces, more after our own fashion. 

In Cicero's day two kinds of farces were in vogue. In his earlier lifethe so-called Atellan plays (fabulae Atellanae) were the favourites:these were of indigenous Latin origin, and probably took their namefrom the ruined town Atella, which might provide a permanent sceneryas the background of the plays without offending the jealousy of anyof the other Latin cities. [522] They were doubtless very comic, but itwas possible to get tired of them, for the number of stockcharacters was limited, and the masks were always the same for eachcharacter--the old man Pappus, the glutton Bucco, Dossennus thesharper, etc. About the time of Sulla the _mimes_ seem to havedisplaced these old farces in popular favour, perhaps because theirfun was more varied; the mere fact that the actors did not wear masksshows that the improvisation could be freer and less stereotyped. Butboth kinds were alike coarse, and may be called the comedy of low lifein country towns and in the great city. Sulla's tastes seem to havebeen low in the matter of plays, if we may trust Plutarch, who assertsthat when he was young he spent much of his time among _mimi_ andjesters, and that when he was dictator he "daily got together from thetheatre the lewdest persons, with whom he would drink and enter into acontest of coarse witticisms. "[523] This may be due to the evidence ofan enemy, but it is not improbable; and it is possible that both Sullaand Caesar, who also patronised the mimes, may have wished to avoidthe personal allusions which, as we have seen, were so often made orimagined in the exhibition of tragedies, and have aimed at confiningthe plays to such as would give less opportunity for unwelcomecriticism. [524]

About the year 50 B. C. , as we have seen in the chapter on education, there came to Italy the Syrian Publilius, who began to write mimes inverse, thus for the first time giving them a literary turn. Caesar, always on the look-out for talent, summoned him to Rome, and awardedhim the palm for his plays. [525] These must have been, as regards witand style, of a much higher order than any previous mimes, and in factnot far removed from the older Roman comedy (fabula togata) in manner. Cicero alludes to them twice: and writing to Cornificius from Rome inOctober 45 he says that at Caesar's ludi he listened to the poems ofPublilius and Laberius with a well-pleased mind. [526] "Nihil mihitamen deesse scito quam quicum haec familiariter docteque rideam";here the word _docte_ seems to suggest that the performance was atleast worthy of the attention of a cultivated man. Laberius, alsoa Roman knight, wrote mimes at the same time as Publilius, and wasbeaten by him in competition; of him it is told that he was induced byCaesar to act in his own mime, and revenged himself for the insult, asit was then felt to be by a Roman of good birth, in a prologue whichhas come down to us. [527] We may suppose that his plays were of thesame type as those of Publilius, and interspersed with those wisesayings, _sententiae_, which the Roman people were still capable ofappreciating. Even in the time of Seneca applause was given to anywords which the audience felt at once to be true and to hit themark. [528]

Thus the mime was lifted from the level of the lowest farcicalimprovisation to a recognised position in literature, and quiteincidentally became useful in education. But the coarseness remained;the dancing was grotesque and the fun ribald, and, as Professor Pursersays, the plots nearly always involved "some incident of an amorousnature in which ordinary morality was set at defiance. " The Romanaudience of the early Empire enjoyed these things, and all sortsof dancing, singing, and instrumental music, and above all the_pantomimus_, [529] in which the actor only gesticulated, withoutspeaking; this and the fact that the real drama never again had a fairchance is one of the many signs that the city population was losingboth virility and intelligence. 

CHAPTER XI

RELIGION

It is easy to write the word "religion" at the head of this chapter, but by no means easy to find anything in this materialistic periodwhich answers to our use of the word. In the whole mass, for example, of the Ciceronian correspondence, there is hardly anything to showthat Cicero and his friends, and therefore, as we may presume, theaverage educated man of the day, were affected in their thinking ortheir conduct by any sense of dependence on, or responsibility to, aSupreme Being. If, however, it had been possible to substitute forthe English word the Latin _religio_ it would have made a far moreappropriate title to this chapter, for _religio_ meant primarily awe, nervousness, scruple--much the same in fact as that feeling which inthese days we call superstition; and secondarily the means taken, under the authority of the State, to quiet such feelings by theperformance of rites meant to propitiate the gods. [530] In both ofthese senses _religio_ is to be found in the last age of the Republic;but, as we shall see, the tendency to superstitious nervousness wasvery imperfectly allayed and the worship that should have allayed itwas in great measure neglected. 

It may be, indeed, that in quiet country districts the joyous ruralfestivals went on--we have many allusions and a few descriptions ofthem in the literature of the Augustan period, --and also the worshipof the household deities, in which there perhaps survived a feeling of_pietas_ more nearly akin to what we call religious feeling than inany of the cults (_sacra publica_) undertaken by the State for thepeople. Even in the city the cult of the dead, or what may perhaps bebetter called the religious attention paid to their resting-places, and the religious ceremonies attending birth, puberty, and marriage, were kept up as matters of form and custom among the upper andwealthier classes. But the great mass of the population of Rome, wemay be almost sure, knew nothing of these rites; the poor man, forexample, could no more afford a tomb for himself than a house, and hisbody was thrown into some _puticulus_ or common burying-place, [531]where it was impossible that any yearly ceremonies could be performedto his memory, even if any one cared to do so. And among the higherstrata of society, outside of these _sacra privata_, carelessnessand negligence of the old State cults were steadily on the increase. Neither Cicero nor any of his contemporaries but Varro has anythingto tell us of their details, and the decay had gone so far that Varrohimself knew little or nothing about many of the deities of the oldreligious calendar, [532] or of the ways in which they had at onetime been worshipped. Vesta, with her simple cult and her virginpriestesses, was almost the only deity who was not either forgottenor metamorphosed in one way or another under the influence of Greekliterature and mythology; Vesta was too well recognised as a symbolof the State's vitality to be subject to neglect like other and lesssignificant cults. The old sacrificing priesthoods, such as theFratres Arvales and the lesser Flamines, seem not to have been filledup by the pontifices whose duty it was to do so: and the FlamenDialis, the priest of Jupiter himself, is not heard of from 89 to11 B. C. , when he appears again as a part of the Augustan religiousrestoration. The explanation is probably that these offices could notbe held together with any secular one which might take the holderaway from Rome; and as every man of good family had business in theprovinces, no qualified person could be found willing to put himselfunder the restriction. The temples too seem to have been sadlyneglected; Augustus tells us himself[533] that he had to restore noless than eighty-two; and from Cicero we actually hear of theftsof statues and other temple property[534]--sacrileges which may beattributed to the general demoralisation caused by the Social andCivil Wars. At the same time there seems to have been a strongtendency to go after strange gods, with whose worship Roman soldiershad made acquaintance in the course of their numerous easterncampaigns. It is a remarkable fact that no less than four times in asingle decade the worship of Isis had to be suppressed, --in 58, 53, 50, and 48 B. C. In the year 50 we are told that the consul AemiliusPaullus, a conservative of the old type, actually threw off his togapraetexta and took an axe to begin destroying the temple, because noworkmen could be found to venture on the work. [535] These are indeedstrange times; the beautiful religion of Isis, which assuredly hadsome power to purify a man and strengthen his conscience, [536] was tobe driven out of a city where the old local religion had never had anysuch power, and where the masses were now left without a particle ofaid or comfort from any religious source. The story seems to ringtrue, and gives us a most valuable glimpse into the mental conditionof the Roman workman of the time. 

Of such foreign worships, and of the general neglect of the old cults, Cicero tells us nothing; we have to learn or to guess at these factsfrom evidence supplied by later writers. His interest in religiouspractice was confined to ceremonies which had some politicalimportance. He was himself an augur, and was much pleased with hiselection to that ancient college; but, like most other augurs ofthe time, he knew nothing of augural "science, " and only cared tospeculate philosophically on the question whether it is possible toforetell the future. He looked upon the right of the magistrate to"observe the heaven" as a part of an excellent constitution, [537]and could not forgive Caesar for refusing in 59 B. C. To have hislegislation paralysed by the fanatical declarations of his colleaguethat he was going to "look for lightning. " He firmly believed inthe value of the _ius divinum_ of the State. In his treatise on theconstitution (_de Legibus_) he devotes a whole book to this religiousside of constitutional law, and gives a sketch of it in quasi-legallanguage from which it appears that he entirely accepted the duty ofthe State to keep the citizen in right relation to the gods, on whosegood-will his welfare depended. He seems never to have noticed that theState was neglecting this duty, and that, as we saw just now, templesand cults were falling into decay, strange forms of religion pressingin. Such things did not interest him; in public life the Statereligion was to him a piece of the constitution, to be maintainedwhere it was clearly essential; in his own study it was a matter ofphilosophical discussion. In his young days he was intimate with thefamous Pontifex Maximus, Mucius Scaevola, who held that there werethree religions, --that of the poets, that of the philosophers, andthat of the statesman, of which the last must be accepted andacted on, whether it be true or not. [538] Cicero could hardly havecomplained if this saying had been attributed to himself. 

This attitude of mind, the combination of perfect freedom of thoughtwith full recognition of the legal obligations of the State and itscitizens in matters of religion, is not difficult for any one tounderstand who is acquainted with the nature of the ius divinum andthe priesthood administering it. That ius divinum was a part of theius civile, the law of the Roman city-state; as the ius civile, exclusive of the ius divinum, regulated the relations of citizen tocitizen, so did the ius divinum regulate the relations of the citizento the deities of the community. The priesthoods administering thislaw consisted not of sacrificing priests, attached to the cult of aparticular god and temple, but of lay officials in charge of that partof the law of the State; it was no concern of theirs (so indeed theymight quite well argue) whether the gods really existed or not, provided the law were maintained. When in 61 B. C. Clodius was caughtin disguise at the women's festival of the Bona Dea, the pontificesdeclared the act to be _nefas_, --crime against the ius divinum; butwe may doubt whether any of those pontifices really believed in theexistence of such a deity. The idea of the _mos maiorum_ was still sostrong in the mind of every true Roman, his conservative instinctswere so powerful, that long after all real life had left the divineinhabitants of his city, so that they survived only as the dead stalksof plants that had once been green and flourishing, he was quitecapable of being horrified at any open contempt of them. And he wasright, as Augustus afterwards saw clearly; for the masses, who hadno share in the education described in the sixth chapter, whoknew nothing of Greek literature or philosophy, and were fullof superstitious fancies, were already losing confidence in theauthorities set over them, and in their power to secure the good-willof the gods and their favour in matters of material well-being. This is the only way in which we can satisfactorily account for thesystematic efforts of Augustus to renovate the old religious rites andpriesthoods, and we can fairly argue back from it to the tendencies ofthe generation immediately before him. He knew that the proletariateof Rome and Italy still believed, as their ancestors had alwaysbelieved, that state and individual would alike suffer unless the godswere properly propitiated; and that in order to keep them quiet andcomfortable the sense of duty to the gods must be kept alive evenamong those who had long ceased to believe in them. It was fortunateindeed for Augustus that he found in the great poet of Mantua one whowas in some sense a prophet as well as a poet, who could urge theRoman by an imaginative example to return to a living pietas, --notmerely to the old religious forms, but to the intelligent sense ofduty to God and man which had built up his character and his empire. In Cicero's day there was also a great poet, he too in some sense aprophet; but Lucretius could only appeal to the Roman to shake off theslough of his old religion, and such an appeal was at the time bothfutile and dangerous. Looking at the matter historically, and nottheologically, we ought to sympathise with the attitude of Ciceroand Scaevola towards the religion of the State. It was based on astatesmanlike instinct; and had it been possible for that instinct toexpress itself practically in a positive policy like that of Augustus, instead of showing itself in philosophical treatises like the _deLegibus_, or on occasional moments of danger like that of the Bona Deasacrilege, it is quite possible that much mischief might havebeen averted. But in that generation no one had the shrewdness orexperience of Augustus, and no one but Julius had the necessary freehand; and we may be almost sure that Julius, Pontifex Maximus thoughhe was, was entirely unfitted by nature and experience to undertakea work that called for such delicate handling, such insight into theworking of the ignorant Italian mind. 

This attitude of inconsistency and compromise must seem to a modernunsatisfactory and strained, and he turns with relief to thecourageous outspokenness of the great poem of Lucretius on the Natureof Things, of which the main object was to persuade the Romans torenounce for good all the mass of superstition, in which he includedthe religion of the State, by which their minds were kept in a prisonof darkness, terror, and ignorance. Lucretius took no part whatever inpublic life; he could afford to be in earnest; he felt no shadow ofresponsibility for the welfare of the State as such. The Epicureantenets which he held so passionately had always ranked the individualbefore the community, and suggested a life of individual quietism;Lucretius in his study could contemplate the "rerum natura" withouttroubling himself about the "natura hominum" as it existed in theItaly of his day. "Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, "--sowrote of him his great successor and admirer, yet added, with a tingeof pathos which touches us even now, "Fortunatus et ille deos quinovit agrestes. " Even at the present day an uncompromising unbelievermay be touched by the simple worship, half pagan though it may seem tohim, of a village in the Apennines; but in the eyes of Lucretius allworship seemed prompted by fear and based on ignorance of natural law. Virgil's tender and sympathetic soul went out to the peasant as heprayed to his gods for plenty or prosperity, as it went out to allliving creatures in trouble or in joy. 

But it is nevertheless true that Lucretius was a great religious poet. He was a prophet, in deadly earnest, calling men to renounce theirerrors both of thought and conduct. He saw around him a world full ofwickedness and folly; a world of vanity, vexation, fear, ambition, cruelty, and lust. He saw men fearing death and fearing the gods;overvaluing life, yet weary of it; unable to use it well, becausesteeped in ignorance of the wonderful working of Nature. [539] He sawthem, as we have already seen them, the helpless victims of ambitionand avarice, ever, like Sisyphus, rolling the stone uphill and neverreaching the summit. [540] Of cruelty and bloodshed in civil strifethat age had seen enough, and on this too the poet dwells with bitteremphasis;[541] on the unwholesome luxury and restlessness of theupper classes, [542] and on their unrestrained indulgence of bodilyappetites. In his magnificent scorn he probably exaggerated the evilsof his day, yet we have seen enough in previous chapters to suggestthat he was not a mere pessimist; there is no trace in his poem ofcynicism, or of a soured temperament. We may be certain that he wasabsolutely convinced of the truth of all he wrote. 

So far Lucretius may be called a religious poet, in that with profoundconviction and passionate utterance he denounced the wickedness ofhis age, and, like the Hebrew prophets, called on mankind to put awaytheir false gods and degrading superstitions, and learn the truesecret of guidance in this life. It is only when we come to ask whatthat secret was, that we feel that this extraordinary man knew far toolittle of ordinary human nature to be either a religious reformeror an effective prophet: as Sellar has said of him, [543] he had nosympathy with human activity. His secret, the remedy for all theworld's evil and misery, was only a philosophical creed, which he hadlearnt from Epicurus and Democritus. His profound belief in it is oneof the most singular facts in literary history; no man ever put suchpoetic passion into a dogma, and no such imperious dogma was everbuilt upon a scientific theory of the universe. He seems to havecombined two Italian types of character, which never have been unitedbefore or since, --that of the ecclesiastic, earnest and dogmatic, seeing human nature from a doctrinal platform, not working andthinking with it; and secondly the poetic type, of which Dante is thenoblest example, perfectly clear and definite in inward and outwardvision, and illuminating all that it touches with an indescribableglow of pure poetic imagination. 

Lucretius' secret then is knowledge, [544]--not the dilettanteism ofthe day, but real scientific knowledge of a single philosophicalattempt to explain the universe, --the atomic theory of the Epicureanschool. Democritus and Epicurus are the only saviours, --of thisLucretius never had the shadow of a doubt. As the result of thisknowledge, the whole supernatural and spiritual world of fancyvanishes, together with all futile hopes or fears of a future life. The gods, if they exist, will cease to be of any importance tomankind, as having no interest in him, and doing him neither good norharm. Chimaeras, portents, ghosts, death, and all that frightens theignorant and paralyses their energies, will vanish in the pure lightof this knowledge; man will have nothing to be afraid of but himself. Nor indeed need he fear himself when he has mastered "the truth. " Bythat time, as the scales of fear fall from his eyes, his moral balancewill be recovered; the blind man will see. What will he see? What isthe moral standard that will become clear to him, the sanction ofright living that will grip his conscience?

It is simply the conviction that as this life is all we have in past, present, or future, it _must be used well_. After all then, Lucretiusis reduced to ordinary moral suasion, and finds no new power orsanction that could keep erring human nature in the right path. Andwe must sadly allow that no real moral end is enunciated by him;his ideal seems to be quietism in this life, and annihilationafterwards. [545] It is a purely self-regarding rule of life. It is noteven a social creed; neither family nor State seems to have any partin it, much less the unfortunate in this life, the poor, and thesuffering. The poet never mentions slavery, or the crowded populationsof great cities. It might almost be called a creed of fatalism, inwhich Natura plays much the same part as Fortuna did in the creed ofmany less noble spirits of that age. [546] Nature fights on; we cannotresist her, and cannot improve on her; it is better to acquiesce andobey than to try and rule her. 

Thus Lucretius' remedy fails utterly; it is that of an aristocraticintellect, not of a saviour of mankind. [547] So far as we know, it wasentirely fruitless; like the constitution of Sulla his contemporary, the doctrine of Lucretius roused no sense of loyalty in Roman orItalian, because it was constructed with imperfect knowledge of theRoman and Italian nature. But it was a noble effort of a noble mind;and, apart from its literary greatness, it has incidentally a lastingvalue for all students of religious history, as showing better thananything else that has survived from that age the need of a realconsecration of morality by the life and example of a Divine man. 

Thus while the Roman statesman found it necessary to maintain the iusdivinum without troubling himself to attempt to put any new life intothe details of the worship it prescribed, content to let much of itsink into oblivion as no longer essential to the good government ofthe State, the greatest poetical genius of the age was proclaiming intrumpet tones that if a man would make good use of his life he mustabandon absolutely and without a scruple the old religious ideas ofthe Graeco-Roman world. But there was another school of thought whichhad long been occupied with these difficulties, and had reachedconclusions far better suited than the dogmatism of Lucretius to theconservative character of the Roman mind, for it found a place forthe deities of the State, and therefore for the ius divinum, in aphilosophical system already widely accepted by educated men. Thisschool may be described as Stoic, though its theology was oftenaccepted by men who did not actually call themselves Stoics; forexample, by Cicero himself, who, as an adherent of the New Academy, the school which repudiated dogmatism and occupied itself withdialectic and criticism, was perfectly entitled to adopt the tenetsof other schools if he thought them the most convincing. Its mostelaborate exponent in this period was Varro, and behind both Varro andCicero there stands the great figure of the Rhodian Posidonius[548], of whose writings hardly anything has come down to us. It is worthwhile to trace briefly the history of this school at Rome, for it isin itself extremely interesting, as an attempt to reconcile the oldtheology--if the term may be used--with philosophical thought, and itprobably had an appreciable influence on the later quasi-religiousStoicism of the Empire. 

We must go back for a moment to the period succeeding the war withHannibal. The awful experience of that war had done much to discreditthe old Roman religious system, which had been found insufficient ofitself to preserve the State. The people, excited and despairing, had been quieted by what may be called new religious prescriptions, innumerable examples of which are to be found in Livy's books. The Sibylline books were constantly consulted, and _lectisternia, supplicationes, ludi_, in which Greek deities were prominent, wereordered and carried out. Finally, in 204 B. C. , there was brought toRome the sacred stone of the Magna Mater Idaea, the great deity ofPessinus in Phrygia, and a festival was established in her honour, called by the Greek name Megalesia. All this means, as can be seenclearly from Livy's language, [549] that the governing classes weretrying to quiet the minds of the people by convincing them that noeffort was being spared to set right their relations with the unseenpowers; they had invoked in vain their own local and native deities, and had been compelled to seek help elsewhere; they had found theirown narrow system of religion quite inadequate to express theirreligious experience of the last twenty years. And indeed that oldsystem of religion never really recovered from the discredit thus caston it. The temper of the people is well shown by the rapidity withwhich the orgiastic worship of the Greek Dionysus spread over Italy afew years later; and the fact that it was allowed to remain, thoughunder strict supervision, shows that the State religion no longer hadthe power to satisfy the cravings of the masses. And the educatedclass too was rapidly coming under the influence of Greek thought, which could hardly act otherwise than as a solvent of the oldreligious ideas. Ennius, the great literary figure of this period, was the first to strike a direct blow at the popular belief in theefficacy of prayer and sacrifice, by openly declaring that the godsdid not interest themselves in mankind, [550]--the same Epicureandoctrine preached afterwards by Lucretius. It may indeed be doubtedwhether this doctrine became popular, or acceptable even to thecultured classes; but the fact remains that the same man who didmore than any one before Virgil to glorify the Roman character anddominion, was the first to impugn the belief that Rome owed hergreatness to her divine inhabitants. 

But in the next generation there arrived in Rome a man whose teachinghad so great an influence on the best type of educated Roman that, aswe have already said, he may almost be regarded as a missionary. [551]We do not know for certain whether Panaetius wrote or taught about thenature or existence of the gods; but we do know that he discussed thequestion of divination[552] in a work [Greek: Peri pronoias], where hecould hardly have avoided the subject. In any case the Stoic doctrineswhich he held, themselves ultimately derived from Plato and the OldAcademy, were found capable in the hands of his great successorPosidonius of Rhodes of supplying a philosophical basis for theactivity as well as the existence of the gods. These men, it mustbe repeated, were not merely professed philosophers, but men of theworld, travellers, writing on a great variety of subjects; they wereprofoundly interested, like Polybius, in the Roman character andgovernment; they became intimate with the finer Roman minds, fromScipio the younger to Cicero and Varro, and seem to have seen clearlythat the old rigid Stoicism must be widened and humanised, and itsethical and theological aspects modified, if it were to gain a realhold on the practical Roman understanding. We have already seen[553]how their modified Stoic ethics acted for good on the best Romansof our period. In theology also they left a permanent mark on Romanthought; Posidonius wrote a work on the gods, which formed the basisof the speculative part of Varro's _Antiquitates divinae_, and almostcertainly also of the second book of Cicero's de _Natura Deorum_[554]. Other philosophers of the period, even if not professed Stoics, mayhave discussed the same subjects in their lectures and writings, arriving at conclusions of the same kind. 

It is chiefly from the fragments of Varro's work that we learnsomething of the Stoic attempt to harmonise the old religious beliefswith philosophic theories of the universe[555]. Varro, following histeacher, held the Stoic doctrine of the _animus mundi_ the Divineprinciple permeating all material things which, in combination withthem, constitutes the universe, and is Nature, Reason, God, Destiny, or whatever name the philosopher might choose to give it. The universeis divine, the various parts of it are, therefore, also divine, invirtue of this informing principle. Now in the sixteenth book of hisgreat work Varro co-ordinated this Stoic theory with the Graeco-Romanreligion of the State as it existed in his time. The chief godsrepresented the _partes mundi_ in various ways; even the differenceof sex among the deities was explained by regarding male gods asemanating from the heaven and female ones from the earth, accordingto a familiar ancient idea of the active and passive principle ingeneration. The Stoic doctrine of [Greek: daimones] was also utilisedto find an explanation for semi-deities, lares, genii, etc. , and thusanother character of the old Italian religious mind was to be savedfrom contempt and oblivion. The old Italian tendency to see thesupernatural manifesting itself in many different ways expressed byadjectival titles, e. G. Mars Silvanus, Jupiter Elicius, Juno Lucina, etc. , also found an explanation in Varro's doctrine; for the divineelement existing in sky, earth, sea, or other parts of the _mundus_, and manifesting itself in many different forms of activity, mightbe thus made obvious to the ordinary human intellect without theinterposition of philosophical terms. 

At the head of the whole system was Jupiter, the greatest of Romangods, whose title of Optimus Maximus might well have suggested that noother deity could occupy this place. Without him it would have beenpractically impossible for Varro to carry out his difficult andperilous task. Every Roman recognised in Jupiter the god whocondescended to dwell on the Capitol in a temple made with hands, andwho, beyond all other gods, watched over the destinies of the RomanState; every Roman also knew that Jupiter was the great god of theheaven above him, for in many expressions of his ordinary speech heused the god's name as a synonym for the open sky. [556] The positionnow accorded to the heaven-god in the new Stoic system is so curiousand interesting that we must dwell on it for a moment. 

Varro held, or at any rate taught, that Jupiter was himself that soulof the world (animus mundi) which fills and moves the whole materialuniverse. [557] He is the one universal causal agent, [558] from whomall the forces of nature are derived;[559] or he may be called, inlanguage which would be intelligible to the ordinary Roman, theuniversal Genius. [560] Further, he is himself all the other gods andgoddesses, who may be described as parts, or powers, or virtues, existing in him. [561] And Varro makes it plain that he wishes toidentify this great god of gods with the Jupiter at Rome, whose templewas on the Capitol; St. Augustine quotes him as holding that theRomans had dedicated the Capitol to Jupiter, who by his spiritbreathes life into everything in the universe:[562] or in lessphilosophical language, "The Romans wish to recognise Jupiter as kingof gods and men, and this is shown by his sceptre and his seat on theCapitol. " Thus the god who dwelt on the Capitol, and in the templewhich was the centre-point of the Roman Empire, was also thelife-giving ruler and centre of the whole universe. Nay, he goes onestep further, and identifies him with the one God of the monotheisticpeoples of the East, and in particular with the God of the Jews. [563]

Thus Varro had arrived, with the help of Posidonius and the Stoics, ata monotheistic view of the Deity, which is at the same time a kind ofpantheism, and yet, strange to say, is able to accommodate itself tothe polytheism of the Graeco-Roman world. But without Jupiter, god ofthe heaven both for Greeks and Romans, and now too in the eyes of bothpeoples the god who watched over the destiny of the Roman Empire, thiswonderful feat could not have been performed. The identification ofthe heaven-god with the animus mundi of the Stoics was not indeed anew idea; it may be traced up Stoic channels even to Plato. What isreally new and astonishing is that it should have been possible for aconservative Roman like Varro, in that age of carelessness and doubt, to bring the heaven-god, so to speak, down to the Roman Capitol, wherehis statue was to be seen sitting between Juno and Minerva, and yet toteach the doctrine that he was the same deity as the Jewish Jehovah, and that both were identical with the Stoic animus mundi. 

But did Varro also conceive of this Jupiter as a deity "making forrighteousness, " or acting as a sanction for morality? It would nothave been impossible or unnatural for a Roman so to think of him, forof all the Roman deities Jupiter is the one whose name from the mostancient times had been used in oaths and treaties, and whose _numen_was felt to be violated by any public or private breach of faith. [564]We cannot tell how far Varro himself followed out this line ofthought, for the fragments of his great work are few and far between. But we know that the Roman Stoics saw in that same universal Power orMind which Varro identified with Jupiter the source and strength oflaw, and therefore of morality; here it is usually called reason, _ratio_, the working of the eternal and immutable Mind of theuniverse. "True law is right reason, " says Cicero in a noblepassage;[565] and goes on to teach that this law transcends all humancodes of law, embracing and sanctioning them all; and that the spiritinherent in it, which gives it its universal force, is God Himself. Inanother passage, written towards the end of his life, and certainlylater than the publication of Varro's work, he goes further andidentifies this God with Jupiter. [566] "This law, " he says, "came intobeing simultaneously with the Divine Mind" (i. E. The Stoic Reason):"wherefore that true and paramount law, commanding and forbidding, isthe right reason of almighty Jupiter" (summi Iovis). Once more, in thefirst book of his treatise on the gods, he quotes the Stoic Chrysippusas teaching that the eternal Power, which is as it were a guide in theduties of life, is Jupiter himself. [567] It is characteristic of theRoman that he should think, in speculations like these, rather of thelaw of his State than of the morality of the individual, as emanatingfrom that Right Reason to which he might give the name of Jupiter: Ihave been unable to find a passage in which Cicero attributes to thisdeity the sanction for individual goodness, though there are many thatassert the belief that justice and the whole system of social lifedepend on the gods and our belief in them. [568] But the Roman hadnever been conscious of individual duty, except in relation to hisState, or to the family, which was a living cell in the organism ofthe State. In his eyes law was rather the source of morality thanmorality the cause and the reason of law; and as his religion was apart of the law of his State, and thus had but an indirect connectionwith morality, it would not naturally occur to him that even the greatJupiter himself, thus glorified as the Reason in the universe, couldreally help him in the conduct of his life _qua_ individual. It isonly as the source of legalised morality that we can think of Varro'sJupiter as "making for righteousness. "

Less than twenty-five years after Cicero's death, in the imaginationof the greatest of Roman poets, Jupiter was once more brought beforethe Roman world, and now in a form comprehensible by all educated men, whether or no they had dabbled in philosophy. What are we to say ofthe Jupiter of the _Aeneid_? We do not need to read far in the firstbook of the poem to find him spoken of in terms which remind us ofVarro: "O qui res hominumque deumque Aeternis regis imperiis, " are theopening words of the address of Venus; and when she has finished, Olli subridens hominum sator atque deorum Vultu, quo caelum tempestatesque serenat, Oscula libavit natae, dehine talia fatur; "Parce metu, Cytherea, manent immota tuorum Fata tibi. "

Jupiter is here, as in Varro's system, the prime cause and ruler ofall things, and he also holds in his hand the destiny of Rome and thefortunes of the hero who was to lay the first foundation of Rome'sdominion. It is in the knowledge of his will that Aeneas walks, withhesitating steps, in the earlier books, in the later ones with assuredconfidence, towards the goal that is set before him. But the linesjust quoted serve well to show how different is the Jupiter of Virgilfrom the universal deity of the Roman Stoic. Beyond doubt Virgil hadfelt the power of the Stoic creed; but he was essaying an epic poem, and he could not possibly dispense with the divine machinery as itstood in his great Homeric model. His Jupiter is indeed, as has beenlately said, [569] "a great and wise god, free from the tyrannical andsensuous characteristics of the Homeric Zeus, " in other words, he is aRoman deity, and sometimes acts and speaks like a grave Roman consulof the olden time. But still he is an anthropomorphic deity, a purelyhuman conception of a personal god-king; in these lines he smiles onhis daughter Venus and kisses her. This is the reason why Virgil hasthroughout his poem placed the Fates, or Destiny, in close relation tohim, without definitely explaining that relation. Fate, as it appearsin the Aeneid, is the Stoic [Greek: eimarmenae] applied to the idea ofRome and her Empire; that Stoic conception could not take the form ofJupiter, as in Varro's hands, for the god had to be modelled on theHomeric pattern, not on the Stoic. It is perhaps not going too far tosay that the god, as a theological conception, never recovered fromthis treatment; any chance he ever had of becoming the centre of areal religious system was destroyed by the Aeneid, the _pietas_ ofwhose hero is indeed nominally due to him, but in reality to thedecrees of Fate. [570]

While philosophers and poets were thus performing intellectual andimaginative feats with the gods of the State, the strong tendency tosuperstition, untutored fear of the supernatural, which had alwaysbeen characteristic of the Italian peoples, so far from losing power, was actually gaining it, and that not only among the lower classes. AsLucretius mockingly said, even those who think and speak with contemptof the gods will in moments of trouble slay black sheep and sacrificethem to the Manes. This feeling of fear or nervousness, which lies atthe root of the meaning of the word _religio_, [571] had been quietedin the old days by the prescriptions of the pontifices and their jusdivinum, but it was always ready to break out again; as we have seen, in the long and awful struggle of the Hannibalic war, it was necessaryto go far beyond the ordinary pharmacopoeia within reach of thepriesthoods in order to convince the people that all possible meanswere being taken for their salvation. Again, in this last age of theRepublic, there are obvious signs that both ignorant and educatedwere affected by the gloom and uncertainty of the times. Increasinguncertainty in the political world, increasing doubt in the world ofthought, very naturally combined to produce an emotional tendencywhich took different forms in men of different temperament. We cantrace this (1) in the importance attached to omens, portents, dreams;(2) in a certain vague thought of a future life, which takes apositive shape in the deification of human beings; (3) at the close ofthe period, in something approaching to a sense of sin, of neglectedduty, bringing down upon State and individual the anger of the gods. 

1. If we glance over the latter part of the book of prodigies, compiled by the otherwise unknown writer Julius Obsequens from therecords of the pontifices quoted in Livy's history, we can get a fairidea of the kind of portent that was troubling the popular mind. They are much the same as they always had been in Romanhistory, --earthquakes, monstrous births, temples struck by lightning, statues overthrown, wolves entering the city, and so on; they areextremely abundant in the terrible years of the Social and Civil Wars, become less frequent after the death of Sulla, and break out againin full force with the murder of Caesar. They were reported to thepontifices from the places where they were supposed to have occurred, and if thought worthy of expiation were entered in the pontificalbooks. We may suppose that they were sent in chiefly by theuneducated. But among men of education we have many examples of thissame nervousness, of which two or three must suffice. Sulla, as weknow from his own Memoirs, which were used directly or indirectly byPlutarch, had a strong vein of superstition in his nature, and madeno attempt to control it. In dedicating his Memoirs to Lucullus headvised him "to think no course so safe as that which is enjoinedby the [Greek: daimon] (perhaps his genius) in the night";[572]and Plutarch tells us several tales of portents on which he acted, evidently drawn from this same autobiography. We are told of him thathe always carried a small image of Apollo, which he kissed from timeto time, and to which he prayed silently in moments of danger. [573]Again, Cicero tells us a curious story of himself, Varro, and Cato, which shows that those three men of philosophical learning were quiteliable to be frightened by a prophecy which to us would not seem tohave much claim to respect. [574] He tells how when the three wereat Dyrrachium, after Caesar's defeat there and the departure of thearmies into Thessaly, news was brought them by the commander of theRhodian fleet that a certain rower had foretold that within thirtydays Greece would be weltering in blood; how all three were terriblyfrightened, and how a few days later the news of the battle atPharsalia reached them. Lastly, we all remember the vision whichappeared to Brutus on the eve of the battle of Philippi, of a huge andfearsome figure standing by him in silence, which Shakespeare has madeinto the ghost of Caesar and used to unify his play. According toPlutarch, the Epicurean Cassius, as Lucretius would have done, attempted to convince his friend on rational grounds that the visionneed not alarm him, but apparently in vain. [575]

2. Lucretius had denied the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, as the cause of so much of the misery which he believed it to be hismission to avert. Caesar, in the speech put into his mouth by Sallust, in the debate on the execution of the conspirators on December 5, 63, seems to be of the same opinion, and as Cicero alludes to his words inthe speech with which he followed Caesar, we may suppose that Sallustwas reporting him rightly. [576] The poet and the statesman were notunlike in the way in which they looked at facts; both were of clearstrong vision, without a trace of mysticism. But such men were theexception rather than the rule; Cicero probably represents better theaverage thinking man of his time. Cicero was indeed too full of life, too deeply interested in the living world around him, to think muchof such questions as the immortality of the soul; and as a professedfollower of the Academic school, he assuredly did not hold anydogmatic opinion on it. He was at no time really affected byPythagoreanism, like his friend Nigidius Figulus, whose works, nowlost, had a great vogue in the later years of Cicero's life, and muchinfluence on the age that followed. In the first book of his TusculanDisputations Cicero discusses the question from the Academic point ofview, coming to no definite conclusion, except that whether we areimmortal or not we must be grateful to death for releasing us from thebondage of the body. This book was written in the last year of hislife; but ten years earlier, in the beautiful myth, imitated from themyths of Plato, which he appended to his treatise _de Republica_, hehad emphatically asserted the doctrine. There the spirit of the elderScipio appears to his great namesake, Cicero's ideal Roman, andassures him that the road to heaven (caelum) lies open to those who dotheir duty in this life, and especially their duty to the State. "Knowthyself to be a god; as the god of gods rules the universe, so the godwithin us rules the body, and as that great god is eternal, so does aneternal soul govern this frail body. "[577]

The _Somnium Scipionis_ was an inspiration, written under theinfluence of Plato at one of those emotional moments of Cicero'slife which make it possible to say of him that there was a religiouselement in his mind. [578] Some years later the poignancy of his griefat the death of his daughter Tullia had the effect of putting himagain in a strong emotional mood. For many weeks he lived alone atAstura, on the edge of the Pomptine marshes, out of reach of allfriends, forbidding even his young wife and her mother to come nearhim; brooding, as it would seem, on the survival of the godlikeelement in his daughter. These sad meditations took a practical formwhich at first astonishes us, but is not hard to understand when wehave to come to know Cicero well, and to follow the tendencies ofthought in these years. He might erect a tomb to her memory, --butthat would not satisfy him; it would not express his feeling that theimmortal godlike spark within her survived. He earnestly entreatsAtticus to find and buy him a piece of ground where he can build a_fanum_, i. E. A shrine, to her spirit. "I wish to have a shrine built, and that wish cannot be rooted out of my heart. I am anxious to avoidany likeness to a tomb . .. In order to attain as nearly as possible toan apotheosis. "[579] A little further on he calls these foolish ideas;but this is doubtless only because he is writing to Atticus, a manof the world, not given to emotion or mysticism. Cicero is reallyspeaking the language of the Italian mind, for the moment free fromphilosophical speculation; he believes that his beloved dead livedon, though he could not have proved it in argument. So firmly doeshe believe it that he wishes others to know that he believes it, andinsists that the shrine shall be erected in a frequented place![580]

Though the great Dictator did not believe in another world, heconsented at the end of his life to become Jupiter Julius, and afterhis death was duly canonised as Divus, and had a temple erected tohim. But the many-sided question of the deification of the Caesarscannot be discussed here; it is only mentioned as showing in anotherway the trend of thought in this dark age of Roman history. Whateversome philosophers may have thought, there cannot be a doubt that theordinary Roman believed in the godhead of Julius. [581]

3. We saw in an earlier chapter with what gay and heedless frivolityyoung men like Caelius were amusing themselves even on the very eve ofcivil war. In strange contrast with this is the gloom that overspreadall classes during the war itself, and more especially after theassassination of the Dictator. Caesar seemed irresistible and godlike, and men were probably beginning to hope for some new and more stableorder of things, when he was suddenly struck down, and the worldplunged again into confusion and doubt; and it was not till afterthe final victory of Octavian at Actium, and the destruction of theelements of disunion with the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra, thatmen really began to hope for better times. The literature of thosemelancholy years shows distinct signs of the general depression, whichwas perhaps something more than weariness and material discomfort;there was almost what we may call a dim sense of sin, or at least ofmoral evil, such a feeling, though far less real and intense, as thatwhich their prophets aroused from time to time in the Jewish people, and one not unknown in the history of Hellas. 

The most touching expression of this feeling is to be found in thepreface which Livy prefixed to his history--a wonderful example of thetruth that when a great prose writer is greatly moved, his languagereflects his emotion in its beauty and earnestness. Every studentknows the sentence in which he describes the gradual decay of all thatwas good in the Roman character: "donec ad haec tempora, quibus necvitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus, perventum est"; but it isnot every student who can recognise in it a real sigh of despair, anunmistakable token of the sadness of the age. [582] In the introductorychapters which serve the purpose of prefaces to the _Jugurtha_ and_Catiline_ of Sallust, we find something of the same sad tone, butit does not ring true like Livy's exordium; Sallust was a man ofaltogether coarser fibre, and seems to be rather assuming thanexpressing the genuine feeling of a saddened onlooker. In one of hisearliest poems, written perhaps after the Perusian war of 41 B. C. [583]even the lively Horace was moved to voice the prevailing depression, fancifully urging that the Italian people should migrate, like thePhocaeans of old, to the far west, where, as Sertorius had been toldin Spain, lay the islands of the blest, where the earth, as in thegolden age, yields all her produce untilled:

 Iuppiter ilia piae secrevit litora genti Ut inquinavit aere tempus aureum; Aere, dehinc ferro duravit saecula, quorum Piis secunda vate me datur fuga. 

It may be, as has recently been suggested, that the famous fourthEclogue of Virgil, "the Messianic Eclogue, " was in some sense meant asan answer to this poem of Horace. "There is no need, " he seems to sayin that poem, written in the year 39, "to seek the better age in afabled island of the west. It is here and now with us. The period uponwhich Italy is now entering more than fulfils in real life the dreamof a Golden Age. A marvellous child is even now coming into the worldwho will see and inaugurate an era of peace and prosperity: darknessand despair will after a while pass entirely away, and a regenerateItaly, --regenerate in religion and morals as in fertility andwealth, --will lead the world in a new era of happiness and goodgovernment. "[584]

But the Golden Age, so fondly hoped for, so vaguely and poeticallyconceived, was not to come in the sense in which Virgil, or any otherserious thinker of the day, could dream of it. I may conclude thischapter with a few sentences which express this most truly andeloquently. "When there is a fervent aspiration after better things, springing from a strong feeling of human brotherhood, and a firmbelief in the goodness and righteousness of God, such aspirationcarries with it an invincible confidence that some how, some where, some when, it must receive its complete fulfilment, for it is promptedby the Spirit which fills and orders the Universe throughout its wholedevelopment. But if the human organ of inspiration goes on to fix thehow, the where, and the when, and attributes to some nearer object theglory of the final blessedness, then it inevitably falls into suchmistakes as Virgil's, and finds its golden age in the rule of theCaesars (which was indeed an essential feature of Christianity), or perhaps, as in later days, in the establishment of socialism orimperialism. Well for the seer if he remembers that the kingdom of Godis within us, and that the true golden age must have its foundation inpenitence for misdoing, and be built up in righteousness and lovingkindness. "[585]

EPILOGUE

These sketches of social life at the close of the Republican periodhave been written without any intention of proving a point, or anypre-conceived idea of the extent of demoralisation, social, moral, orpolitical, which the Roman people had then reached. But a perusal ofMr. Balfour's suggestive lecture on "Decadence" has put me upon makinga very succinct diagnosis of the condition of the patient whose lifeand habits I have been describing. The Romans, and the Italians, withwhom they were now socially and politically amalgamated, were not inthe last two centuries B. C. An old or worn-out people. It is at anyrate certain that for a century after the war with Hannibal Rome andher allies, under the guidance of the Roman senate, achieved an amountof work in the way of war and organisation such as has hardly beenperformed by any people before or since; and even in the period dealtwith in this book, in spite of much cause for misgiving at home, thework done by Roman and Italian armies both in East and West showsbeyond doubt that under healthy discipline the native vigour of thepopulation could assert itself. We must not forget, however severelywe may condemn the way in which the work was done, that it is tothese armies, in all human probability, that we owe not only thepreservation of Graeco-Italian culture and civilisation, but theopportunity for further progress. The establishment of definitefrontiers by Pompeius and Caesar, and afterwards by Augustus andTiberius, brought peace to the region of the Mediterranean, and withit made possible the development of Roman law and the growth of a newand life-giving religion. 

But peoples, like individuals, if offered opportunities of doingthemselves physical or moral damage, are only too ready to acceptthem. Time after time in these chapters we have had to look back tothe age following the war with Hannibal in order to see what thoseopportunities were; and in each case we have found the acceptancerapid and eager. We have seen wealth coming in suddenly, and misused;slave-labour available in an abnormal degree, and utilised withresults in the main unfortunate; the population of the city increasingfar too quickly, yet the difficulties arising from this increaseeither ignored or misapprehended. We have noticed the decay ofwholesome family life, of the useful influence of the Roman matron, ofthe old forms of the State religion; the misconception of the true endof education, the result partly of Greek culture, partly of politicallife; and to these may perhaps be added an increasing liability todiseases, and especially to malaria, arising from economic blundersin Italy and insanitary conditions of life in the city. All theseopportunities of damage to the fibre of the people had been freelyaccepted, and with the result that in the age of Cicero we cannotmistake the signs and symptoms of degeneracy. 

But it would be a mistake to jump to the conclusion that thisdegeneracy had as yet gone too far to be arrested. It was assuredlynot that degeneracy of senility which Mr. Balfour is inclined topostulate as an explanation of decadence. So far as I can judge, theRomans were at that stage when, in spite of unhealthy conditions oflife and obstinate persistence in dangerous habits, it was not toolate to reform and recover. To me the main interest of the history ofthe early Empire lies in seeking the answer to the question how farthat recovery was made. If these chapters should have helped anystudent to prepare the ground for the solution of this problem theirobject will have been fully achieved. 

[Illustration: _Stanfords Geog. Estab. London_]

INDEX

 Accius _Aedicula_ Aediles, the Aemilia, Via. _See_ Via Aemilia Aemilius, Pons. See Pons Aemilius Aeneas Aerarium, the Aesopus, the actor Afranius Africa, province of Agrippa Alexandria Alexis (Atticus's slave) Amafinius _Ambitu, lex de_ Anio, the river Anna Perenna, festival of _Annona_ Antioch Antiochus (the physician) Antium, Cicero's villa at Antony _Apodyterium_ Apollinares, Ludi. _See_ Ludi Apollinares Apollonia Appia, Via. _See_ Via Appia Appius Claudius Caecus Aqua Appia Aqua Tepula Aqueducts Ara maxima Ara Pacis _Argentarii_ Argiletum, the Arpinum, Cicero's villa at _Ars amatoria_ (Ovid's) Arval brothers, the Arx, the Asia, province of Astura, Cicero's villa at _Atellanae, fabulae_. See _Fabulae Atellanae_ _Atrium_ _sutorium_, Vestae Atticus house of, wealth of, as money-lender, the sister of, the slave of, Cicero's letters to, _passim_, Augury Augustus alleged proposal of, to remove the capital, attitude of towards _plebs urbana_, water-supply under, the grandfather of, as a social reformer, marriage laws of, furthers public comfort, restoration of temples by, attempts at religious revival, Aventine hill

 Baiae Balbus, Cornelius, the younger Bankruptcy laws Basilicae, the Baths, public Bath-rooms Bauli Bithynia, province of _Blanditia_ Bona Dea, festival of Boscoreale _Brutus_ (Cicero's) Brutus, Decimus _Bulla_ Byzantium

 Caecilius Caelian hill Caelius Autipater Caelius (M. ) Rufus Caesar, Julius alleged proposal of, to remove the capital extends one of the Basilicae, reduces corn gratuities; regulations of, for the government of the city; debts of; character of; as historian; joined by Caelius; restores credit in Italy; and Cleopatra; clemency of; sale of prisoners by; dismisses surrendered armies; foundation at Corinth by; entertained by Cicero; habits of; as aedile; summons Publilius to Rome; as Pontifex Maximus; speech of, in Sallust; consents to be deified; and _passim_ _Calceus_ _Caldarium_ Calvus Camillus Campagua, the Campania Campus Martius Caninius Capena, Porta. _See_ Porta Capena Capital at Rome Capitol, the Capitoline hill Capua _Carceres_, the Carinae, the Carmentalis, Porta. _See_ Porta Carmentalis _Castella_ Castor, temple of Catiline Cato major Cato minor Catullus Catulus the elder _Cena_ Censor, the _Censoria locatio_ Ceres Ceriales, Ludi. _See_ Ludi Ceriales Cethegus Chariot-racing Chrysippus Cicero, birthplace of; house of; borrows money; as a man of business; and the publicani; relation of, to the governing aristocracy; letters of; as a philosopher; and Clodia; views on education; influence of philosophers upon; and the slave question; and the use of slaves for seditious purposes; villas of; undertakes the Ludi Romani; religious views of; and _passim_ Cicero, Marcus Cicero, Quintus Cilician pirates Circus Flaminius Circus Maximus Cleopatra Clients Clivus Capitolinus Clivus sacer Cloaca maxima Clodia Clodius Cluvius _Coemptio_ _Coenaculum_ Coinage _Collegia_ Colline gate, Sulla's victory at the, Colosseum, the Columella Comedy _Comissatio_ Comitium, the _Commercii, ius_ _Compluvium_ Concordia, temple of _Conducticii_ _Confarreatio_ _Coniugalia praecepta_ (Plutarch's) _Connubii, ius_ Constantine, arch of Consul, the Consus, altar of _Contubernium_ _Convivium_ _Copa_ ("Virgil's") Corfinium Cornelia Cornelius Crassus Cumae, Cicero's villa at Curia, the Curio

 Debtors _Declamatio_ _Deductio_ Democritus _Deorum, De Natura_ (Cicero's) Diana, temple of _Die natali, De_ (Censorinus's) _Diffarreatio_ Diomedes, villa of Dionysius of Halicarnassus Dionysus, worship of Di Penates. _See_ Penates Diphilus, the actor Divorce _Dolia_ _Domus_ _Dos_ Drama, the Dyrrhachium, importation of corn into; battle of

 Egypt Emetics, use of Ennius Epicureanism Epicurus _Epulum Jovis_ Equester, Ordo. _See_ Ordo equester Equirria Equites. _See_ Ordo equester _Ergastula_ Esquiline hill Etruscans, the Evander _Exedra_

 Fabius, arch of _Fabri ferrarii_ _Fabulae Atellanae_; palliatae; _togatae_ _Familiae urbanae_ Fate _Fercula_ _Feriae_ _Festa_ _Figuli_ Figulus, Nigidius Flaccus, Verrius Flamen Dialis; Quirinalis Flaminius _Flammeum_ Florales, Ludi. _See_ Ludi Florales _Foeneratores_ _Foenus_ Formiae, Cicero's villa at Forum Boarium Forum Romanum Friedländer Frontinus _Fullones_ Funeral games Furrina, the grove of

 Gabinius Gellius, Aulus Genseric Gilds. _See_ Collegia Gladiators Gracchus, Gaius Gracchus, Tiberius _Grammaticus_ _Grassatores_ Greeks

 Hannibal Hercules Hirtius _Honorum, ius_ Horace Hortensius Horti Caesaris

 _Ientaculum_ _Impluvium_ _Institutio Oratoris_ (Quintilian's) _Insulae_ _Inventione, De_ (Cicero's) Isis, worship of _Iura_ _Ius civile_ _Ius divinum_ _Ius gentium_

 Janiculum, the Janus, "temple" of Julius Obsequens Juno, temple of Jupiter Jupiter Farreus; Julius; Optimus Maximus, temple of; Stator, temple of Juturna, spring of

 "King, " game of

 Laberius Lar Lares, shrine of _Latifundium_ Latina, Via. _See_ Via Latina Latins, the Latium Law-courts, the _Lectisternia_ _Lectus_; _consularis_ _genialis_ _Legibus, De_ (Cicero's) Lentulus Lepidus Liberalia, the _Libertinus_ Libertus Liternum, Scipio's villa at Livius Andronicus Livy Lucretius Lucretius Vespillo, Q. Lueullus Ludi, Apollinares; Ceriales; Florales; Magni, _see_ Romani; Megalenses; Novemdiales; Plebeii; Romani; Victoriae Ludus Trojae Lupercal, the Lupercalia, the

 _Magister_ Magna Mater _Mancipes_ _Manes_ _Mangones_ _Manus_ Marcius Rex, Q. Marius Mars; temple of Martial _Matrimonium, iustum_ Megaleuses, Ludi. See Ludi Megalenses _Mensa_ _Mensae_; _rationes_ _Meridiatio_ _Metae_, the Metellus Celer Metellus Macedonicus Milo Mimes Minerva, temple of _Missio in bona_ _Missus_ Molo Mommsen Money-lenders _Moretum_ ("Virgil's") _Mos majorum_ _Muliones_ _Munera_

 _Nefas_ _Negotiatores_ _Negotium_ Nepos, Cornelius Neptunalia, the Nicomedes, king of Bithynia Novemdiales, Ludi. _See_ Ludi Novemdiales _Novas homo_ Numa _Nummularii_

 _Obaerati_ _Oecus_ _Officiis, De_ (Cicero's) _Operarii_ _Opifices_ Oppia, lex Oppius Mons _Oratore, De_ (Cicero's) Ordo equester; senatorius Oseans, the Ostia Ovid

 Pacuvius Palatine hill _Palliatae, fabulae_. See _Fabulae palliatae_ Panaetius _Pantomimus_ _Participes_ _Patronus_ Paullus, L. Aemilius _Paupereuli_ _Peculium_ Penates, the; temple of the Pergamum _Peristylium_ _Permutatio_ _Pero_ _Perscriptio_ _Persona_ Phaedrus the Epicurean Philippi, battle of Philippus (tribune) Philo the Academician Philodemus _Pietas_ Piso, Calpurnius _Pistores_ Plaetoria, lex Plautus Plebeii, Ludi. _See_ Ludi Plebeii Pliny, the elder; the younger Plutarch Pollio, Asinius Polybius Pomerium Pompeii Pompeius house of theatre of Pomponia Pons Aemilius Ponte Rotto Pontifex Maximus Porta Capena Carmentalis Esquilina Portunus Posidonius Praecia _Praedes_ _Praediola_ Praetor, the _Prandium_ Priesthoods _Promagister_ _Pronuba_ Provinces, the _Provocations_, _ius_ Ptolemy Auletes _Publicani_ _Publicum_ Publilius Syrus Punic wars Puteoli, Cicero's villa at _Puticulus_ Pythagoreanism

 _Quaestiones Conviviales (Plutarch's)_ Quaestorship, the Quintilian Quirinal (hill) Quirinus

 Rabirius Postumus _Redemptor_ Regia, the _Religio_ Religion _Repetundis, quaestio de_ _Republica, De_ (Cicero's) _Res_, _mancipi_ _Rex, the_ _Rex sacrorum_ _Rhetorica ad Herennium_ Romulus Roscius, the actor Rostra, the Rutilius

 Sabines, the _Saccarii_ _Sacra_, _privata_; _publica_; via, _see_ Via Sacra St. Peter, church of Salaminians, the Sallust Samnium San Gregorio, via di Sarpedon Sassia Saturnalia, the _Saturninus_ Saturnus, temple of Scaevola, Mucius Scaurus Scipio Aemilianus, Asiaticus, Nasica, Sempionia Senate, the Senatorius, ordo. _See_ Ordo senatorius Senec, "Servian wall" Servilius Sibylline books, the Slaves _Societates publicanorum_ _Socii_ _Sodalicia, collegia_. See _Collegia_ _Soleae_ _Somnium Scipionis_ (Cicero's) Spanish silver mines Spartacus _Spina_ _Sponsalia_ _Sportula_ Stoics, the _Stola matronalis_ Strabo Subura, the _Suffragii, ius_ Sulla Sulla, P. Sulpicius (S. ), Rufus Sun-dials _Supplicationes_ _Synthesis_

 _Tabellarii Tabernae Tabernae argentariae Tablinum Tabulae Tabulae novae_ Tabularia, the _Tepidarium_ Terence Terentia Theatre, the Theatre, building of a Thurii Tiber Tiber island _Tibicines_ Tibur Time, divisions of, in the day Tiro (Cicero's slave) _Tirocinium fori_ Titus, arch of _Toga_; _libera_; _praetexta_; _virilis_ _Togatae, fabulae_. See _Fabulae togatae_ Tragedy _Tributum_ _Triclinia_ Triumph, a Trofei di Mario Tullia (Cicero's daughter) Tullianum, the _Tunica_ Turia, the story of Tusculum, Cicero's villa at _Tutela_ _Tutor_ Twelve Tables, the

 _Usus_

 Valerius Maximus Varro Varro, Terentius (consul) Veii Velabrum, the Velia, the _Venationes_ Venus Victrix, temple of Verres Vesta; temple of Vestal Virgins Veterans, Roman Via Aurelia; Appia; Collatina; Latina; Sacra Victoriae, Ludi. See Ludi Victoriae Vicus Tuscus _Vilicus_ _Villa pseudurbana_ Vinalia, the _Vindicta_ Virgil Voconia, lex

 Water-clocks, introduction of

THE END

APPENDIX

Page 1, l. 12. _totam aestimare Romam_: to appreciate Rome in itsentirety. 

Page 3, l. 12. _Hinc ad Tarpeiam_, etc. : he leads him next to theTarpeian Rock and to the Capitol, now of gold, once thick with wildbushes. 

Page 4, l. 24. _Hinc septem_, etc. : from here you may see the sevenhills of the sovereign city, and appreciate Rome as a whole, the Albanand the Tusculan hills, and all the cool suburban retreats. 

Page 10, l. 1. _rerum_, etc. Rome became a supreme thing of beauty. 

Page 10, l. 13. _nativa praesidia_: natural defences. 

Page 10, l. 21. _regionum_, etc. A site in the middle of Italy, singularly fitted by nature for the development of the city. 

Page 17, l. 2. _nec ferrea_, etc. : nor has he seen the hardships ofthe law, the mad forum, or the archives of the people. 

Page 22, l. 2. _Ille, ille_, etc. : he it was, Jupiter himself, whowithstood the attack, he who willed it that the Capitol, that thesetemples, that the whole city and you all should be safe. 

Page 29, footnote 1. _in montibus_, etc. : built between mountains andvalleys, raised and almost suspended on high, through the stones ofits buildings, with its back streets. 

Page 39, l. 6. _ubi semel_, etc. : he who has once strayed from theright path will come to calamity. 

Page 52, l. 11. _lanificium_: the working of wool. 

Page 55, l. 26. _graffiti_: ancient scribblings, scratched, painted, or otherwise marked on a wall, column, tablet, or other surface. 

Page 61, l. 4. _quaestio de repetundis_: court for extortion. 

Page 64, l. 15. _familiarem_, etc. : intimate with L. Lucullus, wealthy, of intractable character. 

Page 73, l. 14. _qui de censoribus_, etc. : whosoever shall havesecured a contract from the censors shall not be accepted as associateor shareholder. 

Page 73, footnote 2. _Asiatici_, etc. : of the public revenue of Asia, he had a very small share. 

Page 91, l. 3. _fortissimus_, etc. : a most powerful and importantfarmer of the public revenue. 

Page 93, l. 20. _insanum forum_: the forum in its maddening bustle. 

Page 116, l. 12. _doctissimus_, etc. : the most learned of that time. 

Page 121, l. 11. _monumentum_, etc. : a monument more enduring thanbronze. 

Page 123, l. 20. _vere humanus:_ truly refined. 

Page 127, l. 23. _omnia_, etc. : he transforms himself into allportentous shapes. 

Page 130, l. 20. _ménager ses transitions:_ to pass gradually over tothe other side. 

Page 132, l. 18. _de vi:_ of criminal violence. 

Page 133, l. 9. _Uni se_, etc. : they are addicted to one and the samepractice, that they may cautiously cheat and craftily contend, outdoeach other in blandishments, feign honesty, set snares as if they wereall enemies to each other. 

Page 133, l. 28. _rari nantes_, etc. : few and scattered swimmers inthe vast abyss. 

Page 142 (bottom). _Claudite_, etc. : close the doors, maidens, enoughhave we sung. And you, noble couple, live happily and apply yourvigorous youth to the assiduous task of wedlock. 

Page 149, footnote 2. _Si quid_, etc. : if a woman act reprehensibly ordisgracefully, he punishes her; if she has drunk wine, if she has donesomething wrong with a stranger, he condemns her. If you surprise yourwife in the act of adultery, you may with impunity kill her withoutany form of judgment; but if she caught you in adultery, she would notdare touch you, for she has no right. 

Page 150, l. 11. _liberorum_, etc. : in order to have children. 

Page 155, l. 22. _Odi_, etc. : I hate and I love. You ask perhaps howthat can be. I do not know, I feel it, and am distressed. 

Page 155 (bottom). _Elle apportait_, etc. : she revealed in her privatebehavior, in her affections, the same vehemence and the same passionwhich her brother showed in public life. Ready for all excesses, andnot blushing to confess them, loving and hating with fury, incapableof controlling herself, and opposed to all constraint, she did notbelie the great and haughty family from which she was sprung. 

Page 178, 1. 3. _rusticorum_, etc. :

 The farmer-soldier's manly brood Was trained to delve the Sabine sod, And at an austere mother's nod To hew and fetch the fagot wood. 

Page 178, l. 20. _Maxima_, etc. : the greatest concern must be shownfor children. 

Page 185, l. 8. _Avarus_, etc. :

 The covetous is the cause of his own misery. Bravery is increased by daring and fear by hesitation. You can more easily discover fortune than cling to it. The wrath of the just is to be dreaded. A man dies every time that he is bereft of his kin. Man is loaned, not given to life. The best strife is rivalry in benignity. Nothing is pleasing unless renewed by variety. Bad is the plan which cannot be altered. Less often would you err if you knew how much you don't know. He who shows clemency always comes out victorious. He who respects his oath succeeds in everything. Where old age is at fault youth is badly trained. 

Page 187, l. 7. _Grais_, etc. : the muse gave genius to the Greeks andthe pride of language, covetous of nothing but of praise. But theRoman youths by long reckonings learn to split the coin into a hundredparts. Let young Albinus say: "If you take one away from five pence, what results?" "A groat. " Good, you'll thrive. 

Page 189, l. 1. In _grammaticis_, etc. : in the study of literature, the perusal of the poets, the knowledge of history, the interpretationof words, the peculiar tone of pronunciation. 

Page 191, l. 9. _Orator est_, etc. : an orator, my son, is an uprightman skilled in speaking. 

Page 191, l. 11. _Rem tene_, etc. : master the subject; the words willfollow. 

Page 196, l. 9. _vir bonus_, etc. : see page 191, l. 9. 

Page 196, l. 13. _Non enim_, etc. : eloquence and oratorical aptnessobtain good results if they be swayed by a right understanding and bythe discretion and control of the mind. 

Page 210, footnote 1. _Mancipiis_, etc. : avoid being like theCappadocian monarch, rich in slaves and penniless in purse. 

Page 211, footnote 1. _pone aedem_, etc. : behind the temple of Castorare those to whom you'd be sorry to lend money. 

Page 215, l. 18. _An te ibi_, etc. : would you stay there among thoseharlots, prostitutes of bakers, leavings of the breadmakers, smearedwith rank cosmetics, nasty devotees of slaves?

Page 216, footnote 2. _agrum_, etc. : in cultivating the fields or inhunting, servile occupations, etc. 

Page 233, l. 5. _Nec turpe_, etc. : what a master commands cannot bedisgraceful. 

Page 233, footnote 3. _Coli rura_, etc. : it is a bad practice to fillthe fields with men from the workhouse, or to have anything done bymen who are forsaken by hope. 

Page 235, footnote 2. _Regum_, etc. : we have taken the tyrant'stemper. 

Page 239, l. 10. _ante focos_, etc. : it was customary once to takeplaces in the long benches before the fireplace, and to trust that thegods were present at our table. 

Page 246, l. 5. _nunc vero_, etc. : but now from morning till evening, on holidays and working days, the whole people, senators andcommoners, busy themselves in the forum and retire nowhere, etc. (Seepage 133, l. 9, and translation of that passage. )

Page 246, footnote 2. _Urbem_, etc. : remain in the city, Rufus; staythere and live in that light. All foreign travel is humble and lowlyfor those that can work for the greatness of Rome. 

Page 247, footnote 1. _Frequens_, etc. : constant change of abode is asign of unstable mind. 

Page 248, l. 12. _contentio_, etc. : not a straining of the mind, but arelaxation. 

Page 259, l. 12. _locus_, etc. : a pleasant site, on the sea itself, and can be seen from Antium and Circeii. 

Page 265, footnote 3. _Ut illum_, etc. : may the gods confound him whofirst invented the hours, and who first placed a sundial in this city. Pity on me! They have cut up my day in compartments. Once when I wasa boy my stomach was my clock, and it was much more fitting andreliable; it never failed to warn me except when there was nothing;now, even when there is something, there is no eating unless it soplease the sun. For the whole city is full of sun-dials, and most ofthe people crawl on in need of food and drink. 

Page 269, footnote 1. _Romae_, etc. : in Rome it was for a long time ajoy and a pride to open up the house at early morning and attend tothe legal needs of the clients. 

Page 275, l. 20. _Nesciit vivere_: he did not know how to live. 

Page 277, l. 10. _ad noctem_: late into the night. 

Page 280, l. 17. _Saepe tribus_, etc. : often you would see threecouches with four guests apiece. 

Page 283, l. 21. [Greek: Emetikhaeu], etc. : he was under theemetic cure, and consequently ate and drank freely and with muchsatisfaction; and everything certainly was good and well served; naymore, I may say that

 "Though the cook was good, 'Twas Attic salt that flavored best the food. "

Page 283, footnote 1. _qua lege_, etc. : which law did not determinethe expense, but the kind of victuals and the manner of cooking them. 

Page 285, l. 11. _Agricolo_, etc. : the farmer is the first who aftera long day of toil in the fields adapted rustic songs to the laws ofmetre; the first in satisfied leisure to modulate a song on his reed, which he would say before the gods decked with flowers. It was thefarmer, O Bacchus, who with his face colored with reddish minium, taught his untrained feet the first movements of the dance. 

Page 287, l. 13. _Quippe etiam_, etc. : for even on holy days, divineand human laws allow us to perform certain works. No religion hasforbidden to clear the channels, to raise a fence before the corn, tolay snares for birds, to fire the thorns, and plunge in the wholesomeriver a flock of bleating sheep. 

Page 303, l. 2. _lex de ambitu_: law concerning the courting ofpopular favor in canvassing. 

Page 307, l. 4. _Eandem_, etc. : a time will come when you will bewailthat valor of yours. 

Page 309, l. 7. _Spectatum_, etc. : they come to see, but they comealso to be seen. 

Page 313, l. 27. _summuts artifex_: consummate artist. 

Page 314, l. 3. _gravis_: serious. 

Page 314, l. 4. _gravitas_: seriousness. 

Page 315, l. 14. _Fescennina_, etc. : the rude Fescennine farce grewfrom rites like these, where rustic taunts were hurled in alternateverse; and the pleasing license, tolerated from year to year, gambolled, etc. 

Page 317, l. 18. _Nihil mihi_, etc. : know well that I lacked nothingexcept company with whom to laugh in a friendly way and intelligentlyover these things. 

Page 324, l. 28. _mos maiorum_: the customs of our ancestors. 

Page 327, l. 12. _Felix_, etc. : blessed is he who succeeded in knowingthe causes of events. 

Page 327, l. 16. _Fortunatus_, etc. : fortunate he also who knows therustic gods. 

Page 333, l. 6. _lectisternia_: a feast of the gods during which theirimages on pillars were placed in the streets. 

Page 333, l. 6. _supplicationes_: religious solemnities forsupplication. 

Page 333, l. 6. _ludi_: games. 

Page 339, l. 23. _numen_: godhead, deity. 

Page 340, footnote 3. _idem etiam_, etc. : he says also that Jupiter isthe power of this law, eternal and immutable, which is the guide, soto speak, of our life and the principle of our duties; a law which hecalls a fatal necessity, an eternal truth of future things. 

Page 341, l. 15. _qua_: as. 

Page 341, l. 26. _O qui res_, etc. : thou who rulest with eternal swaythe doings of men and gods. 

Page 342, l. 1. _Olli_, etc. : the sire of men and gods, smiling toher with that aspect wherewith he clears the tempestuous sky, gentlykissed his daughter's lips; then thus replies: Cytherea, cease fromfear; immovable to thee remain the fates of thy people. 

Page 351, l. 13. _Iuppiter_, etc. : Jove reserved these shores for thejust, when he alloyed the golden age with brass; with brass, then withiron he hardened the ages, from which there shall be a happy escapeaccording to my predictions. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Martial iv. 64. 12. ]

[Footnote 2: _Aen_. Viii. 90. Foll. The Capitoline hill, which Virgilmeans by "arx" a conspicuous object from the river just below theAventine, and would have been much more conspicuous in the poet'stime. There is a view of it from this point in Burn's _Rome and theCampagna_, p. 184. ]

[Footnote 3: Plutarch, _Cato minor_ 39. Cato was expected to landat the commercial docks _below_ the Aventine (see below), where thesenate and magistrates were awaiting him, but with his usual rudenessrowed past them to the navalia. ]

[Footnote 4: _Aen. _ viii. 363. Possibly Virgil meant to put thisdwelling on the site of the future Regia, just below the Palatine andbetween it and the Forum. See Servius _ad loc. _]

[Footnote 5: The modern visitor would cross by the Ponte Rotto, whichis in the same position as the ancient bridge, just below the Tiberisland. ]

[Footnote 6: Livy v. 54. ]

[Footnote 7: The Fratres Arvales. ]

[Footnote 8: For navigation of the river above Rome see Strabo p. 235. ]

[Footnote 9: Horace _Od_. I. 2. After a bad flood in A. D. 15 proposalswere made for diverting a part of the water coming down the Tiber intothe Arnus, but this met with fatal opposition from the superstitionof the country people (Tacitus, _Ann_. I. 79). Nissen, _ItalischeLandeskunde_, i. P. 324, has collected the records of these floods. ]

[Footnote 10: See Nissen, i. P. 407. But it seems likely that theTiber valley was less malarious then than now (see Nissen's chapter onmalaria in Italy, p. 410 foll. ). In an interesting paper on _Malariaand History_, by Mr. W. H. S. Jones (Liverpool University Press), whichreached me after this chapter was written, the author is inclined toattribute the ethical and physical degeneracy of the Romans of theEmpire partly to this cause. ]

[Footnote 11: Livy v. 54. ]

[Footnote 12: Horace, _Epode_ 16. ]

[Footnote 13: _Reden und Aufsätze_, p. 173 foll. ]

[Footnote 14: _Ib. _ p. 175. ]

[Footnote 15: _De Rep_. Ii. 5 and 6. ]

[Footnote 16: Beloch, _Die Bewölkerung der griechisch-römischen Welt_, cap. 9, approaching the problem by three several methods, puts it inthe first century A. D. At 800, 000, including slaves. In Cicero's timeit was, no doubt, considerably less; but we know that in his lastyears 320, 000 free persons were receiving doles of corn, apart fromslaves and the well-to-do. ]

[Footnote 17: Hülsen-Jordan, _Röm. Topographie_, vol. I. Part iii. Pp. 627, 638. ]

[Footnote 18: _Ib_. 643; Cic. _ad Att_. Xv. 15. Here, after the deathof his daughter Tullia, Cicero wished to buy land on which to erecta fanum to her (Cic. _ad Att_. Xii. 19). Here also were the hortiCaesaris. ]

[Footnote 19: Livy xxxv. 40. ]

[Footnote 20: Hülsen-Jordan, _op. Cit_. P. 143 note. ]

[Footnote 21: See below, p. 302. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (iii. 68)gives an elaborate account of it in the time of Augustus, when it hadbeen altered and ornamented. --Hülsen-Jordan, p. 120 foll. ]

[Footnote 22: Fowler, _Roman Festivals_, p. 199; Wissowa inPauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encyklopädie_, s. V. Diana. ]

[Footnote 23: The two roads converged just before arriving at thecity. The reader may be reminded that it was by the via Appia that St. Paul entered Rome (Acts xxviii. ). Another useful passage for this gateis Juvenal in. 10 foll. ]

[Footnote 24: It might be useful here to follow the course of the_pomerium_, which also went round the Palatine, as described inTacitus, _Annals_ xii. 24. ]

[Footnote 25: Cic. _de Officiis_ iii. 16. 66, and the story thererelated. ]

[Footnote 26: Strictly speaking, the Oppius Mons, or southern part ofthe Esquiline. ]

[Footnote 27: See Lanciani's admirable chapter, "A Walk through theSacra Via, " in his _Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome_, p. 190foll. ]

[Footnote 28: _Georg_. Ii. 502. Virgil, for all his admiration ofRome, did not love its crowds. ]

[Footnote 29: Cic. _pro Plancio_, ch. 7. Cp. Horace, _Sat_. I. 9;Lucilius, _Frag. _ 9 (ed. Baehrens), which last will be quoted inanother context. ]

[Footnote 30: On the vexed question of the position of the Subura andits history see Wissowa, _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 230 foll. ]

[Footnote 31: For excavations here see Lanciani, _op. Cit_. P. 221foll. ]

[Footnote 32: Cic. _Cat. _ iii. 9. 21 foll. ]

[Footnote 33: Formerly we may assume that it faced south orsouth-east, like the temple. ]

[Footnote 34: It was completed by Caesar in 46 B. C. ]

[Footnote 35: Beloch, _Bewölkerung_ p. 382. ]

[Footnote 36: C. I. L. I. 206, and Dessau, _Inscr. Lat. Selectae_, ii. 1. P. 493. ]

[Footnote 37: Cic. _ad Q. Fratr_. Iii. I. 14 Suet. _de Grammaticis_, 15; Corn. Nepos, _Atticus_, 13. ]

[Footnote 38: Hülsen-Jordan, _Röm. Topographie_, vol. I. Part iii. P. 323. ]

[Footnote 39: This is the number receiving corn gratis when JuliusCaesar reformed the corn-distribution. --Suetonius, _Iul_. 41. ]

[Footnote 40: See Zeller, _Stoics_, etc. , Eng. Trans. P. 255 foll. ]

[Footnote 41: cic. _de Legibus_, i. 15. 43. It was not as yet possibleto be "poor, making many rich"; to have nothing and yet to possess allthings. ]

[Footnote 42: See the definition of insula in Festus. N. Ill. Andfor insula generally Middleton's article "Domus" in the _Dict, ofAntiquities_, ed. 2. De Marchi (_La Religione nella vita domestica_, i. P. 80) compares the big lodging-houses of the poor at Naples. ]

[Footnote 43: Cicero (_Leg. Agr. _ ii. 35. 96) describes Rome as being(in comparison with Capua) "in montibus positam et convallibus, coenaculis (i. E. Upper rooms) sublatum atque suspensam, non optimisviis, " etc. Vitruv. Ii. 17 is the _locus classicus_. ]

[Footnote 44: Cic. _pro Caelio_ 17. ]

[Footnote 45: In _C. I. L. _ vi. 65-67 we find a Bona Dea erected "intutelam insulae, " i. E. A common cult for all the lodgers. De Marchi_l. C. _ compares the common shrine of the Neapolitan lodging-house. Tutela is mentioned as a protecting deity both of insulae and domus bySt. Jerome, _Com. In Isaiam_, 672. ]

[Footnote 46: Cic. _de Domo_ 109. ]

[Footnote 47: Cic. _ad Att. _ xv. 17; cp. Xiv. 9. ]

[Footnote 48: Plut. _Crassus_ 2: perhaps from Fenestella. ]

[Footnote 49: "Dormientem in taberna, " Asconius, ed. Clark, p. 37. Cp. Tacitus, _Hist_ i. 86, for persons sleeping in tabernae. ]

[Footnote 50: Tucker, _Life in Ancient Athens_, p. 10. ]

[Footnote 51: The _Moretum_ may be a translation from a Greek poet, perhaps Parthenius, but it is certainly as well adapted to theexperience of Italians. ]

[Footnote 52: e. G. Caesar, _Bell. Civ. _ iii. 47. Cp. Tacitus, _Ann_. Xiv. 24. ]

[Footnote 53: On this point see Salvioli, _Le Capitalisme dans lemonde antique_, ch. Vi. Is a book with many shortcomings, but writtenby an Italian who knows his own country. ]

[Footnote 54: See the author's _Roman Festivals_, p. 76 (Cerealia). ]

[Footnote 55: Marquardt, _Staatsverwaltung_, ii. Pp. 107, 110 foll. Amodius, which = nearly a peck, contained about 20 lb. Of wheat (Pliny, _N. H. _ xviii. 66). Four and a half modii x 20=90 lb. ]

[Footnote 56: Hirschfeld, _Verwaltungsbeamten_, ed. 2, p. 231; Strabo, p. 652 (Rhodes). ]

[Footnote 57: Caesar, _B. C. _ iii. 42. 3. ]

[Footnote 58: Marquardt, _op. Cit. _ p. 110. ]

[Footnote 59: For Gracchus' motives see a paper by the present writerin the _English Historical Review_ for 1905, p. 221 foll. ]

[Footnote 60: Cic. _Tusc. Disp. _ iii. 20. 48. ]

[Footnote 61: Lex Julia municipalis, 1-20, compared with Suetonius, _Jul_. 41. ]

[Footnote 62: A good example will be found in Cic. _ad Att. _ iv. 1. 6 foll. ; the first letter written by Cicero after his return fromexile. ]

[Footnote 63: See my _Roman Festivals_, pp. 85 and 204. ]

[Footnote 64: Pliny, _Nat. Hist_. Xviii. 17. ]

[Footnote 65: Suet. _Aug_. 42. ]

[Footnote 66: Frontinus i. 4. The date of his work is towards the endof the first century A. D. ]

[Footnote 67: See Lanciani, _Ruins and Excavations_, p. 48; Mommsen, _Hist_. Vol. I. Appendix. ]

[Footnote 68: Frontinus i. 7, whose account is confirmed by therecently discovered Epitomes of Livy's lost books. --Grenfell and Hunt, _Oxyrhynchus Papyri_, iv. 113. ]

[Footnote 69: See the useful table in Lanciani, _op. Cit. _ 58. ]

[Footnote 70: This dates from the reign of Domitian. The nature of thepublic fountain may be realised at Pompeii. See Mau, _Pompeii, itsLife and Art_, p. 224 foll. ]

[Footnote 71: Cic. _de Officiis_, i. 42. 150. ]

[Footnote 72: Livy xxii. 25 _ad fin_. ]

[Footnote 73: It is very conspicuous, e. G. , in the novels of JaneAusten. ]

[Footnote 74: G. Unwin, _Industrial Organisation_, etc. , p. 2. ]

[Footnote 75: Plutarch, _Numa_, 17; Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 310 foll. ]

[Footnote 76: J. B. Carter, _The Religion of Numa_, p. 48. ]

[Footnote 77: Marq. Iii. P. 138. See also Kornemann's article"Collegium" in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encykl. _, and Waltzing, _Corporations professionelles chez les Romains_, i. P. 78 foll. ]

[Footnote 78: _Le Capitalisme_, etc. , p. 144 foll. ]

[Footnote 79: Cairnes, _Slave Power_, pp. 78, 143 foll. See below, p. 235. ]

[Footnote 80: Pliny, _Nat. Hist. _ xviii. 107. ]

[Footnote 81: _C. I. L. _ i. 1013. The date is possibly pre-Augustan. ]

[Footnote 82: Mau's _Pompeii_, p. 380. ]

[Footnote 83: See my _Roman Festivals_, p. 148. For the mills ofvarious kinds see also Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 405. ]

[Footnote 84: _Privatleben_, p. 409. ]

[Footnote 85: _Pseudolus_, 810 foll. ]

[Footnote 86: Cp. The uncta popina of Horace, _Epist_. I. 14. 21 foll. Scene in a wineshop at Pompeii, Mau, p. 395. ]

[Footnote 87: See, e. G. , the Laudatio Turiae, _C. I. L. _ vi. I. 1527, line 30. ]

[Footnote 88: Only very rich families employed their ownfullers. --Marq. _Privatleben_, p. 512. ]

[Footnote 89: _Menaechmi_, 404: this may, however, be only atranslation from the Greek. ]

[Footnote 90: _C. I. L. _ i. P. 389. ]

[Footnote 91: Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 693 and reff. ]

[Footnote 92: Cato, _de re rustica_, 135; a very interesting chapter, which shows that of the farmer's "plant, " clothing, rugs, carts aswell as dolia, were best purchased at Rome. ]

[Footnote 93: Marq. _Privatleben_, p. 645. ]

[Footnote 94: Strabo, p. 231. ]

[Footnote 95: Lex Julia Municipalis, line 56 foll. ]

[Footnote 96: Mau, _Pompeii_, p. 377. ]

[Footnote 97: See Greenidge, _Roman Public Life_, p. 225. ]

[Footnote 98: Lex Claudia; Livy xxi. 63. ]

[Footnote 99: Plut. _Crassus_, 2; Pliny, _N. H. _ xxxiii. 134:equivalent to about £160, 000. ]

[Footnote 100: Cic. _ad Att_. Ii. 1. 2. ]

[Footnote 101: _Ib. _ iv. 4. ]

[Footnote 102: Corn. Nepos, _Atticus_, 5. ]

[Footnote 103: Livy ixiii. 49. ]

[Footnote 104: Pliny, _N. H. _ xxxiii. 148; Livy xxxvii. 59. ]

[Footnote 105: Polyb. Xxxiv. 9, quoted by Strabo, p. 148. Cp. Livyxlv. 18 for valuable mines in Macedonia. ]

[Footnote 106: Polyb. Xviii. 35, For the unwillingness to serve, Livy, Epit. 48 and 55. ]

[Footnote 107: Cunningham, _Western Civilisation (Modern)_, p. 162foll. ]

[Footnote 108: Duruy, _Hist. De Rome_, vol. Ii. P. 12. ]

[Footnote 109: Cic. _de Provinciis consularibus_, v. 12. ]

[Footnote 110: Cic. _pro Quinctio_ 3. 12; a good case of partnershipin a res pecuaria et rustica in Gaul. ]

[Footnote 111: Examples in Livy xxiii. 49; xxxii. 7 (portoria);xxxviii. 35 (corn-supply); xliv. 16 (army); xlii. 9 (revenue of agerCampanus). ]

[Footnote 112: Festus, ed. Müller, p. 151. ]

[Footnote 113: e. G. Livy xxii. 60 praedibus et praediis caverepopulo. ]

[Footnote 114: Cicero, in his defence of Rabirius Postumus, 2. 4, saysthat Rabirius' father magnas _partes_ habuit publicorum. One Aufidius(Val. Max. Vi. 9. 7) "Asiatici publici exiguam admodum _particulam_habuit. " Cp. Cic _in Vat. _ 12. 29]

[Footnote 115: This is the view of Deloume, _Les Manieurs d'argent àRome_, p. 119 foll. ]

[Footnote 116: Marq. _Staatsverwaltung_, ii. P. 291]

[Footnote 117: Deloume, _Manieurs d'argent_, p. 317 foll. ]

[Footnote 118: _pro lege Manilia_, 7. 18. ]

[Footnote 119: _Ib. _ 7. 19. ]

[Footnote 120: _ad Att. _ i. 17. 9. Crassus, no doubt a largeshareholder, urged them on. ]

[Footnote 121: In a letter to his brother, then governor of thisprovince, Cicero contemplates the possibility of contracts being takenat a loss (_ad Q. F. _ i. 1. 33), "publicis male redemptis. " And in aletter of introduction in 46, he alludes to heavy losses suffered inthis way, _ad Fam. _ xiii. 10. ]

[Footnote 122: _ad Att. _ v. 16. 2. ]

[Footnote 123: _Ib. _ vi. 1. 16. ]

[Footnote 124: _ad Familiares_, xiii. 65. ]

[Footnote 125: _Ib. _ xiii. 9. I have not adhered quite closely to histranslation. ]

[Footnote 126: "Qui est in operis ejus societatis, " i. E. Engaged as asubordinate agent. --Marquardt, _Staatsverwaltung_, ii. P. 291. ]

[Footnote 127: Marq. Ii. P. 35 foll. ]

[Footnote 128: See his article in _Dict. Of Antiq. _ ed. 2, s. V. Argentarii. ]

[Footnote 129: Augustus' grandfather was an argentarius (Suet. _Aug. _2), yet his son could marry a Julia, and be elected to the consulship, which, however, he was prevented by death from filling. ]

[Footnote 130: The word for this cheque is _perscriptio_. Cp. Cic. _adAtt_. Ix. 12. 3 viri boni usuras perscribunt, i. E. Draw the intereston their deposits. ]

[Footnote 131: Cic. _ad Att_. Xii. 24 and 27. ]

[Footnote 132: Cic. _ad Fam_. Xvi. 4 and 9]

[Footnote 133: Cic. _ad Att_. Xiii. Contains many letters of interestin this connexion. ]

[Footnote 134: Cic. _ad Att. _ xiii. 2. 3. Cp. Xii. 25. In xii. 12Cicero's divorced wife Terentia wishes to pay a debt by transferringto her creditor a debt of Cicero's to herself. Another way inwhich actual payment could be avoided was by paying interest onpurchase-money instead of the lump sum. Cp. Xii. 22. ]

[Footnote 135: A good example of this in Velleius ii. 10(house-rent). ]

[Footnote 136: Cic. _de Officiis_, ii. 24, 84. ]

[Footnote 137: Caesar, _de Bell. Civ. _ iii. 1 and 20 foll. ]

[Footnote 138: Deloume in his _Manieurs d'argent_ has a chapter onthis (p. 58 foll. ), but his details are not wholly to be reliedon. Boissier's sketch in _Cicéron et ses amis_, 83 foll. , is quiteaccurate. ]

[Footnote 139: _ad Fam_. V. 20 fin. ]

[Footnote 140: _Ib_. V. 9. ]

[Footnote 141: Deloume's attempt to prove that Cicero speculated withenormous profits seems to me to miss the mark. ]

[Footnote 142: _ad Q. Fratr. _ ii. 4. 3. Cp. _ad Att. _ iv. 2. ]

[Footnote 143: _ad Q. Fratr. _ ii. 14. 3. ]

[Footnote 144: _ad Att. _ xii. 22. I may add in a footnote a finalstartling example of recklessness we have been noting. Decimus Brutushad, in March 44 B. C. , a capital of £320, 000, yet next year he writesto Cicero that so far from any part of his private property beingunencumbered, he had encumbered all his friends with debt also (_adFam. _ xi. 10. 5). But this was in order to maintain troops. ]

[Footnote 145: _ad Att. _ xiii. 42. Cp. Xvi. 5. ]

[Footnote 146: What the king really wanted the money for, was to bribethe senate to restore him. --Cic. _ad Fam. _ i. 1. ]

[Footnote 147: Cic. _pro Bab. Post_. 8. 22. ]

[Footnote 148: Varro, _R. R. _ i. 2. Ferrero (_Greatness and Decline ofRome_) has the merit of having discerned the signs of the regenerationof Italian agriculture at this time, but he is apt to push hisconclusions further than the evidence warrants. See the translation ofhis work by A. E. Zimmern, i. P. 124; ii. P. 131 foll. The statement ofPliny quoted by him (xv. 1. 3) that oil was first exported from Italyin the year 52 B. C. , is, however, of the utmost importance. ]

[Footnote 149: The Republic was not to last long; but among theconsuls of the last years of its existence were several members of theold families. ]

[Footnote 150: _ad Fam_. Xv. 12. This rather stilted letter is nearlyidentical with one to the other consul-designate, another aristocrat, Claudius Marcellus. Cicero is in each case trying to do his ownbusiness, while writing to a man of higher social rank than his own. ]

[Footnote 151: The letters of the years 58 to 54 are full of bitterallusions to the _invidia_ of these men, which culminate in the longand windy one to Lentulus Spinther of October 54, where he actuallyaccuses them of taking up Clodius in order to spite him. In aconfidential note to Atticus in the spring of 56, he told him thatthey hated him for buying the Tusculan villa of the great nobleCatulus. --_ad Fam. _ i. 9; _ad Att_. Iv. 5. ]

[Footnote 152: Plutarch, _Cato major_ 2 and 12. ]

[Footnote 153: Corn. Nepos, _Cato_ 1. 4, who remarks that Cato'sreturn from his quaestorship in Sardinia with Ennius in his train wasas good as a splendid triumph. ]

[Footnote 154: Plut. _Aem. Paul. 6 ad fin. _]

[Footnote 155: Polybius, xxxii. 9-16. ]

[Footnote 156: The difference between him and his father, especiallyin politics, is sketched in Plutarch's _Life_ of the latter, ch. Xxxviii. ]

[Footnote 157: Leo, in _Die griechische und lateinische Literatur_, p. 337. ]

[Footnote 158: The best specimens, or rather the worst, are to befound in the speeches _in Pisonem, in Vatinium_, and in the _SecondPhilippic_. ]

[Footnote 159: The most instructive passage on vituperatio is Cicero'sdefence of Caelius, ch. 3. Cp. Quintilian iii. 7. 1 and 19. On thecustom at triumphs, etc. , see Munro's _Elucidations of Catullus_, p. 75 foll. For most valuable remarks. ]

[Footnote 160: We have courteous letters from Cicero both to Piso andVatinius, only a few years after he had depicted them in public asmonsters of iniquity. ]

[Footnote 161: Plut. C. Gracchus, ch. 6 _ad fin_. Cp. Livy vii. 33. ]

[Footnote 162: These characteristic figures may be most convenientlyseen in Strong's interesting volume on Roman sculpture, p. 42 foll. ]

[Footnote 163: Plut. _Cato_, ch. 1. _ad fin_. Blanditia was the wordfor civility in a candidate: "opus est magnopere blanditia, " saysQuintus Cicero, _de pet cons_. § 41. ]

[Footnote 164: There is a pleasanter picture of Cato, sitting inLucullus' library and in his right mind, in Cic. _de Finibus_ iii. 2. 7. ]

[Footnote 165: See Leo, in work already cited, p. 338 foll. ]

[Footnote 166: For this remarkable writer, of whose work only a fewfragments survive, see Leo, _op. Cit. _ p. 340, and Schanz, _Gesch. Derröm. Literatur_, i. P. 278 foll. ]

[Footnote 167: Cicero, _Brutus_, 75, 262. ]

[Footnote 168: The other Caesarian writers followed him more or lesssuccessfully; Hirtius, who wrote the eighth book of the Gallic War, and the authors of the Alexandrian, African, and Spanish Wars (thefirst possibly by Asinius Pollio). ]

[Footnote 169: Leo, _op. Cit. _ p. 355. ]

[Footnote 170: See below, ch. Vi. ]

[Footnote 171: The passage just cited from the _de Finibus_ (iii. 27)introduces us to the library of Lucullus at Tusculum, whither Cicerohad gone to consult books, and where he found Cato sitting surroundedby volumes of Stoic treatises. ]

[Footnote 172: The fragments of Panaetius are collected by H. N. Fowler, Bonn, 1885. The best account of his teaching known to me is inSchmekel, _Philosophie der Mittleren Stoa_, p. 18 foll. But all canread the two first books of the _de Officiis_. ]

[Footnote 173: Leo, _op. Cit. _ p. 360. Schmekel deals comprehensivelywith Posidonius' philosophy, as reflected in Varro and Cicero, p. 85foll. ]

[Footnote 174: See Professor Reid's introduction to Cicero's_Academica_, p. 17. Cicero considered Posidonius the greatest of theStoics. --_Ib. _ p. 5. ]

[Footnote 175: Cic. _de Legibus_ i. Affords many examples of thisview, which was apparently that of Posidonius, e. G. 6. 18 and 8. 25. Cp. _de Republica_, iii. 22. 33. ]

[Footnote 176: Gaius i. I; Cic. _de Officiis_ iii. 5. 23; Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, iii. P. 604, based on the research of H. Nettleship in_Journal of Philology_, vol. Xiii. P. 175. See also Sohm, _Institutesof Roman Law_, ch. Ii. ]

[Footnote 177: _Brutus_ 41. 151, where he plainly ranks him aboveScaevola. The passage is a most interesting one, deserving carefulattention. ]

[Footnote 178: The _Ninth Philippic_: the passage referred to in thetext is 5. 10 foll. ]

[Footnote 179: I omit _pro Murena_, chs. Vii. And xxi. , for want ofspace. Sulpicius was opposing Cicero in this case, and the latter'sallusions to him are useful specimens of the good breeding spoken ofabove. ]

[Footnote 180: See Dio Cassius xl. 59; and Cic. _ad Fam_. Iv. 1 and 3, to Sulpicius, with allusions to his consulship. ]

[Footnote 181: _Tusc. Disp_. Iv. 3. 6. ]

[Footnote 182: The speech _in Pisonem_; cp. The _de Provinciisconsularibus_, 1-6. This Piso was the father of Caesar's wifeCalpurnia, who survives in Shakespeare. ]

[Footnote 183: The difficult passage in which Cicero describes theperversion of this character under the influence of Philodemus, hasbeen skilfully translated by Dr. Mahaffy in his _Greek World underRoman Sway_, p. 126 foll. ; and the reader may do well to refer to hiswhole treatment of the practical result of Epicureanism. ]

[Footnote 184: This chapter is also useful as illustrating theurbanity of manners, for Lucullus and Pompeius were politicalenemies. ]

[Footnote 185: _ad Fam_. Viii. 5 _fin_. ; viii. 9. 2. ]

[Footnote 186: See the introduction of Asconius to Cicero _proCornelio_, ed. Clark, p. 58. ]

[Footnote 187: _ad Att_. V. 21. 11, 13. ]

[Footnote 188: _ad Q. Frat. _ ii. 1. 1; ii. 10. 1. ]

[Footnote 189: The letters written immediately after Cicero's returnfrom exile are the best examples of this paralysis of business, e. G. _ad Fam_. I. 4; _ad Q. F_. Ii. 3. See a useful paper by P. Groebe in_Klio_, vol. V. P. 229. ]

[Footnote 190: This appears from a letter of Oaelius to Cicero in51. --_ad Fam. _ viii. 8. 8. ]

[Footnote 191: Asconius _in Cornelianum_, ed. Clark, p. 59. "Utpraetores ex edictis suis perpetuis ius dicerent. "]

[Footnote 192: All his letters are in the eighth book of those _adFamiliares_. ]

[Footnote 193: Tacitus, _Annals_ xiii. 2: "voluptatibus concessis. "]

[Footnote 194: Quintil. Iv. 2. 123. ]

[Footnote 195: Brutus 79. 273. ]

[Footnote 196: e. G. _ad Fam. _ ii. 13. 3. ]

[Footnote 197: Exactly the same combination of real interest in, andfrivolous treatment of, politics is to be found in the early lettersof Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, especially those of the year 1742. ]

[Footnote 198: _ad Fam. _ viii. 14. 3. ]

[Footnote 199: Caesar, Bell. Civ. Iii. 20 foll. ]

[Footnote 200: See above, p. 86; cp. P. 58. ]

[Footnote 201: So for example Servaeus is disqualified, _ad Fam_. Viii. 4. I. ]

[Footnote 202: _Ib_. Viii. 8. 2]

[Footnote 203: _Ib_. 8. 12]

[Footnote 204: Lucilius, _Fragm_. 9, ed. Baehrens. ]

[Footnote 205: This probably means that the deity was believed toreside in the cake, and that the communicants not only entered intocommunion with each other in eating of it, but also with him. It isin fact exactly analogous to the sacramental ceremony of the Latinfestival, in which each city partook of the sacred victim, in thatcase a white heifer. See Fowler, Roman _Festivals_, p. 96 and reff. ]

[Footnote 206: This interesting custom is recorded by Servius (ad Aen. Iv. 374). For the whole ceremony of confarreatio see De Marchi, _La Religione nella vita domestica_, p. 155 foll. ; Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 32 foll. Cp. Also Gaius i. 112. ]

[Footnote 207: Gaius l. C. ]

[Footnote 208: Cic. _de Off_. I. 17. 54. ]

[Footnote 209: i. E. Ius commercii and ius connubii: the formerenabling a man to claim the protection of the courts in all casesrelating to property, the latter to claim the same protection in casesof disputed inheritance. ]

[Footnote 210: i. E. Ius provocationis, ius suffragii, ius honorum. ]

[Footnote 211: This is how I understand Cuq, _Institutions juridiquesdes Romains_, p. 223. In the well known Laudatio Turiae we have acurious case of a re-marriage by coemptio with manus, for a particularpurpose, connected of course with money matters. See Mommsen'sCommentary, reprinted in his _Gesammelte Schriften_, vol. I. ]

[Footnote 212: Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, ch. X. ]

[Footnote 213: See, however, the curious passage quoted by Gellius(iv. 4. 2) from Serv. Sulpicius, the great jurist (above, p. 118foll. ), on _sponsalia_ in Latium down to 89 B. C. ]

[Footnote 214: For the other details of the dress, see Marq. _Privatleben_, p. 43. ]

[Footnote 215: Cic. _de Div. _ i. 16. 28. ]

[Footnote 216: These lines suggested to Virgil the famous four at theend of the fourth Eclogue. See _Virgil's "Messianic Eclogue_, " p. 72. ]

[Footnote 217: She was addressed as _domina_, by all members of thefamily. See Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 57 note 3. It should be notedthat she had brought a contribution to the family resources inthe form of a dowry (dos) given her by her father to maintain herposition. ]

[Footnote 218: These details are drawn chiefly from the sixth book ofValerius Maximus, _de Pudicitia_. ]

[Footnote 219: This is proved by an allusion to Cato's speech insupport of the law, in Gellius, _Noct. Att. _ vi. 13. ]

[Footnote 220: Livy xxxiv. 1 foll. , where the speech of Cato isreproduced in Livy's language and with "modern" rhetoric. ]

[Footnote 221: De Marchi, _op. Cit. _ p. 163; Marq. _Privatleben_, p. 87 foll. Confarreatio was only dissoluble by diffarreatio, but thiswas perhaps used only for penal purposes. Other forms of marriagedid not present the same difficulty, not being of a sacramentalcharacter. ]

[Footnote 222: Plutarch, _Aem. Paull. _ 5. ]

[Footnote 223: Livy xl. 37. ]

[Footnote 224: Livy, _Epit. _ 48. ]

[Footnote 225: Livy xxxix. 8-18. ]

[Footnote 226: Plutarch, _Cato the Elder_ 8. ]

[Footnote 227: Gellius (x. 23) quotes a fragment of Cato's speech deDotibus, in which the following sentences occur: "Si quid perversetaetreque factum est a muliere, multitatur: si vinum bibit, si cumalieno viro probri quid fecerit, condempnatur. In adulterio uxoremtuam si prehendisses sine indicio impune necares: illa te, siadulterares sive tu adulterarere, digito non auderet contingere, nequeius est. " Under such circumstances a bold woman might take her revengeillegally. ]

[Footnote 228: Gellius i. 6; cp. Livy, Epit. 59. ]

[Footnote 229: e. G. _ad Fam. _ xiv. 2. ]

[Footnote 230: The story of the relations of Cicero, Terentia, Clodius, and Clodia, in Pint. _Cic. _ 29 is too full of inaccuracies tobe depended on. In the 41st chapter what he says of the divorce andits causes must be received with caution; it seems to come from somerecord left by Tiro, Cicero's freedman and devoted friend, and asCicero obviously loved this man much more than his wife, we canunderstand why the two should dislike each other. ]

[Footnote 231: Plutarch, _Ti. Gracch. _ 1; _Gaius Gracch. _ 19. Theletters of Cornelia which are extant are quite possibly genuine. ]

[Footnote 232: The recent edition of the _Ars amatoria_ by Paul Brandthas an introduction in which these points are well expressed. ]

[Footnote 233: Catullus 72. 75. ]

[Footnote 234: _Cicéron et ses amis_, p. 175. ]

[Footnote 235: Decimus Brutus, one of the tyrannicides of March 15, 44. ]

[Footnote 236: Sall. _Cat_. 25. ]

[Footnote 237: Plut. _Lucullus_ 6. ]

[Footnote 238: Cic. _ad Fam. _ viii. 7: a letter of Caelius, in whichhe tells of a lady who divorced her husband without pretext on thevery day he returned from his province. ]

[Footnote 239: Plut. _Cato min. _ 25 and 52. Plutarch seems to beusing here the Anti-Cato of Caesar, but the facts must have been wellknown. ]

[Footnote 240: e. G. _ad Att. _ xv. 29. ]

[Footnote 241: _ad Fam. _ ix. 26. ]

[Footnote 242: The so-called Laudatio Turiae is well known to allstudents of Roman law, as raising a complicated question of Romanlegal inheritance; but it may also be reckoned as a real fragment ofRoman literature, valuable, too, for some points in the history ofthe time it covers. It was first made accessible and intelligible byMommsen in 1863, and the paper he then wrote about it has lately beenreprinted in his _Gesammelte Schriften_, vol. I. , together with anew fragment discovered on the same site as the others in 1898. Thisfragment, and a discussion of its relation to the whole, will he foundin the _Classical Review_ for June 1905, p. 261; the laudatio withoutthe new fragment in _C. I. L. _ vi. 1527. ]

[Footnote 243: App. _B. C. _ iv. 44. The identification has beenimpugned of late, but, as I think, without due reason. See my articlein _Classical Rev. _, 1905, p. 265. ]

[Footnote 244: This is how I interpret the new fragment. See_Classical Rev. L. C. _ p. 263 foll. ]

[Footnote 245: For the legal question see Mommsen, _GesammelteSchriften_, i. P. 407 foll. ]

[Footnote 246: The account that follows is put together from Appianiv. 44, Valerius Maximus vi. 7. 2, and the Laudatio. Appian preservedsome fifty stories of escapes at this time, and the only one that fitswith the Laudatio is that of Lucretius. ]

[Footnote 247: Newman, _Politics of Aristotle_, i. P. 372. ]

[Footnote 248: A list of the best authorities will be found at thebeginning of Professor Wilkins' book. Of these by far the most usefulfor a student is the section in Marquardt's _Privatleben_, p. 79 foll. The two volumes of Cramer (_Geschichte der Erziehung_, etc. ), whichcover all antiquity, are, as he says, most valuable for their breadthof view. See also H. Nettleship, _Lectures and Essays_, ch. Iii. Foll. ]

[Footnote 249: Plut. _Cato the Elder_, ch. Xx. ]

[Footnote 250: Plut. _Aem. Paul. _ ch. Vi. ]

[Footnote 251: Plut. _Cato minor 1 ad fin. _ What is told in theearlier part of this chapter may perhaps be invention, based on thecharacter of the grown man; but this information at the end may bederived from a contemporary source. ]

[Footnote 252: Val. Max. Iii. 1. 2. ]

[Footnote 253: There is a single story of Cicero's boyhood inPlutarch's _Life_ of him, ch. Ii. , that parents used to visit hisschool because of his fame as a scholar, etc. , but to this I do notattach much importance. ]

[Footnote 254: So in _ad Q. F. _ iii. 1. 7: de Cicerone tuo quod mesemper rogas, etc. ]

[Footnote 255: Ib. ]

[Footnote 256: Ib. Iii. 3. 4. ]

[Footnote 257: Ib. Iii. 9. ]

[Footnote 258: See the few fragments in the Appendix to Riese'sedition of the remains of Varro's Menippean Satires, p. 248 foll. ]

[Footnote 259: _De Rep. _ iv. 3. 3. ]

[Footnote 260: Plut. _Cato_ 20. ]

[Footnote 261: There is probably an allusion to the Stoic view, thatreason is not attained till the fourteenth year, in Virgil's line in_Ecl. _ 4. 27. ]

[Footnote 262: in Nonius, p. 108, s. V. Ephippium. Cp. The account ofthe education of Cato's young son, Plut. _Cato_, 20. Cp. Also Virg. _Aen. _ ix. 602 foll. ]

[Footnote 263: in Nonius, p. 156, s. V. Puerae. ]

[Footnote 264: p. 281, ed. Müller. ]

[Footnote 265: Her. _Odes_ iii. 6. ]

[Footnote 266: Dionys. Hal. Ii. 26. ]

[Footnote 267: Cic. _pro Cluentio_ 60. 165; Marq. _Privatleben_, p. 87. ]

[Footnote 268: See a paper by the author in _Classical Rev. _ vol. X. P. 317, in which evidence is collected in support of this view. Thatthe praetexta had a quasi-sacred character seems certain; see e. G. Hor. _Epod. _ 5. 7; Persius, v. 30; pseudo-Quintilian, _Declam. _ 340. See Henzen, _Acta Fratrum Arvalium_ 15, for the pueri patrimi etmatrimi, representing in that ancient cult the children of the oldRoman family. ]

[Footnote 269: Cic. _de Legibus_, ii. 59. ]

[Footnote 270: Polyb. Vi. 53. For an account of the practice oflaudatio see Marq. _Privatleben_, p. 346 foll. This, too, degeneratedinto falsification. ]

[Footnote 271: A full list of games will be found in Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 814 foll. ]

[Footnote 272: The question is discussed by Quintilian, i. 2. ]

[Footnote 273: Plut. Aem. Fault. 6. ]

[Footnote 274: Full details about elementary schools in Wilkins, ch. Iv. , and Marq p. 90 foll. ]

[Footnote 275: Quintil. I. 3. 14. ]

[Footnote 276: Plutarch is careful to tell us that Aem. Paullusexercised this supervision himself (ch. Vi. ). ]

[Footnote 277: _Pro Flacco_ 4, 9. Cp. _ad Quint. Fratr. _ i. 2. 4. ]

[Footnote 278: That the boy was not always respectful is shown in anamusing passage in Plautus. _Bacchides_, III. Iii. 34 foll. ]

[Footnote 279: Sen. _Controversiae_, vii. 3. 8. ]

[Footnote 280: London, O. J. Clay and Sons, 1895. ]

[Footnote 281: Fortuna occurs many times, as in the so-calledsententiae Varronis printed at the end of Riese's edition of thefragments of Varro's Menippean satires. This is characteristic of theperiod. ]

[Footnote 282: Hor. _Epist. _ i. I. 70. ]

[Footnote 283: Marq. _Privatleben_, p. 95 foll. ; Wilkins, p. 53. ]

[Footnote 284: There is a good example of this in the well-known caseof Brutus' loan to the Salaminians of Cyprus: see especially Cic. AdAlt. V. 21. 12. ]

[Footnote 285: Hor. Ars Poet. 323 foll. ]

[Footnote 286: Mommsen, _Hist. Of Rome_, iv. P. 563. ]

[Footnote 287: Quintilian was of opinion that Greek authors shouldprecede Latin: i. I. 12. ]

[Footnote 288: _De Oratore_, i. 187. ]

[Footnote 289: There are many subjects in the book of other kinds, butall are illustrated in exactly the same way. ]

[Footnote 290: H. Jordan, _M. Catonis praeter librum de re rusticaquae extant_, p. 80. ]

[Footnote 291: Full information on this point will be found inMarquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 131 foll. ]

[Footnote 292: See my _Roman Festivals_, p. 56. The Liberalia (March17) was the usual day for the change, and a convenient one for theenrolment of tirones. ]

[Footnote 293: See the very interesting note (11) in Marq. P. 123, asto the enrolment in municipal towns. ]

[Footnote 294: Pro Caelio, 4. 9. ]

[Footnote 295: Livy xlv. 37. 3. ]

[Footnote 296: Pro Caelio, 30. 72. ]

[Footnote 297: _Pro Caelio_, 31. 74. ]

[Footnote 298: _Roman Education_, ch. V. ]

[Footnote 299: Rhetorica ad Herenniwm, init. The date of this work wasabout 82 B. C. See a paper by the author in Journal of Philology, x. 197. ]

[Footnote 300: H. Nettleship, _Lectures_, etc. , p. III; Wilkins, p. 85; Quintil. Xii. 2. ]

[Footnote 301: Wilkins, _l. C. _]

[Footnote 302: Quintil. I. 4. 5; xii. 1. 1; xii. 2 and 7. ]

[Footnote 303: _Ib. _ xii. 1. 11. ]

[Footnote 304: Plut. _Cic. _ 4; _Caes. _ 3. ]

[Footnote 305: _ad Fam. _ xvi. 21. The translation is based on Mr. Shuckburgh's. ]

[Footnote 306: See _Der Horn, Gutsbetrieb_, by H. Gummerus, reprintedfrom _Klio_, 1906: an excellent specimen of economic research, towhich I am much indebted in this chapter. --E. Meyer, _Die Sclaverei imAltertum_, p. 46. ]

[Footnote 307: Strabo, p. 668. ]

[Footnote 308: Livy, xlv. 34. ]

[Footnote 309: Livy, _Epit. _ 68. ]

[Footnote 310: Caesar, _B. G. _ ii. 33. ]

[Footnote 311: _ad Att. _ v. 20. 5. ]

[Footnote 312: Wallon (_Hist. De l'Esclavage_, ii. P. 38) has notedthat Virgil alone shows a feeling of tenderness for the lot of thecaptive, quoting _Aen_. Iii. 320 foll. (the speech of Andromache): butthis was for the fate of a princess, and a mythical princess. NoLatin poet of that age shows any real sympathy with captives or withslaves. ]

[Footnote 313: Cic. _pro lege Manilia_ 12. 23. Plutarch, in his _Lifeof Pompey_ 24, adds that Romans of good standing would join in thepirates' business in order to make profit in this scandalous way. ]

[Footnote 314: Suet. _Aug. _ 32, of the period before Augustus. ]

[Footnote 315: Varro, _R. R. _ ii. 10; Diodorus xxxvi. 3. 1. ]

[Footnote 316: Hor. _Epist_. I. 6. 39:--

 "Mancipiis locuples eget aeris Cappadocum rex: Ne fueris hic tu. "]

[Footnote 317: Varro, _R. R. _ i. 17. ]

[Footnote 318: _Ib_. 2. 10. 3. ]

[Footnote 319: Hor. _Epode_ 2. 65. Cp. Tibull. Ii. 1. 25 "turbaquevernarum, saturi bona signa coloni. "]

[Footnote 320: See Gummerus, _op. Cit. _ p. 63, who considers the_obaeratus_ of Varro as the equivalent of the _addictus_ of the Romanlaw of debt. ]

[Footnote 321: See the well-known description of the Forum in Plautus'_Curculio_, iv. 1: "pone aedem Castoris, ibi sunt subito quibu' credasmale"; Marq. _Privatleven_, p. 168; Wallon, _op. Cit_. Ch. Ii. ]

[Footnote 322: Gellius iv. 2 gives an extract from the edict ofthe aediles drawn up with the object of counteracting such sharppractice. ]

[Footnote 323: Livy xxxix. 44. ]

[Footnote 324: _N. H. _. Vii. 55. This story affords a good exampleof the tricks of the trade: the boys were not twins, and came fromdifferent countries, though exactly alike. ]

[Footnote 325: _Bevölkerung_, p. 403. ]

[Footnote 326: Cic. _Off_. Ii. 21. 73. ]

[Footnote 327: Galen v. P. 49, ed. Kuhn; Galen was a native of thisgreat city. ]

[Footnote 328: Dr. Gummerus promises it. ]

[Footnote 329: Sittengeschichte, i. , ed. 5, p. 264. ]

[Footnote 330: Probably by Clodius in 58. ]

[Footnote 331: _Asconius ad Cic. Pro Cornel_. , ed. Clark, p. 75;Waltzing, _Corporations professionelles_, i. P. 90 foll. ]

[Footnote 332: Baking as a trade only came in, as we saw, in 174;Plautus died in 184; some doubt is thus thrown on the Roman characterof the passage, or the allusion may not be to a public bakery. ]

[Footnote 333: See a remarkable passage of Athenaeus (vi. 104) quotedby Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 156, on the use of slaves at Rome forunproductive labour. ]

[Footnote 334: Sallust, e. G. , says of his own life in retirementthat he would not engage in "agrum colendo aut venando, servilibusofficiis. "--_Catil. _ 4. ]

[Footnote 335: Wallon, _Hist. De l'Esclavage_, vol. Ii. Ch. Iii. ]

[Footnote 336: Sall. _Catil_. 12. ]

[Footnote 337: iv. 3. 11 and 12. Plutarch says that as militarytribune Cato the younger had fifteen slaves with him. --Cato minor 9. ]

[Footnote 338: Cato, R. R. 2. I. ]

[Footnote 339: In ch. 185 he mentions towns where many other objectsmay be bought best and cheapest: at Rome, e. G. , clothing and rugs, atCales and Minturnae farm-instruments of iron, etc. See also Gummerus, _op. Cit. _ p. 36. ]

[Footnote 340: _R. R. _ 10 and 11. ]

[Footnote 341: Assiduos homines quinquaginta praebeto, i. E. Thecontractor: ch. 144. ]

[Footnote 342: See the discussion of this word in Gummerus, p. 62foll. Varro defines them as those "qui suas operas in servitutem dantpro pecunia quam debebant" (_de Ling. Lat. _ vii. 105), i. E. They givetheir labour as against servitude. ]

[Footnote 343: _R. R. _ i. 22. ]

[Footnote 344: Cp. Plut. _Cato the Elder_ 21; a slave must be at workwhen he is not asleep. ]

[Footnote 345: This is a point on which I cannot enter, but there canhardly be a doubt that in the long run free labour is cheaper. See Cairnes, _Slave Power in America_, ch. Iii. ; Salvioli, _LeCapitalisme_, p. 253; Columella, _Praejatio_. ]

[Footnote 346: Gummerus, p. 81. At the same time the small cultivatoris an obvious fact in Columella, cultivating his bit of land withoutworking for others. ]

[Footnote 347: For Spartacus, Appian, _B. G. _ i. 116; for Caelius, Caesar, _B. C. _ iii. 22; and cp. _B. C. _ i. 56. ]

[Footnote 348: _R. R. _ ii. 10. ]

[Footnote 349: Columella i. 8. ]

[Footnote 350: Gaius ii. 15. ]

[Footnote 351: For examples of slaves' devotion to their masters, Appian, _B. C. _ iv. 29; Seneca, _de Benef_. Iii. 25. ]

[Footnote 352: _ad Fam_. Xvi. 1; read also the charming letters whichfollow. Tiro was manumitted by Cicero at an unknown date. ]

[Footnote 353: _ad Att_. Xii. 10. ]

[Footnote 354: See the article "Manumissio" in _Dict. OfAntiquities_. ]

[Footnote 355: Only in exercising the jus suffragii he was limitedwith all his fellow libertini to one of the four city tribes. ]

[Footnote 356: Val. Max. Viii. 6. 2. ]

[Footnote 357: Sall. _Cat_. 24 and 56; Wallon, ii. P. 318 foll. ]

[Footnote 358: See, e. G. , Cic. _ad Att_. Ii. 24. 3; Asconius, _inMilonianam_ (ed. Clark, p. 31); Milo's host of slaves had gladiatorsamong them, and were organised in military fashion (an antesignanus, p. 32), when he fell in with Clodius. ]

[Footnote 359: _Pro Sestio_, 15. 34. ]

[Footnote 360: _De Pet. Consulatus_, 5. 17. ]

[Footnote 361: _ad Quint. Fratr. _ i. 2 _ad fin_. ]

[Footnote 362: Strabo, p. 381. ]

[Footnote 363: Dion. Hal. Iv. 23. ]

[Footnote 364: Wallon, op. Cit. Ii. P. 436. ]

[Footnote 365: See Otto Seeck, _Geschichte des Untergangs der antikenWelt_, ch. Iv. And v. ]

[Footnote 366: See Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 172. ]

[Footnote 367: Wallon (ii. P. 255 foll. ) has collected a number ofexamples. Plautus' slaves are as much Athenian as Roman, but theconditions would be much the same in each case. Cp. Varro, _Men. Sat_. Ed. Riese, p. 220: "Crede mihi, plures dominos servi comederunt quamcanes. "]

[Footnote 368: Petronius, _Sat_. 75. ]

[Footnote 369: Diodorus xxxiv. 38. ]

[Footnote 370: "Coli rura ab ergastulis pessimum est et quicquidagitur a desperantibus, " wrote Pliny (_Nat. Hist_. Xviii. 36) in thefamous passage about latifundia. ]

[Footnote 371: _R. R. _ i. 17. ]

[Footnote 372: See some excellent remarks on this subject in _EcceHomo_, towards the end of ch. Xii. ("Universality of the ChristianRepublic "). ]

[Footnote 373: _The Slave Power_, ch. V. , and especially p. 374 foll. A living picture of the mean white may be found in Mark Twain's_Huckleberry Finn_, drawn from his own early experience, particularlyin ch. Xxi. ]

[Footnote 374: "Regum nobis induimus animos, " wrote Seneca in awell-known letter about the claims of slaves as human beings, _Ep_. 47. ]

[Footnote 375: _Life in Ancient Athens_, p. 55. ]

[Footnote 376: For this view of the Lar see Wissowa, _Religion undKultus der Römer_, p. 148 foll. ; and a note by the author in _Archivfur Religionswissenschaft_, 1906, p. 529. ]

[Footnote 377: _Fasti_, vi. 299. ]

[Footnote 378: Cato, _R. R. _, ch. Ii. Init. ; Horace, _Epode_ 2. 65;_Sat_. Ii. 6. 65. ]

[Footnote 379: _Romische Religion_, p. 214. ]

[Footnote 380: Or lectulus adversus, i. E. Opposite the door; Ascon. Ed. Clark, p. 43, a good passage for the contents of an atrium. ]

[Footnote 381: See Mau's _Pompeii_, p. 248. ]

[Footnote 382: Mau, _Pompeii_, p. 240. ]

[Footnote 383: The extent to which this could be carried can beguessed from Sall. _Cat. _ 12. ]

[Footnote 384: Quintus Cicero, growing rich with Caesar in Gaul, had afancy for a domus suburbana: Cic. _ad Q. Fr. _ iii. I. 7. Marcus tellshis brother in this letter that he himself had no great fancy for sucha residence, and that his house on the Palatine had all the charm ofsuch a suburbana. His villa at Tusculum, as we shall see, served thepurpose of a house close to the city. ]

[Footnote 385: A great number of passages about the noise and crowdsof Rome are collected in Mayor's _Notes to Juvenal_, pp. 173, 203, 207. ]

[Footnote 386: Some interesting remarks on the general aspect of thecity will be found in the concluding chapter of Lanciani's _Ruins andExcavations_. For the bore elsewhere than in Rome, see below, p. 256. ]

[Footnote 387: _ad Fam_. Ii. 12: "Urbem, Urbem, mi Rufe, cole, et inista luce viva Omnis peregrinatio (foreign travel) obscura et sordidaest iis, quorum industria Roma potest illustris esse, " etc. ]

[Footnote 388: Lucr. Ii. 22 foll. ; iii. 1060 foll. Cp. Seneca, _Ep. _69: "Frequens migratio instabilis animi est!"]

[Footnote 389: _de Oratore_, ii. 22. ]

[Footnote 390: These houses, with the coast on which they stood, have long sunk into the sea, and we are only now, thanks to theperseverance of Mr. R. T. Günther of Magdalen College, realising theirposition and former magnificence. See his volume on _Earth Movementsin the Bay of Naples_. ]

[Footnote 391: See Cic. _pro Caelio_, §§ 48-50. ]

[Footnote 392: _Cicero's Villen_, Leipzig, 1889. ]

[Footnote 393: Varro, _R. R. _ iii. 13. ]

[Footnote 394: The villa had once been Sulla's also: and thearistocratic connection gave its owner some trouble. See above, p. 102. ]

[Footnote 395: Schmidt, _op. Cit. _ p. 31. ]

[Footnote 396: _de Finibus_, iii. 2. 7. ]

[Footnote 397: _de Legibus_, ii. 1. ]

[Footnote 398: _op. Cit_. P. 15. I am assured by a travelling friendthat the Fibreno is a delicious stream. ]

[Footnote 399: _ad Quint. Fratr_. Iii. 1. ]

[Footnote 400: _ad Att. _ xiii. 19. 2. ]

[Footnote 401: For further details of the amenities of the villa atArpinum see Schmidt, _op. Cit. _]

[Footnote 402: _ad Att. _ ii. 14 and 15. ]

[Footnote 403: O. E. Schmidt, _Briefwechsel Cicero's_, pp. 66 and 454;but see his _Cicero's Villen_, p. 46, note. ]

[Footnote 404: _ad Att_. Xii. 19 init. ]

[Footnote 405: See Seneca, _Epist_. 69, on the disturbing influence ofconstant change of scene. ]

[Footnote 406: There is an exception in the young Cicero's letter toTiro, translated above, p. 202. ]

[Footnote 407: Censorinus, _De die natali_, 23. 6. ; Pliny, _N. H. _ vii. 213. On the whole subject of the division of the day see Marquardt, _Privatlben_, p. 246 foll. ]

[Footnote 408: In the XII Tables only sunrise and sunset werementioned (Pliny, _l. C. _ 212). Later on noon was proclaimed by theConsul's marshal (Varro, _de Ling. Lat_. Vi. 5), and also the end ofthe civil day. Cp. Varro, _L. L. _ vi. 89. ]

[Footnote 409: Cic. _pro Quinctio_, 18. 59. ]

[Footnote 410: See the article "Horologium" in _Dict. Of Antiquities_, vol. I. ]

[Footnote 411: Our modern hours are called equinoctial, because theyare fixed at the length of the natural hour at the equinoxes. Thissystem does not seem to have come in until late in the Empire period. ]

[Footnote 412: For the water-clock see Marquardt, _op. Cit_. P. 773foll. ]

[Footnote 413: The lines are so good that I may venture to quote themin full from Gell. Iii 3 (cp. Ribbeck, _Fragm. Gomicorum_, ii. P. 34):"parasitus esuriens dicit:

 Ut illum di perdant primus qui horas repperit, Quique adeo primus statuit hic solarium. Qui mihi comminuit misero articulatim diem, Nam olim me puero venter erat solarium, Multo omnium istorum optimum et verissimum: Ubivis ste monebat esse, nisi quom nihil erat. Nunc etiam quom est, non estur, nisi soli libet. Itaque adeo iam oppletum oppidum est solariis, Maior pars populi iam aridi reptant fame. "

The fourth line contains a truth of human nature, of whichillustrations might easily be found at the present day. ]

[Footnote 414: Pliny, _N. H. _ xv. 1 foll, supplies the history of theoil industry. For the candles see Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 690. ]

[Footnote 415: See above, p. 93. ]

[Footnote 416: Marq. _Privatleben_, p. 264. ]

[Footnote 417: Cic. _ad Q. F. _ ii. 3. 7. For the lippitudo, _ad Att. _vii. 14. ]

[Footnote 418: Hor. _Epist_. Ii. 1. 112; Pliny, _Ep_. Iii. 5, 8, 9. ]

[Footnote 419: Hor. _Epist. _ ii. 1. 103: "Romae dulce diu fuit etsolenne reclusa Mane domo vigilare, clienti promere iura" etc. It iscurious that all our information on this early business comes from theliterature of the Empire. The single passage of Cicero which Marquardtcould find to illustrate it unluckily relates to his practice asgovernor of Cilicia (_ad Att. _ vi. 2. 5). ]

[Footnote 420: e. G. _ad Q. F. _ i. 2. 16. ; and Q. Cic. _Commentariolumpetitionis_, sec. 17. ]

[Footnote 421: See what he says of M. Manilius in _De Orat_. Iii. 133. ]

[Footnote 422: The word seems to be connected with ieiunium (Plant. _Curculio_ I. I. 73; Festus, p. 346), and thus answers to ourbreak_fast_. The verb is ientare: Afranius: fragm. "ientare nullainvitat. "]

[Footnote 423: Galen, vol. Vi. P. 332. I take this citation fromMarquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 257; others will be found in the notesto that page. Marquardt seems to have been the first to bring theevidence of the medical writers to bear on the subject of Romanmeals. ]

[Footnote 424: See the interesting account of these (salutatores, deductores, assectatores) in the _Commentariolum petitionis_ of Q. Cicero, 9. 34 foll. ]

[Footnote 425: See above, p. 109. ]

[Footnote 426: Q. Cicero, _Comment. Pet. _9. 37. ]

[Footnote 427: See the author's _Roman Festivals_, pp. 125 foll. ]

[Footnote 428: Plutarch, _C. Gracchus_, 6. ]

[Footnote 429: Cic. _ad Fam. _ ii. 12. ]

[Footnote 430: Fragm. 9. Baehrens, _Fragm. Poet. Rom. _ p. 141. Cp. Galen, vol. X. P. 3 (Kuhn). ]

[Footnote 431: Livy xlv. 36; Cic. _ad Fam_. I. 2; for a famous case of"obstruction" by lengthy speaking, Gell. Iv. 10. ]

[Footnote 432: Festus, p. 54. ]

[Footnote 433: _ad Fam. _ vii. 30. ]

[Footnote 434: _de Divinatione_, ii. 142, written in 44 B. C. ]

[Footnote 435: Varro, _R. R. _ i. 2; the words are put into the mouthof one of the speakers in the dialogue. See, for examples from laterwriters, Marq. , _Privatleben_, p. 262. ]

[Footnote 436: _ad Att_. Xiii. 52; the habit may have often beendropped in winter. ]

[Footnote 437: Seneca, _Ep_. 86. The whole passage is mostinteresting, as illustrating the difference in habits wrought in thecourse of two centuries. ]

[Footnote 438: Mau, _Pompeii_, p. 300. See above, p. 244. ]

[Footnote 439: See the plan in Mau, p. 357; Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 272. ]

[Footnote 440: See Professor Purser's explanation and illustrations inthe _Dict. Of Antiquities_, vol. I. P. 278. ]

[Footnote 441: The subject of the public baths at Rome properlybelongs to the period of the Empire, and is too extensive to betreated in a chapter on the daily life of the Roman of Cicero's time. Public baths did exist in Rome already, but we hear very little ofthem, which shows that they were not as yet an indispensable adjunctof social life; but the fact that Seneca in the letter already quoteddescribes the aediles as testing the heat of the water with theirhands shows (1) that the baths were public, (2) that they were of hotwater and not, as later, of hot air (_thermae_). The latter inventionis said to have come in before the Social war (Val. Max. Ix. 1. 1. ). Some baths seem to have been run as a speculation by privateindividuals, and bore the name of their builder (e. G. Balneae Seniae, Cic. _pro Cael_. 25. 61). In summer the young men still bathed in theTiber (_pro Cael_. 15. 36). At Pompeii the oldest public baths (theStabian; Mau, p. 183) date from the second century B. C. ]

[Footnote 442: The tradition was that the paterfamilias originallyalso sat instead of reclining. See Marq. _Privatleben_, p. 292 note3. ]

[Footnote 443: Columella, ii. 1. 19, a very interesting chapter;Plutarch, _Cato min_. 56. ]

[Footnote 444: Plut. _Lucullus_ 40; see above, p. 242. ]

[Footnote 445: Plut. _Quaest. Conv. _ 1. 3 foll. ; and Marq. P. 295. ]

[Footnote 446: Hor. _Sat_. I. 4. 86; cp. Cic. _in Pisonem_, 27. 67. ]

[Footnote 447: Cic. _de Senect_. 14. 46. ]

[Footnote 448: Lucilius, fragm. 30; 120 foll. ; 168, 327 etc. Varrowrote a Menippean satire on gluttony, of which a fragment is preservedby Gellius, vi. 16. ]

[Footnote 449: See the interesting passage in _Cic. Pro Murena_, 36. 75, about the funeral feast of Scipio Aemilianus. ]

[Footnote 450: Catull. 47. 5: "vos convivia lauta sumptuose De diefacitis?"]

[Footnote 451: 26. 65 foll; Hor. _Od_. Iii. 19, and the commentators. ]

[Footnote 452: _ad Fam_. Vii. 26, of the year 57 B. C. The sumptuarylaw must have been a certain lex Aemilia of later date than Sulla. (See Gell. Ii. 24: "qua lege non sumptus cenarum, sed ciborum genus etmodus praefinitus est. ") This chapter of Gellius, and Macrob. Iii. 17, are the safest passages to consult on the subject of the growth ofgourmandism. ]

[Footnote 453: See Munro, _Elucidations of Catullus_, p. 92 foll. ]

[Footnote 454: Tibull. Ii. 1. 51 foll. Cp. Ii. 5. 83 foll. Several arealso described by Ovid in his _Fasti_. A charming account of feste ina Tuscan village of to-day will be found in _A Nook in the Apennines_, by Leader Scott, chapters xxviii. And xxix. : a book full of value forItalian rural life, ancient and modern. ]

[Footnote 455: Wissowa, _Religion und Kultus_, p. 366. "Feriae" camein time to be limited to public festivals, while "festus dies" coveredall holidays. ]

[Footnote 456: de Legibus, ii. 8. 19: cp. 12. 29. ]

[Footnote 457: Georg. I. 268 foll. Cato had already said the samething: _R. R. _ ii. 4. ]

[Footnote 458: Thus Ovid describes the rites performed by the FlamenQuirinalis at the old agricultural festival of the Robigalia (Robigus, deity of the mildew) as if it were a curious bit of old practice whichmost people knew nothing about. --_Fasti_, iv. 901 foll. ]

[Footnote 459: Greenidge, _Legal Procedure in Cicero's time_, p. 457. ]

[Footnote 460: It is the same word as our _fair_. ]

[Footnote 461: _Fasti_, iii. 523 foll. ; Fowler, _Roman Festivals_, p. 51. ]

[Footnote 462: _Roman Festivals_, p. 185. The custom doubtless had areligious origin. ]

[Footnote 463: _Ib_. P. 268. Augustus limited the days to three. ]

[Footnote 464: Wissowa, _Religion und Kultus_, p. 170. The cult ofSaturn was largely affected by Greek usage, but this particular customwas more likely descended from the usage of the Latin farm. ]

[Footnote 465: See above, p. 172. Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 586;Frazer, _Golden Bough_ (ed. 2), vol. Iii. P. 188 foll. ]

[Footnote 466: Cic. _Verr_. I. 10. 31; where Cicero complains of thedifficulties he experienced in conducting his case in consequence ofthe number of ludi from August to November in that year. ]

[Footnote 467: Fowler, _Roman Festivals_, p. 217 foll. ]

[Footnote 468: See the account in Dion. Hal. Vii. 72, taken fromFabius Pictor. ]

[Footnote 469: See Friedländer in Marquardt, _Staatsverwaltung_, iii. P. 508, note 3. ]

[Footnote 470: For full accounts of this procession, and the wholequestion of the Ludi Romani, see Friedländer, _l. C. _; Wissowa, _Religion und Kultus_, p. 383 foll. ; or the article "Triumphus" inthe _Dict. Of Antiquities_, ed. 2. All accounts owe much to Mommsen'sessay in _Römische Forschungen_, ii. P. 42 foll. ]

[Footnote 471: On the parallelism between the Ludi Plebeii and Romanisee Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, ii. P. 508, note 4. ]

[Footnote 472: Fowler, _Roman Festivals_, p. 179 foll. ]

[Footnote 473: _Ib_. P. 69. ]

[Footnote 474: _Ib_. P. 72 foll. ]

[Footnote 475: Fowler, _Roman Festivals_, p. 91 foll. ]

[Footnote 476: Livy xxii. 10. 7; Dionys. Vii. 71. ]

[Footnote 477: Pliny, N. S. Xxxiii. 138. The same thing happened onceor twice under Augustus. ]

[Footnote 478: Livy xl. 44. ]

[Footnote 479: ii. 16, 57 foll. ]

[Footnote 480: We have some details of the ridiculously lavishexpenditure of this aedile in Pliny, N. H. Xxxvi. 114. He built atemporary theatre, which was decorated as though it were to be apermanent monument of magnificence. ]

[Footnote 481: Verr. V. 14. 36. ]

[Footnote 482: Plut. Caes. 5. ]

[Footnote 483: Cio. _ad Fam_. Viii. 9. ]

[Footnote 484: _ad Att_. Vi. I. 21. ]

[Footnote 485: There is no evidence that slaves were admitted underthe Republic. Columella, who wrote under Nero, is the first to mentiontheir presence at the games (_R. R. _ i. 8. 2), unless we consider thevilicus of Horace, _Epist_. I. 14. 15, as a slave. See Friedländer inMarq. P. 491, note 4. ]

[Footnote 486: See above, p. 13; Fowler, _Roman Festivals_, p. 208. ]

[Footnote 487: _Roman Festivals_, p. 241. ]

[Footnote 488: _Ib_. P. 77 foll. ]

[Footnote 489: Dionys. Hal. In. 68 gives this number for Augustus'time, and so far as we know Augustus had not enlarged the Circus. ]

[Footnote 490: Gell. Iii. 10. 16. ]

[Footnote 491: Pliny, _N. H. _ x. 71: he seems to be referring to anearlier time, and this Caecina may have been the friend of Cicero. Inanother passage of Pliny we hear of the red faction about the time ofSulla (vii. 186; Friedl. P. 517). Cp. Tertullian, _de Spectaculis_, 9. ]

[Footnote 492: For a graphic picture of the scene in the Circus inAugustus' time see Ovid, _Ars Amatoria_, i. 135 foll. ]

[Footnote 493: ch. 59. ]

[Footnote 494: See Schol. Bob. On the _pro Sestio_, new Teubner ed. , p. 105. ]

[Footnote 495: Val. Max. Ii. 3. 2. The conjecture as to the objectof the exhibition by the consuls is that of Bücheler, in _Rhein. Mus. _1883, p. 476 foll. ]

[Footnote 496: The example was set, according to Livy, _Epit_. 16, bya Junius Brutus at the beginning of the first Punic war. ]

[Footnote 497: _ad Fam_. Ii. 3. ]

[Footnote 498: The origin of these bloody shows at funerals needsfurther investigation. It may be connected with a primitive and savagecustom of sacrificing captives to the Manes of a chief, of which wehave a reminiscence in the sacrifice of captives by Aeneas, in Virg. _Aen_. Xi. 82. ]

[Footnote 499: See Lucian Müller's _Ennius_, p. 35 foll. , where hemaintains against Mommsen the intelligence and taste of the Romans ofthe 2nd century B. C. ]

[Footnote 500: Cic. _Brutus_, 28. 107, where he speaks of having knownthe poet himself. ]

[Footnote 501: _ad_ Att. Ii. 19. ]

[Footnote 502: _Pro Sestio_, 55. 117 foll. ]

[Footnote 503: _ad Q. Fratr_. Iii. 5. ]

[Footnote 504: It is only fair to say that this information comes froma letter of Asinius Pollio to Cicero (_ad Fam_. X. 32. 3), and asPollio was one who had a word of mockery for every one, we maydiscount the story of the tears. ]

[Footnote 505: Tibicines, usually mistranslated flute-players; thischaracteristic Italian instrument was really a primitive oboe playedwith a reed, and usually of the double form (two pipes with aconnected mouthpiece), still sometimes seen in Italy. ]

[Footnote 506: See above, p. 70. ]

[Footnote 507: Val. Max. Ii. 4. 2; Livy, _Epit_. 48. ]

[Footnote 508: Tacitus, _Ann_. Xiv. 20. ]

[Footnote 509: Tertullian, _de Spectaculis_, 10; Pliny, _N. H. _ viii. 20. ]

[Footnote 510: See the excellent account in Hülsen, vol. Iii. OfJordan's _Topographie_, p. 524 foll. Some of the arches of thesupporting arcade are still visible. ]

[Footnote 511: _ad Fam_. Vii. I. Professor Tyrrell calls this letter arhetorical exercise; is it not rather one of those in which Cicero istaking pains to write, therefore writing less easily and naturallythan usual?]

[Footnote 512: I have used Mr. Shuckburgh's translation, with one ortwo verbal changes. ]

[Footnote 513: Pliny, _Nat. Hist_. Viii. 21. ]

[Footnote 514: _de Div_. I. 37. 80. Cp. The story in Plut. _Cic_. 5. ]

[Footnote 515: Hor. _Ep_. Ii. 82; Quintil. Ii. 3. Ill. ]

[Footnote 516: Val. Max. Viii. 10. 2. Cicero was said to have learntgesticulation both from Aesopus and Roscius. --Plut. _Cic_. 5. ]

[Footnote 517: Pliny, _N. H. _ vii. 128. ]

[Footnote 518: _Pro Archia_, 8. ]

[Footnote 519: _De Oratore_, i. 28. 129. ]

[Footnote 520: _De Oratore_, iii. 27, 59. ]

[Footnote 521: A useful succinct account of the literature ofthis difficult subject will be found in Schanz, _Gesch. Der rom. Litteratur_, vol. I. (ed. 3) p. 21 foll. ]

[Footnote 522: This is the view of Mommsen, _Hist_. Iii. P. 455, whichis generally accepted. For further information see Teuffel, _Hist. OfRoman Literature_, i. (ed. 2) p. 9. That they were in fashion beforethe mimus is gathered from Cic. _ad Fam_. Ix. 16. ]

[Footnote 523: Plut. _Sulla_, 2: ep. 36. ]

[Footnote 524: Political allusions in mimes, were, however, notunknown. Cp. Cic. _ad Alt_. Xiv. 3, written in 44 B. C. , after Caesar'sdeath. ]

[Footnote 525: All the passages about Publilius are collected in Mr. Bickford Smith's edition of his _Sententiae_, p. 10 foll. On mimesgenerally the reader may be referred to Professor Purser's excellentarticle in Smith's _Diet. Of Antiq_. Ed. 2. ]

[Footnote 526: Animo aequissimo, _ad Fam_. Xii. 19. He means perhapsrather that flattering allusions to Caesar did not hurt his feelings. ]

[Footnote 527: See Ribbeck, _Fragm. Comic. Lat_. P. 295 foll. ]

[Footnote 528: Seneca, _Epist_. 108. 8. ]

[Footnote 529: See another excellent article of Professor Purser's inthe _Dict. Of Antiq_. ]

[Footnote 530: See the _Hibbert Journal_ for July 1907, p. 847. In thesecond sense Cicero often uses the plural "religiones, " esp. In _deLegibus_, ii. ]

[Footnote 531: See Middleton, _Rome in 1887_, p. 423; Horace, _Sat_. I. 8. 8 foll. ; Nissen, _Italische Landeskunde_, ii. P. 522. ]

[Footnote 532: Fowler, _Roman Festivals_, p. 336 foll. ]

[Footnote 533: _Monumentum Ancyranum_ (Lat. ), 4. 17. ]

[Footnote 534: _de Nat. Deor. _ i. 29. 82. ]

[Footnote 535: Valerius Maximus, _Epit. _ 3. 4; Wissowa, _Rel. UndKult. _ p. 293. ]

[Footnote 536: See, e. G. Dill, _Roman Society from Nero to MarcusAurelius_, ch. V. ]

[Footnote 537: See, e. G. , _pro Sestio_, 15. 32; _in Vatinium_, 7. 18. ]

[Footnote 538: Augustine, _Civ. Dei_, iv. 27. ]

[Footnote 539: Cp. I. 63 foll. ; iii. 87 and 894; v. 72 and 1218; andmany other passages. ]

[Footnote 540: iii. 995 foll. ; v. 1120 foll. ]

[Footnote 541: iii. 70; v. 1126. ]

[Footnote 542: ii. 22 foll. ; iii. 1003; v. 1116. ]

[Footnote 543: _Roman Poets of the Republic_, p. 306. ]

[Footnote 544: The secret may be found in the last 250 lines of Bk. Iii. , and at the beginning and end of Bk. V. ]

[Footnote 545: v. 1203; ii. 48-54. ]

[Footnote 546: v. 1129. ]

[Footnote 547: "Philosophy has never touched the mass of mankindexcept through religion" (_Decadence_, by Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour, p. 53). This is a truth of which Lucretius was profoundly, though notsurprisingly, ignorant. ]

[Footnote 548: See above, p. 115. ]

[Footnote 549: e. G. Xxi. 62. ]

[Footnote 550: Ribbeck, _Fragm. Trag. Rom. _ p. 54: Ego deum genus essesemper dixi et dicam coelitum, Sed eos non curare opinor quid agathumanum genus. ]

[Footnote 551: See above, p. 114. ]

[Footnote 552: See H. N. Fowler, _Panaetii et Hecatonis librorumfragmenta_, p. 10; Hirzel, _Untersuchungen zu Cicero's philosophischenSchriften_, i. P. 194 foll. ]

[Footnote 553: See above, p. 115. ]

[Footnote 554: Schmekel, _Die Mittlere Stoa_, p. 85 foll. ; Hirzel, _Untersuchungen_, etc. , i. P. 194 foll. ]

[Footnote 555: The fragments are collected by E. Agahd, Leipzig, 1898. The great majority are found in St. Augustine, _de Civitate Dei_. ]

[Footnote 556: As Wissowa says (_Religion und Kultus der Römer_, p. 100), Jupiter does not appear in Roman language and literature as apersonality who thunders or rains, but rather as the heaven itselfcombining these various manifestations of activity. The most familiarillustration of the usage alluded to in the text is the line of Horacein _Odes_ i. 1. 25: "manet sub Iove frigido venator. "]

[Footnote 557: ap. Aug. _Civ. Dei_, iv. 11. ]

[Footnote 558: _Ib. _ vii. 9. ]

[Footnote 559: ap. Aug. _Civ. Dei_, vii. 13: animus mundi is here socalled, but evidently identified with Jupiter. ]

[Footnote 560: _Ib. _ vii. 9. ]

[Footnote 561: _Ib. _ iv. 11, 13. ]

[Footnote 562: Aug. _de consensu evangel. _ i. 23, 24. Cp. _Civ. Dei_, iv. 9. ]

[Footnote 563: _Ib. _ i. 22. 30; _Civ. Dei_, xix. 22. ]

[Footnote 564: See Wissowa, _Religion und Kultus_, p. 103. ]

[Footnote 565: _de Rep_. Iii. 22. See above, p. 117. ]

[Footnote 566: _de Legilus_, ii. 10. ]

[Footnote 567: _de Nat. Deor. _. I. 15. 40: "idem etiam legis perpetuaeet eternae vim, quae quasi dux vitae et magistra officiorum sit, Iovemdicit esse, eandemque fatalem necessitatem appellat, sempiternam rerumfuturarum veritatem. " Chrysippus of course was speaking of the GreekZeus. ]

[Footnote 568: e. G. _de Off. _ iii. 28; _de Nat. Deor. _ i. 116. ]

[Footnote 569: Glover, _Studies in Virgil_, p. 275. ]

[Footnote 570: It is interesting to note that in the religious revivalof Augustus Jupiter by no means has a leading place. See Carter, _Religion of Numa_, p. 160, where, however, the attitude of Augustustowards the great god is perhaps over-emphasised. On the relation ofVirgil's Jupiter to Fate, see E. Norden, _Virgils epische Technik_, p. 286 foll. Seneca, it is worth noting, never mentions Jupiter as thecentre of the Stoic Pantheon. --Dill, _Roman Society from Nero to M. Aurelius_, p. 331. ]

[Footnote 571: See an article by the author in _Hibbert Journal_, July1907, p. 847. ]

[Footnote 572: Plut. _Sulla_, 6. ]

[Footnote 573: Valerius Maximus ii. 3. ]

[Footnote 574: _de Div_. I. 32. 68. ]

[Footnote 575: Plut. _Brutus_, 36, 37. ]

[Footnote 576: Sall. _Cat. _ 51; Cic. _Cat. _ iv. 4. 7. ]

[Footnote 577: Cic. _de Rep. _ iv. 24. ]

[Footnote 578: Reid, _The Academics of Cicero_, Introduction, p. 18. ]

[Footnote 579: _ad Att. _ xii. 36. ]

[Footnote 580: ad Att. Xii. 37. ]

[Footnote 581: Suetonius, _Jul_. 88. See E. Kornemann in _Klio_, vol. I. P. 95. ]

[Footnote 582: We do not know exactly when this preface was written. Prefaces are now composed, as a rule, when a work is finished: butthis does not seem to have been the practice in antiquity, andinternal evidence is here strongly in favour of an early date. ]

[Footnote 583: _Epode_ 16. 54; cp. 30 foll. ]

[Footnote 584: Sir W. M. Ramsay, quoted in _Virgil's MessianicEclogue_, p. 54. ]

[Footnote 585: Dr. J. B. Mayor, in _Virgil's Messianic Eclogue_, p. 118foll. ]