BOOK THIRD
Chapter XIII
Faith and Manners
Roman Austerity and Roman Pride
Life in the case of the Roman was spent under conditions of austere
restraint, and, the nobler he was, the less he was a free man.
All-powerful custom restricted him to a narrow range of thought
and action; and to have led a serious and strict or, to use the
characteristic Latin expressions, a sad and severe life, was his
glory. No one had more and no one had less to do than to keep his
household in good order and manfully bear his part of counsel and
action in public affairs. But, while the individual had neither the
wish nor the power to be aught else than a member of the community,
the glory and the might of that community were felt by every
individual burgess as a personal possession to be transmitted along
with his name and his homestead to his posterity; and thus, as one
generation after another was laid in the tomb and each in succession
added its fresh contribution to the stock of ancient honours, the
collective sense of dignity in the noble families of Rome swelled into
that mighty civic pride, the like of which the earth has never seen
again, and the traces of which, as strange as they are grand, seem to
us, wherever we meet them, to belong as it were to another world. It
was one of the characteristic peculiarities of this powerful sense of
citizenship, that it was, while not suppressed, yet compelled by the
rigid simplicity and equality that prevailed among the citizens to
remain locked up within the breast during life, and was only allowed
to find expression after death; but then it was displayed in the
funeral rites of the man of distinction so conspicuously and
intensely, that this ceremonial is better fitted than any other
phenomenon of Roman life to give to us who live in later times a
glimpse of that wonderful spirit of the Romans.
A Roman Funeral
It was a singular procession, at which the burgesses were invited to
be present by the summons of the public crier: "Yonder warrior is
dead; whoever can, let him come to escort Lucius Aemilius; he is borne
forth from his house." It was opened by bands of wailing women,
musicians, and dancers; one of the latter was dressed out and
furnished with a mask after the likeness of the deceased, and by
gesture doubtless and action recalled once more to the multitude the
appearance of the well-known man. Then followed the grandest and most
peculiar part of the solemnity--the procession of ancestors--before
which all the rest of the pageant so faded in comparison, that men of
rank of the true Roman type enjoined their heirs to restrict the
funeral ceremony to that procession alone. We have already mentioned
that the face-masks of those ancestors who had filled the curule
aedileship or any higher ordinary magistracy, wrought in wax and
painted--modelled as far as possible after life, but not wanting even
for the earlier ages up to and beyond the time of the kings--were wont
to be placed in wooden niches along the walls of the family hall, and
were regarded as the chief ornament of the house. When a death
occurred in the family, suitable persons, chiefly actors, were dressed
up with these face-masks and the corresponding official costume to
take part in the funeral ceremony, so that the ancestors--each in the
principal dress worn by him in his lifetime, the triumphator in his
gold-embroidered, the censor in his purple, and the consul in his
purple-bordered, robe, with their lictors and the other insignia of
office--all in chariots gave the final escort to the dead. on the
bier overspread with massive purple and gold-embroidered coverlets and
fine linen cloths lay the deceased himself, likewise in the full
costume of the highest office which he had filled, and surrounded by
the armour of the enemies whom he had slain and by the chaplets which
in jest or earnest he had won. Behind the bier came the mourners, all
dressed in black and without ornament, the sons of the deceased with
their heads veiled, the daughters without veil, the relatives and
clansmen, the friends, the clients and freedmen. Thus the procession
passed on to the Forum. There the corpse was placed in an erect
position; the ancestors descended from their chariots and seated
themselves in the curule chairs; and the son or nearest gentile
kinsman of the deceased ascended the rostra, in order to announce to
the assembled multitude in simple recital the names and deeds of each
of the men sitting in a circle around him and, last of all, those of
him who had recently died.
This may be called a barbarous custom, and a nation of artistic
feelings would certainly not have tolerated the continuance of this
odd resurrection of the dead down to an epoch of fully-developed
civilization; but even Greeks who were very dispassionate and but
little disposed to reverence, such as Polybius, were greatly impressed
by the naive pomp of this funeral ceremony. It was a conception
essentially in keeping with the grave solemnity, the uniform movement,
and the proud dignity of Roman life, that departed generations should
continue to walk, as it were, corporeally among the living, and that,
when a burgess weary of labours and of honours was gathered to his
fathers, these fathers themselves should appear in the Forum to
receive him among their number.
The New Hellenism
But the Romans had now reached a crisis of transition. Now that the
power of Rome was no longer confined to Italy but had spread far and
wide to the east and to the west, the days of the old home life of
Italy were over, and a Hellenizing civilization came in its room. It
is true that Italy had been subject to the influence of Greece, ever
since it had a history at all. We have formerly shown how the
youthful Greece and the youthful Italy--both of them with a certain
measure of simplicity and originality--gave and received intellectual
impulses; and how at a later period Rome endeavoured after a more
external manner to appropriate to practical use the language and
inventions of the Greeks. But the Hellenism of the Romans of the
present period was, in its causes as well as its consequences,
something essentially new. The Romans began to feel the need of a
richer intellectual life, and to be startled as it were at their own
utter want of mental culture; and, if even nations of artistic gifts,
such as the English and Germans, have not disdained in the pauses of
their own productiveness to avail themselves of the miserable French
culture for filling up the gap, it need excite no surprise that the
Italian nation now flung itself with fervid zeal on the glorious
treasures as well as on the dissolute filth of the intellectual
development of Hellas. But it was an impulse still more profound and
deep-rooted, which carried the Romans irresistibly into the Hellenic
vortex. Hellenic civilization still doubtless called itself by that
name, but it was Hellenic no longer; it was, in fact, humanistic and
cosmopolitan. It had solved the problem of moulding a mass of
different nations into one whole completely in the field of intellect,
and to a certain extent also in that of politics; and, now when the
same task on a wider scale devolved on Rome, she took over Hellenism
along with the rest of the inheritance of Alexander the Great.
Hellenism therefore was no longer a mere stimulus or accessory
influence; it penetrated the Italian nation to the very core. Of
course, the vigorous home life of Italy strove against the foreign
element. It was only after a most vehement struggle that the Italian
farmer abandoned the field to the cosmopolite of the capital; and, as
in Germany the French coat called forth the national Germanic frock,
so the reaction against Hellenism aroused in Rome a tendency which
opposed the influence of Greece on principle, in a fashion altogether
foreign to the earlier centuries, and in doing so fell pretty
frequently into downright follies and absurdities.
Hellenism in Politics
No department of human action or thought remained unaffected by this
struggle between the old fashion and the new. Even political
relations were largely influenced by it The whimsical project of
emancipating the Hellenes, the well deserved failure of which has
already been described, the kindred, likewise Hellenic, idea of a
common interest of republics in opposition to kings, and the desire of
propagating Hellenic polity at the expense of eastern despotism--the
two principles that helped to regulate, for instance, the treatment of
Macedonia--were fixed ideas of the new school, just as dread of the
Carthaginians was the fixed idea of the old; and, if Cato pushed the
latter to a ridiculous excess, Philhellenism now and then indulged in
extravagances at least quite as foolish. For example, the conqueror
of king Antiochus not only had a statue of him self in Greek costume
erected on the Capitol, but also, instead of calling himself in good
Latin -Asiaticus-, assumed the unmeaning and anomalous, but yet
magnificent and almost Greek, surname of --Asiagenus--.(1) A more
important consequence of this attitude of the ruling nation towards
Hellenism was, that the process of Latinizing gained ground everywhere
in Italy except where it encountered the Hellenes. The cities of the
Greeks in Italy, so far as the war had not destroyed them, remained
Greek. Apulia, about which, it is true, the Romans gave themselves
little concern, appears at this very epoch to have been thoroughly
pervaded by Hellenism, and the local civilization there seems to have
attained the level of the decaying Hellenic culture by its side.
Tradition is silent on the matter; but the numerous coins of cities,
uniformly furnished with Greek inscriptions, and the manufacture of
painted clay-vases after the Greek style, which was carried on in that
part of Italy alone with more ambition and gaudiness than taste, show
that Apulia had completely adopted Greek habits and Greek art.
But the real struggle between Hellenism and its national antagonists
during the present period was carried on in the field of faith, of
manners, and of art and literature; and we must not omit to attempt
some delineation of this great strife of principles, however difficult
it may be to present a summary view of the myriad forms and aspects
which the conflict assumed.
The National Religion and Unbelief
The extent to which the old simple faith still retained a living hold
on the Italians is shown very clearly by the admiration or
astonishment which this problem of Italian piety excited among the
contemporary Greeks. on occasion of the quarrel with the Aetolians it
was reported of the Roman commander-in-chief that during battle he was
solely occupied in praying and sacrificing like a priest; whereas
Polybius with his somewhat stale moralizing calls the attention of his
countrymen to the political usefulness of this piety, and admonishes
them that a state cannot consist of wise men alone, and that such
ceremonies are very convenient for the sake of the multitude.
Religious Economy
But if Italy still possessed--what had long been a mere antiquarian
curiosity in Hellas--a national religion, it was already visibly
beginning to be ossified into theology. The torpor creeping over
faith is nowhere perhaps so distinctly apparent as in the alterations
in the economy of divine service and of the priesthood. The public
service of the gods became not only more tedious, but above all more
and more costly. in 558 there was added to the three old colleges of
the augurs, pontifices, and keepers of oracles, a fourth consisting of
three "banquet-masters" (-tres viri epulones-), solely for the
important purpose of superintending the banquets of the gods. The
priests, as well as the gods, were in fairness entitled to feast; new
institutions, however, were not needed with that view, as every
college applied itself with zeal and devotion to its convivial
affairs. The clerical banquets were accompanied by the claim of
clerical immunities. The priests even in times of grave embarrassment
claimed the right of exemption from public burdens, and only after
very troublesome controversy submitted to make payment of the taxes in
arrear (558). To the individual, as well as to the community, piety
became a more and more costly article. The custom of instituting
endowments, and generally of undertaking permanent pecuniary
obligations, for religious objects prevailed among the Romans in a
manner similar to that of its prevalence in Roman Catholic countries
at the present day. These endowments--particularly after they came to
be regarded by the supreme spiritual and at the same time the supreme
juristic authority in the state, the pontifices, as a real burden
devolving -de jure- on every heir or other person acquiring the
estate--began to form an extremely oppressive charge on property;
"inheritance without sacrificial obligation" was a proverbial saying
among the Romans somewhat similar to our "rose without a thorn." The
dedication of a tenth of their substance became so common, that twice
every month a public entertainment was given from the proceeds in the
Forum Boarium at Rome. With the Oriental worship of the Mother of the
Gods there was imported to Rome among other pious nuisances the
practice, annually recurring on certain fixed days, of demanding
penny-collections from house to house (-stipem cogere-). Lastly, the
subordinate class of priests and soothsayers, as was reasonable,
rendered no service without being paid for it; and beyond doubt the
Roman dramatist sketched from life, when in the curtain-conversation
between husband and wife he represents the account for pious services
as ranking with the accounts for the cook, the nurse, and other
customary presents:--
-Da mihi, vir,--quod dem Quinquatribus
Praecantrici, conjectrici, hariolae atquc haruspicae;
Tum piatricem clementer non potest quin munerem.
Flagitium est, si nil mittetur, quo supercilio spicit.-
The Romans did not create a "God of gold," as they had formerly
created a "God of silver";(2) nevertheless he reigned in reality alike
over the highest and lowest spheres of religious life. The old pride
of the Latin national religion--the moderation of its economic
demands--was irrevocably gone.
Theology
At the same time its ancient simplicity also departed. Theology, the
spurious offspring of reason and faith, was already occupied in
introducing its own tedious prolixity and solemn inanity into the old
homely national faith, and thereby expelling the true spirit of that
faith. The catalogue of the duties and privileges of the priest of
Jupiter, for instance, might well have a place in the Talmud. They
pushed the natural rule--that no religious service can be acceptable
to the gods unless it is free from flaw--to such an extent in
practice, that a single sacrifice had to be repeated thirty times in
succession on account of mistakes again and again committed, and that
the games, which also formed a part of divine service, were regarded
as undone if the presiding magistrate had committed any slip in word
or deed or if the music even had paused at a wrong time, and so had to
be begun afresh, frequently for several, even as many as seven, times
in succession.
Irreligious Spirit
This exaggeration of conscientiousness was already a symptom of its
incipient torpor; and the reaction against it--indifference and
unbelief--failed not soon to appear. Even in the first Punic war
(505) an instance occurred in which the consul himself made an open
jest of consulting the auspices before battle--a consul, it is true,
belonging to the peculiar clan of the Claudii, which alike in good and
evil was ahead of its age. Towards the end of this epoch complaints
were loudly made that the lore of the augurs was neglected, and that,
to use the language of Cato, a number of ancient auguries and auspices
were falling into oblivion through the indolence of the college. An
augur like Lucius Paullus, who saw in the priesthood a science and not
a mere title, was already a rare exception, and could not but be so,
when the government more and more openly and unhesitatingly employed
the auspices for the accomplishment of its political designs, or, in
other words, treated the national religion in accordance with the view
of Polybius as a superstition useful for imposing on the public at
large. Where the way was thus paved, the Hellenistic irreligious
spirit found free course. in connection with the incipient taste for
art the sacred images of the gods began as early as the time of Cato
to be employed, like other furniture, in adorning the chambers of the
rich. More dangerous wounds were inflicted on religion by the rising
literature. It could not indeed venture on open attacks, and such
direct additions as were made by its means to religious conceptions
--e.g. the Pater Caelus formed by Ennius from the Roman Saturnus in
imitation of the Greek Uranos--were, while Hellenistic, of no great
importance. But the diffusion of the doctrines of Epichar and
Euhemerus in Rome was fraught with momentous consequences. The
poetical philosophy, which the later Pythagoreans had extracted from
the writings of the old Sicilian comedian Epicharmus of Megara (about
280), or rather had, at least for the most part, circulated under
cover of his name, saw in the Greek gods natural substances, in Zeus
the atmosphere, in the soul a particle of sun-dust, and so forth. In
so far as this philosophy of nature, like the Stoic doctrine in later
times, had in its most general outlines a certain affinity with the
Roman religion, it was calculated to undermine the national religion
by resolving it into allegory. A quasi-historical analysis of
religion was given in the "Sacred Memoirs" of Euhemerus of Messene
(about 450), which, under the form of reports on the travels of the
author among the marvels of foreign lands, subjected to thorough and
documentary sifting the accounts current as to the so-called gods, and
resulted in the conclusion that there neither were nor are gods at
all. To indicate the character of the book, it may suffice to mention
the one fact, that the story of Kronos devouring his children is
explained as arising out of the existence of cannibalism in the
earliest times and its abolition by king Zeus. Notwithstanding, or
even by virtue of, its insipidity and of its very obvious purpose, the
production had an undeserved success in Greece, and helped, in concert
with the current philosophies there, to bury the dead religion. It is
a remarkable indication of the expressed and conscious antagonism
between religion and the new philosophy that Ennius already translated
into Latin those notoriously destructive writings of Epicharmus and
Euhemerus. The translators may have justified themselves at the bar
of Roman police by pleading that the attacks were directed only
against the Greek, and not against the Latin, gods; but the evasion
was tolerably transparent. Cato was, from his own point of view,
quite right in assailing these tendencies indiscriminately, wherever
they met him, with his own peculiar bitterness, and in calling even
Socrates a corrupter of morals and offender against religion.
Home and Foreign Superstition
Thus the old national religion was visibly on the decline; and, as
the great trees of the primeval forest were uprooted the soil became
covered with a rank growth of thorns and of weeds that had never been
seen before. Native superstitions and foreign impostures of the most
various hues mingled, competed, and conflicted with each other. No
Italian stock remained exempt from this transmuting of old faith into
new superstition. As the lore of entrails and of lightning was
cultivated among the Etruscans, so the liberal art of observing birds
and conjuring serpent? flourished luxuriantly among the Sabellians
and more particularly the Marsians. Even among the Latin nation, and
in fact in Rome itself, we meet with similar phenomena, although they
are, comparatively speaking, less conspicuous. Such for instance were
the lots of Praeneste, and the remarkable discovery at Rome in 573 of
the tomb and posthumous writings of the king Numa, which are alleged
to have prescribed religious rites altogether strange and unheard of.
But the credulous were to their regret not permitted to learn more
than this, coupled with the fact that the books looked very new; for
the senate laid hands on the treasure and ordered the rolls to be
summarily thrown into the fire. The home manufacture was thus quite
sufficient to meet such demands of folly as might fairly be expected;
but the Romans were far from being content with it. The Hellenism of
that epoch, already denationalized and pervaded by Oriental mysticism,
introduced not only unbelief but also superstition in its most
offensive and dangerous forms to Italy; and these vagaries moreover
had quite a special charm, precisely because they were foreign.
Worship of Cybele
Chaldaean astrologers and casters of nativities were already in the
sixth century spread throughout Italy; but a still more important
event--one making in fact an epoch in the world's history--was the
reception of the Phrygian Mother of the Gods among the publicly
recognized divinities of the Roman state, to which the government had
been obliged to give its consent during the last weary years of the
Hannibalic war (550). A special embassy was sent for the purpose to
Pessinus, a city in the territory of the Celts of Asia Minor; and the
rough field-stone, which the priests of the place liberally presented
to the foreigners as the real Mother Cybele, was received by the
community with unparalleled pomp. Indeed, by way of perpetually
commemorating the joyful event, clubs in which the members entertained
each other in rotation were instituted among the higher classes, and
seem to have materially stimulated the rising tendency to the
formation of cliques. With the permission thus granted for the
-cultus- of Cybele the worship of the Orientals gained a footing
officially in Rome; and, though the government strictly insisted that
the emasculate priests of the new gods should remain Celts (-Galli-)
as they were called, and that no Roman burgess should devote himself
to this pious eunuchism, yet the barbaric pomp of the "Great Mother"
--her priests clad in Oriental costume with the chief eunuch at their
head, marching in procession through the streets to the foreign music
of fifes and kettledrums, and begging from house to house--and the
whole doings, half sensuous, half monastic, must have exercised a most
material influence over the sentiments and views of the people.
Worship of Bacchus
The effect was only too rapidly and fearfully apparent. A few years
later (568) rites of the most abominable character came to the
knowledge of the Roman authorities; a secret nocturnal festival in
honour of the god Bacchus had been first introduced into Etruria
through a Greek priest, and, spreading like a cancer, had rapidly
reached Rome and propagated itself over all Italy, everywhere
corrupting families and giving rise to the most heinous crimes,
unparalleled unchastity, falsifying of testaments, and murdering by
poison. More than 7000 men were sentenced to punishment, most of them
to death, on this account, and rigorous enactments were issued as to
the future; yet they did not succeed in repressing the ongoings, and
six years later (574) the magistrate to whom the matter fell
complained that 3000 men more had been condemned and still there
appeared no end of the evil.
Repressive Measures
Of course all rational men were agreed in the condemnation of these
spurious forms of religion--as absurd as they were injurious to the
commonwealth: the pious adherents of the olden faith and the partisans
of Hellenic enlightenment concurred in their ridicule of, and
indignation at, this superstition. Cato made it an instruction to his
steward, "that he was not to present any offering, or to allow any
offering to be presented on his behalf, without the knowledge and
orders of his master, except at the domestic hearth and on the
wayside-altar at the Compitalia, and that he should consult no
-haruspex-, -hariolus-, or -Chaldaeus-." The well-known question, as
to how a priest could contrive to suppress laughter when he met his
colleague, originated with Cato, and was primarily applied to the
Etruscan -haruspex-. Much in the same spirit Ennius censures in true
Euripidean style the mendicant soothsayers and their adherents:
-Sed superstitiosi vates impudentesque arioli,
Aut inertes aut insani aut quibus egestas imperat,
Qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam,
Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab eis drachumam ipsi petunt.-
But in such times reason from the first plays a losing game against
unreason. The government, no doubt, interfered; the pious impostors
were punished and expelled by the police; every foreign worship not
specially sanctioned was forbidden; even the consulting of the
comparatively innocent lot-oracle of Praeneste was officially
prohibited in 512; and, as we have already said, those who took part
in the Bacchanalia were rigorously prosecuted. But, when once men's
heads are thoroughly turned, no command of the higher authorities
avails to set them right again. How much the government was obliged
to concede, or at any rate did concede, is obvious from what has been
stated. The Roman custom, under which the state consulted Etruscan
sages in certain emergencies and the government accordingly took steps
to secure the traditional transmission of Etruscan lore in the noble
families of Etruria, as well as the permission of the secret worship
of Demeter, which was not immoral and was restricted to women, may
probably be ranked with the earlier innocent and comparatively
indifferent adoption of foreign rites. But the admission of the
worship of the Mother of the Gods was a bad sign of the weakness which
the government felt in presence of the new superstition, perhaps even
of the extent to which it was itself pervaded by it; and it showed in
like manner either an unpardonable negligence or something still
worse, that the authorities only took steps against such proceedings
as the Bacchanalia at so late a stage, and even then on an accidental
information.
Austerity of Manners
Catos's Family Life
The picture, which has been handed down to us of the life of Cato the
Elder, enables us in substance to perceive how, according to the ideas
of the respectable burgesses of that period, the private life of the
Roman should be spent. Active as Cato was as a statesman, pleader,
author, and mercantile speculator, family life always formed with him
the central object of existence; it was better, he thought, to be a
good husband than a great senator. His domestic discipline was
strict. The servants were not allowed to leave the house without
orders, nor to talk of what occurred to the household to strangers.
The more severe punishments were not inflicted capriciously, but
sentence was pronounced and executed according to a quasi-judicial
procedure: the strictness with which offences were punished may be
inferred from the fact, that one of his slaves who had concluded a
purchase without orders from his master hanged himself on the matter
coming to Cato's ears. For slight offences, such as mistakes
committed in waiting at table, the consular was wont after dinner to
administer to the culprit the proper number of lashes with a thong
wielded by his own hand. He kept his wife and children in order no
less strictly, but by other means; for he declared it sinful to lay
hands on a wife or grown-up children in the same way as on slaves.
In the choice of a wife he disapproved marrying for money, and
recommended men to look to good descent; but he himself married in
old age the daughter of one of his poor clients. Moreover he adopted
views in regard to continence on the part of the husband similar to
those which everywhere prevail in slave countries; a wife was
throughout regarded by him as simply a necessary evil. His writings
abound in invectives against the chattering, finery-loving,
ungovernable fair sex; it was the opinion of the old lord that "all
women are plaguy and proud," and that, "were men quit of women, our
life might probably be less godless." on the other hand the rearing
of children born in wedlock was a matter which touched his heart and
his honour, and the wife in his eyes existed strictly and solely for
the children's sake. She nursed them ordinarily herself, or, if she
allowed her children to be suckled by female slaves, she also allowed
their children in return to draw nourishment from her own breast; one
of the few traits, which indicate an endeavour to mitigate the
institution of slavery by ties of human sympathy--the common impulses
of maternity and the bond of foster-brotherhood. The old general was
present in person, whenever it was possible, at the washing and
swaddling of his children. He watched with reverential care over
their childlike innocence; he assures us that he was as careful lest
he should utter an unbecoming word in presence of his children as if
he had been in presence of the Vestal Virgins, and that he never
before the eyes of his daughters embraced their mother, except when
she had become alarmed during a thunder-storm. The education of the
son was perhaps the noblest portion of his varied and variously
honourable activity. True to his maxim, that a ruddy-checked boy was
worth more than a pale one, the old soldier in person initiated his
son into all bodily exercises, and taught him to wrestle, to ride, to
swim, to box, and to endure heat and cold. But he felt very justly,
that the time had gone by when it sufficed for a Roman to be a good
farmer and soldier; and be felt also that it could not but have an
injurious influence on the mind of his boy, if he should subsequently
learn that the teacher, who had rebuked and punished him and had won
his reverence, was a mere slave. Therefore he in person taught the
boy what a Roman was wont to learn, to read and write and know the law
of the land; and even in his later years he worked his way so far into
the general culture of the Hellenes, that he was able to deliver to
his son in his native tongue whatever in that culture he deemed to be
of use to a Roman. All his writings were primarily intended for his
son, and he wrote his historical work for that son's use with large
distinct letters in his own hand. He lived in a homely and frugal
style. His strict parsimony tolerated no expenditure on luxuries. He
allowed no slave to cost him more than 1500 -denarii- (65 pounds) and
no dress more than 100 -denarii- (4 pounds: 6 shillings); no carpet was
to be seen in his house, and for a long time there was no whitewash on
the walls of the rooms. Ordinarily he partook of the same fare with
his servants, and did not buffer his outlay in cash for the meal to
exceed 30 -asses- (2 shillings); in time of war even wine was
uniformly banished from his table, and he drank water or, according to
circumstances, water mixed with vinegar. on the other hand, he was no
enemy to hospitality; he was fond of associating both with his club in
town and with the neighbouring landlords in the country; he sat long
at table, and, as his varied experience and his shrewd and ready wit
made him a pleasant companion, he disdained neither the dice nor the
wine-flask: among other receipts in his book on husbandry he even
gives a tried recipe for the case of a too hearty meal and too deep
potations. His life up to extreme old age was one of ceaseless
activity. Every moment was apportioned and occupied; and every
evening he was in the habit of turning over in his mind what he had
heard, said, or done during the day. Thus he found time for his own
affairs as well as for those of his friends and of the state, and time
also for conversation and pleasure; everything was done quickly and
without many words, and his genuine spirit of activity hated nothing
so much as bustle or a great ado about trifles. So lived the man who
was regarded by his contemporaries and by posterity as the true model
of a Roman burgess, and who appeared as it were the living embodiment
of the--certainly somewhat coarse-grained--energy and probity of Rome
in contrast with Greek indolence and Greek immorality; as a later
Roman poet says:
-Sperne mores transmarinos, mille habent offucias.
Cive Romano per orbem nemo vivit rectius.
Quippe malim unum Catonem, quam trecentos Socratas.- (3)
Such judgments will not be absolutely adopted by history; but every
one who carefully considers the revolution which the degenerate
Hellenism of this age accomplished in the modes of life and thought
among the Romans, will be inclined to heighten rather than to lessen
that condemnation of the foreign manners.
New Manners
The ties of family life became relaxed with fearful rapidity. The
evil of grisettes and boy-favourites spread like a pestilence, and, as
matters stood, it was not possible to take any material steps in the
way of legislation against it. The high tax, which Cato as censor
(570) laid on this most abominable species of slaves kept for luxury,
would not be of much moment, and besides fell practically into disuse
a year or two afterwards along with the property-tax generally.
Celibacy--as to which grave complaints were made as early as 520--and
divorces naturally increased in proportion. Horrible crimes were
perpetrated in the bosom of families of the highest rank; for
instance, the consul Gaius Calpurnius Piso was poisoned by his wife
and his stepson, in order to occasion a supplementary election to the
consulship and so to procure the supreme magistracy for the latter
--a plot which was successful (574). Moreover the emancipation of
women began. According to old custom the married woman was subject
in law to the marital power which was parallel with the paternal, and
the unmarried woman to the guardianship of her nearest male -agnati-,
which fell little short of the paternal power; the wife had no
property of her own, the fatherless virgin and the widow had at any
rate no right of management. But now women began to aspire to
independence in respect to property, and, getting quit of the
guardianship of their -agnati- by evasive lawyers' expedients
--particularly through mock marriages--they took the management
of their property into their own hands, or, in the event of being
married, sought by means not much better to withdraw themselves
from the marital power, which under the strict letter of the law was
necessary. The mass of capital which was collected in the hands of
women appeared to the statesmen of the time so dangerous, that they
resorted to the extravagant expedient of prohibiting by law the
testamentary nomination of women as heirs (585), and even sought by a
highly arbitrary practice to deprive women for the most part of the
collateral inheritances which fell to them without testament. in like
manner the exercise of family jurisdiction over women, which was
connected with that marital and tutorial power, became practically
more and more antiquated. Even in public matters women already
began to have a will of their own and occasionally, as Cato thought,
"to rule the rulers of the world;" their influence was to be traced
in the burgess-assembly, and already statues were erected in the
provinces to Roman ladies.
Luxury
Luxury prevailed more and more in dress, ornaments, and furniture, in
buildings and at table. Especially after the expedition to Asia Minor
in 564 Asiatico-Hellenic luxury, such as prevailed at Ephesus and
Alexandria, transferred its empty refinement and its dealing in
trifles, destructive alike of money, time, and pleasure, to Rome.
Here too women took the lead: in spite of the zealous invective of
Cato they managed to procure the abolition, after the peace with
Cartilage (559), of the decree of the people passed soon after the
battle of Cannae (539), which forbade them to use gold ornaments,
variegated dresses, or chariots; no course was left to their zealous
antagonist but to impose a high tax on those articles (570). A
multitude of new and for the most part frivolous articles--silver
plate elegantly figured, table-couches with bronze mounting, Attalic
dresses as they were called, and carpets of rich gold brocade--now
found their way to Rome. Above all, this new luxury appeared in the
appliances of the table. Hitherto without exception the Romans had
only partaken of hot dishes once a day; now hot dishes were not
unfrequently produced at the second meal (-prandium-), and for the
principal meal the two courses formerly in use no longer sufficed.
Hitherto the women of the household had themselves attended to
the baking of bread and cooking; and it was only on occasion of
entertainments that a professional cook was specially hired, who in
that case superintended alike the cooking and the baking. Now, on
the other hand, a scientific cookery began to prevail. in the
better houses a special cook was kept The division of labour became
necessary, and the trade of baking bread and cakes branched off from
that of cooking--the first bakers' shops in Rome appeared about 583.
Poems on the art of good eating, with long lists of the most palatable
fishes and other marine products, found their readers: and the theory
was reduced to practice. Foreign delicacies--anchovies from Pontus,
wine from Greece--began to be esteemed in Rome, and Cato's receipt for
giving to the ordinary wine of the country the flavour of Coan by
means of brine would hardly inflict any considerable injury on the
Roman vintners. The old decorous singing and reciting of the guests
and their boys were supplanted by Asiatic -sambucistriae-. Hitherto
the Romans had perhaps drunk pretty deeply at supper, but drinking-
banquets in the strict sense were unknown; now formal revels came into
vogue, on which occasions the wine was little or not at all diluted
and was drunk out of large cups, and the drink-pledging, in which each
was bound to follow his neighbour in regular succession, formed the
leading feature--"drinking after the Greek style" (-Graeco more
bibere-) or "playing the Greek" (-pergraecari-, -congraecare-) as the
Romans called it. in consequence of this debauchery dice-playing,
which had doubtless long been in use among the Romans, reached such
proportions that it was necessary for legislation to interfere. The
aversion to labour and the habit of idle lounging were visibly on the
increase.(4) Cato proposed to have the market paved with pointed
stones, in order to put a stop to the habit of idling; the Romans
laughed at the jest and went on to enjoy the pleasure of loitering
and gazing all around them.
Increase of Amusements
We have already noticed the alarming extension of the popular
amusements during this epoch. at the beginning of it, apart from some
unimportant foot and chariot races which should rather be ranked with
religious ceremonies, only a single general festival was held in the
month of September, lasting four days and having a definitely fixed
maximum of cost.(5) at the close of the epoch, this popular festival
had a duration of at least six days; and besides this there were
celebrated at the beginning of April the festival of the Mother of the
Gods or the so-called Megalensia, towards the end of April that of
Ceres and that of Flora, in June that of Apollo, in November the
Plebeian games--all of them probably occupying already more days than
one. To these fell to be added the numerous cases where the games
were celebrated afresh--in which pious scruples presumably often
served as a mere pretext--and the incessant extraordinary festivals.
Among these the already-mentioned banquets furnished from the
dedicated tenths(6) the feasts of the gods, the triumphal and funeral
festivities, were conspicuous; and above all the festal games which
were celebrated--for the first time in 505--at the close of one of
those longer periods which were marked off by the Etrusco-Roman
religion, the -saecula-, as they were called. at the same time
domestic festivals were multiplied. During the second Punic war there
were introduced, among people of quality, the already-mentioned
banquetings on the anniversary of the entrance of the Mother of the
Gods (after 550), and, among the lower orders, the similar Saturnalia
(after 537), both under the influence of the powers henceforth closely
allied--the foreign priest and the foreign cook. A very near approach
was made to that ideal condition in which every idler should know
where he might kill time every day; and this in a commonwealth where
formerly action had been with all and sundry the very object of
existence, and idle enjoyment had been proscribed by custom as well
as by law! The bad and demoralizing elements in these festal
observances, moreover, daily acquired greater ascendency. It is true
that still as formerly the chariot races formed the brilliant finale
of the national festivals; and a poet of this period describes very
vividly the straining expectancy with which the eyes of the multitude
were fastened on the consul, when he was on the point of giving the
signal for the chariots to start. But the former amusements no longer
sufficed; there was a craving for new and more varied spectacles.
Greek athletes now made their appearance (for the first time in 568)
alongside of the native wrestlers and boxers. of the dramatic
exhibitions we shall speak hereafter: the transplanting of Greek
comedy and tragedy to Rome was a gain perhaps of doubtful value, but
it formed at any rate the best of the acquisitions made at this time.
The Romans had probably long indulged in the sport of coursing hares
and hunting foxes in presence of the public; now these innocent hunts
were converted into formal baitings of wild animals, and the wild
beasts of Africa--lions and panthers--were (first so far as can be
proved in 568) transported at great cost to Rome, in order that by
killing or being killed they might serve to glut the eyes of the
gazers of the capital. The still more revolting gladiatorial games,
which prevailed in Campania and Etruria, now gained admission to Rome;
human blood was first shed for sport in the Roman forum in 490. Of
course these demoralizing amusements encountered severe censure: the
consul of 486, Publius Sempronius Sophus, sent a divorce to his wife,
because she had attended funeral games; the government carried a
decree of the people prohibiting the bringing over of wild beasts to
Rome, and strictly insisted that no gladiators should appear at the
public festivals. But here too it wanted either the requisite power
or the requisite energy: it succeeded, apparently, in checking the
practice of baiting animals, but the appearance of sets of gladiators
at private festivals, particularly at funeral celebrations, was not
suppressed. Still less could the public be prevented from preferring
the comedian to the tragedian, the rope-dancer to the comedian, the
gladiator to the rope-dancer; or the stage be prevented from revelling
by choice amidst the pollution of Hellenic life. Whatever elements of
culture were contained in the scenic and artistic entertainments were
from the first thrown aside; it was by no means the object of the
givers of the Roman festivals to elevate--though it should be but
temporarily--the whole body of spectators through the power of poetry
to the level of feeling of the best, as the Greek stage did in the
period of its prime, or to prepare an artistic pleasure for a select
circle, as our theatres endeavour to do. The character of the
managers and spectators in Rome is illustrated by a scene at the
triumphal games in 587, where the first Greek flute-players, on their
melodies failing to please, were instructed by the director to box
with one another instead of playing, upon which the delight would
know no bounds.
Nor was the evil confined to the corruption of Roman manners by
Hellenic contagion; conversely the scholars began to demoralize their
instructors. Gladiatorial games, which were unknown in Greece, were
first introduced by king Antiochus Epiphanes (579-590), a professed
imitator of the Romans, at the Syrian court, and, although they
excited at first greater horror than pleasure in the Greek public,
which was more humane and had more sense of art than the Romans, yet
they held their ground likewise there, and gradually came more and
more into vogue.
As a matter of course, this revolution in life and manners brought an
economic revolution in its train. Residence in the capital became
more and more coveted as well as more costly. Rents rose to an
unexampled height. Extravagant prices were paid for the new
articles of luxury; a barrel of anchovies from the Black Sea cost
1600 sesterces (16 pounds)--more than the price of a rural slave; a
beautiful boy cost 24,000 sesterces (240 pounds)--more than many a
farmer's homestead. Money therefore, and nothing but money, became
the watchword with high and low. in Greece it had long been the case
that nobody did anything for nothing, as the Greeks themselves with
discreditable candour allowed: after the second Macedonian war the
Romans began in this respect also to imitate the Greeks.
Respectability had to provide itself with legal buttresses; pleaders,
for instance, had to be prohibited by decree of the people from taking
money for their services; the jurisconsults alone formed a noble
exception, and needed no decree of the people to compel their
adherence to the honourable custom of giving good advice gratuitously.
Men did not, if possible, steal outright; but all shifts seemed
allowable in order to attain rapidly to riches--plundering and
begging, cheating on the part of contractors and swindling on the part
of speculators, usurious trading in money and in grain, even the
turning of purely moral relations such as friendship and marriage to
economic account. Marriage especially became on both sides an object
of mercantile speculation; marriages for money were common, and it
appeared necessary to refuse legal validity to the' presents which the
spouses made to each other. That, under such a state of things, plans
for setting fire on all sides to the capital came to the knowledge of
the authorities, need excite no surprise. When man no longer finds
enjoyment in work, and works merely in order to attain as quickly as
possible to enjoyment, it is a mere accident that he does not become a
criminal. Destiny had lavished all the glories of power and riches
with liberal hand on the Romans; but, in truth, the Pandora's box was
a gift of doubtful value.
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