The History of Rome, Book III

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";[174 - II. VIII. Religion] 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.– [175 - [In the first edition of this translation I gave these lines in English on the basis of Dr. Mommsen's German version, and added in a note that I had not been able to find the original. Several scholars whom I consulted were not more successful; and Dr. Mommsen was at the time absent from Berlin. Shortly after the first edition appeared, I received a note from Sir George Cornewall Lewis informing me that I should find them taken from Florus (or Floridus) in Wernsdorf, Poetae Lat. Min. vol. iii. p. 487. They were accordingly given in the revised edition of 1868 from the Latin text Baehrens (Poet. Lat. Min. vol. iv. p. 347) follows Lucian Muller in reading -offucia-. —TR.]]

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.[176 - A sort of -parabasis- in the -Curculio- of Plautus describes what went on in the market-place of the capital, with little humour perhaps, but with life-like distinctness.-Conmonstrabo, quo in quemque hominem facile inveniatis loco,Ne nimio opere sumat operam, si quis conventum velitVel vitiosum vel sine vitio, vel probum vel inprobum.Qui perjurum convenire volt hominem, ito in comitium;Qui mendacem et gloriosum, apud Cloacinae sacrum.[Ditis damnosos maritos sub basilica quaerito.Ibidem erunt scorta exoleta quique stipulari solent.]Symbolarum conlatores apud forum piscarium.In foro infumo boni homines atque dites ambulant;In medio propter canalem ibi ostentatores meri.Confidentes garrulique et malevoli supra lacum,Qui alteri de nihilo audacter dicunt contumeliamEt qui ipsi sat habent quod in se possit vere dicier.Sub veteribus ibi sunt, qui dant quique accipiunt faenore.Pone aedem Castoris ibi sunt, subito quibus credas male.In Tusco vico ibi sunt homines, qui ipsi sese venditant.In Velabro vel pistorem vel lanium vel haruspicemVel qui ipsi vorsant, vel qui aliis, ut vorsentur, praebeant.Ditis damnosos maritos apud Leucadiam Oppiam.-The verses in brackets are a subsequent addition, inserted after the building of the first Roman bazaar (570). The business of the baker (-pistor-, literally miller) embraced at this time the sale of delicacies and the providing accommodation for revellers (Festus, Ep. v. alicariae, p. 7, Mull.; Plautus, Capt. 160; Poen. i. a, 54; Trin. 407). The same was the case with the butchers. Leucadia Oppia may have kept a house of bad fame.] 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.[177 - II. IX. The Roman National Festival] 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[178 - III. XIII. Religious Economy] 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.

Chapter XIV

Literature and Art

The influences which stimulated the growth of Roman literature were of a character altogether peculiar and hardly paralleled in any other nation. To estimate them correctly, it is necessary in the first place that we should glance at the instruction of the people and its recreations during this period.

Knowledge of Languages

Language lies at the root of all mental culture; and this was especially the case in Rome. In a community where so much importance was attached to speeches and documents, and where the burgess, at an age which is still according to modern ideas regarded as boyhood, was already entrusted with the uncontrolled management of his property and might perhaps find it necessary to make formal speeches to the assembled community, not only was great value set all along on the fluent and polished use of the mother-tongue, but efforts were early made to acquire a command of it in the years of boyhood. The Greek language also was already generally diffused in Italy in the time of Hannibal. In the higher circles a knowledge of that language, which was the general medium of intercourse for ancient civilization, had long been a far from uncommon accomplishment; and now, when the change of Rome's position in the world had so enormously increased the intercourse with foreigners and the foreign traffic, such a knowledge was, if not necessary, yet presumably of very material importance to the merchant as well as the statesman. By means of the Italian slaves and freedmen, a very large portion of whom were Greek or half-Greek by birth the Greek language and Greek knowledge to a certain extent reached even the lower ranks of the population, especially in the capital. The comedies of this period may convince us that even the humbler classes of the capital were familiar with a sort of Latin, which could no more be properly understood without a knowledge of Greek than the English of Sterne or the German of Wieland without a knowledge of French.[179 - A distinct set of Greek expressions, such as -stratioticus-, -machaera-, -nauclerus-, -trapezita-, -danista-, -drapeta-, – oenopolium-, -bolus-, -malacus-, -morus-, -graphicus-, -logus-, – apologus-, -techna-, -schema-, forms quite a special feature in the language of Plautus. Translations are seldom attached, and that only in the case of words not embraced in the circle of ideas to which those which we have cited belong; for instance, in the -Truculentus- —in a verse, however, that is perhaps a later addition (i. 1, 60) —we find the explanation: —phronesis— -est sapientia-. Fragments of Greek also are common, as in the -Casina-, (iii. 6, 9):–Pragmata moi parecheis— – -Dabo- —mega kakon—, -ut opinor-.Greek puns likewise occur, as in the -Bacchides- (240):-opus est chryso Chrysalo-.Ennius in the same way takes for granted that the etymological meaning of Alexandros and Andromache is known to the spectators (Varro, de L. L. vii. 82). Most characteristic of all are the half-Greek formations, such as -ferritribax-, -plagipatida-, -pugilice-, or in the -Miles Gloriosus- (213):-Fuge! euscheme hercle astitit sic dulice et comoedice!-] Men of senatorial families, however, not only addressed a Greek audience in Greek, but even published their speeches—Tiberius Gracchus (consul in 577 and 591) so published a speech which he had given at Rhodes—and in the time of Hannibal wrote their chronicles in Greek, as we shall have occasion to mention more particularly in the sequel. Individuals went still farther. The Greeks honoured Flamininus by complimentary demonstrations in the Roman language,[180 - III. VIII. Greece Free] and he returned the compliment; the "great general of the Aeneiades" dedicated his votive gifts to the Greek gods after the Greek fashion in Greek distichs.[181 - One of these epigrams composed in the name of Flamininus runs thus:—Zenos io kraipnaisi gegathotes ipposunaisiKouroi, io Spartas Tundaridai basileis,Aineadas Titos ummin upertatos opase doronEllenon teuxas paisin eleutherian.—] Cato reproached another senator with the fact, that he had the effrontery to deliver Greek recitations with the due modulation at Greek revels.

Under the influence of such circumstances Roman instruction developed itself. It is a mistaken opinion, that antiquity was materially inferior to our own times in the general diffusion of elementary attainments. Even among the lower classes and slaves there was much reading, writing, and counting: in the case of a slave steward, for instance, Cato, following the example of Mago, takes for granted the ability to read and write. Elementary instruction, as well as instruction in Greek, must have been long before this period imparted to a very considerable extent in Rome. But the epoch now before us initiated an education, the aim of which was to communicate not merely an outward expertness, but a real mental culture. Hitherto in Rome a knowledge of Greek had conferred on its possessor as little superiority in civil or social life, as a knowledge of French perhaps confers at the present day in a hamlet of German Switzerland; and the earliest writers of Greek chronicles may have held a position among the other senators similar to that of the farmer in the fens of Holstein who has been a student and in the evening, when he comes home from the plough, takes down his Virgil from the shelf. A man who assumed airs of greater importance by reason of his Greek, was reckoned a bad patriot and a fool; and certainly even in Cato's time one who spoke Greek ill or not at all might still be a man of rank and become senator and consul. But a change was already taking place. The internal decomposition of Italian nationality had already, particularly in the aristocracy, advanced so far as to render the substitution of a general humane culture for that nationality inevitable: and the craving after a more advanced civilization was already powerfully stirring the minds of men. Instruction in the Greek language as it were spontaneously met this craving. The classical literature of Greece, the Iliad and still more the Odyssey, had all along formed the basis of that instruction; the overflowing treasures of Hellenic art and science were already by this means spread before the eyes of the Italians. Without any outward revolution, strictly speaking, in the character of the instruction the natural result was, that the empirical study of the language became converted into a higher study of the literature; that the general culture connected with such literary studies was communicated in increased measure to the scholars; and that these availed themselves of the knowledge thus acquired to dive into that Greek literature which most powerfully influenced the spirit of the age —the tragedies of Euripides and the comedies of Menander.

In a similar way greater importance came to be attached to instruction in Latin. The higher society of Rome began to feel the need, if not of exchanging their mother-tongue for Greek, at least of refining it and adapting it to the changed state of culture; and for this purpose too they found themselves in every respect dependent on the Greeks. The economic arrangements of the Romans placed the work of elementary instruction in the mother-tongue—like every other work held in little estimation and performed for hire—chiefly in the hands of slaves, freedmen, or foreigners, or in other words chiefly in the hands of Greeks or half-Greeks;[182 - Such, e. g, was Chilo, the slave of Cato the Elder, who earned money en bis master's behalf as a teacher of children (Plutarch, Cato Mai. 20).] which was attended with the less difficulty, because the Latin alphabet was almost identical with the Greek and the two languages possessed a close and striking affinity. But this was the least part of the matter; the importance of the study of Greek in a formal point of view exercised a far deeper influence over the study of Latin. Any one who knows how singularly difficult it is to find suitable matter and suitable forms for the higher intellectual culture of youth, and how much more difficult it is to set aside the matter and forms once found, will understand how it was that the Romans knew no mode of supplying the desideratum of a more advanced Latin instruction except that of simply transferring the solution of this problem, which instruction in the Greek language and literature furnished, to instruction in Latin. In the present day a process entirely analogous goes on under our own eyes in the transference of the methods of instruction from the dead to the living languages.

But unfortunately the chief requisite for such a transference was wanting. The Romans could, no doubt, learn to read and write Latin by means of the Twelve Tables; but a Latin culture presupposed a literature, and no such literature existed in Rome.

The Stage under Greek Influence

To this defect was added a second. We have already described the multiplication of the amusements of the Roman people. The stage had long played an important part in these recreations; the chariot-races formed strictly the principal amusement in all of them, but these races uniformly took place only on one, viz. the concluding, day, while the earlier days were substantially devoted to stage- entertainments. But for long these stage-representations consisted chiefly of dances and jugglers' feats; the improvised chants, which were produced on these occasions, had neither dialogue nor plot.[183 - II. IX. Ballad-Singers] It was only now that the Romans looked around them for a real drama. The Roman popular festivals were throughout under the influence of the Greeks, whose talent for amusing and for killing time naturally rendered them purveyors of pleasure for the Romans. Now no national amusement was a greater favourite in Greece, and none was more varied, than the theatre; it could not but speedily attract the attention of those who provided the Roman festivals and their staff of assistants. The earlier Roman stage-chant contained within it a dramatic germ capable perhaps of development; but to develop the drama from that germ required on the part of the poet and the public a genial power of giving and receiving, such as was not to be found among the Romans at all, and least of all at this period; and, had it been possible to find it, the impatience of those entrusted with the amusement of the multitude would hardly have allowed to the noble fruit peace and leisure to ripen. In this case too there was an outward want, which the nation was unable to satisfy; the Romans desired a theatre, but the pieces were wanting.

Rise of a Roman Literature

On these elements Roman literature was based; and its defective character was from the first and necessarily the result of such an origin. All real art has its root in individual freedom and a cheerful enjoyment of life, and the germs of such an art were not wanting in Italy; but, when Roman training substituted for freedom and joyousness the sense of belonging to the community and the consciousness of duty, art was stifled and, instead of growing, could not but pine away. The culminating point of Roman development was the period which had no literature. It was not till Roman nationality began to give way and Hellenico-cosmopolite tendencies began to prevail, that literature made its appearance at Rome in their train. Accordingly from the beginning, and by stringent internal necessity, it took its stand on Greek ground and in broad antagonism to the distinctively Roman national spirit. Roman poetry above all had its immediate origin not from the inward impulse of the poets, but from the outward demands of the school, which needed Latin manuals, and of the stage, which needed Latin dramas. Now both institutions—the school and the stage—were thoroughly anti-Roman and revolutionary. The gaping and staring idleness of the theatre was an abomination to the sober earnestness and the spirit of activity which animated the Roman of the olden type; and—inasmuch as it was the deepest and noblest conception lying at the root of the Roman commonwealth, that within the circle of Roman burgesses there should be neither master nor slave, neither millionnaire nor beggar, but that above all a like faith and a like culture should characterize all Romans—the school and the necessarily exclusive school-culture were far more dangerous still, and were in fact utterly destructive of the sense of equality. The school and the theatre became the most effective levers in the hands of the new spirit of the age, and all the more so that they used the Latin tongue. Men might perhaps speak and write Greek and yet not cease to be Romans; but in this case they accustomed themselves to speak in the Roman language, while the whole inward being and life were Greek. It is not one of the most pleasing, but it is one of the most remarkable and in a historical point of view most instructive, facts in this brilliant era of Roman conservatism, that during its course Hellenism struck root in the whole field of intellect not immediately political, and that the -maitre de plaisir- of the great public and the schoolmaster in close alliance created a Roman literature.