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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/76087-0.txt b/76087-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1cfce23 --- /dev/null +++ b/76087-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,16837 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76087 *** + + + + [Illustration: INTERIOR OF GREAT PUBLIC BATHS IN IMPERIAL + ROME. + + _Restoration according to Von Falke._] + + + + + A DAY IN OLD ROME + + A PICTURE OF ROMAN LIFE + + BY + + WILLIAM STEARNS DAVIS + + PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE + UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA + + [Illustration] + + ALLYN AND BACON + BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO + ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO DALLAS + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1925 + BY ALLYN AND BACON + + PAP + + Norwood Press + J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. + Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. + + + + + PREFACE + + +This book tries to describe what an intelligent person would have +witnessed in Ancient Rome if by some legerdemain he had been translated +to the Second Christian Century, and conducted about the imperial city +under competent guidance. Rare and untypical happenings have been +omitted, and sometimes to avoid long explanations _probable_ +matters have been stated as if they were ascertained facts: but these +instances it is hoped are so few that no reader can be led into serious +error. + +The year 134 after Christ has been chosen as the hypothetical time of +this visit, not from any special virtue in that date, but because Rome +was then architecturally nearly completed, the Empire seemed in its +most prosperous state, although many of the old usages and traditions +of the Republic still survived, and the evil days of decadence were +as yet hardly visible in the background. The time of the absence of +Hadrian from his capital was selected particularly, in order that +interest could be concentrated upon the life and doings of the great +city itself, and upon its vast populace of slaves, plebeians, and +nobles, not upon the splendid despot and his court, matters too often +the center for attention by students of the Roman past. + +To acknowledge all the modern books upon which the writer has drawn +heavily would be to present a list of almost all the important +handbooks or discussions of Roman life and antiquities. It is proper +to say, however, that such secondary sources have been mainly useful +so far as they reënforced a fairly exhaustive study of the Latin +writers themselves, especially of Horace, Seneca, Petronius, Juvenal, +Martial, and, last but nowise least, of Pliny the Younger. Inevitably +this volume follows the lines of its companion “A Day in Old Athens,” +published several years ago, a book which has enjoyed such public favor +as to prove the usefulness of this method of presentation; but life +in the Roman Imperial Age has seemed so much more complex than that +in the Athens of Demosthenes, and our fund of information is so much +greater, that the present volume is perforce considerably longer than +its companion. The “day” devoted to Rome will probably seem therefore a +somewhat lengthy one. + +To my colleague and friend Dr. Richard C. Cram, Professor of Latin in +the University of Minnesota, I am deeply grateful for a careful reading +of the manuscript and for many helpful and incisive suggestions; and +for a careful checking over of every feature of the work I must once +again gladly acknowledge the gracious and untiring services of my wife. + +The illustrations, which, it is hoped, add considerably to the interest +of the book, have been collected from many sources. Many of the highly +informational “restorations” included are from the monumental work of +Jakob von Falke, _Hellas und Rom_, the English version whereof has +long ceased to be available to American readers. + + W. S. D. + + THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA + MINNEAPOLIS + + + + + CONTENTS + + + PAGE + + LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xxi + + + Chapter I. The General Aspect of the City + + SECTION + + 1. The Prosperity of Rome in the Reign of Hadrian + (A.D. 117–138) 1 + + 2. Increasing Glory of the Imperial City 2 + + 3. Population and Crowded Condition of Rome 3 + + 4. The Country around Rome 5 + + 5. The Tiber and Its Valley 6 + + 6. A View over Rome from the Campus Martius 7 + + 7. The Seven Hills of Rome 9 + + 8. Building Materials Used in Rome 10 + + 9. The Great Use of Concrete 11 + + 10. Greek Architectural Forms Plus the Arch and Vault 12 + + + Chapter II. Streets and Street Life + + 11. The Regions of Rome: Fashionable and Plebeian Quarters 15 + + 12. A Typical Short Street, “Mercury Street” 16 + + 13. The House and Shop Fronts 18 + + 14. Street Shrines and Fountains 20 + + 15. Typical Street Crowds 21 + + 16. Frequent Use of Greek in Rome 22 + + 17. Clamor and Thronging in the Streets 23 + + 18. The Processions Attending Great Nobles 24 + + 19. A Great Lady Traveling 25 + + 20. Public Salutations: the Kissing Habit 26 + + 21. The Swarms of Idlers and Parasites 27 + + 22. Public Placards and Notices 28 + + 23. Wall Scribblings 30 + + 24. The Streets Dark and Dangerous at Night 32 + + 25. Discomforts of Life in Rome 33 + + + Chapter III. The Homes of the Lowly and of the + Mighty + + 26. The Great _Insulæ_--Tenement Blocks 34 + + 27. A Typical Insula 35 + + 28. The Flats in an Insula 36 + + 29. The Cheap Attic Tenements and Their Poor Occupants 37 + + 30. A Senatorial “Mansion” (_Domus_) 39 + + 31. The Plan of a Large Residence 40 + + 32. Entrance to the Residence 42 + + 33. The Atrium and the View across It 42 + + 34. The Rooms in the Rear and the _Peristylium_ 44 + + 35. The Dining Room (_Triclinium_) and the Chapel 45 + + 36. The Garden and the Slaves’ Quarters 47 + + 37. The Floors and Windows 49 + + 38. Frescos, Beautiful and Innumerable 50 + + 39. The Profusion of Statues and Art Objects 51 + + 40. Family Portrait Busts 52 + + 41. Death Masks (_Imagines_) 54 + + 42. Couches, Their General Use 54 + + 43. Elegant Chairs and Costly Tables 55 + + 44. Chests, Cabinets, Water Clocks, and Curios 57 + + 45. Spurious Antiques 58 + + 46. Pet Animals 58 + + + Chapter IV. Roman Women and Roman Marriages + + 47. Honorable Status of Roman Women 60 + + 48. Men Reluctant to Marry 61 + + 49. Rights and Privileges of Married Women 61 + + 50. Selection of Husbands for Young Girls 63 + + 51. A Marriage Treaty among Noble-Folk 64 + + 52. A Betrothal in Wealthy Circles 65 + + 53. Adjusting the Dowry 66 + + 54. Dressing the Bride 66 + + 55. The Marriage Ceremonies 67 + + 56. The Wedding Procession 69 + + 57. At the Bridegroom’s House 70 + + 58. Honors and Liberties of a Matron 71 + + 59. Unhappy Marriages and Frivolous Women 72 + + 60. Divorces, Easy and Frequent 74 + + 61. Celibacy Common: Old Families Dying Out 75 + + 62. Nobler Types of Women 75 + + 63. Famous and Devoted Wives 76 + + 64. The Story of Turia 78 + + + Chapter V. Costume and Personal Adornment + + 65. The Type of Roman Garments 80 + + 66. The Toga, the National Latin Garment 81 + + 67. Varieties of Togas 83 + + 68. Draping the Toga 83 + + 69. The Tunica 84 + + 70. Capes, Cloaks, and Gala Garments 85 + + 71. Garments of Women: the _Stola_ and the _Palla_ 86 + + 72. Materials for Garments. Wool and Silk 88 + + 73. Styles of Arranging Garments. Fullers and Cleaners 89 + + 74. Barbers’ Shops. The Revived Wearing of Beards 90 + + 75. Fashions in Women’s Hairdressing. Hair Ornaments 93 + + 76. Elaborate Toilets 94 + + 77. Sandals and Shoes 95 + + 78. The Mania for Jewels and Rings 96 + + 79. Pearls in Enormous Favor 97 + + 80. Perfumes: Their Constant Use 98 + + + Chapter VI. Food and Drink. How the Day is + Spent. The Dinner + + 81. Romans Fond of the Table. Gourmandizing. The Famous + Apicius 100 + + 82. Vitellius, the Imperial Glutton 102 + + 83. Simple Diet of the Early Romans 102 + + 84. Bread and Vegetables 103 + + 85. Fruits, Olives, Grapes, and Spices 104 + + 86. Meat and Poultry 105 + + 87. Fish in Great Demand 106 + + 88. Olive Oil and Wine: Their Universal Use 107 + + 89. Vintages and Varieties of Wine 108 + + 90. Kitchens and the Niceties of Cookery 109 + + 91. A Roman Gentleman’s Morning: Breakfast (_jentaculum_) + and the Visit to the Forum 110 + + 92. The Afternoon and Dinner-Time. Importance of the + Dinner (_cena_) 111 + + 93. Dinner Hunters and Parasites (“Shadows”) 112 + + 94. The Standard Dinner Party--Nine Guests 113 + + 95. Preparing the Dinner and Mustering the Guests 114 + + 96. Arrangement of the Couches: Placing the Guests 115 + + 97. Serving the Dinner 116 + + 98. The Drinking Bout (_Comissatio_) after the Dinner 118 + + 99. Distribution of Garlands and Perfumes. Social + Conversation 119 + + 100. Elaborate and Vulgar Banquets. Simple Home + Dinners 120 + + + Chapter VII. The Social Orders: The Slaves + + 101. Enormous Alien Population in Rome. The “Græcules” 122 + + 102. Strict Divisions of Society. The Régime of _Status_ 123 + + 103. Vast Number of Slaves. Universality of Slavery 124 + + 104. Power of Master over Slaves 125 + + 105. The City Slaves and the Country Slaves 125 + + 106. Purchasing a Slave Boy 126 + + 107. Traffic in the Slave Pens 127 + + 108. Sale of Slaves 128 + + 109. Size of Slave Households (_Familiæ_). Slave Workmen 129 + + 110. Division of Duties and Organization of Slave Households 131 + + 111. Discipline in a Well-Ordered Mansion. Long Hours of + Idleness 132 + + 112. Inevitable Degradation Caused by Slavery. Evil Effect + upon Masters 133 + + 113. Punishment of Slaves 135 + + 114. Branding of Slaves. _Ergastula_--Slave Prisons 136 + + 115. Death Penalties for Slaves. Pursuit of Runaways 136 + + + Chapter VIII. The Social Orders: Freedmen, Provincials, + Plebeians, and Nobles + + 116. Manumission of Slaves Very Common 139 + + 117. The Ceremony of Manumission 140 + + 118. The Status of Freedmen. Their Great Success in Business 140 + + 119. Humble Types of Freedmen 141 + + 120. Wealth and Power of Successful Freedmen 142 + + 121. Importance of Freedmen in a Roman Family 143 + + 122. The Status of Provincials. The Case of Jesus 143 + + 123. Great Alien Colonies in Rome 145 + + 124. The Roman Plebeians, the “Mob” (_Vulgus_) 145 + + 125. The Desirability of Roman Citizenship. The Case + of St. Paul 146 + + 126. Clientage: Its Oldest Form 147 + + 127. The New Parasitical Clientage: the Morning Salutation 148 + + 128. The Dole to Clients (the _Sportula_) 150 + + 129. Attendance by Clients in Public. Insults They Must + Undergo 151 + + 130. The Decurions: the Notables of the Chartered Cities 152 + + 131. The Equites: the Nobles of the Second Class 153 + + 132. Qualifications and Honors of the Equites 154 + + 133. Review of the Equites. Pretenders to the Rank 156 + + 134. The Senatorial Order. The First-Class Nobility 156 + + 135. Social Glories of Senators 157 + + 136. The Senatorial Aristocracy Greater than the Senate 158 + + 137. Insignia, Qualifications, and Titles of Senators 158 + + + Chapter IX. Physicians and Funerals + + 138. Scanty Qualifications and Training of Doctors 160 + + 139. Superior Class of Physicians 161 + + 140. A Fashionable Doctor 161 + + 141. Medical Books and Famous Remedies 163 + + 142. Absurd Medicines. Theriac 164 + + 143. Fear of Poisoning. Popularity of Antidotes 165 + + 144. Medical Students, “Disciples,” Beauty Specialists 166 + + 145. Cheap Doctors: No Hospitals 167 + + 146. Suicide as Escape from Hopeless Disease 168 + + 147. Execution of Wills. Numerous Legacies Customary 169 + + 148. Regular Incomes from Legacies. Professional Legacy + Hunters 171 + + 149. Public Bequests 172 + + 150. Great Funerals Very Fashionable. Desire to Be + Remembered after Death 172 + + 151. Preliminaries to a Funeral 173 + + 152. The Funeral Procession. The Display of Masked + “Ancestors” 174 + + 153. The Exhibits in the Procession. The Retinue around + the Bier 175 + + 154. The Funeral Oration in the Forum 176 + + 155. Family Tombs. The _Columbarium_ and the Garden 177 + + 156. The Funeral Pyre and Its Ceremonies 180 + + 157. Funeral Monuments. Memorial Feasts to the Dead 182 + + 158. Funerals of the Poor. “Funeral Societies” 182 + + + Chapter X. Children and Schooling + + 159. Theoretical Rights of Father over Children. The _Patria + Potestas_ 184 + + 160. Ceremonies after Birth of a Child. The _Bulla_ 185 + + 161. The Roman Name: Its Intricacy 186 + + 162. Irregular and Lengthy Names under the Empire. Names + of Slaves 187 + + 163. Names of Women. Confusion of Roman Names 188 + + 164. Care of Parents in Educating Children 189 + + 165. Toys and Pets 190 + + 166. The Learning of Greek by Roman Children 191 + + 167. Selection of a School 192 + + 168. Extent of Literacy in Rome. Education of Girls 193 + + 169. Schools for the Lower Classes 193 + + 170. Scourging, Clamors, and Other Abuses of Cheap Schools 195 + + 171. A Superior Type of School 196 + + 172. Methods of Teaching 197 + + 173. Training in Higher Arithmetic 199 + + 174. The Grammarians’ High Schools 199 + + 175. Oratory Very Fashionable 200 + + 176. Professional Rhetoricians 201 + + 177. Methods in Rhetoric Schools: Mock Trials 201 + + 178. Enormous Popularity of Rhetoric Studies 203 + + 179. Philosophical Studies: Delight in Moralizing 204 + + 180. Children’s Games. “Morra” and Dice 204 + + 181. Board Games of Skill: “Robbers” (_Latrunculi_) 205 + + 182. Out-Door Games. Ball Games, Trignon 206 + + + Chapter XI. Books and Libraries + + 183. Letters and Writing Tablets 207 + + 184. Personal Correspondence and Secretaries 208 + + 185. Books Very Common: Papyrus and the Papyrus Trade 209 + + 186. Size and Format of Books 210 + + 187. Mounting and Rolling of Books 211 + + 188. Copying Books: the Publishing Business. Horace’s + and Martial’s Publishers 212 + + 189. Passion for Literary “Fame” 214 + + 190. Zeal for Poetry: Multiplication of Verses 216 + + 191. Size of Libraries 217 + + 192. A Private Library 218 + + 193. The Great Public Libraries of Rome 219 + + + Chapter XII. Economic Life of Rome: I. Banking, + Shops, and Inns + + 194. Passion for Gain in Rome 220 + + 195. Life in Rome Expensive. Premiums upon Extravagance + and Pretence 221 + + 196. Rome a City of Investors and Buyers of Luxuries 222 + + 197. Multiplicity of Shops. The Great Shopping Districts 223 + + 198. Arrangement of Shops. Streets Blocked by Hucksters 224 + + 199. Barbers’ Shops and Auction Sales 225 + + 200. Superior Retail Stores 226 + + 201. Numerous Banks and Bankers 227 + + 202. A Great Banker and His Business 228 + + 203. Trust Business: Savings Banks 229 + + 204. Places of Safe Deposit: The Temple of Vesta 230 + + 205. Inns: Usually Mean and Sordid 231 + + 206. Reckonings and Guests at a Cheap Inn 233 + + 207. Noble Frequenters of Taverns 234 + + 208. Respectable Eating-Houses 235 + + 209. _Thermopolia_--“Hot Drink Establishments” 236 + + + Chapter XIII. Economic Life of Rome: II. The + Industrial Quarters. The Grain Trade. Ostia. + The Trade Guilds + + 210. Industrial Quarters by the Tiber 238 + + 211. Conditions of Industrial Labor 238 + + 212. Great Trade through Ostia and the Campanian Ports 239 + + 213. The Emporium and Its Wharves: The Tiber Barges 240 + + 214. The Marble and Grain Trades 241 + + 215. The Public Grain Doles 242 + + 216. Distribution of Free Bread: Extraordinary Bonuses + (_Congiaria_ and _Donativa_) 244 + + 217. The Trade in Sculptures and Portrait Statues 246 + + 218. The Tiber Trip to Ostia: The Merchant Shipping 247 + + 219. Imperial Naval Vessels 248 + + 220. The Harbor Town of Ostia 249 + + 221. The Roman Guilds (_Collegia_) 249 + + 222. Very Ancient Guilds. The Flute-Blowers 250 + + 223. Importance of the Guilds 251 + + 224. Multitude of Beggars 252 + + + Chapter XIV. The Fora, Their Life and Buildings. + The Daily Journal + + 225. The Fora, the Centers of Roman Life 254 + + 226. Incessant Crowds at the Forum. The Centers of Gossip 256 + + 227. Grandiose Architecture: Vast Quantities of Ornaments + and Statues 258 + + 228. Use of Color on Sculptures and Architecture 259 + + 229. Entering the Series of Fora: the Temple of Venus and + Rome 260 + + 230. The Arch of Titus: Continuation of the Sacred Way 262 + + 231. House and Temple of Vesta: the Regia: the Temple of the + Divine Julius 265 + + 232. The Old Forum (_Forum Romanum_) 265 + + 233. The Forum Area: the Posting of Public Notices 268 + + 234. Western End of Forum: Rostra: the Golden Milestone: + the Tullianum Prison 269 + + 235. The Basilica Æmilia: the Temple of Janus: the Senate + House (_Curia_) 271 + + 236. The Basilica Julia, the Greatest Court House in Rome; + the _Lacus Curtius_ 272 + + 237. The New Fora of the Emperors: the Temple of Peace 275 + + 238. The Fora of Julius, Augustus, and Nerva 276 + + 239. The Forum, Column, and Libraries of Trajan 278 + + 240. The Park System of the Campus Martius: the Pantheon 280 + + 241. The Daily Gazette (_Acta Diurna_). How Rome Gets Its + News 282 + + 242. Contents of the Acta Diurna 283 + + 243. Miscellaneous Entries and Gossip in the “Gazette” 284 + + + Chapter XV. The Palatine and the Palace of the + Cæsars. The Government Offices, and the Police + and City Government of Rome + + 244. History of the Palatine: Its Purchase by Augustus 286 + + 245. Extension of the Imperial Buildings: Central Position of + the Palatine 287 + + 246. Commanding View from the Palatine Hill 288 + + 247. Magnificence of the Palatine Structures 288 + + 248. The More Famous Buildings on the Palatine: Enormous + Display of Art Objects 290 + + 249. The Triclinium and Throne Room of Domitian 291 + + 250. Swarms of Civil Officials Always on the Palatine 293 + + 251. The Emperor Center of High Social Life 294 + + 252. Friends of Cæsar (_Amici Cæsaris_) 295 + + 253. The Imperial Audiences 296 + + 254. Social Ruin through Imperial Disfavor 296 + + 255. Enormous Value of Imperial Favor 298 + + 256. City Government of Rome: the “City Præfect” (_Præfectus + Urbi_) 299 + + 257. The Municipal Superintendents and Commissioners + (_Curatores_) 301 + + 258. Excellent Water Supply of Rome 301 + + 259. The Great Aqueducts 303 + + 260. The Police System Instituted by Augustus 304 + + 261. The Police-Firemen of the Watch (_Vigiles_). The + _Præfectus Vigilum_ 304 + + + Chapter XVI. The Prætorian Camp. The Imperial + War Machine + + 262. The Army the Real Master of the Roman Empire 307 + + 263. Army Held under Stiff Discipline and Concentrated + on Frontiers 308 + + 264. The Prætorian Guard of the Emperors 309 + + 265. The Prætorian Præfect and the Prætorian Camp 311 + + 266. Organization and Discipline of the Prætorians 312 + + 267. The City Cohorts (_Cohortes Urbanæ_) 313 + + 268. A Private in the Legions. The Legionary Organization 314 + + 269. Training of the Legionaries: the _Pilum_ and the + _Gladius_ 316 + + 270. Defensive Weapons 318 + + 271. Rewards and Punishments for Soldiers 319 + + 272. Pay and Rations in the Army: Soldiers’ Saving Banks 320 + + 273. The Training of Soldiers: Non-Military Labors 321 + + 274. Petty Officers in the Legions 322 + + 275. The Centurions: Their Importance and Order of Promotion 323 + + 276. The _Primipilus_: the Great Eagle of the Legion 325 + + 277. Locations and Names of Legions 326 + + 278. The Auxiliary Cohorts: the Second Grand Division of the + Army 327 + + 279. The Præfect of the Camps and the Legate of the Legion 328 + + 280. Care for Veterans: Retiring Bonuses and Land Grants 329 + + 281. Barrier Fortresses; System of Encampments; Flexible + Battle Tactics; Siege Warfare 330 + + 282. Limited Size of the Imperial Army: Its Great + Efficiency 331 + + + Chapter XVII. The Senate: A Session and a + Debate + + 283. Apparent Authority and Importance of the Senate 334 + + 284. Actual Weakness of the Senate 335 + + 285. Amount of Power Left to the Senate 336 + + 286. Organization and Procedure of the Senate 337 + + 287. The _Curia_ (Senate House) and Its Arrangement of + Benches 338 + + 288. The Gathering of the Senators 339 + + 289. Opening the Session: Taking the Auspices 340 + + 290. Presentation of Routine Business: Taking a Formal Vote 341 + + 291. Presenting an Impeachment at a Senate Trial 342 + + 292. The Water Clocks; Method of a Prosecutor; Applause + in the Senate 344 + + 293. Speech for the Defendant: Methods of a Professional + Advocate 345 + + 294. Concluding Speeches; Interrupting Shouts; Personal + Invectives 347 + + 295. Taking the Opinion of the Senate 348 + + 296. An Uproar in the Senate: An “Altercation” 350 + + 297. Taking a Vote of the Senate. A Sentence of Banishment 351 + + + Chapter XVIII. The Courts and the Orators. The + Great Baths. The Public Parks and Environs of + Rome + + 298. Roman Court Procedure Highly Scientific 353 + + 299. The Great Tribunals in the Basilicas 354 + + 300. Great Stress on Advocacy 355 + + 301. Cheap Pettifogging Lawyers 356 + + 302. Character Witnesses; Torture of Slave Witnesses 357 + + 303. Written Evidence; High Development of the Advocate’s + Art 357 + + 304. Popularity and Necessity of the Baths 358 + + 305. Luxurious Private Baths 359 + + 306. Government and Privately Owned Public Baths: Both + Very Popular 360 + + 307. The Great Baths of Trajan: Baths, Club-House, and Café 361 + + 308. Heterogeneous Crowds in the Great Baths 362 + + 309. Entering the Thermæ 363 + + 310. Interior of the Baths: the Cold Room (_Frigidarium_) 364 + + 311. The Great Swimming Pool and the _Tepidarium_ 365 + + 312. The Hot Baths (_Caldaria_): Their Sensuous Luxury 366 + + 313. Restaurants, Small Shops, and Sports in or around the + Baths 367 + + 314. The Great Porticoes along the Campus Martius. The + Park System towards the Tiber 368 + + 315. Public Buildings upon the Campus Martius 369 + + 316. The Tombs of Hadrian and Augustus 370 + + + Chapter XIX. The Public Games: the Theater, + the Circus, and the Amphitheater + + 317. Roman Festivals: Their Great Number 374 + + 318. Passion for Public Spectacles: Mania for Gambling 375 + + 319. Expenses of Public Spectacles to Great Officials 376 + + 320. Indescribable Popularity of the Games 377 + + 321. The Theater Less Popular than the Circus or Amphitheater 378 + + 322. The Mimes: Character Plays 380 + + 323. The Pantomimes: Their Real Art 381 + + 324. Extreme Popularity of the Circus 382 + + 325. Popular Charioteers (_Aurigæ_): the Great Racing + Factions 383 + + 326. The Circus Maximus 384 + + 327. The Race-Track: Procession before the Races 384 + + 328. Beginning a Race in the Circus 386 + + 329. Perils of the Races; Proclaiming the Victors 386 + + 330. Gladiatorial Contests Even More Popular than the + Circus 389 + + 331. Gladiator Fights at Funerals 390 + + 332. Gladiator “Schools” (_Ludi_): Inmates Usually Criminals 390 + + 333. Severe Training of Gladiators; Their Ephemeral Glory 392 + + 334. Normal Arrangements for an Arena Contest 393 + + 335. The Flavian Amphitheater (Later “Colosseum”) 394 + + 336. Exterior and Ticket Entrances to the Flavian + Amphitheater 396 + + 337. Interior Arrangements of the Flavian 396 + + 338. Procession of Gladiators 397 + + 339. Throwing a Criminal to the Beasts. The Animal Hunt 398 + + 340. Interval in the Contests: Scattering of Lottery Tickets 399 + + 341. Beginning the Regular Gladiatorial Combats 401 + + 342. Mounted Combats: the Signals for Ruthlessness and Mercy 403 + + 343. Combats between Netters (_Retiarii_) and Heavy-Armed + Warriors (“Thracians”) 404 + + 344. End of the Combats: Rewarding the Victors 405 + + + Chapter XX. The Roman Religion: the Priesthoods, + the Vestal Virgins + + 345. Religious Symbols Everywhere in Rome 407 + + 346. Epicureanism and Agnosticism among the Upper Classes 407 + + 347. Stoicism: Revival of Religion under the Empire 408 + + 348. Foreign Cults Intruded upon the “Religion of Numa” 410 + + 349. Superstitious Piety of the City Plebeians 411 + + 350. Roman Religion Originally Developed by Italian Farmers 411 + + 351. Native Italian Gods: Janus, Saturn, Flora. The Lares + and Penates 413 + + 352. Personified Virtues as Gods: Cold and Legalistic Character + of the Roman Religion 414 + + 353. Priestly Offices: Little Sacrosanct about Them 416 + + 354. The Pontifices 417 + + 355. The Augurs 418 + + 356. The Flamens 420 + + 357. The _Salii_ (“Holy Leapers”) 421 + + 358. The _Fetiales_ (“Sacred Heralds”): Ceremony of Declaring + War 422 + + 359. The Arval Brethren (_Fratres Arvales_) 423 + + 360. Rustic Ceremonies; Soothsaying, Astrologers, and + Witches 424 + + 361. A Private Sacrifice 425 + + 362. Ceremony at the Temple 426 + + 363. A Formal Prayer: the Actual Sacrifice 428 + + 364. The Vestal Virgins: Their Sanctity and Importance 429 + + 365. The Temple of Vesta and the House of the Vestals 431 + + 366. Appointment of Vestals 432 + + 367. Duties of the Vestals: the Maxima 433 + + 368. Punishments of Erring Vestals 434 + + 369. Remarkable Honors Granted the Vestals 435 + + + Chapter XXI. The Foreign Cults: Cybele, Isis, + Mithras. The Christians in Pagan Eyes + + 370. Saturnalia: the Exchange of Presents on New Year’s Day 437 + + 371. Multiplication of Oriental Cults 437 + + 372. The Cult of the Deified Emperors 439 + + 373. The “Divine Augustus” and His Successors 439 + + 374. The Cult of Cybele, the “Great Mother” 441 + + 375. Cult of Isis and Associated Egyptian Gods 442 + + 376. Ceremonies at an Isis Temple 443 + + 377. Cult of Serapis and of Other Oriental Gods 445 + + 378. The Cult of Mithras: Its Relative Nobility 445 + + 379. The _Taurobolium_ (“Bath in Bull’s Blood”) 447 + + 380. The Christians: Pagan Account of Their Origin 449 + + 381. The Persecution of Christians: Their “Insane Obstinacy” 450 + + 382. Current Charges against the Christians 451 + + + Chapter XXII. A Roman Villa. The Love of the + Country + + 383. Appreciation of Country Life by the Romans 453 + + 384. Praises of the Country Towns and Villas 453 + + 385. Comfortable Modes of Travel: Luxurious Litters + and Carriages 454 + + 386. Multiplication of Villas: Seashore Estates at Baiæ, etc. 456 + + 387. Villas in the Mountains; Small Farms near Rome 457 + + 388. Great Estates in the Hills: Pliny’s Tuscan Villa 458 + + 389. Charming Location of Pliny’s Villa 460 + + 390. Terraces of the Villa: the Porticoes: Summer-Houses + and Bedrooms 462 + + 391. The Baths: the Rear Apartments: the Riding Course 464 + + 392. The Fountains and Luxurious Pavilions in the Gardens 465 + + 393. Life of Sensuous Luxury at Such a Villa. Contrast in + Human Conditions under the Roman Régime 466 + + + Chapter XXIII. The Return of the Emperor + + 394. Character of Hadrian: Prosperity and Good Government + of His Reign 468 + + 395. Return of Hadrian to Italy 469 + + 396. Imperial Procession Entering Rome 470 + + 397. Hailing the Emperor 472 + + 398. The Donatives, Fêtes, and Games 472 + + 399. A Christian Gathering 473 + + + INDEX 475 + + + + + ILLUSTRATIONS + + + PAGE + + Interior of Great Public Baths in Imperial Rome _Frontispiece_ + + Map of Rome in the Days of Hadrian 6 + + Capitoline Hill and Temples as seen from Palatine 8 + + Typical Temple Front 12 + + Arch of Constantine 13 + + Street in Pompeii 16 + + Stepping Stones across a Side Street 17 + + Street Scene before a Cook-Shop 19 + + Shrine at the Crossways 20 + + Monument of a Wine Seller 28 + + Tenants Paying Rent to a Landlord’s Agent 38 + + Atrium of House in Pompeii 41 + + Plan of a Roman Mansion 43 + + Interior of a Roman Mansion 44 + + Scene in a Peristylium 45 + + Roman Type of House at Pompeii 46 + + Corner in a Garden in Rear of a Roman House 48 + + Portrait Bust--Pompey the Great 52 + + Typical Roman Portrait--Marc Antony 53 + + Roman Lamps 55 + + Altar with Design of a Curule Chair 56 + + A Roman Matron 62 + + Wedded Pair with _Camillus_ 76 + + Seated Noblewoman 77 + + Romans wearing the Toga 81 + + A Roman Matron: showing the _stola_ and _palla_ 87 + + Scene before a Barber’s Shop 91 + + Roman Female Heads 92 + + Sandals 95 + + Roman Jewelry and Ornaments 96 + + Roman Banquet Scene 101 + + Grist Mill turned by Horse 103 + + Nine Guests in a Triclinium 116 + + Roman Serving Forks 117 + + Drinking Cup 118 + + Slaves working in a Bakery 131 + + Clients gathering in the Rain, before their Patron’s Door 149 + + Invalid with Attendants 162 + + Scene along the Appian Way 178 + + Pyramid--Tomb of Gaius Cestius 179 + + View along the Appian Way showing Funeral Monuments 180 + + Street of the Tombs at Pompeii 181 + + Boy Studying 194 + + School Discipline 196 + + Grammarian instructing Two Upper Pupils 200 + + Wax Tablet with Stilus Attached 207 + + Writing Tablets and Stilus 208 + + Book Cupboard 209 + + Book Container 210 + + Double Inkstand 210 + + Pen and Scroll 211 + + Book Scroll 212 + + Old Forum, looking towards Northern Side: restoration 216 + + Tradesmen’s Scales and Balances 224 + + Monument of a Hostler 231 + + Gateway at Pompeii: present state 232 + + Cheap Grocery and Cook-Shop 235 + + River Boat Loaded with Hogsheads of Wine 241 + + Distributing Bread 243 + + Oven and Grist Mill in a Bakery 245 + + Environs of Rome 247 + + General View of Old Forum and Capitol 254 + + Old Forum: present state, looking towards the Capitol 255 + + The Heart of Rome; the Fora, the Palatine, etc. 261 + + Spoils from Jerusalem: Arch of Titus 263 + + View through the Arch of Titus 264 + + Old Forum: looking west. Restoration 266 + + Old Forum, looking towards Capitol. Restoration 267 + + Old Forum, present condition, looking east 270 + + Interior of a Basilica: restored 273 + + The Tarpeian Rock 275 + + Forum of Augustus and Temple of Mars the Avenger: restored 277 + + An Imperial Forum, near the Column of Trajan. Restoration 279 + + Interior of the Pantheon. Restoration 281 + + Arch of Titus 287 + + Palatine and Palace of the Cæsars. Restoration 289 + + Roman Urn 290 + + Cæsar Augustus 298 + + Ruined Aqueduct in the Roman Campagna 302 + + Prætorian Guardsmen 310 + + A Slinger 315 + + Roman Siege Works. Restoration 316 + + Storming a City with the _Testudo_ 317 + + Catapult 318 + + Cuirass 319 + + Javelin: _pilum_ 320 + + Sword 320 + + Helmet 321 + + Shield of the Legionary 322 + + Military Trumpet 323 + + Legionaries 324 + + Roman Officer 325 + + Light-Armed Soldier 327 + + Storming a Besieged City 331 + + Coop of Sacred Chickens 341 + + Cicero denouncing Catiline before the Senate 346 + + Plan of Roman Public Baths 363 + + Castle of St. Angelo: Tomb of Hadrian in its present state 371 + + Tomb of Hadrian. Restored 372 + + At the Theater Entrance 376 + + Theater at Pompeii 379 + + Circus Maximus. Restoration 385 + + Race in the Circus Maximus 388 + + Flavian Amphitheater (Colosseum): present state 395 + + Boxers 400 + + Gladiators saluting the Editor 402 + + Defeated Gladiator Appealing for Mercy 403 + + Maison Carrée, Nîmes 408 + + Farmer’s Calendar 413 + + Circular Temple, probably of Goddess Matuta, Rome 415 + + Roman Altar 425 + + A Military Sacrifice 427 + + Roman Altar 428 + + Vestal Virgin 430 + + Archi-Gallus, Priest of Cybele 441 + + Shrine of Cybele 442 + + Mithras the Bull Slayer 446 + + Mithraic Emblems 447 + + Traveling Carriage (_Reda_) 454 + + Roman Bridge 455 + + Roman Spades 458 + + Ruins of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli (_Tibur_) 459 + + Ruins of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli (_Tibur_) 460 + + Villa of Pliny the Younger; restored 461 + + Roman Garden Scene 463 + + Marble Urn or Garden Ornament 464 + + Hadrian 469 + + View in the Christian Catacombs 473 + + + + + A DAY IN OLD ROME + + + + + CHAPTER I + + THE GENERAL ASPECT OF THE CITY + + +=1. The Prosperity of Rome in the Reign of Hadrian= (117–138 A.D.).--In +the year 134 A.D. the great Emperor Hadrian was turning his steps back +to Rome after three long journeys of inspection over his enormous +dominions. Never before had that Empire seemed so prosperous. No +serious war was upon the horizon. The Parthian king and the Germanic +chiefs were only too happy to keep beyond the Euphrates or the Rhine +and the Danube, highly respectful before the disciplined power of the +guardian legions. + +In the provinces there was generally loyalty and contentment, save +only in unhappy Judæa where the Roman generals were stamping out +the last embers of a desperate rebellion, undertaken by those Jews +allowed to remain in Palestine after Titus’s capture of Jerusalem +(70 A.D.). The imperial government created by Augustus and +strengthened by later emperors appeared an unqualified success, while +the tyrannies of Nero and Domitian were becoming things merely of +frightened memory. + +All over this vast Empire with a population and area nearly equal to +that of the United States there reigned the blessed _Pax Romana_. +Robbers had been cleared from the roads and pirates from the seas. +Commerce went to and fro with surprisingly little interference from +customs barriers or provincial boundaries. The same coin was current +from the cataracts of the Nile to the Caledonian Wall across Britain. +A scientific system of law, on the whole administered with remarkable +firmness and justice, prevailed between the same wide boundaries. + +The central government was, indeed, in essence a despotism, but it was +a despotism infused with an extreme intelligence, and it left many of +the forms of liberty, especially of local liberty, in the municipal +matters which touch men nearest home. The Emperor Hadrian, himself, +although sometimes guilty of eccentricities and even harshness, was, in +the main, a ruler singularly intent upon benefiting his subjects. In +all his constant travels he had showered favors upon the communities +which he visited. It was as if he (and his great predecessor Trajan) +had set out to justify monarchy as an ideal government by showing how +much good monarchs could do to the governed. + + +=2. Increasing Glory of the Imperial City.=--All this prosperity +had inevitably reacted upon the city of Rome itself. In a most literal +sense of the word “all roads led to Rome,” not merely the vast network +of government highways and the paths of maritime commerce, but those of +intellectual, artistic, and moral influence. Rome was incomparably the +best market for the merchant, it provided the largest audiences for the +philosopher or rhetorician, the wealthiest patrons for the sculptor. It +had, in fact, become the common center and crucible for everything good +and bad in the huge, teeming Mediterranean World. + +Outwardly the city was near the summit of its architectural perfection. +In Cicero’s day it could not compare in the elegance of its squares +and avenues, and the magnificence of its buildings with Alexandria, +Antioch, or several lesser cities which lay at the mercy of the +legions; but with the coming of the Empire there has been an incessant +process of demolishing, rebuilding, and extending. “I found Rome +built of brick; I leave it built of marble,” Augustus had boasted when +near his end (14 A.D.). However, even after him, there had been only a +gradual transformation until the great fire of Nero in 64 A.D. Terrible +as has then been the devastation, the calamity has at least required +a general rebuilding of almost half of the city usually upon a much +handsomer and more artistic scale. Since then each succeeding Emperor +has tried to leave some great architectural memorial behind him. +Vespasian and Titus have built the Flavian Amphitheater (Colosseum), +Trajan a noble Forum, and Hadrian is now completing a magnificent +“Temple of Venus and Rome.” + +After this time there will perhaps be a few more remarkable structures +erected, _e.g._ the Baths of Caracalla and of Diocletian and the +Basilica (Court House) of Constantine, but for practical purposes +imperial Rome has now been created. In 134 A.D. it is already +architecturally what it will be in 410 A.D. (except then for a certain +decadence) when Alaric’s Goths knocked at the gates. There is, +therefore, hardly a better time than this year, 134 A.D., to visit +the “Eternal City,” if we would discuss the best and the worst, the +strength and the weakness of that Roman society which is to hold men +fascinated across the ages. Let it be assumed, therefore, that on a +warm spring morning we are being guided about the enormous capital of +which bronze-skinned Arabs and blond-haired Frisians alike speak in +awestruck whispers; the city apparently ordained by the gods to be the +center and ruler of the conquered world. + + +=3. Population and Crowded Condition of Rome.=--Before entering +such a metropolis it is a fair question to present: “How large is +Rome, at this time of our supposed visit?” Unfortunately the imperial +government will fail to transmit to later ages its census statistics, +and the conjectures of learned men will vary most seriously. By +taking into account some data as to the number of citizens receiving +grain doles, by adding to these the known size of the garrison, by +establishing the extent of a great colony of resident foreigners and +the still greater hordes of slaves, assertions can be made that the +population exceeds 2,000,000, and again that it is barely 800,000. +Both reckonings may be quite wrong. It seems reasonable to suppose +that in Julius Cæsar’s day the city lacked considerably of 1,000,000 +inhabitants, but these probably increased with the rising prosperity +of the Empire. Hadrian’s “City Praefect” perhaps has to administer the +peace for some 1,500,000 people. In later generations, however, the +population will again slowly dwindle with the wave of the imperial +system. + +However, this million and a half produces a sense of immensity greater +perhaps than that in a later New York or London. Rome is, roughly +speaking, some three miles long and nearly the same in breadth, no +remarkable area as American cities will go;[1] but, as duly explained, +population within these limits is extraordinarily congested. The +streets overflow with pedestrians to the exclusion of most wheeled +traffic. There are no “rapid transit” cars, no taxicabs, no telephones, +and even no public postal service. + +If, therefore, you have the slightest business across the city, you +must walk the entire distance, or be borne in a litter or send a +messenger--methods taking about equally long. As will be seen, even +the use of horses and carriages is largely prohibited. Besides, the +mild climate and method of building the houses compel people to spend +a great fraction of their day in the streets, or in the public plazas +and buildings. Human life teems everywhere. One is overwhelmed by +the jostling multitudes even in the remoter quarters. Everything +(including many personal acts which other ages keep in strict privacy) +seems going on in public. There is, in fact, no city where it is easier +to be “lost in a crowd” than in Rome; no city where the good and the +bad, the divine and the bestial in humanity are so incessantly in +evidence and in such abrupt contact. + + +=4. The Country around Rome.=--Rome is some thirteen miles from the +nearest seacoast, but the distance down the twisting “yellow” Tiber to +Ostia (“River Mouth”) is nearly twice as great. The city itself lies +near the northerly end of that broad plain later called the Campagna +which stretches southeasterly for nearly seventy miles but whereof the +width betwixt ocean and Apennines seldom exceeds twenty-five. Looking +off from any of the heights of Rome towards the east, the whole horizon +from north to south seems traced by a continuous chain of mountains +about ten to twenty miles distant. Very beautiful they are when seen +through a soft blue or golden haze beneath the Italian sky; and by +facing straight north one can discover the round isolated peak of +Mount Soracte (2420 feet high), made famous by the poets, near whose +southeastern base the Tiber winds on its tortuous progress towards the +sea. + +Then following the line of mountains southward one can notice the chain +of the Sabine hills, some with peaked and lofty summits, and next is +discovered the spot where the Tiber rests embosomed in its gray olive +groves. More southward still are the hills on whose slopes rests “Cool +Præneste,” and then, running over a horizon of four or five miles and +ending in the plain, is beheld the noble form of Mount Albinus, the +isolated volcanic peak sacred to the Latin Jupiter and at whose base by +tradition lay Alba Longa, the parent town of Rome; after that the view +takes in nothing but the undulating plain, which at length sinks off +into the sea. + + [Illustration: + + Map of ROME + in the Days of Hadrian + about 135 A.D.] + + +=5. The Tiber and Its Valley.=--Near at hand, of course, is the +Campagna itself, a series of gentle ridges, covered at this epoch with +one long series of delightful suburban villas and thrifty produce +farms, sometimes grouped into rich little villages.[2] In a general +direction of north to south the Tiber flows along the western skirts of +Rome, with only a minor settlement on the western banks. If it ran by +a less famous city, the Tiber would pass for a rather ordinary stream. +Its yellow, turbid waters come with such force from the Apennines +that there can be little navigation for part of the year beyond the +point where the Anio flows into it from the east, about three miles +above Rome. Grain and timber can, however, be floated down on barges, +and when the mountain snows are melting the river swells to a truly +dangerous size, flooding all the lowlands near the city and sometimes, +despite a careful system of dykes, causing freshets which are simply +ruinous to large sections of the metropolis inhabited by the very +poor. The Emperors Augustus and Tiberius set up a regular board of +“Tiber Commissioners” to keep the rebellious river in bounds, but their +efforts are still often vain. + +Between Rome and Ostia the Tiber is indeed navigable at most seasons +for the smaller kind of vessels, but, as will be seen, Rome is scarcely +a first-class seaport; however, special river craft easily bring up +heavy freight from Ostia--an enormous economic advantage for the great +city. + + +=6. A View over Rome from the Campus Martius.=--Before descending into +the city it is well to ascend some height or lofty building well to the +western verge of the _Campus Martius_ (“Field of Mars”) at the great +bend of the Tiber as it sweeps by its levees. Before the onlooker there +spreads what seems at first an indescribable confusion of enormous +buildings, gilded roofs, stately domes, serried phalanxes of marble +columns and far-stretching porticoes, some on level ground, others +upon the summits or clinging to the slopes of several hills. Mixed +with these are an incalculable number of red-tiled roofs obviously +covering more humble private structures. Here and there, mostly on +the outskirts, are also broad patches of greenery, public parks, and +private gardens. + +After more study, however, the first confusion begins to adjust itself +into a kind of order. It is possible, for example, to recognize +directly in the foreground a small and comparatively abrupt hill +crowned at either end by temples of peculiar magnificence. This is +the _Capitol_, particularly the seat of the fane of _Jupiter Optimus +Maximus_ (“Jupiter Best and Greatest”), officially the chief temple +of Rome. Beyond it at a certain distance rises a gray cylinder of +enormous bulk. That, of course, is the _Flavian Amphitheater_, and +in the hollow between it and the capitol but nigh concealed by many +structures stretches the _Old Forum_ of the Republic--the most famous +spot in Rome. To the south of the Forum, and in no wise concealed, +lifts another hill covered with a vast complex of buildings, which, +even when seen in the distance, is of extraordinary splendor. This is +the _Palatine_, the present residence of the Cæsars and the seat of the +government. + + [Illustration: CAPITOLINE HILL AND TEMPLES AS SEEN FROM + PALATINE: restored according to Von Falke.] + +Just to the south and right of the Palatine there runs a long hollow, +the edges of which flash with settings of marble; it is the _Circus +Maximus_, the chief race course. These are the structures or +localities that stand out clearly at first glance. Close at hand, +in the Campus Martius itself, is a perfect labyrinth of covered +promenades, dome-capped public baths, theaters, and circuses, as well +as the remarkable _Pantheon_ and other far-famed structures, the +details whereof can wait. Behind the onlooker is winding the Tiber, +spanned by at least eight bridges; and across the river, before the +view wanders off into the hills of Etruria, are seen numerous suburban +settlements and heights whereof the most conspicuous is that around +_Mount Janiculum_ crested with verdant gardens. But our attention +must be centered upon Rome itself. Before descending from the coign of +vantage it is needful to distinguish her Seven Hills. + + +=7. The Seven Hills of Rome.=--The two most famous of these hills (the +_Capitoline_ and the _Palatine_) have been named already, but they +have five distinguished rivals. Probably in prehistoric days all these +“mountains” rose like separate islands from a treacherous marsh or +even from a lake connected with the Tiber; but long since they have +silted down, and presently man came to add his drains and channels. +They are now, therefore, connected by valleys which are crammed with +habitations, although in any case the most desirable residences are +near the summits of the hills and the humble folk are compelled to live +in the gulleys. Each of these hills has a history: for example, the +Aventine is alleged to have remained apart from the others for long +after the founding of the city, merely as a fortified outpost for the +protection of shepherds; but we cannot stop to recite pleasant legends. + +The “Seven Hills” of Rome have really become eight, as the city has +extended. Not one of these is lofty, but they give a diversity to the +city that prevents the great masses of blank walls and of ungainly +tenement houses lining most of the streets from becoming too ugly, +and they secure light and air to many quarters that are grievously +congested. + +These hills can be thus catalogued: + + 1. _Capitoline_, about 150 feet above sea level.[3] + + 2. _Palatine_ (S. E. of Capitoline), about 166 feet high. + + 3. _Aventine_ (South of Palatine), about 146 feet high. + + 4. _Cœlian_ (East of Palatine), about 158 feet high. + + 5. _Esquiline_ (North of Cælian), about 204 feet high. + + 6. _Viminal_ (North of Esquiline), about 160 feet high. + + 7. _Quirinal_ (N. E. of Capitoline), about 170 feet high. + + To the familiar “seven” ought to be added the hill of the great + northern suburb. + + + 8. _Pincian_, or “Hill of the Gardens” (North of Quirinal), + about 204 feet high. + +Highest of all rises the _Janiculum_ beyond the Tiber, 297 feet +high; commanding a noble prospect over the city and the whole Campagna +beyond. It formed, therefore, in the olden days, a very proper place +for the fort with its watch-tower and its sentinel, when Rome dreaded +an Etruscan raid from the north, and when the citizens dropped their +tools to seize their weapons the minute the “flag on Janiculum” was +struck as signal that the foe was at hand. + + +=8. Building Materials Used in Rome.=--The most cursory view of +the city gives an overwhelming impression of the _enormous quantities +of building material_, as well as of the expenditure of human labor +which has gone into the creation of Rome. Strabo the geographer[4] +has wisely observed that it is lucky that the city can get a constant +supply of stone, timber, etc., on account of “the ceaseless building +which is rendered needful by the pulling down of houses and on account +of the great fires and constant sales of [house] property,” everybody +being incessantly scrapping old buildings, erecting new ones, and +speculating generally in real estate. + +Of course, the great public buildings are erected with extremely +durable materials which will defy the assaults of time, but the +vast districts of ugly tenement houses are often thrown together +in as flimsy a manner as those in the least elegant quarters of +American cities of another age. However, there are almost no wooden +houses in Rome; and for the better structures there is provided most +excellent building stone. The standard masonry is of _tufa_, +a soft red or black stone needing a stucco to protect it from the +weather; for superior work there is dark brown _peperino_, golden +_travertine_, and last but not least, for the finest buildings, +white and many colored _marble_. The marble trade, as will be +explained, is, in fact, one of the greatest commercial activities of +the city. + + +=9. The Great Use of Concrete.=--Going about Rome one is led to +imagine, however, that many very pretentious structures are of solid +brick. This is seldom the case. Bricks and tiles are often in evidence +because they can be worked into the face of naturally ugly concrete to +disguise the nakedness of its surfaces. _Concrete_ has really made +it comparatively easy to create Rome as an enormous city. If concrete +has not been invented by the Romans, they are at least the first great +people to put it to a very general use. In their neighborhood can +be found huge quantities of _pozzolana_,[5] a volcanic deposit +which can be readily worked up into admirable cement. It is this very +practical material which makes the vast domes, cupolas, and other +architectural triumphs possible. Many a pretentious temple or residence +flaunts a marble exterior; this, however, is a mere shell and covering; +strip it away, and within is an enormous mass of concrete. + +This material can be handled by comparatively small labor gangs, +rendering it feasible to erect huge structures without mobilizing such +wholesale man-power as was needed for the great monuments of Egypt. +It is very durable, almost nothing can destroy it. Indeed it will be +written later that “This _pozzolana_ [for concrete] more than any +other material contributed to make Rome the proverbial ‘Eternal City.’” +[Middleton.] + + +=10. Greek Architectural Forms Plus the Arch and Vault.=--Every +building by the Tiber apparently bears the impress of Greece. Greek +architects are said to have designed many of the finest public +edifices, while Greek artists have chiseled the statues or painted the +pictures which all the Roman world admires. The “orders” of the columns +everywhere in evidence are the Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian that one +might find at Athens, although it can be complained that the Romans are +over-fond of the most ornate form--the florid Corinthian. + + [Illustration: TYPICAL TEMPLE FRONT.] + +In general, lovers of the purer architectural types of Hellas may +allege that Roman architecture and ornamentation is too elaborate and +extravagant. There are too many scrolls and floriated designs. Every +possible surface is covered with statuary or bas-reliefs, often in +decidedly inferior taste. There is too garish a display, also, of blue, +green, white, and orange-colored marble. The whole effect of most Roman +buildings is, therefore, _grand rather than beautiful_. It is the +architecture of a civilization apparently growing a little weary and +striving to startle itself by remarkable effects. + + [Illustration: ARCH OF CONSTANTINE: typical of many + triumphal arches: date about 315 A.D.] + +Nevertheless, this borrowing from Greece has not been slavish. +Romans, if not great artists, are master adapters. Perhaps they have +not invented the _arch_ and the _vault_,[6] but in any case they +have utilized them in connection with the Greek system of columns to +produce magnificent effects whereof Argos and Ephesus never dreamed. +By concrete vaulting can be made those enormous substructures which +sustain the great palaces, and again, the lofty domes of such splendid +creations as the Pantheon. By the arches can be upheld the tiers of the +Flavian Amphitheater, the pretentious company of theaters and circuses, +and last but not least the long arrays of stately aqueducts which bring +the great water supply so many miles to Rome. Underground also the +arch system is upbearing the vast network of sewers which has redeemed +the city from a quagmire. In the _fora_ and across many avenues are +thrown in their turn the imposing _triumphal arches_, crowned with +heroic statues or with prancing chariots which are unmatched by +anything in Greece. + +Having taken in the generalities, it is now proper to go down from our +viewpoint and plunge boldly into the vast city. The wise man should +not, however, visit at first the Fora, the Palatine, and the other +“show places” which officious guides here as everywhere are always glad +to display to visitors. More helpful it is to examine at the outset +certain typical streets first in a poor and next in a more aristocratic +quarter, to enter the houses, and to penetrate the daily lives of the +masses of the people. Then with better understanding can one approach +the famous “Heart of Rome.” + + + + + CHAPTER II + + STREETS AND STREET LIFE + + +=11. The Regions of Rome: Fashionable and Plebeian Quarters.=--The +great Augustus divided the capital into 14 _regiones_ or “wards” and +these in turn into 265 _vici_ or precincts. Obviously some of these +districts are more select than others. No citizen of decent tastes +will, unless compelled by dire poverty, live in the network of hovels +beyond the bridges and under the brow of the Janiculum, where a great +colony of Jews and other Orientals exist in what is alleged to be +extreme squalor. If you go south also from the Forum and Palatine, you +are likely to run into a wide complex of unlovely industrial districts +and laborers’ quarters, especially along the Tiber, although there are +still some very good residential streets upon the Aventine. + +In general the northern end of the city is the fashionable section, +although the Subura, the street running out between the Esquiline and +the Viminal, is notorious for containing some of the vilest tenements +in all Rome. To live in a “Subura garret” is about the greatest +possible degradation socially. Right above this ill-favored avenue, +however, slopes the Esquiline itself, lined with the palaces of many +of the most exclusive Senators. Pliny the Younger resided there in his +lifetime,[7] and a rich ex-consul has his house at present. Rome is, +in fact, decidedly like many later cities; walk only a few blocks, +and one can pass from the bottom to the top of the social ladder. +Further north, in the regions of the parks and public gardens, the fine +residences are probably more continuous, but one can never know Rome +by merely visiting its ultra-genteel quarters. There is, consequently, +no better place to begin an investigation than near the Esquiline, +let us say where the disreputable Subura runs northeast towards the +somewhat more select “Patrician Street” (_Vicus Patricius_). + + [Illustration: STREET IN POMPEII: present state. + Note the pavement, the stepping stones, the wayside fountain, + and the numerous subdivisions into small houses or shops.] + + +=12. A Typical Short Street, “Mercury Street.”=--We may wisely take +our stand facing somewhat southward, with our backs to the Viminal and +with the domes of the huge Baths of Trajan partially in sight upon the +heights ahead. It is a little after dawn on a warm spring morning; but +all Rome, we shall discover, rises very early, and normally goes to +bed correspondingly early. Even the sedate “Conscript Fathers” of the +Senate are supposed to convene at _prima luce_,--gray morn. What can be +seen? + +To any later judgment this “Mercury Street” (so named from a local +temple)[8] is very narrow, not over fifteen feet from housewall +to housewall. Although the sun has now risen the way is still +uncomfortably dark, because the houses pressing on either side rise +to at least thirty or forty feet. The roadway, one discovers, is +skillfully and durably paved with heavy lava blocks, and since it forms +a regular thoroughfare it has been swept reasonably clean; although to +right and left in the semi-darkness can be descried impossible alleys +barely ten feet wide winding off between the tall buildings, and these +side passages are more than dirty. This street, like the great majority +in Rome, is comparatively short. You come to an abrupt turn, or perhaps +to an ascending flight of stone steps worn slippery by innumerable +sandals, and immediately enter into a quite different quarter. + + [Illustration: STEPPING STONES ACROSS A SIDE STREET: + a gentleman followed by personal slave with umbrella. + _After Von Falke._] + +There is a very narrow stone sidewalk but it differs slightly before +each house, every owner being required to make his own repairs. In +the pavement broad ruts have been worn by the wagons, despite the +restrictions (presently stated) upon wheeled traffic. Very few streets +of Rome are wide enough for two carts to pass freely; and every driver +has to look ahead and frequently to wait at corners to let other teams +get by. Upon the pavement and especially at intersecting crossways are +set groups of four or five large oblong stepping stones; these seem +needless at present but can be a veritable godsend in the rainy season +when every “Via” and “Vicus” in Rome seems converted into a raging +torrent. + + +=13. The House and Shop Fronts.=--Looking upward now, one is instantly +confronted by a long expanse of stuccoed walls--some pink, yellow, or +bluish, but mostly an ugly brown. The lower story, quite on the street +level, is broken either by the petty shops which open their shutters +and thrust their counters clear out upon the pavement, or else it is +merely a solid blank space with only here and there a doorway, or a +few small windows, mere peepholes for fear of burglars. The second +and upper stories, however, are less solid. There are many larger +windows set with window-boxes displaying bright flowers, or even with +projecting balconies which reach out so far that neighbors in opposite +houses can sometimes clasp hands above the hurrying life below. + +Shops abound almost everywhere. In the great commercial quarters by +the fora, the Tiber and the Campus Martius, will be found the splendid +establishments which cater to wealth, but no quarter of Rome is +too mean for its bakeries, vegetable stands, wine shops, and cheap +restaurants. In fact, the absence of a speedy means of interurban +communication makes a multiplication of small shops absolutely +necessary. Most of these retailers do business on the pettiest scale, +and a glance reveals that nearly the whole stock in trade is spread +on the counter facing the street. As for the shopkeeper, ordinarily +he lives and sleeps either in a dark cell just in the rear or in an +equally narrow chamber directly above his business. “Born over a +shop,” snobbish people say when they wish to brand some person as a +nobody. + + [Illustration: STREET SCENE BEFORE A COOK-SHOP. + _After Von Falke._] + + +=14. Street Shrines and Fountains.=--Nevertheless, commonplace and +darksome as this street may seem, there are clear tokens both of an +active religious, also of an artistic life. On the flat wall, beside +a grocer’s stand, two serpents are crudely painted in yellow--emblems +of the guardian genii of the place. Opposite, by a money-changer, is +painted a fairly presentable Mercury, the god of Gain. As one goes +about the city the painted snakes appear almost everywhere, and also +pictures of Jupiter, Minerva, and Hercules. + + [Illustration: SHRINE AT THE CROSSWAYS.] + +At the nearby crossroads, however, is something more important. Set +against the side of a building is a little niche let into the wall +in lieu of an altar. Upon this pious neighbors can deposit small +articles of food for the “Gods of the Street Crossings” (_Lares +Compitales_), and above is a low relief of two youthful deities, +male and female. Early as it now is, an old woman has already stolen up +to deposit a small crust--for the little neighborhood Lares are good +and trusty friends; they will never be forgotten. + +Opposite this shrine, however, a group of laughing, chattering girls is +mustering around a gushing fountain. Romans are justly proud of their +excellent water supply. Every house of any pretentions has its separate +faucets, perhaps in great number; but the poor tenement dwellers must +depend upon the street fountains. Pure, clear water is shooting from +a metal pipe into a broad separate stone basin. The stream is issuing +from the sculptured head of a Medusa executed with admirable detail and +vigor, although this is only one of thousands of similar fountains all +over the city. At the next corner the water is spouting from an eagle’s +beak; at another from the mouth of a calf, or the head of a Mercury. + +The surplus water overflowing the basin trickles away in a streamlet +down to the middle of the street, and although this adds to the +inconvenience of pedestrians the pitch of the ground makes the flow +carry away much of the rubbish (often very filthy) which is thrown +out recklessly from the shops and even from the upper windows. It is +thanks partly to this admirable water system that Rome is not even more +scourged by epidemics, than is unhappily the case.[9] + + +=15. Typical Street Crowds.=--So much for the inanimate objects in +Mercury Street; what now of its surging humanity? A wise law of Julius +Cæsar has indeed forbidden the ordinary use of wheeled vehicles in the +city streets between sunrise and the “tenth hour” (4 P.M.). +This is a blessed regulation considering the narrow width of even +the finest avenues, but, nevertheless, the wagons that were allowed +to enter by night bringing heavy building materials to the Senator +Rullianus’s new mansion have now to be suffered to depart, and also the +wain that had rattled up in the darkness with flour for the nearby +public bakery. Also one may possibly see a Vestal Virgin or one of the +superior priests exercising their special privileges and driving in a +chariot. + +The street, however, is crowding with life, even if not a horse is in +sight. The most conspicuous are literally dozens of men, each with +a heavy toga wrapped carelessly around him, hurrying frantically in +every direction. In other cities and other ages they might be “making a +train.” Here they are in fact “clients,” duty bound to be at the doors +of their patrons early every morning to pay their respects and seek +their bounty (see p. 149)--but almost every other type of humanity is +represented. Great numbers of boys and girls are trudging reluctantly +along to their schools, the poorer bearing their own packages of +writing tablets, the better dressed each followed by a sedate male +attendant, a pedagogue, bearing the weapons of learning. + +In and out there also go youths in humble attire, often running at +breakneck speed, thrusting and jostling to make their way; they are +the slave messengers from the great houses flying on early errands for +their masters. One of them elbows aside a tall and venerable man with a +prodigiously long beard and wrapped in a trailing but none too spotless +mantle--he is a Greek philosopher on his way to some mansion where he +will perhaps expound the theories of Epicurus to a pleasure-loving +nobleman. A few steps further and there is seen a fair-haired German +clad in his outlandish costume of undressed wolf skins; hardly behind +him is a red-headed Gaul in a short tartan cloak; one can speedily +recognize also a hawk-eyed, white-robed Arab from the edge of the +deserts and presently appears a grinning negro, black as ebony and in +a splendid gilt and scarlet livery--the foot-boy probably of some rich +lady. + + +=16. Frequent Use of Greek in Rome.=--The bulk of the crowd, to be +sure, is Italian, with keen, olive faces, dark hair, and rather short +stature, graceful and incessantly gesturing. But the Latin chattered +on every hand is full of uncouth idioms, the _sermo plebis_ calculated +to make Cicero turn in his grave, and there is a great co-mingling of +foreign words; above all, about one person out of every four seems to +be _speaking Greek_, now abominably corrupt, now in the purest Attic, +and upon penetrating the great houses one would discover Greek to be +even more truly a familiar language. + +All educated Romans write and speak Greek as Englishmen and Americans +will never learn to use French. Learned books are being written by +the Tiber in the incomparable tongue of Hellas, and only the most +ignorant Romans fail to understand simple Greek sentences. In short +Rome seems close to becoming a bi-lingual city. The reigning emperor +is so enthusiastic for things Hellenic that his foes brand Hadrian as +“the Graecule.” Athens and Corinth seem almost to have conquered their +conquerors. + + +=17. Clamor and Thronging in the Streets.=--As the sun rises, every +instant the street becomes more crowded. A great din is rising from a +forge just inside an alley; a second noise from a carpenter shop. As +if determined to be heard above everything else, from a second story +comes a voice bawling out some kind of a declamation--it is a rhetoric +school getting into action, and an ambitious youth is denouncing the +dead tyrant Phalaris at the top of his lungs. By yonder wall, almost +completely blocking the sidewalk, a nondescript barber has set down a +stool and is clipping a victim with huge scissors. Close by him stands +a cook’s boy guarding two braziers, on one of which are boiled peas, +on the other small sausages that are kept smoking hot. Early as the +hour may be, workmen and others who have an active day before them are +standing around and laying in a hearty breakfast. Almost upsetting this +throng comes a countryman flogging a donkey whose huge paniers laden +with garden truck project dangerously to either side. + +The noise increases continually. From another lane there comes more +shouting. An auctioneer is knocking down the furniture of a poor +bankrupt, and the bidding is growing violent. All the shopkeepers are +bawling their wares to each prospective purchaser. Now there is a clang +and jangling; pushing the crowd aside march ten soldiers, five abreast, +with insolent strides, their _optio_ (sub-centurion) stalking +before them. Their gilded armor and helmets and the scarlet kilts +peeping under their cuirasses, proclaim them to be “Praetorians,” proud +members of the imperial guard. Gilded shields clatter on their backs; +they warn the slaves and hucksters away with their spear butts while +their officer’s red plume nods arrogantly. + +Hardly are they gone before there comes the crash of some barbaric +music; one hears castanets, trumpets, drums, and sistra (a kind of +glorified bronze rattle), and unmelodious singing. Tossing their arms, +waving blunted swords or pounding them on light shields, along comes a +troupe of the priests and priestesses of Cybele, the uncouth Asiatic +goddess; the women, dark-skinned Syrians, whirling in wild dances with +hair aflying, the priests puff-cheeked, smooth-faced creatures, busily +pounding with their noise-making instruments. They are headed for their +temple to spend a day of orgy. + + +=18. The Processions Attending Great Nobles.=--Suddenly there is +a partial silence. Youths in livery are moving down the street +flourishing white wands: “Way, way for his Excellency,” they are +shouting. Instantly the word flies around, “The Praetor Fundinus!” +Hucksters cease shouting. Everybody stands still and all who wear hoods +or hats hastily bare their heads,[10] for the praetor represents “The +Majesty of the Roman People.” Behind his _viatores_ (“Way Clearers”) +a full score of toga-clad clients swing into sight marching ahead of +the great man. He rides in a blue tasseled litter borne by eight tall +Cappadocians of equal height and pace. Just in front of them march +two haughty lictors, attendants of honor, with bundles of rods, the +official “fasces,” conspicuously resting upon their shoulders.[11] +Close beside the litter walks a well-groomed man with a marked +Greek profile--the confidential freedman and man of business of the +magistrate. Behind trail more clients and a greater retinue of slaves. +Fundinus himself heeds little the incessant greetings cast at him. He +can be seen lolling on his cushions, with the little curtains thrown +back just enough to show the purple embroidery on his official toga. +A book, half unrolled, is in his hand--for it is the best of form to +affect a certain bookishness in scenes of great distraction. + +As the praetor’s train advances, however, it is met by another headed +in the opposite direction. A great concourse appears of handsome +slaves, all wearing brown coats and each bearing a box or package upon +his shoulder; then follows a group of pretty Levantine slave-girls +gaudily clad, then a brown Egyptian boy carrying a pet monkey; then a +simpering Celtic maid with a large basket from which peers a small and +very uneasy lap-dog; next a perfect hedge of upper slaves and freedmen, +some carrying musical instruments, some small caskets obviously crammed +with valuables, and some conveying ostentatiously costly garments, and +then borne high by her eight slaves in light red livery comes a great +lady herself--an ex-consul’s wife, the multi-millionaire Faustina. + + +=19. A Great Lady Traveling.=--“Her Magnificence” (_Clarissima_) also +leans back on her cushions with a studied attitude of indifference +and boredom, letting the whole street take in the silky sheen of her +embroidered mantle, the gem-set handle of her ostrich fan, the gold +dust that her maids have sprinkled on her tall pile of brown hair, +and the great pearls that shed luster from her ears, neck, and every +finger. She is merely making one of her incessant pilgrimages between +her Viminal palace and some one of her ten country villas. She would +feel disgraced to travel with less than about two hundred slaves and +freedmen. Very likely her grandfather was a freedman himself; what +matter?--official rank yields to the conquering flash of gold. + +Fundinus’s lictors lower their fasces; his litter is set down hastily. +As the trains meet the great man hastens to the side of the greater +_matrona_. Faustina is evidently in a gracious mood. She is seen +to flip the praetor’s face daintily with her fan. The magistrate climbs +back to his own litter smilingly--perhaps he has been bidden to an +ultra-select house party at Tusculum. The two trains of attendants +elbow past each other, and the street resumes its plebeian bustle. + + +=20. Public Salutations: the Kissing Habit.=--As the crowds thin a +little, so that the types and faces are more easily seen, several +things become noticeable. First the salutations--there are surely +advantages in being borne high in a litter. No person in good clothes +can proceed far without being incessantly beset with greetings. +Everybody seems to know everybody else. It is polite to cry _Ave!_ +(“Hail”) or _Salve!_ (“I hope you’re well”) to persons of the scantiest +acquaintance, and then, when they return your salute, if there is +nothing more to add, _Vale!_ (“Good luck”). + +More serious, however, is the incessant kissing. A sedate old gentleman +with a narrow purple stripe on his tunic (the token of the “equestrian” +rank) appears followed by two spruce slave boys. A nondescript fellow +immediately pushes up to him, seizes his hand, then smacks him roundly +on the cheek. Doubtless the rascal’s lips are foul and his breath +charged with garlic; it is nevertheless most discourteous for the older +man to resent it. There is no escaping the incessant attacks, unless +you can have a litter, and the poet Martial has vainly complained of +acquaintances who insisted on kissing him in December “when round his +nose hangs a veritable icicle.” Even the Emperor has to submit to the +usage, although the privilege is confined to that envied and exalted +circle known as “Cæsar’s friends.” + + +=21. The Swarms of Idlers and Parasites.=--Another thing becomes +obvious after a short scrutiny--_the vast number of idlers_. People are +incessantly lounging up and down the street manifestly with nothing +important to do. Hard work and common trade are, as later explained +(see p. 146), by no means genteel; and many a Roman who possesses +merely a threadbare toga and has his name on the list for corn doles +prefers living by his wits in busy idleness, fawning on the great, and +hunting dinner invitations to doing a stroke of honest labor. + +Most of the idlers nevertheless are slaves. In the vast _familia_ +of the palaces the tasks are all so subdivided that the average slave +has far too much time on his hands. He puts in many hours, therefore, +wandering about the sights of the city, gaming, following coarse love +affairs, and seeking tips on the circus and amphitheater contests. The +amount of worthless chatter is infinite. Even at this early hour from +the tables of a wine-shop comes the rattle of dice boxes. Another dirty +group is actually throwing dice on the pavement under pedestrian’s +heels. The law nominally forbids open gaming, but the police are very +busy men. Rome, one discovers thus promptly, is all too much a city of +“parasites.” By exploiting the world, she is able to maintain a horde +of human bipeds, bond or free, who minister nothing to her prosperity. + +The gamesters on the pavement halt, however, instantly, when a tumult +arises from a neighboring vintner’s stall. A Spanish boy has tried to +steal a jar of fine old Massic, but the vessel has been wisely fastened +to a pillar with a chain. While he tugs to break this the dealer spots +him: “Stop thief!” rises the cry. Instantly appear two broad-shouldered +men, in half armor with small steel caps. They carry stout poles tipped +with strong hooks useful in fires. These are _vigiles_ (police-firemen) +of the city watch. The thief is seized and hustled off howling and +protesting, to tell his troubles at the court of the City Praefect. +Before the players can resume, they have to stand aside also for a +funeral procession--flute players, professional mourners screaming and +gesticulating, manumitted slaves of the deceased wearing liberty caps, +mourning relatives around the bier; all headed for the cremation-pyre +outside the gates. + + [Illustration: MONUMENT OF A WINE SELLER.] + + +=22. Public Placards and Notices.=--Just as the dice are about +to rattle again a shrewd-looking fellow with a piece of red chalk is +seen stepping up to a space of blank wall. “Celer, the notice writer,” +whispers everybody. A large crowd elbows and gathers around him, +as to general delight, with quick strokes he letters the following +announcement of a gladiator fight: + + IN THE AMPHITHEATER OF TAURUS + THE GAMES OF THE AEDILE BALBUS + + _From the 12th to the 15th of May_ + + THE ‘THRACIAN’ PUGNAX + + OF THE + + NERONIAN GLADIATORIAL SCHOOL + + Who Has Fought Three Times Will Meet + + THE ‘MURMILLO’ MURANUS + + OF THE + + SAME SCHOOL + + And The Same Number of Fights + + THE ‘HEAVY ARMOUR FIGHTER’ CYCNUS + + FROM THE + + SCHOOL OF JULIUS CAESAR + + Who Has Fought Eight Times + + WILL MEET + + THE ‘THRACIAN’ ATTICUS + + OF THE + + SAME SCHOOL + + And of Fourteen Fights + + _Awnings will be provided against the sun_ + +“_Euge! Euge!_ Bravo, Balbus!” cry the expectant idlers as they go back +to their game, and Celer hurries off to repeat his notice on some wall +in the next street. + +The dice contest can be omitted. Not so with the wall inscriptions +which we now discover are scattered over almost every space of +available stucco along the thoroughfare. Some are formal notices of +games, articles for sale, auctions, tenements to let, etc., written +with some skill, although with many puzzling abbreviations, by +professional sign-writers like Celer. Thus on one building can be read +in tall red letters: “_To rent, from the first of July, shops with +the floors above them and a house in the Arrius Pollio block, owned by +Nigidius Maius. Prospective lessees may apply to Primus his slave_,” +and another sign advertises the “_Venus baths, fitted up for the best +people, shops, rooms over shops and second story apartments, in the +property owned by Julia Felix_.”[12] + + +=23. Wall Scribblings.=--More interesting really are the wall +scribblings of the humble. “The walls were the writing paper of the +poor,” will be declared later by students of Rome. All kinds of +sentiments are scratched upon the stucco; sometimes with considerable +care with a stylus; sometimes with merely a finger nail; sometimes +drawn with charcoal or a red crayon. There are indeed so many writings, +especially in frequented places, that we notice a wag has actually +added a word of protest: + + I wonder O wall, + That your stones do not fall + All scribbled thus o’er + By the nonsense of all! + +Every kind of opinion is to be found along a limited stretch of wall. +Coarse insults abound where your enemy can promptly see them: “Vile +wretch,” “Bold rascal,” “Old fool,” “I hope you’ll die!” “May you be +crucified!”--these are merely the mildest. Then other sentiments are +more friendly: “Luck to you!” “Good health to you everywhere!” “A Happy +New Year and a lot of them,” and “What wouldn’t I do for _you_, dear +eyes of Luscus” (the names of the enemy or friend involved being often +added). + +Lovers also take up their tale. A girl records her frank opinion: +“Virgula to her dear Tertius--You are mighty mean.” A penitent swain +spreads forth this “personal” to his mistress: “_Do_ have pity on me +and let me come back.” A young lady announces tartly: “Where Verus +is there’s nothing _veracious_” (a pun on words). A gay philanderer +explains, “A blonde girl taught me to hate brunettes, and I _will_ hate +them if I can--but loving them would come so much easier!” And another +youth demands passionately: “My dear Sava, please do love me!” While +finally a jealous suitor has broken into verse: + + If any man shall seek + My girl from me to turn, + On far-off mountains bleak, + May Love the scoundrel burn! + +The prosing moralist must likewise have his say. Somebody has +sagely scribbled, “A trifling ailment if neglected can grow to be +very serious.” There are in addition conundrums and children’s +sketches--pictures of playmates, friends, foes, and especially of +popular gladiators, marked with red ochre or charcoal, and sometimes +limned with considerable vigor, but usually in the manner of the +childish drawings in all ages, with forehead and nose marked by a line +and with two dots serving for eyes. School boys have scratched down +some of the verses in Vergil and Ovid that have just been flogged into +them by their masters. + +The only thing we can miss in Rome are the election notices which would +abound on the walls of all chartered provincial or free Italian cities, +entreating us to vote for soand-so for _duumvir_ “he’s a good man”; or +declaring that “all the fullers’ guild are out for ---- as aedile.”[13] +Rome, alas! has lost her liberty; the city is paternally governed by +the Emperor aided by the Senate, and popular elections are a thing of +the past. + + +=24. The Streets Dark and Dangerous at Night.=--One is warned, however, +not to tax the patience of the adjacent shopkeepers and linger too long +in this street. Written above a drug seller’s stand appears clearly, +“_No idlers here! Move on you loungers!_” and a little distance along +upon a wall, “_Here you! What are you loitering for?_” Indeed the +passing throngs are becoming somewhat monotonous. The hurly-burly +abates. About noon almost everybody will take first a fairly hearty +luncheon, and then a siesta. Nearly every shop will be closed. Then +the bustle will be resumed while the more genteel element will be seen +headed in great numbers towards the public baths. + +By four o’clock, however, the shops will be closing behind heavy +shutters, the clamor from the work rooms will cease, and even the +humble will begin to prepare for the crowning event of a Roman’s +day--dinner, often begun still earlier. After sundown the silence +almost of the grave shuts down upon avenues which a few hours earlier +were simply swarming with life. There are no street lights. Nobody +stirs outdoors if possible, unless accompanied by friends or slaves +with lanterns or torches; and it is no harm to carry heavy bludgeons, +for despite the watch there are all too many sneak thieves, cutpurses, +and even open bandits, “dagger men” (_siccarii_), with their “your +money or your life.” Also lawless young nobles sometimes get an evil +pleasure (as did Nero and his companions) by ranging the streets and +beating up harmless and poorly guarded citizens. + + +=25. Discomforts of Life in Rome.=--People also tell you that +at night there is no small peril of being brained by loose tiles +which rattle down from the lofty house-tops, or less dangerous but +most disgusting, of being drenched by buckets of filthy slops flung +recklessly from upper windows into the streets. Then toward dawn your +sleep is ruined by the incessant rumbling of the wagons with timber, +brick, building stone, cement, and all kinds of food supplies which +have to be excluded from the city in the day hours. These are all part +of the general discomforts of life in Rome, along with the squalid +flat-buildings, the peril from the collapse of rickety houses, the +occasional great floods of the Tiber, the fearful conflagrations, the +ubiquitous throngs of people, and the grievous absence of privacy. + +The complaints are incessant. “School masters in the morning; corn +grinders at night; and braziers’ hammers day and night” are subjects +for standard diatribes of poets like Martial and Juvenal. And they, +like everybody, first praise the quiet simple life possible in the +Italian country towns--and then they remain in Rome. The great city +with its multitudes, its ceaseless variety of all things good and bad, +its appeal to every kind of human interest holds them with so many +other mortals fascinated. They are unhappy while in Rome; but still +more unhappy until they can return to her. + +So much for the merely outward side of a typical street on the slopes +of the Esquiline. We can now penetrate the homes of the people, first +visiting an _insula_, a great tenement block of the lowly, and then +investigating a more elegant _domus_, the residence of a magnate. + + + + + CHAPTER III + + THE HOMES OF THE LOWLY AND OF THE MIGHTY + + +=26. The Great _Insulæ_--Tenement Blocks.=--Perhaps another age will +imagine that most Romans have lived in vast marble palaces, moving +through spacious halls amid stately pillars and spraying fountains. +Nothing like this is the case for the great majority. A census report +declares “there are some 44,000 tenement blocks (_insulæ_) in the city +and only about 1750 separate ‘mansions’ (_domus_).”[14] Such figures +can merely imply that an overwhelming proportion of “the toga-wearing +race, the Lords of the world” (to quote Virgil’s threadbare line) are +flat-dwellers. + +Considering the extreme congestion of population, no other solution +than this is possible if Rome is to remain Rome. There is a great +profit in building these huge, ungainly “islands,” the tenement blocks. +Everywhere around the city we meet the gangs of laborers mixing the +concrete whereof the structures are mostly constructed, or setting the +wooden molds to shape the material as it solidifies; or else tearing +down and carting away the wreckage of insulæ that have begun to decay. +Such property employs a great amount of capital. Nearly every senator +has his men of business caring for his housing investments and rentals, +and the “realtor” is a very familiar personage. + +Rightly is it complained also that many insulæ are put up in a cheap +and absolutely dangerous manner, and at best are dark, dirty, and +unsanitary. The very name implies that they should be built with a free +space all around them. The old law of Twelve Tables (450 B.C.) required +a passage way (_ambitus_) of at least two and a half feet on either +side, but this law was recklessly disregarded until the great fire of +Nero enabled the government to enforce a fairly scientific building +code. Even now, however, the tenement houses are often hemmed in on +all sides by miserable black alleys hardly accessible to the public +scavengers. + +This struggle to use every scrap of ground is completely matched by the +effort to build as high as possible. “The immense size of Rome,” wrote +Vitruvius, about 1 A.D., “makes it needful to have a vast number of +habitations, and as the area is not sufficient to contain them all on +the ground floor, the nature of the case compels us to raise them in +the air.” + +There are no passenger elevators in Rome; furthermore, the concrete +construction does not permit the safe erection of extremely high +buildings without unusual precautions, and with such narrow streets +tall structures obstruct both light and air; nevertheless, the real +estate interests grumbled loudly when Augustus limited the height of +dwellings to seventy feet. Hadrian has just vexed them still more by +a decree that if an owner allows his insula to fall into dangerous +repair, he must either sell it, or rebuild it thoroughly. For all that, +many insulæ seem to be towering rookeries, ready to collapse at any +flood or earthquake. + + +=27. A Typical Insula.=--Upon Mercury Street, which we have just +examined, stands a very average insula, built about forty years ago, +and, therefore, loyally named the _Flavia Victoria_ for the then +reigning dynasty. It belongs to the widow of the rich eques Gaius +Macer, and is managed by the lynx-eyed procurator, or bailiff, who +superintends her estate. Despite the fact that it is safer than some +of its neighbors, the tenants complain on rent days that the upper +stories are built so largely of wood as to be in peril of fire, and +that one of the outer walls is so cracked that it has to be propped up +with heavy timbers. + +The _Flavia Victoria_ is just under the legal building height, +and contains five stories. On the street there are several shops of +the usual kind, also several separate entrances whereof the doorways, +flanked with pillars, give access to certain extra-select flats above; +but most of the tenants have to go in through the central portal under +the eyes of a porter. + +Upon entering they find themselves in a fairly ample square court, upon +which open many windows of the tiers of rooms in the upper stories. +There is a fountain in the court, but the pavement below is decidedly +slimy and dirty. Quantities of half-naked small children are scampering +about in noisy play. The windows, however, like those facing upon the +streets, often have balconies on which simple boxes of flowers are +blooming. The blue Italian sky above and the bars of intense sunlight +upon the flag-stones make the filthiness of the court and the dinginess +of the yellow stuccoed walls less obnoxious. Dirt and even the numerous +fleas lose part of their terrors amid picturesque surroundings in a +mild climate. + + +=28. The Flats in an Insula.=--From the courtyard several staircases, +often dark and dank, rise to the tenements above. The _Flavia Victoria_ +is a fair-sized insula, and just as in European flat buildings later, +can contain many social strata under one ample roof. In the apartments +on the first floor, there are really comfortable suites, each with +a series of rooms--living room (_atrium_), dining room, kitchen, +bedrooms, and the like, chambers not large indeed, but sufficient for a +modest household keeping perhaps ten slaves. The walls are covered with +bright frescoes, and the floors with very fair mosaics. Such a superior +apartment can bring some 10,000 sesterces ($400) per year, and a good +many flats rent for even more.[15] + +The rentals fall rapidly as the tenants scale higher. In the second +floor the apartments are much smaller; there is merely a living room +and a few smaller chambers. The appointments are correspondingly +mean and dingy, while the annual rent is only 2000 sesterces ($80); +and between the prosperous grain factor on the third floor and the +hard-working brickyard superintendent on the fourth there is never the +least sociability. + + +=29. The Cheap Attic Tenements and Their Poor Occupants.=--Both unite, +however, in despising the wretched creatures who plod wearily up to the +dirty, vermin-infested sleeping pockets upon the fifth or sixth stages, +where, under the roof tiles, the hot sun beats pitilessly. If we care +to thrust ourselves into the tiny chambers of the unfortunate Codrus, +the bath attendant, we will find, perhaps “a bed too small for the +dwarf Procula, a marble slab whereon are set six small food jars and a +small drinking cup, a statue of Chiron [some decaying heirloom], and an +old chest of Greek books gnawed by the unlettered mice.”[16] + +Vainly do Codrus and his wife complain to the bailiff that the roof is +collapsing over them. He merely laughs and bids them “sleep at ease,” +although a deadly crash is threatened any night. They have another +peril, because fire may at any time break out in Ucalegon’s flat below +and leave them cut off, possibly while in their beds, and with no +chance of escape after the alarm spreads. + +Such poor tenants never stay in one place long. Rome is a city of +inveterate flat-hunters. The first of July (the Calends) is the +regular moving day. Every tenant who cannot or will not pay his rent, +has to go forth seeking even cheaper and more squalid quarters. There +are endless family processions bearing off the few poor chattels. +The satirists make ungenerous fun of their plight, telling how a +wretched man has to march away followed by “his carroty-headed wife, +his white-haired mother and his giantess of a sister.” Between them +they carry off “a three-legged bed, a two-footed table, a lamp, a +horn-cup, a rusty brazier, some cracked dishes, some jars of very stale +pickled fish,” also a supply of cheese and onions, and “a pot of resin +belonging to the poor fellow’s mother and used by the beldame for +anointing herself.” + + [Illustration: TENANTS PAYING RENT TO A LANDLORD’S + AGENT.] + +Such luckless plebeians, of course, may delude some house agent in a +distant part of the city into giving them a dark garret in the vain +hope that they can pay their rent; “but really,”--says the bailiff with +a shrug, “they belong at the Aricine bridge--the haunt of the beggars.” + +Unfortunately a large fraction of Rome is little better off than this. +Poverty stalks everywhere. There are plenty of fetid insulæ which do +not contain a single family that can be sure of next week’s dinners. +Nevertheless there are mitigations; as will be seen, the government +takes great pains that in Rome nobody will actually starve; and again, +there are so many free circuses and gladiatorial shows that a man has +abundant diversion from his troubles. There is a magnificent water +supply, and the kind Italian sun prevents heavy fuel bills. Poverty, +therefore, does not imply the acute misery which it does in the North. + +Nevertheless, the most fortunate insula dweller probably dreams of the +day when he can crown his inevitable ambition. “When can I cease to +live in a _cenacula_ (flat) and live in a _domus_?”[17] + + +=30. A Senatorial “Mansion” (_Domus_).=--Publius Junius Calvus is a +senator of ancient lineage, whose domus lifts itself arrogantly near +the summit of the Esquiline, at the head of Mercury Street, looking +down upon the tiles of the humble insula _Flavia Victoria_. + +Calvus, although a member of the upper aristocracy, is not +extraordinarily wealthy. He does not, like some of his friends, possess +simultaneously three large city houses, often moving from one to +another according to season and mood. He has only four country villas, +one far in the North by the Italian lakes, one in the Etruscan hills, +one fairly close to Rome, and a fourth on the delightful Bay of Naples. +His city residence is inferior in magnificence not merely to those of +many senators but even of many equites (second-class nobles) and of +a whole cohort of rich, upstart freedmen. Nevertheless, it is a fine +mansion, which has been in the Calvian family for many generations, and +it is crammed with treasured heirlooms. Calvus, unlike certain noble +colleagues, is happily married and rejoices in two half-grown sons and +a daughter. For them a _familia_ of only one hundred and fifty slaves +suffices, although the noble Gratia sometimes complains to her husband: +“Our staff is disgracefully small.” + +The Calvi are really an extremely old family in what is now becoming a +city of upstarts. Publius’s forebears have lived for centuries on the +Esquiline and their domus has been rebuilt many times. In Punic War +days it probably consisted only of a central atrium, with an opening +in the ceiling to admit light and emit smoke, and a few dark cell-like +chambers radiating from the great living room. This hall rightly +received its name of the “black place” (_ater_) from the soot from the +open hearth which was perpetually caked around the rafters. The walls +were of rubble, the floor of simple tiles or even merely of pounded +earth, and the roof was of thatch. Such a house could stow away the +many children and the relatively few servants of a senator who helped +to humiliate Carthage. + + +=31. The Plan of a Large Residence.=--Very different is the domus now +as we approach the lofty Ionic pillars before its portal, nevertheless, +the plan of the old house has not quite vanished in the stately +mansion. The Roman house is always (like the Greek) essentially the +typical _southern_ dwelling built around _courts_, and getting its +light thence, and with little dependence upon exterior windows. What +has happened now is that the old living room has expanded into a +magnificent light-bathed hall, with the sun streaming not through a +smoke-hole but an ample opening. The rooms leading from this court +have multiplied in number and vastly increased in size. Then through a +series of passages one enters a second court even larger and handsomer, +and with another array of dependent chambers. + +In such a house the main apartments are on the first floor, but there +is a second story for the lodging of the retinues of slaves. In +the rear of all there is usually a garden. Every domus has its own +particular plan and pretentions but all conform to the general scheme +of two main courts, just as almost every house of another civilization +will demand its parlor and its dining room. + + [Illustration: ATRIUM OF HOUSE IN POMPEII LOOKING TOWARDS + THE PERISTYLIUM: present condition.] + +Calvus’s mansion is priced by the real estate experts at about +3,500,000 sesterces (say $140,000);[18] but there are not a few houses +of richer senators worth four times as much. The structure faces a +street which is reasonably clear of shops and where all the neighbors +are at least equites or else very wealthy freedmen. The building does +not rise as high as an insula; in fact it possesses only two stories: +the first broken by mere peepholes in the solid stuccoed walls, the +second by larger windows all heavily grated. One can guess part of the +reason for these bars from a placard hanging in the entrance: + + NO SLAVE IS TO QUIT THE HOUSE WITHOUT + THE MASTER’S ORDERS. PENALTY 100 LASHES + + +=32. Entrance to the Residence.=--The entrance itself, however, +is handsome. The columns on either side are of fine Luna marble. +Pass between these, and you enter a vestibule, a considerable outer +chamber with fine pilasters let into the walls, where at this moment +a swarm of the Senator’s clients are mustering. Then you approach the +actual doors of the _ostium_. These stand open but every passer is +being scrutinized, and if questionable, is stopped by a janitor, a +highly responsible slave, who has a seat just inside. Many a janitor +is supported in his duty by a surly dog, but here there is merely a +life-like mosaic creature, wrought in the tiles of the pavement, with +CAVE CANEM (“Beware the dog”) written beneath him. Overhead in a gilt +cage however is swinging a tame magpie, and the creature croaks out his +“_Salve! Salve!_” as the guests press into the atrium. + + +=33. The Atrium and the View across It.=--The moment we are inside the +transformation of scene from the dusty, dingy street is startling. If +other persons do not obstruct the view, you can see clear down the long +vistas of the house from the entrance to the greenery of the garden. +Before us is the atrium, a magnificent court, paved with elaborate +mosaics, and with four elegant Corinthian columns in pink marble +upholding the roof around a wide light-well. Under this light-well is +a complicated fountain, where bronze tritons and dancing nymphs are +shooting great jets into a white marble basin in which grow luxurious +water plants. On the inner sides of the atrium, and on either of the +numerous doors opening into the same, stand statues, bronze or marble, +upon carved stone pedestals. + + [Illustration: PLAN OF A ROMAN MANSION + (_Domus_): strictly conventionalized.] + +Many of the doorways around this elegant hall are closed by heavy +curtains, of rich saffron, purple, olivine, or blue, the hues being +selected to blend marvelously with the tints of the columns. Where the +walls are not a sheen of marble, they are spread with elaborate and +wonderfully decorative frescos--of which more hereafter. On special +pedestals of honor are fine art objects, valuable bric-a-brac, tripods, +vases, silver cups, war trophies. The mosaics on the floor (could we +stop to gaze) are more beautiful than any carpet. In brilliant jewel +work, for it is little else, has been wrought out a series of pictures +showing the campaigns of Alexander. There is another series giving the +legend of Perseus. The sunlight, the spray from the fountain, the +sheen of the marbles, the brilliance of the frescos, all combine in an +effect that is dazzling. + + +=34. The Rooms in the Rear and the _Peristylium_.=--But this hall is +merely the beginning, not the end of the domus. In the rear of the +atrium there is the master’s office, the _tablinum_, a very large +alcove, a handsome apartment where he will receive those guests who are +come strictly on business. This and the atrium, however, are merely the +public rooms of the house; the real living rooms are beyond, although, +by a survival of old custom, the symbolic marriage couch of the master +and mistress stands on a back wall by the tablinum. The heavy curtains +have been swept aside from the broad passageways (_fauces_) which lead +into the second court--the _peristylium_. + + [Illustration: INTERIOR OF A ROMAN MANSION, LOOKING FROM + THE ATRIUM INTO THE PERISTYLIUM: restored.] + +Here the atrium is duplicated--but on a much more elaborate scale. +There is another column-girdled court; but the pillars are taller and +of an exquisite blue-veined marble. A huge curtain swings on its cords +ready for expansion as the sun grows hot. Beneath the light-opening, +there is not merely a second fountain, but a real plat of greensward, +a _viridarium_, with a bright bed of rare flowers and even a few +tropical plants. There is another phalanx of statues. Under the +long quadrangular colonnades around the court are spread out deeply +upholstered couches, easy chairs, small tables, and other appurtenances +for luxurious existence. The ceilings of the colonnades and of the +rooms leading thence are covered with metallic fretwork gilded in a +soft sheen, while the intense light filters down gratefully between the +columns, and sinks to a pleasant twilight in the niches and nooks in +the walls of the peristylium. + + [Illustration: SCENE IN A PERISTYLIUM.] + + +=35. The Dining Room (_Triclinium_) and the Chapel.=--From this second +court to left and to right open doors which lead to the master’s +and mistress’s sleeping chambers, and those of their children, their +guests, and their upper servants. The rooms are small, but are always +daintily frescoed. + + [Illustration: ROMAN TYPE OF HOUSE AT POMPEII, LOOKING + ACROSS THE ATRIUM: present condition.] + +Far more important than these chambers is the great dining room +(_triclinium_). Calvus’s friends tell him he really ought to rebuild +his residence and provide a special “summer dining room” on the north +side of the house, and a warmer “winter dining room” on the south +side as in all the newer mansions.[19] However, his triclinium is +very handsome; with good pilasters of Hymettus marble, fine statuary, +sideboards loaded with rare old plate, and a ceiling fretted with ivory +and arranged so that it can be partly opened at the climax of a feast +to drop garlands and to spray down unguents upon the guests. + +In the rear of the house there are also a smaller breakfast room, and a +special hall (_oecus_) for the display of even additional art objects, +likewise a library, and a private bathroom, both to be described later; +while in the rear of the peristylium is one of the most important rooms +assuredly in the entire mansion--the kitchen (_culina_), where Gratia’s +proudest possession, a truly superior cook, prepares dinners that atone +for the sorrowful fact that “we have only one dining room.” + +Off the peristylium, too, one notes what amounts to a miniature chapel. +Before a temple front composed of short columns mounted on a kind of +table are set several little images of beautiful fairy-like creatures +of both sexes. These are the family _lares_, the honored guardians of +the old house of the Calvi. Once they stood in the atrium, but in later +days although withdrawn to the more private peristylium, they have not +ceased to be dear. Calvus discusses with his philosopher friends, “Are +there really any gods?”; but he never fails to cast his incense night +and morning upon the small gilt brazier which smokes before his family +lares. In the kitchen, also, there is a second little niche and still +other images of the lares, where they receive bits of food and innocent +prayers from all the servants--even more devotedly than from the lordly +folk in the peristylium. + + +=36. The Garden and the Slaves’ Quarters.=--Another passage beside +the kitchen leads us into what can be just glimpsed as one enters the +atrium--the rear garden set in by high walls. Land is too valuable +in Rome for Calvus to permit himself much more than a short graveled +walk under a few fine old box trees, but by an intensive gardening +that another age might style “Japanese” there is laid out a miniature +brooklet, a cascade plunging into a little pool containing tame +lampreys, and some small pines, which have been forced into the +semblance of a tiny forest. A broad marble seat now strewn with +cushions, a good statue of a dancing Pan, the rushing music of +the water, and the breeze rustling the foliage--all these make the +tumultuous, squalid street and the dirty garrets of the _Flavia +Victoria_ seem very far away.--In reality they are barely a stone’s +throw down the hill. + + [Illustration: CORNER IN A GARDEN IN REAR OF A ROMAN + HOUSE.] + +Where do Calvus’s slaves keep themselves? Undoubtedly in the very +cramped barracks of the second story, a section of which looks down +from an upper tier of columns above the court of the peristylium. Even +lordly Romans spend little time in their chambers and need only small +bedrooms. For the slaves there is extremely little accommodation; any +kind of a sleeping pocket, very truly called a “cell” (_cella_) will +answer, where a stool, a blanket, and a thin mat on the floor suffice +for all save the upper servants. + +Under the house there are ordinary cellars for the storage of +provisions. Somewhere, too, is a strong room, with barred windows, and +heavy door, and inside, fastened upon the floor, a set of stocks and +manacles. Lucky is the day when, in a slave-familia of this size, this +lock-up has not at least one backsliding occupant. + + +=37. The Floors and Windows.=--Inquiring about certain details of such +a mansion we discover that like most other Roman houses, it is built of +concrete, faced with brick or coarse stone and stucco, and then with +as many interior surfaces as possible, covered with slabs of marble +or decorative frescos. The roof is of brick tiles; the floors in the +humbler chambers, where mosaic is unnecessary, are partly of concrete +and partly of small pieces of stone and tile roughly fitted together +and then pounded down by a rammer (_pavimentum_). Two or three rooms +most used in winter have a special and very luxurious device--part of +their floors are made of hollow tile pipes, and through these hot air +from a furnace can be forced to warm them precisely as is done at the +baths.[20] + +Little thus far has been said about the windows. These open mainly upon +the courts, and they are so few that very many rooms, especially those +used by the slaves, seem disagreeably dark, although in the long, hot +season this drawback somewhat vanishes. Most of the windows are closed +merely by board shutters swinging in leaves, and rather handsomely +paneled; but shutting them results in a state of artificial night. + +For certain rooms used by the master and mistress there is a much +better arrangement. Numbers of small pieces of glass are set in bronze +lattices and inserted in the windows. Glass cannot be made that is +strictly transparent, but it is highly translucent. Such rooms are +delightfully illuminated all day long. Certain other wealthy houses +use windows set with translucent talc (soft magnesium silicate), but +these openings are hardly as satisfactory. Glass is slowly coming into +general use, and the window panes will improve as glass-makers learn +how to blow larger sheets and to make their product more transparent. + + +=38. Frescos, Beautiful and Innumerable.=--From the house itself +we can turn to its ornamentation and furniture. The use of marble +columns and of great slabs of marble veneer has been repeatedly +mentioned. Africa, Egypt, and Greece as well as Italy have been +ransacked by Roman contractors for their treasures of stone.[21] Even +this private mansion of the Calvi boasts its green and black monolithic +pillars, as well as its ceiling of gilded fretwork. + +Where the sheen of polished marble does not meet the eye almost +invariably there are bright _frescos_. These are the _Roman wall +paper_. Even in the poorest insulæ we have met them, cheap hackneyed +things, garish in color, the work not of artists but of common +craftsmen. Yet most of even these are not without a certain decorative +beauty and their number is enormous.[22] In the humble tenements the +pictures often consist of pillars painted upon the walls, with gardens +and landscapes represented as if seen between the portico, so the +lodgers may have the pretence of looking upon the greenery reserved for +the mighty. + +In a fine domus, however, the frescos, infinite in number, often +approximate real works of art. There is no time to discuss their types +and history; it is sufficient to say the decorative effect is amazingly +effective. Some rooms have their walls covered with a variety of bright +conceits and patterns,--balconies, perches, tapestries of fruit and +flowers, garlanded columns and flying sprites and maidens. Another +room has pictures of all the possible handicrafts and trades; but with +cupids working the forges and wine presses, or chaffering as merchants. +Gratia’s boudoir is full of amorous scenes of brides adorning +themselves and of lovers’ meetings. In the triclinium there are elegant +pictures of still life--fishes, fruit, birds; and in the peristylium +and atrium are elaborate landscapes, scenes from Greek mythology, and a +series of pictures depicting the voyages and adventures of Æneas.[23] +There are no picture frames, but a skilful use of colored lines and +sometimes of a painted setting of columns and architectural pediments +makes each scene stand out to great advantage. + +The colors of all these frescos are very brilliant but they are never +painfully crude. Where the walls are not covered by painting or marble +they are tinted a soft brown or gray; and where the columns are not of +naturally shaded marble they also are gently tinted to a neutral tone, +although the lower third is usually painted a bright red or yellow. + +The numerous statues about the house are all in their turn given a kind +of flesh color, with some other hue laid upon their drapery. Perhaps +in the open, under the light of a northern summer these features would +appear barbaric and offensive; under the gentle radiance diffused from +the apertures of the atrium and the peristylium they create a scene of +marvelous beauty, fascinating, and generally restful to the eye. + + +=39. The Profusion of Statues and Art Objects.=--So much for the +wall decorations, and we must turn to the statues. The mansion seems +to swarm with slaves, yet they are hardly more numerous than the +sculptures in bronze and marble. Many of these are good copies of the +best masterpieces of Greece. The splendid athlete in the atrium is from +an original by Praxiteles; the Penelope in the peristylium follows +precisely the noble work of Scopas. Many others are simply graceful and +ornamental but less pretentious works by lesser geniuses, often adapted +in detail by the clever copyists. + + [Illustration: PORTRAIT BUST--POMPEY THE GREAT.] + +The whole quantity of art objects in such a house is enormous. The legs +and arms of the chairs and every knob and handle upon the furniture +are chased or carved with an amazing skill. The veriest knick-nacks +and articles for everyday life have been transformed into things of +beauty. In the triclinium is a long series of statuettes presenting the +myths of Bacchus--the god himself, the drunken Silenus, the satyrs, +bacchants, and all the other revelers. It would be easy, indeed, to +reconstruct a good part of the standard Græco-Roman mythology from +the statues, statuettes, and reliefs, no less than from the frescos +scattered about the mansion and garden. + + +=40. Family Portrait Busts.=--However, there is one lengthy array +of sculptures in the atrium that does not bear the hand of Greece. +These are the portrait busts of the Junii Calvi. There they stand, a +full score of them; all the more distinguished members of the great +house since sculpture became a facile art in Rome. + + [Illustration: TYPICAL ROMAN PORTRAIT--MARC ANTONY.] + +It is an array of cold, hard, yet withal terribly efficient faces. +Slightly battered is the broad homely countenance of that tough old +Calvus who was Scipio’s legate at Zama. Here also is the sharp shrewd +face of his great-grandson who was prætor under Sulla; here the more +refined and intellectual lines of the grandson of the last named +worthy who won Octavius’s thanks at Actium for gallantry with his +bireme, and afterward was a famous governor of Syria; here the high +forehead of that courageous Stoic, the present master’s grandfather, +who bade Nero do his worst, and who calmly “opened his veins” when the +centurion arrived with the tyrant’s order to commit suicide. There are +also displayed the busts of several distinguished women of the family +including that Junia who was the bosom friend of the Empress Livia. + +In addition to these, there are the portrait busts of the present +Publius Calvus, of his wife Gratia, and of his three children. They +are all executed with remarkable verisimilitude and without the least +flattery. Customs with the hair often change, and the headdress of +Gratia is made detachable so that if her style of headdress alters, the +portrait may be promptly brought up to date. Young Sextus the second +boy had a birthday yesterday; his statue is still hung with wreaths; +flowers too hang around the likeness of Gnæus Calvus, Publius’s +brother, who lately died while proprætor of Bætica (South Spain). + + +=41. Death Masks (_Imagines_).=--The sight of these busts is a constant +incentive to both the young Calvi to remember their lordly lineage; +but they have a still prouder treasure. The enormously rich freedman +Vedius just down the street would give twenty million sesterces for +the social preëminence implied by the possession of the great cupboard +all bound with gilt and bronze bands which stands in the tablinum. +Here, carefully labeled, are kept several scores of waxen death +masks, blackened, marred, and ugly enough now, but all taken when the +successive heads of the family lay in their last slumber. + +Many of these date from before the production in Rome of sculptured +portrait statues. Here, for example, is the mask of the Calvus who +helped win the consulship for the plebeians; and here of him who +seconded Appius Claudius in the Senate when he turned away the glozing +envoys of Pyrrhus. When alien upstarts complain of “noble pride,” +it is easy for a Calvus to toss his head: “Have we not something to +be proud of!”--and later, it will be duly explained how these waxen +_imagines_ appear very conspicuously at public funerals (p. 175). + + +=42. Couches, Their General Use.=--One cannot, however, sit or lie down +upon statues or portrait busts, and the domus is well provided with +conventional furniture. In general the Romans prefer to _recline_ when +men of a later age may prefer to _sit_. Visitors sprawl down on couches +for a little conversation, and the regular method of writing is not at +a desk but lying on a couch with the right leg doubled and the tablet +held on the knee. Long habit makes this attitude quite comfortable. + +There are many special kinds of beds for reading, dining, and for +sleeping. Of course the latter are the most elaborate, and in Calvus’s +and Gratia’s chamber the wooden bed is so high that it has to be +reached by a footstool. The legs are of bronze, elaborately turned and +carved, the frame is veneered with tortoise shell and the supports at +the sides of the sloping pillow-rest are set with plates of silver. +As for the thick mattresses they are of the finest down and the ample +blankets are dyed purple and embroidered with gold thread. The couches +in the triclinium are lighter and lower although of very fine cabinet +work,[24] but they have to be made larger for they must accommodate +three diners. The reading couches (_lectuli_--“little beds”) are still +lighter and simpler, although of elegant design, and those scattered +under the peristylium are overlaid with plates of gold leaf. + + [Illustration: ROMAN LAMPS: collection in Naples + Museum.] + + +=43. Elegant Chairs and Costly Tables.=--Excluding the couches the +furnishings of a Roman domus seem much simpler than those used in +a later age. There are few carpets, no great loss in view of the +beautiful mosaic floors, although there are rich, heavy portières +across many passages. The chairs, frequently of light and elegant +workmanship, are as a rule simple and often backless. Some, however, +are splendidly inlaid with silver, and there are a few great +_cathedræ_, ponderous arm chairs with lofty backs. + + [Illustration: ALTAR WITH DESIGN OF A CURULE CHAIR.] + +In the atrium, moreover, there stands an object surveyed with great +pride by Calvus’s children--their father’s _sella curulis_, the +folding, backless arm chair with a seat of leather straps which the +senator had occupied while prætor. Presently (they hope) he will sit +again thereon before the admiring Senate house, this time presiding as +the veritable consul. The “curule chair,” despite its gold and ivory +arms and cushions covered with purple Alexandrian fabrics, is anything +but a comfortable seat through a tedious official ceremony; but who +thinks of personal comfort when reckoning the glories of its public +occupancy! + +Besides the chairs there are everywhere the tables. These are numerous +but low and small. In the dining room they are round and barely two +feet in diameter; but what a wealth of art and taste has gone into +their making! All are of extremely fine wood, but the three reserved +for the regular couches of the dinner guests have their legs overlaid +with plates of magnificently embossed gold, and the material upon the +tops is composed of single thin slabs cross-sawn from the trunks of the +great citrus trees (a form of cypress) on Mount Atlas. + +This wood can be finished to show an exquisite wavy pattern or +curly veins--“tiger citrus,” “panther citrus,” or “peacock-tail +citrus”--the experts call the varieties. Over really fine specimens +true connoisseurs go into ecstasies, and fortunes can be wasted. A +table somewhat larger than Calvus’s has been known to sell for 500,000 +sesterces ($20,000); and there is a record price of twice that figure. +The tables in the present mansion are nowhere nearly so valuable; yet +they are among the most precious objects in the house. If there is a +fire, they will be rescued almost before anything else, always barring +the waxen _imagines_. + + +=44. Chests, Cabinets, Water Clocks, and Curios.=--Of course there are +many other articles of furniture like the great _arca_, the master’s +strong box in the tablinum; heavily locked and riveted down upon the +stone beneath. There are the elegant tall candelabra, of bronze or +even of silver, elaborately ornamented and swinging at night with such +batteries of olive-oil lamps as to make the marbles, frescos, and +mosaics give back an alluring glitter. There is the water clock in the +peristylium, a kind of glorified hour-glass, so adjusted as to record +small fractions of time, and beside which a special slave usually +stands all day long to call off the passage of each hour to the family. +There are great cabinets, chests, and cupboards full of plate, fine +blankets, and extremely elaborate wardrobes. + +In addition to all these upon a kind of sideboard there stand forth +real or alleged objects of value or antiquity, a silver cup taken +at the capture of Syracuse; a tall black and red vase signed by the +master potter Callisthenes; and a statuette of a dancing girl which +is probably a true work of Lysippus. Conspicuous, too, is a silver +bowl, battered and discolored, and of extreme simplicity. Mock it +not, however, it is “the ancestral salt cellar” (as remarks Horace), +the one silver dish possessed by the good old Calvi, when in all the +Roman Senate there was only a single complete silver dinner service +to be exchanged from house to house when high officials entertained +ambassadors. + + +=45. Spurious Antiques.=--Publius Calvus is happy in possessing +undeniably genuine antiques. He can afford to laugh at the collection +of the rich freedman across the way. That poor fellow, anxious to +“keep in style” and to display an art collection, has fallen into the +clutches of unscrupulous dealers. He has filled his atrium with absurd +specimens such as “cups from the table of Laomedon, a double vase +that belonged to Nestor and a tankard used by Achilles.” His citrus +tables are of very thin veneer, and in his atrium his impossible wife +has actually on display a ponderous golden box in which her husband’s +first beard is deposited. It is also gossiped about that this crude +fellow actually pretended sickness lately, merely that he might receive +condoling friends in bed and display to them the gold chasings on the +bedstead, the magnificent scarlet coverlets, and proclaim his riches by +having the mattress steeped in expensive perfumes. + + +=46. Pet Animals.=--One thing more must be stated about the house +of the Calvi before passing to its human denizens. There are a great +many tame animals in evidence. Over the doorway one already notes +the caged magpie. From a dark corner within a large cage blinks a +morose-looking owl. The master’s fine greyhound has a litter of puppies +which are now scrambling around the peristylium with a special slave to +look after them. Behind a column is seen gliding a slinky civet. The +children delight in a small monkey tethered now in the garden. Gratia +especially has her own beloved lap dog and its personal slave-boy +custodian. She does not, however, imitate a certain female friend who +dotes upon snakes, and who has a whole cage of the creatures which she +often twines about her neck to scare her companions. + +So much for the material aspects of a Roman insula and a Roman domus. +It is time to examine their inhabitants. + + + + + CHAPTER IV + + ROMAN WOMEN AND ROMAN MARRIAGES + + +=47. Honorable Status of Roman Women.=--Calvus is the lordly senator +when his litter swings him down to the Curia by the Old Forum to +participate in what is still the most venerable council in the world, +but in his own house his authority is divided. He is not even sure that +one-half the power is really his. In all private matters his sway is +shared by his spouse Gratia. + +Many are the evils inflicting Imperial Rome, but oppression of women is +not one of them. By the age of Hadrian it has long since come to pass +what Cato the Elder sadly predicted three centuries earlier, when Roman +women were learning the way to freedom: “On the day that women are our +equals, they will be our masters.” + +Roman women are, indeed, excluded from seats in the Senate and from +the long-defunct right to vote in the public assemblies.[25] They +cannot command armies nor receive governorships, although every now +and then an angry senator vainly proposes a resolution that governors +shall not take their wives along with them to their provinces, lest the +latter constitute themselves the real rulers of the district. Women do +not act as judges or jurors. Nay more: legally they are under legal +disabilities calculated to stir the rage of their “equal suffrage” +sisters of a later day. They have always the status of minors, and are +subject to the legal control of either father, guardian, or husband to +their dying hour. + +All this is true, yet, what of it? The jurists have long ago devised +fictions of the law whereby the women have practically as complete +control of their property as have their brothers; and the government +of the Empire is peculiarly a government of backstairs intrigues and +of secret influence. What chance have mere men against women in such +warfare? Custom also assigns to women an amount of freedom in most +social matters which makes Imperial Rome a feminine paradise that can +only be matched by Twentieth Century America. + + +=48. Men Reluctant to Marry.=--Long since leaders of the bolder +sex have had to reason with their fellow citizens on the necessity +of marriage as a patriotic duty. The pragmatic old censor Quintus +Metellus in 102 B.C. delivered a kind of a lay sermon: “If we could +get along without wives, fellow citizens (_Quirites_) we should all +spare ourselves the _tedium_ of marriage, but nature has ordained that +we can neither live pleasantly with wives, nor exist at all without +them--therefore let us sacrifice our personal interests to those of +society.” After him Emperor Augustus enacted stiff laws to decrease the +alarming number of bachelors, and to give special privileges to the +parents of three children. This does not prevent many prominent Romans +from looking upon a wife as a kind of expensive bondage often to be +shunned altogether. + + +=49. Rights and Privileges of Married Women.=--The great majority +of all Romans are married. Even the slaves are allowed to join in a +kind of unofficial wedlock known as _contubernium_, which only a +very harsh master will dissolve. As for the free married women they +go everywhere and do almost everything. No husband’s permission is +needed when they visit the Forum or theater. They can sue and be sued +or give testimony in the courts without his intervention. They manage +their own property. Gratia, for example, is well off in her own right. +Her estates are in charge of a dapper young freedman Ephorus, who is +incessantly visiting her, and who never dreams of taking orders from +her husband. So long as Gratia is barely faithful to Calvus he has no +right to complain. He thanks his “Good Genius,” therefore, that things +are not as in his friend Probus’s house, where the mistress’s factotum +is suspected of being on altogether too familiar terms with his fair +employer. + + [Illustration: A ROMAN MATRON.] + +Nevertheless, this freedom is supposed to carry with it corresponding +responsibilities. Every Roman woman theoretically is responsible for +her husband’s good name and for the wise ordering of his family. No +right-minded woman dismisses the hope that at the end they will put +the great words on her tombstone: “_She counselled well. She managed +well. She spun wool._” + +The control of the vast _familia_ of slaves is usually in a matron’s +hands, a duty calculated to bring out every executive quality within +her. She largely conducts the education of her sons, no less than +of her daughters. No Roman is ashamed to admit (as an Athenian in +Pericles’s day might have been ashamed) that in the great crises +of life he took the authoritative advice of his mother.[26] Roman +civilization is, therefore, for better or worse, a civilization to +which women no less than men have been suffered to apply the full +powers of their genius. _It is a “hundred per cent civilization”_; +whereas, that of Athens, considering the manner in which Athenian women +were confined and ignored, was hardly more than a “fifty per cent +civilization.” + + +=50. Selection of Husbands for Young Girls.=--It is a fact, however, +that in one great and vital matter Roman women are not free agents. +They usually have their husbands, at least their first husbands, chosen +for them by their parents. This comes to pass largely because usage +requires that girls should be married so young that no rational romance +on their part is really possible. + +Custom amounting to law requires that a girl shall be at least twelve, +and a boy fourteen before marriage. In the case of girls this minimum +is often adhered to pretty closely, but betrothals can be arranged +still earlier. Cicero’s daughter Tullia was betrothed at ten and +married at thirteen--a very common arrangement. Nobody imagined she had +the least right to complain. Marriage involves a great shift in family +relations, and the control of the family pertains strictly to the +_pater familias_ and to his _matrona_. They will ordinarily exercise +loving pains in selecting a suitable spouse for a daughter, but the +decision must be very largely theirs. + +Boys as a rule marry much later, often not until well into manhood. +They can demand inevitably a certain right of choice, although the +parents still exercise a marked authority. As for bachelors, if they +indulge in various coarse “affairs” with dancing girls, only very +peevish persons are critical. After marriage, however, they must treat +their wives with reasonable outward respect, if by no means always +with austere faithfulness. In any case a girl is likely to be married +off too young either to resist her parents’ choice or to pick out +intelligently any proper husband for herself.[27] + + +=51. A Marriage Treaty among Noble-Folk.=--When Gratia’s parents +decided she was old enough to “become settled” they applied to a +distinguished kinsman, an ex-consul, to help them to find a suitable +bridegroom. This noble gentleman looked over a list of his younger +friends, selected Calvus, and wrote a careful letter commending him, +praising his lineage, and his firm hopes of official distinction, +and telling how “he had a frank, open countenance, fresh colored and +blooming and a handsome well-knit figure”; in short “he was quite +the fellow to deserve so fine a girl.” The great man went on to add +that the favored candidate had a respectable fortune, for “though I +dislike to speak of the financial aspects of the matter, still one must +consider the tendencies of the day.” Not one word was said as to how +Gratia herself might want to be consulted; her consent was taken for +granted.[28] + +Gratia’s parents, therefore, approached Calvus’s guardian, his uncle. +He being satisfied as to dowry and social adjustments, both young +people were informed of what had been determined for them. Gratia +and Calvus alike had always expected some such arrangement and +capitulated with reasonable grace. The ensuing marriage, founded not +on any romance, but on a cold-blooded study of what supposedly made +for domestic happiness, in this case at least has been fortunate and +fruitful. The wedded pair have come truly to love one another, and they +dwell in great harmony. In this general manner marriages are arranged +every day in Rome. + +Of course these are first marriages. Let Gratia become a widow, or let +her imitate so many of her friends and divorce her husband, and her +second spouse will ordinarily be of quite her own choosing; and Calvus, +of course, in selecting again, would be completely his own master. + + +=52. A Betrothal in Wealthy Circles.=--Gratia’s daughter Junia +is only ten, yet her parents are already beginning to think about +betrothals; but only a block up the street there has just been the +excitement of an actual wedding. Aulus Statilius Pomponius is only an +eques, but the gods have blessed him with a hundred million sesterces +($4,000,000). He and his wife have a daughter who will inherit vast +possessions, and wealth is a splendid substitute for lineage. They have +found a young Gaius Ulpius Pollio, already in the Senate, who claims a +distant cousinship to the Emperor himself. Pollio is none too wealthy +and is already a widower, but Statilia and her mother are infinitely +delighted at an alliance with the edges of an imperial house. Nothing +has lacked, therefore, for an ultra-fashionable wedding, the talk of +the entire capital. + +First came the betrothal, a great social concourse in Pomponius’s +atrium, a throng of equites and senators with their wives, jewels +flashing, countless tongues gossiping, with Statilia led in by her +father to the center of the circle to meet the bridegroom-to-be. +Statilia said not a word through the entire proceedings. All Pollio’s +dealings were with her father, and in clear voice the two men exchanged +the legal formulas: “Do you promise to give your daughter, Statilia to +me, to be my wedded wife?” said the younger man. + +“The gods bring luck! I betroth her.” + +“The gods bring luck!” + +After that technically Statilia became a bride-elect; she was a +_sponsa_. Either side had legally the right still to break the +agreement, but it was socially ruinous to do so. Pollio presented +Statilia with various valuable toilet articles, and especially with a +ring to be worn on the third finger of the left hand, because everybody +said that “a nerve ran directly from this particular finger to the +heart.” It was the engagement ring of a later age almost precisely. + + +=53. Adjusting the Dowry.=--Then followed weeks of frantic +preparation: the women busy with the things which always have +made women busy over weddings long before the days of Romulus and +Remus; Pomponius and Pollio with wrestling over the very nice legal +adjustments of Statilia’s dowry. How much would the old eques give +in all, in cash, land, and banker’s securities? How much for his +daughter’s special use? How much as _dos_, the funds which the +new son-in-law could touch? How could the property be arranged so that +if the marriage ended presently in a divorce (as spiteful wagers were +already being laid that it might) the _dos_ could be given back to +Statilia without grievous loss of principal? + +At one time the betrothal almost had to be cancelled, such extreme +shrewdness was shown on both sides. But finally the matter was +adjusted. Three noble friends for either side pressed their seal rings +in witness to the contracts. The day came for the wedding. + + +=64. Dressing the Bride.=--Family exigencies required a springtime +wedding, when there were a great many unlucky days to be avoided; +but an expert Etruscan haruspex at length found a day that satisfied +Statilia and her parents’ scruples. On the night before the great event +she laid all her playthings, her childish amulet (_bulla_), and her +childish garments on the altar of the paternal Lares whose protection +she was quitting forever. Then she went to bed in a _tunica recta_, +a fine, yellow garment woven in one piece, supposedly an article of +extremely good omen. + +The next day the bride was dressed personally by her mother with +unusual care. However expensive her ornaments she had to wear this +same one-piece tunic next to her skin, the gown being held around the +waist by a band of wool tied with a complicated “knot of Hercules.” +She wore, of course, all the jewels loaded upon neck, ears, arms, and +fingers which by the contract she was to bring Pollio in her trousseau. +Her long hair had been parted according to ancient custom by a spear +into six locks, braided now with ribbons weighted down with pearls. +Her shoes were of finest white leather covered with more pearls. Over +her head streamed a long, gauzy flame-colored veil of silk--worth +very literally more than its weight in gold.[29] Pressing down this +bridal veil was a garland of flowers picked, as custom required, by the +bride’s own hand, and interspersed with sprigs of the sacred “verbena” +herbs. Pollio, when he presented himself, was in the best gala costume +of a senator, but there were no special “wedding garments” for the +bridegroom, corresponding to the bridal veil. + + +=55. The Marriage Ceremonies.=--The afternoon was at hand, and the +insulæ in neighboring quarters emptied their plebeian throngs to gaze +at the gilded litters which went swinging up to the house of Pomponius, +the armies of scarlet-clad running footmen, the pompous freedmen +marching beside their patron’s sedans, the bravery of purple robes, +the flash of gold and of jewels. Of course, the atrium had been hung +with garlands. The air inside was heavy with the perfumes of flowers, +of costly unguents, and of the finest Arabian incense, while the noble +guests elbowed and pushed one another to get near the altar near the +tablinum and win the best sight of the happy pair. + +Roman marriages are pretty strictly civil ceremonies. There is no legal +requirement for any religious rites. Hardly anybody now is married +according to the stale old formula of the _confarreatio_, when the +betrothed couple became wedded by eating a cake which had just been +consecrated by the Pontifex Maximus. A much simpler form is now used, +but before the ceremony there always has to be the sacrifice. + +Amid a decently pious hush a sheep is led to the side of the water tank +(_impluvium_) in the atrium; the shrewd-eyed old haruspex, trailing his +long robe and muttering jargon that passes for Etruscan, is aided by +two skillful assistants in killing the creature promptly and avoiding +disgusting gore; then in ripping open its belly and examining with +expert eye the still quivering entrails. (See p. 429.) It is proper now +for Statilia to turn pale and clutch the arm of her mother. What if the +signs were unfavorable? “Whoever heard of bad omens being discovered +at a great wedding?” cynically whispers a senator. “_Bene_--good!” +announces the haruspex with a leer. “_Bene! Bene!_” echo all the +guests. The soothsayer retires. The wedding can proceed. + +The final ceremony is very simple. First the tablets of the marriage +contract and the transfer of the dowry are produced, read, and, if not +already witnessed, are signed by the proper attestors. Then a young +matron-of-honor, Statilia’s _pronuba_, leads the bride up to Pollio. +She thrusts out her hand from under her great veil and takes the hand +of her husband-elect. Everybody listens while he, and not any priest +or official for him, puts the direct question: “Will you be my _mater +familias_?” “Yes,” answers Statilia, perhaps a little too readily; and +then she asks him openly: “And will you be my _pater familias_?” “Yes,” +and immediately there is a general shout of congratulation. + +These decisive words once spoken, Pollio, his bride, and her parents +unite in placing a cake of coarse bread upon the altar, uttering brief +dedications of the food to Jupiter and Juno, and also to the quaint +rural gods Tellus, Picumnus, and Pilumnus who will bless the estates +of the new couple. The cakes are presented in a basket held by a +young boy, Statilia’s cousin, her _camillus_, both of whose parents +are required to be living. The company now redoubles its cry of “Good +luck! Good luck! _felicitas!_”--and everybody is assuredly in excellent +appetite for the ensuing wedding feast. + + +=56. The Wedding Procession.=--This is not the place for describing a +great banquet (see p. 113); it is enough here to state that Pomponius +is obliged to justify his wealth by a prodigal hospitality. Vain has +proved Augustus’s law limiting the cost of wedding feasts to one +thousand sesterces ($40). Such regulations win only laughter! + +As the climax after the dainties comes the distribution of pieces of +the huge wedding-cake (_mustaceum_), made of fine meal steeped in +new wine and served upon bay leaves. By this time everybody has drunk +enough good Massic and Falernian to be excited and talkative, it has +become twilight in the street, and Pomponius’s chief freedman (the +master of ceremonies) gives the signal: “The procession!” + +In the vestibule musters a squad of flute players and torch bearers. +As the music strikes up, good form requires Statilia to cast herself +into her mother’s arms and weep and scream violently. Good form +equally requires Pollio to tear her thence with playful violence--“a +remembrance,” people say, “of the Romans’ rape of the Sabines.” +Statilia promptly ceases struggling and submits cheerfully to being led +through the door. + +The wedding procession is an indispensable part of the ceremony. +Probably if Pollio lives in another city, some family friend will +now loan his residence for “leading home the bride.” As it is, the +bridegroom fortunately possesses a handsome house about a mile distant +on the Quirinal. For all her wealth Statilia has to walk the entire +way. + +First go the flute players bringing the crowds out of all the insulæ +when they cross the Subura; then long files of the younger guests of +both sexes, talking vivaciously, and flourishing white-thorn torches; +then the camillus and a youthful assistant bearing ostentatiously the +bride’s spindle and distaff, token of the household labors presumably +ahead of her; then the bride herself, led on either hand by a boy both +of whose parents are living, while a third of like good fortune carries +a special torch of honor. Pollio himself walks just behind the bride, +and is kept busy tossing walnuts to all the children in the crowd +in token of the fact that he has now (for the second time) put away +childish things. After them, with more flambeaux and in merry disorder, +taking pains to exhibit their fine robes and jewels, follow all the +older relatives and friends of both parties. The torchlight, the music, +the brave colors, and gems gleaming out of the darkness make the scene +bewitching. No wonder all the gaping crowds join in the marriage shouts +“Io Talasse!”[30] or in the oft-repeated “Felicitas!” + + +=57. At the Bridegroom’s House.=--The guests and many of the spectators +fail not also to raise the “Fescinne songs” proper for marriage +processions; old folk songs very coarse, and interspersed with +extremely broad quips and personalities. At last the house of Pollio is +reached. It is a blaze of light from vestibule to garden, and all the +_decuriæ_ (squads of ten) of slaves are mustered to greet their new +_domina_. + +At the entrance Statilia stops to wind the door pillars with bits of +wool, and to touch the door itself with oil and fat, the emblems of +plenty. She is then promptly _lifted_ over the threshold to avoid +an ill-omened stumble, and is immediately confronted by her husband who +has slipped in before her and who now presents her with a cup of water +and a glowing fire brand, token that she is entitled to the protection +of his family Lares. Statilia accepts these and in clear voice repeats +the very ancient and famous marriage formula, “Where thou art Gaius, I +am Gaia” (_Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia_). + +The invited guests now sweep inside and there is more elbowing while +Statilia produces three silver coins; one of these she gives to her +husband as emblem of her dowry; one she lays on the altar for the +Lares of her new home; one she casts back into the street, a gift to +the “Lares of the Highway” who guarded the door. Then her marriage +torch is blown out, and tossed away to be scrambled for as emblem of +supreme good luck by all the younger guests. The matron of honor has +already arranged the luxurious marriage chamber, and the happy pair +are led inside and the door shut upon them, while all their friends +join in the rollicking “nuptial song” just outside the portal. There +is nothing left now for the guests to do but to go home; all being +invited, however, to return to Pollio’s house the next day to join in +a second great feast, with Statilia this time presiding as mistress of +the establishment. + + +=58. Honors and Liberties of a Matron.=--Before her marriage Statilia +had been a mere girl, completely controlled by her parents, unable to +appear in public save under severe restrictions, and apparently with +hardly a will of her own. The day after entering Pollio’s house she +finds herself become by one act a noble _matrona_, with the destinies +of a huge retinue of slaves and freedmen at her disposal, enjoying a +great property, meeting her husband’s friends as their equal, going +where she pleases, saying what she pleases, almost (within wide limits) +doing what she pleases. + +Abroad in crowds, her dress, the _stola matronalis_, secures +the young married woman extreme respect. Every March, she, with +all the other honorable wives in Rome, enjoys the honors of the +_matronalia_, an official festival, kind of “Mother’s day” devoted +to celebrating the virtues of the gracious heads of each household. +On this day no less than on her birthday, she receives presents from +her husband, her family, and all her dependents. Finally, being a +Senator’s wife, when she comes to die, she probably will be entitled +to a great state funeral, with a formal eulogy in the Forum as if she +were a public personage. No wonder that Roman girls yearn eagerly for +marriage! It is their astonishing emancipation. + + +=59. Unhappy Marriages and Frivolous Women.=--Will a fashionable +alliance like that of Statilia and Pollio turn out happily? There +are scoffers even among the friends who bore the torches. Nobody +expects Pollio (a gay young aristocrat) to prove an example of austere +faithfulness, although he must never do anything to insult his wife +publicly. As for Statilia the cynics about the fair sex are very many. +Long ago Ovid has written, “Every woman may be won if only she’s +rightly tempted.” If a young wife is light-minded, she has plenty +of opportunities to acquire lovers, and at the great festivals and +banquets, at the theaters, gladiator fights, and circuses women have +every chance to meet intriguing men without interference by their +husbands. + +The very fact that as unmarried girls Roman matrons were denied +all chance for lawful romances, now makes devious love affairs +seem all the more racy. Any number of fine ladies have indulged in +unwise “friendships” with dissolute actors, public dancers, or even +gladiators. In many a mansion there is a handsome freedman or even a +slave who can become extraordinarily familiar with his mistress. There +are said to be coarse-grained mothers who actually teach their married +daughters how to push intrigues and to smuggle in or out love-letters +under the very noses of their husbands; and there are plenty of young +men, rich, “noble,” and very idle, who spend their time philandering +with married ladies. + +With every deduction and allowance for scandal the number of such +unsteady women is very great. “What snakes are driving you mad,” cried +Juvenal, “that you think of taking a wife? Why not leap from a high +window or from the Æmilian bridge rather than submit to a she-tyrant?” + +However, even if women lead lives that are outwardly respectable, there +are plenty of minor charges against Roman ladies. Some are utterly +extravagant; haunting the fine shops along the Via Lata and running +up ruinous bills. Some are laughed at for taking up music, poetry, or +Greek antiquities as shallow fads and “chattering in a mixture of Latin +and Greek, and making their tongues go incessantly like a gong.” Some +are said to take fencing lessons and to waste their days practicing +on a dummy antagonist with a foil, and learning to handle a shield +as if intending to join the army. Others are never happy unless they +know all the latest news: “What the Thracians and the Seres (Chinese) +are doing”; “Who has just married a notorious widow”; “Whether a +comet threatens the King of Parthia.” Others are utterly selfish and +heartless; they will weep at the loss of a pet sparrow, but treat their +slave girls with hideous brutality, and “let a husband die to save a +lap-dog’s life.” Worst of all are certain women actually suspected of +giving their unloved husbands a dose of poison when various reasons +make a divorce inconvenient. + + +=60. Divorces, Easy and Frequent.=--However, divorce is the regular +outcome of very many unlucky marriages. Every Roman girl, when her +parents tell her “We have chosen for you--”; knows in the back of her +mind: “Marriage will give me freedom. If this wedlock isn’t a success, +my next husband will probably be my own choosing.” + +The first divorce mentioned in Roman history was in 231 B.C. when a +certain Ruga put away a truly beloved wife, out of a high sense of +public duty--because she bore him no children. The public was shocked +at such action then, but soon it was shocked no longer. Under the later +Republic lucky was the nobleman or noblewoman who was not divorced at +least once. Cicero divorced Terentia after a long wedded life seemingly +because he wanted a new marriage portion; Cato the Younger (immaculate +Stoic) repudiated his wife to please a friend, then calmly took her +back again at the friend’s death. + +Under the Empire things hardly seem to have become any better. “Trial +marriages” are not a recognized institution; but surely they exist. It +is direfully easy for either a man or woman to take the initiative. +No court proceedings are necessary. “Take away your property!” spoken +formally and before witnesses is sufficient to break up the household, +although the more usual method is to “_send a messenger_”; _i.e._ +dispatch a delegation of friends to the other party to break the news. +Vainly did Augustus try by legislation to make divorces less prompt and +convenient. The whole proceeding is still grievously popular and simple. + +Of course, divorced persons are under no stigma in the fashionable set. +Many a time a couple has separated, married elsewhere, separated again, +and then resumed the old wedlock. Women are charged with “flitting +from one home to another, wearing out the bridal veil”; and indeed, +spicy instances are cited of ladies who boasted “eight husbands in +five autumns, a fact worthy of commemoration on their tombs”; or of +reckoning the years not by the annual consuls but by their annual +husbands. + + +=61. Celibacy Common: Old Families Dying Out.=--Under such conditions +what wonder many a rich Roman prefers celibacy! They often proclaim the +“advantages of childlessness.” Old men of property without children +are fawned upon with offers of every kind of service. Social and even +public honors are thrust upon them. Their atria are crowded every +morning with genteel visitors; their least wishes anticipated--all in +the desperate hopes that “when their tablets are opened” they will have +remembered the swarm of lackeys in their wills. Indeed, adventurers +have been known to go far in Rome by making a false show of wealth, +concealing the fact they actually have children, and “seeming bilious +and complaining of indigestion.” Everybody apparently will give them +favor or credit. It is a familiar scandal. + +Under such circumstances what wonder most of the old Republican +families have died out by the age of Hadrian, that the Calvi feel very +isolated; and that of the strictly patrician families only the famous +Cornelii appear now to survive. + + +=62. Nobler Types of Women.=--But do the above stories represent +the true moral condition of most women in Rome? Certainly not, or +society could not exist. In the first place such women represent the +rotten crust of the nobility; the ordinary equestrian and middle-class +women are still relatively modest and moral, efficient managers, good +mothers, and, if they are poor, hard workers. In the second place, even +among the upper Senatorial nobility, there are plenty of matronæ of the +very best type; true props to their husbands, wise mothers to their +children, kindly mistresses to their slaves. Gratia has many friends +whose households are schools of virtue, and many a Roman, from the +Imperial Augustus down, has confessed that his wife has been his tower +of strength. + + +=63. Famous and Devoted Wives.=--People still talk of the famous Arria, +wife of Cæcina Pætus, who, when the Emperor Claudius ordered him to +commit suicide, and he could hardly pluck up courage for a manly exit +from life, as an example plunged the dagger in her own breast, then +held it out to her husband, saying, “Pætus, it doesn’t hurt me.” +Her own daughter, the younger Arria, and Fannia, the wife of the +philosopher Helvidius Priscus, grossly murdered by Nero, won hardly +less reputations for fortitude. Pliny the Younger has recorded a more +humbly born Italian dame, who, when her husband was suffering from +incurable ulcers, but lacking the hardihood to kill himself alone, tied +herself to him and with him jumped into the lake at Larium so that both +were drowned. + + [Illustration: WEDDED PAIR WITH CAMILLUS (Boy + Attendant).] + +Fortunately the days of tyrannous emperors seem long since over. Wives +usually can show their virtue by living for their husbands and not by +dying with them. Rather lately there passed away an old man, Domitius +Tullus. Vast was his wealth but it brought him no pleasure; he was so +crippled and racked in every limb “that he could only enjoy his great +riches by looking at them. He was so helpless that he had to get others +to clean and wash his teeth.” He had a young and a very pretty wife; +but so far from neglecting him or trying to hasten his end, she kept +him alive for years by extraordinarily faithful personal care. Lately, +too, the venerable Senator Macrinus has lost his wife, “who if she had +lived in the good old days would have been counted an exemplary woman. +They lived together for thirty-nine years, with never a single quarrel +or disagreement.”[31] + + [Illustration: SEATED NOBLEWOMAN.] + +These are simply random cases. Of course, many people know the tribute +Pliny the Younger paid to his own wife Calpurnia, much younger than +himself but absolutely devoted to her husband: “She has a keen +intelligence, she is wonderfully economical, and she loves me.” He went +on to add that she read all his literary effusions most carefully, +sat behind a curtain to listen when he gave public recitations before +a male audience, and that when he had to argue in court had relays +of runners to keep her informed as to how well he was impressing the +judges. When the twain were separated she “would embrace his letters as +though they were himself,” while he (if he got no new letters from her) +“would read over her old letters and take them up again and again as +though they were new ones.” + + +=64. The Story of Turia.=--One day when Gratia had caught young +Junia overhearing a very uncanny story of a rich old lady who kept a +whole troupe of profligate actors for her own private amusement, she +took her out upon the magnificent avenue of stately tombs along the +Appian Way to visit the memorial to a venerated ancestress,--a certain +Turia who had lived in the troubled days of the Second Triumvirate, +and who by her rare courage, fortitude, and intelligence had saved her +husband the noble Vespillo from disgrace and death. + +Turia’s husband in a long inscription recited how she had saved his +life in the Civil Wars at sore peril to her own, and how she had lived +with him afterward in perfect affection and harmony, although, being +childless, such was her devotion to him that she actually offered +to let Vespillo divorce her that he might have children by a second +marriage, promising very literally “to be a sister” to his new wife. +But her husband repudiated the strange idea with anger: “That you +should have ever thought it possible we could be separated save by +death was most horrible to me. The one sorrow that was in store for me +was that I was destined to survive you.” + +And thus the tablet concluded: “You were a faithful and obedient wife; +you were kind and gracious, sociable and friendly; you were assiduous +in your spinning; you followed our family and national religious rites +and admitted no foreign superstitions; you did not dress conspicuously, +nor make any kind of household display. Your management of our house +was exemplary; you tended my mother as carefully as if she had been +your own. You had innumerable other excellencies, common to the best +type of matrons, but these I mention are peculiarly your own.”[32] + +Turia has been dead over a hundred years, but there are still high-born +women in Rome who are her equals. One of them, Calvilla, has a fine +young son now about thirteen, who owes an infinite debt to his mother, +and whom the Emperor will presently select as the heir presumptive to +the throne. History will call him Marcus Aurelius. + + + + + CHAPTER V + + COSTUME AND PERSONAL ADORNMENT + + +=65. The Type of Roman Garments.=--How is it possible to mention Roman +women and Roman weddings without thoughts also of Roman costume and +personal adornment? Seldom, indeed, has there been or will there be +an age in which fine wearing apparel, and jewelry, and elaborate hair +dressing can occupy so great a place in the thoughts of both sexes as +it does in this era of the Roman Empire. + +Good clothes and fine rings are in fact so important that if you do +not possess them, on many social occasions you must hire them. There +were several guests at Statilia’s wedding who appeared in gala robes +with handsome jewels to match. With them went attendants who passed +for confidential freedmen; yet it was whispered they were actually the +agents of costume purveyors charged to see that every hired banqueting +gown and topaz-set ring was promptly returned. + +Roman garments are like the Greek: they are usually _wrapped on_, +they are not like those of a later age which must be _put on_. Pins, +buckles, and brooches usually take the place of buttons. Sometimes, +however, costumes of a different type can be met with in the +cosmopolitan crowds in the fora. Occasionally are seen Persians and +Parthians wearing tight-fitting leathern casings around their lower +limbs, like the articles that another day will style “trousers”; and +more frequently are met blond or red-headed Gauls wearing _caracallæ_, +close-fitting garments with long sleeves, slit down in front and +reaching to the knee.[33] Such dresses are, however, exceptional. +Loose shawl-like apparel prevails in Rome just as with nearly all the +classical Mediterranean peoples. + + [Illustration: ROMANS WEARING THE TOGA.] + + +=66. The Toga, the National Latin Garment.=--But Roman tailors have +never been servile imitators of Sparta or Athens. Long before Greek +costumers became familiar visitors by the Tiber, the Latin folk had +found their own national garment--the _toga_. Every true Roman is +proud of the right to wear this distinctive garment, and its use +is prohibited to non-Romans, however princely or wealthy. A group +of ex-slaves has just come from the prætor, where their master has +emancipated them--thereby making them Roman citizens. In a body they +are flocking to the clothiers’ stalls whence they can emerge as +arrogant _togati_--lawful members of the imperial race. An unfortunate +senator has lately been condemned for malfeasance in office and +sentenced to banishment. It is not the least of his penalty that +he must also divest himself of his toga: it can never be worn by a +degraded exile. Clients have to wear this gown _de rigueur_ when they +visit their patrons in the morning--he would feel insulted if they +omitted it. + +Anybody also having the least official business at the palace must +wear the toga; and the reigning Hadrian has just issued an edict +commanding all senators and equites to wear the garment on the city +streets at all times except when returning from dinner parties; while +the distinguished rhetorician Titus Castricius has lately delivered a +public lecture,--probably by imperial request, on “the proper costume +for senators walking about Rome,” urging obedience to the law. The toga +in short occupies a place in Roman manners hardly equaled by any other +garment in any other nation. + +Nevertheless, many a client or nobleman, as he dons this mantle, +inwardly curses the folly of the men of “the good old times” in +selecting the toga as the national garment. It is very hot, very +clumsy, very hard to drape around one’s self without expert assistance. + +Everybody knows the story of old Cincinnatus, how when he was out +plowing and the committee of Senators suddenly appeared to say, “You +are named dictator; make haste to save the imperilled army”, would +not receive them until his wife had run and fetched his toga and he +was suitably clad. In his day, however, the toga was almost the only +garment worn and was hardly more than a small-sized woolen shawl. Now +one always wears a _tunica_ as a house and undergarment, and the +toga has been growing ever larger and more elaborate. Dandies still +wear togas so huge as to justify Cicero’s sneer: “They wrap themselves +in _sails_ not in togas.” But even for decent citizens the +garment is disagreeably complicated. The use thereof is one of the +penalties for the splendid right to boast, “Civis Romanus sum!” + + +=67. Varieties of Togas.=--The normal toga is always of wool and is +usually of a dull white, the natural color of the wool; but in the +Republican days seekers for election to public office would have their +togas bleached to a conspicuous snowy whiteness, and hence their name, +_Candidati_--“extra-white” men. Boys wear the _toga prætexta_, a toga +with an elaborately embroidered purple hem. When they put this off on +reaching manhood (fourteen to sixteen) they proudly assume the pure +white toga, inwardly hoping, however, that they can some day reappear +in the _prætexta_--for it is also the official robe of the high +“curule” magistrates. + +More glorious still is the _toga picta_ entirely of purple and with +gold embroidery, which can be worn by great officials while they are +presiding over public games, and which is used by the Emperors on +all state occasions. Quite different, of course, is the gloomy _toga +pulla_, dyed to some dark color, and worn as mourning or to excite +sympathy in some threatened calamity; _e.g._ if one is the defendant in +a dangerous lawsuit. + + +=68. Draping the Toga.=--The plain white toga, however, suffices +in most cases for most Romans. Of course, there is a vast difference +between the dirty shawls not without moth holes, which some of Calvus’s +clients have thrown around them the morning we visit his mansion, and +the garment which his special valet, Parmenio, drapes about him when +presently the Senator announces, “I must visit the Forum.” + +Parmenio has to be assisted by no less than three other slaves while +he literally winds the soft white mass of fine Milesian wool around +his master. When skillfully draped, the toga appears to be an easy and +elegant garment, leaving the right arm at liberty, and flowing around +the person in noble lines implying dignity and deliberation. Well can +it be called “one of the handsomest dresses ever worn by man”; but who +can tell the pains required to get the huge semi-circular fabric into +shape.[34] + +Every fold has to settle with precision; every corner has to trail to +exactly the right length; and the whole has to be so adjusted that +Calvus can walk easily without fear of dislocating his toga, although +it is without brooches or other fastenings. When at last, however, all +is ready, the results justify the effort. Its wearer appears every inch +a Senator: one of the leaders of the arrogant imperial race. + + +=69. The Tunica.=--The toga has to be worn everywhere in public, +but the instant he is back from the hot Forum, Calvus is more than +glad to fling it off. Indoors he, with all other Romans, wears the +_tunica_. The tunic is a comparatively new garment in Italy. In +early Rome probably the toga was the only clothing worn at all except +a simple undershirt or loin cloth. The tunic in fact resembles closely +the Greek _chiton_,[35] and is made much the same for men and +for women. It is a kind of long shirt fashioned by sewing two pieces +of cloth together, with holes for the arms or with short sleeves, and +secured around the waist by a girdle. Long sleeves (Gallic style) are +not unknown but they are accounted very effeminate. Without the belt +the tunic falls well down to the ankles, but it is easily shortened by +drawing the cloth up through the girdle and letting it tumble around +the waist in a loose fold. + +In warm weather the tunic is often the only garment that a Roman wears +indoors. In cold weather he will put a second tunic (or two or three +extra, as did Augustus) under his outer one. Like the toga the tunic is +ordinarily made of white wool, the finer the better, but, unlike the +toga, if the wearer is of the nobility, the tunic is never plain. When +the owner is an eques a narrow strip of purple (_angusticlavia_), +if a senator a broad strip (_laticlavia_), runs down the entire +length of the garment both behind and in front. This is the official +token of his rank, that all men may reverence his nobility, and one of +the chief tasks of a great man’s valets is to hang the toga so that the +purple strips on the tunic will always peep out conspicuously from the +undergarment. + + +=70. Capes, Cloaks, and Gala Garments.=--The toga and the tunic are +the two standard male garments in peace times, but they do not meet +every requirement. On festival days, unless the imperial edict is very +strictly enforced, most of the younger citizens will be seen streaming +to the theater or circus in the _lacerna_. This, at first, was merely +a short sleeveless mantle of light stuff thrown over the toga to +protect against dust or rain. Presently it was made into a more festive +garment, usually of brilliantly dyed wool, and was substituted for the +toga outright. There is a hood usually attached and it is convenient, +therefore, to wear the lacerna if one is not anxious to be recognized +on the streets; it is so very easy to conceal one’s face. + +In bad weather, and with poor country people in general, however, the +_pænula_ is more useful. This is much like the lacerna, a sleeveless +(“Shaker”) cloak or cape, also provided with a hood, but always made +of coarse heavy material. Most travelers wear the pænula, and it is a +common garment for the slaves. + +Like the pænula in turn is a third type of swinging cloak, but usually +cut shorter,--the _sagum_, issued to soldiers. Sometimes it is of +rough material for the severest purposes, sometimes it is a truly +elegant garment for officers, floating in bright colors over flashing +armor. The generals wear a special sagum of conspicuous red, the +_paludamentum_. The sagum is, in fact, so decidedly the military cloak +that the phrase “changing the toga for the sagum” has become a regular +way of saying “being suddenly called to arms.” + +One can see many Oriental and Greek-style garments in Rome, but +native gentlemen have only one other article of apparel that must +be mentioned. Everybody ought to keep a gauzy and brilliantly dyed +_synthesis_ for indoor wear at formal dinner parties, to wear over +the tunic. It can never be worn outdoors except during the jolly riot +of the Saturnalia, but indoors it is light, comfortable, and a fine +contrast to the heavy togas. Saffron, amethystine, and azure are the +favorite colors, and at ultra-fashionable parties it is good form for +a male guest to rise between courses and put on a new synthesis of a +different hue, held ready by his slaves. + + +=71. Garments of Women: the _Stola_ and the _Palla_.=--Calvus, of +course, keeps many specimens of all these garments in his wardrobe. +The average poor citizen gets along with a toga, a tunic or two, and +probably a pænula. Gratia’s clothes chests and presses are inevitably +more ample than her husband’s, but the garments of a Roman lady +resemble those of a Greek--they are far more like the masculine +garments than are those of women of a later age. Gratia really seldom +wears any save three kinds of garments: her tunics, her stolæ, and her +pallæ. + +Roman ladies anxious about their figures cannot squeeze themselves +with corsets, but sometimes they do wear bands of soft leather pressed +tightly around their bodies. Then comes the tunic, extremely like the +inner tunic worn by the men, but it fits the body rather more closely; +sometimes it has no sleeves, and it falls only to the knee and it needs +no belt. Over this single garment is the essential dress of the Roman +matrona, her _stola_. It is decidedly more elaborate than the outer +tunic of the men. In the main it is not sewn, but is held together by +a whole series of clasps and pins--giving an admirable opportunity for +the display of gem-set buckles. There is a girdle, passing high, above +the waist; the many folds tumble to the feet, but at the very bottom +there is an embroidered flounce or hem, and with noble women at least +this flounce is always of purple as is the border around the neck. + + [Illustration: A ROMAN MATRON: showing the + _stola_ and _palla_.] + +Like the toga, the stola is an extremely ample garment, giving its +owner a chance to display innumerable graceful folds; and like the +toga, good taste requires that it should usually be of clear white. To +wear the stola is the proud privilege of Roman matrons, and in it no +woman of light character is permitted to flaunt herself.[36] Girls put +on the stola immediately after their marriage, and even more than the +toga it is a garment of grace, permitting beautiful poses of statuesque +dignity. + +Outdoors a Roman lady will wrap herself in her _palla_. This is merely +a large shawl, although often with elaborate arrangement. Gratia’s +maids usually throw one third of its length over her left shoulder, +letting the end trail almost to her feet, while the remainder is +carried behind the back and wound skilfully around the wearer, although +if a head covering is needed, one can draw up some of the cloth and +form a loose and convenient hood. + +Every woman in Rome possesses a palla; and the wealthy, of course, own +whole arsenals of them in every possible size, weight, material, color, +and embroidery, suitable for all purposes from winter travel to snaring +susceptible youths beside one in the theater. + + +=72. Materials for Garments. Wool and Silk.=--So much for the types of +garments. Needless to say that their fabrics and details are infinite. +_Wool_ is still the standard material. Even now “in these degenerate +days” the best Roman matrons keep the spindles and distaffs working +with their maids in the peristylia, and make up a large part of all the +coarser garments needed by the household. Calvus takes pride in wearing +and exhibiting a really handsome toga and in telling his friends “my +Gratia made that”; but various other senators can utter like boasts, +their wives merely imitating such empresses as Livia, who wove all +Augustus’s everyday garments. + +On the great villa estates the slaves are kept from busy idleness in +winter by weaving cloth, not merely for themselves, but for their +masters’ families in the city. But such fabrics, ordinarily, are +decidedly coarse. There are really fine woolens made in southern Italy, +but the very best comes from the East. “Milesian wool” is a trade name +in every market, though very likely much of it actually is from Tyre, +Sidon, or Alexandria. A good deal of linen is woven up into comfortable +house dresses. Enough cotton comes in from the Orient to make it no +rarity for superior garments, but it is too scarce for any common use. +What every Roman of fashion dotes upon, however, is _silk_. + +Far away in the East is a half-mythical land, _Serica_ or _Seres_. +Hardly any European has ever penetrated there,[37] but caravan traders +pass along small parcels of a wonderful material alleged to grow on +trees. Garments made thereof are incomparably lovely; but the material +is worth its full weight in gold or even more. As a result the stuff is +spun up into the flimsiest and gauziest gala dresses imaginable, and +these are often partly made of cotton. Seneca has written in disgust +“We see silken garments, if indeed, they can be called ‘garments’ which +neither afford protection to the body, nor concealment to modesty.” +For all that women like Statilia and her mother will be miserable if +they have not plenty of “Serician tissues” wherewith to float into the +Amphitheater or Circus and dazzle their rivals in a city where, as +complains Juvenal: “Everybody always dresses above his means.” + + +=73. Styles of Arranging Garments. Fullers and Cleaners.=--With +garments so simple in their sewing as togas and stolas there is little +call in Rome for exclusive tailoring establishments or for fashionable +makers of “gowns.” Practically all purchased clothing, however costly, +is “ready-made,” although the shifting styles in girding, arranging the +folds, buckles, etc., are infinite. For example, there is a special +arrangement of the toga in peculiarly ample folds known as the +“Gabinian cincture,” and this form is practically required every time a +man joins in an important sacrifice. + +If, nevertheless, the dressmaker’s skill is simple, there is constant +demand for that of the _cleaner’s_, whose art is brought to great +perfection. The huge squares of fine woolen seem continually going +to or coming from the fullers’ establishments. The fullers pass for +peculiarly jovial, friendly people, and the “jolly fuller” is a stock +character in comedy. + +Soap is a Gallic invention and it is just coming into fairly common +use. Garments are still cleansed, however, with “fuller’s meal,” a +kind of alkaline earth. Wherever you go around the humbler parts of +Rome you hear a monotonous song being trolled over and over, and +coming usually from a pungently smelling establishment. It is the +fullers’ _tripudium_ (“three step”), sung as they tread out the +clothes in the great vats all day long. After the direct cleaning, a +fine garment has to be recarded to bring up the soft nap, then it is +carefully smoothed in a large wooden press with powerful screws.[38] +Every household can do its own laundry work, but in no later age will +the “cleaner” reign with the supremacy which he enjoys in Rome. His +justification comes when, at great public assemblies, thousands of +togas and stolas veritably shine under the Italian sun like newly +fallen snow. + + +=74. Barber Shops. The Revived Wearing of Beards.=--Rome, too, is +a city of barbers. Their shops abound everywhere and are great places +for lounging and gossip. Most men have their hair clipped quite short, +although a good many dandies delight in wearing fringes or rows of +short crisped curls (as did Nero) often reeking with pomatum. People +who dislike appearing old sometimes use black hair dye; and not a few +elderly senators are said to wear wigs. + + [Illustration: SCENE BEFORE A BARBER SHOP.] + +The barber shops, however, have recently received a terrific blow; +and loud is the lament of the entire profession shared in by all +those private “house barbers” who care for the wealthy. Since not +long after 300 B.C. Romans have been smooth shaven, beards ordinarily +being counted the sign of rusticity or of poverty; although teachers +of philosophy wore long whiskers as a kind of professional badge. The +day when a youth shaved off his first beard was celebrated almost as +elaborately as the day he assumed the pure white “manly” toga. But to +general consternation the reigning Emperor Hadrian, in his passionate +admiration for Periclean Athens, has astonished all Rome by appearing +with a full beard. Of course, every courtier and government official +has loyally imitated him. Of course, every senator and eques has with +equal loyalty done likewise. Feminine protests have been utterly +vain. Beards, sometimes closely trimmed, sometimes long and venerable, +have blossomed on almost every manly chin across the entire Empire. +Imperial Rome will henceforth continue bearded until the era of +Constantine, nearly two hundred years, when the razor will suddenly +resume its sway. Such is the power of Cæsarian example! + + [Illustration: ROMAN FEMALE HEADS: showing elaborate + arrangement of the hair.] + + +=75. FASHIONS IN WOMEN’S HAIRDRESSING. HAIR ORNAMENTS.=--If the +barbers are unhappy, their gentler rivals, the _ornatrices_, who +dress the hair of ladies, still reign in full glory. No Roman girl +dreams of cutting off her hair, but the modes of arranging it are, as +says Ovid, “More numerous than the leaves on the oak or the bees on +Mount Hybla.” Fashions come and go with astonishing rapidity, and we +have seen how Gratia’s statue was devised so that a new coiffure could +be substituted for the old (see p. 53). + +As a rule young girls bind back their hair in simple coils or clusters +of curls, but some of the styles permitted to them from the moment +they become matrons defy easy description. The prevailing mode rather +favors building up the hair in an elaborate semi-circular mound in +front with ringlets and plaits behind; but many a lady appears with +a perfect tower-like structure that would collapse instantly were it +not an affair compacted with extreme art. Of course, such edifices put +a premium on false hair, preferably blonde from Germany, or even on +wigs. Auburn hair, however, is extremely fashionable, and many a lady +buys the expensive “Batavian caustic” supposed to bleach to the proper +shade. Even very modest women can rejoice in great treasure chests of +hair ornaments, elaborate hair pins, and combs made of precious metal +or fine boxwood, ivory, and tortoise shell; besides all kinds of snoods +and wimples usually of scarlet, amethystine, or ivory. Noble dames +will keep at least one _diadem_, a long band of golden chains set +with as many pearls and jewels as possible. On simple social occasions +they will wear their hair in a net of gold thread. As for the very +wealthy, they have one simple and favorite method of displaying their +riches--that of bidding their maids, almost every day, to sprinkle the +whole coiffure liberally with pure gold dust. + + +=76. Elaborate Toilets.=--Needless to say, the toilet is, to ladies +of fashion, a slow and serious business, consuming most of the +morning.[39] Statilia’s mother, for example, who is now old enough to +have to guard her complexion, has as her first duty that of suffering +her maidens to peel off the thick layer of cosmetic paste smeared upon +her face ere retiring. She complains that her husband is stingy because +he will not let her imitate Poppæa (Nero’s Empress), who took a bath in +asses’ milk every morning to improve her looks. + +Such a lady, of course, requires two maids to dress her and to pile the +masses of hair upon her head; the pair being supported and directed by +an old freedwoman who “assists at the council,” skilfully improves and +flatters, and who perhaps can do something to assuage the domina’s fury +if the latter’s silver mirror reveals a misplaced curl, and she stabs +the clumsy maid’s arm with a sharp hairpin, or even shrieks out in +wrath “Bring in the whipper!” + +Blessed with such “tiers and storys” upon their heads, Roman women +seldom need anything else out-of-doors except a veil or hood in extreme +heat or bad weather. There are no milliners’ shops along the Via +Lata or Vicus Tuscus. The men likewise seldom bother about hats, and +everybody on normal days goes about town bareheaded, although travelers +have the hoods upon their pænulas. Workingmen, however, who are +continually exposed to the weather, wear small conical felt hats--the +pilei; and travelers who find hoods irksome can keep off the sun by a +comfortable broad-brimmed hat, the _petasus_. + + +=77. Sandals and Shoes.=--Shoes, however, are more necessary and +nobody but a slave goes barefooted around the streets. In the house +nevertheless it is sufficient to wear very light and simple sandals, +mere leather soles fastened to the foot with thongs; and even these are +laid aside when you stretch out on the couch for meals. To “call for +your sandals” is the same thing as “leaving the table.” + + [Illustration: SANDALS.] + +Outdoors one often puts on the _calceus_, which is practically +like the shoe of other ages, although fastened not so much by lacings +as by a complicated system of straps. Women’s shoes are much like +men’s, although inevitably lighter and more often made of brightly +colored leathers. High magistrates are proud to wear red “Patrician +shoes” with an extra elaborate scheme of bands and an ivory ornament +“C” conspicuous upon the outside of the ankle.[40] Ordinary senators +wear red shoes without the “C”; and equites a kind of tall boot +recalling the days when to be an eques really implied being a horseman. +Soldiers naturally clatter about in hob-nailed _caligæ_, ponderous +sandals with such heavy straps and thongs that they become practically +marching boots. As for stockings, they are all but unknown in Rome. + + +=78. The Mania for Jewels and Rings.=--But what dandy and what +fashionable woman is content to appear merely with the standard +quantity of clothing? The mania for jewelry is inordinate. Teachers of +oratory have to warn their pupils as did the great Quintilian that “the +hand [of a good public speaker] should not be covered with rings, and +especially these should not be set below the middle joint.” Exquisites +of both sexes, in fact, often wear half a dozen rings at once; all with +as fine jewels as possible, and with a separate “light” set of rings +for summer, and a “heavy” set for winter. + + [Illustration: ROMAN JEWELRY AND ORNAMENTS.] + +The jewelry work is, of course, exquisite. In the best shops by +the Campus Martius can be seen rings of magnificent chasing and +carving, set with onyx, sard, banded agate, amethyst, ruby, and +sapphire,[41]--some plain, some engraved, and all of a beauty which +any later age can envy. Inevitably there are pendants, coronets, and +innumerable brooches, and buckles every whit as fine. + +In addition, every Roman of equestrian or senatorial rank will wear +with pride one perfectly _plain_ gold ring (like a later wedding +ring) as the token of his own nobility, and as the memorial of a time +when a simple gold ring was the sign of real wealth. Every person of +consequence also will wear a special signet ring, often an intaglio cut +with some mythological character. The impression of this frequently +takes the place of a personal signature, and the illicit use of such a +ring constitutes the gravest kind of forgery. + + +=79. Pearls in Enormous Favor.=--Time fails to speak of the beautiful +cameos, intaglios, engraved medals, and huge engraved gems which are +the triumphs of the lapidaries, and which many rich connoisseurs put +in their collections; but one must not omit certain precious objects +which Romans seem to prize above all others: _pearls_. The more pearls +apparently that the fashionable can spangle upon shoes, dress, fingers, +and (for women) upon the hair, the better. The great jewelers will say +that they sell more pearls than all the ordinary gems put together. + +The imperial councilors protest in vain at the ceaseless export of gold +to India to pay for the unprofitable imports of pearls from Taprobane +(Ceylon), but the mania for such gems continues. People still tell +how Julius Cæsar gave to Servilia, the mother of Marcus Brutus, a +single weight pearl worth six million sesterces ($240,000); or how +the inordinately rich Lollia Paulina, one of Caligula’s overnumerous +wives, appeared at a dinner party, with great pearls spangled over +her unlovely person worth all together every whit of forty million +sesterces ($1,600,000).[42] There are no such tantalizing collections +as hers now in Rome, but many a lady of modest means has in her coffers +a few pearls large and beautiful; and the cynics declare that in a +crowd “the sight of a big pearl in a woman’s ear is better than a +lictor to clear the way for her.” + + +=80. Perfumes: Their Constant Use.=--Nevertheless, something else is +needful for a fine toilet beyond clothes, rings, and pearls, namely, +perfumes. The old-line Italians were a coarse and hardy folk; and +later the Orientals, whom slavery or self-interest has brought into +Italy, have a truly barbaric love for powerful odors. Even modest +women, therefore, of reputed good taste like Gratia, will appear in +public charged with scents which another generation would find highly +unwelcome. + +There is no alcohol in which to carry perfumery. The odorous substances +have to be dissolved in olive oil, making them at best greasy and +liable to grow flat and obnoxious after a little exposure. But +perfumery is practically indispensable. Men use it hardly less than do +women. At fine banquets vials of perfumery are passed among the guests +to pour over their heads and hands. The foppish youths who wave the +hair on their heads, and render the rest of their bodies sleek and +shiny with depilatories, simply reek with strong perfumery. + +On almost every important street you can find the little shops, usually +kept by women, where are sold scented powders, fragrant oils for +bathers, and the precious bottles of gold, silver, glass, and alabaster +for the unguents, as well as the standard perfumes themselves. +Profitless it is to catalogue these last; Pliny the Elder has listed +twenty-one standard varieties mostly named after favorite flowers +(_e.g._ narcissus) or Oriental spices (cinnamon, etc.).[43] Every +funeral demands its supply of myrrh; every sacrifice a quantity of +Arabian frankincense. The perfume trade with the East is an important +factor in Roman commerce, but very many of the popular unguents are +compounded in Italy. The great city of Capua in Campania grows rich +by the industry;[44] and the “perfumery interest” is one of the prime +business elements in the economic life of the Empire. So much for the +garments and ornaments which typical Romans put upon their persons. It +is now right to ask concerning a more important matter still--what do +they have for dinner? + + + + + CHAPTER VI + + FOOD AND DRINK. HOW THE DAY IS SPENT. THE DINNER + + +=81. Romans Fond of the Table. Gourmandizing. The Famous +Apicius.=--Seldom can there be another age when the importance of +good eating and drinking occupies the place that it does in Rome. +Vast numbers of coarse-grained people devoid of the least ability to +criticize fine bronzes or to comprehend Homer or Virgil can go into +ecstasies over superior oysters. Epicurean philosophers can argue +that “the true, the beautiful and the good” are to be as genuinely +apprehended by the enjoyment of ravishing tastes as by ravishing music. +Gastronomy has become a kind of supreme science and art, and no slaves +sell for better prices than truly expert cooks. + +Repeatedly huge fortunes have been ruined merely because their +possessors wished to surpass all rivals with the extravagant +refinements of gluttony. Since 69 A.D. and the coming to power +of the simpler Flavian Cæsars there has been a fortunate decline in +many absurdities, but there are still plenty of people who admire and +envy the fame of Apicius, the true example for the gourmand. + + [Illustration: ROMAN BANQUET SCENE. _After Von + Falke._] + +Marcus Apicius flourished in Tiberius’s age; and he developed a +positive genius for inventing new sources of culinary delight. Every +quarter of the Roman world was ransacked to find strange objects +whereon to whet his appetite. In Hadrian’s day people continue to +eat Apician cakes and Apician sauces, such as are described in his +encyclopædic cook books. But although he inherited a hundred million +sesterces ($4,000,000), at last his steward reported glumly, “You +have only ten million ($400,000) left.” How was it possible for a true +gourmand to exist in such poverty?--Apicius, therefore, committed +suicide rather than live on commonplace fare! Many will tell you that +he showed the right spirit and that his busts stand as a kind of +inspiration for dozens of rich epicures in their marble triclinia. + + +=82. Vitellius, the Imperial Glutton.=--One of Apicius’s disciples, +Vitellius, rose to Empire. In his brief reign (April-December 69 A.D.) +before Vespasian’s troops killed him, he taught his subjects how truly +a man can live to eat. He had trained himself by the constant use of +emetics to devour four heavy meals per day.[45] His senatorial friends, +obliged to invite him to their houses, never dared to offer him a +dinner costing less than 400,000 sesterces ($16,000). His brother gave +him a banquet at which were served “2000 choice fishes and 7000 birds”; +but he returned the favor by giving a feast at the imperial palace in +which he served his favorites with “The Shield of Minerva”--a kind of +salad-supreme made of “the livers of charfish, the brains of pheasants +and peacocks, the tongues of flamingoes, and the entrails of lampreys.” +Warships had been sent as far as the Ægean or Spain to round up some of +these viands. It was lucky for the treasury that his reign was a very +short one. + + +=83. Simple Diet of the Early Romans.=--And yet these worthies +gorged and guzzled in a city whose founders had been famous for their +abstemiousness. For many a generation even prosperous Romans had lived +very largely on coarse bread or even on a coarser wheat porridge +(_puls_). Wheat porridge was what supplied the brawn and courage +to the legionaries who brought to ruin Pyrrhus, Hannibal, Philip of +Macedon, and Antiochus. They were fortunate if their meal was not made +of barley, later counted as being barely fit for inferior slaves. + +Even senators, we are told, were glad to pick a few green vegetables in +their gardens to help out the porridge. On feast days there would be a +little pork or bacon from the hanging rack, and if there was a public +sacrifice the worshipers might each take home a lump of beef. Such was +the dietary of the men who originally made possible the fortunes of an +Apicius, and as late as 174 B.C. there were no professional cooks in +Rome. Now, however, there are plenty of purple-fringed exquisites who +“can tell at first bite whether an oyster comes from Circeii, or the +Lucerine rocks or clear from Britain; or at one glance discover the +native shore of a sea-urchin.” + + [Illustration: GRIST MILL TURNED BY HORSE AND FILLED AND + EMPTIED BY A SLAVE.] + + +=84. Bread and Vegetables.=--However, there are still multitudes +who have to be content with very simple fare, and for them bread in +some form is (as with all the Mediterranean peoples) very literally +“the staff of life.” In the great mansions there is, of course, a +bakehouse for the huge familia, but the bulk of people frequent the +numerous public bakeries, near which the mills driven by patient +donkeys or by less patient slaves are incessantly grinding flour. + +The standard loaves are made very flat, of moderate size, and about +two inches thick, their backs often marked with six or eight notches. +There is a cheap bread of coarse grain (_panis sordidus_) for the +humblest; a second quality (_panis secundus_) for better class +purchasers, and also the very white and sweet _siligineus_. You ask for +“Picenian bread” if you want fine biscuit, and for _libæ_ if you desire +smaller rolls. At feasts there will be wonderful structures of pastry, +and by use of honey and chopped fruits sweet “cake” truly delectable +comes out of many ovens. + +Vegetables and fruits can hardly play the part that they will in +later gastronomy: potatoes, tomatoes, oranges, lemons--all these are +grievously wanting. But there are admirable cabbages, “the finest +vegetable in the world,” declared Cato the Elder, and turnips, the +favorite dish of tough old Manius Curius, conqueror of the Samnites. +Around Rome, for many miles, are long stretches of profitable truck +gardens, which send an incessant supply of artichokes, asparagus, +beans, beets, cucumbers, lentils, melons, onions, peas, and pumpkins +into the city. A visitor to Rome should promptly accustom himself to +garlic; and there is a certain fashionable rusticity about garlic +eaters, as if they were trying to bring back the flavor and odor of +“the good old times.” + + +=85. Fruits, Olives, Grapes, and Spices.=--Italy, of course, is +an excellent fruit country. In the markets are apples, pears, plums, +and quinces, besides an abundance of very fine nuts, such as walnuts, +filberts, and almonds. Peaches, apricots, cherries, and pomegranates +are familiar, although some of these are rather late introductions to +the peninsula from the East. Of course, in season there never fail +magnificent olives and grapes which have abounded in Italy since time +immemorial. + +A great demand exists, too, for all kinds of salad greens; cresses +and fine lettuce, also edible mallows. Poppy-seed mixed with honey is +a standard dish for desserts, and such seasonings as anise, fennel, +mint, and mustard can be bought in all the innumerable little grocery +shops scattered over Rome. In the larger foodshops can be had likewise +those Oriental spices in heavy demand by the epicures; and also very +costly imported fruits, often preserved with great ingenuity in an age +that knows not the use of canning processes, refrigerating plants, or +sugar. + + +=86. Meat and Poultry.=--The demand for meat has been steadily +increasing with the growth of luxury and economic prosperity. Butchers’ +shops abound. Poor people buy goats’ flesh, which, however, is +completely disdained by the finical. Many citizens nevertheless never +taste beef or mutton except when it is distributed in the form of a +sacrifice at some of the great public festivals; and even for the rich +beef is not in extraordinary favor. + +Pork, however, is always popular. The despised Jews never seem to the +Romans to show their national folly more clearly than in refusing to +eat thereof. Pork in all forms, especially bacon and pork sausages +figure in every important banquet; and up in the Apennines in the vast +acorn forests, uncounted herds of swine are always fattening to satisfy +the incessant demands of the great capital. Poultry is on the whole in +greater demand than meat.[46] Squawking coops of common fowl, ducks, +and geese are on sale at almost every street corner. There is also +good money in raising upon country preserves quantities of partridges, +thrushes, and grouse, and even of cranes. In Cicero’s day peacocks made +a very fashionable dish, and they are still in request, although losing +their old popularity. Hares, rabbits, venison are comparatively cheap, +and everybody with a price can buy wild boar at the better purveyors’ +shops. + + +=87. Fish in Great Demand.=--Rome, however, somewhat resembles Athens +in one particular; the butcher shops are less important than the fish +dealers’ stalls.[47] Poor people eat salt fish or pickled fish, from +little sardines to slices of the big _cybium_, as forming frequently +the only break in an otherwise vegetarian diet. They also make up salt +fish with various vegetables and cheese into a kind of fishballs. A +man of income, however, is unhappy without his fresh fish daily. This +creates a serious and expensive problem for Rome. There are a few eels +and pike of good flavor caught right in the Tiber between the bridges, +but the great fish supply must be brought from a distance--often in +warm weather without aid of refrigerating plants. Frequently along +the road from Ostia, and very often down the Via Appia clear from +Puteoli can be seen large wagons tearing in hot haste. They bring not +government dispatches but fresh fish that will frequently command +absurd prices in the city. + +Often all kinds of sea-food are transported still alive in small tanks; +and sometimes the distance whence they can be imported is astonishing. +The best turbots (large flat fish) come from Ravenna on the Adriatic. +Eels can be brought in good flavor from Sicily and even from Spain. +Gourmands go into ecstasies over oysters from Circeii or Baiæ, but of +late people wishing to astonish their fashionable friends have actually +claimed to import such shellfish from Britain. The real fish for the +epicure, notwithstanding, is by common confession the noble mullet. The +flavor of the best specimens is ravishing, and, for a truly large and +perfect mullet, the prices paid are astonishing. It is a common story +that a certain Crispinus, a satellite of Domitian’s, once gave 6000 +sesterces ($240) for a single six-pound mullet; “More than the cost of +the slave-fisherman!” indignantly exclaimed the outraged Juvenal. + +Many great nobles, however, disdain having to depend on the public +markets. At their seaside villas they have huge salt-water tanks and +artificial fishponds; therein mullet, turbot, carp, and eels can be +bred, fattened, and brought to perfection, and on the day of a feast a +slave will hurry them up to Rome still gasping. + + +=88. Olive Oil and Wine: Their Universal Use.=--Supplementing +the salt fish and bread, the poor of the capital, like all genuine +Mediterranean folk, seldom fail to get their oil and wine. Olives are +gladly eaten green, ripened, or preserved in great quantities with salt +or pickle, but their greatest value comes from their oil. To Rome as +to Athens olive oil is not merely food; it largely takes the place of +toilet soap, and it supplies also the most common illuminant (see “A +Day in Old Athens,” p. 177). It is a complete substitute for butter in +the average dietary, often making dry or moldy bread palatable, and as +earlier stated (p. 98), it is the basis for most of the ointments and +perfumery wherein the average citizen delights. + +As for drink, practically every Roman has his wine. There are, indeed, +beverages made from wheat and barley, and also from fermented quince +juice, but for daily purposes beer and distilled liquors never appear +at Italian banquets. Cider is sometimes drunk, and a little so-called +“wine” made from mulberries; but the enormous vineyards existing in +every part of the country testify to the importance of ordinary grape +wine. + +Vintners’ stalls are almost as common along the streets as bakeries. +The drink they sell in jars, skins, or small flagons is sometimes +decidedly resinous after the Greek fashion, and in any case is +extremely sour, so that a large admixture of honey is often required +to make the favorite sweet _mulsum_. In any case only sheer +barbarians will drink their wine undiluted, and really good wine can +stand as much as eight parts of water to one of itself without losing +too much flavor. + + +=89. Vintages and Varieties of Wine.=--There are as many varieties +of wine as there are regions around the Mediterranean. Each produces +a vintage that is tolerable, and some are highly select. Your average +poor plebeian can get a large jug of palatable stuff for a sesterce +(4 cents). The wealthy will think nothing of paying heavily for +_amphoræ_ (tall jars) of choice old Setinian (the best wine in +Italy), or for Falernian, Albanian, or Massic which count next among +the native vintages. If, however, you are giving a formal dinner +party, etiquette dictates that at least one imported drink should be +served. It makes an excellent impression to bring in Chian, Thasian, or +Lesbian from the Ægean, or even Mareotian from Egypt and the splendid +Chalybonium from Damascus, the delight of Oriental kings. + +In summer time wines, of course, are drunk cold, and at luxurious +banquets they are even chilled with snow water. In winter, however, +you will often see a kind of bronze samovar, heated by charcoal, used +for preparing _calda_, warm water and wine, heavily charged with +spices; and at the cheap eating houses the calda counter is often +thronged, especially on chilly afternoons. Common soldiers, slaves, and +plebeians of the lowest class have a special beverage all their own, +namely _posca_, which is simply vinegar mixed with enough water to +make it palatable. It probably forms a really refreshing drink, if one +can acquire the taste for it.[48] + +Time fails to tell of various rare vintages which are treasured by the +epicures as if worth their weight in gold. In 121 B.C. there +was a wonderful yield of wine called Vina Opimia from the then Consul +Opimius. By Hadrian’s day the last drops of this precious liquor have +long since disappeared, but men still discuss the traditions of its +nectarous flavor. In every great house the wine cellar retains a number +of web-covered and dirty glass jars carefully sealed with gypsum, and +with labels showing that they were laid away perhaps a hundred years +ago. As for the undesirability of wine-drinking, that idea has hardly +crossed any man’s head; and Horace in Augustus’s day voiced a universal +thought when he sang that good wine, “Made the wise confess their +secret lore; brought hope to anxious souls, and gave the poor strength +to lift up his horn.” + + +=90. Kitchens and the Niceties of Cookery.=--With such attention +to good eating and drinking a Roman kitchen necessarily requires +an elaborate equipment. Cook stoves there are none; but there are +extensive masonry or brick hearths. The charcoal fire heats the stones +until a broad surface is glowing and ready for remarkable culinary +achievements. The head cook in Calvus’s house rejoices in a great +battery of copper utensils often of truly elegant shape; and copper +ware (more expensive than tin, but far more durable) appears in every +Roman kitchen. There are pastry molds, dippers, ladles, great spoons, +little spoons, baking pans for small cakes, in short, everything to +delight the heart of the housewife of another age. + +Nobody expects us to investigate rudely the peculiar dishes evolved in +the kitchen of a genuine gourmand. Cookery, the disciples of Apicius +aver, is not a common handicraft, but the noblest of sciences. Only a +thrice-initiated epicure, a man who has carefully trained his tongue +to discriminate the least shades of taste, and his fingers to endure +hot viands so that he may pluck out the morsels at precisely the proper +temperature, can appreciate many of the refinements. + +Calvus laughs, indeed, at a friend of his who lately insisted on +serving “a wild boar from Lucania caught when the South wind was +blowing,” with “honey apples picked under a waning moon,” and +“lampreys caught just before spawning.” Such people will also explain +dogmatically that “eggs of oblong shape have better flavor than round +ones;” and that “after drinking wine the appetite is better stimulated +by dried ham than by boiled sausage,” or that “it spoils the flavor of +Massic wine to strain it through linen; but you can clear it by mixing +with the lees of Falernian and then adding the yolk of a pigeon’s +egg.”[49] A new dish coming loyally into favor is that to which Hadrian +is personally so partial--a huge meat pie wherein pheasant, peacock, +sow’s udder, and wild-boar flesh are all baked up together. + +Needless to say many coarse fellows who boast themselves “epicures” +really are merely gluttons. Their appetites have become simply animal. +Rome has plenty of twin-brothers to that Santra derided by Martial, who +at a banquet “asked three times for boar’s neck, four times for the +loin, then for hare, thrushes, and oysters.” After that he bolted sweet +cakes, and finally devoid of all decency hid some fruit and a cooked +dove in the folds of his gown and sneaked home with a small jar of wine! + + +=91. A Roman Gentleman’s Morning: Breakfast (_jentaculum_) and the +Visit to the Forum.=--However, even gluttons like Santra spend all the +earlier part of the day under conditions of relative abstemiousness. +Romans never eat three hearty meals a day; they merely stay their +stomachs until dinner, the event they ordinarily look forward to from +early morning. In Calvus’s house everybody is supposed to rise at gray +dawn. Just as the first bars of light are making darkness visible a +_decuria_ (squad of ten) of slaves under a chamberlain (_atriensis_) +brushes down the atrium and peristylium before the master and mistress +rise and are dressed by their body servants. As promptly as possible +these noble folk are served, often in their chambers, with their +breakfast, the _jentaculum_--merely a few pieces of fine bread, +sprinkled with salt or dipped in wine, and with a few raisins and +olives, and a little cheese added. If Calvus is now expecting to go +on a journey or to put in a hard day debating in the Senate, he may +however call for some eggs and a cup of heartening mulsum. + +After that, the clients are let into the atrium, greet their patron +with their _aves_, receive his counter greetings, and get their +money doles for service (see p. 150). Next, upon an ordinary day, +Calvus calls for one of his second-best togas, and issues forth. If the +Senate is convening, he, of course, seeks the Curia. If not, he will +often visit his banker upon the Via Sacra to talk over investments, +will call at the mansion of a sick friend, will go to witness a will +for another friend (a very familiar ceremony), or will go to one of the +Basilicas, where still another friend is arguing a case, and expects +all his best acquaintance--the more distinguished the better--to sit +near him and applaud as he makes his points. During all these rounds +Calvus is, of course, followed by some two dozen clients and freedmen +as well as by at least as many slaves. + + +=92. The Afternoon and Dinner-Time. Importance of the Dinner +(_cena_).=--After that it is near the sixth hour (12 M.). All over +Rome work ceases almost automatically; the poorer classes make for +the cook shops or itinerant food venders; while people of rank either +go home or accept the hospitality of friends for the mid-day lunch, +the _prandium_. This is a real meal, although taken as informally as +possible. The food is mostly cold,--bread, salads, olives, cheeses, and +meats remaining from last night’s dinner; although sometimes there are +hot dishes, such as hams and pigs’ heads, and a good deal of common +wine is drunk. + +During the next hour everybody who can possibly spare the time takes +a short siesta. Rome, in fact, in summer seems to have gone to sleep +under the glaring sun. Then for the humbler folk toil resumes; +while the fortunate classes make for the great baths where, indeed, +under the guise of sociability a great deal of real business can be +transacted. By the ninth hour (3. P.M.) Calvus and Gratia +alike have usually finished all the formal duties for the day and are +being escorted homeward preparatory to the standard climax of every +four-and-twenty hours--the dinner. + +The dinner (_cena_) is always eaten at home or at the house of +some friend. It is so strictly personal an affair that there are +almost no first-class, handsomely appointed, public restaurants in +Rome, although there is a superabundance of cheaper eating houses, +yet many of these close up during the afternoon. There are almost no +other evening entertainments--no receptions, no balls, no theaters, +no concerts.[50] But Italians in every age have been a sociable, +talk-loving, gregarious people, and the dinner seems to many of them +apparently the “be all and end all” of existence. + + +=93. Dinner Hunters and Parasites (“Shadows”).=--Wealthy and popular +personages never have to bother about the dinner problem; every +night they can invite whom they desire, or be sure of a summons to a +congenial board. Plenty of substantial citizens are willing and happy +to join in a simple family meal in the good old style, the master +reclining on a couch, with his wife in a somewhat more conventional +attitude beside him, the younger children sitting on a lower couch, the +freedmen and more important slaves arranged on benches at a respectful +distance. + +The city nevertheless abounds in shabby-genteel individuals or social +climbers who are miserable every afternoon because some senator or an +eques does not tell them, “Come home to dinner!” For example, there +is a certain ubiquitous Selius. He hangs about the law courts, and +if a pleader is rich and noble, is always interrupting with a loud +“Excellent!” or “How clever!” Some afternoons, however, he is seen +dragging about, “the picture of misery.” Has his wife just died or his +steward embezzled? Not so. He “must dine alone at home.” Thus there +develops a type of high-class parasites, “_shadows_,” men of thick +hide and nimble wit who snap at every possible excuse for thrusting +into a dinner party, and who are willing to pay for the least honored +place on the couches by becoming the butts of the jests, or by bringing +laughter on themselves by such feats as swallowing whole cheese cakes +at a mouthful. + + +=94. The Standard Dinner Party--Nine Guests.=--In Athens in other +days a delightful informality prevailed at banquets. The number of +guests was seldom fixed, and it was quite proper to intrude two or +three more at the last minute. Romans are more grave, methodical, and, +be it said, more commonplace. The standard size for a dinner party is +determined by an almost inflexible custom--nine. Three couches, three +guests to a couch;--that number can concentrate around a single set of +serving tables, and let everybody mingle easily in the conversation. + +Of course, you can get along with fewer guests, but it is the height +of meanness to have more than three to a couch. For a larger affair +one must therefore have two or three or more triclinia,--eighteen or +twenty-seven guests, etc. Unlike Athens, however, it is perfectly +proper to invite high-born ladies to mixed dinner parties, although +not to the free and easy drinking bouts that sometimes follow; and +the women apparently recline on the couches with perfect decorum and +modesty. Nevertheless, “stag” parties are extremely common, and one +such, of a very conventional nature, Calvus gave recently in honor of a +friend, Manlius, who was just departing as _proquæstor_ (assistant +governor) of Africa. + + +=95. Preparing the Dinner and Mustering the Guests.=--The guests +were invited by personal greetings at the Forum or Baths of Trajan +except one who had to be summoned by slave messenger at his home. +However two places on the couches have been left vacant deliberately +to let Manlius invite any two acquaintances he desired--a frequent +prerogative of the guest of honor. The dinner was to be a strictly +decorous affair, and, therefore, it did not begin before the tenth hour +(4 P.M.). If Calvus had desired a carouse, he might have begun +at 3 P.M. in order to get plenty of leeway for a long riotous +evening; but “early dinners” are ordinarily as great a reproach in Rome +as “late dinners” will be later. + +During the morning while the master-cook was tyrannizing over his +scullions in the kitchen, and evolving various triumphs in pastry, the +chamberlain, an upper-slave, was standing whip in hand over a whole +platoon of lower slaves, giving orders like a centurion: “Sweep and +scrub the pavement!” “Polish up those pillars!” “Down with all those +spider webs!” “One of you clean the plain silver ware, and another +the embossed dishes!” The whole mansion, therefore, was furbished up +thoroughly, for a few signs of dirt before dinner guests is the most +disgraceful of shortcomings. + +By the tenth hour the triclinium was in perfect order. The three +elegant sofas with purple cushions embroidered with gold thread were +arranged around the finest citrus-wood table. Small pillows were +laid upon the cushions to mark the positions of the feasters and for +them to thrust under their elbows as they lay and ate. Presently the +street before the vestibule became jammed with the retinues of the +eight guests as each swung up in his litter. Calvus greeted each of +the invited friends in the atrium, while the bulk of their escorts +turned back home to return again with torches when the party should be +over; but each guest was followed into the house by his own special +valet, who took off his shoes as soon as he stretched himself out upon +the couch, and then stood by to help Calvus’s servants serve his own +master. The triclinium was thus a decidedly crowded place, with eight +strange slaves present, besides a mobilization of all the handsomest +and most efficient of the house servants. + + +=96. Arrangement of the Couches: Placing the Guests.=--The guests were +each in the gay _synthesis_ or other gala costume, and quite in the +mood to obey the grave _nomenclater_, a handsome and experienced slave +of the host who pointed out to each his place on the couches. This +location of feasters, however, was an extremely solemn business. How +many social feuds have been created by blunders concerning it! Nay, +if the guest chances to be a public character, a certain position is +really a matter of legal right to many dignitaries and its refusal +possibly can give matter for a lawsuit.[51] The three couches were set +around three sides of the table, the fourth being left open for the +service. Approaching from the open side that couch to the right was +reckoned the first (_summus_), then the middle one opposite (_medius_), +then the one on the left (_imus_). + +The best place of all was reckoned to be the third position on the +middle couch “The Consul’s Post,”[52] and here, of course, Manlius +was consigned. Calvus by custom took the host’s place, on the third +couch, but nearest the guest of honor. The distribution of the other +places was a matter for great discrimination, but peace was kept by +placing the two African gentlemen whom Manlius brought, upon the middle +couch beside him, and setting the young eques Nepos (the junior of the +company) at the outer end of the third couch. All nine, therefore, +spread themselves out unconventionally and chattered about the newest +jockeys in the circus, while a troupe of slave-boys, half-stripped +but pomaded and curled, passed around silver bowls of water and fine +towels for washing and wiping the hands.[53] This ceremony happily +accomplished, a tall upper slave magnificently arrayed nodded from the +doorway to Calvus that the cook had declared himself ready, and Calvus +nodded back his approval. The dinner could begin. + + [Illustration: NINE GUESTS IN A TRICLINIUM.] + + +=97. Serving the Dinner.=--The giver of this feast only desired +a grave and conventional dinner for sedate people, and a strictly +normal order was followed without epicurean niceties or a low revel +as a climax. No tablecloths; the serving boys running to and from +the kitchen set on the beautiful polished surface of the table before +the guests first a preliminary course, the _gustatio_, supposed +to stimulate the appetite. On silver dishes were served some choice +crabs, salads, mushrooms, and also eggs. The guests ate these without +forks, dexterously picking up the food in their fingers. The handsomely +embossed silver cups were handed about filled with sweet mulsum +properly diluted in order not to befuddle the intellect; after that +followed the formal dinner itself. + + [Illustration: ROMAN SERVING FORKS.] + +At really elaborate feasts there would be six or even seven courses, +but Calvus had merely ordered the orthodox number of three--a +succession of daintily cooked meats and fish tastily garnished with +vegetables, but with no rarities such as heathcock from Phrygia or +sturgeon from Rhodes. The honor of the house, however, required that +every viand should be arranged carefully on its dish, and every dish +upon its tray by a special slave, the _structor_, a true artist, who +also acted as master carver, cutting up a roast of boar with his knife +keeping time to a flute-player. The mere fact, however, that one man +was allowed both to arrange the dishes and then to do the carving was a +sign that Calvus was among the less ostentatious senators. + +Between each course water and towels were again passed about, and the +guests washed their hands. Finally for dessert there was brought on +a great quantity of curious pastry--artificial oysters and thrushes +filled with dried grapes and almonds; and a great dish whereon stood +an image, made of baked dough, of the orchard god Vertumnus, holding a +pastry apron full of fruits, while heaped around his feet were sweet +quinces stuck full of almonds, and melons cut into fantastic shapes.[54] + + [Illustration: DRINKING CUP.] + + +=98. The Drinking Bout (_Comissatio_) after the Dinner.=--This +concluded the regular dinner, but Calvus had invited his friends (since +Manlius had much to talk about) to stay to a _comissatio_, a social +drinking spell afterwards. The nine guests rose and adjourned to the +host’s private baths, whence, after they had refreshed themselves and +taken a turn around the colonnades in the peristylium, they returned to +the triclinium to find that the slaves had changed all the couch covers +and pillows, had swept the floor, and had actually brought in new +tables. It was now quite dark, beautiful silver lamps gleamed on high +against the fretwork of the ceiling and on the tall inlaid sideboard +stood two great silver tankards; one was filled with snow;[55] the +other had a charcoal brazier beneath it and steamed with hot water. + +If Calvus’s party had now been composed of younger merrymakers, some +one would have called out, “Let’s drink in the ‘Greek style’ and elect +a king”; and everybody would have joined in throwing dice to select +the _rex_, or lord of the revels. That potentate would have been +obligated to decide how much water was to be mixed with the wine, and +how many cups must be drunk to the health of each feaster’s lady love, +and to arrange the forfeits, riddles, and practical jokes inseparable +from a jolly evening. If the party had been still more uproarious, +Spanish dancing girls might have been provided by the host, or a corps +of pantomimes, acrobats, or farce players, and the whole scene could +have ended in a very coarse orgy. + +In the present case Calvus had decided to let his friends merely drink +enough to loosen their tongues and to exchange their best wit and +wisdom. The slaves, therefore, brought in with decent solemnity the +little images of the family lares, and a small smoking brazier, and +Calvus cast a trifle of meal and salt and a few drops of wine upon +the fire. “The gods are propitious!” announced a slave in loud voice, +after which the guests preserved a reverent silence for an instant, to +be followed by vigorous conversation the moment the divine images were +carried out. + + +=99. Distribution of Garlands and Perfumes. Social +Conversation.=--While one corps of slaves was passing about the wine, +asking each guest whether “Hot?” or “Cold?” others were distributing +wreaths of fragrant flowers, to put on the forehead and even around +the neck (by their odor supposedly preventing drunkenness) and also +little alabaster vials of choice perfumes which the guests immediately +broke and poured upon their hands and hair. Then followed long +conversations, grave or gay according to the mood. Calvus had not +provided any professional entertainers, but all through the drinking +a good flute-player and a good harpist hid behind a curtain kept up a +soft pleasing melody. + +While Manlius and the older guests discussed the control of the Moorish +tribes of Numidia, young Nepos and one or two others found much to say +about a new “Thracian” who had just fought at the Flavian Amphitheater, +and presently all the others pressed the host (knowing him to be a +little vain on the subject) to show some new moves in “robbers” +(_latrunculi_, a board game with men extremely like checkers) which he +had evolved with peculiar pride. It would have been good form also to +have played at making impromptu verses, or at matching riddles, but +for a Roman gentleman to indulge in anything like singing a song, even +before a group of friends, would have been undignified; Nero possibly +shocked public opinion even more by appearing openly as a common +theater performer than he did by killing his mother! + +At last the evening ended. It was only 8 o’clock by later reckoning; +but everybody had to be up again by gray dawn. The streets were already +dark and deserted save by prowlers and the police-watch. “My shoes, +boy,” called Manlius to his valet. All the other guests imitated him, +and already their retinues with slaves and torches were crowding in the +vestibule. The eight diners departed after thanking Calvus. The slaves +cleared out the triclinium, and quenched the lights. Soon the whole +domus was asleep. + + +=100. Elaborate and Vulgar Banquets. Simple Home Dinners.=--Such +was a very decorous and ordinary dinner. It could easily have run +off to greater follies and vastly greater magnificence, useless to +describe. Space lacks, also, to describe the magnificent imperial +banquets at the palace when all the gold, glitter, and luxury of the +capital is on display. Calvus is no great philosopher, or he might have +followed the mode and insisted upon his guests conversing solely about +the “Stoic Conception of Duty”; or the “Immortality of the Soul.” + +A host of another type might have imitated certain very mean patrons +who would invite poor clients to fill up the triclinium and then +deliberately serve them with cheap wine and coarse scrappy food, +while the best was being set before himself and the guests of honor. +Such great men were also equal to pettiness of stationing special +slaves behind each less-favored guest to watch lest the latter +should with his finger nails pick out the gems set in the drinking +cups. Pliny the Younger has already recorded his emphatic opinion of +noblemen who will not serve dependents with as good fare as they get +themselves,--declaring that if the host _must_ economize, he should eat +and drink nothing better that night than what he gives his clients and +freedmen. + +Of course, many an evening meal is far simpler than the one just +described. If the triclinium is not full, Calvus and Gratia may +sometimes offer their near acquaintances merely “some lettuce, three +snails, two eggs, spelt mixed with honey and snow, olives from Spain, +cucumbers, onions, and a few like delicacies.” Old Roman simplicity +still--but every dish will be perfect of its kind, and the cookery +excellent; and even the modest Calvi are none too fond of this diet +praised by the philosophers. Rome is not merely the mistress of the +world, she is the citadel of the gourmands. + + + + + CHAPTER VII + + THE SOCIAL ORDERS: THE SLAVES + + +=101. Enormous Alien Population in Rome. The “Græcules.”=--Rome, +as already discovered, is a city with an enormous cosmopolitan +population, and in that population is a sadly large proportion of +drones, parasites, and selfish purveyors to the vices or luxuries of +the rich. The influx of aliens, of course, impresses one at every turn, +be the visit to obscure Mercury Street or to the famous Old Forum. +“The Syrian Orontes (quoting lines of Juvenal hackneyed already) has +long since poured into the Tiber, bringing its lingo and its manners, +its flutes and its timbals, and its coarse girls who hang around the +Circus.” + +A large fraction of these invaders, however, are not confessed +Orientals, but olivine-featured, nimble creatures of very Levantine +morality who like to be called “Greeks.” The poet, just cited, has +other familiar lines deriding their suppleness, servility, and +willingness for any shift promising favor or reward. The self-same +adventurer is ready to be “grammarian, orator, geometrician, painter, +trainer, rope-dancer, augur, doctor, or astrologer,” or if you bid +“‘Græculus’ to mount to heaven--why, to heaven he’ll go!’” They squeeze +out tears or split with laughter at a sign, and, of course, they +readily sell themselves for any well-paid villainy. + +Do these creatures prosper? If so, Roman citizenship comes next. They +change their names, assume the toga, and their sons or at least their +grandsons will be borne along in their high litters toward the Senate +House. There is another large group of “Conscript Fathers” who, +Calvus angrily tells Gratia, are only crude Celts from Spain, Gaul, +or even distant Britain. Another group can only speak Latin with a +pronounced North African accent. There is even a certain dark-skinned +“Julius” (a good Roman name surely), who wears his broad purple stripe +proudly enough, but who,--every one swears,--was born far up the Nile +in Egypt--“How did he get the Emperor’s favor!” At first thought, +therefore, Rome seems one of the most democratic cities socially in the +world. + + +=102. Strict Divisions of Society. The Régime of _Status_.=--But +closer acquaintance discloses the fact that Roman society is utterly +undemocratic. Wealth to be sure can surmount many barriers, but even +a hundred-million sesterces plus imperial patronage cannot _quite_ do +everything. The whole Roman Empire is founded not on the basis of human +brotherhood and equality, but on “_piety_.” “Pious Æneas” is the hero +of the national epic poem. But what in fact is this piety? Not the +rendering of due homage to the gods merely, but the bestowing of exact +justice upon every man according to his _status_--the great stratum +in society in which the law has placed him, and whence he can neither +rise nor fall without important formalities. Are you brought into +court? Instantly the question is, “What are you?” And on that answer, +regardless of guilt or innocence, your fate will largely depend. + +The Roman Empire in reality is essentially _a régime of status_--giving +to every man a certain social and legal due. This accent on _status_ +has been increasing ever since Augustus founded his dominion; and it +will intensify even more rapidly down to the very end of the Empire. + +In the 1,500,000 odd people in Rome, there are these six well-defined +social classes, each with a distinct legal condition: I. _Slaves_; II. +_Freedmen_; III. _Free Provincials_; IV. _Ordinary Roman Citizens, or +“Plebeians”_; V. _Equites_; VI. _Senators_. In Rome the third class, +of course, is necessarily small, being made up solely of visitors and +resident aliens, some of whom, if notables from such free allied towns +as Athens, enjoy excellent protection and privileges. Nearly all the +freedmen are technically Roman citizens but are still under certain +civil and social disabilities. The Plebeians, Equites, and Senators +are all reckoned officially as “majores,” persons with superior legal +rights, however much the two upper orders may scorn the one inferior. +Socially, however, there are many cross sections, with the upper slaves +of rich noblemen despising the petty tradesmen, who wear moth-eaten +togas, and the higher “Cæsarians” (slaves at the imperial palace) have +been known to patronize equites and even senators. + + +=103. Vast Number of Slaves. Universality of Slavery.=--The slaves, +however, are always officially at the bottom of the human ladder. Their +number is great, making up close to half, if not quite half, of the +population of Rome. They are not required to wear a special dress.[56] +Some years ago it was proposed to order this in the Senate, but the +motion was voted down: “It would be dangerous to show the wretches how +numerous they really were.” Ordinarily they go about in sad-colored +tunics and long cloaks like most of the common citizens, or else they +wear some bright livery devised by their masters. + +Only a few of these unfortunates have Italian countenances and can +speak Latin without some foreign accent. Plenty of alien adventurers, +it is true, drift to Rome as willingly, but probably the great bulk +of the cosmopolitan multitudes everywhere observable, even if free at +present, come to Latium involuntarily--as slaves imported to wait on +the masters of the world. + +Almost no one has questioned the rightfulness and necessity of slavery. +Seneca, indeed, has written that no man can be enslaved beyond a +certain point--his body is his master’s, but his mind is his own. +Horace has written grandiloquently “Who is truly free? The wise man +alone; who is stern master of himself.” This sounds well but does not +alter the practical results of a situation wherein, for example, all +farm implements are solemnly classified in the handbooks under three +heads: I. _Dumb tools_--plows, mattocks, shovels, etc.; II. +_Semi-speaking tools_--oxen, asses, etc., that can bellow or bray; +III. _Speaking tools_--slaves useful as farm hands. + + +=104. Power of Master over Slaves.=--Until very lately, before +Hadrian’s time, these “Speaking Tools” have had rather less legal +protection than may be granted to horses by the “humane” legislation +of later civilization. The reigning Emperor, however, a remarkable +innovator, and tinctured with the Stoic philosophy, has lately issued +an edict that a slave cannot be killed outright by his master without +some kind of consent by a magistrate. + +Every owner of human bipeds has probably grumbled that “discipline is +now made impossible,” but the new law is of little practical help to +the slave. His master can still order a punishment so brutal that death +is certain, and if he should murder a servant, slave witnesses can give +no valid testimony, and almost no citizen will turn traitor to his +class and prosecute. Half of Rome, therefore, continues in the absolute +power and possession of the other half. + + +=105. The City Slaves and the Country Slaves.=--Calvus and Gratia have +a familia of about one hundred and fifty slaves in their city house. +Scattered upon their villas there are always at least as many more, +but between the _city slaves_ and the _rustic slaves_ there is a great +gulf fixed. The first class utterly despises the latter. The city +slaves are mostly soft-handed ministers to their owners’ luxuries. The +country slaves are toiling farm hands often under extremely severe +discipline. When the master, attended by a great retinue from his town +house, sojourns at a villa, squabbling and even fights between the +two contingents are extremely probable. Let a serving boy become too +insolent, or a tiring maid fail in her duty--the master or mistress can +simply order, “Send him or her to the villa!” The wretch will then beg +instead to be flogged in sheer mercy. Banishment to the rustic slave +colony seems a mere death in life. + + +=106. Purchasing a Slave Boy.=--In any large city familia, the purchase +of new slaves to replace vacancies caused by death or otherwise is +an everyday occurrence. Very lately a new errand boy was wanted by +Calvus, who could not condescend to purchase such a menial in person; +and he left the task to a competent freedman, Cleander. The latter +conscientiously went through the great slave bazaars near the fora and +especially along the Sæpta Julia, the great porticoes lining the Via +Lata. + +Here any quantity of human bipeds were on sale as in a regular cattle +market. There were numbers of little stalls or pens with crowds of +buyers or mere spectators constantly elbowing in and out, and from many +of them rose a gross fleshly odor as from closely confined animals. At +the entrance to these pens notices, written on white boards with red +chalk, recited the nature of the slaves inside, and sometimes the hour +when they would be sold at auction. Every nationality was represented +among these vendable commodities--Egyptians, Moors, Arabs, Cilicians, +Cappadocians, Thracians, Greeks and alleged Greeks, Celts from Gaul, +Spain, and Britain, and a good many Teutons, fair-haired creatures +from beyond the Rhine. They were of both sexes and of all ages, but +with youths and grown-up girls predominating. As Cleander went about he +heard a crier announcing that a new coffle of Jews was just being put +on sale, the results of the latest success of the Emperor’s generals in +capturing one of the last rebellious strongholds in Palestine. + + +=107. Traffic in the Slave Pens.=--It avails not to dwell on the +hideous brutality and degrading character of many of the scenes. The +slave-dealers were men counted the scum of the earth socially, but the +vast gains from lucky speculation in human flesh drove many shrewd +scoundrels into the trade. At last Cleander found the stall he desired. +Several boys from the Black Sea region were about to be knocked down. +They did not seem so very miserable. Truth to tell their barbarous +parents had probably sold them in way of regular trade, and the boys +looked forward to entering a fine Roman familia as a great adventure. + +The lads stood in line on raised stones, stripped almost naked and with +white chalk on their feet as a token that they were for immediate sale. +Cleander and other would-be purchasers examined them as they might so +many cattle; felt of their muscles, examined their teeth, and made them +converse enough to be sure they could speak fair Greek and a little +Latin. Another buying agent was accompanied by a physician to give the +proffered merchandise a regular physical examination, and Cleander in +his turn interrogated the selling clerks very specifically: “Did they +warrant the health of a certain boy, especially his freedom from fits? +Was he thievish? Was he prone to run away? Did he get despondent and +attempt suicide?”[57] + +One ill-favored youth was standing with a tall felt hat on his head. +That implied he was being sold “as is,” without the least warranty; “An +incorrigible thief” went the whisper, and the great welts on his back +betrayed repeated whippings. If the sellers failed, however, to “cap” +their chattels, they had to answer all queries truthfully, and take +back the slave if he developed various defects within six months. Such +a liability, however, was hard to enforce. A slave trade involved all +the points of shrewdness, hard bargaining, and smooth prevarication of +the proverbial horse trade. + + +=108. Sale of Slaves.=--At last a bell rang. A boy whom Cleander +had inspected approvingly was stood on a higher block. The glib +auctioneer began his patter to the little group before him: “The +lad’s clear-skinned and well-favored from head to foot, a well-bred +fellow carefully trained for good service. Has a smattering of Greek +learning--you can educate him for a secretary if you want to. He can +also sing a bit at dinners--not professionally, but enough to make +you jolly over your wine.--All this is sheer and simple truth. You’ll +wait long for another such bargain. Just one point (with a deprecatory +smirk) I am obliged to warn about--once he _did_ have a lazy fit, +and hid himself for fear of a lashing,--Well, he’s yours for a mere +8000 sesterces.” [$320.][58] + +“Take 2000,” stolidly retorted Cleander, naming the standard price +for male slaves of no extra qualities. Counter bidding and much +chaffering followed. All ended when “Crœsus” (slaves were often given +fancy oriental names) was knocked down to Cleander for 4000 sesterces +($160), a very fair bargain if the youth had not been praised too +extravagantly. On the same errand the freedman also purchased for +his master a stout Gaul, needed as an expert muleteer on one of the +farm villas,--such a fellow if at all capable was well worth the 6000 +sesterces asked for him. + +The next day, however, it was announced by Gratia that she required +a first-class lady’s maid, a girl not merely versed in all toilet +mysteries, but comely to look upon should she have to appear with her +mistress in public. Such damsels commanded a high price, and Gratia and +Calvus together condescended to do the shopping. Along the Sæpta Julia +they visited special booths, from which vulgar idlers were carefully +excluded, and where human chattels of the superior grades were shown to +bona fide purchasers. + +The dealer whom they visited had handsome slave boys to act as +statuesque cup bearers and worth up to 100,000 sesterces ($4000) +apiece; he also had a truly competent physician at the same price; a +good private schoolmaster; two very expert dancers, and a remarkably +fine cook just thrown on the market by a bankrupt ex-consul. Girls +fit for kitchen service could be had in the common stalls as cheap as +1000 sesterces ($40); but Gratia and her husband had to pay a round +25,000 ($1000) for a truly pretty little Greek, who was a dexterous +hair-dresser and who could read aloud to her mistress with a good Attic +accent. + + +=109. Size of Slave Households (_Familiæ_). Slave Workmen.=--Thus the +_familia_ of the Calvi has been made up. People complain that owing +to the surcease of great wars the supply of cheap slaves fit for farm +service is running down. Great landowners are actually being driven to +fall back on free hired labor or a system of tenantry; but kidnapping, +the sale of children by their barbarian parents, the ceaseless petty +wars in Africa, Asia, and along the Rhine, as well as the sale of +slaves born and bred on the Roman farms or mansions themselves[59] +keep up a sufficient supply for domestic service. + +The very poor plebeians are, of course, slaveless and servantless, and +plenty of small tradesmen or minor officials get along with only two or +three slaves-of-all-work; but it is impossible to be a “somebody” and +to exist in Rome without _at least ten slaves_. The social ladder +and the size of the familiæ ascend together until we find senators and +very rich equites who boast many more than two hundred in their city +houses alone. “How many slaves has he got?” is the regular formula +for asking “What’s his fortune?” In Augustus’s day there was a very +wealthy freedman who owned 4116 slaves, although the majority of these +were scattered on his numerous farms; but well known is the story of +Pedanius Secundus, City Præfect under Nero: One of his slaves murdered +him, and by the harsh old law making the entire familia liable for the +killing of its master by one member, all of the slaves in his Roman +mansion, almost 400 in number, were actually put to death, although his +farm slaves were spared. + +There are many slaves, however, in Rome that are not strictly servants. +They act as craftsmen and tradesmen of every kind, sometimes hired +out by their masters to contractors, sometimes working on their +own account. Custom, though not law, entitles them to a part of +their earnings; this is their _peculium_ (“special property”) +and only a very harsh owner will deprive them of it. Indeed it is +clearly understood that an intelligent slave cannot be expected to +do his best without a personal incentive. You can even find savings +banks and really large commercial enterprises run by slaves, often +put in positions of great trust, but such persons undoubtedly have +an understanding about being manumitted if they are faithful and +successful. + + [Illustration: SLAVES WORKING IN A BAKERY.] + + +=110. Division of Duties and Organization of Slave Households.=--In +Calvus’ house as in every other great mansion one is impressed with +the multitude of attendants. The master, mistress, and their friends +are dependent on every kind of menial service. Before Calvus rises +from bed, he is massaged every morning by an expert masseur, and some +of his more effeminate friends insist on having not walking sticks but +handsome slave boys of convenient height always at hand, on which to +lean as they move about. In a well-ordered mansion, indeed, it seems +needless really for the master to do much more than feed himself and +draw his own breath--the servants can do all the rest for him! + +A familia of one hundred and fifty slaves, such as Calvus’s, requires +a semi-military organization. Everything should run smoothly. At +the head of all are the upper slaves, proud, arrogant beings with +their own body servants, the commissioned officers of the army. The +_procurator_ (sometimes a freedman), who does the purchasing and +outside business; the _dispensator_, who manages the storerooms; +the _atriensis_, who acts as general chamberlain, and especially +the _silentarius_, who enforces “silence” and general discipline +form the heads of this category. They are often petty tyrants, and the +newcomer Crœsus will have far more to fear from their harshness than +from Calvus, who will hardly know him by sight. + +The staff at large is carefully split up into _decuriæ_ (squads of ten) +each under its special chief. There are the house cleaners, the table +retinue, the kitchen force, the chamber boys and maids, the keepers of +the wardrobes, the master’s valets, the mistress’s maids, the special +attendants of Calvus’s children, the litter bearers, the corps of +messengers--each forming a separate contingent. The master, too, has +several secretaries, expert copyists and readers, and a librarian. +There are several slave physicians although their duties are largely +confined to the familia; the masters will call in fashionable free +professionals for their own serious ills. The two sexes are about +equally divided, and a great many slaves are respectably if informally +married,[60] although a familia is anything but a school of social +virtue. + + +=111. Discipline in a Well-Ordered Mansion. Long Hours of +Idleness.=--In such a mansion the master and mistress have little +acquaintance with the lower run of the human beings over whom they +possess absolute power. Calvus, however, knows his upper servants, his +favorite valets, and his first secretary, and being a genuinely kindly +man has come to esteem them and trust them familiarly; and it is the +same between Gratia and her confidential maids. + +The other slaves they treat fairly humanely, all things considered, +but absolutely impersonally--their presence is to be taken for granted +like articles of furniture, and their personal problems are ignored. +In the peristylium there is always posted a bulletin board informing +the slaves of the nights when their master is going out to dinner, +and although Calvus does not imitate certain very haughty individuals +by trying to give all his orders through signs and never addressing +a menial, it is good breeding to speak to ordinary slaves as seldom +and then as curtly as possible, just as one should not waste words +addressing a yoke of oxen. + +Roman house-slaves have their sorrows but they need not ordinarily fear +two mortal evils--hunger, or overwork. They have, of course, their own +dining quarters and are kept on sufficient, if simple rations of meal +cakes, salt, oil, common wine, and a little fruit. Butcher’s meat they +seldom touch, except as the kitchen staff get the leavings from the +banquets, although the upper servants naturally fare more sumptuously. + +As for slaves’ working hours, they are absurdly short. Every servant +has some limited appointed task. When that is finished nothing else +is expected of him, and to require other duties would not merely make +the master unpopular with his servants, it would stamp him before his +equals as an extremely mean and sordid man. Thus, on very many days, +Calvus’s six litter bearers have absolutely nothing to do. On the many +nights that he and Gratia dine out the great kitchen staff is concerned +mainly with the dice-box. The boudoir maids are usually idle from the +time their mistress is dressed until she must dress again for dinner. +All this makes for gossiping, gaming, and for the worst kinds of busy +idleness. + + +=112. Inevitable Degradation Caused by Slavery. Evil Effect upon +Masters.=--Are these “speaking tools” very miserable? Calvus’s +familia is not exceptional in that a tolerably kindly relation often +exists between owner and owned. The Stoic philosophy is making its +impression, and there are plenty of theoretical arguments that “a slave +is also a man” and entitled to humane treatment. A master or mistress +who is habitually cruel is frowned on socially as might be a man +accustomed to abuse his horses. + +Nevertheless, the status of a slave is always morally degrading. He +feels himself a mere chattel. Whatever he enjoys, he enjoys merely on +suffrance. Any sort of iniquity is condoned in his mind “if the master +orders it,” and he is likely to be honest and faithful more through the +fear of harsh punishment than because of any high ethical motives. + +On the other hand just because slavery has perforce its brutal, +soul-destroying elements, it is almost equally evil for the master. +It is seldom good for a man to have the lives often of hundreds of +fellow beings in his power; or to be relieved of every possible kind of +honest exertion by a swarm of officious menials. Furthermore, slavery +being inevitably so brutal, masters often live in terror of a mutiny by +the brutes themselves. “_So many slaves, so many enemies_,” is a +standard maxim; not always true, but true enough to excuse many horrid +practices. + +The slave revolt led by Spartacus in 73 B.C. is now half forgotten +in history, but that rebel gladiator had later several almost as +successful imitators. Every now and then something happens which makes +senatorial blood run cold. Only in Trajan’s day there was one Lagius +Macedo, an ex-prætor, a cruel and overbearing master, indeed, who was +beaten to death by his slaves while he was bathing at his Formiæ villa. +The wretches were all crucified, of course, but (as wrote Pliny the +Younger just after it happened): “You see what we masters are exposed +to; and nobody can feel safe because he’s an easy and mild master; for +it’s sheer villainy, not premeditation, that prompts our murder.” + +Another danger, especially under evil emperors, comes from the +incessant presence of slaves at the most private affairs of their +lords, their willingness to tattle, to assist informers, and often to +help ruin their masters outright in return for freedom and reward. +“The tongue is the worst part of a bad slave,” runs a familiar saying, +and even an honest and high-minded man must shudder at the idea of +having all his intimate doings passed on to delight his enemies. + + +=113. Punishment of Slaves.=--Under these circumstances, and with +so many slaves who are undoubtedly by origin and nature unreliable if +not incorrigible, every large house has its small private dungeon, and +also a low-browed wolfish creature who serves as jailer and official +“whipper.” Even in Calvus’s house he finds occupation, for in so large +a familia some luckless boy or maid is often caught loitering or +pilfering, and gets a dose of the many-lashed scourge--at the orders of +the upper-slave managers.[61] Under-slaves, indeed, think nothing of a +lashing beyond its mere pain; there is no disgrace, it is all part of +one’s lot in life. + +There can be much worse things than this in many houses. Servilia, one +of Gratia’s acquaintances, often beats her tire-women cruelly with the +flat of her bronze mirror for the most trivial offenses. Ambustus, the +new ædile, lately ordered a boy to get one hundred stripes merely for +being slow in bringing hot water. The rich widow Lepidia so enjoys +having her slaves flogged, that she makes the whipper actually do his +pitiless work in her dressing room, while she is reading the “Daily +Journal” (_Acta Diurna_, see p. 282) and having her face rouged. +Many a slave has been whipped to death because of some small folly +which sent his master or mistress into a rage, and noblemen have been +known to keep huge flesh-eating carp in their fish ponds, and to toss +in a recalcitrant slave occasionally to improve the flavor of the fish, +although such actions disgust all decent people. + + +=114. Branding of Slaves. _Ergastula_--Slave Prisons.=--If a slave’s +offense is too great to be rewarded by a mere whipping, and yet does +not provoke the death penalty, there are plenty of intermediate +punishments. Toiling around Calvus’s atrium is an ill-favored lad with +the scars of branding barely healed on his forehead: “FVR” he is marked +(“Thief”)[62]. He is taking the place of another youth who, to cure +extreme laziness, has been sent for a month to the “mill gang”--chained +to the great lever which turns the grist mill and forced to toil all +day like a hard-driven ass--an excellent cure for idleness. + +This fate is not so bad, however, as what befell one of the eques +Pollio’s valets, a bright clever lad, who foolishly became too pert +to his master. In a fit of anger Pollio ordered, “Give him six months +in the _ergastulum_.” The soft-handed boy was, therefore, not merely +shipped off to severe farm labor, itself utterly repulsive, but was +obliged to work in the fields in a chain-gang along with the very +scum of slave-criminals; always in fetters, lashed by brutish keepers +themselves slaves, and confined at night in underground prisons +(_ergastula_) that were mere kennels. + + +=115. Death Penalties for Slaves. Pursuit of Runaways.=--If +a slave really deserves death, there are, of course, two standard +methods of capital punishment, both very degrading as well as fearful. +Everybody knows about crucifixion with its hours and perhaps days +of hideous agony; but more common and nearly as painful is death on +the _furca_.[63] The victim’s head is placed at the opening of +two “V”-shaped beams and his arms tightly lashed upon them; then the +professional floggers strike the wretch with their loaded whips, the +leaden balls worked into the thongs making them a terrific weapon, +until death comes as blessed relief. It has been a long day since there +has been an execution at Calvus’s house, but some years ago a Spanish +boy who murdered an upper-servant perished thus under the lash. There +is, however, a much simpler way of disposing of criminal slaves, one +bringing a certain return to their masters,--namely, to sell them to +the givers of public shows to train as gladiators or merely to set in +the arena to give sport to the bears or lions. + +Of course, under such conditions slaves will often try to run away. +They seldom really succeed, however, unless they are persons of marked +intelligence and can make off with considerable money. The Roman +Empire is one vast police unit, unattached strangers are everywhere +scrutinized carefully and when a slave disappears a reward is promptly +offered. Only now a crier has gone down Mercury Street, with a crowd +after him, as he proclaims: “_Disappeared from the public baths, a +boy aged about sixteen. Free and easy habits. Curly hair. Good-looking. +Answers to name of Giton. A thousand sesterces to anybody haling him +back to Aulus Sulpicius near the Temple of Ops, or to anyone who will +betray his whereabouts!_”[64] + +If Giton is retaken, he can thank the gods if he is merely flogged +almost to death, and is not also given a year in the ergastulum. + +Naturally slaves can only testify in court by their master’s consent +and under torture, although the reigning humane Emperor has just issued +a decree limiting its use to the last resort. Hadrian, also, contrary +to the usage in Nero’s day, has ordained that if a man is murdered by +his slaves, only the slaves near the actual scene of crime are to be +tormented, and he has actually banished a certain matron, Umbricia, for +“abusing her slave girls most atrociously for trivial reasons.” All +this perhaps dimly foreshadows a new day; but what human chattel can +wait to see the abuses of slavery whittled down by the law across the +centuries? + +Have the slaves along Mercury Street any nearer hope? Possibly. The +other day many of them saw in the front benches of honor at the +Circus a man of dignity. His hands glittered with sardonyx rings; his +lacerna was of Tyrian purple; his shoes were scarlet, his hair reeking +with costly essences; a great train bowed and cringed to him. But +his forehead was covered with “numerous white patches like stars”; +“sticking plaster,” everybody whispered, to cover up the FVR once +branded on his countenance. He was an ex-slave, an exalted freedman, +who, a couple of decades before, had stood on the auction block, but +now was a mighty power in Roman high finance. + + + + + CHAPTER VIII + + THE SOCIAL ORDERS: FREEDMEN, PROVINCIALS, PLEBEIANS, AND NOBLES + + +=116. Manumission of Slaves Very Common.=--A Roman slave’s legal +position may be miserable, but usually he is not under that fearful +stigma of race and color weighing upon the slaves of another era. His +complexion and his brain power do not differ essentially from his +master’s.[65] If he is a Greek or Levantine, often his mental acuteness +may be greater than that of his lord. An intelligent slave under not +too harsh a master will devote himself to the latter in every possible +way, expecting pretty certainly the great reward for faithfulness and +zealous service--freedom. Of course, many dull hardened wretches, +especially upon the farms, will die as the toiling chattels they have +lived; but freedom comes often enough to make manumission something for +which to hope eagerly. + +Often the death of a master is the signal for a grand enfranchisement +of all the older members of his familia. It costs nothing thus to +reward faithful service at the expense of your heirs; and it is a fine +thing to have a long file of newly created freedmen, all wearing the +tall red caps of “liberty,” march in your funeral procession. Everybody +will praise your “generosity,” and the freedmen can be expected to +cherish their lord’s memory. Incidentally, also, there are few better +ways of punishing a generally incompetent slave than having him +ostentatiously _refused_ freedom when all his comrades go about +rejoicing. + + +=117. The Ceremony of Manumission.=--Nevertheless, many slaves need +not wait for their masters to die. They are perhaps suffered to work +at a trade, and accumulate their “peculium,” and then very likely +to purchase their own and their wives’ and children’s liberty. With +rich masters of the better sort, it is also a gracious act at certain +intervals to select a few extra-deserving slaves and say to them the +blessed words, “Come with me to the prætor!” + +When they are all before the magistrate a solemn legal formality +is gone through. One of the official lictors steps forward, gives +a light tap with his rod upon the head of each slave and says +loudly, “I declare this man is free!” The master laying hold of the +slave and turning him around, replies, “And I desire that this man +should be free!” adding a slight blow on the cheek; whereat the +magistrate declares officially, “And I adjudge that this man is free.” +This completes the “manumission”; then home the happy “freedman” +(_libertinus_) goes to be greeted with the congratulations of his +former fellow-slaves, showers of sweet cakes, dates, and figs and all +kinds of humble rejoicings. + + +=118. The Status of Freedmen. Their Great Success in +Business.=--Henceforth, the ex-slave is the freedman of his former +master. He takes the first part of his master’s name; thus that +Cleander, manumitted a few years ago by Publius Junius Calvus, now +swells about proudly as Publius Junius Cleander. His children will +henceforth be Junii, no less lawfully than Calvus’s children; with a +result that the gentile names of some of the proudest houses in Rome +are now also borne by families perforce acknowledging swart Africans or +tow-headed Batavians as very near ancestors. + +Once escaped from actual slavery a great career in life can open before +an energetic freedman. If his ex-master is a Roman citizen, he also +is now a Roman citizen without any naturalization process. True he +is under a social stigma. Not merely he, but his children also, are +excluded from the Senate and all the higher offices of the state; but +an ex-slave is not likely to suffer from thinness of skin. Compelled in +his youth to use his wits and put forth all his energies, he now often +possesses abilities, often not very refined or delicate, which carry +him far in trade, general business, and finance. + +Usually before a master manumits a slave it is arranged that he shall +remain in the mansion as some kind of an invaluable “man of business” +for handling a large estate. Many a senator is like Cicero, in all +private affairs completely at the mercy of a confidential _alter +ego_, a freedman like Cicero’s able and beloved Tiro. Practically +every dignitary in Rome will refer his business matters to “my +freedman,” a shrewd consequential fellow, probably of Græco-Levantine +origin, who has the right to use his patron’s seal ring, and who knows +all the family secrets. Supple, obsequious, and indispensable, he is +certain of a great legacy when his patron dies; and if the patron is +childless, he often becomes his heir. There are, indeed, plenty of +cases where a slave-boy who entered a house as a valet, first earned +freedom, then became a general confidant, and ended not merely with +inheriting the house itself but with marrying the late owner’s widow. + + +=119. Humble Types of Freedmen.=--Of course, the bulk of freedmen +have no claim to such expectations. They are petty shop keepers or +skilled craftsmen. They make up the great bureaus of upper clerks in +the huge government offices on the Palatine. Everywhere they compete, +as a rule very successfully, with the free born, and, of course, they +add to the cosmopolitan multitudes in Rome. + +An ex-slave cannot avoid becoming substantially the client of his +former master. He is supposed to show his patron and his patron’s +family constant respect and usually a certain amount of service +without compensation. Thus a while ago Calvus manumitted a very +faithful slave-physician. It was stipulated that he should continue +to physic the familia without charge. For a freedman to show himself +neglectful of these obligations, above all to do anything to injure +his ex-master, is the depth of depravity. The legal penalties for such +“ingratitude” are very severe, and in extreme cases the actual act of +manumission itself can be cancelled. + + +=120. Wealth and Power of Successful Freedmen.=--Nevertheless, +top-lofty freedmen abound. Their ready wits bring them riches--the +power before which all the Empire bends. Once more Juvenal describes +an obnoxious type: “Though I’m born on the Euphrates, a fact which +the little windows [holes for earrings] in my ears would prove if I +denied it--yet am I the owner of five shops which bring me in 400,000 +sesterces [$16,000] per year. What better thing does a senator’s robe +bestow? Therefore, let everybody give way to one who but yesterday +with the chalked feet of a slave entered our city.” Freedmen, of +course, get ahead marvellously because nothing is too sordid if only +it promises gain. “He [a certain freedman],” says Petronius, “started +with an _as_ [large copper coin], and was always ready to pick a +_quadrans_ [farthing] out of the filthy mire with his teeth. So +his wealth grew and grew like a honey comb!” + +Very probably, the ideal set before this species of persons is that of +becoming all-powerful imperial freedmen, such as that pair, Pallas and +Narcissus, who literally ruled the Roman Empire through their patron, +Claudius. Trajan and Hadrian have, indeed, greatly reduced the power of +freedmen around the Palace, turning the great secretarial offices over +to equites, but there are still ex-slaves in the service of “Cæsar,” +who have only a little less influence than that mighty Claudius +Etruscus who died of old age under Domitian after having served six +Emperors. He began life in Rome as a slave boy from Smyrna. Tiberius +manumitted him. He rose to become practically the head of the Treasury. +His wealth was great, but his integrity matched his vast power, and +few senators had such commanding influence in the government as he +possessed. + + +=121. Importance of Freedmen in a Roman Family.=--In such a house +as that of Calvus there are neither imperial ministers nor miserly +speculators. The freedmen are honored and trusted members not of the +slave familia but of the actual “family.” When they are sick Calvus and +Gratia are greatly concerned, as was Pliny the Younger over the illness +of his beloved reader, Zosimus. If there is any domestic crisis, their +counsel is sought and they take a zealous interest in the education of +their lord’s children. + +On the other hand, on the nearby Flora Street spreads the huge garish +palace of the ex-slave Athenonius, who won his freedom by catering to a +foolish master’s worst passions, and then gathered enormous wealth by +speculating in Egyptian corn. “_Freedmen’s riches_” have become a +proverb. Not all freedmen are by any means wealthy, but enough of them +have risen to the seats of the mighty to make every toiling slave dream +dreams and see visions of something better than a dishonored, servile +grave. + + +=122. The Status of Provincials. The Case of Jesus.=--All freedmen +are Roman citizens, albeit citizens under a formal handicap, but in a +city like Rome there are always many free persons who are not citizens +at all--visiting provincials. Every year the Emperors issue some edict +granting the franchise to a new group of non-citizens, but the numbers +of the latter in all the provinces of the Empire is still great.[66] +At Rome their position is ordinarily comfortable enough, although if +arrested, they are liable to a more summary trial than Roman citizens +and in case of famine or public disturbance they are liable to sudden +expulsion from the city (as Claudius expelled the Jews) without any +redress. The real disadvantage which they endure is that they cannot +be appointed to any kind of public office under the Roman government. +They are also sometimes under a legal handicap in making and enforcing +commercial contracts; and last but not least in their own provinces +they cannot “appeal to Cæsar” (if in an “Imperial” province) or to the +Senate (if in a “Senatorial” province) against the decision, however +arbitrary, of the Roman governor. + +If you search the public records at the great _Tabularium_ (Public +Record Office) by the Forum, you can find for example the report of the +trial of a certain Jew, one Christus, who was accused of sedition in +Judæa, about a hundred years before our visit to Rome. The procurator +Pilatus yielding to popular clamor had him executed ignominiously by +crucifixion. This was, of course, within Pilatus’s legal authority. +Christus was only a provincial and he could take no appeal. + +The status of the provincials depends much on whether their communities +enjoy any treaty with or charter from Rome. Athens and a few other +favored places are nominally “equal allies” with full rights of +self-government, and their citizens can claim a favored position among +the mass of provincials. Other places possess charters giving great +privileges but revocable in case of gross abuse. + +The bulk of the provincials are mere “stipendiaries,” often permitted +local self-government, but subject to Roman taxation, and to the +complete jurisdiction of the Roman governor. Under the Empire these +governors are only by exception corrupt and arbitrary, but their +decisions must usually be final. + + +=123. Great Alien Colonies in Rome.=--Apart from the great alien +slave population there are inevitably large groups of resident aliens +in various parts of the capital. There is a Little Syria, Little Egypt, +Little Spain, and a Little Greece as surely as in certain great cities +of a later civilization, but the most famous and conspicuous is the +great Jewish colony. + +This exists mainly in the Trans-Tiber district under the shadow of the +Janiculum, although Jews are allowed to settle and to do business in +any section of the city. The total number of free Jews in Rome has been +set at 35,000 in Augustus’s day, and it received a great reinforcement +through the captives of Titus, many of whom regained their liberty. The +Jews are obliged to pay to the Capitoline Jupiter that tribute which +they formerly paid to their Temple in Jerusalem, but otherwise they +are not harassed by the government. For the most part, however, they +are very poor; few of them are great bankers or merchants, but nearly +all the rest are petty shopkeepers and peddlers--also a great many are +alleged to increase their living by fortune-telling and by like dubious +arts. + + +=124. The Roman Plebeians, the “Mob” (_Vulgus_).=--Greatly surpassing +the resident aliens in number are inevitably the ordinary Roman +plebeians. It is a fine thing in the provinces to boast, “_Civis +Romanus sum_,” but in the capital many a freedman, many an upper-slave +of a magnate even, looks down with scorn on a large fraction of this +“common herd” (_grex_) that still claims to form “the Roman People.” +However, if you are really a Roman citizen entitled to wear a toga, +and to share in the grain doles and other public distributions, you +can really live on very little. Somehow you must find means for the +rental of a sleeping garret in an insula, but the daytime you can spend +hanging around the fora, porticoes, or the entrances to the circuses +and gladiator schools, playing _morra_ and checkergames (see p. 205); +idling in the great public baths; frequenting every possible public +exhibition in the theater or amphitheater and often getting a bare +income by toadying most abjectly to the rich. + +Everybody despises this Roman “mob,” and yet cringes to it. Its yells +across the circus send the blood from the cheeks of very tyrannous +emperors. The mild Italian climate renders an existence amid dirt and +sunshine, eked out by very little labor, decidedly tolerable.[67] +Assuredly very many of these “citizens” are simply honest thrifty +industrialists, trades people, or professional men, holding their +own stubbornly against the competing slaves, freedmen, and aliens. +Nevertheless, the proportion of undesirables is dangerously great. Many +of the idle plebeians are the sons of freedmen, who have inherited +their parents’ non-Italian vices but who have not been under their +necessity of hard work and faithfulness; and when one examines the +moral and social qualities of the alleged heirs of the virtuous +old-time plebeians the idea of “restoring the Republic,” still +sighed after by a few aristocratic philosophers, appears absolutely +laughable.[68] + + +=125. The Desirability of Roman Citizenship. The Case of St. Paul.=--It +is as contrasted with the status of provincials that Roman citizenship +still preserves its remarkable value. A citizen can, indeed, no +longer go to the Republican assemblies to elect magistrates and vote +on proposed statutes, but he has his personal and property rights +protected by the best kind of “Quiritian” law. The government is +never, indeed, iniquitous enough to enact that, as between Roman and +provincial, the judge must always decide for the former, nevertheless +the advantages of the citizen are great. + +A Roman can command all sorts of protection not open to provincials. +The judge will almost inevitably be a little prejudiced in his favor. +If arrested, a citizen can ordinarily demand the right to give bail. It +is a gross outrage to “examine him by scourging.” He cannot be put to +torture. If he is finally sentenced to die, he cannot be crucified, but +ordinarily must be beheaded--a very merciful end. Particularly, unless +the case is extremely clear, in matters touching his life and status as +a citizen he can appeal from the decision of a provincial governor to +“Cæsar” or to the Senate (if in a province governed by that body). + +If we visit the Record Office again, this matter is clearly +illustrated. About twenty-five years after the crucifixion of +Christus, one of his followers, a certain Paulus, was also arrested +in Jerusalem on much the same charges of attempted sedition and +inciting disturbance. But Paulus, when arrested, promptly pleaded his +Roman citizenship. Vainly the local mob clamored for his life even as +they had demanded that of Christus. When the local procurator Festus +hesitated to set him at liberty, the prisoner demanded to be sent to +Rome--and thither at great trouble and expense he had to be shipped; +to be tried ultimately before the Prætorian Præfect sitting as Nero’s +deputy; and the charges were dismissed and he was set at liberty.[69] +If he had not been a Roman, assuredly the weak-kneed governor of +Palestine would have sacrificed him “to please the Jews” just as +Pilatus sacrificed Christus. + + +=126. Clientage: Its Oldest Form.=--Between the poorest classes +of plebeians, sleeping within porticoes and despised by the superior +slaves, and those dignified well-to-do gentlemen who have almost the +means to pass as equites, there are, of course, an infinite number of +social strata. The most important section of the better plebeians is +undoubtedly to be numbered among the _clients_. + +Clientage is a very old Roman institution. The kings and nobles of +Rome in the very twilight of history had their clients. Those were +the days when poor plebeians had little or no legal protection unless +they enlisted the patronage of a magnate. They entered his _gens_ +(inner-clan), followed him in war, voted (when they obtained the vote) +in his interest, assisted him in certain money matters, in short, +became members of his household although very much better off than the +slaves. In return the patron was bound to defend their legal rights +in the courts and to protect them from all forms of outrage. Men were +proud to confess themselves as clients of a Fabius or an Æmilius. But +by the end of the Republic the institution had practically disappeared +in its original form. There was little legal discrimination then +against poor citizens, and about all the real clients who now remained +were freedmen, who, as just seen, were bound to be loyal and helpful to +their _patroni_. + + +=127. The New Parasitical Clientage: the Morning Salutation.=--Now, +however, a new and wholly parasitical clientage has come into being. +Early every morning the clients can be seen hurrying down Mercury +Street in their hastily donned togas. Sometimes a patron lives a great +distance across the city; sometimes a fawning myrmidon hopes to visit +_two_ patrons in the same morning and get a double reward. Calvus +does not rejoice in a great horde of clients, but being a senator his +dignity requires that he should maintain perhaps a score of them. + +These clients are an assorted lot. Some are merely cheap hangers-on, +some are adventurers visiting Rome and expecting to prosper by earning +the favor of the great, there is also a mediocre poet who hopes for a +tidy gift some day because of laudatory verses about his “Rex” and the +latter’s family, there are several distant relatives of the Calvi, poor +relations to whom the doles are a form of pension; and finally there +are two or three men of good family and tolerable incomes who actually +dance attendance on Calvus just to get a little extra pocket money. + + [Illustration: CLIENTS GATHERING IN THE RAIN, BEFORE + THEIR PATRON’S DOOR. + + _After Von Falke._] + +The clients gather in the vestibule at dawn, rubbing their eyes, +rearranging their hastily donned togas, and each trying to induce the +not very civil porter to permit him to enter first. At last the word +is passed to the door that, “The patron is ready.” The valves open; +the clients swarm inside together. Publius Calvus dressed for the +morning is standing in the rear of his atrium, just behind the pool of +the impluvium. At his elbow is his nomenclator, the slave who “knows +everybody,” to whisper a name in case he should not connect it promptly +with a face. + +“_Ave, patrone, ave!_” cries each client coming up in turn. “_Ave, +Marce!_” or “_Sexte!_” or “_Lucie!_” answers Calvus with a more or less +formal smile. + +If his mood is very gracious, each client is allowed to seize his hand, +and two or three in extra favor are suffered to kiss his cheek. The +nomenclator meantime prompts him in undertone, “Ask about his wife,” +“Congratulate him on his niece’s marriage,” etc. And if that evening +there are not more important guests in view, the senator will delight +the souls of several by saying affably, “Come to-night to dinner.” The +clients in any case congratulate themselves that their patron is not +like some of those very haughty parvenus, who simply hold out their +hands to be kissed and never speak a word, and who like to be called +“dominus,” as if their clients were merely slaves. + + +=128. The Dole to Clients (the _Sportula_).=--After the clients will +appear more pretentious visitors--equites and fellow senators--who +call to see Calvus on business. Their own clients are probably waiting +listlessly in the street, while Calvus’s dependents have to stand +respectfully near their lord until an upper slave beckons them toward +the office--the tablinum. He has a list in his hand and checks off all +present as might a master the pupils in his school, and then comes +the reward which brought all these toga-wearing gentry thither, a +distribution of money. + +In former years every client had received an actual portion of +victuals, known as _sportula_ from the “little basket” which everybody +brought to bear the viands hence. But this custom of distributing +actual food was inconvenient, and far more pleasing is an actual +gift of money. Only regularly listed clients can receive this; and +no client, sick or lazy, can send a deputy.[70] He must appear in +person or stand his loss. At length, to every lawful retainer present +is carefully counted out a hundred _quadrantes_, small coppers (rather +under 25 cents), and besides the clients entertain a few hopes of a +fairly liberal present at New Year’s Day, and at some other festivals, +and as seen, in a kind of rotation they are invited at broad intervals +to dinner. + + +=129. Attendance by Clients in Public. Insults They Must +Undergo.=--After the sportula has been paid, the clients look anxiously +toward Calvus. Will he tell them, as he does about half of the time, +“Nothing more to-day,” and let them scatter down the streets? Not so; +“My litter” he orders. The clients are obliged to march before and +behind, along with the slaves, helping to elbow aside the crowd, while +the senator visits other senatorial houses, next his banker at the +Forum, and then the law courts for a consultation, and so goes his +round. If he detains the clients through the noon hour, he is obligated +to give them some kind of luncheon; but he can command the attendance +of them all even up to the tenth hour, when he may turn them loose to +refresh themselves in the public Baths of Titus, after they have left +him perhaps at the more select Baths of Agrippa. + +As for the clients invited to Calvus’s dinner, if the fare is plainer +than on the night of a high banquet, there is at least no insulting +discrimination. A decent patron and patrona are bound to show +themselves “friends” of their clients and to keep up a pretence of +democratic manners. But as stated earlier (see p. 120), many a vulgar +plutocrat, feeling that he has paid good money to get a proper retinue +to follow him to the Forum, delights to insult his clients’ feelings +when he invites them. The host enjoys his fine white loaf, while the +client’s is almost too hard to break; the host a splendid lobster +garnished with asparagus, the client “a crab on a tiny plate hemmed in +by half an egg”; the lord “noble mushrooms,” the client “toadstools of +doubtful quality,”--and all other treatment is to match. Yet such is +the servility and pettiness of many that they will endure all this and +worse merely in order to boast the next day of “last night when I dined +with my friend the senator----!” “You think yourself a citizen and the +guest of a grandee,” cries the indignant poet. “_He_ thinks, and +he’s nearly right, that you’ve been captured by the fine smell from his +kitchen.” + +Clientage then is a typical institution of imperial Rome--a means for +letting rich men flatter their desire for a huge company of obsequious +attendants by trading on the wretched ambition of so many to appear +to be on familiar terms with the great. It multiplies the horde of +shabby-genteel persons around the city, and the vast number of those +who flee from their greatest aversion--honest work. + + +=130. The Decurions: the Notables of the Chartered Cities.=--Above +the run of clients or even of the better plebeians is the actual +nobility. Strictly speaking only the senators and equites are reckoned +in this group, but always in Rome are sojourning a certain number of +other men who hold themselves decidedly better than any plebeians--the +_decurions_ from the enfranchised towns covering all Italy and +dotted over the entire Empire.[71] + +The decurions are the notables of the smaller chartered cities. In +their own communities they are local senators and enjoy in a small way +the position of an actual Senator in Rome.[72] Nobody can be elected +decurion without a reasonable property qualification, in many cities +100,000 sesterces ($4000), and from their body of wealthy dignitaries +the local public assemblies still elect (even under the Empire) city +magistrates, duumvirs, ædiles, etc., who take the place in each +community of the old consuls and censors of Republican Rome. + +Since the loyalty of the population and the popularity of the imperial +régime often depends on this very influential class of decurions, the +government makes much of them; allows them high-sounding titles and +tinsel honors, and any who visit Rome are given social precedence +directly behind the actual equites. Furthermore, many high Roman nobles +themselves are proud to be enrolled as patrons and _honorary_ +decurions of the Italian towns, looking after the interest of their +client communities in the capital, and, if they visit the smaller +cities, being received as particular guests of honor. The number of +decurions, however, in Rome itself is always small, although their +importance everywhere else in the Empire is vast, and they virtually +form a third order of nobility. + + +=131. The Equites: the Nobles of the Second Class.=--Everywhere +around the metropolis you meet the second-class nobles--the +Equites.[73] This “Splendid Order” dates, of course, from the oldest +days when to keep a cavalry horse implied having considerable property. +The equites sank to unimportance in the prosperous era of the Republic, +but were revived to great power by Gaius Gracchus; they were later +reorganized and made an effective part of the new imperial régime by +Augustus. + +The dividing line between Senators and Equites is not always sharp. +Young men of senatorial family who renounce a political career have to +“make narrow their purple stripe,” as did Ovid, and without disgrace +appear henceforth as second-class nobles. Supposedly no persons but the +sons of free-born men are eligible for enrollment as equites, but the +members of the old-line families fume vainly at the way the Emperors +(who have complete dispensing power) will grant “the right of the +gold ring,” not merely to the sons of freedmen, but sometimes even to +downright ex-slaves. There are in truth very few equites in Rome who do +not reckon a slave among their not remote grandparents. + +The equites are all carefully enrolled in a public bureau under +imperial control, and one of the surest holds which the Emperor +possesses upon the government lies in the fact that he can refuse +enrollment arbitrarily to any young man and thereby practically exclude +him from any kind of high public office except in the municipal towns, +or from any military rank above that of centurion. The senators, all +the more important officials, and all the commissioned officers of the +army are equites, although their greater honors cause them to ignore +the lesser, while if the Emperor has an eligible son or heir, he is +often proclaimed the _princeps juventutis_ (“Chief of the Roman +Youth”) and is nominally the first member of the Equestrian Order. + + +=132. Qualifications and Honors of the Equites.=--To be enrolled +as an eques one must possess besides unstained birth (with exceptions +above noted), a good public reputation, and taxable property worth at +least 400,000 sesterces ($16,000); sufficient therefore to pass for +a tolerably rich man. The honor comes for life, subject to demotion, +however, for disgraceful conduct, or lapse into poverty. A son normally +inherits his father’s status, if his own share of the patrimony comes +to over 400,000 sesterces; and of course, to make up that magic figure +many plebeians pinch and slave. + +The honors of an eques are great in any age laying such stress on +outward praise and glory. Besides the right to the plain gold ring, +the narrow purple stripe running down the front of the tunic proudly +proclaims the fact, “I am of the nobility.” The equites also enjoy +fourteen rows of seats in the public games and theater directly behind +the four front ones reserved for the senators. They provide a large +fraction of all the jurors in the great civil tribunals which handle +most of the litigation.[74] Very many of the great imperial ministries +and superintendencies are reserved for them, for the Emperor does not +like to trust the senators too implicitly, and some of the smaller +provinces have equestrian “Procurators” as their governors, as also +does the enormously wealthy province of Egypt. + +The majority of the equites, however, are in private life. Senators +ought not (except through convenient middlemen) to engage in +commerce and trade. Not so the equites--the powerful bankers with +whom the imperial treasurer may confer; the owners of the peaceful +armadas that enter Puteoli or Ostia; the proprietors of the finer +retail establishments along the Sæpta Julia as well as of the huge +wholesale houses; the directors of the vast brickyards, and other +highly developed industries; the owners of so many of the squalid but +profitable insulæ--nearly all will show their “Angusticlave”--their +narrow purple stripe. Equites appear at banquets with senators +without the least awkwardness; and they like to be addressed by fine +booming titles: _insignes_, _primores_, _illustres_, or, if holding +high office, _eminentissimi_, but in most cases as _splendidi_; and +“splendid” they appear to the envious slaves and plebeians. + + +=133. Review of the Equites. Pretenders to the Rank.=--The equites +are still in theory a military body. Every 15th of July, unless the +review is deliberately omitted, all members who are physically able are +supposed to procure horses and take part in a grand parade before the +Emperor. Sometimes there are at least 5000 equites in the procession. +The Emperor still has the right of the ancient censors to brand a man +as a bad citizen by the public command, “Sell your horse!” as he rides +by the reviewing stand;[75] but the parade has now become merely an +unpleasant formality for portly men unaccustomed to horseback, and old +gentlemen are usually excused. + +In so large a body of “gentry,” however, imposture becomes fairly +common. Nearly every Emperor issues an edict for the purging of the +order, and every now and then some adventurous nobody is divested of +his “narrow stripe.” Calvus came home lately from the Flaminian Circus +laughing heartily. Just behind his senatorial tier a perfumed and +beringed fellow set off with a splendid lacerna sat down saying loudly, +“Now at last, thanks to our Cæsar, due honors have come to the Roman +equites, and the vulgar are kept away”; but hardly had he spoken ere a +lynx-eyed usher identified him and amid the jeering of hundreds “forced +that very fine lacerna to get up!” + + +=134. The Senatorial Order. The First-Class Nobility.=--The first +class in the nobility is the Senatorial. The actual functioning of +the Senate which is still a most venerable and powerful council will +be told later (see p. 334); here we have to see its members merely +in social and unofficial life. They number six hundred and entrance +into their gilded circle comes usually by a kind of hereditary right. +The sons of a senator can almost always count on becoming senators +themselves if the family fortune is not too impaired and they have +not fallen under imperial disfavor. To win the honor you must either +be elected (by the Senate itself) to some one of the old Republican +offices--quæstors, ædiles, prætors, consuls, etc.,--which carried a +life seat in the Senate with them, or be appointed outright by fiat of +the Emperor. The latter, furthermore, is always pushing forward his +favorites by “inviting” the senators to elect them to office, and the +“Conscript Fathers” never disregarded such a broad hint from “Cæsar.” + + +=135. Social Glories of Senators.=--Senators alone are eligible +for the highest commands in the army, for the governorships for the +more important provinces, except Egypt, and for most of the other +exalted offices which do not involve a vulgar handling of money. The +Emperor himself ranks as the head of their noble body. Even when he +is at bitter odds with them, he must not forget that they share part +of his glory. Still is told the story of how one of Nero’s parasites +raised a laugh from the tyrant one day. “I hate you, Cæsar!” he +announced. “And why is that?” “Oh, just because you are a senator.” + +All the senators are officially the “friends,” _amici_, of the +monarch. + +These great nobles are entitled to visit the Emperor in the palace +somewhat as clients visit their patron. He is expected to extend his +hand to them; to treat them as a kind of social equals; and to allow +the more important of them to kiss him. They and their wives must be +invited to all the greater palace banquets. Finally all the better +monarchs are expected to take oath at the beginning of their reigns +that they “will never put any senator to death”--that is, that the +Senate shall be the supreme judge over its own members. + +Although parvenus are promoted by even the best of emperors, the +senatorial families average much older than do the equestrian; and it +is still a very desirable thing to boast of “ancient blood and the +painted visages of one’s forebears.” + + +=136. The Senatorial Aristocracy Greater than the Senate.=--The +“Senatorial Aristocracy,” nevertheless, is something greater than the +actual membership of the great council itself. Not merely the sons +but all the male descendants of a senator to the third degree are +reckoned as equal socially to the actual “Conscript Fathers,” though +many such connections dress merely as equites with the narrow stripe. +This may be from “lack of ambition” or it may be from desire to engage +in trade. Gratia has two brothers. One is a senator, his wealth +invested in lands, and at present he is imperial legate over part of +Britain. The second is technically only an eques, busy with enormous +financial transactions with Alexandria; but the second is the richer +and probably the more influential man of the two. Of course, all the +wives of senators rank with their husbands, and every cousin, niece, or +nephew of the latter feels a reflected luster. The six hundred senators +are, therefore, the center of an upper aristocracy with at least six +thousand actual members. + + +=137. Insignia, Qualifications, and Titles of Senators.=--The actual +senators make no concealment of their honors. They have their special +shoes (see p. 95), and most important of all they have the broad +purple stripe running down the front of their tunics, the precious +_laticlave_, distinguishing them instantly from the equites. Nobody, +furthermore, can be enrolled as senator unless he possesses the taxable +fortune of at least 1,000,000 sesterces ($40,000); and this insures +that he is a passing rich man, above petty bribes and able to live with +the dignity becoming a Lord of the Empire. + +The public glories of these dignitaries match their fortunes. At all +the public games and spectacles the senatorial tiers are directly +behind the Emperor’s loge. In the public feasts the senators are not +merely entitled to the seats of honor, but frequently to extra-generous +portions of the food. If a senator tours the provinces, he can command +every kind of servile attention, even if the Emperor refuses him +the “right of free legation”--the privileges of traveling with the +honors of an ambassador. Finally if he is arrested, not merely is he +ordinarily tried before his peers--in the Senate; he is subject to much +lighter penalties than the run of citizens in case of conviction.[76] + +Finally the senators have a title of nobility which they are able to +command practically as a formal right[77]--_vir clarissimus_--“Very +distinguished Lord” or “Your Magnificence.” Gratia, like every +senator’s wife, is a _femina clarissima_; even her small sons can be +addressed pompously as _pueri clarissimi_. To the multitude who make +way for their litters, the rank of _clarissimus_ appears the acme of +attainable happiness. + +The political power of the Senate has waned, but emperors are only +mortal individuals. They come and go; the existence of the great, +proud, wealthy, landed aristocracy seems to go on forever. Emperors +usually succeed so far as they win its loyalty and favor; they somehow +fail, and are branded across history as tyrants (often cut short by +dagger thrusts) when they earn its hate. In an Empire of nigh one +hundred millions the six thousand of the Senatorial Order form the +normal apex of the human pyramid. It is a fine thing to be a senator. + + + + + CHAPTER IX + + PHYSICIANS AND FUNERALS + + +=138. Scanty Qualifications and Training of Doctors.=--People fall +sick in Rome quite as much as in every other great center of humanity, +but the healing art has not really progressed a great deal beyond +that in Athens in the days of Hippocrates nearly five hundred years +earlier.[78] A great proportion of even the most fashionable doctors +are freedmen, and nearly all of these have Greek (or sometimes +Egyptian) names. There is no medical examination. Anybody who has made +a failure in other callings is welcome to pose as a physician and try +to extract money from the unfortunate. There are many “surgeons” and +“therapists” around the city who, a little while ago, were shoemakers, +carpenters, or smiths, and who, perhaps, keep up their old handicraft +on the side. Six months is time enough to learn a little medical jargon +while serving as “disciple” to some experienced doctor; after that, let +the invalids beware. + +Under such circumstances the glory of the medical profession suffers. +Rightly did Pliny the Elder complain of doctors: “Any voluble person +has powers of life and death over us, just as though thousands of +persons did not live on without doctoring, as Rome existed for six +hundred years [before the first physicians came].” Such gentry +inevitably, if they fail at quackery, can then drift off to something +else, and very familiar is Martial’s epigram: “Diaulus has been a +surgeon and is now an undertaker. At last he’s begun to be useful to +the sick in the only way that he’s able.” + + +=139. Superior Class of Physicians.=--Nevertheless, the physicians +of Rome are by no means all of them charlatans. If their theories are +grossly imperfect, many of them are men of wide experience and keen +insight. A sick man able to command the best, need not give up in +despair unless his case is really complicated and difficult. Great +cures are recorded, as that of Augustus, whose life was saved in a +most critical illness by the “cold-water treatment” ordered by his +doctor, the wise freedman Antonius Musa--a cure which by saving an +all-important life affected the world’s history. + +Whatever their qualifications, physicians, if not highly educated, +assuredly abound in large numbers. Every chartered city maintains +a corps of them for the free treatment of the citizens, and keeps +up public _hiatreia_--well-lighted, spacious halls for offices +and dispensaries.[79] Every cohort of the army has four physicians +attached, with superior medical officers over the larger divisions, and +camp sanitation has been worked out excellently by the Roman military +experts. + +In the Imperial Court, the _archiater_ (“head physician”) is a +well-paid and very important dignitary. Between him and the miserable +slave doctors who bleed and physic their fellows in the private familia +there are any number of gradations. Most of the doctors, of course, +practice for fees, although in Rome, too, a system of free clinics and +dispensaries is coming in, with a special public physician for each of +the fourteen regions of the city. + + +=140. A Fashionable Doctor.=--A doctor of the superior kind is +Symmachus whom Calvus summons whenever any of his own family are +seriously ill. He has one of the most fashionable practices in Rome, +and his annual income is not much under that of Quintus Stertinus +whose fees in Claudius’s day brought him 600,000 sesterces ($24,000) +per year. A high-grade physician does not render a monthly bill. He +expects to be paid once annually--on the first of January. Besides he +counts on receiving a substantial legacy whenever a regular patient at +length escapes him and dies. Lower grade doctors, however, are less +delicate. They are charged with being greedy for unreasonable fees and +with prolonging illnesses easily curable, demanding outrageous sums for +common medicines, and taking every sordid advantage of the needs of the +sick. + + [Illustration: INVALID WITH ATTENDANTS.] + +Symmachus is apparently above all such _gaucheries_. He has been +trained to bear himself as a polished gentleman. His visits are long +or short according to the desires of his patients. He never blurts +out unpleasant truths and he always repeats the Hippocratic maxim, +“A cure depends on three things, the sick man, his sickness, and the +physician”; and that the physician’s business is to help the sick man +to cure himself. The result is that while his anatomical theories would +distress a later age, and some of his medicines are very crude, he +often effects excellent results especially in those cases where mental +therapeutics can avail a little. + +Such a doctor possesses a set of surgical instruments quite as good +as any available in a later age until at least the time of the French +Revolution, and assuredly he knows how to use them very skillfully. He +can dull pain for operations or induce sleep by juice of mandragora or +atropin, and he can operate for cataract by distending the eye-pupil +by anagallis. Delicate surgical operations, however, he will probably +turn over to specialists. There are such surgeons who operate, no +doubt with reasonable success, for hernia and fistula, who take out +gall-stones, and deal with very dangerous fractures. There are also +lesser specialists who can remove or fill aching teeth and can banish +superfluous hair, and there is one shrewd old fellow who commands a +princely income--he can really erase the degrading marks of branding +upon slaves, after they become lordly freedmen. + + +=141. Medical Books and Famous Remedies.=--Symmachus affects to +be a man of professional learning. He possesses and claims to have +studied carefully the great medical treatises of Hermogenes of Smyrna +in 72 books, and that of Tiberius Claudius Menecrates in 156 books. To +impress his patients he will talk learnedly of the jangling theories +of the “Dogmatics,” and “Methodics,” “Pneumaticists,” etc., although +professing himself to be an “Eclectic.” However, his own shrewd common +sense is usually of greater avail than all his books. + +A large part of a popular physician’s gains come not from regular +fees, but from supplying his patients with medicine. There are +many shops selling crude drugs in Rome but no regular prescription +pharmacists.[80] Public opinion avers that the more costly remedies are +always the best, and Symmachus does not discourage that idea too much, +although telling his select patients that cheap medicaments often are +as effective. It is often hard, however, to get pure drugs, and genuine +ingredients.[81] Even the best doctors will be deceived by oriental +drug dealers palming off false balsams, and similar commodities. + +Many physicians consider it professional to keep their remedies secret, +and boast of private formulas, which they will not share with their +rivals. In Tiberius’s day there was a Paccius Antiochus who prepared +a marvellous powder, a kind of panacea for many ills. He compounded +it behind locked doors and mystified even his assistants as to its +nature; but on his death he had the decency to bequeath his formula +to the Emperor who had it deposited for inspection in all the public +libraries; and Hadrian has just done the same with some formulas left +by the great Marcellus of Side. + + +=142. Absurd Medicines. Theriac.=--Some of these remedies are of an +extraordinary nature and so intelligent a man as Symmachus can have no +confidence in them. Still plenty of good doctors will tell you that a +piece of hyena-skin is an excellent remedy for mad-dog bites, and that +certain very filthy substances make good poultices for swellings. The +imperial government actually employs several slaves to catch adders, +whence are derived several important medicaments; and it is claimed +that medicines to cure gall-stones must be pounded with a pestle that +contains no iron. There is no need to dwell on the absurd articles +foisted on the gullible by the quacks; pills made from dried bugs and +centipedes are among the very least obnoxious. + +There is supposed to be a specific medicine for every disease, and +Symmachus’s office is crammed with little chests bearing such labels +as “_Drug from Berytus for watery eyes. Instantaneous_”; “_Ointment +for gout. Made for Proculus, imperial freedman. Safe Cure_”; “_Remedy +for scab. Tested successfully by Pamphilius during the great scab +epidemic_,” or “_Eye-salve tried by Florus on Antonia, wife of Prince +Drusus, after other doctors had nearly blinded her_.”[82] There is +also a large box of a famous compound to be used whenever diagnosis +is uncertain. _Theriac_ is a mixture of sixty-one different elements +including dried adders. Whoever takes it is sure to find at least +_one_ substance that will assist his disease; and it is prescribed by +almost every physician at the opening stages of a malady, before he can +attempt diagnosis. + + +=143. Fear of Poisoning. Popularity of Antidotes.=--A large part of +the doctor’s drug collection is, however, made up of _antidotes_ for +poisons. Everybody dreads being poisoned. Many peculiar deaths which +ought to be diagnosed as caused by natural illness are charged up to +venomous drugs[83] and indeed a deadly dose rather than a deadly dagger +seems a favorite means for murder. People still whisper stories of that +awful poison-vender, the woman Locusta, who probably supplied Nero’s +mother Agrippina with the fatal powder she sprinkled on her husband +Claudius’s dish of mushrooms, and then another dose to Nero himself to +kill his stepbrother, Britannicus, with a highly spiced goblet. + +If a man has many deadly foes, he is likely to take a potion of the +precious theriac daily--because antidotes for so many poisons are +carried in the compound; and all histories tell how Mithridates of +Pontus, that famous adversary of Sulla and Pompeius, used to take +antidotes so constantly that he became entirely immune to the venoms +prepared by all his enemies. Symmachus, as part of his stock in trade, +therefore, keeps the proper antidotes for all such familiar poisons as +hemlock, opium, henbane, gypsum, white lead, etc., as well as for many +obscurer foods of evil. Rumor says that not long since he had to use +several of them on the old ex-consul, Annæus, whose spendthrift sons +seemed very anxious to get their inheritance. + + +=144. Medical Students, “Disciples,” Beauty Specialists.=--Symmachus +like all responsible physicians keeps an office on a good street, +but although patients can visit him there, the place is mainly for +the compounding of medicines by various slaves under the direction +of several “disciples.” There are no medical schools in Rome,[84] +and these young disciples follow their master about, study a little, +and learn by watching him. They are kept away from his most select +patients; but are allowed to troop into the sick room of the poorer, +feel of the pulse, examine the wounds, etc., in a manner most +distressing. People, in fact, dread to call in a doctor--it often means +being felt over not by one but by a half dozen clammy hands, usually +when one is very ill.[85] + +In addition to the men of medicine are the “beauty +specialists”--persons who claim to have reduced the supplementing of +nature to a science. A court physician Crito once wrote four books of +standard authority on the compounding of cosmetics. Every physician is +called upon to prescribe skin washes, depilatories for rendering the +bodies of young dandies perfectly hairless, and formulæ for fragrances +for clothes or chambers; but it takes a specialist to know the +intricacies of rouge and enamel, and otherwise to assist the ladies. +The dividing line also between the physician and the hair-dresser is +not always easy to mark. Petronius tells about the dames who not merely +have abundant false hair, but “take their eyebrows out of a little box” +and “put their teeth away at night just as they do their silks.” + + +=145. Cheap Doctors: No Hospitals.=--The inferior grades of doctors do +a great deal of office work. In mere booths or small shops opening upon +the street they receive patients, sometimes even standing by the door +and bidding the hesitant “Step in!” Their surgeries are decked out with +a display of ivory boxes, silver cupping glasses, and golden-handled +lancets,--the more incompetent the leech the greater often being the +display. + +To advertise their skill practitioners of this class will often set +bones and perform minor operations before a gaping crowd just outside +in the streets--actions denounced by men of Symmachus’s caliber; and +all their patients are examined with great publicity. Lower still are +the itinerant quacks who will diagnose diseases on a street corner +and vend alleged theriac and other “medicines” from a pedlar’s pack. +There are other unlovely members of the profession who grow rich +by performing criminal operations, and to whom unfaithful wives or +legacy-seekers can appeal, begging them to “put the patient out of +his misery!”--with results deliberately murderous. More legitimate of +course are the numerous women who attend to the maladies of their own +sex. Some of these women are said to be physicians of high capacity and +able to command generous compensation. + +A serious handicap to medicine exists because there are no public +hospitals in Rome, although sick strangers are probably allowed to lie +around the Temples of Asculapius or of other healing deities.[86] The +control of epidemics is very imperfect. Rome has been visited severely +by the plague, and in the reign of Marcus Aurelius it will be ravaged +yet again. The age is a brutal one. Much is done to keep the populace +amused and to delight the eye; relatively little to preserve precious +human lives. In the great slave familia, however, self-interest if no +better motive impels the owners to try to keep their chattels healthy. +As already explained nearly every slave household has its special +slave physicians, men of tolerable competence; and there is also the +_valetudinarium_, the infirmary--a detached building or a large +room in which sick slaves can be properly tended, and also isolated to +prevent infection. + + +=146. Suicide as Escape from Hopeless Disease.=--Symmachus, +despite his reputation for “wonderful cures,” has just lost a wealthy +patient. The circumstances were somewhat unusual but by no means +unprecedented. Quintus Gordianus, an elderly senator, had been +suffering from a very painful internal disease. Symmachus assured him +the case was incurable, but that he might, nevertheless, live for +years. Thereupon Gordianus announced that he would commit suicide. + +The right of a sane man voluntarily to surrender his life is undoubted. +Philosophers have written fine essays on the desirability of suicide; +only it must be entered upon discreetly and not as a cowardly means +of escaping the duties of life. Many of Nero’s and Domitian’s noble +victims obviously obeyed the mandate “Open your veins” more because +they were tired of existence than because a desperate attempt to +overthrow the tyrant would have been hopeless. Many a Roman aristocrat +has sucked all the sensual pleasure so completely out of life that the +latter has become one great boredom, and no religion commands “Live +on!” when it is evident that the remainder of existence must merely be +months or years of helplessness and pain. + +As soon, therefore, as Gordianus was satisfied that his case was +hopeless he declared to his relatives that, “He would starve himself to +death.” They pleaded with him faithfully and caused most tempting food +to be always within his reach, but later they took pride in telling of +his iron will which rejected all their efforts. At last the end came, +and all his circle remarked that Gordianus died as became a Roman +senator and a true philosopher. Suicides for more trivial reasons than +the above are, of course, reported every day.[87] + + +=147. Execution of Wills. Numerous Legacies Customary.=--Before +Gordianus became too weak, he called in a group of friends to witness +the revision of his will. The right to execute a will is a precious +privilege for Roman citizens,[88] and the law allows wide options in +disposing of one’s property. A Roman gentleman makes his will many +times and is constantly revising or adding codicils to the same. Slaves +are not supposed to make testaments--their small _peculia_ must +legally revert to their masters; but the more decent owners allow even +slaves to bequeath their belongings to fellow-slaves. + +A will implies much more than merely distributing one’s property among +near kin. Gordianus’s widow and son were in fact well content when +they found not more than two-fifths of the large estate was to pass +outside the family. It is a deadly insult--all the more deadly because +the departed are beyond retaliation--to fail to remember a familiar +acquaintance with a sizable legacy.[89] + +“When the tablets are opened” all Rome knows how a man has paid his +social debts, usually to people who have no blood connection. + +Was the ex-ædile Numerius angry because he only received 10,000 +sesterces ($400)? And why was that ill-mannered old eques Albinus +left 20,000? And why was the banker Velocius, once such a confidant, +left nothing at all? Did Gordianus wish to brand the last-named as +a scoundrel? The list of slaves enfranchised, and also of those +specifically refused enfranchisement is carefully scanned; as well as +various legacies to certain great advocates who have evidently rendered +Gordianus service in tight lawsuits, and above all a sum of 100,000 +sesterces ($4000) to “Our Lord Hadrianus Augustus Cæsar.” Gordianus +had been by no means a great intimate at the palace, but it would +have been most untactful to fail to remember the Emperor. Under bad +rulers such a slight would probably involve the actual setting aside +of the will, posthumous charges of treason, and the ruin of the heirs +by the confiscation of the entire property. Under a good Emperor such +an insertion puts the donor’s son in good odor with the government, +and insures that the imperial procurators (who guard their master’s +property) will assist in defending the will if disgruntled kinsmen +should try to break it. + + +=148. Regular Incomes from Legacies. Professional Legacy +Hunters.=--The granting of legacies is in fact so ordinary a part +of Roman life that distinguished men like Cicero and Pliny the Younger +can almost count on a steady flow of bequests (often from people whom +they know but slightly) as part of their income. Gordianus is leaving +a mature and proper son to take over his great name, clients, and a +good share of his property. His bequests therefore are relatively +small, and that fact robs his will of most of its interest. If, +however, he had been childless, all Rome would have been agog as soon +as people knew that he was dying. Great, if evil, are “the advantages +of childlessness.” The rich bachelor is sure of obsequious service from +innumerable quarters. The more he coughs and the paler he grows, the +more the presents he receives and the more do loudly condoling friends +press to his bedside. They reach the very depth of servility, and +sometimes they are rewarded. + +Years ago Horace gave directions to the successful legacy hunter. “If +a man hands you his will to read, be sure to refuse and push the wax +tablets from you---yet take a side-glance to catch the second line of +the first table [below the preamble]. Run your eye quickly along to see +whether you are the _sole_ heir or one of many.” If the prospective +victim has a “crafty woman, or a freedman looking after the dotard, +strike a partnership with them and praise them to him, that they may +praise _you_ behind your back.” Then when the testator at last dies +lament him loudly, as a “worthy and true friend,” shed as many tears as +you can, and don’t grudge a splendid funeral. + +Thus fortunes can be and often are won, but not invariably. In Trajan’s +reign there died a rich Domitius Tullus. He allowed the legacy hunters +to fasten upon him; to shower him with all kinds of favors--then he +actually left everything to a niece and to grandchildren. All Rome +was divided: “Perfidious hypocrite!” some gossips buzzed in the great +baths; but others praised him for “cheating the hopes of the rascals.” + + +=149. Public Bequests.=--Gordianus, besides these legacies to friends, +also makes some public bequests. This is an age when the rich are +expected to justify their good fortune by showering favors upon the +community. If the rich testator had lived in a municipal town, he would +have been expected in his life time to have provided feasts, public +games, new civic buildings, and probably to have repaired the city +walls. As it is, he leaves the cost of a good gladiator fight to an +Italian town that once elected him patron; increases the endowment for +a public library which he had earlier founded at another such town near +one of his villas; and institutes a trust fund to provide an annual +feast in honor of his “Manes” to be shared in by all the freedmen of +his family and by their own descendants. + + +=150. Great Funerals Very Fashionable. Desire to Be Remembered after +Death.=--Before he died, Gordianus also gave particular orders about +his funeral. Every Roman seems to look forward to his obsequies with +a melancholy, but an enormous interest. If he is poor, he hoards his +money and joins a coöperative burial society to provide for final rites +that will be long remembered. If he is rich, he will leave nothing +undone to succeed in impressing the entire city that it has lost an +important citizen. Under the Republic the funerals of great personages +were really public pageants, deliberately calculated to teach young +nobles the glory of a long career spent in the service of the state. +Under the Empire these customs are still maintained, although often +they are nothing more than vulgar displays showing forth the wealth of +the deceased. + +The age does not believe earnestly in immortality. Epicureans deny +it outright, and Stoics more than doubt. Sometimes a very gross view +of death is taken, that it is merely the careless end of a round of +sensual pleasures. You can occasionally read on tombstones inscriptions +like this: “_Bathing, wine, and love-affairs--these hurt our bodies, +but they make life worth living. I’ve lived my days. I revelled, and +I drank all that I desired. Once I was not; then I was; now I am not +again--but I don’t care!_”[90] But most persons, especially grave +Stoics like Gordianus, view death otherwise. Death means a going out +into the dark; a process of being forgotten by those who once loved or +admired you. If, by a splendid funeral, you can make your memory last +a little longer, who would fail having one? Hence the excuse for very +costly obsequies, often for unimportant individuals. + + +=151. Preliminaries to a Funeral.=--The moment Gordianus seemed +to be breathing his last his son bent over his face as if to catch +his final sigh. Then immediately the young man called his father +three times “Quintus! Quintus! Quintus!” partly to make sure he was +dead; partly as a signal to start off all the expectant slaves and +freedmen in loud and frenzied lamentation through all the wide domus. A +messenger promptly summoned a fashionable _libitinarius_ (funeral +director) who undertook to conduct everything in the best possible +style. While the house rang with outcries, professional experts washed +the body in warm water and took immediately a waxen impression of the +features. + +The dead was thereupon dressed in an embroidered toga, such as he might +have worn when a magistrate, and was placed on a gilded couch in the +atrium with the feet towards the door, beside which was set a bunch +of cypress or pine, in token of the sorrow in the house. Skillful +embalmers were available and the actual funeral could have been +delayed as much as a week. This was not necessary, however, and the +ceremony took place in two days--time enough to arrange the great pyre +and other necessary matters. + +The old practice was for every funeral to be held at night, and +“funeral torches” were once about as common along the streets as the +more festive marriage torches. But under the Empire the greater display +can, of course, be made by daytime, although by a peculiar survival a +few torch bearers will solemnly march along in the procession as if to +outvie the sunlight. + +The mustering of a large funeral procession calls for no mean executive +skill. If the deceased is from an old family, persons must be hired to +wear all the death masks found in his atrium, and costumes improvised +or rented so that the wearers can appear as consuls, prætors, etc., +and all the various articles and exhibits needful for the procession +must be assembled. Above all there must appear at the house of mourning +a clever Greek actor, selected partly because of some physical +resemblance to the dead. This is the _archimimus_, who carefully +confers with Gordianus’s freedmen and even with his son to learn the +speech, mannerisms, and the personal foibles of the departed. + + +=152. The Funeral Procession. The Display of Masked “Ancestors.”=--At +last at a time sure to command the best attention, the criers begin +going about all the streets where Gordianus is likely to have had +friends. They shout a formula in quaint, archaic Latin. “This citizen, +Quintus Gordianus, is being surrendered to death. For those who +find it convenient, now is the time for his funeral. He is being +borne from his house!” and the procession sets forth commanded by a +master-undertaker--the pompous _designator_. + +At the head marches a band of players, their flutes, lyres, and +dulcimers keeping up a most melancholy music. Then unavoidably follows +a whole platoon of professional clowns and buffoons singing ribald +songs and shouting very coarse jokes to the thronging spectators. +Next, apparently, there walks Gordianus himself--it is the archimimus +dressed like the ex-consul, imitating his gait, gestures, and voice, +and even making broad personal jests at the expense of the deceased. +Then follows the really imposing part of the display, and the bereaved +widow and her son thrill with aristocratic pride at the thought of +it. Theirs is a very old house, and a hundred actors are needed to +wear all the wax _imagines_ (often battered and blackened) from +the great cupboards in the atrium. All his “curule ancestors” going +back to the Gallic invasion seem to be accompanying Gordianus to the +grave. The spectators are checking off the “consuls” and “ædiles” on +their fingers, and at last some cry “a censor,” and presently even +more admiringly a “dictator.”[91] One can almost feel that it is no +misfortune to die, if only one can look forward properly to this moment +of posthumous glory. + + +=153. The Exhibits in the Procession. The Retinue around the +Bier.=--Behind the procession of death-masks come slaves bearing on +poles large crudely sketched pictures upon boards, showing incidents +in the Dacian wars where their master commanded as one of Trajan’s +legates. Gordianus also had dabbled in literature, and copies of +his essays and poems are now tied on tall rods and carried along +conspicuously by the marchers. Next comes the corpse itself--exposed to +view, upon a couch decked with purple, fretted with gold, and carried +aloft upon the shoulders of eight picked bearers. All can see that +Gordianus wears the “triumphal ornaments,” the laurel wreath as well +as the toga prætexta awarded the favorite generals in the army.[92] + +After that follows the family procession. Young Gordianus is robed +in black, and leads by the hand his mother, a venerable matron, who +wears the mourning color for women, white, and who lets her gray locks +stream in disorder over her shoulders. If he had possessed sisters, +they would now tear their hair, dig their nails in their cheeks, and +utter piercing cries of grief. This clamor is produced sufficiently by +a group of slave women led by two or three professional female wailers +who, at intervals, set up a shrill chant of lamentation for the dead. +Next follow a great company of Gordianus’s more distinguished friends, +all walking with down-cast looks and clad in black or sad-colored +togas. After them is the large retinue from the familia, first the +older freedmen, then groups of ex-slaves wearing tall caps--token of +manumission by will, and trying not to appear _too_ exultant in their +new freedom, then bringing up the rear the whole group of actual +slaves, supposed to be torn with grief at the loss of “so good a +master.” + + +=154. The Funeral Oration in the Forum.=--The procession heads at +first not toward the place of the final pyre but toward the Old Forum. +The honor of a public funeral oration is granted to practically every +distinguished citizen, including many noblewomen. Indeed, this use +of the Forum is an extremely common occurrence. The space around the +orator’s stand (the _rostra_) has been cleared of idlers, and an array +of suitable “curule chairs” has been set out for all the wearers of the +death masks, as if they were again sitting like the magistrates of old. + +After a suitable delay a kinsman of the deceased, a senator somewhat +vain of his reputation as an orator, mounts the rostra and delivers +a fulsome eulogy. It is notorious that such “laudations” never stick +closely to the truth. The audience is made to understand that Gordianus +was a very Cato the Elder in personal virtue and a Scipio Africanus in +his success as a general. When that ceremony is completed the whole +company sets forth again--this time toward one of the gates beyond +which is the funeral pyre.[93] + + +=155. Family Tombs. The _Columbarium_ and the Garden.=--Burials are not +unknown in Rome, but most bodies are disposed of by cremation. Even +persons of very modest means will try to provide money for a good pyre. +This is partly because the very poor, the worthless slaves, and the +lowest of the plebeians, are not burned, but their bodies simply are +dumped in hideous open pits not far from the Esquiline itself. Nothing +is done to the bodies thus exposed except to leave them to the dogs and +ravens, and only the favor of Jupiter averts from the city an incessant +pestilence in consequence. Long since, however, Gordianus’s family has +erected along the Appian Way (though another frequented highroad could +have been selected) a stately tomb, calculated to attract attention +from all passers. + +Handsome tombs can take many forms; there is even a good-sized stone +pyramid, 116 feet high, erected to guard the ashes of Gaius Cestius, +a great man under Augustus. That of the Gordiani is of a more modest +character; a circular masonry tower, about fifty feet in diameter and +rather higher, surmounted by a castellated battlement adorned with +life-sized marble statues of famous members of the family. Inside there +is no huge chamber for a sarcophagus, but simply a series of arched +vaults the walls of which are honey-combed with little niches, each +intended to receive a funeral urn. This kind of interior, therefore, +is not unhappily called a _columbarium_--a “pigeon-cote”; and here +will be placed not merely the urns of all the regular scions of the +family, but (in inferior niches of course) those of all the freedmen +and even of all the better loved slaves. The ashes of the Gordiani, +mighty or humble therefore rest all together. + + [Illustration: SCENE ALONG THE APPIAN WAY: showing + the tombs and the gay crowds passing.] + +Outside this massive tower there is a considerable open compound, laid +out as a pleasant garden, with shrubbery, flower-beds, and a little +lodge for the slave in residence who acts as caretaker. There is even a +small but handsome building, where members of the family can meet for +the periodic feasts in honor of the dear departed. Handsome statues +and fine bas-reliefs on the inclosing walls abound, and the place in +short seems much more like a small pleasure park than a cemetery. This +mortuary compound, however, is one of the better types of inclosures. +The taste displayed in some adjacent is execrable. Already across +the Appian Way opposite, a rich freedman has purchased a large lot +and is erecting in his own lifetime a tall central statue of himself, +flinging money from a bag to the populace, with the base surrounded by +bas-reliefs showing his favorite small dog, some gladiator fights, and +deep-laden craft under full sail--to explain how he made his money.[94] + + [Illustration: PYRAMID--TOMB OF GAIUS CESTIUS: + Ostia Gate of the Wall of Aurelian (built _circ._ 275 + A.D.) in background.] + +For many miles out into the Campagna around Rome extend these strange +cemeteries--not in seclusion, but passed by incessant traffic. Some +of the monuments are magnificent, some simple; they illustrate almost +every type of sculpture--but the object of nearly all is the same, +to remind the living of the one-time existence of the dead, and so +to provide a kind of spurious immortality often for very commonplace +persons, in an age when the immortality of the soul seems no favored +doctrine. + + [Illustration: VIEW ALONG THE APPIAN WAY SHOWING FUNERAL + MONUMENTS. + + _Restored after Von Falke._] + + +=156. The Funeral Pyre and Its Ceremonies.=--At last the funeral +procession has reached the great mausoleum of the Gordiani. The pyre +of choice wood, sprinkled with perfumes, unguents, and costly spices +is ready at a safe distance. The sides of the pile have been covered +with dark leaves, while cypress boughs have been set upon the top. +Amid these the bier and the corpse, just as they have been borne, are +now planted and various articles of clothing, jewelry, trinkets, etc., +used by the deceased are next placed upon the pyre. If the ex-consul +had been a younger man fond of hunting, deer nets and boar spears might +have been added; or favored horses and dogs slaughtered and their +carcasses added to the pile. + + [Illustration: STREET OF THE TOMBS AT POMPEII, SHOWING + TYPICAL MONUMENTS OF THE SMALLER CLASS.] + +At length all is ready. Young Gordianus is handed a torch, and with +averted face he touches it to the wood impregnated with perfumed oils. +Instantly a great blaze shoots up, the smoke from the aromatic wood +smelling most sweetly. The company waits in mournful silence until the +tall pyre collapses and the bier has been utterly consumed. Then as +the fire glows away, several loyal freedmen dash forward and quench +it with great jars of chilled wine. Certain calcined bones and ashes +are collected, wrapped in fine linen cloths and placed in a superb +funeral urn, blue and white glass cut into exquisite designs, showing +boys piping and treading the grapes in a festival of Bacchus. The last +mortal remains of the departed senator are, therefore, at rest amid +scenes eminently cheerful. + + +=157. Funeral Monuments. Memorial Feasts to the Dead.=--The ceremony +is over. “_Vale!_”--and again “_Vale!_” cries all the company ere +departing. The urn will now be placed in one of the niches in the +columbarium; but in Gordianus’s honor they will erect a special statue, +at its base chiseled a peaceful ship gliding steadily toward a distant +shore; the son and widow evidently recalling the peaceful thoughts of +Cicero in his essay “On Old Age”--“I find the nearer I come to the time +of death the more I feel like one who begins to see land, and knows +that sometime he will enter the harbor after the long voyage.” + +On Gordianus’s birthday, on the anniversary of his death, and also +for eight days in February sacred to the honored dead, his heirs and +loyal freedmen will visit the spot, deck his statue with wreaths of +roses, violets, and other flowers, sacrifice a black sheep or pig to +the “Manes,” and indulge in a feast in his honor. This will be kept up, +perhaps, until his own son is placed on the pyre and the fame of the +“great Gordianus” has sunk to the barest memory. + + +=158. Funerals of the Poor. “Funeral Societies.”=--We have witnessed +obsequies of a rich senator. Less favored persons, of course, are +buried with ever-increasing degrees of simplicity. There is almost no +religious element in Roman funerals. The bodies of unfortunates can be +disposed of with brutal abruptness and lack of decorum, but the great +host of plebeians and of those freedmen who cannot hope for an urn in +the columbarium of a noble family have a recourse. They often club +together in a “Funeral Society.” Everybody pays a fixed assessment into +a common chest; out of these funds space is hired in one of the great +public columbaria which are often erected as legitimate speculations. +When a member dies he is assured of a respectable procession of +buffoons and weepers (imagines being out of the question), a private +harangue in his honor, and a thoroughly adequate funeral pyre. Funds +not needed for this purpose are spent on feasts once or more a year in +which the names of dead members are solemnly commemorated. + +Some of these funeral “colleges” are really elaborate affairs, with +considerable ritual, a permanent hall, and a corps of elective +officers, “prætors,” “curators,” etc., whose tinsel pomp makes the +wearers forget that most of the time they are humble plebeians or even +slaves. The collegia, in other words, appeal to those who in another +age may find a certain inferior type of “lodge” very congenial. They +are grandiloquently named for some patron god, calling themselves “The +Worshippers (_cultores_) of Apollo,” or perhaps for an Oriental deity, +“The Servants of Serapis”; but their fundamental purpose is the same; +to insure against the horrid thought of having one’s body flung into +the open pits of the potter’s field and then perhaps having one’s ghost +wander in misery over sea and land instead of finding a calm oblivion +in Hades. + + + + + CHAPTER X + + CHILDREN AND SCHOOLING + + +=159. Theoretical Rights of Father over Children. The _Patria +Potestas_.=--When a child is born into a Roman home the father +has complete legal rights even as in Athens to determine whether it +is to live or to die.[95] If theoretically he has the terrific power +as _pater familias_ to kill his children in later life if they +merely displease him, how much more can he claim the right to decide +that “This boy will be one too many,” or “We can afford no more +girls,” or “This child will be sickly and deformed.” If his decision +is adverse, mother and nurse may beseech in vain; the babe is simply +“exposed”--that is, carried by a slave to some spot by the highway and +left to perish. This harsh old law is unrepealed. + +Possibly such deserted children will be taken up by those whose homes +are desolate and who require consolation. There is a greater and +fouler chance that such babes will be carried away and reared by human +harpies who raise boys and girls to sell as victims of gross wickedness +among the rich, or who even mutilate the children to convert them into +grotesque buffoons or pathetic beggars to wheedle the coppers from +the tender-hearted. Perhaps some of those horribly deformed creatures +who cry “Give! Give!” behind the litters of the senators are blood +relations to the gilded lords themselves. This is physically possible, +if we can believe many ugly stories. + +Legal right and actual custom can often, however, stand miles asunder. +No Roman gladly will see his house dying out, despite the “advantages +of childlessness.” In fact to keep up the family name, resort is +often had to _adoption_, sometimes of mature adults, to an extent +quite unknown in other ages. The upper classes under the Empire are +dwindling so rapidly, thanks to many causes, that rare indeed is the +house where a lawful child is unwelcome; and in the lower classes +fathers are fathers still. In short though the cruel old “right of +exposure” exists, it is not exercised often enough to make its practice +a wholesale evil, and a man of distinction who exposes a babe (unless +his family is remarkably large and expensive) will fall under social +ostracism; in fact the Emperor may even be advised to strike him from +the list of senators or equites as “a bad citizen.” + + +=160. Ceremonies after Birth of a Child. The _Bulla_.=--The birth +of a child in a good family is, therefore, the signal for no common +rejoicing, and thanks to the favored position of Roman women, girls +are not a serious discount as against boys. Then comes the grand +celebration--the _lustratio_, the name-day for the babe. + +This occurs nine days after the birth of boys and the eighth after that +of girls; the idea being not to name the child prematurely lest it die +in first infancy. The ceremony takes place in the atrium. The mother +cannot, perhaps, be present, but there is a general gathering of the +near friends, kinsmen, clients, etc., before whom the nurse solemnly +presents herself and then lays her little bundle of swaddling clothes +at the feet of its father. With equal solemnity the father bends and +takes up the infant and with his formal “lifting up” the whole company +raises a shout of joy.[96] Henceforth, the babe is of undoubted +legitimacy, a member of the family, entitled to the protection alike of +the family lares and of the public law, and a new citizen of the Roman +state. Then the father, turning to the company, if the child is a boy, +announces in clear voice his prænomen, _e.g._, “Let the lad be called +Marcus!” + +After these formalities are ended the kinsmen and also the favorite +slaves rush forward and throw around the neck of the infant cords +bearing little metal toys, tiny swords, axes, flowers, or even dolls, +all called _crepudia_, from the manner in which they clank together. +Most important of all, however, is the golden _bulla_, an elaborate +locket containing charms, which the father himself hangs about the +child’s neck. If the family is poor, one of painted leather may answer, +but a bulla there must be. It will never be laid aside permanently +until the proud day when the grown-up lad “assumes the manly toga,” or +when the girl leaves her parents’ house as a bride. + + +=161. The Roman Name: Its Intricacy.=--It is no slight thing, this +matter of the Roman personal names, and they are far more complicated +than are the Greek. Under the Republic names were so standardized among +the upper families, that those of a young nobleman were practically +determined the moment he touched the cradle. How many “Appii Claudii” +figure in the history of the Commonwealth! Omitting technicalities, +practically every Roman citizen then had three names: his _prænomen_, +a personal designation something like the Christian “John” or +“George,” his _nomen_, fixed on him by his _gens_ (special clan) +such as Cornelius, Fabius, Julius, etc., and finally his _cognomen_, +which marked the particular family of the gens to which his father +belonged. Cæsar, Sulla, Cicero, Scipio, and the like were all cognomens +corresponding closely to later-day surnames, and were anything but the +individual property of certain famous holders of the same. Thus even a +cognomen could have many bearers, and sometimes a second cognomen was +added--such as Publius Cornelius Scipio _Nasica_. + +This is all very well, but how few are the options left to the parents +in selecting the prænomen! There are only eighteen regular Roman +prænomens, of which Marcus, Gaius, and Lucius are perhaps the most +common. Certain families confine themselves to a very few prænomens. +Thus no Cornelian ever names his sons anything but Gnæus, Lucius, and +Publius unless the gods bless him with a fourth boy. The Domitii were +nearly all either Gnæus or Lucius. Rare was the Claudian eldest son who +escaped being called Appius.[97] + +These cases simply register what is true in most of the old families. +The rule is to name your first son always after your own father. Thus +Publius Calvus’s young Titus is the grandson of a Titus and the great +grandson of a Publius. His younger brother, however, was not thus named +by rigid precedent. He could be named Decimus.[98] + + +=162. Irregular and Lengthy Names under the Empire. Names of +Slaves.=--Things are far more irregular, however, since the Empire +has brought the Roman name along with the Roman citizenship to hordes +of freedmen and foreigners. They Latinize their alien names, or +they take an altered form of their ex-master’s names, for example, +Claudianus Licinianus; or often, being complete upstarts, swell around +with absurdly long names often meaning nothing at all. This is true +even of some high officers, and there is now ruling as proconsul of +Africa a senator calling himself pompously Titus Cæsarinus Statius +Quintius Statianus Memmius Macrinus, while that of the governor of +North Britain, a certain “Pollio,” has _nine_ names if you give +him his full title.[99] + +As for slaves they were ordinarily called in simpler days of the +Republic merely “Marcipor,” or “Lucipor,” etc.,--“Marcus’s boy,” or +“Lucius’s boy”; but such descriptions in the days of the great familiæ +become impossible. Most house slaves are either named for Greek +deities or heroes, or else for some Oriental potentate, precisely as +“Cæsar” and “Pompey” will figure on slave plantations of another day. +“Mithridates,” “Pharnaces,” “Cyrus,” and the like appear in every +atrium. There are also plenty of handsome boys answering to such +fine names as “Eros,” “Polydorus,” “Xenophon”; or who are named for +their native country as “Syrax” for a Syrian, and “Cappadox” for a +Cappadocian. + + +=163. Names of Women. Confusion of Roman Names.=--When a girl is born +in an old family her chance of a distinctive name seems even less than +that of her brothers. There are really no recognized prænomens for +girls, and until lately there have been hardly any regular cognomens. +Calvus’s daughter should have been merely called Junia for her gens: +“The Junian Woman.” If it is needful, however, to separate her from +her cousins, she can be called _Junia Calvi_--“Calvus’s Junia.” If she +had a younger sister, she would be simply “_Junia Prima_” as against +“_Junia Secunda_”--Junia No. 1 and Junia No. 2. + +This kind of effacement is, however, becoming very displeasing to +high-spirited Roman women. They are now asserting their personality +by demanding special names. The result is that they are getting a +kind of irregular cognomens. Calvus’s daughter is, therefore, known +as Junia _Gratia_ (from her mother), and should the house be favored +with another young mistress, she will probably be Junia _Calva_ in +compliment to her father’s cognomen. + +Nevertheless, with every explanation, the names alike of men and women +at Rome are utterly confusing. Duplication seems incessant and anything +like a complete directory of the city would apparently carry many pages +of identical entries. Of course, a ready use of nicknames (constantly +invented by Italian ingenuity) overcomes the actual difficulty. Among +near friends or dependents it is quite proper to cry “Hail, Spurius!” +or “Well said, Tiberius”; but it is an impolite familiarity to employ +the prænomen except for intimates. Ordinarily the cognomen is the +proper form, used, be it said, without any “Sir” or “Mister,” and +in the Senate the archaic usage requires that the Conscript Fathers +should be summoned by prænomen and gentile name only. “_Dic, Marce +Tulle_,” “Speak, Marcus Tullius,” was the form by which Cicero was +often called before he began his great orations. + + +=164. Care of Parents in Educating Children.=--So a Roman child +receives that great thing, his name. What is the course of his life if +he grows to manhood? Very much the same as in other civilized lands, +where most parents are loving and where most children bring joy to +the house. Boys and girls, until school age, are largely in the hands +of the womenfolk. Gratia’s old nurse, brought with her to Calvus’s +house, is still more of a beloved mentor and tyrant to Gratia’s +children, usually bribing her charges to be good “with honey, nuts and +sweet-cakes.” But as soon as boys, at least, begin to pass out of early +childhood their fathers are expected to take them in hand, and even a +man of high rank is criticized if he leaves his sons too much to the +guidance of paid tutors and of slaves. + +This paternal discipline may be harsh but it is seldom negligent. Boys +are taught to go with their fathers almost everywhere; to watch and +listen in silence, but to ask intelligent questions afterward. Thus +young Titus is already old enough to accompany his father Calvus to +the sessions of the Senate itself. On a seat reserved near the door +for senators’ sons he listens through many a solemn debate. Presently +the routine of business is so familiar to him, that he presumptuously +thinks he can correct the consul on certain points of order. He and +his companions of like rank already are playing “prætor’s court”--with +one of them on the tribunal and the others (like their parents) the +orators in the great basilica. As the good old customs have waned this +companionship of fathers and sons has perhaps somewhat waned also--but +it still remains one of the worthiest features of the Roman training. + + +=165. Toys and Pets.=--Roman children lack nothing in playthings. +All but the elaborate mechanical toys of a later age are at their +disposal. Little children have their rattles, balls, and carts. Small +Junia plays with very life-like dolls of ivory, wax, and painted terra +cotta, often fashioned by exceedingly skilful Greek craftsmen. She and +her brothers rejoice in swings and hobby horses, while Titus and young +Decimus also make glad in a finely painted “century” of wooden soldiers +and in tops, hoops, and marbles--such as are transmitted almost +unchanged across the ages, and they receive somewhat suspiciously (as +soon as they are of proper age) a gift of a carefully carved set of +wooden letters, a sly device for teaching the alphabet. + +Much more welcome than these last are, of course, the New Year and +birthday presents of tame nightingales, talking parrots, and caged +blackbirds, of dogs, large and small, of that somewhat rare animal from +Egypt--a delightful furry cat, and best of all--when they grow a little +older--being children of a senator, each a well-broken pony--of little +use in Rome, but a splendid comrade when the family goes to its villas. + +As they get older still a decent allowance of pocket money is added +and an earnest attempt is made to teach the children financial +responsibility, to add accounts, to save their sesterces, and not to +run up bills. It is not ungenteel, however, for a youth of family to +be an easy spender, and Pliny the Younger has scolded a friend as +outrageously severe for “thrashing his son because he was too lavish in +buying horses and dogs.” + + +=166. The Learning of Greek by Roman Children.=--Even before formal +schooling begins, the young Calvi, like all other Romans of the better +class, have begun an important part of their education--the learning of +Greek. The Athenian education was a single-language education with no +studies outside those of the mother tongue.[100] The Roman education is +a bi-lingual education. + +Without Greek everybody confesses that a full half (probably more) +of the world’s entire wit and wisdom is locked away. Without Greek +not merely must a man refuse to claim the least real culture; he is +handicapped in all the professions and in most forms of business. He +can have no commercial dealings with the Levant. If he travels anywhere +East of the Adriatic, he can hardly make himself understood outside of +the governors’ prætoria and the camps. Even into the literary Latin +there have crept an enormous number of Greek terms, mostly having to +do with matters of learning or luxury. In short without the mastery of +Greek a Roman of any ambitions is hopelessly lost. + +A scholar need not, however, bother about any third language. +Practically all Levantines can jabber _some_ Greek, even though +their accent be abominable, and their native tongue Syriac or Coptic. +As for Spaniards, Gauls, and Britons doubtless interpreters are needful +if you visit their crude villages, but all their upper classes are +now busily learning Latin just as they are learning the joys of Roman +baths, circus races, and cookery. With Latin and Greek you are ready to +meet the world. + +Greek is taught in the schools, but hardly as a painfully acquired +foreign language. From infancy Titus, Decimus, and Junia have had +Greek-speaking attendants, and their own parents (very fair Greek +scholars) take pains to talk in good Attic part of the time while they +play with them. As the children grow up about half of all the more +elegant and refined conversation they must hear will be in Greek--and +so through all their education. The result will be that Junia may turn +out to be a learned lady like the poetess Julia Balbilla, the Empress +Sabina’s friend, who has written some very fine Greek elegiacs,[101] +“worthy of Sappho,” say her friends; or Titus if he dabbles in +philosophy, may write a long treatise in good Attic prose as well as +can his contemporary the destined emperor, Marcus Aurelius. + + +=167. Selection of a School.=--In the good old days a father was +expected not merely to give his son moral and practical lessons, but +actually to be his schoolmaster--to flog reading, writing, and a little +arithmetic into him; even as Cato the Elder (234–149 B.C.) boasted +that he did with his own son. But that stage has long passed, and the +main question now for every boy or girl is, “tutors or school?” No +doubt families of the highest rank find private tutors fashionable and +convenient; thus such a personage as Augustus employed the skilful +freedman, Verrius Flaccus, to teach his grandsons; but the advantages +of contact with other children of about the same social class are +clearly understood. The young Calvi, therefore, have been sent to +a carefully selected school. This arrangement is exceptionally good +because their father’s colleague, the ex-prætor Aponius, owns a +remarkably gifted slave, one Euganor, who is allowed not merely to +teach his master’s children but (by a recognized custom) to take in +others; their fees going toward his _peculium_ saved up to buy his +freedom. + + +=168. Extent of Literacy in Rome. Education of Girls.=--Schools +exist everywhere in Rome, and there are all sorts and conditions of +schools. There is no system of public education, and probably a good +many poor plebeians and slaves are barely literate enough to spell out +the gladiator notices and to jot down a few accounts or memoranda; but +public opinion condemns parents who deny their children at least a +little schooling, and absolutely illiterate persons are rare.[102] + +Girls in poor families are rather less sure of instruction than +boys, and in superior families they seldom pass on to the upper and +the rhetoric schools; but apparently in the ordinary schools they +frequently go with their brothers on terms of perfect equality. There +seems to be no prudish separation of the sexes, although when the grown +boys go off to learn the tricks of orators and philosophers, nobly-born +girls spend the years just before their marriages under good tutors +learning the poets, and being taught a graceful proficiency in harp +playing and also enough of dancing to give them the erect carriage and +the stately, calm movements of destined matrons. + + +=169. Schools for the Lower Classes.=--Between the select establishment +of Euganor in a side apartment of Aponius’s great mansion and the +cheapest type of school along Mercury Street there is a great gulf +fixed. Any kind of a shelter will do for a low-grade school, and any +kind of a half-educated fellow can set up as a school teacher. + + [Illustration: BOY STUDYING.] + +Take for example poor Platorius who, having failed as an inn-keeper +at Ostia, is trying to earn a living by leasing a vacant shop near +the Insula Flavia. The shallow room opens directly upon the noisy +street, and the passing throngs divert the children, while the clamors +of the children distress all the semi-invalids in the big insula. +Every thrashing by the master attracts a knot of brutal idlers just +outside. Platorius’s school is of the lowest grade, but he has to make +a certain pretence of learning by setting up a few chipped busts of +Homer, Virgil, Horace, etc., and erecting a high seat (_cathedra_) +for himself. His class sits before him on long backless benches. +There are no desks, and every child holds his smudgy wax-covered +tablets uncomfortably upon his knee, as he copies or erases with his +stylus.[103] + +To all the better schools the children come each accompanied by his or +her “pedagogue,” much after the Greek manner; a private slave being +especially assigned to each boy or girl, and obligated to lead his +charge to and from school, help with the lessons, guard the child’s +morals, and even assist in chastising.[104] But few of Platorius’s +pupils come from parents who can afford the luxury of a pedagogue +for their children. They appear by themselves so early in the morning +in winter time that they have to bear smoky lanterns; the most +self-sufficient of them being “the sons of centurions, with satchels +and tablets hung on their left arms, and carrying every Ides (middle +of the month) their fee of eight brass pieces each.” [Horace.] Each +boy has devoured a crust before leaving home and the school continues +without recess until noon when there is an intermission of fair length +to get the prandium or at least to buy some sausages from the street +dealers, and perhaps to indulge in a short siesta. After that the +deafening study is resumed, and there is relief in the neighboring +tenements only when the school is dismissed towards dusk. + + +=170. Scourging, Clamors, and Other Abuses of Cheap Schools.=--A +school is no asset to the neighborhood. Vainly do the satiric poets +implore a teacher to “be kind to his scholars” and to “lay aside his +Scythian scourge with its horrible thongs” and his “terrible cane, the +schoolmaster’s scepter.” Poor Platorius knows well enough that the type +of parents who employ him believes the old maxim “he who is not flogged +is not educated.” The Romans are a military people and the ideal of a +school is always somewhat the stern discipline of the centurion with +his vinestock (see p. 323). Precepts in many a classroom are enforced +with curses and blows, and Seneca has declared in disgust that it is a +common thing “to find a man in a violent passion teaching you that to +be in a passion is wrong.” + +The children, too, are often permitted to study their lessons aloud +even as in the schools of the Orient. All this adds to the buzzing +confusion, so that it is claimed that a school causes more noise than +a blacksmith at his anvil or the amphitheater applauding a favorite +gladiator. + +The teaching and the flogging keep up through a long season. The +school year begins on March 24th, when Platorius painfully counts the +entrance fees brought by each scholar, reckoning himself lucky if he +does not have to split his gains with the pedagogues who attend a +favored few of the children. There is a considerable holiday in summer +when it is too hot to study, and children of good family are likely to +be attending their parents in the country. There is another interval of +about a week at the Saturnalia and over New Year’s Day; another just +before the new school year begins in March. Otherwise, except for the +more important religious festivals, and the “Nones” (5th or 7th days +of each month), the studying and the beating go on, with rather fewer +holidays than in the twentieth century. + + [Illustration: SCHOOL DISCIPLINE.] + +Platorius is near the bottom of the educational ladder. His fees are +only about four sesterces (16 cents) per month per pupil, and he is +none too sure of prompt payment. The miserable room costs something +for rental. If his pupils fail to progress, their parents storm at him +and promptly shift to another master. In short he leads a dog’s life. +The green grocer and the copperpot monger who have stalls opposite the +school despise him as entirely beneath them. + + +=171. A Superior Type of School.=--Quite different is the atmosphere of +Euganor’s schoolroom. He is technically a slave, but a slave of very +superior class. The children come to him accompanied not merely by +extremely genteel pedagogues but by subordinate slaves, _capsarii_, who +carry their books and tablets, and the establishment has a convenient +ante-room, where all these gentry can foregather and match gossip, “My +master says”--while their charges are being instructed. + +The school itself is held in an elegant chamber adorned with fine +frescos of historical events such as the campaigns of Alexander, +speaking statues of great literary figures, and, conspicuous upon the +wall, an elaborately painted map of the Roman Empire, “for,” affirms +Euganor, “the boys should have daily before their eyes all the seas +and lands, and all cities and peoples comprehended therein; for the +name and position of places, the distance between them, the source +and outflow of rivers, the coastline with all its seaboard, its gulfs +and its straits are better taken in by the eye than by the ear.”[105] +Euganor, too, has his rod and does not bear it in vain, but he never +allows his discipline to degenerate into stupid cruelty. He is, in +short, an extremely competent man who studies each of his charges +carefully and who would prove an excellent teacher in any schoolroom in +any age. + + +=172. Methods of Teaching.=--All Roman schools are small. The idea +of vast “graded” establishments where year after year pupils are passed +from teacher to teacher and at last “graduated” has occurred to no man. +Platorius conducts his school entirely alone. Euganor has a couple of +efficient monitors, but neither he nor Platorius tries to handle more +than say thirty pupils. Many of Euganor’s pupils came to him while +little more than babies and will only leave him when actually ready +for the rhetoric schools. He is largely responsible for their entire +elementary education, although many of the higher class children know +the Latin and Greek alphabet and can spell a little before being put +under his charge. + +This is no place for a real discussion of the actual forms of +education. First there comes the mere teaching of reading, writing, and +simple arithmetic, with very little use of books, the master dictating +sentences and correcting the tablets whereon the children write them +down. Such a teacher as Platorius may have a few musty rolls of papyrus +which his charges are allowed to handle gingerly, but “First Readers” +as understood in later schools are unknown. Euganor is better off, and +a considerable library is at his disposal, although barring a few books +of fables it contains little that is directly appealing to children. + +In the poorer schools the average master congratulates himself if his +charges stay long enough to become fairly literate, but the better +establishments, of course, accomplish far more. When a child can once +read with tolerable fluency, and can write the characters on his wax +tablets without wandering from the traced lines or needing too many +corrections, he begins to have the great poets, especially Virgil and +Horace in Latin and Homer in Greek, pounded into him. He is compelled +to learn very long passages of such authors by heart,[106] and as an +especially desirable exercise he is forced to translate both from Greek +into Latin and also from Latin into Greek. + +Since many of Euganor’s pupils will presumably become orators, they +are furthermore aided to improve their diction also in every possible +manner, to acquire a good stock of metaphors, and to have on hand a +great supply of apt, pungent quotations. All the possible meanings +in the literary texts are explained, likewise the mythological, +historical, and geographical allusions, etc. The study of literature +thus becomes what is really a form of a “General Information” course. + + +=173. Training in Higher Arithmetic.=--Before the children leave +Euganor they are also taught the higher forms of arithmetic. Prior +to the coming of Arabic numerals this is pretty serious business, +yet every Roman of property must be able to keep elaborate accounts, +and not be too dependent upon his stewards. Indeed, in some superior +schools a special arithmetic teacher is called in; a _calculator_, +who is entitled to demand extra large fees, although one suspects +that most of his pupils are equites’ sons who will probably engage +in commerce. One thing, however, Euganor does not have to bother +about--physical culture. The Greeks can send their sons to the +_palæstra_ and to the harpist to learn gymnastics and music. The +Romans try merely to see that their boys get exercise enough to keep +them in good health, but they cannot grasp the practical value of a +training that neither makes the lads better soldiers nor better men of +business. Many Romans, of course, learn also about the fine arts, but +never in the regular classroom. + + +=174. The Grammarians’ High Schools.=--By their early teens, however, +even Euganor’s pupils begin to forsake him. They are passed on to a +higher teacher, a regular “grammarian” (_grammaticus_), who assumes +that his charges are well grounded in the fundamentals, and who +endeavors to instruct them in the real niceties of Greek and Latin +literature. Sometimes also there is a specialist in each of the +languages. + +In these high schools great stress is laid on proper pronunciation +and elocution. Euclid’s theorems in geometry are studied, and a good +deal of history is fluently if not very critically taught. Much of +the learning is superficial, for it is a fine thing in many circles +to _affect_ to be erudite,[107] and more stress is sometimes laid +on absurd problems of mythology than upon learning sober facts. +Grammarians who teach the sons of the parvenu rich are liable, indeed, +to be scolded if they cannot themselves explain instantly “Who was +Anchises’s nurse?” But the better grammarians’ schools turn out pupils +who are not perhaps men of deep learning but who have a great fund of +information, who can write a clear accurate Latin (and often a Greek) +style, and generally carry themselves as cultivated young gentlemen. +Those, however, who aspire to pass as highly educated will inevitably +go on to the still higher school of the _rhetor_. + + [Illustration: GRAMMARIAN INSTRUCTING TWO UPPER + PUPILS: an attendant (_capsarius_) standing at one + side.] + + +=175. Oratory Very Fashionable.=--Oratory seems the keystone to +success. True, the fall of the Republic makes it impossible to harangue +the assembled Comitia in behalf of favorite candidates or proposed +laws. Even in the Senate there are now grave limitations upon free +eloquence. Nevertheless, the desirability of “fame” as an orator seems +incalculable. To win your cause in the courts; to make a crowded hall +resound with applause at your set orations seems the height of peaceful +triumph. Never will another age set more store on high-soaring formal +_talk_ than this age of the Roman Empire. The actual performances +of professional orators and “readers” we can glance at later, and, of +course, space lacks for any presentation of the “Science of Eloquence”; +but mention must be made of the rhetoric schools in which by ardent +anticipation young Titus and Decimus Calvus are already winning laurels. + + +=176. Professional Rhetoricians.=--No slave or ordinary grammarian +can hope to conduct a rhetoric school. The masters are either Romans +of such rank that they can mingle with senators, or are distinguished +Greeks fresh from the schools of Rhodes or Athens.[108] Not many years +ago in Trajan’s reign, a certain Isæus came to Rome from Greece. He +dazzled the noblest circles by his proficiency; his diction was the +purest Attic; his sentences sparkled with epigrams. He called on his +audience to name any mooted subjects it liked for discussion and to +state on which side it wanted him to argue. Instantly he would rise, +wrap his gown around him and “without losing a moment, begin, with +everything at his finger tips no matter what subject was selected.” +Presumably his thoughts and the information behind them were very +superficial; no matter, the flow of his logic, learning, and language +set his audience into ecstasies. Calvus only hopes he can find an +equally distinguished master for his own sons. + + +=177. Methods in Rhetoric Schools: Mock Trials.=--Rhetoric schools are +arranged rather as halls of audience than as ordinary classrooms. The +students are expected to sit in a proper manner, “to look steadily +at the speaker, not let their minds wander or to whisper to their +neighbors, yawn sleepily, smile, scowl, cross their legs, or let +their heads drop.” The training in its earlier stages, however, seems +decidedly academic. Great models in Greek and Latin oratory are +examined and discussed. Then the young advocates-to-be are put to work +preparing their own orations. They are not, however, allowed to take +any live and fresh topic. Instead they must seek one in distant history. + +Every day the streets of Rome resound with noise from the rhetoric +schools--some youth is laboriously inciting the Athenian patriots, +Harmodius and Aristogeiton, to screw up their courage and to free their +country by slaying the foul Hipparchus. Still more threadbare are the +ceaseless orations urging Hannibal to advance (or not to advance) on +Rome after his victory at Cannæ. There are a number of stock subjects +of a more private kind. Mimic prosecutors work themselves into a +passion against “The Ravisher,” “The Poisoner,” or “The Wicked and +Thankless Husband.” + +Often a couple of pupils a little more advanced can be pitted against +one another in an imaginary lawsuit. Suppose a father orders a son to +kill the youth’s brother, whom the father suspects of intending to +turn parricide. The boy pretends to have obeyed the order, but the +second lad really escapes. The father at length discovers the facts and +prosecutes his first son for “The Crime of Disobedience,”[109]--what +endless opportunities now for “eloquence” either proving that a parent +must be obeyed at any cost, or that no one can be compelled to commit +fratricide! + +Again it is supposed that a young girl has been kidnapped, but rescued +and her ravisher later arrested. Imagine now that the law gives her the +choice--either the kidnapper must marry her and give her the status +of an honorable wife or she can require that he be put to death. The +rhetor will put two of his best pupils to prepare counter exhortations +to the perplexed girl: “Marry the fellow to assure your social future!” +or “Let justice be done--summon the executioner!” It is all very +ingenious, but equally unreal, and it is often hopelessly artificial. +Angrily wrote Seneca of such debates that by them “we are learning not +for life but for school.” + + +=178. Enormous Popularity of Rhetoric Studies.=---However impractical +this study, the upper classes at Rome assuredly dote upon it. When +each youth in turn mounts the orator’s stand in the school and begins +his _suasoria_ (set oration) or his _controversia_ (pretended legal +argument) all his fellows are duty bound to cry in Greek, “_Euge!_” +or “_Sophos!_” at every booming sentiment or well-rounded climax. At +least once during the oration it is good form for them to rise from +their seats and join in a salvo of applause--they will all get like +courtesies when their own turns come. + +When the young declaimer has finished the master will arise. He will +show how to gesture, making his garments fall in picturesque folds. +He will take the subject just handled and repeat the argument showing +how each point can be better developed; how new matter can be brought +in; how allusions to the gods, the worthies of old, and perhaps to +the reigning Emperor will improve the effect; how to use one’s voice +at each particular turn, etc., etc. If the only object of oratory is +to tickle the ear, the result is magnificent. The students dutifully +applaud their master even more loudly than they do their fellows, and +each goes home wondering anxiously, “When can I argue my first case +before the prætor?” + + +=179. Philosophical Studies: Delight in Moralizing.=--A good many +Roman nobles of intellectual type advance a step further than the +rhetoric schools. They study philosophy; and even go to Athens (now a +quiet, delightful university town) to listen to lectures by the alleged +successors of Epicurus or of Zeno the Stoic, but to Greece one need not +follow them. It is proper to say, however, that a certain dabbling in +philosophy is extremely fashionable.[110] There are plenty of stories +about noblemen who have treatises on philosophy read to them while +they are being carried to and fro in their litters under the porticoes +of their villas; or even of ladies who listen to lectures by a +professional philosopher every morning while their maids are arranging +their hair. + +Such personages, needless to say, never improve upon the familiar +guesses at the riddle of human existence; but sometimes their desire +to moralize becomes worse than comical. People still repeat stories +of Agrippinus, a high-born victim of Nero. When he caught a fever he +immediately dictated a panygyric on the moral excellencies of fever. He +was ordered into exile; he wrote a treatise on the benefits of exile. +He was made a high judge; he added to the anguish of those he condemned +by giving his victims long orations to prove that he passed sentence on +them only for their own good! + + +=180. Children’s Games. “Morra” and Dice.=--It is a long cry from +child-rearing to philosophy. One must return to the first topic enough +to notice the games played by young Romans and also by their elders. +Tag-games, blindman’s buff and its refinements, and like sports, can be +seen in every street and dusty area in Rome. A favorite game is that +of “King”; when a group of children elects a _Rex_ who commands +them to perform all sorts of fooleries. Time fails to tell of all the +contests with tossing knuckle bones and at “odd and even,” guessing +at concealed pebbles, shells, and nuts. The later-day Italian game of +“morra” (_micare digitis_) in which both players hold out a hand +with a certain number of fingers extended, and then each one tries to +shout out the correct number of his rival’s fingers before the other +can do the like by his, is a highly popular if noisy method of killing +time. At the eating houses and taverns it is regularly used among +friends to settle who shall pay the score. + +All too early boys, and likewise girls, learn also to rattle the dice +box. Some of the dice are ordinary six-sided cubes, some are oblong, +with the numbers “2” and “5” omitted from the narrow ends. Almost +always three dice of bone or fine wood are used; and the familiar +expression “three sixes or three aces” is the same as saying “all or +nothing.” + + +=181. Board Games of Skill: “Robbers” (Latrunculi).=--Altogether +too much time and money are wasted at dice even by fairly grave people, +while professional gamblers abound; but the Romans have two games in +which men are moved on a gaming board according to rules involving +very high degrees of skill. You can play _Duodecim Scripta_ very +much like later-day backgammon; fifteen white men and fifteen black +men are shifted about on a board marked with twelve double lines +(whence the name) according to the casts of the dice. More abstract +and learned is _Latrunculi_ (“Robbers”), a game without dice and +seemingly very much like later-day checkers or chess. Some of the +pieces are called “soldiers” and others “officers”--and the moves +are very elaborate.[111] Of course, such games are far removed from a +mere youthful sport. Consuls and Emperors delight in them, and while +playing forget everything but the problem involved. Devotees cite with +pride the story of Julius Kanus, one of the mad Caligula’s victims. +He was in prison but was allowed to have a friend visit him, and the +two were busy over “Robbers,” when a centurion came in to say he must +be immediately executed. Kanus at once arose unmoved, but carefully +counted the men on the board; then said to his friend, “Mind you, don’t +tell a lie after I’m dead, and say that you won”; then turning to the +centurion, “Please bear witness for me that I was one man ahead,”--and +so did Stoicism find its way even to the gaming table! + + +=182. Out-Door Games. Ball Games, _Trigon_.=--Among out-of-door +amusements, we find that young Romans and some of their elders enjoy +fairly elaborate games of ball. There are various exercises which show +that the world is on its way to handball, tennis, and even to polo, but +hardly any contests foreshadow such things as baseball, foot ball, or +cricket. The most common game is _trigon_, when three players stand at +the corners of a triangle, and at least three, or even six balls, are +kept flying around the circle with great rapidity; the points being +made on catching and throwing with as few misses as possible. The +players stand close together, and the whole sport is more a mild form +of juggling than it is any real field exercise. + + + + + CHAPTER XI + + BOOKS AND LIBRARIES + + +=183. Letters and Writing Tablets.=--The multiplication of schools +presupposes the constant use of books, correspondence, and other forms +of writing. What are these like? + + [Illustration: WAX TABLET WITH STILUS ATTACHED.] + +“Tablets” are seen everywhere. Upper-class people delight in scribbling +down memoranda. The story even runs that Augustus wrote out his +intended conversations with his wife Livia “lest he should say too much +or too little,” a testimony at once to the need of circumspect dealings +with the lady and to a great mania for writing. Ordinary tablets are +made of two or three thin strips of wood joined together like later-day +book-covers, and spread over the inside with a thin coating of wax. On +this wax, often black and dingy, day accounts and business messages can +be scratched with facility. But really important fashionable letters +demand something better. The leaves can be made of fine citrus wood or +even of ivory. As for very special correspondence, love letters, and +the like, these are written on very small tablets in contrast to the +broad slabs carrying the merchant accounts. + +If you want a handsome note book, you can buy one with a number of +folding leaves and with outside covers of finely chased ivory, silver, +or gold, and such handsome note books make very convenient presents +among friends. By a convention attached to the high office, when +Calvus became prætor, he presented his intimates with tablets adorned +with his own portrait in low relief on ivory, and with scenes of the +prætor’s tribunal. If he had been consul, he would have been expected +to give around bunches of tablets even more elegant. + + [Illustration: WRITING TABLETS AND STILUS.] + +When a letter is written no envelope is needed. The tablets are folded +over upon themselves, fastened with crossed thread and then at the +point when the ends are knotted is placed a round piece of wax, stamped +before it can cool with a signet ring. The name of the person to +whom the letter is going can be written on the outside, and then the +communication is ready. Letters can be transmitted to distant places +usually only with tedious difficulty, but around Rome delivery from +writers of any high position is extremely prompt. The carrying of +letters is one of the commonest duties for otherwise idle slaves, and +from a mansion like Calvus’s it is easy every morning to send off ten +packets each by its own hurrying messenger. + + +=184. Personal Correspondence and Secretaries.=--Calvus, like every man +of distinction, has a heavy correspondence. It is a fine thing to be a +good letter writer, to make your epistles seem easy, natural, gossipy, +and yet in such faultless language that they can be collected presently +and published in a book. To a few special correspondents, especially to +absent relatives, Calvus writes almost daily in his own hand. But he +dictates even more frequently. He has a couple of slave _amanuenses_ +who are with him constantly; they can take down his dictation in a kind +of abbreviated long hand; then write it out in handsome script, always +submitting the final text to their master not for his signing but for +sealing. As a consequence of all this correspondence, the demand for +new tablets in Rome is prodigious. The wax, indeed, can be melted upon +letters which one does not care to preserve, and the wood used a second +time, but the waste inevitably is great. + + [Illustration: BOOK CUPBOARD.] + + +=185. Books Very Common: Papyrus and the Papyrus Trade.=--Nevertheless, +the activity of such secretaries is vastly less important than that of +another set of scribes, the makers of books. Poor is the tenement suite +that does not contain a few musty papyrus scrolls, while a parvenu +freedman will inevitably acquire a large library (which he may never +read) just to show himself a man of fashion. Books are so common that +their divided sheets are wetted, and used in kitchens to keep fish in +fresh condition, or, if dry, to make wrappers for incense and spices. + +Paper is unknown, and parchment although not unknown is used mainly for +very important correspondence, public documents, and the like, which +require extremely durable material. Practically all books are written +on papyrus arranged in rolls.[112] The papyrus is strictly an Egyptian +monopoly, and if the importation of this precious article should cease, +apparently all Greece and Italy would be doomed to partial illiteracy. + +The papyrus plant grows in the swamps by the Nile to a height of about +ten feet. The pith of its tall stalks is first cut into strips; next +the latter are placed one by another upon a wetted board and smeared +over with a paste. On these there is next laid a second layer forming +a cross pattern or kind of net work. Then the whole combination is +pressed and beaten down into a solid sheet and smoothed with an ivory +knife or a shell. After that it is ready for export from Egypt and to +be put to proper use. + + [Illustration: BOOK CONTAINER.] + +The papyrus trade is well standardized. There are eight well-recognized +grades of the commodity. The best is _hieratica_, so called because it +is fine and firm enough to be used by the Egyptian priests for their +sacred books. The cheapest is _emporetica_, not fit for writing but +only for wrapping parcels. The intermediate qualities answer for the +run of books. When the papyrus sheets are ready separately, either they +can be pasted together at once into a long scroll making a complete +volume, or first the book can be written off and the sheets pasted +later. + + +=186. Size and Format of Books.=--Books can, therefore, be of all +sizes but everybody usually agrees with the Greek saying, “_Big book, +big evil!_” It is an indescribable nuisance to fumble over a roll of +more than a certain length hunting for a desired passage. Not many +volumes run over 100 pages,[113] and many are much smaller. Each sheet +constitutes a separate page (varying between six to twelve inches +high), with the writing usually in a single column, four to six inches +broad, on each page, and a blank space crossed by a red line before the +next page begins. + + [Illustration: DOUBLE INKSTAND.] + +It is impossible to read with any convenience writing on more than +one side of the papyrus prepared in this manner. The result is that +discarded books are often used for schoolboys’ exercises or for mere +scribbling “paper”; although, if the papyrus is very firm, often the +writing can be sponged out and a whole new work can be written over the +vanished sentences. Books being of this character, it is impossible +really to prepare the “ponderous tomes” of a later day. “Volumes” are +very short. The Iliad of Homer is ordinarily in twenty-four separate +rolls, one for each of its “books”, and the same arrangement obtains +for other standard works. Very many “books” in the Roman libraries, +therefore, are really little more than pamphlets. + + [Illustration: PEN AND SCROLL.] + +For writing on parchment, of course, one cannot use the stylus. Reed +pens skilfully cut may suffice, with a thick ink made of lampblack and +gum for ordinary purposes and also a red ink, rich and permanent, for +ornamental lines. In Calvus’s library, as in almost every other, are +two large beautifully wrought ink wells, made of bronze with silver +chasings, and attached together--one for the black ink and one for the +red. + + +=187. Mounting and Rolling of Books.= The mounting of the papyrus +long roll is a great art, especially if the book is intended for a fine +library. First, the whole long strip of papyrus is dressed with cedar +oil to repel worms--thus giving the pages a pleasing yellow tinge. +Then the last leaf is fastened to a thin cylinder of wood or of rolled +papyrus called the _umbilicus_. The ends of the roll itself are +carefully cut and smoothed with pumice stone, and the ends of the +umbilicus are often gilded. Next a strip of solid parchment bearing +the title of the book in handsome red letters is attached by a string +at one end, where it will hang down when the volume is rolled. + +After the book itself is ready a neat cylindrical cover or case must +be made of parchment, colored red or yellow, and also marked with the +title. For really fine volumes additional elegancies are possible; for +example, a handsome portrait of the author can be painted or pasted +upon the first page, and the edges of the entire scroll can be colored. +Handsomely illustrated works grace every good library. + + [Illustration: BOOK SCROLL.] + +To read these books will seem to persons familiar only with +_codexes_ (flat opening books) extremely cumbersome.[114] You have +to take the volume in both hands, unrolling with the right while you +roll up with the left. It seems nigh impossible to “run through” such a +volume, and hard to trace down a passage; and there are apparently no +indices. However, practice can make almost perfect. Calvus can roll and +unroll his books with remarkable dexterity and by a kind of instinct +hit promptly upon almost any allusion. It will be a real gain for the +world, nevertheless, when the roll is supplanted by the many-leaved +book. + + +=188. Copying Books: the Publishing Business. Horace’s and Martial’s +Publishers.=--Books abound, although of course all are multiplied +by painful human effort. This is because slave copyists are relatively +cheap. Atticus, Cicero’s friend, seems to have made a real fortune in +the publishing business--that is, he owned a great corps of skilful +slaves incessantly busy transcribing manuscripts. The finest copies +must be made deliberately one by one, but ordinary volumes can be +multiplied more summarily. As you go about Rome you will perhaps come +on large rooms where a great number of scribes are seated in a kind +of lecture hall desperately following word for word some reader who, +in a smooth, monotonous voice, is giving out the text either of an +established classic or the newest essays or epigrams of the successors +of Pliny the Younger or Martial. In this way what is really an +“edition” of say a hundred or even two hundred copies can be produced +in a remarkably short time, without the aid of the printing press.[115] + +The publisher, and even more the authors who try to live by their +literary genius, are, however, under a grave handicap. There is no +copyright. What you “publish” to-day, may be flagrantly recopied +and sold under your very nose to-morrow--possibly with errors and +interpolations calculated to drive an author frantic. The average +aspirant for literary fame unless he has personal means is therefore +constrained, as were Horace and Martial, to hunt up a rich patron who +for the joy of being “immortalized” will keep him from starving. + +However, every aspiring author tries to find some bookseller, who will +turn his works over to a corps of competent slaves, and then vend the +products. There is a regular booksellers’ quarter in Rome down by the +Forum of Cæsar in the heart of the commercial district. Here Horace’s +old publishers, the Sosii, had their stalls; and Martial’s publishers, +the firm headed by the clever freedman Allectus, are still there in the +business. + +At Allectus’s shop they will tell you how the epigramist used to drop +in with pardonable vanity to see how from “the first or second shelf +they would hand down a ‘Martial,’ well smoothed with pumice stone and +adorned with purple--all for five denarii (80 cents).” On the columns +by the entrance to this and the rival shops are plastered up long lists +of new publications--often with sample extracts to prove their wit or +learning; or announcement of new or old copies of standard works from +Homer down to that clever Greek litterateur Plutarch, who has recently +died in Bœotia; or in Latin from old Nævius and Ennius to the recent +biographies of the Cæsars by the imperial secretary Suetonius. + +Considering the labor of copying, the price of books is moderate; a +small volume of poems by a popular writer can be had for as little as +two denarii (32 cents), although such a scroll would probably be only +equivalent to a thin pamphlet of later-day printing, and the works of +a really voluminous author like Pliny the Elder might appear ruinously +expensive. + + +=189. Passion for Literary “Fame.”=--Expensive or cheap, by men of +education a certain number of books must be had. Perhaps the Age of +Hadrian will fail to leave a great mark in the history of either +Greek or Latin letters, but that will not be because _literary fame_ +is not passionately sought after. Everybody is anxious to dabble +in authorship. Everybody (in the upper circles) seems incessantly +compounding formal “epistles,” memoirs, essays, rhetorical and +sentimental histories, and last but not least great quantities of +verses which pass as “poetry.” Pliny the Younger (not long dead) was +incessantly urging his correspondents to write: “to mould something, +hammer out something, that shall be known as yours for all time.” +The same pathetic desire for immortality which leads to ostentatious +funeral monuments and to endowed funeral feasts, perhaps puts a premium +upon this mania. + +The fine gentlemen and ladies who share these tastes boast that nothing +can interrupt their furious pursuit of “letters.” Senators like to +inform their friends that even while hunting boars in the Apennines +they keep their writing tablets and stylus near them when watching for +the beaters to drive the game into the nets--what precious sentences +might escape them otherwise! They like also to have freedman or +slave “readers” always at their elbows to keep up a flow of poetry +or philosophy apparently all the time when they are not eating, +exercising, or conversing.[116] + +It is also a kind of etiquette for all members of the gilded literary +circle to keep sending their unpublished effusions around among their +friends with demands for “entirely frank and severe criticism”; +the response always being a long letter of praise even for very +mediocre efforts. “Terse, lucid, brilliant, stately,” or even “keen, +impassioned, graceful”--these are grievously overworked adjectives, +although perhaps at the end of the answers there are a few polite hints +suggesting a slight improvement. + +The Latin-speaking provinces are said to follow Roman literary +celebrities intently. Nothing delights the latter more than to learn +that their fame has spread to distant parts. Tacitus was certainly +a great historian, but he was a man of his time and also a very +warm friend of Pliny the Younger. Oft repeated is the story of a +conversation he had in the circus, where on the front benches for +notables he met a “certain learned provincial.” The twain, without +introduction, fell into a delightful literary conversation, until the +stranger who manifestly was very up-to-date asked: “Are you from Italy +or the provinces?” “Ah,” said Tacitus, “you know me very well from +my books that you’ve read.” “Then,” cried the other, “you are either +Tacitus or Pliny!” + + [Illustration: OLD FORUM: looking towards northern + side, with the Curia shown behind the high columns in + foreground; restoration by Spandoni.] + + +=190. Zeal for Poetry: Multiplication of Verses.=--Prose +compositions in smooth and fastidious Latin, or in very passable +Greek are common enough, but even the authors of genuinely superior +histories or literary essays, often desire to become something more +magnificent--they wish to be poets. Very famous Romans have put forth +their energies over iambics, elegiacs, or hexameters; Sulla, Cicero, +Hortensius the Orator, Julius Cæsar, Brutus, Augustus, Tiberius, +Seneca, Nerva--the list of such celebrities could be made much longer. +Of course, every loyal subject knows that the reigning Hadrian is +the author of clever epigrams, which would really deserve a certain +fame even if their author had lived in the Subura and not upon the +Palatine.[117] + +Probably if there could be physical measuring rods wherewith to +determine it, the sheer quantity of Latin, and also of Greek verses, +being thrust upon the world every year would seem prodigious. At +Allectus and Company they will tell you that Romanus has just brought +out some very acceptable “Old Comedies” in the style of Aristophanes, +and some other “New Comedies” in iambics worthy to be classed with +Plautus and Terence. The noble Caninius, too, has at last completed +and published a remarkable Greek epic: “The Dacian War”--celebrating +Trajan’s victories in a manner quite worthy, let us say, of Homer and +Hesiod. True, the uncouth names of Dacian barbarians do not fit well +into the hexameters, and especially that of their king, “Decebalus,” +is metrically almost impossible, but ingenious poetical license has +overcome the difficulty. Who can doubt that Caninius’s “long poem” will +live across the ages?[118] + +Such a practical man of affairs as Calvus does not take all the +smooth compliments proffered his efforts over-seriously; but even our +friendly senator can feel a thrill of pleasure when he dashes off a +dozen elegiacs in praise of his mountain villa, and hears the “_Euge! +Euge!_” (he hopes not _too_ insincere) of his guests as he +reads them at a dinner party. + + +=191. Size of Libraries.=--With such an affectation for books +and literary fame there are inevitably great libraries. Long ago +the old Hebrew gloomily recorded, “Of making of many books there is +no end,” and his sighs would have increased could he have seen the +collections in Rome. The small size of the volumes indeed makes it +hard to compare these libraries with those of other ages. The largest +library in the world is that at Alexandria with some 400,000 rolls, +but there are public collections in Rome not very much smaller. As for +private libraries, a certain rich and learned senator has about 60,000 +rolls.[119] Calvus and his friends make no such boast, and he contents +himself with some 4000 volumes. This is respectable, but nowise an +unusual collection for a man of refined tastes, and it has plenty of +counterparts all over the city. + + +=192. A Private Library.=--The library in the house of Calvus is +small but sumptuously furnished. Around a large part of the walls +extend great tiers of large pigeonholes made of finely carved wood, +and in each hole is a group of rolls, either the complete works of +a voluminous author, or a collection of smaller books on a single +subject. The bright red lettering on the dangling labels, the gilt ends +of the rolling rods, the pleasing soft yellow of the end of the papyri +(if these are not also colored red) give a luxurious appearance to the +collection. + +Set above the tiers of books in such a room is a long array of fine +busts in bronze and marble of nearly all the distinguished literary +figures of Greece or Italy. Calvus has just added a handsome bronze of +the comedian Menander. The careful frescos on the exposed walls have to +do with learned mythological subjects; there is also a fine life-sized +statue of Minerva the patroness of letters, and on a long shelf stand +really beautiful silver statuettes of all the Nine Muses. Along one +side of the library there are also tables where Harpocration, Calvus’s +truly learned and capable freedman librarian (_librarius_), who +assists in all his patron’s studies, can spread out rolls for patching, +rewinding, or even for recopying; also a convenient writing couch for +the senator himself when he wishes to take his tablets and compile +those fine “extracts” which the literary world delights to cull from +every possible author, or to try his own hand at original composition. + +Calvus is not a virtuoso, however, and does not imitate such wealthy +enthusiasts as the poet Silius Italicus who collected all kinds of rare +editions, crammed his house with every imaginable writer, and “kept +Virgil’s birthday more carefully than he did his own.” For all that +Harpocration has been commended for hanging a small wreath around the +bust of Sophocles, this day being the reputed anniversary of the death +of the great tragedian. + + +=193. The Great Public Libraries of Rome.=--Into the Public +Libraries of Rome we cannot enter. They exist nevertheless as great +and beneficent institutions although probably only a favored few are +permitted to read their treasures except inside their ample halls.[120] +The oldest public library is that founded by Asinius Pollio (an officer +of Julius Cæsar) and is located on the rather distant Aventine. Cæsar +himself projected two very grand Greek and Latin Libraries but did not +live to create them; Augustus founded a very fine library in the Temple +of Apollo on the Palatine (making it virtually the imperial palace +library), and his sister Octavia created another. There is still a +fourth good library in the Temple of Peace founded by Vespasian; but +all these are now overshadowed by the relatively new “Ulpian Libraries” +established by Trajan at his new Forum. These enormous collections +of Greek and Latin rolls make Rome by far the greatest repository of +literary treasures in the entire world, barring always the famous +collection in Alexandria. + + + + + CHAPTER XII + + ECONOMIC LIFE OF ROME: I. BANKING, SHOPS, AND INNS + + +=194. Passion for Gain in Rome.=--Much has been said about Roman +trade and riches, but this is no place for an economic survey of the +realm of the Cæsars. It is impossible, however, to ignore the outward +side of that commercial activity which is everywhere in evidence around +the imperial capital. + +The desire for gold, doubtless, had its potence in old Egypt and +Babylonia, and most certainly in old Tyre and Carthage, but never has +the fierce passion burned much keener than along the Seven Hills. Go +into many a pretentious vestibule; in the mosaic pavement are set as +mottoes, “_Salve Lucrum!_” (“Hail, Profit!”) or “_Lucrum Gaudium!_” +(“Profit is pure joy!”). Hearken also to the cynical poets of society, +for example, to Juvenal: “No deity among us is held in such reverence +as _Riches_; though as yet, O baneful Money, thou hast no temple of +thine own! Not yet have we reared fanes to Money in like manner we have +to Peace and Honor, Virtue, Victory, and Concord.” And he speaks again: +“No human passion has mingled more poison bowls, none has more often +plied the murderer’s dagger than the violent craving for unbounded +wealth.” + +His less sedate but not less cynical contemporary, Martial, echoes +his words. He recommends that an honest friend should leave Rome; he +cannot succeed for he is neither a rake nor a parasite; he cannot tell +lies like an auctioneer, wheedle old ladies out of their property, +sell “smoke” (“empty rumors,” in other words political, gaming, or +commercial tips), nor otherwise earn a corrupt living. Martial tells +us too of despicable misers who, as their vast fortunes increase, let +their togas become even more dirty, their tunics still worse, their +wine mere dregs, and their main diet one of half-cooked peas. + +Perhaps such sordid creatures, however, are no worse than the others +who struggle for riches simply to enjoy gross material vanities; +who desire “that their Tuscan estates may clink with the fetters of +innumerable toiling slaves in order that they may own a hundred tables +of Moorish marble supported pedestals, that gold ornaments may jingle +from their couches, that they may never drink anything but Falernian +cooled with snow from large crystal goblets, and that a crowd of +clients may follow their litters; etc., etc.” And long before Martial, +Horace has asserted, “All the arches of Janus [the typical Latin deity] +from end to end teach one lesson to young and old ‘Oh, fellow citizens, +fellow citizens, _money is the first thing to seek--virtue after +money_!’” + + +=195. Life in Rome Expensive. Premiums upon Extravagance and +Pretence.=--With every deduction from such charges Rome is +undoubtedly an extremely expensive city to dwell in, probably the most +expensive in the whole Empire, and in all but very limited circles +the pressure for wealth is inconceivable. A typical man-of-affairs +is represented as boasting to his cronies, “Coranus owes me 100,000 +sesterces ($4,000); Mancinus 200,000; Titius 300,000; Albinus 600,000; +Salinus a million; Soranus another million; from the rent of my insulæ +I get three million ($120,000); from the flocks on my pasture lands +600,000.” On any night at half the triclinia, the mighty equites +and senators can be heard talking about investments, real estate +transactions, government contracts, and foreign trade prospects, far +more vigorously than concerning either the wisdom of the Emperor’s +policy in building the wall across Britain, or the philosopher’s +doctrine of the immortality of the soul. + +The very life of the city puts a premium in fact on getting and +spending. A youth inheriting a modest fortune in the provinces comes to +Rome. In a few months his patrimony has drifted away on fish-mongers, +bakers, luxurious baths, ointments, and garlands, not to mention fine +clothes, gamesters, and dancing girls. In many circles an outlay +of 40,000 sesterces ($1600) is “a mere pinch of poppy seed for an +ant-hill.” You must at least _seem_ rich or you amount to nothing. + +Half the young men of fashion are therefore, good authorities aver, +up to their ears in debt; but anybody with a little ready money can +put on a bold countenance to make an impression. Many is the apparent +aristocrat who is swung along in a fine litter, his violet robes +trailing, and with a long train apparently of clients and slaves +following him, who has actually hired litter and attendants, nay, the +gown which he wears from a ready contractor--in order perhaps to carry +his part in some business conference at the Forum. And if you are to +plead a case as advocate but are unluckily a poor man, nevertheless be +sure to hire a fine toga and a couple of handsome rings to wear through +the morning, or the jurors will assume you are a nobody and promptly +vote against you. + + +=196. Rome a City of Investors and Buyers of Luxuries.=--Everybody +declaims against this scramble for wealth and yet joins in it. Even +Martial and Juvenal, it is peevishly averred, would have held back +their jibes if their financial hopes had prospered. Be it said also +that this struggle in Rome is probably not much more sordid than it +can become in other capitals in other ages. The standards of business +honesty are relatively high. Most bargains are faithfully kept. A great +credit system has been built up--itself a witness to the fact that most +traders are honorable. + +The business life of Rome flows in many channels, but in general the +Eternal City does not compete with Alexandria, or even with certain +smaller Græco-Levantine cities, as an industrial or distributing +center. Rome _receives_ much. The great incomes from investments +in the provinces and from the expenditure in the city of the imperial +revenues, make it possible to pay for enormous quantities of luxuries +for which no corresponding articles are exported in return. There are +many petty industries but they exist mainly for local needs. Rome +exports legions and law-givers, so her inhabitants assert proudly,--is +it not right, therefore, that she should wax fat upon the tributes +of the world, when she can repay them with the blessed _pax +Romana_?[121] + + +=197. Multiplicity of Shops. The Great Shopping Districts.=--But +if the industrial life of the city is relatively weak, never before +has there been such a “wilderness of shops” as spreads itself along +the streets of Rome. A certain type of shops can be found everywhere; +hardly a street but has grocers’ stalls; the terra cotta plaque with a +goat, the sign of a milk dealer; the stone relief of two men tugging a +great jar slung up on a pole, the sign of a wine shop, and the like. + +There are nevertheless certain great retail quarters to visit if you +are seeking for articles of _vertu_ and price. The fashionable +fish-mongers have their odoriferous stalls under the great porticoes +and basilicas by the fora; the fruit sellers are along the ascent +from the Old Forum to the top of the Velia (a spur of the Palatine +flung out toward the Esquiline); while the jewelers, goldsmiths, and +makers of musical instruments as well as the great bankers have their +headquarters directly along the Sacred Way itself. The perfumers’ +shops in turn are well concentrated under the south-east brow of the +Capitoline. + +In addition to these, however, there exist two grand shopping districts +for Rome outside the Fora themselves: for the cheap trade, where +elbowing plebeians struggle for bargains, we find that the little shops +are wedged all along the swarming Tuscan Street (_Vicus Tuscus_) +going south from the Old Forum toward the Circus Maximus and the +adjacent cross streets; but for the more select purchases high-born +ladies and gentlemen order their litters to take them northward along +“Broadway” (_Via Lata_), where by the Sæpta Julia and the vast +series of porticoes adjoining or opposite are the finest retail shops +in the entire world. + + [Illustration: TRADESMEN’S SCALES AND BALANCES.] + + +=198. Arrangement of Shops. Streets Blocked by Hucksters.=--What +the inferior shops were like has been already seen in the local survey +of Mercury Street. They are almost countless in number but are very +small, the bulk of their wares being on sale upon the open counters +facing the street, and often you can make all your purchases without +going inside. The proprietor and his wife with a slave or two manage +the entire business, unless, indeed, they manufacture, let us say, the +shoes which they retail; in which case a workroom directly in the rear +keeps busy a few more slaves or free wage-workers. + +The shop fronts are protected at night and on holidays by heavy wooden +shutters which, when raised, project into the street serving as a kind +of awnings. They are the more necessary to guard against thieves and +also against a riot. Shop-keepers are proverbially timid folk, and to +say “all the shutters are being closed down” is practically to say +that a brawl or a tumult seems possible. The small size of these shops +makes their owners encroach upon the streets whenever they can. The +counters thrust out over the scanty sidewalk, while pedestrians trip +over the boards with placards set in front of the shops advertising the +wares inside. + +In such narrow streets a little knot of bargain hunters can readily +halt all traffic. Every now and then, indeed, the City Præfect orders +his deputies, “Enforce the shop edicts!” A few offending hucksters are +hailed into court and the rest draw back their counters. “Now the city +is Rome again and not one vast bazaar,” rejoice the poets of the hour. +Then, after a little, official zeal abates, and the streets are as +badly cumbered as before. + +A great deal of the trading, however, goes on without any permanent +shops at all. In almost any cross-street or little square one can +get a license to locate a table and to set thereon a small stock of +such articles as copper or iron pots, the cheaper grades of women’s +and men’s shoes, or pieces of cloth, probably woven by the huckster +himself, not to mention all kinds of edibles, also the stands of +menders of old pots, and others of public letter-writers for the +illiterate. Through the midst of all these, beggars glide whining for +alms, and children dash about playing hide-and-go-seek.[122] + + +=199. Barber Shops and Auction Sales.=--An institution almost as +familiar in Rome as in Athens[123] is the barber shop. Not that a shop +is really needful. Many a dirty tonsor will put down a low stool in the +middle of the crowd in the very street and ply his shears or razor upon +any poor wight who can find a _quadrans_ (small copper). The finer +barber shops, however, are really elegant establishments, fitted to +please the fastidious. Here men of parts and fashion can meet to hear +the latest gossip, and perhaps to read a copy of the “Daily Gazette” +(see p. 282). A complete manicure service is afforded; superfluous +hairs are removed with tweezers or depilatories, and nails polished +and faces massaged very skilfully; although some inferior barbers are +railed at bitterly, and it is charged that their patrons “may count +the scars on their chins like those on an aged boxer, or those marks +produced by the nails of enraged wives.” + +Another institution much frequented is the auctioneer’s room. Auction +seems at Rome an ideal method for realizing quickly upon property, and +bidding is often keen. The auctioneers are past-masters in stimulating +the bidders, and in praising-up worthless articles. An auction sale is +the normal end for the career of a spendthrift when his creditors seize +his plate and furniture. A dozen times around the city one can see +placards like the following, tactfully worded to save the pride of the +unfortunate debtor:[124] + + GAIUS JULIUS PROCULUS + WILL OFFER FOR SALE + CERTAIN ARTICLES + HERE-UNDER NAMED + FOR WHICH HE HAS NO FURTHER REQUIREMENT + + +=200. Superior Retail Stores.=--However, besides the petty shops +and street traders there are the really magnificent stores, especially +toward the Campus Martius where articles of _vertu_ attract the +wealthy. If you have wealth, you can delight yourself in splendid +establishments offering citrus-wood tables, veneered with ivory and +gold, with other articles of furniture to match, or candelabra that are +massy works of art, or vases and mirrors of every possible style and +elegance, and where all kinds of fine pottery, plate, and bric-a-brac, +as well as gorgeous upholsteries, tapestries, and carpets, can be had +for a price. + +To thrust into these places that welcome only the most aristocratic +clientele is the delight of those professional shoppers, which abound +in Rome as in many another city. Martial’s Mamurra will have many +survivors in the next generation. This worthy fellow put in his days +at the richest bazaars along the Sæpta Julia. He would force his way +to inner rooms where the handsomest and most expensive slaves were +on private exhibition. He made obsequious clerks uncover fine tables +“square and round, and next asked to see some rich ivory ornaments +displayed on the upper shelves.” He measured a tortoise-shell veneered +dinner couch five times, then sighed, “It’s not long enough for my +citrus table.” He smelled of rare bronzes “to see if they were real +Corinthian”; criticized a statue by Polycleitus, had ten porcelain cups +“set aside” to be taken by him later, examined some splendid antique +goblets, made a jeweler let him inspect some emeralds in a splendid +gold setting, also some valuable pearl ear pendants, and complained +aloud that he was seeking “_real_ sardonyxes.” At last, just as the +shops closed for the day, utterly wearied, “he bought two earthen cups +for one small coin and bore them home himself.” + + +=201. Numerous Banks and Bankers.=--All this trade implies the +handling of great sums of money, and for its care banks and bankers are +everywhere in evidence. The Romans naturally run to finance. It appeals +to their keen sense of the practical. Even before Cæsar’s conquest +it was boasted that rarely a large sum changed hands in Gaul without +its being entered in an Italian account book; while in Nero’s day a +serious revolt in Britain was said to have been precipitated by the +act of the millionaire philosopher, Seneca, in calling in his British +loans, thereby reducing certain tribes to beggary. + +Stocks, bonds, and long-time government securities do not indeed exist, +and there is no regular stock exchange, but in many respects about +all the other financial conveniences of a later age can be found by +the Tiber. There are two kinds of money handlers--mere coin-changers, +dealing in foreign mintages and often no doubt accepting sums merely +for safe keeping in their strong boxes; and above them are the real +bankers acting under a kind of state license and doing business on the +largest scale. + + +=202. A Great Banker and His Business.=--The highest classes of +these _argentarii_ are men whom the Emperor will gladly consult if +the Parthians break loose in an expensive war, or great public works +have to be undertaken in Africa. They are strictly under government +supervision, their business honor is high and bankruptcy is a great +disgrace. + +On this day in question Calvus must needs visit his own personal +banker, Sextus Herrenius Probus, head of the firm of the Probi, one +of the oldest houses on the Via Sacra. Probus is an eques, though +his wealth surpasses that of most senators. His father helped such +personages as the philosopher Seneca to make and to manage their huge +fortunes, but the real origin of the firm went back to Augustus’s +settlement of Egypt, when the successful liquidation of the royal +estates of Cleopatra provided enormous and lawful commissions. Probus +now is practically the Custodian of many of the noblest patrimonies in +Rome. He is all the time consulted concerning investments, and Calvus +has particularly desired to-day to ask whether his own freedmen are +wise in urging their patron (acting, of course, through themselves +as middlemen) to put 300,000 sesterces into a transaction in Arabian +frankincense. + +Probus, of course, runs a regular banking business. Besides several +junior partners he has a great corps of clerks, some freedmen, and +some slaves. His office has all the signs of a well-ordered commercial +establishment. Every item of his business is entered in an elaborate +system of ledgers, which are regularly brought into court as the most +reliable kind of evidence. + +Such a banker issues bills of exchange on correspondents in such places +as Athens, Alexandria, Antioch, Lugdunum, Gades, and even on distant +Londinium in Britain. Money is deposited with him, then withdrawn by +personal checks (_perscriptio_) in a manner very familiar to another +age. On long-time deposits he pays interest; and, of course, he is +always loaning money for long or short terms on what seems good +security. + +On the day that Calvus comes to him Probus has just loaned 200,000 +sesterces on a mortgage on a well-rented insula, at the standard +rate of 12 per cent; and also a sum to a merchant planning a trading +voyage to Spain at the heavier rate of 24 per cent until the ships are +safe in harbor.[125] Probus, too, exchanges foreign moneys at a fair +commission, although by the reign of Hadrian the coinage of all the +Mediterranean world has become decidedly Romanized; one seldom now +has to change drachmas and shekels into sesterces and _aurei_ +(gold pieces), although the old Græco-Oriental coins have not quite +disappeared. + + +=203. Trust Business: Savings Banks.=--Besides its strictly banking +business Probus’s firm also does much that could at another time be +referred to a “Trust Company.” It makes sales or purchases for its +clients, undertakes to close up estates, attends to legal business, +collects debts, and above all conducts auctions of large quantities of +goods in the most responsible manner possible. Somewhat on the side +the firm also maintains several small savings banks to attract the +sesterces of the humble. + +These modest savings institutions, paying the depositors a fair +interest, are numerous all over the city; and such concerns also +make loans for small sums on chattel mortgages--in short, doing a +business that is sometimes highly legitimate, sometimes griping and +usurious. Probus’s savings banks, like many others, are intrusted to +slave managers (_institutores_) who are expected to invest their +own _peculium_ in the business to insure their watchfulness and +honesty. The management of such small establishments is naturally held +in little social esteem, and the heads of Probus and Company affect to +ignore their savings banks just as much as possible, although the gains +from them are, perhaps, almost as great as from the dealings with the +lofty _Clarissimi_ of the Senate. + + +=204. Places of Safe Deposit: The Temple of Vesta.=--At all the +banks there are very strong brass-bound treasure boxes carefully +guarded and protected by elaborate locks. These boxes if not actually +“safe deposit vaults” can defy any ordinary burglars. However, objects +of great value, caskets of jewels, large sums of bullion, and the like, +can be deposited in the Temple of Castor at the Old Forum, where (under +the double sanctions of law and religion) the government undertakes +their storage for a moderate fee. There is also a second government +deposit vault at the Temple of Mars Ultor on the Augustan Forum, but +this unfortunately “lost its helmet” (_i.e._ its reputation for +inviolability) when it was successfully entered by burglars some years +ago. + +There exists, however, a still safer place than the Temple of Castor, +although obviously it can only give room to protect very small packets +and highly precious documents. The Vestal Virgins in their House of +Vesta, sacrosanct and absolutely guarded, have now in their keeping +the wills of half of the Senators and of many other distinguished men. +There they are safe from tampering not merely by common criminals, but +by designing heirs and even by greedy Emperors; but this service, of +course, is only at the disposal of the aristocracy. + + [Illustration: MONUMENT OF A HOSTLER.] + + +=205. Inns: Usually Mean and Sordid.=--The very nature of a city +like Rome presupposes an enormous floating population. The metropolis +is always full of strangers. The more distinguished of these almost +inevitably find hospitality at least as “paying guests” in some private +quarters, so that large hotels for the gentry are almost nonexistent; +and as stated (p. 112) the universal custom of either dining at home or +being a dinner guest of friends largely obviates the need of luxurious +restaurants. But all visitors cannot command noble hospitality; and +many a plebeian, freedman, or slave cannot go home from his work either +to the noon-time prandium or to the regular evening dinner. Besides +there are plenty of loose fellows who desire congenial places for +tippling and carousing. The result is that Rome is provided with inns +and with eating houses; although nearly all of both types are sordid +and held in little aristocratic favor. + +The inns (_tabernæ_) usually combine the reception of travelers with +the providing of meals for chance visitors. Since driving in the city +is seldom permitted, nearly all wagons have to unload near the gates, +and around these there is a perfect sprinkling of inns primarily for +the accommodation of teamsters. + + [Illustration: GATEWAY AT POMPEII: present state. + Note the small entrance for foot passengers, available after + the main gate for beasts and wagons has been closed.] + +A few of these establishments are very large but the most are decidedly +small. Take for example the “Inn of Hercules,” just outside the Porta +Capena, where the Appian Way commences. It is kept by one Proxenus, a +sly-eyed, strong-limbed fellow, who pretends he is an Athenian Greek, +but who probably comes from somewhere much nearer the Orient. His inn +stands side by side with a number of competitors, all much alike. There +is a broad entrance through which wagons can drive; and on either side +of this passage are rooms, one for the proprietor’s personal use, the +others for serving meals, drinking, and idling. On the walls are coarse +frescos, showing besides the Lares (the serpent Genius of the place, +and the god Hercules) views of the wine trade, perhaps of a man pouring +wine from a large jar into a still larger earthen hogshead. In the rear +of these rooms there is a fairly large court for wagons, a stable, and +a watering trough. Near these are three small chambers for teamsters +who have to sleep near their beasts; but most of the guests are +accommodated in small, dirty cubicles in the story above the wine-rooms. + + +=206. Reckonings and Guests at a Cheap Inn.=--Proxenus is not more +filthy or extortionate than the majority of his kind. He takes it as +part of his perquisites to hear his tavern cursed as “dirty,” “smoky,” +“vermin infested”--or things much worse, and laughs heartily when +he finds that a departing guest has scratched upon the walls of his +sleeping chamber such doggerel verses as + + “Landlord, may your lies malign + Bring destruction on your head! + You, yourself drink unmixed wine + Water sell your guests instead!”[126] + +He can at least claim that his ordinary charges are moderate. His +regular bill to a driver is likely to be: + + “Bread and a pint of wine 1 as; + Meat dish 2 asses; + Mule provender 2 asses; + Night accommodation 2 asses.” + +The bronze _as_ is hardly more than 2 cents; and the whole charge, +including the mule, is thus about 14 cents later-day reckoning. The +real profit, however, comes when for example a burly soldier off duty +tramps in with his hob-nailed boots, swings back his military cloak, +and orders, “Come, mine host (_copus_), some really good wine with +a little water!” If congenial spirits, male and female, are now ready, +such may be the beginning of a long sousing evening, when the dice will +clatter furiously and the soldier will awake in the morning with not +one sesterce in his pouch. + + +=207. Noble Frequenters of Taverns.=--Sometimes Proxenus rejoices in +still more exalted company. Certain fast young nobles enjoy “doing the +rounds” of low taverns; and the Inn of Hercules has fairly regular +visitors of this very profitable type. When Proxenus sees Gnæus +Lollius, Gratia’s black sheep of a cousin, entering, he makes haste to +anoint his own locks with pungent musk, and runs to greet his visitor +as ‘Dominus’ and ‘Rex,’--while the young profligate, boasting that he +has come to enjoy a perfect “Liberty Hall” (_æqua libertas_), commands +the host at once to call in all the loose rascals in the neighborhood +and insists that they drink with him from the same goblet. At last they +are all sprawling about the tavern, the noble Lollius “cheek by jowl +with cut-throats, bargees, thieves, runaway slaves, hangmen, and coffin +makers.”[127] + +All Rome has been laughing in loyal glee at the retort in verse which +the clever Hadrian has just made to a certain Florus, who wrote some +lines saying “he would rather not be Cæsar” because the latter was +always gadding off to outlandish places. Florus is notoriously a +frequenter of all-night taverns, and the Emperor instead of imitating +Nero and sending him a centurion with a death message, has hit back +roundly: + + “Florus would I never be, + Now a-tramp to taverns he, + Sulking now in cook-shops see, + Victim of the wicked flea!” + + [Illustration: CHEAP GROCERY AND COOK-SHOP. _After + Von Falke._] + + +=208. Respectable Eating-Houses.=--But not all people are teamsters +seeking a lodging, or rascals seeking a carouse. Honest hard-working +men and women must buy their meals every day. The simplest method, if +you care nothing for appearances, is to halt before one of the cooks +who station themselves in the open street with caldrons over small +charcoal fires. At the end of copper sticks they attach little cups +with which they bring up boiled peas, or some form of stew to be eaten +on the spot. Of better grade are the _cauponæ_ (eating-houses); these +are ordinarily arranged with a long counter open to the street whereon +is arrayed a tempting display of dainties, and above this are marble +shelves set with cups and glasses. We see also a place for heating +liquids over a charcoal fire. + +On going inside a typical restaurant, one comes to a long room filled +with small tables and backless stools for the use of the guests. The +walls are covered with tolerable frescos showing scenes of eating +and drinking, while from the ceiling dangle strings of sausages, +hams, and other eatables. Really good meals can be ordered here, also +good wine at reasonable prices. Most of the guests are honest, quiet +tradesmen who go about their business, and every sign of a brawl is +promptly repressed. When two youths in servile dress begin to exchange +blows over a cast of dice, the strong-armed proprietor promptly gives +them a push toward the door with the firm injunction, “Please fight +outside.”[128] + + +=209. Thermopolia--“Hot-Drink Establishments.”=--Such places +are genuine restaurants where more attention is given to the food +than to the beverages. Hardly any eating-house, however, can really +be popular unless it does business also as a _thermopolium_, a +“hot-drink establishment.” Coffee and tea are unknown; but hard-working +folk around the city find _calda_ very refreshing especially +after the toil of the morning. Calda is a kind of diluted wine mixed +with spices and aromatic herbs, and heated up into a sort of negus. +It is in constant demand. In fact a cup of calda and a little bread +and peas make up the average poor laborer’s luncheon; therefore the +samovar (_authepsa_) is continually steaming in all the Roman +eating-houses. + +Needless to say most inns and even the better restaurants enjoy such +an evil reputation among the high and mighty that the latter never +frequent them save, as does Lollius, for the naughty “experience.” +Even when traveling through Italy, so general is the custom of +extending hospitality, that only rarely will a great man like Calvus +have to lodge with his retinue at an inn. The result is that country +inns are hardly more select than those in the city, with sometimes the +additional reputation of being the holds of unabashed robbers. Ladies +and gentlemen, and even their more fastidious slaves, groan when they +have to put up at country taverns, and what Cicero, Horace, Propertius, +and other writers have thought of inns and inn-keepers has passed into +literary history. + + + + + CHAPTER XIII + + ECONOMIC LIFE OF ROME: II. THE INDUSTRIAL QUARTERS. THE GRAIN TRADE. + OSTIA. THE TRADE GUILDS + + +=210. Industrial Quarters by the Tiber.=--We have said that Rome +was not primarily an industrial or commercial city. A million and +a half people cannot, however, exist without a great deal of local +manufacturing and an elaborate organization for importing staples and +luxuries. If we go down the Vicus Tuscus or some other streets leading +near the Tiber and toward the southern part of the city, the fine +mansions grow fewer, the insulæ become more squalid, and even these +last are interspersed with dingy structures of concrete which by the +noise and smells proceeding thence are obviously factories. + +These industrial plants are for the most part small according to the +standards of another age; there is also a marked absence of complicated +machinery and a conspicuous dependence simply on patient man-power; but +some establishments are really on a great scale. The noble House of +Afer, for example, has a practical monopoly of the brick industry.[129] +Its products are used all over the city, as may be proved by the name +stamped on almost every brick, and in the Afer yards and kilns are +employed several thousands of slaves and free workers. + + +=211. Conditions of Industrial Labor.=--Slave labor has crowded +free labor hard but has not actually destroyed it. You can never get +quite the same efficiency from a “speaking tool” as from a man to +whom life affords honest prospects. Furthermore, the supply of slaves +is unsteady. While the legions were overrunning helpless kingdoms, it +was easy enough to buy a hundred more hands for your pottery works or +metal factory; but now the campaigns of Trajan (the last period, it +will prove, of the great conquests) are over. There are barely enough +prisoners in the slave market at present to provide a fair supply of +servants. + +There are other drawbacks to servile labor: though a slave worker +cannot “strike” against terms of employment, his employer cannot cease +to feed and clothe him during slack times, when he will gladly lay +off free labor. As a result the average industry employs slaves and +free men side by side; the latter are a little more self-sufficient, +but seemingly they do not object to having slaves as fellow workmen. +In any case the hours of labor are long and the conditions hard. A +denarius (16 cents) is apparently wages enough to provide an artisan +with a few rooms in a dingy insula and to keep his wife and children +from starvation--especially if they can get the government grain doles; +greater reward he dares seldom to demand. + + +=212. Great Trade through Ostia and the Campanian Ports.=--But +Rome, as stated, imports more articles than she manufactures. The +commerce from the interior of Italy, down the Tiber and along the +main roads from the north, the Via Cassia and the Via Flaminia, is +not of first importance--mostly garden produce, stone, and timber. +Not so that from Ostia, the harbor town, or that coming by the famous +southern highways, the Via Appia and the Via Latina. Navigation along +the Italian coast to Ostia has its dangerous features, and a great +many merchants try to unlade at such south-Latin ports as Antium or +preferably at the busy harbor of Puteoli in Campania. The result is +that the southern roads are often black with great trains of heavy +wagons bumping over the hard pavement all the hundred and fifty odd +miles from Puteoli to Rome. However, a very large fraction of the +entire commerce of Rome passes up the Tiber from Ostia, and is set down +on those long arrays of wharves southwest of the Aventine, known as the +Emporium. + + +=213. The Emporium and Its Wharves: the Tiber Barges.=--The +Emporium is not the most beautiful section of Rome, but it is one +of the most important. From its murk and bustle many a lordly eques +is swung away every night in his litter for the quiet, aristocratic +Quirinal or Esquiline; but it is the Emporium trade which makes +possible his great mansion with its hierarchy of soft-footed slaves. To +reach the Emporium we go down the Vicus Tuscus past the upper end of +the tall gray masses of the far-stretching Circus Maximus, then turn +down narrow lanes where the Aventine crowds closely toward the Tiber. +Immediately the river opens before us with a scene of teeming life. + +We are now below all the regular bridges and at the head of deep-sea +navigation. In truth the Tiber is too shallow and uncertain a river +to be very practical for large ships, even of the Græco-Roman type. +Only small vessels, mostly of the coasting variety, come up to Rome on +direct voyages. But the regular procedure is to unload the deep-sea +craft at Ostia and then bring up their lading along the twenty odd +miles of the crooked river, in light-draft barges. These barges--some +worked by long oars, some towed by their crews walking along the +shore--are constantly coming and going. To-day as every day the river +is alive with them, and many others are moored closely, prow following +stern, all along the magnificent stone embankments which serve as quays. + +Approaching one of these ungainly flat-bottomed craft, we see it has a +little cabin on the poop, and its name, the “Isis of Geminus,”[130] +is marked in large red letters upon the black hull. The captain is +now standing by the mooring cable passed through a sculptured lion’s +mouth, directing a great gang of porters carrying sacks of grain +down a bank to the wharf, where Geminus, the owner himself, assisted +by a government clerk carefully checks off every sack upon their +bills of lading. A little scrutiny reveals that while all kinds of +commodities abound on the Emporium two take wide precedence over all +others--_grain_, from Egypt and provincial Africa; and _marble_, from +Numidia, Greece, and Asia Minor. + + [Illustration: RIVER BOAT LOADED WITH HOGSHEADS OF + WINE.] + + +=214. The Marble and Grain Trades.=--The marble trade, indeed, +demands a special section of the wharves. For the government buildings +the imperial procurators in the marble-producing provinces are +constantly sending in valuable cargoes, and for monolithic columns and +extra large blocks specially constructed barges are used to bring them +from Ostia. Even now a great labor gang is painfully disembarking a +splendid column of Egyptian porphyry for the new Temple of Venus and +Rome. + +Behind the Emporium stretches an ugly complex of offices, warehouses, +porters’ barracks, and the like, but most conspicuous and ugly of all +are the public _horrea_. These are tall gaunt storehouses for the +keeping of grain, enormous fabrics of dull gray concrete, “elevators” +in fact, carefully maintained by the government for the victualing of +the capital. There are said to be more than three hundred horrea, and +the largest are named for the emperors who built them--the Horreum of +Augustus, of Domitian, and the like. Thousands of men are employed +around them, and the state of their contents can give anxious nights to +the Imperial Council. Unlovely as they seem, they are vital to the life +of Rome. + +It is no small task to provide grain for so huge a city, and that, too, +without the aid of railways or steamships. Even a top-lofty Emperor +like Domitian can fear the howls of the crowds in the circus if the +price of wheat becomes high and the customary free distributions are +not forthcoming. Hence these horrea must be large enough to supply +a large margin against possible delay in the annual arrival of the +“Alexandrian” or “African” fleets on which the provisioning of the +capital depends. + + +=215. The Public Grain Doles.=--All the world knows that one of +the most precious prerogatives of a plebeian in Rome is the right to +receive about 5 _modii_ (about 10 gallons dry measure) of grain +every month at government charges. Is it not only right that the +wearers of the toga should live on the bounty of the subject world? + +In the past there have been, indeed, efforts to make the populace pay +_part_ of the price of their grain, with the government simply +discharging the balance. This half measure has broken down because of +unpopularity. All that the authorities can do now is to see that the +list of recipients is limited to genuine citizens, and that the alien +riffraff of the great city is strictly excluded. + + [Illustration: DISTRIBUTING BREAD.] + +There are now, as since the time of Augustus, about 200,000 citizens +upon the precious “Frumentary Lists.” The recipients are not paupers, +but include very many “small citizens” of the worthier kind. It is +an honor in many circles to win the precious _tessera_ (metal or +bone ticket) entitling one to stand in line at the numerous grain +dispensaries all over the city and get the monthly allowance.[131] +Every adult male Roman in the city receives this privilege, but under +some circumstances the tessera can be alienated. You hear of persons +selling theirs or even bequeathing them by will; and some of the +holders are thus not merely freedmen but even ex-criminals. + + +=216. Distribution of the Free Bread: Extraordinary Bonuses +(_Congiaria_ and _Donativa_).=--For a long time this food has simply +been portioned out unbaked at the numerous grain stations all over the +city; after which it has to be made into bread at home, or to be handed +over to private bakers who will return so many loaves per measure, +deducting a commission in kind. There is a growing tendency, however, +towards government bakeshops as a new means of pampering the “Sovereign +People” and towards passing out the food in the form of handsomely +baked bread. + +The custom nevertheless is not yet universal.[132] The private bakeries +continue to flourish, and since each baker must grind his own flour, +no sound is more common all over the city than the rasping of the +millstones worked either by long-suffering donkeys, blindfolded to +keep them from eating, or by the most recalcitrant and sodden class of +slaves. + +These distributions of free grain are part of the normal life of Rome. +Inevitably they multiply the number of parasites, busybodies, and sheer +beggars. Ever since Gaius Gracchus started the evil system, thoughtful +men have groaned over its consequences, but all have been helpless, and +the demoralization increases when an Emperor, to insure popularity at +the beginning of his reign, or to confirm it later, orders a special +_congiarium_ to all the citizens. + + [Illustration: OVEN AND GRIST MILL IN A BAKERY. + _After Von Falke._] + +This gift can take the form of special distributions of oil, wine, +and meat to all the lucky holders of the tesseræ; but presents even +more lavish are possible. When Trajan died in 118 A.D. and Hadrian was +proclaimed, the latter, not quite certain of public favor, put all the +insulæ to roaring in his praise by proclaiming a gift of three aurei +(gold pieces of $4.00 each) to every “frumentary citizen” in Rome. What +wonder that later _donativa_ (bonuses) become necessary at dangerously +frequent intervals to prevent even the most loyal plebeians from +praying for a new reign![133] + + +=217. The Trade in Sculptures and Portrait Statues.=--But it +is time to return to the region about the Emporium. Near the marble +wharves are naturally the huge establishments where all the day long +the chip, chip of many mallets and chisels indicates that great masses +of sculptured stone are being turned out--magnificent capitals, +pediment groups, bas-reliefs that are splendid works of art, for all +the needs of the government buildings and the mansions of the wealthy. + +Many large concerns devote themselves to manufacturing single statues, +life-size or miniature. Standing around in their courtyards are rows +of sculptured deities, mostly copies of good Greek masterpieces, +representing the whole host of Olympus from Jupiter down to the +inferior demigods; there are also numerous statues displaying orators +posing in their togas, magistrates in their official robes, and +generals in their armor, but with the features left in the rough--to be +finished up on order at short notice to adorn some atrium or small-town +forum. + +A great array of statues of the Emperor are also kept in stock. These +are needed in every government building, and the demand is constant; +but it must be admitted that Hadrian’s handsome bearded features are +often outrageously distorted by the careless journeymen, so that loyal +folk protest even as does the governor of Pontus, Arrianus, who has +just written his master, “Your statue at Trapezus [on the Euxine] is +beautifully placed, but it is not the least like you. Please send on +another at once from Rome!” + +Special markets and warehouses also exist for almost every other +major commodity. Near the Circus Maximus there is the noisy, fetid +cattle market where horses, kine, and asses change hands amid coarse +chaffering very much as in the trade for slaves. There are likewise +great repositories for oil, flax, lumber, wool, spices, etc.--some +private, some under government supervision; the clang from all kinds +of smithies and metal workshops is incessant, and the factories for +manufacturing bronze statues are almost as large as those for the stone +sculptures. + + [Illustration: ENVIRONS OF ROME] + + +=218. The Tiber Trip to Ostia: the Merchant Shipping.=--If, however, +one would learn the real sum of Roman industry and commerce, it is +needful to charter a slim swiftly-pulling wherry and to glide down +the yellow Tiber to Ostia. All the way the craft has to dodge the +enormous barges, but the shores are covered with delightful villas, +small villages, or with prosperous farms raising poultry, flowers, +vegetables, and the like for the city trade. In the distance across the +level campagna can be seen the impressive array of the solemn arches of +the great aqueducts, reaching back into the hills and bringing their +supply of pure water to Rome. Ostia itself, however, is strictly a +harbor town, with an elaborate series of breakwaters, dredged basins, +naval docks, mercantile docks, and a perfect jumble of shipping. + +The vessels have come from all parts of the Mediterranean, and there +is even a battered trader that has coasted all the way from Britain +with a cargo of tin ore. The smaller craft can trust sometimes to their +oars in a calm, but all the larger must depend on their unwieldy lateen +sails which swing from two or three long yards crossing as many masts. + +By far the largest merchantmen are the Egyptian corn ships, and one +of these, that is just being moved to the quay by a gang of shouting +half-naked stevedores, is of somewhat unusual size. We are informed she +is fully 180 feet long and 45 feet in beam.[134] She is provided with +elaborate and decidedly comfortable cabins for many passengers, so that +it is easy to believe the story that when the Jew Paullus (previously +mentioned) on his compulsory trip to Rome was wrecked off Malta, 276 +persons were rescued from the Alexandrian merchantman whereon he and +his guards had embarked. + + +=219. Imperial Naval Vessels.=--At Ostia, too, can be seen a few +triremes of the Imperial Navy. Enemies to the Roman dominion have +practically disappeared from the seas, but there is still a certain +danger of pirates or local insurrection; therefore, although the clumsy +four- and five-bankers of the Punic War periods disappeared soon after +the battle of Actium, small patrol squadrons of swift triremes, pulling +about 170 oars, or of smaller craft are maintained by the government. +These ships are extremely like the Athenian triremes of the golden age +of Greece and call for no special description here.[135] The Romans are +not naturally a seafaring people. Nearly all the larger merchant ships +are manned if not owned by Greeks or Levantines; and it has been with +real satisfaction that the Emperors have felt that they could allow +their navy to dwindle down to insignificance. With the army, as will be +seen, things are very different.[136] + + +=220. The Harbor Town of Ostia.=--Ostia has all the accompaniments +of a busy port: a great mass of squalid lodging-houses for sailors, +innumerable taverns overrun with dirty loiterers of both sexes, a +great many uncouth faces along the quays, ear-ringed Syrians, and even +quaintly jabbering negroes. There are, however, some good houses for +the rich merchants and directors of the shipping, and a forum flanked +with handsome temples and government buildings befitting the harbor +town of the Mistress of the World. + +In the outskirts of Ostia one can quickly get out into delightful +country stretching all along the seashore. The villas of city magnates +look forth upon the blue Tyrrhenian Sea, or are bowered in lush +groves surrounded by rich gardens and fruitful orchards. The melons +raised around Ostia are in demand by every epicure in the capital. +Who can believe a prophecy that this active bustling port, with its +enormous shipping, and all these villas, groves, and gardens will +some day vanish like a dream, and that Ostia will lie in a desolate +fever-stricken country,--with hardly a house in sight along the +deserted shores, and with the harbor town of the Eternal City reduced +itself to a few miserable cabins? + + +=221. The Roman Guilds (_Collegia_).=--Ere turning one’s glance from +the economic life of Rome it is needful to regard the organization of +industry. Nearly all free workmen are members of “guilds” (_collegia_) +which nominally exist for the purpose of worshiping some patron deity; +thus the bakeries are the special votaries of Vesta the hearth goddess, +the fullers of Minerva the protectress of wool-working, the smiths of +Vulcan, and so with others. + +These “colleges” are not labor unions for the protection of the +wage-earners against exploitation; they are more like the guilds that +are to be developed in the Middle Ages. The chief members are the +employing “masters,” and paid journeymen and apprentices have little +share in the control of the organization. However, most industries in +Rome are on so small a scale and the situation is so complicated by the +competition of slave labor that the friction between wage-earners and +their employers seldom becomes dangerously acute. + +The trade guilds are carefully watched by the government lest they +become the hotbeds of sedition and disturbing intrigue,[137] on the +other hand their existence is often useful in helping to mobilize +industry in behalf of the army and to keep up the public works in +general. + +They have a fairly tight organization, with their own officials, +“prætors” and “presidents,” and the like, and the election to such +a post by one’s fellow craftsmen is no slight honor. The guilds, +too, have their special corporate property; and many of them possess +elaborate guild halls for their feasts and meetings. + + +=222. Very Ancient Guilds: the Flute-Blowers.=--Some of the colleges +are of decidedly recent origin, but eight of them boast that their +history goes back to the very early days of Rome. These are the +fullers, cobblers, carpenters, goldsmiths, coppersmiths, dyers, +potters, and last but not least, the flute-blowers, so important at +funerals and all public festivals. + +From the “good old times” come many quaint stories about these +guilds, and everybody remembers especially the tale concerning the +flute-blowers. About 314 B.C. the censors saw fit to forbid these +somewhat riotous and irregular gentry from joining in the sacred +banquets to Jupiter in which they had formerly participated. In anger +the whole college struck and retired in dudgeon to the friendly city +of Tibur. Soon the Senate found it difficult to conduct the religious +rites properly without the aid of the flute-players, and endeavored to +cajole them home, but the strikers had found their fare and quarters +in Tibur very pleasant and refused any reasonable terms. The people of +Tibur, however, wearied of their guests and to get rid of them gave +the whole corporation a generous banquet, during which all the members +became so drunk that they could be loaded into wagons, trundled back +to Rome and then laid down in a helpless stupor in the very Forum. The +next morning the entire guild awoke, rubbed its collective eyes and +found a vast crowd of jeering friends pressing around. The result was +an honorable compromise. The censors relented, and the flute-players, +in return for giving solemn attention to their religious duties, were +awarded the right to three days of high carnival, with songs, dances, +and every kind of coarse gayety. + + +=223. Importance of the Guilds.=--The complete list of the guilds +is very long. Besides those mentioned, among the more prominent are the +barbers, perfumers, fruit sellers, garment cutters, pack carriers, mule +drivers, gig drivers, and fishermen, not to mention the great guild +of the bakers. There is as yet no formal compulsion upon a craftsman +to join a college, but in fact any “non-union” workman is subject +to discrimination and sabotage which make his life unhappy. Cases +are known of funerals being halted amid an unseemly scuffle when a +non-member of the guild of bier-carriers has been discovered helping to +carry the litter for the dead. + +Certain crafts have perforce to be distributed all over the city but +inevitably fellow guildsmen like to flock together. In the industrial +quarters each craft tries to concentrate upon a certain street which is +then called by its name. Well known is the case of how Catiline’s gang +had its rendezvous at Marcus Læcas’s house on Scythemaker’s Street. +There is no annual “labor day” when all the guild members of the city +hold festival together. On the contrary each college has its own +separate festival, when the united craft is entitled to parade through +Rome with horns, pipes, cymbals, and gaudy banners; its officers +appearing in the guise of magistrates. The whole company with their +families ordinarily head for the outskirts, where, beside convenient +temples and hospitable taverns, the good people can spread themselves +for picnics under the trees, join in vulgar dances, and very often +spend the night under improvised tents of leaves--everybody sleeping +the sounder because of much strong wine. + + +=224. Multitude of Beggars.=--To these honest plebeians must be +added another less noble multitude. Rome literally swarms with beggars. +The parasitical habits taught by slavery and by the grain doles go +far to make begging somewhat respectable. At every turn you can run +on whining wretches often repulsively mutilated in order to excite +sympathy. They have their regular stand, however, upon the bridges, +where they crouch on dirty mats shouting their “_da! da!_” “Give! +Give!” and at the gates where travelers take or leave their carriages +they are thicker than the flies. Near Ostia and along the Emporium +may also be seen real or pretended sailors escaped from shipwreck, +identifiable by their heads, which are shaven because of vows made in +peril, and who hold out their caps for coppers while “delighting in +garrulous ease to tell the story of their perils.” + +Downright thieves, professional robbers, and petty pilferers are held +in reasonable restraint by the active police, but the absence of street +lights makes it risky business to go about after dark without torches +and a good escort. Serious burglaries are often reported, and every +now and then the body is found of some wayfarer who was stabbed while +resisting a hold-up. As for certain districts going down the river +toward Ostia, or along the Via Appia toward the Pomptine Marshes, their +reputation is so bad that even in daylight a company of armed slaves is +desirable. + + + + + CHAPTER XIV + + THE FORA, THEIR LIFE AND BUILDINGS. THE DAILY JOURNAL + + +=225. The Fora, the Centers of Roman Life.=--Hitherto in our prolonged +“day” in Rome we have carefully avoided visiting those famous quarters +or buildings which are the glory of the imperial city. These can only +take on true significance when we have first seen the ordinary life +of rich and poor. It is now time, however, to visit the “Heart of +Rome”--the splendid system of fora in that great hollow where five of +the “Seven Hills” almost come together just north of the Palatine, and +then to visit the Palatine itself with its abodes of official majesty. + + [Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF OLD FORUM AND + CAPITOL: a simplified restoration.] + +The renowned and original “Forum” is known technically as the +_Forum Romanum_, or the Old Forum, and down to Julius Cæsar’s time +it was the only great plaza inside the official limits of the city. +Under the emperors it is still revered and famous, but the needs of an +enormous metropolis have caused first Cæsar, then Augustus, Vespasian, +Nerva, and finally Trajan to add other wide public squares surrounded +by buildings far more magnificent than most of those around the ancient +rallying spot of the men of the Republic. + + [Illustration: OLD FORUM: present state, looking + towards the Capitol.] + +All these fora are closely connected together, sometimes by no +very sharp lines of demarkation. You can start in near the Flavian +Amphitheater and follow down the Sacred Way across the Old Forum, with +one soaring edifice, triumphal arch, or memorial column succeeding +another until at the Temple of Trajan you find yourself on “Broadway” +(_Via Lata_), upon the great avenue leading through the select shopping +districts, and then past the Campus Martius, and onward to the northern +suburbs. “Going to the Forum” means visiting any place in this crowded, +swarming district, where every public and private interest seems to +have its stronghold, and where the litters of Senators go past so +frequently that nobody stops to count them. + + +=226. Incessant Crowds at the Forum. The Centers of Gossip.=--If +driving is impossible in the ordinary Roman streets by day, it is +doubly impossible in this congested region where only those who delight +in crowds should endeavor to force their way from one building to +another. Nevertheless, with that informality so characteristic of +Mediterranean countries, all the fora are allowed to be overrun with +idlers. Ragged boys are scampering between the columns fronting the +most sacred temples, and on the steps of the same adult idlers from +morn till eve are playing “Robbers” on boards scratched upon the +stonework,[138] or rattling dice (nominally forbidden) if the police +are not too near. The foul and the elegant therefore are often in +amazing juxtaposition. + +For the average senator or eques a morning visit to the Forum, after +he has received his own callers or clients, is almost a required act +of the day. All his associates are doing the same thing; he can easily +meet almost any friend without making an appointment, he can read that +“Daily Journal” presently to be described (see p. 282), hear the latest +tittle-tattle from the palace and get all the trade reports--all this +even if he has no real business at the Senate House, the government +bureaus on the Palatine, or the Record Office on the slopes of the +Capitol. + +If the great men do this, all the lesser fry and above all the genteel +idlers must do the same. The women frequent the fora almost as much +as do the men. If there is nothing else to busy one, one can always +wedge into the crowds listening to the distinguished advocates in the +Basilicas (Court Houses). It is quite a proper thing to imitate Horace +who put in many days simply wandering around the business quarters. “I +go on foot (said he) and go alone. I ask the price of kitchen-stuff +and grain. I often stroll down toward the cheating [gambling] Circus +and around the Forum; then perhaps I stop toward evening at the +fortune tellers. Presently I go home to my supper of leeks, pulse, and +macaroni.” + +Across the fora will parade all personages who wish to put men’s +tongues to wagging. People laugh at a certain pretentious senator who +likes to pass for a great hunter and who is incessantly sending his +slaves around the plazas at the crowded morning hour, bearing nets and +spears and driving a mule apparently bearing home a wild boar “which +we all know,” whisper the cunning, “he has just bought in the game +market.” + +Here in the fora also the magistrates with their lictoral fasces pass +so often that it is really inconvenient the number of times you have +to bow your head to them, or, if in a litter, to dismount and stand at +polite attention: and in such frequented places the kissing nuisance +takes on its greatest bane. The merest chance acquaintance, if only +he is a citizen, will thrust his damp salute upon you, little heeding +whether you have a vile cold or his own lips be ulcered and his breath +foul. + + +=227. Grandiose Architecture: Vast Quantities of Ornaments and +Statues.=--In viewing these great public squares and buildings +instantly one is impressed by a single fact--the grandiose character of +the ornaments and the architecture. All the enormous public buildings +are literally overladen with adornments. The architects seemed to have +abhorred the idea of blank spaces. There are no reposeful vistas. +Everything seems striving to be magnificent and ornate. Statues, singly +or in groups, occupy all the gables, roofs, niches, intervals of +columns, and even the stairways. The Triumphal Arches are surmounted +by equestrian figures or by prancing four-horse chariots. Reliefs and +medallions cover all the friezes. If there is any space that cannot be +seized for the mounting of sculptures or at least for bas-reliefs, it +can be used for painting designs in stucco or colored mosaics. Every +detail down to the gutters is highly decorated. + +Very different, therefore, are these fora from the chaste elegance of +the public places in Athens. On the other hand much of the effect is +splendid as well as startling. The utilization of concrete permits the +erection of vast soaring domes, often covered with gilded tiles. The +elaborate Corinthian pillars before many of the buildings are often +simply superb polished monoliths of colored marbles. The use of the +arch (practically unknown in Greece) permits new effects often graceful +and pleasing. + +The sculptures permitted in such public places are, of course, always +of the highest order. Sometimes they are original Greek masterpieces +carried as spoils to Italy. Often they are excellent copies of those +masterpieces but with small variations, not inelegant, which give the +reproductions a real character of their own. At every turn one sees +these triumphs of bronze and marble, Apollos, Minervas, Victories, +Winged Mercuries, Centaurs, Homeric Heroes, and all the legendary host +of Græco-Roman mythology--now singly, now in groups. Interspersed with +these gods mounted on pedestals or on the entablatures of the buildings +are the honorary statues of the worthies of Rome. Hardly a great leader +is absent from Romulus to the reigning Hadrian. + +A mere walk about the fora with an explanation of their portrait +statues becomes therefore a detailed lesson in Roman history. Besides +the images of the truly great and good, there are so many others of +sheer mediocrities or worse that one is left wondering whether the +honor of a “statue in the Forum” is so important after all. Even in +old Cato’s day the abuse was such that he remarked sarcastically that +“he would rather that men asked why he had _not_ a statue in the +Public Square, than whisper questioning why he had one.” + + +=228. Use of Color on Sculptures and Architecture.=--Needless to +say, in Rome as in Athens very many of these buildings are brilliantly +painted.[139] The great columns of colored or of snow-white Carrara or +Græcian marbles are usually left in their natural aspect, but nearly +all the backgrounds, architectural members, and details are colored +in brilliant greens, reds, and blues. The nude statues are nearly all +tinted in flesh color, and the hair darkened, and there is perhaps an +overplus of gilding. + +Under a bright Italian sky these color combinations make the vast +succession of enormous buildings stand out with indescribable +grandeur; and to this spectacle must be added the huge crowds +incessantly moving about the fora, great masses of soft white togas +giving to the wide areas all the exuberance of teeming life. There can +be many other great plazas in the future capitals of the world; there +will never be any more clearly marked out as the veritable center of an +enormous Empire than the succession of fora in Rome. + +We are not concerned with archæological descriptions. The arrangement +of the fora in this reign of Hadrian must be sketched over lightly +or explained completely, otherwise the result is not knowledge but +confusion; here a very brief survey will suffice. If we are following +Publius Calvus’s litter as it traces the Esquiline on routine business +of a senator, a series of convenient side streets probably will bring +it past the great baths of Trajan and then down the slope to the +spot where the vast bulk of the Flavian Amphitheater rears itself +arrogantly. The baths and the Amphitheater both will be visited later +(see p. 361 and p. 394), and we can, therefore, ignore them. Then the +litter bearers swing west and slightly north--and before us lies the +veritable Heart of Rome. + + +=229. Entering the Series of Fora: the Temple of Venus and +Rome.=--To avoid being overwhelmed by details only the most +conspicuous objects and buildings will be mentioned. Some structures +are obvious at the very first. To the left, lifting vauntingly above +the visitors’ heads, rise tier upon tier the domes, balconies, and +pinnacles of the Imperial Palace upon the Palatine, sustained at their +base by an enormous mass of arches and buttresses of masonry and +concrete. The lords of the palace at any moment can look down from +a gilded balcony upon the Old Forum and its bustling life, and they +need only descend an inclined plane in order to mingle with the mob, +or cross the Plaza to visit the Senate House. Directly ahead--at the +end of the vista, rises the Capitol, crowned by the rebuilt Temple of +Jupiter Best and Greatest (_Jupiter Optimus Maximus_), its roof +flashing with the gold tiles; its enormous pillars proclaiming it the +most splendid fane in Rome. + + [Illustration: MAP OF + + THE HEART OF ROME + + The Fora, the Palatine, the Capitoline etc. as in Period of + Hadrian: about 135 A.D.] + +At the head of the Via Sacra (for this famous route of the great +Triumphators now opens before us), upon our right, is the new and +indescribably splendid Temple of Venus and Rome, a building just +completed by Hadrian. This edifice has been reared by demolishing the +last of the ruins of the impossibly extravagant “Golden House,” the +architectural monstrosity of Nero. + +In order to get sufficient room for his new structure Hadrian also was +compelled to move the colossal statue of Nero (99 feet high) located +near the site and to set it nearer the Flavian Amphitheater. This had +been a great task, executed by the clever architect Decrianus, with +the aid of twenty-four elephants--performed to the delight of all the +idling crowds in Rome. The statue now towers upon its new pedestal, +with Nero’s unworthy head sagaciously lifted from its shoulders and one +of the Sun God substituted. The new Temple of Venus and Rome is a truly +magnificent object; rising as it does upon a terrace 26 feet high, +500 feet long, and 300 broad, and surrounded by an enormous portico +of 400 columns each 40 feet high. The versatile Emperor boasts that +he has been the architect himself, and whatever are the real facts no +vestibule to the fora could well be more impressive. + + +=230. The Arch of Titus: Continuation of the Sacred Way.=--With +the Temple of Venus and Rome to our right and the substructures of +the Palatine to the left we go straight ahead to the Arch of Titus. +Everybody recognizes the shape of that impressive but relatively simple +structure. Its bas-reliefs showing the spoils of Jerusalem--the “Golden +Table” and more particularly the “Seven Branched Candlestick”--are +destined to be reproduced countless times. + +Old men in Hadrian’s day can still recall the Triumphal Procession +when the son of Vespasian returned in glory; how the great throng of +cheering soldiers and citizens swept up toward the Temple of Jupiter +Capitolinus, then halted at the portal of the Temple while Simon +Bar-Giora, the captive Jewish leader who had been dragged in the +procession, could be taken to a high place overlooking the Forum and +deliberately scourged to death. At the news that he had perished all +the vast company made the crags and columns quake with their brutal +“acclamation,” and Titus entered the shrine to sacrifice and to bear +witness how much mightier was Latin Jove than Palestinian Jehovah. + + [Illustration: SPOILS FROM JERUSALEM: Arch of Titus.] + +And now the Via Sacra turns at right angles, or, to be more accurate, +its thronging ways divide. Go to the left and you will come upon a high +street passing under the brow of the Palatine. It runs a considerable +distance toward the Capitol, receiving several sloping avenues or +broad staircases leading down from the Palatine. This is “New Street” +(_Nova Via_), the most convenient route to certain buildings on +the southern side of the Forum. + +It is better, however, to follow the denser crowds which are swerving +somewhat to the right, and then by a second turn go straight onward +again between magnificent structures, with the gilded roofs of the +Capitol ever looming ahead more clearly. We are now on the Via Sacra +proper; and caught in the eddying throngs of litters, litter bearers, +running footmen, following clients, elbowing plebeians with now and +then a masterful squad of Prætorians in gilded armor, we find it +perhaps impossible to get more than the names of the structures in +passing. + + [Illustration: VIEW THROUGH THE ARCH OF TITUS, SHOWING + THE FLAVIAN AMPHITHEATER IN DISTANCE.] + + +=231. House and Temple of Vesta: the Regia: the Temple of the Divine +Julius.=--The venerable temple near which the ways divide is that +of Jupiter Stator where Cicero convened the anxious Senate when he +delivered his great assault on Catiline. Next comes to view a long +high wall broken only by narrow doorways until you see a stately +portal at the western end, nearest the Old Forum. From above the wall +can be glimpsed the tiles and marble of an elegant mansion inside, +also the foliage trees of a really fine garden. This is the House of +the Vestals, the abode of the six sacrosanct virgins who are the most +revered personages in all Rome, hardly barring the Emperor. + +As we advance there come next to view two buildings--one a small round +temple of antique and simple structure; the other a handsome arched +building of no great size. The first is the Fane of Vesta itself, where +burns the eternal hearthfire of Rome, guarded by the Vestals, and the +most sacred structure in the entire city. The second is the Regia, the +official home of the Pontifex Maximus, the head of the Roman religion, +and actually occupied (since that official is now the reigning Emperor) +by various clerks and administrative bureaus relating to the upkeep +of the State cultus. To the right of these buildings are government +warehouses and offices;[140] and then, closing off the Old Forum proper +from these structures just named, stands another extraordinarily +magnificent Temple, that of the deified Julius Cæsar. + + +=232. The Old Forum (_Forum Romanum_).=--We are now close upon the +actual Forum. It can be entered by two methods: you can go between the +Temple of Vesta and that of Cæsar, very likely walking through the +triumphal arch of Augustus, in which case you will see the pillared +façade of the stately Temple of Castor and Pollux (the divine helpers +of Rome at the half legendary battle of Lake Regillus), and then across +that busy shopping street, the Vicus Tuscus, before reaching the +quieter portico of the great Basilica Julia; or you can take a better +way by keeping on past the northern side of the Temple of Cæsar and +coming out pretty directly upon the Forum. In so doing you will have +the second great court house, the old but capacious Basilica Æmilia +to the north on your right. Let tribunals and litigants, however, +wait--before the visitor at last is opening one of the most famous +areas in the entire world--the _Forum Romanum_. + + [Illustration: OLD FORUM: looking west towards the + Capitol. Restoration by Nispi-Landi.] + +Of the Old Forum well may one say what Cicero declared of Athens, “On +whatever spot we tread we awake a memory.” There is hardly an event +connected with the long reaches of Roman history which is not also +connected in one manner or another with this public square. The first +impression, to be sure, may be one of disappointment: the whole open +plaza barely measures 300 by 150 feet. It seems the more confined +because a large part of the southern side is hemmed in by the huge +Basilica Julia, while directly above the square rise the two hills of +the Capitoline and the Palatine, their summits crowned with lofty and +noble buildings looking down upon the Forum as a kind of common center. + + [Illustration: OLD FORUM, LOOKING TOWARDS CAPITOL FROM + BEFORE THE TEMPLE OF CASTOR: the building on the left, + with statues beneath its upper arches, is the Basilica Julia. + Restoration after Von Falke.] + +As one advances, however, the impression deepens as to how earnestly +the Romans have tried to concentrate their whole life around this +beloved square. If statues abound elsewhere in the city, they seem here +more numerous than even the surging throngs around their pedestals. +Every kind of human activity is apparently going on simultaneously. +Along the north side, as we have seen, are the offices of those great +bankers who hold the nations in fee from the Euphrates to Hibernia, yet +pedlers are now wandering about, almost under the feet of the consul’s +lictors, hawking hot sausages, strings of garlic, and pots of eye +salve, while a snake charmer has obtained the license to exhibit two +stupid serpents on the actual steps to the Temple of Janus just beyond +the Basilica Æmilia. + + +=233. The Forum Area: the Posting of Public Notices.=--Walking +out into the area itself, we find it solidly paved with rectangular +blocks of travertine. The days are gone when closely packed throngs of +quirites stood for hours upon this pavement listening to the orators +bidding them vote upon peace or war, or for or against some proposed +law, as lay in their right as free citizens. Gone, too, is the day of +that great funeral pyre of garments, ornaments, trinkets, tables and +benches, which the frenzied mob heaped around the corpse of Cæsar after +Marcus Antonius had thundered his invective against Cassius and Marcus +Brutus. But not gone is the Senate House (the _Curia_), looking +out across the plaza from the northern side of the square, just beyond +the Temple of Janus. And around the orator’s stands, the Rostra, at the +western end of the area there is still another elaborate funeral in +progress; the wearers of the imagines sitting in their curule chairs, +and the orator pompously lauding “the noble departed.” + +Truth to tell the Forum is frequented every morning largely to get +the news. Not merely can you meet the bearers of all sorts of public +or confidential information; you can spend an hour merely reading the +great “white boards” (_albums_) bearing official and private notices +which stand around everywhere. The “Daily Gazette” is here posted, and +we shall consider its contents presently; but apart from that, whether +you wish to know the price of grain or the day set for a lawsuit; +whether Syphax the Moor will race his four in the next circus, or +Epaphroditus the Athenian will lecture to-morrow on the nature of the +soul, the Forum placards will tell you everything. Gossip incalculable, +often of a kind which no man dare put in writing, you may also pick +up, as well as accost half of your acquaintance. A visit to the Forum, +therefore, is almost as important to a Roman of parts and activity as +in another age will be the perusal of the paper. + + +=234. Western End of Forum: the Rostra: the Golden Milestone: the +Tullianum Prison.=--At the extreme western end of the area, more +temples are seen rising on the slopes of the lofty Capitol. Here is the +Temple of Saturn; and higher still the Temple of the deified Vespasian, +the Temple of Concord, and the great “Public Record Office,” the +Tabularium, and the Rostra are reached just before you quit the level +area and take the winding ascents towards the Capitol. + +These famous stands for the orators constitute an elaborate platform, +with a fine marble balustrade which is adorned with exceptionally good +bronze statues of notables such as Sulla and Pompeius; although all +these ornaments were added by Julius Cæsar and know not the days of +the Old Republic. Some of the original “beaks” (_rostra_) from +captured warships which gave the famous pulpit its name are still in +position, however, with others from such battles as Actium added.[141] +Even if the Republic is dead, the place remains of decided utility not +merely for funerals, but also for formal speeches on state occasions; +and sometimes an emperor will still condescend to harangue the loyal +quirites from its platform. + +Close by the Rostra and near its southern end rises a tall stone pillar +coated with gilded bronze. This is the “Golden Milestone” whereon +Augustus inscribed the names of the great roads leading out of Rome, +and the distances to the chief towns along their course. “_All roads +lead to Rome_,” and leading to Rome find their convergence in the +“Golden Milestone.” It comes close, therefore, to being the “Hub” of +the entire Roman Empire. + + [Illustration: OLD FORUM: present condition, western + end looking east. In foreground pillars of Temple of Saturn.] + +Near the other, the northern end of the Rostra, when one goes a little +of the way up to the Capitol, there is quite a different landmark, far +more venerable--the old prison of the city, the Tullianum, prepared, +according to the story, by King Ancus Martius. It was originally +nothing but a kind of well let into the damp rock, with an upper and a +lower compartment; this second chamber is only accessible by means of +a hole in its vaulted roof through which prisoners were lowered by a +rope. + +The Tullianum has long since been discarded as the public jail, but +state prisoners are sometimes confined or executed there. Familiar +is the story of how Jugurtha, the luckless Numidian, was starved to +death in the lower dungeon; and how Lentulus and the other Castilinian +conspirators were strangled in the upper. Since then, if one accepts +the story told by those very despised creatures, the Christians, their +great leader, Peter, one of the associates of Christus, was kept there +in chains before he was taken out to be executed by Nero’s orders. It +is assuredly a gloomy and fearsome enough place to strike terror even +into such “Haters of all Mankind,” as official documents assure us +these Christians must be. + + +=235. The Basilica Æmilia: the Temple of Janus: the Senate House +(_Curia_).=--But to return to the great buildings lining the Forum. +The Basilica Æmilia on the north side was erected as early as 179 +B.C., and, though often repaired, it is a substantial monument of the +great days of the Republic. It is so like the greater Basilica Julia, +however, that one description will do later for both. Directly by this +court house stands the venerated Temple of Janus, a structure with many +arches and sacred to the most characteristic if not the greatest of +all the gods of Rome.[142] The gates of the shrine, one notices, are +standing carefully open, as a token that some petty frontier wars are +still raging. When absolute peace prevails these doors, however, will +be carefully shut. The Romans are thrifty and practical people. Why +waste good sacrificial victims and incense on the god when his help +against the foe is not needed? It would be like paying a doctor when +one is feeling entirely well. + +Leading away from the Forum and this Temple is a series of vaulted +passages also called _janus_, which form a large part of the banking +district. Here, because the Sacred Way is too limited, many great +financiers have their offices; here countless clerks are busy with +their account books; here great loans are negotiated or investments are +placed hourly. It is almost a regular exchange and the scene of many +speculations. Regularly one hears of fortunes made or lost “between the +janus,” _i.e._ by the workings of high finance. + +Beside the Temple of Janus rises the magnificent porch of the _Curia_ +(Senate House). The Conscript Fathers are not yet in session, and a +visit to the interior can wait. The structure is very splendid, but it +is not the grand old Curia Hostilia, built according to legend by King +Tullus Hostilius, and the scene of nearly all those famous Senatorial +debates across the long annals of the Republic. That ancient building +was burned in 52 B.C. during the riots following the murder of the idol +of the populace, the demagogue Clodius. Julius Cæsar, therefore, had a +good excuse for building a stately new Senate House. This in turn was +damaged in Nero’s great fire, but Domitian carefully repaired it--and +with its fine pillars, bronze doors, and galaxy of statues, it forms a +worthy meeting place for what is still a venerable and powerful body. + + +=236. The Basilica Julia, the Greatest Court House in Rome; the _Lacus +Curtius_.=--The Basilica Julia on the southern side of the Forum is a +building into which it is best to enter. The structure was begun by +Julius Cæsar to meet the imperative need for a larger court house. More +important business is transacted under its roof and ample porticoes, +perhaps, than in any other building in Rome; and in bad weather nearly +all the Forum loungers take refuge beneath its ample shelter. Its +size is worthy of its important functions; it is 270 feet long and in +addition to the regular exterior colonnade has a fine inner colonnade. + + [Illustration: INTERIOR OF A BASILICA: restored.] + +These double porticoes are the special lounging spots of fashionable +idlers of both sexes. Young men of fashion seeking to meet congenial +ladies of easy habits have only to loiter around and stroll about a +little--their hopes are gratified. Assuredly Venus can hardly reckon up +the love affairs that here have ripened. The pavements are even more +marked up for gaming boards than elsewhere and some of the players, we +note, actually wear the equestrian stripes, while there are senatorial +laticlaves in the interested throngs standing around them. Along the +sides of the building are roomy offices, where a large corps of city +officials and clerks conduct the various municipal boards and bureaus. + +The glory of the Basilica Julia, however, is its great hall, used +for the chief courts of justice, barring always those of the Emperor +and the Senate. The hall is paved with colored marbles of price; the +pillars running down either side are splendid monoliths of still rarer +marbles, and the ceiling is heavy with gilt fretting and painting. +In every possible niche rise statues of famous jurisconsults and +advocates. The light streams down abundantly through the windows in +the upper clerestory, and in this second story at the present moment +there are standing or sitting groups of very respectable men and women +listening to the orator pleading before one of the tribunals below. Any +guide will tell how the mad Emperor Caligula used to delight to stand +in these upper balconies, fling down money, and roar with delight when +the crowds trampled one another struggling to get the coins. + +So large is this hall that not one but _four_ tribunals have been set +up in different quarters of the building, and litigation often proceeds +before all four of them simultaneously, although in the absence of +partitions strong-lunged advocates sometimes interfere with their +neighbors; they tell of a certain stentorian Trachalus who once while +speaking before one tribunal not merely was heard by but drew applause +from the audiences in the other three. Here Quintilian, Pliny the +Younger, Tacitus, and other orators of the generation just departed, +won their fame, and at present every windy amateur in the rhetoric +schools dreams of the day when he can wave out his toga in the Basilica +Julia before a crowded and cheering balcony. + +These are some of the more famous monuments in and around the Forum +Romanum. Were one to descend to particulars the task were endless. +Perhaps there should be mentioned a certain modest altar in the +very center of the open plaza. This marks the so-called _Lacus +Curtius_. Antiquarians give one several stories concerning it, but +the accepted version is this.--Once in the good old days a yawning +gulf opened at this very spot, the portent, perhaps, of the devouring +of the entire city--when lo! the brave youth, Marcus Curtius “devoted” +himself for his country and plunged unflinchingly into the abyss. The +earth closed over him, he was seen no more, but Rome held his name in +eternal remembrance. Doubtless he had thus taken upon himself the anger +of the infernal gods and had saved the state![143] + + [Illustration: THE TARPEIAN ROCK: on slopes of the + Capitol. (From this traitors were hurled in the time of the + Republic.)] + + +=237. The New Fora of the Emperors: the Temple of Peace.=--After +surveying the Forum Romanum we are told that five other fora--the +creations of high-minded Emperors--still await inspection. Truth to +tell, however, these great plazas--not marking the growth and events +of centuries, but the mandates of wealthy despots--give one a sense +of anticlimax. Of them it will be properly written: “The fora of the +Empire were as much superior in magnificence to the Forum Romanum as +they were inferior in historical interest and association.” + +They are the work of master architects mobilizing armies of laboring +slaves, stone cutters, and artists. The eye becomes weary with the +incessant sheen of costly marble; the equestrian statues, the forests +of ornate Corinthian pillars, the great reaches of tessellated +pavements, the quantities of colored paint, enamel, and heavy gilding. +At first these imperial fora appear to the visitor as a hopeless +complex of pretentious splendor; but after a little, a clever method +appears in their arrangement by which one great plaza or system of +public buildings joins itself to another. + +Four of these public squares join closely together, but the fifth +stands a little apart. This last is located near the northeast end of +the Old Forum, verging toward the Subura and the Esquiline, and is the +“Forum of Peace,” constructed by Vespasian about 75 A.D. The +open area, however, is relatively small, for its center is occupied by +the imposing “Temple of Peace.” This temple is adorned with a perfect +gallery of sculptures and paintings, nearly all of them masterpieces +by the Greeks. These works of art had formerly occupied Nero’s Golden +House until that grandiose structure was destroyed by the thrifty +Vespasian. In this Temple of Peace likewise are kept those precious +Jewish spoils shown on the Arch of Titus, and there is not merely a +fine library but a hall for the savants and scientists when they meet +for their learned conventicles. + + +=238. The Fora of Julius, Augustus, and Nerva.=--In dealing with +the four connected fora it profits little to multiply detailed +descriptions; one glittering marble edifice succeeds another around +each square. Nearest to the Old Forum lies the Forum Julium. Julius +Cæsar paid out 100,000,000 sesterces ($4,000,000) merely for the land +which it occupies, and its buildings are worthy of the costly soil +whereon they stand. In its center rises the great Temple of Venus +Genetrix, “mother” of the Julian line. Here at times the Senate can +convene, while the shops under the porticoes around are among the +finest in Rome. + + [Illustration: FORUM OF AUGUSTUS AND TEMPLE OF MARS THE + AVENGER: restored.] + +Directly north of this Forum Julium is the Forum Augustum. When young +Octavius went forth to avenge his adopted father against Brutus and +Cassius he vowed a temple to Mars Ultor (“Mars the Avenger”). Later +as the Emperor Augustus, most splendidly he fulfilled this vow. The +porticoes around the plaza are of Numidian marble, and variegated +marbles compose the pavements; the open area is covered with bronze +_quadrigæ_ (four-horse chariots), triumphal arches, and, of course, +numerous statues, some of precious metals, while the Temple of Mars +Ultor itself matches all its rivals in magnificence. + +To the south-east of the Forum of Augustus and joining it to the Forum +of Peace is the smaller Forum of Nerva. This plaza was really begun by +Domitian, but when that tyrant perished ere completing the task, it was +finished and named by the eirenic Nerva. It is really a kind of broad +thoroughfare leading down from the Subura district, although upon it +fronts a fine Temple of Minerva. One of the features of this square is +a stately avenue of statues of the deified Emperors. + + +=239. The Forum, Column, and Libraries of Trajan.=--By far the +finest of the imperial fora, however, is that of Trajan--and all the +buildings, when we visit them, are still relatively new. It opens to +the northwest of the Forum of Augustus, and is not really a single +square but a genuine series of squares. + +To get the level space for their great areas, it was needful to cut +away a whole spur of the Quirinal, excavating to a depth equal to the +height of Trajan’s Column (128 feet). On entering this precinct, if one +has been marveling before, it is right to be astounded now. First there +comes the _Forum Trajani_ proper, a square of most imposing size, with +lofty porticoes, semi-circular at the ends; and in the center stands +a remarkable equestrian statue of the imperial founder himself. Then +there is the vast _Basilica Ulpia_, the third great court house of the +city, which spreads lengthwise across the northwestern boundary of this +forum. It is 300 feet long, 185 feet broad, and five lines of pillars +divide it into four separate halls for different kinds of business; in +fact it is really a finer building than the older Basilica Julia. + +Going through this enormous but very open structure, we come to a +second smaller plaza, and here rises one of the noblest sights of +Rome--a monument that will draw the admiration of all ensuing ages--the +_Column of Trajan_ itself. The bas-reliefs telling in picturesque +detail the whole story of the Dacian Wars, the 2500 human figures +executed with infinite fidelity and care, wind spirally from the top +of the 18 foot pedestal clear to the summit. This last is crowned by a +colossal bronze-gilt statue of Trajan looking down upon the sculptured +record of his military glory. + + [Illustration: AN IMPERIAL FORUM, NEAR THE COLUMN OF + TRAJAN: restoration after Von Falke.] + +This column is, perhaps, the worthiest monument of the whole imperial +age.[144] The marvels of Trajan’s forum-system, however, are not +exhausted. North and south of the Column are two fine buildings of +moderate size; these are the _Bibliothecæ_, the two public “Libraries +of Trajan,” one Latin, one Greek--containing on the whole the finest +collections of books in Rome; and directly facing the Column and the +Libraries across another open area of considerable extent is the +_Temple of Trajan_, where the priests daily offer their sacrifice to +the deified manes of the terror of Dacia and of Parthia. + + +=240. The Park System of the Campus Martius: the Pantheon.=--These +exhaust for the moment the structures we can survey around the fora: +and it were well to stop lest sheer confusion may follow. With time, +however, we could wander after the throngs again northwestward along +“Broadway” past the great porticoes and fine shops of the Sæpta Julia, +and saunter about the great park system of Campus Martius. + +The public baths there located and such structures as the Theater of +Pompey and the Flaminian Circus can, perhaps, be explained later; but +a word must be spoken for the one great temple which is here situated +away from the center of Rome. The _Pantheon_, dedicated to +Mars, Venus, the deified Cæsar, and to all the other deities of the +Julian line was the erection of Marcus Agrippa, the mighty coadjutor +of Augustus. It has just been rebuilt from its very foundations +by Hadrian.[145] Its noble dome shines with the golden tiles. The +soaring rotunda inside is encircled with stately altars to the gods +the building honors. Already one can stand and look upward 143 feet +to that patch of blue 18 feet in diameter through which sun and +stars will shine down across at least eighteen centuries of changing +history--making the Pantheon the one great building, not a ruin, which +shall link the Rome of the Cæsars with the Rome of another day. + + [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON: restoration + according to Von Falke.] + + +=241. The Daily Gazette (_Acta Diurna_). How Rome Gets Its News.=--One +thing, to avoid complexity, we omitted while crossing the old Forum +Romanum. It behooves us to return and to explain it. Before a series +of tall white boards set up against certain pillars is gathered an +elbowing, gesticulating throng. Many of the company have tablets and +seem copying vigorously. The crowd is always receiving additions, +while others are departing. The white boards (“albums”) when we get +near enough are seen to be covered with somewhat fine writing. There +is a special rush and flutter in the crowd when a petty official sets +up still another white board, and a hundred styli instantly become +busy. It is easy to learn the excitement caused by these notices: they +constitute the publication of the new _Acta Diurna_. + +Even without the Acta Diurna (“Daily Doings”) a city like Rome +would have its supply of news. There are professional gad-abouts +who make themselves desirable guests at dinner-parties merely +because they are “very well informed.” They have picked up all the +stories about the Parthian king, the new chiefs of the Germans, +the number of legionaries mobilized on the Rhine, and the corn +prospects in Africa and Egypt, as well as every kind of commercial +information. Other wiseacres of a less reliable cast are known +as “_subrostrani_,”--“Rostra-haunters,”--for at the Rostra all +gossipers have their tryst. These people specialize in rumors of +calamity, reports of great military disasters, of the sudden death of +magistrates, etc., and take a peculiar glee in circulating vile stories +about the Emperors--the danger of repeating such rumors only adding +spice to their game. Usually, however, they are too insignificant fry +for the government to consider worth prosecuting. + + +=242. Contents of the Acta Diurna.=--The Acta Diurna, however, is +issued by a government bureau, and a certain degree of official +responsibility is attached to the more formal statements. The editors, +nevertheless, are allowed to add racy anecdotes of a personal nature, +especially concerning the higher aristocracy. The relations between +the senatorial nobility and the freedmen and equites in the imperial +government bureaus are none the best; and Hadrian himself is not on +perfect terms with the Conscript Fathers.[146] + +Official circles, therefore, are never careful to suppress spicy bits +about the aristocrats. The public record offices and dispatches from +the provinces supply most of the items, but some of the material can +only have come from direct reportorial activity. In any case the +interest in this Daily Gazette is enormous. Its single copy will be +multiplied many times, copies being made of the copies, and the same +sent to wealthy people in all parts of the Empire. A month from now +groups will probably be gathering in Spanish Corduba and Syrian Antioch +to read the items published to-day in Rome. + +Owing to the limitations of space, despite the use of many “white +boards,” the Acta Diurna has to maintain a very dry journalistic style +indeed. The lively Italian imagination, however, can provide most of +the details, even if they are not at once eked out by quantities of +that “smoke,” oral rumor, which is passed about amid the copyists the +moment the new gazette is posted. This is a very commonplace issue, and +the albums read something like this:[147] + +“Records for the tenth day of June. Yesterday ---- boys and ---- girls +were born in the city of Rome. ---- bushels of grain were landed at +the Emporium. ---- head of cattle [and other commodities specified] +were also brought into the city. On this same day the palace slave +Mithridates was ordered crucified for blaspheming the guardian genius +of his master the Emperor. At the imperial treasury ---- million +sesterces, which it proved impossible to loan out at interest, were +ordered returned to the public funds. A fire broke out in the insula of +Nasta in the Viminal district but was extinguished.” + + +=243. Miscellaneous Entries and Gossip in the Gazette.=--The entries +go on to give the doings in the petty police courts, the copies of +important wills with especial mention of any bequests that were left +the Emperor, the statement that a certain eques had caught his wife +in gross misconduct and divorced her; that a procurator for a large +trading house was being prosecuted for embezzlement, and a summary of +the evidence in a great violation of contract case between two marble +importers now on trial in the Basilica Æmilia. Then follow magisterial +edicts, lists of judicial appointments, and careful entries about +all the doings of the Emperor and of his progress back toward Rome. +Next is given a rather elaborate summary (evidently made by shorthand +reporters) of the latest debate in the Senate, with careful entry of +the applause and interruptions which the orators received. + +All this is more or less “official”; but the newsmongers are really +more interested in “human interest stories” added by the publishers’ +private authority. Thus it makes good reading to tell how a frantic +admirer of a certain “Red” charioteer who was killed in the last races, +cast himself on the funeral pyre of the beloved jockey, in order not to +survive his idol; or to relate how a citizen of Fæsule has just visited +Rome and sacrificed to Jupiter along with “eight children, thirty-six +grandchildren, and nineteen great grandchildren.”[148] Furthermore, the +report of love affairs among the noble and mighty is never omitted--how +a senator’s wife has eloped with a gladiator, and how a certain +oft-mentioned lady is about to wed an eighth husband. Finally (perhaps +the most copied of all) there are, of course, the announcements for the +coming exhibitions in the theater, amphitheater, and circus, with lists +of the actors, gladiators, and charioteers, and other data, which can +enable all Rome to arrange its wagers and its holidays. + +The Acta Diurna therefore goes about as far as is possible to create a +real newspaper in the days of mere penmanship. Its vogue is immense. +Many a fine lady sends her slave or freedman to the Forum every day to +bring home a special copy. Its items will focus the conversation at a +thousand dinner tables. + +Finally this publication will enjoy a certain degree of historic +importance. After each issue has served its daily purpose, fair copies +are deposited in the Public Record Office, and here they can be +consulted many years later by the learned. It is from the files of the +Acta Diurna that Tacitus and Suetonius have apparently drawn a great +many of their anecdotes about the days of the early Emperors. + + + + + CHAPTER XV + +THE PALATINE AND THE PALACE OF THE CÆSARS. THE GOVERNMENT OFFICES, AND + THE POLICE AND CITY GOVERNMENT OF ROME + + +=244. History of the Palatine: its Purchase by Augustus.=--There +is one other great quarter of Rome, from the political standpoint the +most important of all, the Palatine. + +The Palatine originally was a hill of modest height, in shape fairly +rectangular, some 1400 feet on the side. Here according to firm +tradition was that first settlement by the Alban shepherds led out +by Romulus. The hill seems to have been encompassed by its own crude +wall, and presently it figured as the earliest “Rome,” often called +from its squarish configuration _Roma Quadrata_. Time fails to +count the various memorials such as the “House of Romulus,” alleged to +have survived since this primitive time. Note should be made, however, +of certain small but very old temples such as those of Victoria, +Viriplaca, and Orbona,[149] which are now carefully preserved amid +surroundings of artificial magnificence. + +After the growth of the Republic the Palatine became one of the most +fashionable residence sections of the city. Public leaders liked to +mount the roofs of their mansions and see the whole Forum with the +familiar Senate House spread out at their feet. Here were erected +the earliest of those sumptuous mansions wherein the aristocracy +invested their spoils from the great conquests. Marcus Scaurus had +his pretentious dwelling on the Palatine, and so did Catiline, and +Marcus Antonius, and Cicero. Last but not least, Hortensius the Orator, +Cicero’s professional rival, erected an extremely fine dwelling here +shortly before his death in 50 B.C., which mansion was later +purchased by Augustus when he had assumed the government and desired +a suitable residence; and thus it was that the Palatine became the +“Palace” of the Emperors. + + [Illustration: ARCH OF TITUS: part of Palatine + visible to the left.] + + +=245. Extension of the Imperial Buildings: Central Position of the +Palatine.=--Augustus, posing merely as the “First Citizen” among his +fellow Quirites, and with a studious abhorrence of the outward forms of +monarchy, had avoided establishing anything like an Imperial court; but +he was, of course, entitled to a large senatorial mansion. In addition +to his private residence elaborate offices had also to be provided for +the great corps of secretaries and clerks through whom he governed +half the provinces and controlled the army. This corps of bureaucrats +has grown with every new accretion to imperial power; furthermore, +Augustus’s pretence of democratic simplicity has been utterly discarded +following the extravagances of Caligula and Nero. + +One enormous building has, therefore, been added to another. The last +private dwellings upon the hill have been condemned, and the Cæsars now +control every inch of the Palatine, making it so completely the abode +of majesty that “palace” will remain across the centuries as the name +for any seat of princely authority. + + +=246. Commanding View from the Palatine Hill.=--This is the smallest +of the Seven Hills, but it is the real focus of the other six, which +“seem to surround it with their homage, as being their king.” It is +so close to the Capitol that the crazy Caligula erected a bridge (now +long demolished) leading from his mansion clear over to the Temple +of Capitoline Jove, in order that he might frequently “go and visit +his friend Jupiter.” The view from the crest of the palace structures +is superb: northward across the Forum, and all the thickly clustered +roofs on the slopes of the Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline, westward +to the Capitol where the magnificent temples seem within a stone’s +toss, southward across the great hollow of the Circus Maximus and then +across to the densely covered Aventine. Whether the Emperor desires to +harangue the Senate, to sacrifice to the greater gods, or to grace the +chariot races--Curia, temples, or circus are all close at hand; with +the Flavian Amphitheater to the northeast, almost equally near. + + +=247. Magnificence of the Palatine Structures.=--But the Palatine +itself is perhaps the most glorious sight of all. It rises above the +city two and three hundred feet to its upper parapets, lifting itself +on several tiers of arches and pillared stories which gleam with +marble below and present a perfect treasure house of gilded tiling +above. Under the morning light with the sun flashing the gold of the +multitudinous domes back into the clear azure the whole effect is +incomparable. The natural foundations of the hill are covered with +enormous substructures of masonry and concrete, and these are continued +by long tiers of many-arched buildings which house the great government +bureaus and ministries. Crowning these can be seen equally long forests +of columns, upbearing a whole complex of gabled roofs covered not +merely with the gilded tiles, but with a whole legion of gilded or +richly toned bronze statues. Here and there show forth bits of greenery +and foliage betraying the gardens and the parks reserved for the Lords +of the World. + + [Illustration: PALATINE AND PALACE OF THE CAESARS: + restoration by Spandoni.] + +The effect of this entire mass is overpowering. The eye wearies of +counting the sweeping porticoes, tall monoliths, colossal statues, and +quadrigas. The result is also enhanced by the use of great numbers of +huge awnings, hung over nearly every opening and window, usually made +in brilliant colors, with the imperial purple very conspicuous. There +will never be another Palatine in the history of the world. + + +=248. The More Famous Buildings on the Palatine: Enormous Display of +Art Objects.=--This vast residence compound--it cannot be called +a single building--can be reached by a number of inclined planes +or stairways upon all four sides. Access is easy enough and crowds +of slaves, plebeians, and nobles are incessantly coming and going, +although a couple of Prætorians loll carelessly on their spear-shafts +beside each ingress. Possibly the easiest entrance is by the _Clivus +Victoriæ_ (“Ascent of Victory”) which starts upward from the edge of +the Old Forum very near to the Shrine of Vesta. + + [Illustration: ROMAN URN: typical art object.] + +To find one’s way about the Palatine is, however, far more difficult +than about the fora. It is not, of course, an area but a jumble of +buildings, all splendid, but often thrust upon one another without any +real system. Augustus added extensively to the old house of Hortensius, +and particularly he built a very pretentious Temple to Apollo. +Tiberius, the next Emperor, added a new wing, the _Domus Tiberiana_, +almost doubling the bulk of the former structures. Caligula thrust +on more buildings still. Across the ages will be pointed out that +_Cryptoporticus_, the twisting underground gallery connecting parts of +the palaces, where the stout tribune Cherea struck down and slew the +insane despot, January 24th, 41 A.D., to the great profit of the entire +world. Nero added other wings and structures, some of which had to be +rebuilt after his great fire. Finally, Domitian added a whole series of +enormous halls, baths, banqueting rooms, and government offices. The +Palatine is now virtually complete: Trajan and Hadrian have erected +their monuments elsewhere, and so will most of the later Emperors.[150] + +We do not propose to explore all these buildings in so vast a complex. +It is enough that one superb court or façade follows another; that +almost every hall and ante-room is of sumptuous splendor; that veined +marbles, porphyry, elaborate bas-reliefs, and profuse gilding seem +multiplied until they become commonplace. All the artificiality and +over-elaborate art of the age seems concentrated around the Palatine. +Within the great substructures and the arched terraces which bear up +the more important buildings, even in the cells for the slaves and the +offices for the toiling clerks there are fine frescos and handsome +stucco reliefs. + + +=249. The Triclinium and Throne Room of Domitian.=--As for some of +the special areas and chambers, they justify the praises of the servile +court poets: “Olympian” is the mildest word which they can use. Take, +for example, the porticoes of Domitian. On the inner side of their +vast length, they are lined throughout with marble so highly polished +that it shines like mirrors. What matter if the original cause for +their use was the desire of the suspicious tyrant to have a promenade +wherein nobody could glide upon him without warning from behind. The +result is indescribably brilliant. But let us go rather into the +“House of Domitian” itself, and inspect the great banqueting hall, the +Triclinium. “The gods themselves might quaff their nectar there!” cried +the enraptured Martial. + +This magnificent apartment leads off from a marvelous peristyle-court +of more than 10,000 square feet in area. The chamber itself is not +huge, but is arranged so that three tables (each for nine guests) can +be placed laterally along the walls, with the third, opposite the +door of entry, for the Emperor and his chief guests. Twenty-seven +dignitaries thus can dine together. On each side of the hall five large +windows are separated by massive columns of red granite. + +As the guests of majesty repose on their silken cushions they can see +between the columns still another court where water is softly gushing +from a fountain, and purling in a small cascade over steps of marble, +verdure, and flowers. The ornamentation may be grievously overdone; the +taste of some of the reliefs and wall pictures is questionable, but the +effect of the sheen from the many colored marbles, the gilding, and +the heavy fretwork around the lofty dome undeniably justifies all the +enthusiasm of the verse-mongers. + +Equally striking is the Throne Room built by Domitian. It is called the +tablinum as in humbler dwellings, but it is actually used for great +state audiences. It is a hall of imposing size. You enter past the +guards, and directly across the broad area is a niche where sits “Cæsar +Augustus” upon a gilded dais and curule-chair, every whit as truly a +throne as that of the Great King of Parthia. The walls of the room are +covered with extraordinarily costly marbles, and around the circuit +rise twenty-eight Corinthian columns of intricate workmanship. Eight +large niches contain as many colossal statues wrought of adamantine +basalt, and a Hercules and a Bacchus are particularly noteworthy. The +entrance door is flanked by two enormous columns of _giallo antico_, +deep yellow marble flushed with pink, imported from Numidia. The +threshold is a single immense slab of a whiter marble brought from +Greece. + +Words thus exhaust themselves describing these grandiose, +overpowering, magnificent courts, halls, and apartments. We can +perforce ignore such features as the separate hippodrome and the +luxurious gardens reserved for imperial amusement or recreation. Better +it is to concentrate attention upon the human life wherewith the +Palatine ordinarily abounds. + + +=250. Swarms of Civil Officials Always on the Palatine.=--All the +Palatine revolves around the Emperor. Rome is not yet governed by an +unabashed despotism, yet it would be hard to name a deed that a king +of old Babylon could perform which a _Princeps et Imperator_ could not +perpetrate if his heart really desired, although certain restraints +and decencies make this absolutism endurable save under a Nero or a +Domitian. + +The thousands of persons who dwell upon or are employed upon the +Palatine are all employed with one of two things, the imperial court or +the imperial public service. Since Hadrian (despite the grumblings of +his Italian subjects) is still absent from Rome the court ceremonial +has practically ceased. A few of the Emperor’s relatives dwell in +gilded ease in certain wings of the palace, but except for the +caretakers the great army of self-sufficient slaves and still more +self-sufficient freedmen who act as valets, cooks, waiters, musicians, +chamberlains, and in every other menial capacity, can eat, play dice, +and discuss the races in idleness. + +Now as always, however, the imperial public service which sends +its impulse to the remotest borders of Dacia, Syria, or Britain is +functioning actively, and most of the vast bureaus and ministries have +huge offices upon the Palatine. The Prætorian Præfect, as high judge +for the Emperor’s half of the provinces, daily mounts his supreme +tribunal. The four Imperial Secretaries for Finance, for Petitions, +and for Official Correspondence (one for the Greek provinces and one +for the Latin) direct their great corps of subordinates. The chief +Procurators (Superintendents) of the enormous Imperial Estates all +over the Empire are receiving reports and protecting their masters’ +interests; and so with a great body of other high officials. + +The huge administrative machine perfected by the practical Roman genius +is running steadily--so steadily that even under a very bad Emperor, +even a Nero, it will function for years with no great harm to the +governed millions. The only condition is that the tyrant will reserve +his cruelties for the nobility and refrain from tactless interference +with the secretaries instead of indulging merely in vicious personal +pleasures.[151] + + +=251. The Emperor Center of High Social Life.=--Into these high +political concerns we dare not enter, but the social life of the Palace +cannot be so well ignored. Already the imperial freedmen are busy +planning the great receptions and state banquets which Hadrian must +give soon after his return. In half the atria of Rome men and women +are discussing vigorously, “When ‘Cæsar’ returns will he have any new +‘Friends,’ and will he have discontinued any old ones?” + +Already it is rumored that certain freedmen (supposedly in their +lord’s confidence) have received a great bribe to get them to induce +the “Dominus” (so loyal etiquette calls the monarch) to summon back +to favor a certain Jallius, an indiscreet senator whom, on his last +sojourn in Rome, Hadrian had ordered excluded from his personal +receptions. Rome is a city of rumors, but nowhere do these abound more +than about the Palatine, always centering on the doings, words, and +even the health of the Emperor. “Smoke” from the valets, barbers, and +table-servitors of the Augustus can often be sold for precious aurei. +Self-respecting monarchs punish the tale-bearers pitilessly, but the +latter can seldom be caught in the act.[152] Every Emperor knows that +he is the constant victim of outrageous tattling. + + +=252. Friends of Cæsar (_Amici Cæsaris_).=--But an Emperor’s company is +not confined to menials; neither does he spend all his time at council +with his ministers. Being a Roman among Romans he is forced to spend +a good deal of his day receiving the social attentions of those who +proudly list themselves as his “Friends.” + +To be an _Amicus Cæsaris_, to be entitled to greet as a kind of social +equal the personage who is worshiped as a god in all the Oriental +provinces, who is (by adoption in Hadrian’s case) the son of a +Divinity, the “Deified Trajan,” and whose own “divine genius” (guardian +spirit) receives prayer and incense in every government building--this +honor seems almost dazzling. Every Emperor ranks his “Friends” in two +classes--“_First Class Friends_,” great secretaries, ministers, and +generals who must have constant access to his cabinet, certain very +distinguished members of the Senate, certain near relatives, and also +a few congenial personal companions--poets, and philosophers, with +great Emperors, or jockeys, gamesters, and debauchees with the bad; and +“_Second Class Friends_,” which great catalogue includes all the rest +of the Senate, many of the more distinguished equites, and a select +sprinkling of such plebeians as Cæsar delights to honor. + +The First Class Friends, it is true, pay for their glory by a heavy +obligation--to appear at the Palace every morning usually before +daylight, and greet the Lord of the World while he sits up in bed and +is dressed by his valets.[153] Very much of state business is then +transacted, but the obligation to appear merely to say an “_Ave_” is +imperative provided the Emperor is in his residence. Sometimes merely +to avoid giving gouty ministers great inconvenience Hadrian has been +known considerately to pass the night away from the Palace in order to +dispense with the ceremonial in the morning. + + +=253. The Imperial Audiences.=--After the Emperor has been clad +with due ceremony, has conversed with his intimates, and perhaps has +sealed some urgent rescripts, he is ready for the morning audience. A +full cohort (1000 men) of the Prætorian Guard is always on service at +the Palace and a platoon of these without armor, but in magnificent +cloaks, stands by the entrance to the hall of state. Only men as a +rule are admitted.[154] Under certain evil or very suspicious Emperors +such as Claudius there has been the humiliating custom of searching +every visitor (whatever his rank) for weapons, ere admission; but that +abomination has ceased at last, beginning with Nerva. + +In the broad courts before the audience chamber some dozens of senators +dismount from their litters every morning when the monarch is in Rome, +and sometimes the delay ere the doors are opened is so long that much +personal business can be transacted and philosophical disquisitions +indulged in. Second Class Friends do not have to appear every morning, +but it is a serious error to fail to use your entrée fairly often. + + +=254. Social Ruin through Imperial Disfavor.=--The process resembles +that with the clients in the noble lords’ own houses a little earlier +in the day, although with greater solemnity and formality.[155] A +group of gorgeously dressed “admissioners” (_admissionales_) keep +the doors, and scan every applicant closely, but besides the regular +Friends they frequently admit certain distinguished visitors from the +provinces, especially members of those provincial delegations that are +always junketing to Rome to proffer the homage of their district to the +Emperor, or to present some kind of a public petition. + +The last day that Hadrian gave audience ere leaving Rome, when our +friend Calvus waited upon him, there was an awkward happening. A very +roistering and immoral young nobleman, Calvisius, presented himself +when the doors were opened, whereupon an imperial freedman took him +by the arm, announcing: “You are no longer admitted to the palace.” +Calvisius instantly slunk away, overwhelmed by his calamity. He would +have suffered less if he had forfeited half his fortune. + +Even worse was in store for the aforementioned Jallius, who was said to +have mocked at Hadrian’s pretentions as an art critic (a tender point) +while over-drunk at a dinner party. He was suffered indeed to enter and +to approach the imperial seat: “_Ave, Cæsar!_” he called out boldly, +hoping that his indiscretion had been unnoticed. “_Vale, Jallie!_”[156] +(“Good-by, Jallius”) answered the monarch, turning his face from him. +The insult was offered in the presence of at least fifty tale-bearers +and that night it was over Rome. Under a bad Emperor, Jallius’s life +would have been in sore jeopardy, and as it was he was socially ruined; +every time-serving nobleman closed his house to him and his innocent +wife and children shared his ostracism. His only hope now is that +when Hadrian returns he can be induced to let Jallius call again, and +will answer affably “_Ave!_” to the visitor’s greeting. Then the poor +senator can hold up his head in the world. + + [Illustration: CÆSAR AUGUSTUS: showing costume of a + Roman general.] + + +=255. Enormous Value of Imperial Favor.=--On the other hand Calvus +returned walking on air from this particular audience. The Emperor +answered his greeting by calling him “My very dear Calvus”; then asked, +“And how are your Gratia and the boys?” and actually added, “Do you +think Gallinas, the Thracian, is going to be a good match for Syrus +in the arena?”--finally, throwing in the sage advice, “These morning +frosts now are sharp if you don’t dress warmly.”[157] + +When Calvus quitted the hall all his friends swarmed around +congratulating him on “the remarkable favor of the Emperor,” and +intimating that he was surely destined to be Consul within a few +years and then the imperial legate of a great province. He can hardly +persuade them that he has received no private information about the +boundary settlement with Parthia and the terms being offered the chiefs +of the Quadi. In fact the imperial looks and moods are studied as +carefully as is the weather. “Did _he_ frown or look pleased when +so and so was mentioned?” “Did he offer his cheek graciously to be +kissed by that ex-consul?” “Did he invite the chiefs of the delegation +from Provincial Asia to dinner?” “Did he cast down his eyes gloomily +when they said N---- was about to be tried to-morrow in the Senate?” +No marvel if bad Emperors are easily persuaded that they are gods on +earth, and even good Emperors have to strive hard not to allow their +heads to be turned! + +Hadrian is still away from Rome, and both First Class Friends and +Second Class Friends are probably a little relieved not to have to play +the client to him. If the days of bloody tyranny seem past, the fate of +poor Jallius can still overtake almost any of them.[158] But though the +vast hall of audience stands vacant save for gaping sightseers, there +are plenty of distinguished visitors upon the Palatine come to transact +business at the imperial ministries, or very likely at the great +offices of the City Præfect (_Præfectus Urbi_), who is essentially +the Mayor of Rome. + + +=256. City Government of Rome: the City Præfect (_Præfectus +Urbi_).=--It was one of the greatest sins of the defunct Republic +that it permitted Rome to grow until it became an enormous metropolis +without providing any respectable police force, fire department, or +other efficient means of securing law, order, and public safety. The +old _ædiles_ (commissioners of public works) were overburdened +men, with imperfect authority, few constables, and great political +interests. In the days of Cicero great fires, great riots, and serious +crimes occurred almost daily. In self-protection many prominent men +had actually to arm their slaves in regular companies and even to hire +the assistance of armed bands of gladiators. Augustus ended all this. +Thanks to him, Rome has become one of the best policed and protected +cities in the world. + +The old ædiles[159] are now supplemented and largely superseded by a +corps of officials all named by the Emperor, for indefinite terms and +removable by him at pleasure. At their head is that high “Clarissimus,” +the City Præfect. He is always a senator who has held the consulship, +and who often has governed great provinces. To be named City Præfect +is almost the highest civil honor in the gift of the Cæsars, and it +ordinarily comes to a veteran nobleman of approved experience and +integrity. He is really in part a military officer because at his +command stand the “City Cohorts,” the regular armed garrison of Rome, +four Cohorts of reliable troops, one thousand men in each, ready to +assist the ordinary police in repressing rioting. + +The City Præfect is responsible for the general good order of the +metropolis; it is his business not merely to punish evil, but to +take measures to prevent it, _e.g._ by breaking up illicit +societies and assemblies, such as those of the “debased” Christians. +In conjunction with the other magistrates he also takes measures to +keep down the price of provisions. In addition he is the high judge in +most cases arising around Rome, which are not especially reserved to +other tribunals. Particularly he and his deputies have jurisdiction +over cases involving outrageous usury, betrayal of trust by guardians, +unfilial conduct of children, and disrespect shown to patrons by +freedmen. And to his court go all the charges of serious crimes sure +to arise in a great city, barring, however, lesser police court +cases--these last falling to his colleague, the Præfect of the Watch. + + +=257. The Municipal Superintendents and Commissioners +(_Curatores_).=--Aiding the City Præfect are several high +superintendents or commissioners usually of at least prætorian rank +among the senators. The two “Curators of the Public Works” obviously +have to look after the municipal buildings and especially the temples +and the considerable endowments often attached to them. The Præfect of +the Grain Supply (_Præfectus Annonæ_) is a magistrate who--in view of +the importance of his function (see p. 242)--will often be chosen with +almost as great an eye to his efficiency as the City Præfect. + +Besides the corps of agents collecting grain in the provinces, the +special deputy at Ostia, the “Official Grain Measurers,” the “Grain +Magazine-Keepers” (_horrearii_), and the staff of clerks and porters, +all the bakers of the city also are under the Præfect of the Grain +Supply, and he can sit as high judge in all cases, criminal and civil, +where the provisioning of the city is affected. As for the Tiber, it is +so often bursting its levees and flooding the lower city that a special +board of five senators, “Commissioners for the Tiber, River-Banks, and +the Sewers,” attends alike to the care of the dikes and also to the +great sewer system which drains the capital. + + +=258. Excellent Water Supply of Rome.=--An official board with +duties of the first order is that of the “Curators of the Water +Supply.” There is a chief curator and two assistants, and since the +task calls for expert professional knowledge, these are not senators +but imperial freedmen, or at the highest only equites. No sinecure, +however, is their task. Justly are the Romans proud of the excellent +water supply of the imperial city. As early as Augustus’s time Strabo +the geographer warned his fellow Greeks that while they could boast +that their cities excelled the Roman in artistic adornments, Rome +rejoiced in a far better water system, in better pavements, and in +better sewers. Certain of the latter, he declared in admiration, were +“arched over with hewn stone and were so large that in some parts hay +wagons can drive straight through them!” + + [Illustration: RUINED AQUEDUCT IN THE ROMAN + CAMPAGNA.] + +By Hadrian’s day the aqueducts supplying the city have become wholly +admirable. Time fails us to go out into the Campagna or to the distant +hills and see how, by gravity alone, and without the aid of pumping +engines, “copious streams are conducted great distances despite the +obstacles presented by mountains, valleys, or low-lying level plains, +sometimes rushing along in vast subterranean tunnels, at other times +supported on long ranges of lofty arches, the remains of which [in +after ages] will still be seen spanning the waste of the Campagna.” +[Lanciani.] + +There is difficulty in making very large iron pipes capable of standing +high pressure over long distances; and as a result the Roman engineers +prefer to carry the water in channels lined with solid cement and borne +across the open ground on a vast series of arches. Besides, most of the +good water near Rome leaves a calcareous deposit; and it is much easier +to clean out large channels than an underground piping system. + + +=259. The Great Aqueducts.=--When we try to understand the water system +of Rome we come upon astonishing figures for the great aqueducts. +There are nine of these huge conduits in constant use. The oldest +is the _Aqua Appia_, built in 312 B.C. by that tough old censor, +Appius Claudius, and it starts only about eleven miles from the city, +with nearly its entire bed underground; but when this supply proved +inadequate the engineers had to reach much farther back into the hills +to find powerful jets. An increasing proportion of the channels of +the newer aqueducts has also to be on arches; for example, the _Aqua +Julia_, built by Agrippa in 33 B.C., has to go back fifteen and a half +miles, and six and a half of these are on arches; while the _Aqua +Claudia_, built about 40 A.D., is no less than forty-six miles long +with nine and a half on elevated arches. There are two others, the +older _Aqua Marcia_ and the slightly newer _Aqua Anio Novus_ (taking +water from the river Anio), that are not much shorter either upon the +ground or in their elevated sections. + +Once inside the city this enormous volume of water is distributed +in a most scientific manner according to a scheme worked out by the +mighty Agrippa. There are 700 public pools and basins and 500 public +fountains drawing their supply from 130 collecting heads or reservoirs. +Only the poorest or tallest tenement houses, consequently, are bereft +of a water supply, clear, sanitary, and abundant, such as most later +cities can desire in vain until close upon the twentieth century. + + +=260. The Police System Instituted by Augustus.=--Almost as +important, however, as the excellent water supply came the blessing of +the firm police system instituted by Augustus. There was an end at last +to the fearful riots and even private wars of the later Republic, as +when those cheerful desperadoes Clodius and Milo played at being the +“Hector and Achilles of the Streets,” and ordinary crime soon became +comparatively rare. + +The city has also been divided into 14 “regions” (_regiones_) and these +into 262 “precincts” (_vici_) distributed among the “regions.” Each +vicus is in theory a religious unit. It has its own little _ædicula_ +(petty temple) containing the images of the two guardian Lares of the +neighborhood plus inevitably a statue of the Genius of the Emperor. +Each vicus also has its two special curators, worthy tradesmen usually, +elected by their fellow wardsmen and clothed with enough importance to +make the office desirable. Their chief official duty is to keep up the +sacred rites at the central shrine and to help to compile the census +lists, but they are also a kind of local arbitrators or justices of +the peace who assist the police and look after the general weal of the +precinct. + + +=261. The Police-Firemen of the Watch (_vigiles_): the _Præfectus +Vigilum_.=--However, the actual security of Rome is not intrusted to +any such unprofessional guardians. Augustus understood clearly the +need of an effective police force apart from a mere armed garrison; +besides he had to protect the capital against the fearful and incessant +fires; as a result his new _vigiles_ (“watchmen”) were a combination +of policemen and firemen. The fourteen regions of Rome have now been +coupled together into seven police districts, each possessing a regular +police station (_excubitorium_) and two subordinate watch houses. + +Each district is intrusted to a separate cohort of vigiles about 1000 +men strong, thus giving Rome a total force of some 7000. The vigiles +are not actually soldiers, and not being honorable legionaries they are +recruited almost entirely from the freedmen. However, after faithful +service they can be transferred to the army. They are under a rigid +discipline, nevertheless, and are divided into “centuries,” each +under a centurion, with a tribune over the entire cohort. They have +various weapons for an emergency, but the crowd usually mocks them +for the fire-fighting apparatus with which they often hurry down the +streets--hooks, ladders, axes, simple hand-pumps, and above all, many +buckets made of rope rendered water-proof with pitch. + +By their promptitude, discipline, and daring, even with such +inadequate apparatus, these patrolmen can often stop very dangerous +fires, and their familiar equipment gives them their nickname. “The +‘_Bucketmen_’ are coming!” is the yell that frequently disperses a +knot of thieves or of turbulent bullies. + +At their different police stations the vigiles when off duty scribble +many things upon the walls,[160] which give a vivid idea that life “on +the force” is much the same in every age. At night these “Bucketmen” go +out in little groups bearing tallow lanterns and patrol the pitch-black +streets, rounding up evil-doers and detecting incipient fires. + +At each station there is a good-sized lock-up which never wants its +unhappy occupants, also, it must be added, a professional torturer +(_quæstionarius_) to wring confessions out of slaves and other +non-privileged prisoners without any tedious “third degree” process. +Petty offenses are tried summarily before the Præfect of the Watch or +his deputies in police court at these stations; and for great crimes +the alleged offenders can be conveyed to a central jail, or admitted to +bail, prior to a formal trial before the City Præfect. + +The Præfect of the Watch (_Præfectus Vigilum_), the head of this +very important organization, is really the most important municipal +official in Rome except the City Præfect. Since he has to do with +much sordid detail, he is not a top-lofty senator, but only an eques; +nevertheless, his honor and dignity are great. The subpræfect under him +is also a highly respected officer. The entire force of the vigiles, +although, of course, incessantly criticized and jeered at, is a very +capable body of men, whose faithfulness and energy go far to make life +and property better protected in Rome than in most great cities at any +age. + +So with this glance at the municipal government of a metropolitan +community of 1,500,000 we quit the Palatine. A new opportunity has +presented itself: we can visit the Prætorian Camp. + + + + + CHAPTER XVI + + THE PRÆTORIAN CAMP. THE IMPERIAL WAR MACHINE + + +=262. The Army the Real Master of the Roman Empire.=--The Romans +beyond all else have been a military people. Their great abilities +as law givers, administrators, disseminators of civilization through +Western Europe apparently would have been almost in vain if the +legions had failed against Hannibal, against Mithridates, against +Vercingetorix. Furthermore, the power of the Cæsars is primarily +that of war chiefs. Let the army revolt, and Senate, plebeians, +and provincials can protest their loyalty ever so frantically--the +Princeps, the “First Citizen,” nevertheless is a lost man. + +Every Emperor knows this fact. His memory goes back to those two +fearful years 68 and 69 A.D. when first a revolt in Gaul and +a mutiny by the Prætorians in Rome overthrew Nero and set up Galba, +then a second mutiny of the Prætorians set up Otho, then a revolt of +the Rhine legions set up Vitellius, then a counter-revolt by the Danube +and Syrian legions set up Vespasian; with the civilian population +looking on helplessly, and being almost as helplessly plundered, while +decidedly small bodies of professional swordsmen settled the fate of +the Empire. Still later they remember how after Domitian’s murder, the +Prætorians (whom that despot had caressed and corrupted) forced his +successor Nerva to punish the very conspirators to whom Nerva himself +owed the throne. + +Hadrian, in turn, who passes for a very “constitutional” ruler, when +his kinsman Trajan died (117 A.D.), allowed himself to be “proclaimed” +immediately by the soldiers in the East where he then was. Next he +wrote with studious modesty to the Senate begging the Conscript Fathers +to “excuse” the zeal of the army and to ratify its action in choosing +him Imperator. Every senator knew the blade might soon be at his own +neck if he openly opposed confirming the mandate of the legionaries. +The army, in short, is the final authority in the Roman Empire. +Presently there may even be an Emperor [Septimus Severus about 210 +A.D.] who will give his sons direfully blunt and effective counsel: +“Enrich the army and then you can do anything.” + + +=263. Army Held under Stiff Discipline and Concentrated on +Frontiers.=--Nevertheless at present the army is under a tight rein. +Trajan and Hadrian by a mixture of donatives and severity have restored +firm discipline. The Roman world functions freely and normally behind +the frontier barriers held by the legions, with the great chaos of +barbarism tossing harmlessly outside. Furthermore, this army, if very +formidable, is, we shall see, decidedly small. It is distributed mainly +along the northern and eastern frontiers, with a sizable garrison and +guard-corps at Rome. + +In the arrangement of the army, most of the provinces seem absolutely +divested of regular soldiers save those in transit, and their governors +only require a good constabulary to arrest brigands and rioters. The +collapse of the Jewish insurrection has practically ended the last +serious attempt to cast off Roman authority, and the provinces submit +not simply because of fear, but because they are now bound to the +imperial régime by great cultural and economic interests.[161] In +Rome itself, thanks to the presence of the imperial guard, soldiers +are frequent sights upon the streets, but in many other great cities +of the Empire they are comparative rarities. Their duties are in the +frontiers, and their officers know well the demoralization wrought by +keeping their men in city garrisons. + +When Augustus found the world at his feet he also found himself with +armies which were very expensive and somewhat ready to mutiny against +him. Very promptly, therefore, he reduced his 45 legions to only about +18. This number proved too few, and by the end of his reign they had +risen to 25; these in turn have been gradually increased to 30; and +this will be the ordinary number for a good while longer.[162] The +legionaries are the regular troops of the line, on whose disciplined +fighting the safety of civilization may well depend. There are, +however, no ordinary legionaries stationed in Rome, although we can, of +course, obtain full information in the capital about them. Their place +is taken by a magnificent and arrogant guard-corps--the Prætorians. + + +=264. The Prætorian Guard of the Emperors.=--The Prætorian guards +are the successors of the old _Prætoriani_, picked men, who guarded +the Prætorium (general’s residence or tent) in the armies of the old +Republic. But the new Imperators were entitled to a much larger and +more permanent guard, and they also desired to have a reliable body of +troops always in or near Rome to protect against an uprising. Augustus, +therefore, organized nine “prætorian cohorts,” although keeping only +three directly in Rome; his successor, Tiberius, however, boldly +concentrated them all in the imperial city, and built for them an +enormous camp behind the Viminal hill, on the northeast side of the +metropolis. + + [Illustration: PRÆTORIAN GUARDSMEN.] + +Here they have remained as the dreaded engine of the Caesars. Disguise +the fact as he may, every senator knows in his heart: “If the Senate +defies the Emperor, the Prætorians can and will sack the Curia.” So +long as the Prætorians are obedient no Emperor need tremble overmuch +at stories of a provincial uprising. When the Prætorians desert he had +better, as did Nero, slink away to commit suicide. + +The guard-corps is jealously regarded by the frontier legions who +sometimes turn against it, but thanks to its position at the capital +its power is tremendous. Even the privates walk down the streets with a +confident swagger--can they not make and unmake Emperors? If the army +really controls the Empire, the Prætorians go far to control the will +of the army. + + +=265. The Prætorian Præfect and the Prætorian Camp.=--Such being +the case, there is one high official whom the Cæsars will always select +with greater care than any other--the _Prætorian Præfect_. On this +general rests responsibility for the military efficiency and loyalty +of the corps. If he is a scheming bloody man, he can, like Tiberius’s +præfect Sejanus, almost place himself upon the throne; and if he is +simply a faithful competent officer, his public services excel that of +any civil functionary. + +Since curiously enough the Emperor usually intrusts to the Prætorian +Præfect the task of hearing legal “appeals to Cæsar” from the imperial +half of the provinces, it is not unusual to name two præfects, +nominally of equal authority but with one of them often a trained +jurist, and the other more concerned with the military management of +the corps. This has the additional advantage of making it harder to +start an insurrection,--each Præfect will keep watch upon his colleague. + +Inasmuch as the Emperor is now absent from Rome a detachment of the +guard is away with him, but the world being in general peace there +is no need (as in a major war) for the entire corps to go forth to +reinforce the frontier legions. The Prætorians are therefore on duty +as usual; one cohort at the Palatine, the remainder barracked at their +great camp. + +The _Castra Prætoria_[163] is more than a mere cantonment; it +is a real fortress, only to be stormed after desperate fighting. We +enter it from the central gateway (_Porta Prætoria_) which looks +straight westward upon the city. A lofty wall of masonry, brick, and +concrete, crowned by suitable battlements, surrounds a vast rectangular +area about 1400 feet wide, and 1100 feet deep. The greater and lesser +gates are crowned with fine marble sculptures almost worthy of the +Palatine. In the center of the area rises a mass of office buildings, a +residence for the Præfect and a small temple to the military gods such +as Mars, and especially to the deified emperors. The side walls of the +inclosure are extended on the inside by an enormous system of arches +and vaulting, making many deep chambers where thousands of men are +easily barracked. + +In the open area fountains are playing, and the sun is sending a flying +glory from the burnished armor of a cohort standing at rest, while +certain officers affix medals of honor, or bestow spears and banners of +honor upon various men who have lately distinguished themselves during +some detached duty in Mauretania. Everything about the place betrays a +perfect “police”; all commands are executed with extreme promptness; +and every individual seems absolutely to know his part, as being one +cog in an enormous war machine, into the making of which has entered an +almost inconceivable amount of skill and energy. + + +=266. Organization and Discipline of the Prætorians.=--The Prætorians +are organized much as the ordinary legionary troops with certain proud +modifications. The regular legions can be recruited from all over the +Empire; the Prætorians are still drawn only from Italy. They receive +twice the pay of the legionaries, and their term of service is only +sixteen years as against twenty with the regulars. Besides these +advantages, and the joy of living near to the pleasures of Rome, their +discipline is said to be much easier. + +The emperors, who fear the mutterings of the guard-corps much more than +they do those of the Senate, often shower special bonuses upon the +Prætorians. Their centurions and still more their tribunes are welcome +guests in the most aristocratic houses in Rome. Their weapons are the +same as the legionaries’, but, of course, their armor is of the finest; +and on gala occasions when the whole corps is ordered out with gilded +or silvered helmets and cuirasses over purple military cloaks, the +sight of these thousands of tall powerful warriors marching in perfect +rhythm is astonishing beyond words. + +In one important respect the organization of the Prætorians differs +from that of the regular legionaries: their nine cohorts number 1000 +instead of 600 men each and the whole guard-corps therefore amounts +to about 9000 men. Considering that these troops are chosen for their +splendid physiques, and are trained for years in every military +accomplishment, remarkable will be the foe of like numbers that can +withstand them. As for the city of Rome, its whole raging populace is +like mere chaff and straw if the trumpets sound through the camp, and +the centurions thunder down their files, “Open the gates and clear the +streets!” + + +=267. The City Cohorts (_Cohortes Urbanæ_).=--The Prætorians, however, +have some humbler comrades in Rome, in addition to police-firemen, the +vigiles. Sometimes the guard-corps must follow the Emperor on campaign, +but nevertheless the capital needs a fixed garrison. The City Præfect +(see p. 300), therefore, commands four additional cohorts (_cohortes +urbanæ_) also of 1000 each, in a special camp in the northern part +of the metropolis. These “City Cohorts” are organized much like the +Prætorians, and in a grave emergency would act with them; but they have +longer terms of service, lesser pay, severer discipline. + +It is far less of an honor to belong to this force than to the +Prætorians, and there is little “fraternizing” between its members and +the haughty guard-corps. However, they make 4000 more armed men always +available for the defense and control of the city. Added to these +can, of course, be the vigiles (7000 strong), easily changeable into +genuine soldiers in a crisis. This makes the total garrison of Rome, +while the Prætorians are in the city, around 20,000 men, plus usually +some marines detached from the squadrons at Ostia and Misenum. + +The frontiers are far away, but the central direction of the great +imperial war machine is inevitably at Rome. From the Prætorian barracks +issue those orders which can set the legions marching against the +Caledonians of North Britain or the Arabs of the Syrian deserts. There +can be no better place, therefore, for inquiry about the organization +and discipline of that grim efficient engine which maintains the +Pax Romana and makes possible the splendid, artificial Græco-Roman +civilization. + +High officers are constantly passing through Rome. Some of these men +have had long and distinguished careers, and among them is a certain +Aulus Quadratus, a gray and grizzled veteran, now in the capital for +honorable retirement, after an unusual term of service. By tracing his +experience, a good insight can be gained into the organization and +duties of the legionaries. + + +=268. A Private in the Legions: the Legionary Organization.=--Quadratus +was born in South Gaul (_Gallia Narbonensis_), a country that has +already been well Romanized, and from which the government draws many +excellent legionaries.[164] He was a poor free laborer on a great +estate, but when he was only about eighteen an enrolling officer +appeared and demanded a certain number of recruits of his master. +The latter naturally suggested taking several of the youngest and +least valuable of the hands. Quadratus was strong, courageous, +and adventuresome, and he did not object to this informal type of +“selective draft.” Thus he soon found himself a private in the camp of +the “Second Augustan Legion” (_legio secunda augusta_) stationed in a +great fortified camp guarding the Rhine somewhere near later Mayence or +Strassbourg in “Upper Germany” (Alsace and the Rhenish Palatinate). + +Once enlisted, Quadratus realized that at least twenty years of +unremitting service lay ahead of him. Home life and marriage were +forbidden the soldiery, and their whole lives revolved around the army. +The Roman discipline caught each man, and each became a valuable and +contented soldier only so far as he submitted to this discipline and +merged his personality in the vast organization. + + [Illustration: A SLINGER.] + +Quadratus was, therefore, promptly “put under the vinestock,” +the stout cudgel of twisted vine twigs with which the centurions +vigorously corrected their tyros. At first he was a very ignorant and +unimportant part of the “Second Augustan,” but soon he understood its +organization and became proud of its history. Every legion consisted +of ten _cohorts_, each in turn divided into six centuries.[165] +Each century contained in theory a hundred infantry, making 6000 for +the entire legion. Besides these, there was a small cavalry force for +scouting attached to each legion, four _turmæ_ (squadrons) of 30 +horsemen each. The various contingents, however, were seldom quite +full. When the Second Augustan went to battle it reckoned, therefore, +somewhere under 6000 men. + + [Illustration: ROMAN SIEGE WORKS: restoration of + Caesar’s siege works at Alesia.] + + +=269. Training of the Legionaries: the _Pilum_ and the +_Gladius_.=--Quadratus, under very severe drill masters, learned the +use of weapons. Nothing could take the place, so he was taught, of +cool proficiency with sword and javelin. It was the trained valor of +the average Roman legionary, not the skill often of his commanders, +that had given to the Cæsars the mastery of the world, and while the +discipline was strict, and the training incessant, pains were taken not +to destroy the young man’s self-respect, or those powers of initiative +which were the glory of his profession. + +He was taught furthermore to despise those enemies, who, like the +old Macedonians, were so lacking in personal resources that they had +to go into battle wedged together shield to shield with long spears +bristling in front--the rigid “phalanx” formation. This is excellent on +level ground when the foe is all ahead, but often becomes a source of +danger to itself because the closely packed soldiers are deprived of +any chance to display personal valor, and are almost helpless to change +position if attacked on flank or rear. Quadratus in his training was +taught to stand five feet from his comrades on either side with plenty +of room to swing his shield and javelin. + + [Illustration: STORMING A CITY WITH THE + _Testudo_.] + +Long exercise made him a master of his two weapons. The heavy javelin +(_pilum_) is a devilish missile, as every foe of Rome has learned +to his cost. It is about six and a half feet long with a heavy wooden +butt and a long blade-like head, usually barbed and razor keen. Flung +by a practiced soldier at short range it can knock down any adversary +who is not firmly braced, even if it does not pierce his shield. Once +lodged in the shield it is no light thing to draw it out and not expose +oneself to a second deadlier blow. + +The pilum, they told Quadratus, was what had really made the Roman +Empire possible; but it is duly supplemented by the Spanish short sword +(_gladius_). This is a weapon borrowed, perhaps, from Spain but +thoroughly Italianized. The blade is about thirty-three inches long, +two-edged, sharp-pointed, and always used for thrusting. The instant a +legionary has flung his pilum, and while his foe if not wounded is at +least utterly demoralized from the shock, he whips his gladius from his +thigh and leaps upon him. A single good thrust will disembowel a man, +and he who is thus assailed by a trained Roman swordsman should pray to +his native gods--he will need all aid possible. + + [Illustration: CATAPULT.] + + +=270. Defensive Weapons.=--These two very simple weapons Quadratus +was taught to handle to perfection, until across the years their use +became simply mechanical to him. Meantime he was learning to march, +leap, and fight in his heavy defensive armor. He wore a stout metallic +cuirass of fish-scale plates, and a solid helmet of brass upon which in +parades and in actual battle he set a nodding plume of horse-hair. This +helmet had brow- and cheek-pieces giving very perfect protection, but +was so heavy that while marching he was allowed to carry it swung from +a strap upon his breast. + +Of course, however, his chief defensive weapon was his shield. This +capital piece of armor is a rectangle of solid leather about four by +two and one half feet, rimmed with iron and with handles for carrying +on the left arm. A trained legionary knows how to fend and lunge with +his shield with marvelous agility, and by means of the solid metal +base in the center he can strike a tremendous blow. Almost no weapon +can penetrate the shield, and thanks to it and his cuirass and his +helmet, a soldier can march unscathed amid a perfect shower of arrows. +Every technical point about his armor has, of course, been worked out +scientifically. Simple as it appears, it represents a triumph of human +skill. + + [Illustration: CUIRASS.] + + +=271. Rewards and Punishments for Soldiers.=--Thus accoutered +Quadratus gained his first experience when the Second Augusta was +ordered over the Rhine to punish a tribe of Germanic raiders in +later-day Hessen. In the fighting that ensued he so proved his skill +and courage that he received his first decoration, the right to wear +a small banderole upon his pilum when his cohort appeared on parade +ground. Discipline was severe, but rewards for faithfulness and valor +were prompt and conspicuous. He had long seen his older comrades +marching about with “spears of honor,” banderoles, and above all with +huge medals and medallions, which, upon gala occasions, they wore upon +their breasts. + +Long before Quadratus’s career was ended, he, like many others, had +a perfect collection of these medals, which hung jangling over his +cuirass almost like a second coat of armor. Everybody knew the honors +awarded his comrades, and there was constant emulation to deserve like +decorations as well as more substantial rewards. No system could be +better devised to call out the valorous service of simple-hearted and +often very uncultivated men. + + [Illustration: JAVELIN: _pilum_ of the + legionary.] + +While Quadratus, without too many blows from his centurions’ vinestock, +was thus on his way to promotion, he could witness the punishment of +less fortunate comrades. Stripes, docking of pay, and extra duty were +the standard penalties; but sometimes there were worse inflictions. +Once a whole century acted in a cowardly manner. It was sentenced for +one month to bivouac outside the camp and to eat bread of barley,--not +of wheat, the food of brave and obedient troops. + +Sometimes, of course, capital penalties were demanded. Once a private +was guilty of gross insubordination; he had to “run the gantlet” +(_fustuarium_) between two long files of soldiers who beat him with +cudgels while he dashed vainly down the line, perishing ere he could +reach the end. Once a detachment of half-drilled auxiliaries fled in +an outrageous manner before the enemy. To teach a stern lesson these +irregulars were “decimated”; being forced to stand disarmed before the +whole legion, while lots were cast selecting every tenth man, who was +forthwith dragged from the ranks and beheaded. + + [Illustration: SWORD.] + + +=272. Pay and Rations in the Army: Soldiers’ Savings Banks.=--While a +private Quadratus, of course, drew the private’s pay, 1200 sesterces +($48) a year,[166] out of which, however, was deducted a certain part +of his upkeep and equipment. Even as it was, however, this gave fairly +ample spending money, and every soldier was required to deposit a part +of his wages in the legionary savings bank, accumulating against the +day of his happy discharge, and protected from barrack-room gambling +and squandering. Besides this, brave service often won an increase of +stipend, more valuable than many medals; and Quadratus was presently a +_duplarius_, a “double-pay man,” to the great envy of certain comrades. + +Army rations would have seemed to another age extremely monotonous, a +mere succession of huge portions of coarse bread or of wheat porridge. +There were also distributions of salt pork, vegetables, etc., but the +legionaries did not care greatly for meat. There were even cases when +they protested against “too much beef and too little wheat.” As for +drink, everybody in camp enjoyed plenty of _posca_--the dilution of +cheap wine and vinegar.[167] + + [Illustration: HELMET.] + + +=273. The Training of Soldiers: Non-Military Labors.=--Drilling +went on incessantly. Even soldiers versed in their spear play seemed +forever under arms merely to keep up the camp routine and morale. Every +man was trained to be a good swimmer, to run, jump, and indulge in +acrobatic feats like the _testudo_ (when one group of men climbed +upon their comrades’ heads) so useful in storming walls. Thrice a month +the whole legion went on a forced practice march, going at least twenty +miles at four miles (or more) per hour, each man bearing, besides his +heavy armor, an elaborate baggage kit, half a bushel of grain, one or +two tall intrenching stakes, a spade, axe, rope, and other tools--a +weight of sixty pounds. + +If strictly military work failed, there were endless civilian labors. +Quadratus learned to use his spade almost as well as he could his +pilum. He assisted in making and in repairing the great network of +magnificent military roads leading to the frontiers. He worked in the +legionary brick kilns, making bricks for the camps and the numerous +small _castella_ used to hold back the onthrusting Germans. He helped +also to rebuild a temple of Jupiter at the garrison town of Mogontiacum +(Mayence), and later to tug up the stones for a new amphitheater in +that city. If he had been attached to a Syrian legion, he and his +comrades might even have been ordered out to repel an invasion not of +Parthians but of the more devastating locusts. + + [Illustration: SHIELD OF THE LEGIONARY.] + + +=274. Petty Officers in the Legions.=--All this experience came +to him while he was earning his first promotions. Everybody in the +legion--except those lowest and highest--had somebody, indeed, whom he +could command while some one else could command him, and there was a +very ingenious division and interlocking of power and responsibility. + +Petty officers abounded, and having approved himself, Quadratus became +one of the _principales_ (high privates, and corporals)--first he +became a _tesserarius_, “bearer of the watchword” for his century; +then the “horn blower,” responsible often for important signals, +then the _signifer_, the bearer of the small red flag (_vexillium_), +surmounted with a small image of Victory, which was the standard of +the cohort; then he was named _optio_ (“chosen” man by a centurion), a +centurion’s deputy and assistant, entitled to rank as a real officer +and responsible for the control of a large squad of men. + + [Illustration: MILITARY TRUMPET.] + +At last came one of the most important days of his life. At a general +parade of the legion the commanding general (_legatus legionis_) +announced that Quadratus was appointed centurion and solemnly intrusted +him with the terrible vinestock. There was no danger he would show +mercy to the raw recruits! + + +=275. The Centurions: their Importance and Order of +Promotion.=--Quadratus was now a member of that group of officers to +which the Roman army owed the greater part of its entire discipline, +morale, and efficiency. There were sixty centurions in every legion. +They were usually self-made men, sturdy peasants’ sons like himself, +who had risen from the ranks and then been selected by the general on +account of merit. + +The six military tribunes of each legion were, indeed, of higher rank, +but they were often untested young noblemen, obliged to get a certain +“military experience” before returning to Rome to sue for seats in the +Senate and the favor of the Emperor. The centurions, however, were +a permanent body. They had enlisted in the legion, and their whole +life was tied up with it. If their methods were harsh, they prided +themselves on showing an example of daring yet scientific valor in +every battle. They were intensely devoted to their corps, its honor, +and the honor of their comrades. With good centurions a motley host of +raw recruits soon became formidable legionaries; without them the most +skilful general might strive in vain to organize an army. + + [Illustration: + + LEGIONARIES (REGULAR TROOPS-OF-THE-LINE): one + soldier is carrying his equipment upon a “Marius’s Mule,” a + staff arranged to serve as a knapsack, invented by Marius + about 110 B.C.] + +As centurion Quadratus found a straight line of promotion before him. +He was obliged to begin as the sixth centurion of the tenth cohort, +and by process of seniority he was entitled to rise to first centurion +of the first cohort. He was making fair progress but advancement was +discouragingly slow, and he might have ended (as did most of his fellow +officers) only part way up the ladder before he reached the retiring +age, when a great good fortune came to him. + +While only a private he had won the “civic crown” (_corona civica_) +of oak leaves for saving the life of a comrade in battle; he had also +gained the golden “mural crown” (_corona muralis_) for being the first +in a desperate storming party over the parapet of a crude fortress +held by the Germans. But now, while acting as senior centurion of a +large detachment, with the commanding tribune absent, he learned that +a Roman garrison somewhere in the heart of the Black Forest region +was hard pressed by a horde of Chatti. He led up his men suddenly and +skilfully, broke through and dispersed the Barbarians and saved the +garrison when it was at last gasp. For this he was awarded the “siege +crown” (_corona obsidionalis_), a remarkable honor given by the rescued +garrison, and plaited out of grass and weeds plucked on the spot of +battle,[168] to the leader who had saved them. + + +=276. The _Primipilus_: the Great Eagle of the Legion.=--This +distinction made it inevitable that when the post of first centurion in +the legion fell vacant, Quadratus should be jumped over the heads of +many others and made _primipilus_ (“first javelin”)--the head of the +whole corps of centurions, entitled to participate with the tribunes in +a council of war, and--being, of course, now a man of great practical +experience--allowed to speak very openly to the Legate of the Legion +himself. Quadratus was now in some respects the most important man +in the Second Augustan. His war pay was considerable, and he added +to it by the permitted usage of taking fees from the men for certain +exemptions from duty. + + [Illustration: ROMAN OFFICER.] + +As primipilus he had the weighty responsibility of taking charge of the +great golden eagle of the legion. In battle he would sometimes pluck it +from the ordinary bearer (_aquilifer_), and electrify his comrades +by dashing ahead with the full-sized golden eagle with outspread wings, +surrounded by brilliant streamers, now borne on its pole high above his +shoulders. Where the eagle went, there honor and devotion made every +legionary follow with the fury of a man possessed. In a certain shrewd +tussle with the Hermunduri, the valor of the whole phalanx of those +Barbarians was snuffed out when they saw the glistening _aquila_ +bearing down on them heading a six-thousand-man wedge, with all the ten +cohort flags like obedient retainers thrusting on behind, and when next +came the pitiless beat of the pila succeeded instantly by the rush of +the expert swordsmen. + + +=277. Locations and Names of Legions.=--Having become primipilus +while still a fairly young man, Quadratus was not at the end of his +promotion. He had carefully saved his money, and presently he gained +official nobility as an eques. Now he was appointed to an independent +command not in the legionary regulars, but in the “auxiliary cohorts.” + +Only about one half of the imperial forces are in the legions. These +are for the heavy fighting; they are kept in large garrisons and are +used for secondary work as little as possible, nor are they moved from +province to province except in serious emergencies.[169] The Second +Augustan has always been in Upper Germany and there presumably it will +stay for generations more. The same is true of the Third Augustan in +North Africa, of the Fourth Scythians on the Danube, of the Twelfth +Thunderers in Syria, and of a good many others. The result is that +each legion, largely recruited in the nearby provinces, has small +desire for distant service; and there is little love between, say, the +“Twenty-first Ravagers” in Upper Germany and the “Sixth Ironclads” +stationed along the Euphrates.[170] + + [Illustration: LIGHT-ARMED SOLDIER.] + + +=278. The Auxiliary Cohorts: the Second Grand Division of the +Army.=--But it is absolutely necessary to have a mobile force, +composed of troops of many kinds, especially cavalry, archers, +slingers, and light spearmen for scouting. These men are often enlisted +in the un-Romanized provinces, and are allowed to keep their native +arms and discipline. As a rule they are organized in unattached +cohorts, either in “large” cohorts of 1000 men with ten centuries, or +“small” cohorts of 480 with six so-called centuries. Their commander +is regularly a “Præfect,” commonly an officer who, like Quadratus, has +graduated from the stern school of the centurion in a legion. + +Auxiliary cohorts are often embodied and disbanded, they have no +such glorious history and traditions as the legions, but they have a +distinctive name and a number. Quadratus was assigned to the command +of a new “large” cohort made up of tall blonde Germans who were glad +to forget their feuds with the Romans, cross the Rhine, and take the +Emperor’s pay, swearing to him the great oath of implicit military +allegiance (_the sacramentum_). The government is far too wise, +however, to leave such aliens too near their homes. Quadratus was, +therefore, promptly ordered to march his “Sixth Nervan” (so named in +honor of the then Emperor Nerva)[171] to the Danube. + +The day the new Præfect quitted his old comrades of the Second Augustan +he drew from the legionary chest all the savings from his pay, plus +the sums deposited there after each bonus or donation wherewith the +Emperors were always conciliating the army. He had also long since +joined a self-help organization among the officers whereby he was to +receive a fixed sum for his outfit whenever he received promotion.[172] +He thus started upon his career as an upper officer a tolerably rich +man. + + +=279. The Præfect of the Camps and the Legate of the Legion.=--As +Præfect of the Sixth Nervan he won the good opinion of Trajan in both +of the desperate Dacian Wars and then in the campaign against Parthia. +As the next step, he was appointed by imperial patent “Præfect of the +Camps”--the second in command of a legion, not responsible, indeed, +for its conduct in battle, but with almost complete authority over +its management and discipline while in its great permanent garrisons, +subject only (in extreme cases) to the final authority of the +commanding legate. + +This was as high ordinarily as even a very fortunate soldier, who +had enlisted as a mere private, could advance. Even as Præfect of +the Camp Quadratus was looked down upon socially by the six young +military tribunes, scions of senatorial families, who hung around +the headquarters (_prætorium_), wrote verses, patronized the +centurions, and boasted of how “they commanded the legion.” But +Quadratus was, we repeat, an extraordinarily lucky officer. Grizzled +now and battle-scarred, he impressed Hadrian as absolutely to be +trusted. The Emperor, therefore, raised him to the rank of “Legate of +the Legion,” which carried with it a seat in the Senate, and for the +past few years accordingly Quadratus has been on the Rhine in chief +command of that same Second Augustan where once he had “submitted to +the vinestock” as a raw recruit. + +He has now returned to Rome to be honorably retired and to end his +days in a luxurious villa in the hills, having enjoyed every honor +possible in the Roman army save that of being Imperial Legatus over an +entire province, a post ordinarily combined with the command of several +legions. It is men like Quadratus, hard and fit soldiers of absolute +faithfulness, coolness, courage, and efficiency; steeped in the +traditions of the army, and obeying automatically the call of military +duty, that have been the soul of the Roman war-machine. Perhaps some +day there will be degeneracy in the camps, even as in the luxurious +city. Then the perils of the Empire will draw nigh--but not in the +reign of Hadrian. + + +=280. Care for Veterans: Retiring Bonuses and Land Grants.=--Few +enough of Quadratus’s messmates kept near to him in his upward career. +To the average recruit, the most to be hoped for is that, before the +end of his twenty years’ enlistment, he can be somewhere near the rank +of centurion. But many men learn to enjoy the military life even as +privates, and when the time for honorable discharge comes, will often +be glad to reënlist in picked corps of _veterani_, bronzed and +hardened warriors who make invaluable scouts and bodyguards for the +upper officers, and who have quite forgotten the modes of civilian life. + +If, however, they elect to be mustered out, not merely are there +accumulations of pay and donations given them from the legion’s savings +bank, but along with the _honesta missio_ (honorable discharge) +they receive either a grant of land for a modest farm, or a lump sum +(some 3000 sesterces--$120) to start them on a peaceful career. If they +become sick or disabled while in service, reasonably good care is taken +of them. In any case the constant award of honorary spears, pennons, +and medals appeals to the soldier’s vanity, and helps to reconcile him +to a very long enlistment and an equally stiff discipline. + + +=281. Barrier Fortresses; System of Encampments; Flexible Battle +Tactics; Siege Warfare.=--Into the details of the Roman war machine +we cannot enter. We cannot discuss the wonderful system of barrier +fortresses along the junction of the Rhine and Danube upon which +the northern tribes beat in vain, nor the newly completed “Wall of +Hadrian” sundering peaceful and guarded Britain from the stark savagery +of Caledonia. We cannot explain the scientific system of temporary +encampments, whereby every night--when a legion is on the march,--it +occupies a square of ground fortified by solid palisades and with +every tent in precisely the same spot as in the old camp of the +preceding night--a method insuring that every camp becomes practically +a fortress, almost impregnable in case of a defeat in the field. We +cannot visit the permanent garrison towns, such as Colonia Agrippina +(Cologne) on the Rhine, or Vindobona (Vienna) on the Danube, where +extensive cities, with all the paraphernalia of civilization, have +grown up around the cantonments on the very edge of raw barbarism. + +It is still less possible to offer here a discussion of the flexible +legionary battle tactics, whereby each particular foe is met with +the formations most formidable to his special arms and weaknesses; +and of the carefully adjusted order of march whereby an army can move +with all its baggage train through a hostile country defiant of any +ordinary harassment and flank attack. We must pass over also the system +of siege warfare, and the use of long-range casting engines--a genuine +artillery; and finally the wonderfully scientific engineering service, +building high-roads through deserts, and throwing strong bridges even +across such mighty streams as the Rhine, and--on Trajan’s Dacian +campaigns--the Danube. + + [Illustration: STORMING A BESIEGED CITY: casting + engines in foreground.] + + +=282. Limited Size of the Imperial Army: its Great Efficiency.=--Two or +three things about the army, however, call for particular comment. The +size of these forces seems decidedly small, considering the vast extent +of the Empire, the slow communications, the careful demilitarizing of +the provincials, and the absence of any reserve corps or efficient +militia. The thirty legions (5000 to 6000 men each) reckon perhaps +175,000 troops of the line. The Prætorians at Rome, the heterogeneous +and scattered auxiliary cohorts, the small naval force, and other armed +groups at the command of the government, in all reckon, perhaps, as +many more; 350,000 men, however, is a very limited number when spread +out from Britain to the confines of Arabia and the Nile cataracts, +although only along the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates are there +now enemies creating serious military problems. + +Except at Rome, we have seen that the bulk of these troops is held +in the frontier garrisons, with all their corps kept on edge in full +battle efficiency. Let a frontier be in real peril, however, and there +is no means of reënforcing the local legions save by calling off other +legions from posts at great distance. Governmental policy has not +merely disarmed the provincials, it has systematically discouraged +maintaining the military virtues.[173] If the frontiers are forced +and the legions fail, the civilian population of the Empire (possibly +some 80 to 100 millions) will be nigh helpless before a Parthian raid +or Germanic invader; they can only call on the gods and the distant +Emperor for aid.[174] + +However, as yet, the legions have not failed. The Roman armies, never +large, but unsurpassed in quality and composed of highly expert +soldiers steeped in martial tradition, and organized, and commanded +with scientific skill, lie as a solid barrier around the Mediterranean +world, and in Hadrian’s day they are holding back possible invaders +by the mere terror of their name. When one looks, marveling, upon the +huge, luxurious, sophisticated capital, let it not be forgotten that +Rome is imperial Rome because far away on the frontiers thirty brigades +of iron-handed men night and day keep watch and ward. + + + + + CHAPTER XVII + + THE SENATE: A SESSION AND A DEBATE + + +=283. Apparent Authority and Importance of the Senate.=--Powerful +is the army and powerful its Emperor, yet there is a body to which +they both pay lip-service, and which still enjoys a prestige and moral +authority that stamps itself upon the imagination of every man in the +Roman Empire--the “venerable Senate.” + +Theoretically the Senate shares the government with the Emperor, +controls the state when there is a vacancy in the palace, selects +the new ruler and bestows on him the “proconsular” and “tribunician +power,”--the legal bases of his authority. It must be consulted by him +in every important act, and when he dies it decides whether he is to be +deified as a god, or suffer the awful “damnation of memory” (_damnatio +memoriæ_) branding him for all time as a tyrant. It can also declare +him suspended or deposed from office, set a price on his head and +order the armies to refuse him obedience. Its formal decrees (_senatus +consulta_) constitute, now that the old public assemblies have been +abandoned, the most binding kind of law. + +The Senate also governs directly all of those provinces (about half of +the whole Empire) which do not require any army for defense or control. +It has its own treasury, and it can strike copper money, although gold +and silver are reserved to the Emperor, making a considerable profit on +the seignorage. It acts as supreme court of appeal on all cases which +rise in the provinces under its government. By the vote of its members +are elected all those “old Republican” magistrates from consul down to +_quæstor_ (treasury supervisor) which carry along with the temporary +glories of office the right to a life seat in the Senate itself--making +the latter practically a self-perpetuating body. A good Emperor swears +at the beginning of his reign, “I will never put any senator to +death”--_i.e._ the Senate shall judge all capital charges against its +members, even those involving treason. + +Besides these prerogatives senators alone are eligible for the highest +military commands and the governorships of all the larger imperial +provinces. As already stated (see p. 156), the senators in addition +constitute the highest aristocracy; they must each possess at least +1,000,000 sesterces ($40,000) taxable property, and they enjoy all +the influence that comes to vested prestige and wealth in an age that +cringes to titles and fortunes. On this showing, the 600 senators +apparently constitute the most powerful organ in the government. + + +=284. Actual Weakness of the Senate.=--Unfortunately much of this brave +showing is only a glittering mask. The Senate has not one swordsman +in Rome or in any of its provinces to obey the summons, “Resist the +Emperor and his Prætorians.” It ordinarily has to stand helpless while +the army decides who is to be the next Cæsar in case of a contested +succession. + +After Caligula’s murder in 41 A.D. the Conscript Fathers debated +earnestly: “Shall we restore the Republic? If not that, which aspiring +nobleman can we elect as Emperor?” Meantime, the Prætorians, pillaging +the palace, found the terrified and demoralized Claudius hiding in a +closet; they dragged him forth and discovered a survivor of the Cæsars +whose dynasty they greatly wished to perpetuate. “_Ave Imperator!_” +rang their shout. Soon the senators were informed that their debates +were unnecessary--Claudius was being proclaimed in the Prætorian Camp. +The Fathers made haste to bestow on Claudius full imperial powers and +to congratulate him on his succession. Nobody doubted after that where +the real power lay. + +Besides all this, without mentioning the army, the Emperor has every +senator personally within his grasp. He can strike any member from the +_album_ (Senate List) by use of his irresponsible Censorial Power. +Through that same power he can appoint any favorite to the order by his +mere fiat. In the elections held within the Senate, he can control the +choice for any office by announcing that he favors the aspirations of +such and such a friend; the “Candidates of Cæsar” are always elected. +In the debates it is a bold senator who dares to face the unpopularity +of opposing the Emperor’s suggestions;[175] and once let the monarch +indicate the slightest wish, a whole pack of servile favor-seekers +will instantly champion the proposition with fervent loyalty. Finally +by his “tribunician authority” the Emperor can veto any senatorial +proposal which he dislikes. The power of the “venerable Senate” seems, +therefore, to have vanished in thin air. + + +=285. Amount of Power Left to the Senate.=--This last is not quite +true, however. The Cæsars do not, as yet, represent an unvarnished +despotism; they need a cover for their autocracy,[176] and they have to +leave to the Senate a certain show of power. No new Emperor’s throne +furthermore is secure against pretenders until, after the army has +proclaimed him, the Senate has confirmed him, and no Emperor likes to +feel that his sole refuge is with the irresponsible swordsmen. + +Besides all this, the moral prestige of the Senate is still so great +that even a Nero or a Domitian hesitates to flout that famous body +too openly. Finally, be it said, the task of governing the enormous +Empire is a tremendous burden. A reasonable monarch is glad enough to +throw upon the Senate a great many problems over which the “Fathers” +can exhaust their eloquence and which they probably can settle quite +as wisely as he. If they fail and the case is then dutifully referred +back to “Cæsar,” his own importance becomes all the greater. If they +succeed, he gains a reputation for moderation and liberality. The +senators, on their part, have long since ceased to dream of restoring +the old Republic. Since the accession of Nerva, 96 A.D., an era of good +feeling and equilibrium on the whole has existed. The Senate therefore +still vaunts itself as a coördinate branch of the Roman government. + + +=286. Organization and Procedure of the Senate.=--The Senate of the +Empire exists in form and procedure very like its predecessor under +the Republic. Its debates are the talk of the capital and are duly +reported in the Acta Diurna; and at present, with Hadrian out of the +city, its supreme presiding officers, the two consuls, affect to be the +most powerful personages in Rome, although some of the great permanent +ministers on the Palatine, and especially the Prætorian Præfect, have +firm doubts on the subject. + +When Publius Junius Calvus is compelled to attend sessions of the +Senate, he has ordinarily been informed a couple of days in advance +by a _viator_ of one of the consuls bringing a personal notice to +his home, although urgent meetings can be summoned on much shorter +notice merely by sending forth a crier. There is no fixed quorum for +the Senate; although there are 600 lawful members, many of these are +high government officials absent in the provinces, others are retired, +elderly dignitaries very loath to quit their luxurious ease in their +Etruscan or Campanian villas. Since the post of senator is ordinarily +for life, the body contains an undue proportion of superannuated, +doddering old men who will only appear on great occasions. + +Sessions can thus be held with only a very thin number, say fifty,[177] +although if the gathering is disgracefully small, those attending +can shout to the presiding officer, “_Numera! Numera!_” (“Take the +number!”) and insist on adjournment until the consul’s tipstaffs +and bailiffs have rounded up a respectable fraction. On this day in +question, however, there is no danger of a slim attendance. Every +member in Rome is sure to be present, including certain invalids who +have to be helped out of their litters and led inside by their freedmen. + +Sextus Annius Pedius, ex-proconsul of Asia has been impeached by +Publius Calvus and a fellow senator, Titus Volusius Atilius, for gross +extortion and malfeasance in his government. The case has been referred +to the Senate by Hadrian as lying within its special competence. Pedius +is of the highest aristocracy, but like most great men has made plenty +of enemies. Every possible social influence has been mobilized for and +against him. A great state trial, with an abundance of soaring oratory +is consequently in prospect. Every senator is in his element. + + +=287. The Curia (Senate House) and Its Arrangement of Benches.=--On +days when the Senate convenes, the clients can stream into the empty +atria of their noble patrons, collect their money doles and depart--the +patrons themselves have set off at first dawn for the council, +accompanied very probably (if it is not summertime) by link-boys to +guide them through the still darkened streets. They gather thus at +_prima luce_ in the rebuilt Curia at the Forum, although sessions can +be held in almost any other duly consecrated spot, and Pompey built a +special Curia near his own mansion in the Campus Martius for use when +he wished to deliberate with the Fathers.[178] + +The Curia Julia has a magnificent hall with tiers of comfortable and +highly carved benches (_subsellia_) curving in a semi-circle not unlike +the legislative chambers of other times. The six hundred senators sit +fairly close together, so that the debates can be in easy voice. At +the entrance the consuls’ viatores and lictors check off the Fathers +entering to exclude interlopers, but there is no real secrecy. The +doors are numerous and stand wide, and a curious crowd is permitted +to linger around them; especially are the young sons of a good many +senators seen there, eagerly following all the proceedings wherein they +hope soon to have a part. (See p. 190.) + +Facing the benches rises a low dais whereon is a line of curule chairs +for the consuls and prætors, also a long solid settee whereon ten +of the younger senators sit down solemnly together. These ten are +the tribunes of the Plebs,--shorn now of nearly all their ancient +authority, but still maintaining the “shadow of a great name,” a name +surviving from the time when, as in the days of such personages as +Gaius Gracchus, a tribune could be mightier than a consul. + + +=288. The Gathering of the Senators.=--The Fathers drop into their +seats. No law adjusts their precedence, but etiquette gives the front +row to the ex-consuls, the next banks to the ex-prætors, behind them +the former ædiles, tribunes, and quæstors with the _pedani_[179] +(senators who have never held elective office) modestly in the rear. +The defendant Pedius attended by several distinguished senators, his +relatives, all clad in the gray togas of distress and mourning, and +also by his two advocates both in conventional white, take seats in the +front benches. As they do this it is noted as of ominous significance +that several ex-consuls, who had come in first, promptly shift to the +other side of the hall. + +At the center of the platform is observed a majestic, gilded statue of +Victory, with expanded wings, flowing robes, standing upon a globe, and +stretching forth a laurel crown.[180] Before it, upon a little altar, +a few coals are smoking. Presently a door at the side of the platform +opens, and a lictor signs with his fasces. The chatter across the now +crowded hall ceases instantly; all the toga-clad figures rise together, +while the presiding consul, Gaius Juventius Varus,[181] leads in the +array of magistrates, each in the ornate toga prætexta. + + +=289. Opening the Session: Taking the Auspices.=--Gravely this official +company seats itself in the curule chairs; gravely Varus casts a +handful of incense upon the altar before the Victory, and a cloud of +fragrance fills the hall. Then Varus, a tall and very majestic figure, +signs to the senators; they also are seated, next his voice sounds +clearly: “Bring forth the chickens!” + +Not a lip twitches in all that sedate audience as two attendants +appear upon the platform setting down a small coop containing a few +barnyard fowls. The consul rises and stands beside them; next to him +takes station an elderly senator also wearing the prætexta and holding +a staff with a peculiarly shaped spiral head, a _lituus_--the badge +of office of an _augur_, lawfully entitled to proclaim the will of +the gods. In a dead hush the servitors pass a small dish of grain to +the consul who carefully scatters the grain within easy reach of the +chickens. The latter, carefully starved since yesterday, snap up the +grains eagerly. They even devour so fast that the wheat drops from +their bills, a most excellent sign. The augur bends forward intently, +watching their action, then motions with his staff: “_There is no evil +sight nor sound!_” he announces in solemn formula. + + [Illustration: COOP OF SACRED CHICKENS USED IN + DIVINATION.] + +A mutter of relaxation passes around the Senate. The servitors carry +out the chicken coop. The consul shakes his great draperies around +him with studied dignity and turns to the waiting assembly. “Affairs +divine” have been attended to; “affairs human” can now begin. + + +=290. Presentation of Routine Business: Taking a Formal Vote.=--Even +under the Empire it is a glorious thing to be consul, with the twelve +lictors, the temporary colleagueship with the Emperor, and the right to +preside over the most magnificent council in the world. Varus carries +himself with the dignity of a nobleman who has enjoyed a long career +in the Senate and now is at the summit of his aspirations. Every +tradition of the ancient body has been cherished; and the solemn forms +still differ little from those in the great conclave that piloted the +overthrow of Carthage. + +The chief business of the day is the trial of Pedius, but a certain +lesser matter demands prior disposition. The consul has received a +dispatch from the proprætor of Sicily (a “senatorial” province) asking +if he can be empowered to remit the taxes of certain peasants near +Agrigentum, whose crops have suffered from the blight. Varus begins +with the time-honored formula, “That it may be well and fortunate to +the Roman people, the Quirites, we refer this thing to you, _patres +conscripti_.” Then in well-chosen words he gives the substance of +the governor’s request, and reads certain correspondence explaining the +plight of the peasants; having thus finished his _relatio_--the +“presentation of the problem”--he ends with another formula, “What is +it your pleasure to do concerning this matter?” + +If the business be contentious, now might begin a vigorous debate; but +the governor’s request, based on wise policy, is not worth questioning +and almost everybody wants to proceed to the trial. The consul, +therefore, after a pause, demands, “Is it your will to grant this +thing? Let then all the Conscript Fathers favoring pass to the right!” + +One garrulous old senator anxious for a chance to speak, indeed +begins shouting “_Consule! Consule!_” (“Take counsel!”--_i.e._ start +a debate.) If many others join him, Varus can be forced to permit a +long-winded discussion; but the troublemaker is without a second. The +senators with one accord seem rising and passing to the right side of +the Curia. Nobody ventures to go to the left. The motion thus carries +unanimously. The company resume their seats; then all eyes are again +upon the consul when with clear voice he commands: “Let the accusers of +Sextus Annius Pedius stand forth.” + + +=291. Presenting an Impeachment at a Senate Trial.=--Publius Calvus +rises from the front benches opposite the defendant, allows the many +folds of his toga to fall magnificently around him, thrusting them back +just enough to reveal the purple laticlave running down his tunic, +and carefully adjusts a ring so its great emerald will give precisely +the correct flash as he gestures. Directly behind him, inconspicuously +garbed stands a favorite freedman, avowedly to pass him papyri and +tablets which he will read, but really quite as much to whisper, “Drop +your tones!” “Speak louder!” or “Not so shrill!” and like promptings as +the oration progresses.[182] + +The Senate, of course, cannot be expected to put in weary days +listening to intricate and sordid testimony. All this has been taken +before a special board of judges, and on their report there is no real +doubt of Pedius’s guilt. He has taken a bribe of 300,000 sesterces +($12,000) to banish a Roman eques from his province and has put seven +less-protected provincials, friends of this eques, to death; worse +still, he has taken still another bribe of 700,000 sesterces ($28,000) +for committing the unspeakable outrage of causing yet a second eques +to be first beaten with rods, next hustled off to the mines, then +actually strangled in prison. The prominent provincials from Asia have, +therefore, presented an absolute case against their evil ex-governor. +The lesser culprits have mostly confessed and received appropriate +penalties--and the only question really before the Senate is fixing the +punishment of Pedius. + +He is a great noble with great connections. Ought a senator who has +held the consulship be banished and ruined even if he _has_ misgoverned +his province, taken bribes and done to death an eques--one of those +upstart half-nobles whom every true senator should scorn? Pedius +does not lack friends who have told him to brazen it out, and that +no severe penalty can befall him; and he glares defiantly across to +Calvus as the latter begins his argument. + + +=292. The Water Clocks; Methods of a Prosecutor; Applause in the +Senate.=--Just as the chief prosecutor commences, the servitors +reappear and set close beside him a large glass vessel upon a wooden +stand, perforated to empty slowly into a second vessel beneath, and +when thus emptied the upper container is promptly refilled. Calvus +has been informed he can have “only four water clocks” (about two +hours)--an outrageously insufficient number in his opinion, when many +an advocate can get twelve--but time must be given the other orators +and after that the Senate must discuss and vote. + +Speedily Calvus warms to his task, and in long periods of sonorous +Latin his voice resounds through the Curia. He delights to expand upon +the enormity of the crime of putting to death not a mere provincial, +not a simple Roman plebeian, but a Roman eques. His speech abounds with +elegant and apparently impromptu allusions, metaphors and similes--duly +practiced half a month before. He goes out of his way to pay an +extended and fulsome compliment to the benignity and liberality of the +Emperor in condescending to let the Senate settle the issue. Words at +length almost fail him when he calls on the Fathers in the name of +Justice, Virtue, Heavenly Vengeance, and all the other guardian deities +of the state to punish the hideous misdeeds of such a criminal as +Pedius. + +As he proceeds the Senate kindles at his eloquence. First his personal +friends who are sitting directly behind him begin to shout “_Euge!_” +and “_Sophos!_” Then the applause re-echoes from all over the hall. +Presently the occupants of the curule chairs on the platform begin to +clap, the consul half rises from his seat as if transported by the +oratory, and even Pedius’s own advocates politely join in that applause +which Calvus is professionally bound to return with interest as soon +as they begin to speak in turn. + +Soon, all too soon, for the orator, and for those senators who love +“the good old times,” when an advocate could thunder all day long, the +four water clocks are exhausted. Calvus subsides, to be immediately +surrounded by his friends who compare his efforts to those of Cato, +Hortensius, Cicero, and such later masters as Cornelius Tacitus; while +the freedman immediately speeds off to inform Gratia of the “wonderful +triumph” of her husband--a triumph of oratory, whatever be the actual +verdict. + + +=293. Speech for the Defendant: Methods of a Professional +Advocate.=--After order is restored a grave old senator--Quintus +Saturius--arises to answer the prosecutor. He is a professional +advocate of fame, but evil report has it that in his youth under +Domitian he was a _delator_ (professional accuser), and won a fortune +by prosecuting the innocent victims of that bad Emperor’s disfavor. +Since then he has never been squeamish in accepting doubtful causes. +The law only allows him 10,000 sesterces ($400) as the fee from each +legal client, but the latter has plenty of indirect means of showing +his “gratitude,” and Saturius’s wealth now is enormous. This morning he +has carefully smeared eye-salve above his left eye--a token that he is +to speak for the defendant, not over the right as if for the plaintiff. +His toga also floats in billowy folds, his hands flash with costly +rings, and his powerful voice soon booms through the Curia. + + [Illustration: CICERO DENOUNCING CATILINE BEFORE THE + SENATE: painting in modern Senate House in Rome.] + +Saturius does not waste time denying that many of Pedius’s misdeeds +have been proved, but he praises at great length his client’s +“glorious ancestry” and distinguished social connections. As for +the accusations,--what if he did abuse his office? Was a member of +the great house of the Annii to be held down to the sordid rules +befitting mere plebeians and freedmen? What if an eques _had_ been +wrongfully done to death? Was not the fellow by birth a Phrygian who +had gained first citizenship and then the “narrow-stripe” merely by the +use of his wits? How could so great a man as the Proconsul of Asia be +expected to live on a beggarly salary of 1,000,000 sesterces ($40,000)? + +At this point Saturius’s voice begins in fact to tremble with pathos. +How can the Conscript Fathers bring themselves to disgrace all the +defendant’s distinguished relatives who just now are sitting behind +him in the gray togas of public mourning? Think of his distressed wife +whose father and all three uncles were at least prætors! Think of his +brother who had been killed bravely fighting the Parthians! Think of +his two sons whose public careers would be blighted by the disgrace of +their father! Think finally of the Senate itself--what contempt upon +the “Venerable Order” if one of its most prominent members should be +ruined on the testimony of mere provincials and upstarts! etc., etc. + + +=294. Concluding Speeches; Interrupting Shouts; Personal +Invectives.=--Saturius, ere concluding, works himself into a fine +passion. He also gets sallies of applause--mostly from the self-same +men who have just cheered Calvus. But at some of his assertions there +are murmurs of dissent, and even open shouts such as “Drop that +argument!” “Don’t insult our intelligence!” Finally, however, he +sits down, having exhausted his four water clocks. More cheers, more +congratulations, everybody swears to his neighbor the day is proving an +intellectual feast. + +The consul proclaims an interim; and the Conscript Fathers adjourn +to stretch their limbs, snatch a hasty collation provided by their +attendants and discuss the arguments. Then all resume when Marcus +Petreius, Pedius’s junior advocate, continues for the defense. The +hostile attitude of the Senate has impressed the defendant’s counsel, +and Petreius enters into an elaborate appeal for mercy, with many fine +invocations of the “Divine Clemency,” and reminders of how any senator +might some day find himself in Pedius’s horrid predicament. Petreius +is allowed “less water” than Saturius; he gets considerable applause, +however, when he finishes, but knowing members shake their heads: “They +cheer his oratory and not his cause.” + +In fine mettle therefore Titus Atilius, Calvus’s associate, next sums +up for the prosecution. Atilius is a relatively young man, as yet only +an ex-quæstor; and to-day is his glorious opportunity. Carried away +on a flood of invective, he allows himself, as is permitted by usage, +to cover not merely Pedius but even Pedius’s advocate with a storm of +bitter personalities. When he thunders against Saturius’s sycophantic +career there are wild shouts of applause from all over the Curia; and +more applause follows when he ridicules certain physical infirmities of +the miserable defendant.[183] Pedius rises with supplicatory gestures +and appeals loudly to the ten tribunes, “Oh, very noble tribunes +protect me!”--but the ten sit stolid and silent upon their bench and +he subsides with blenching cheeks. His advocates, exchanging knowing +glances, are seen to be gathering up their tablets. + + +=295. Taking the Opinion of the Senate.=--At last Atilius’s “water” +has likewise ended. Amid another whirlwind of applause and rush of +congratulating friends he takes his seat. The consul Varus rises with +extreme dignity, and beckons with his hand. Every senator instantly is +tense and silent. + +“We do now,” proclaims Varus, “take the opinions (_sententiæ_) +of the Conscript Fathers concerning that which it befits should be +done in the case of Sextus Annius Pedius this day arraigned and tried. +You have heard his accusers and his advocates. I shall call the album +of the Senate.” He holds up tablets whereon are listed the senators +in order of official rank and precedence; then turns to the members +seated directly before him, the magistrates-elect for the ensuing year, +summoning first the senior consul designate, Appius Lupercus: + +“_Dic, Appie Luperce!_” + +Appius Lupercus, an elderly aristocrat, the head of an ancient family, +rises amid a portentous hush. The “right to speak first,” possessed by +the Emperor when present, is invaluable. All the orators for either +side have really aimed their best arguments toward Lupercus, knowing +his prerogative, but his “cold looks” toward Pedius have already fallen +as ice upon the friends of the defendant. His voice now carries through +the expectant Curia. + +“Conscript Fathers:--It is true that Sextus Pedius is a man of exalted +birth; the more shame, therefore, that he has disgraced the name of +a _clarissimus_ of the Venerable Senate. It is true his victims were +either provincials or citizens of provincial origin:--the law is +impartial, the Roman Empire has been established upon the inflexible +rule of ‘piety’ giving alike to gods and to men that which is lawfully +their due. If he has outraged provincials the case is clear; long ago +the Emperor Tiberius expressed the ruling policy when he said, ‘A good +shepherd shears his sheep but does not flay them.’ If Pedius has also +outraged citizens, much more equites, wherein lies the boast ‘_Civis +Romanus sum!_’, if these men, whatever their original birth, cannot +demand lawful vengeance at our hands? + +“My opinion, therefore, is this: let the defendant’s ill-gotten bribes +be confiscated to the treasury, and let Pedius himself be banished from +Rome, and Italy; let his lesser confederates be banished from Rome, +from Italy, and also from the Province of Asia. Since also Publius +Calvus and Titus Atilius have pleaded the cause of the provincials +with diligence and fearlessness, let them receive the thanks of the +Senate. Such is my opinion!” + +A great murmur rises--applause with some shouts of dissent. “Hangman!” +“Butcher!” rise from the little knot of Pedius’s relatives. Then Varus +calls on the second consul designate, Atticus, who, rising stiffly, +says with clear voice, “I agree with the most noble Lupercus,” and +promptly takes his seat. + +One by one the ex-consuls, each summoned by turn, announce that they +also agree with Lupercus, until one cynical old aristocrat, the +ex-consul Gavius, notorious for his own sensual life and the manner +whereby he enriched himself in Africa, yet powerful through his vast +wealth and influential connections, announces that he is confident +the Senate should show mercy. “Let Pedius disgorge the money and +forfeit the priesthood of Mars which he holds--that will be punishment +enough. A good lesson has been taught and the unfortunate man has been +disgraced enough already.” + + +=296. An Uproar in the Senate: an “Altercation.”=--Instantly the Senate +is in an uproar. The shorthand reporters[184] can hardly take down +all the interrupting shouts that are tossed back and forth: “How now, +Marcus Æmilius Gavius, will you let such a scoundrel go?” “What are +those provincials but scum anyway!” etc., etc. A violent “altercation” +follows, several senators rising and demanding that Gavius explain +himself. The old reprobate however cleverly stands his ground, and is +vigorously cheered by many who will not actually support his proposal. + +At last the house cools down. The taking of the opinion now proceeds +among the prætors-designate and the ex-prætors. No senator can +speak twice, but each man, when on his feet, has great liberty of +action--several of the younger men half ironically support Gavius, and +one senator earns unpopularity by insisting on his right of the floor +and calling attention to the embezzlements reported in the African +municipality of Utica--a matter quite beside the question. Two or three +long and eloquent speeches are delivered in favor of Lupercus’s stern +proposal. It is growing late and nobody wants to call on the ex-ædiles +and other junior senators,[185] and cries are rising, “_Divide! +Divide!_” + + +=297. Taking a Vote of the Senate. A Sentence of Banishment.=--Varus +again rises, “Conscript Fathers: you have heard the opinions of these +very noble men of consular and prætorian rank. Two propositions are +before you. Those who favor the penalties for Sextus Pedius proposed by +Appius Lupercus let them walk to the right! Those the lesser penalty +proposed by Marcus Gavius to the left.” + +The hundreds of togas rise together. Gavius is not without a certain +minority of supporters who start with him to the left, but most of +these, seeing how many ex-consuls of birth and character are following +Lupercus, desert Gavius, who is left with only a trifling band around +him. There is no need for Varus to count the result. Even while the +Senate is dividing the luckless Pedius, with his kinsmen and advocates, +is seen gliding through a side exit. It is the defendant’s right thus +to anticipate sentence and to slip away with as little ignominy as +possible into exile. + +At a word from the consul the senators return to their seats. The long +shadows of evening are stretching through the doors of the Curia, as +Varus announces that Sextus Pedius having been convicted of high crimes +is banished from Rome and from Italy. He must quit the city to-morrow. +He must quit Italy in twenty days. Should he tarry or return he will +be “cut off from fire and water,” and dealt with “after the ancient +custom”--_i.e._ he will be scourged with his head in a forked +stake, then sewed in a bag with a cock, a dog, and a viper, and flung +into the sea. + +Everybody is anxious to be gone. In the great mansions six hundred +expensive cooks are fuming over the delay to six hundred expensive +dinners. The terrible fate of Pedius will make talk for all Rome +through ten days. Varus raises his hand and at length pronounces +the sonorous ancient formula, “_Nihil vos moramur, patres +conscripti_”--“We detain you no longer, Conscript Fathers.” + +Publius Calvus and Titus Atilius are escorted homeward by groups of +fellow senators as if they were triumphant generals. Their skill, +eloquence, pathos, and legal learning are praised to the skies. Each +is assured that “he has rendered himself and his friends immortal!” +Each to-morrow will begin rewriting his speech, introducing many +fine arguments which he has had no time to utter.[186] These will be +embalmed in his published works which will be presumably carried some +day, tied to poles, in a conspicuous place in his funeral procession. + +So ends a typical meeting of the Senate under the Empire; noble forms, +much dignity, a perfect river of eloquence, a judicial decision in +this case conforming with justice, but handling no great issues of +diplomacy, high finance, or peace or war. Already Pedius’s friends are +consoling him, as he drearily prepares to retire to Macedonia: “In a +few years at worst we can get your pardon from the Emperor.” + + + + + CHAPTER XVIII + + THE COURTS AND THE ORATORS. THE GREAT BATHS. THE PUBLIC PARKS AND + ENVIRONS OF ROME + + +=298. Roman Court Procedure Highly Scientific.=--If Publius Calvus +does not have to attend the Senate, two places will assuredly devour +a great part of his normal day--the court-house and the public baths. +Even if he is not plaintiff, defendant, or witness, like every man of +his class he delights in listening to oratory, and etiquette requires +that, whenever one of his numerous friends argues a case, he, with as +many other senators and equites as possible should sit in the front +of the audience, to “lend their distinguished influence,” to lead the +salvos of applause, and even to stand up conspicuously behind the +orator at critical points in his argument. + +Roman courts are not like the Athenian dicasteries, huge juries of +many hundreds,[187] with tumultuous appeals from the letter of the +law to the emotions of the members. Personal influence has its part, +but everything is regulated, orderly, scientific. Cases which do not +involve the safety of the state or the fate of distinguished personages +are usually argued coldly, and with a nice attention to technicalities. +Your Roman jurisconsult (expert in the law) is as much superior to +an Athenian in developing the science of formal justice, as another +Athenian might be to a Roman, in breathing life into chiseled marble. +The administration of law is intricate. There are courts behind courts, +with final appeal either to the Senate (as we have just seen) or to +the Emperor.[188] The “law’s delays” are perfectly well understood by +adroit advocates; and Martial records a case that took twenty years +while dragging through three successive courts--to the ruin of both +sets of litigants. + + +=299. The Great Tribunals in the Basilicas.=--If we visit the great +basilicas, we find two kinds of tribunals steadily functioning. For +much civil business there is the great “Court of the Centumviri,” a +board not of “One Hundred” but actually of one hundred and eighty +distinguished citizens, who sit sometimes all together, sometimes +divided into four groups for conducting trials simultaneously. Their +stronghold is the Basilica Julia. It is a great honor to argue before +the Centumviri, and every advocate exhausts his wiles to induce the +grave judges to pay him the highest compliment (as they did to Pliny +the Younger) by “suddenly leaping to their feet and applauding him as +if they could not help themselves.” + +The most of the higher litigation, however, goes before _judices_. A +_judex_ may be one of the great panel of 4000 citizens,--senators, +equites, and plebeians of substance who can be called upon to serve as +a kind of jury for ordinary trials of importance. The size of such a +jury depends on the nature of the case as provided by statute,--you can +have from 32 members up to a full 100. There is a high judge over the +entire body, either the prætor, or a professional expert in the law, +the _judex quæstionis_, who controls the presentation of evidence and +the strictly technical parts of the trial. + +After the evidence has been submitted, orally or in writing, and the +orators have exhausted themselves, the jurors take small wax-covered +tablets and vote, each man marking simply letters: A = _absolvo_, “Not +guilty,” C = _Condemno_, “Guilty,” N.L. = _Non Liquet_, “No verdict.” A +bare majority can either acquit or condemn, but, of course, no man is +condemned on a plurality, and a tie means acquittal. If “No verdict” +is the decision, the case can still go to another trial. Roman juries, +therefore, do not have to be locked up for days to compel them to agree. + +However, this jury system is often inconvenient and does not adapt +itself to that very technical justice in which the Roman jurisconsults +increasingly delight. More and more cases are being tried by a single +_judex_, or a small bench of _judices_, men highly trained in the +law, and especially appointed by the prætor or other high official, +to investigate a given case and report their findings. Under the +later Empire the large juries will disappear altogether, and a few +professional judges will become arbiters alike of the law and the +evidence--an excellent system from the standpoint of scientific +jurisprudence, but not so excellent if these judges become corrupt, +pliable, or subject to class prejudices. + + +=300. Great Stress on Advocacy.=--Whatever the tribunal may be, +great is the stress laid on the arts of the advocate. Calvus has served +a long probation arguing in the basilicas before his day of glory +came in the Senate. All the young Ciceros in the rhetoric schools +dream of the hour when they can stand in flowing togas before the +high raised platform of the judices, wave their arms, throw out their +voices, and plead the cause of some widow, or arraign some embezzler +or extortioner. The mere fact that senatorial speeches have to be +extremely careful, lest they trench upon imperial prerogative, puts +a greater premium upon private argument in the courts where usually +“Cæsar” has no interests. + +The rewards of successful eloquence are great;[189] and if the legal +fees are small, rich clients, at least, never fail with big New Year’s +presents, and with legacies in their wills. Besides there are no +governmental prosecuting attorneys. Criminal actions can be started by +any citizen against any possible offender. To reward such zeal, a good +part of the fines or confiscated property of convicted criminals goes +to the self-appointed prosecutor. It is thus easy to see how, under +Tiberius, Nero, and Domitian, the delators (“professional accusers”) +grew fat prosecuting wealthy senators for “treason.” These good days +for the profession seem over, but the incomes of certain of the +leading advocates are princely, some almost vying with those of the +earlier Vibius Crispus and Epirius Marcellus, who had over 200,000,000 +sesterces ($8,000,000) apiece. + + +=301. Cheap Pettifogging Lawyers.=--On the other hand Rome is infested +with starving pettifoggers, pretentious wretches, sleeping in dirty +tenements, and with hardly a decent toga to wear when they argue on +petty cases in the præfect’s court. Sometimes they get a better class +of client, hire a good robe and ring to wear at the trial, and win the +case in the Basilica. Their client will very likely decorate the stairs +to their tenement with palm leaves, but as the only fee[190] send them +a quantity of uncertain edibles--“a dried-up ham, a jar of sprats, +some veteran onions, or five flagons of [very cheap] wine that has +just sailed down the Tiber!” If any money is actually paid, lucky the +advocate who does not have to split his fee with some agent who has +secured the case for him! + + +=302. Character Witnesses; Torture of Slave Witnesses.=--One thing +more concerning these trials must be noted: the testimony of Roman +citizens carries much greater weight than that of aliens, and the +unreliability of Græco-Levantines is notorious. Freeborn men, Roman or +provincial, testify under oath. Only accusers have the right to compel +the attendance of unwilling witnesses, but the defense can bring not +merely voluntary witnesses to the facts, but can present as many as ten +_laudatores_, character witnesses, and if men of high standing are +vigorous in their friends’ praises, their opinions will offset very +many ugly facts in the testimony. + +Frequently enough, however, the statements of slaves have to be taken. +These wretches, having little better status before the law than +animals, can only testify under torture. No master, nevertheless, +except in cases of treason, can ordinarily be compelled to let his +slaves testify _against_ him, but it is assumed that torture is +necessary if a master voluntarily offers his slave as witness,--for +what slave would dare uncompelled to say anything unwelcome to his +master in view of the terrific flogging waiting after he gets home? +The situation in short as to slave testimony is substantially as in +Athens.[191] This use of the rack and flogging post is one of the worst +blots upon the highly scientific and usually reasonable and humane +judicial system of Rome. + + +=303. Written Evidence; High Development of the Advocate’s Art.=--On +the other hand much weight is given to reliable written evidence. +Public documents from the record office, and the careful entries on +bankers’ ledgers are continually being introduced as testimony. +Much of the forensic oratory also is of a high order. The rhetoric +schools have not taught their better pupils in vain; despite much +silly display, “appeals to the emotions,” and artificiality, the art +of advocacy has never completely lost touch with the promotion of +justice; and usually the verdict goes still to him who best meets Cato +the Elder’s pungent definition of the true orator, _vir bonus, dicendi +peritus_ (“the good man versed in the art of speech”), and who recalls +that great republican’s classic injunction for all advocates--_rem +tene, verba sequentur_ (“Grasp the subject and the words will +follow”).[192] + +In all matters not touching certain high interests the Roman courts are +perhaps as disinterested and clean as human tribunals can well be, and +the average _judex_ is charged with a passionate desire to do that +which is formally right. In the courts the spirit of Rome is often to +be seen at its best. + + +=304. Popularity and Necessity of the Baths.=--As the afternoon +advances, however, unless the case is extremely urgent, or the +advocates unwontedly skilful, the impassive toga-clad figures upon +the high seats of the tribunals begin to show signs of uneasiness. +The pleaders themselves reach in turn a suitable climax, as the +last filling of the water clocks runs out;--if necessary they can +finish their castigations or their excuses to-morrow. The courts are +adjourned, and judges, litigants, advocates, spectators, all hasten +from the Basilicas possessed with the thought which is common to nigh +every man in Rome not of the most unfortunate class--“To the Baths!” + +The warm Italian climate makes frequent ablutions not merely +comfortable but necessary, but in the stern old days of the +earlier Republic Seneca specifically assures us that the fathers +of Rome were not wont to wash all over oftener than once a week +(_nundinæ_).[193] Long before the age of Hadrian, however, a daily +bath became a personal necessity. No dinner can be enjoyed without it. +No respectable man can feel comfortable deprived of it. + +As the bathing habit grows, its luxury and elaboration grow +correspondingly. The daily bath becomes a social ceremony, and the +bathing place becomes almost as indispensable as the forum, or the +triclinium. Other peoples and ages may equal or surpass the Romans in +actual cleanliness; none can develop institutions really corresponding +to the enormous public _thermæ_ scattered over the capital.[194] + + +=305. Luxurious Private Baths.=--Probably every senator and all +the more pretentious equites have sumptuous private baths in their +own mansions. Here they can go when visits to the public thermæ are +inconvenient, or to refresh themselves between the long courses of +their great dinner parties. + +The luxury of these private baths can be so prodigious as to afford +constant texts for the Stoical philosophers. Seneca has waxed almost +frantic telling how an aristocrat feels somewhat poverty-stricken +unless “the walls [of his bath] shine with great costly slabs, and +marbles of Alexandria tricked out with reliefs in stone from Numidia, +and with the whole ceiling elaborately covered with all varieties +of paintings, and unless Thasian marbles inclose the swimming pool, +and the water gushes out of silver taps”; likewise “how many a rich +freedman adorns his baths with fine collections of statues and a +multitude of pillars supporting nothing but serving only as ornaments.” +Essential, too, are such private baths for those so devoted to the +enjoyment that they insist on bathing several times a day. + + +=306. Government and Privately Owned Public Baths: Both Very +Popular.=--Even great nobles, however, enjoy the society and +recreations afforded by the public establishments; and there is often +no better way for a rich senator to display pomp and circumstance than +to enter one of the huge thermæ followed by a long train of slaves, +freedmen, and clients. Men of business, and, of course, mere toilers +must visit the baths when their duties give temporary leisure, but for +everybody who can control his time there is one preferable period--the +eighth or ninth hour, two or three P.M. It is around this time +that the bath attendants heat all their huge tanks to boiling and make +ready with an endless supply of anointing oils and “strigils” (metal +scrapers) to care for the onrush of the multitudes. + +There are about sixteen enormous public baths in Rome owned by the +government, although often their care is leased to contractors. Small +baths, privately owned, opened to anybody at a tolerable fee and +managed solely for profit, exist in addition all over the city, and +nearly nine hundred stand licensed on the City Præfect’s books. Some of +these privately owned baths are elegant establishments, offering great +luxuries at corresponding prices. + +The keepers of a bath-house (_balneatores_) rank low in social +estimation, for many of their places are the scenes of gross reveling +and debauchery; but there is excellent money in the business. Their +baths have names something like inns, and going about the metropolis, +we have noticed the “Baths of Daphne,” “The Æolian,” “The Diana,” “The +Mercury,” or they are simply called from the names of the owners, as +“Faustinian Baths” or “The Crassian.” On a signboard one can read +that the “Thermæ of Marcus Crassus” offer both salt- and fresh-water +baths.[195] + + +=307. The Great Baths of Trajan: Baths, Club-House, and +Café.=--However, if one would see and meet the world, a visit to the +great public baths is absolutely necessary. Some of these are located +on the outskirts of the capital; for example, the magnificent Baths +of Agrippa stand near the Pantheon in the Campus Martius; but only a +short distance from Publius Calvus’s mansion on the Esquiline rise what +are, perhaps, the finest public thermæ as yet existing in Rome, those +of Trajan, which were rebuilt on the site of a similar establishment +earlier erected by Titus.[196] + +The Baths of Trajan constitute more than a vast establishment where +perhaps a thousand persons can bathe in the various tanks and pools +simultaneously. They supply many of the needs which another age +will meet partly by the club-house and partly by the café. They are +frequented by women as well as men, although the former are expected +to make their visits particularly during the morning hours and certain +special rooms are set aside for their use. These rules, however, are +often violated, and scenes can take place at the Baths of Trajan which +from the standpoint of a later time are simply indescribable. + + +=308. Heterogeneous Crowds in the Great Baths.=--One of the glories of +the great thermæ is their apparent democracy. Any freedman is entitled +to make use of them, although there are doubtless special recreation +and reposing rooms reserved for the rich elect. In theory the public +baths are free, but except on gala occasions when the Emperor wishes to +win popularity, there is usually a standard charge for admission of a +_quadrans_, a small copper coin (about ¼ cent). This simply covers the +expense of the attendants who look after one’s clothes, and provides +the oil for anointing--the use of the magnificent building goes for +nothing. + +In such a place persons of every station can be seen mingling +together, social barriers partially break down, and a delightful +informality prevails. It is recorded of Hadrian that when he is in +the city, he proves his “liberal” habits by frequenting the public +baths and bathing in the great pools along with the meanest of his +subjects. Every afternoon, therefore, the thermæ are the scenes of +intensely bustling life. The noise rising from their great halls is +terrific--the shouting, laughing, splashing, running, exercising, going +on continuously.[197] + +The Romans are preëminently a sociable people. They delight in the free +and easy contacts of the baths. What place has witnessed more financial +bargains struck, quarrels started or abated, lawsuits arranged, +marriage treaties negotiated, philosophical theories spun, artistic +points discussed, or even matters of imperial policy promoted than the +thermæ of Trajan? At the thermæ are continued all those matters you +talked over in the Forum this morning and which you will finish on the +supper couches to-night. The place, however, to a stranger is utterly +bewildering in its hugeness, its noise and the hurrying of its crowds +and its complexity, and few scenes in Rome could be more novel to a +visitor from another civilization. + + [Illustration: PLAN OF ROMAN PUBLIC BATHS: partly + conjectural.] + + +=309. Entering the Thermæ.=--We can follow Calvus as he approaches +by the great southern portal which looks down from the slopes of the +Esquiline upon the great gray cylinder of the Flavian Amphitheater. +Before us stretches an enormous portico, fronting a high masonry +wall, of course crowned at many points with statues. The entrance +is relatively narrow in order to control the thousands of persons +streaming inside, each passing his copper to the attendants at the +gate. But once past the barrier, we see before us the vista, apparently +not of a bathing establishment, but of an ample, inclosed park, girded +on every side with handsome porticoes, scattered with trees, bright +shrubbery, and groups of sculpture, but with the domes seemingly of a +magnificent palace rising from the middle of the area. + +This park is teeming with life; young men in the scantiest of costume +are running races on a long sandy track, others are tossing ball, +others engaged in a wrestling contest, Greek fashion, before a crowd +of spectators wedged upon seats along a kind of stadium. In a kind +of kiosk, or small temple, in a remote corner behind the shrubbery a +venerable man with the long beard of a philosopher is expounding the +theory of atoms to a small but select audience. We are told that there +are also _aulæ_ for learned conventicles, likewise excellent +libraries within the central building. + + +=310. Interior of the Baths: the Cold Room (_Frigidarium_).=--This +building itself is an enormous mass of brick and concrete, formed into +correspondingly enormous vaulted apartments and domes, their entire +surface covered with polished marbles or at least with brilliantly +colored stucco. At every point there are statues, singly and in groups, +historical and mythological, in the round or in high reliefs, in stone +and in bronze. Particularly to be noted is a marvelous if overrealistic +Laocoön group destined to be celebrated through the coming ages.[198] + +It boots little to describe all the special chambers and features of +the Baths of Trajan; we can only notice those prime features common +to all public thermæ even in the provincial cities. The great mass of +visitors makes for the hall of the _frigidarium_ (“cold room”), a vast +unheated space, albeit comfortable enough on a warm Italian afternoon. +Here they toss off their garments, to their own personal slaves if they +are visitors of consequence, although there is a great force of regular +attendants (_capsarii_) whose prime business it is to take charge of +togas and tunics. For all their pains, thefts of clothes in the baths +are very common and give rise to frequent uproars. + +Once stripped, even the gravest and oldest visitors are likely to +indulge in all kinds of gymnastics and horseplay. If they do not go +outside to limber themselves with tossing ball at trigon (see p. 206) +or with amateur races in the stadium, there are plenty of diversions +in the frigidarium itself. One can behold the “Very Noble” Varus, the +presiding consul, forgetful of all official dignity, competing with an +imperial legatus, both with their hands tied behind them and trying +by leaning backward to touch their heads against the tips of their +toes; while a prætor, an hour earlier an austere judge in the Basilica +Æmilia, is leaping up and down “murdering a good song by trying to sing +it.”[199] + + +=311. The Great Swimming Pool and the _Tepidarium_.=--All this +is usually preliminary to a splashing plunge into the clear cool +_natatio_, the great swimming pool of unheated water, which is nearly +200 feet long by 100 broad, and in which scores of Rome’s noblest +dignitaries now are to be seen splashing, swimming, and cavorting, with +perfect self-respect beside a much greater number of the plebeians. For +the many who do not prefer a warm bath, this is sufficient refreshment +on a summer day, and presently they will call their attendants to +bring towels, strigils, and ointments and hasten home. But your true +_habitué_ makes almost as much of his baths as of his dinners. He +delights in hot baths and all the refreshments that go with them. +“People want to be parboiled,” once declared Seneca disgustedly. + +A hot bath involves an elaborate process. Often one will omit the +frigidarium with its cold shock, or take it later. In any case one +goes on to a second enormous chamber, perhaps the finest in the whole +building. A majestic dome soars over broad pavement. The pillars and +the fretwork on the ceiling and vaulting groan with heavy gilding. The +groups of statues flanking each of the huge marble-incrusted piers are +themselves of heroic size. The light streams down over the polished +marbles of the walls and pendentives, upon hundreds of persons lolling +about on stone benches, conversing, or lazily meditating. A warm mist +is rising; one feels as if in a plant house of tropical exotics, while +the elaborate mosaic designs are pleasantly warm under one’s bare feet. + +Such luxury of course is enjoyed in the _tepidarium_ where the bathers +are gently warmed before the actual hot bath. It is an oblong hall, +nearly as large as the great cold swimming tank,[200] and, as stated, +the decorations are almost overpowering in their richness. Anybody will +explain that the floors are composed largely of hollow tiles through +which warm air of just the right temperature is being continually +forced from the great system of charcoal furnaces (“hypocausts”) +located in the substructures of the thermæ. + + +=312. The Hot Baths (_Caldaria_): Their Sensuous Luxury.=--At intervals +some person rises from the couches and hastens away to one of the +smaller chambers located at the four corners of the tepidarium. These +are the actual _caldaria_ (hot baths), wherein a perpetual fine steam +is rising. The water here is so hot that only experienced bathers can +find a plunge in the large porphyry tanks enjoyable. If one can endure +the heat, however, soon it becomes a kind of stupid bliss to lie back +motionless in the heated water, gazing upward to the vaulted ceiling +which is skilfully painted in a deep blue interspersed with trees, +foliage, birds, and gilt stars, as if one were dropping off to slumber +in the forest some summer evening! If the acme of life is merely +sensuous enjoyment, what can existence offer greatly surpassing this! + +After you have lain quiescent in the caldarium until its pleasure has +begun to pall, the proper thing next is to pass to the _laconicum_. +Here the hypocausts have heated the floor and walls with an intense dry +heat. The bathers loll again upon marble slabs, and first are dried off +and then burst into a profuse perspiration. The ceremony of the bath is +at last over. + +Your slaves or the regular attendant now will scrape you down with +the thin flexible bronze strigils, rub you thoroughly with towels, +and anoint you with unguents, the more costly and highly perfumed the +better. In the numerous small chambers around the great laconicum, open +for special fees, there is a greater luxury still;--here such elderly +magnates as Varus, or even young noblemen of the more effeminate type, +will be elaborately massaged and finally rubbed down with very soft +woolen blankets, by at least three expert masseurs working together. +After such an experience surely body and mind ought to be prepared for +the pleasures of the dinner party. + + +=313. Restaurants, Small Shops, and Sports in or around the +Baths.=--Very much more might be added about the Great Baths. For +those people who wish to linger until the edge of meal time, there is +no need to go hungry. Close by the entrance are numerous restaurants +(_popinæ_) of more than ordinary elegance. Here you can send your +slave for sweet cakes, slices of toasted honey bread, sausages, eggs, +and like viands; and in the great frigidarium and tepidarium the +peddlers from these restaurants are always going about with trays of +such food, crying their wares and making the ordinary bedlam so much +the greater. Directly in the thermæ themselves are small shops for +the sale of fine perfumes and unguents; and often in the corridors +and antechambers you can find crowds gazing at special displays of +paintings, or of new statuary--for the public baths are practically the +art galleries of Rome. + +As for the frequenters of the baths, here even more than in the fora +are the trysting spots for parasites. Let an approachable nobleman be +seen lolling at ease in the tepidarium and he is instantly spotted by +some dinner hunter. Innumerable are the attentions that can then be +paid him. Does he wish to play handball?--The parasite retrieves for +him. Does he lay aside a fine garment?--At once “his remarkable taste” +is praised to the skies. Does he lie perspiring in the laconicum? +His “friend” tries to anticipate the slaves in wiping the sweat from +his brow. No act is too obsequious--all in hopes of hearing those +delightful words, “Come home and dine!” In the halls of the women +similar scenes are enacted, but we cannot pursue them. + +At last the sun dials that stand in every open spot around the thermæ +indicate that the afternoon is well spent. From the laconicum the +refreshed bathers return to the milder tepidarium, to recover from the +shock of the intense heat and to resume their garments. Then the crowds +all hasten out again. Some of the privately owned bathing-places may +remain open all night, but the great thermæ, lately the scene of such +boisterous life, stand vast, dark, and empty. + + +=314. The Great Porticoes along the Campus Martius. The Park System +towards the Tiber.=--The public baths are not the only places for +daily enjoyment which a solicitous government has provided for the +quirites. The fora are limited and the city proper is very closely +built, but around its outskirts and especially to the north and west +there is a genuinely magnificent park system. The beginnings of this +are reached after you go through the Forum of Trajan and follow along +“Broadway.” Here are the great porticoes and promenades of the Sæpta +Julia. The famous stores (see p. 228) are mostly on the east side of +the avenue verging off towards the slopes of the Quirinal, but the west +side, going clear across the broad Campus Martius to the Tiber, is more +strictly public property. + +This wide level area formed by the great bend in the river has +long since ceased to be a mere parade ground for the army. There +are broad masses of greenery, grateful shade trees, spreading over +neatly graveled walks, as well as literally miles of lofty porticoes +stretching in every direction and giving comfortable places for +strolling in bad weather. The greatest of these porticoes is, of +course, the long Sæpta Julia, but there is a succession of others, so +that you can almost wander from the Column of Trajan across the Campus +clear to the Ælian Bridge completely defiant of any rain. + +In the open pleasure grounds there are always people exercising without +the restraints inevitable at the thermæ, playing ball, wrestling, +exhibiting horses and chariots, as well as very many children chasing +about with hoops. If legionaries are passing through the city, their +leathern tents probably stand here, and here, too, can be held all the +vast open-air pageants which cannot accommodate themselves inside any +building. + + +=315. Public Buildings upon the Campus Martius.=--Out of the lofty +trees, however, there rise still loftier structures. Two of the great +public thermæ, those of Nero and Agrippa, are here upon the Campus +Martius. In this region, also, are three of the principal theaters, +that of Pompeius, accommodating some 25,000 people, and two others +(Theaters of Marcellus and Balbus) only slightly smaller. Here is the +Flaminian Circus and the Amphitheater of Taurus for those horse races +and gladiator fights which do not demand the huge Circus Maximus or +Flavian. Here again is the golden-roofed Pantheon and a great number +of other temples to such ill-assorted gods as the Egyptian Serapis +and Isis, Neptune, Minerva of the Campus, and the old Latin goddess +Juturna. Notable, too, are the triumphal arches raised across several +of the broad avenues. + +You can in fact wander on across this region from one marvelous +structure to another until the eye and brain become weary trying to +enumerate, much more to comprehend the succession of buildings every +one of which is a triumph of marble and of sculpture. Pressing on to +the marge of the Tiber itself, the river above the commercial bridges +is seen covered with gay pleasure skiffs plying about under bright +flags. The shores are lined with handsome little houses, usually +decorated in the doors with potted shrubs or boughs of foliage. +Innocent they look in the day time but at night when their windows +blaze with lamps they will be veritable traps of iniquity for the +enjoyment and then the ruin of the unwary. + + +=316. The Tombs of Hadrian and Augustus.=--Across the river near +its main bend, can be noticed the green slopes of the hill of the +Vatican uncrowned as yet by any temple of fame, but with the suburban +Circus of Nero stretching along its slopes. Directly across the +current, also, is rising the enormous circular mass of the Mausoleum +of Hadrian, with the derricks and staging still above it swinging to +place the last of that galaxy of statues which will look down upon the +Tiber.[201] + + [Illustration: CASTLE OF ST. ANGELO: Tomb of Hadrian + in its present state.] + +We do not cross over to the new structure, but proceeding along the +bank to the point where the Via Flaminia continuing “Broadway” bears +down beside the river, we see before us the older but very majestic +Mausoleum of Augustus. It lifts itself fully 220 feet in the air, its +base composed of a vast cylinder coated with sculptured marbles, above +which there is heaped a conical mound of earth, planted with evergreen +trees, while on the summit stands a colossal statue of its mighty +builder himself. Within repose the urns not merely of Augustus, but of +nearly all the worthier members of the imperial families. + + [Illustration: TOMB OF HADRIAN. _Restored after + Von Falke._] + +These are only some of the features of the Campus Martius which foreign +visitors such as Strabo acclaim as the most remarkable section of +Rome, if not the one most charged with her past history. Time fails +to visit the other great public pleasure-grounds upon the slopes of +the Pincian--the “Gardens of Lucullus” and the “Gardens of Sallust,” +or that other wide park northeast of the Esquiline, the “Gardens of +Mæcenas,” presenting yet other vistas of shrubbery, groves, promenades, +and green lawns, interspersed with pleasure pavilions. It behooves us +now to return to Rome and to visit some of the most important centers +of its life--the theater, the amphitheater, and the circus. + + + + + CHAPTER XIX + + THE PUBLIC GAMES: THE THEATER, THE CIRCUS, AND THE AMPHITHEATER + + +=317. Roman Festivals: Their Great Number.=--One thing only, besides a +long session of the Senate, ordinarily will keep men of the class of +Publius Calvus away from the great thermæ--the celebration of one of +the greater Public Games. + +The _Ludi Publici_, around which so large a part of Roman life +revolves, like the Pan-Hellenic games and similar Greek festivals, +always have religious origin; they are in honor of some god or group of +deities. But the secular has long intruded into their routine. Nobody +worries greatly about the fact that the _Ludi Apollinares_ are for the +glory of Apollo, save perhaps as one adds an extra fervent invocation +of the Delphian god during the placing of wagers. The time consumed by +the Public Games represents a period of recreation and festival, which +other ages will find in Sundays and Saints’ Days. + +Altogether there are some 76 days per year normally set aside for these +great _Ludi Sollemnes_, including such prolonged periods as those of +the _Ludi Romani_ or _Magni_ which extend from September 4th to 18th, +on a stretch, with several others for six days and more. When to these +periods are added various extra or very special holidays, during which +the ordinary life of the city is broken up, the courts are closed, and +only the most necessary labors of commerce and industry are conducted, +it is plain that the plebeians and even the slaves get pretty ample +respite in their year of toil. Without attempting a close study of the +official lists of holidays it is safe to say that the average Roman +gains many more periods of lawful vacation than the laboring classes +can enjoy in other ages,--another factor which tends to make the +metropolis abound with idlers and parasites. + + +=318. Passion for Public Spectacles: Mania for Gambling.=--Besides +the great public theaters, amphitheaters, and race courses (circuses) +there are many smaller private establishments. Good money can be made +from gladiator fights and chariot races, and they are often given by +speculators, although more frequently in a provincial town than in Rome. + +The passion for such spectacles and contests is incredible;--no +“baseball” or “football” of another era can so monopolize the popular +mind. The wagering on all kinds of contests is incessant in every +insula, shop, or mansion, and, of course, ordinarily it is entirely +lawful. Only the few select spirits cry out vainly against the passion, +although Juvenal’s famous protest will echo across the centuries, “The +Roman people who once gave commands, consulships, legions, and all +else now yearn simply for two things--_free bread and the Public +Games_!” + +The government doubtless encourages this tendency. If the multitude +is engrossed with the merits of two charioteers, so much less is the +scrutiny upon strange doings at the Palatine; yet even excellent +emperors give very elaborate spectacles as a kind of lawful tribute +to the multitudes of that city which affords them their right to the +purple. After the conquest of Dacia, Trajan celebrated his victory by +giving contests which lasted 123 days, during which 10,000 wild and +domestic animals were said to have been killed and 10,000 gladiators +fought, although probably most of the latter were allowed to survive. +So incessant in fact are the contests of some variety, that rare is the +day when a thunderous roar does not reverberate over the city telling +that the “Blue” or “Green” jockeys have won, or a favorite gladiator +has plunged home his trident. + + [Illustration: AT THE THEATER ENTRANCE. _After Von + Falke._] + + +=319. Expenses of Public Spectacles to Great Officials.=--Naturally +the cost of these contests is enormous. The presidency and supervision +of them is distributed around among the magistrates, with the chief +glories and burdens falling usually upon the consuls and prætors.[202] +The State gives each official a respectable sum to pay for the +spectacles, but this falls far short of the actual cost. The glory of +presiding in the central box at the Flavian Amphitheater or Circus +Maximus is so great that a magistrate is bound to sacrifice a good +share of his entire patrimony in order to make a fine display, to win +the “Ave!” of the populace, and to hold up his head among his noble +rivals. When Hadrian was prætor, his kinsman, Trajan the Emperor, gave +him personally 4,000,000 sesterces ($160,000) towards the cost of those +games which the prætorship demanded. + +Our Publius Calvus, with no imperial connection, deliberately saved +and economized for years prior to his elevation to the prætorship, +and during his term of office he spent almost as much energy in +corresponding with a friend who was legatus of Numidia to get African +leopards, and negotiating with certain racing interests to secure a +very desirable jockey, as he did in settling a certain great lawsuit +before his tribunal. One good set of chariot races can cost 400,000 +sesterces ($16,000), and some of Calvus’s richer colleagues have found +the prætors’ games coming to a dozen times as much. He congratulated +himself, therefore, on getting out of office for about half their +outlay; as it was he had to live very sparingly for the next two years, +and sell off a villa.[203] + + +=320. Indescribable Popularity of the Games.=--Everybody in Rome +attends the games. Once slaves were forbidden to be present, but that +law had broken down several generations ago. Few are the masters that +risk the unpopularity of refusing to let their familia frequent at +least the more famous contests. The waiting litter bearers, the idling +foot-boys, all the parasitical menials about the great mansions discuss +every coming event most frantically and wager all the coppers which +their masters give them upon the outcome, and their zeal is matched by +the ragged plebeians who infest the fetid insulæ, or sleep under the +porticoes. + +Seemingly half of Rome exists only from one chariot or gladiator +exhibition to another. Every contest is a display of social +importance. The front seats are assigned to the magistrates, who occupy +curule chairs in the order of their rank; there are other seats of +honor for the senators, others directly behind them for the equites. If +the Emperor is present, he sits in a special box (_cubiculum_), +which Trajan with democratic condescension caused to be thrown wide +open that all the spectators might see him. + +These seats of honor are free, but the great multitude of well-to-do +spectators are expected to purchase tickets for all the better ranges +behind the tiers of the equites.[204] The prices ordinarily are low, +but concerning these tickets there is a complaint not unknown in +another age: that the box-officers (_locarii_) in charge buy up many +reserved seats for the more popular games, then sell them over again +at an outrageous advance. However, behind these reserved seats there +are still a certain number of others thrown open free to the first +comers, and behind these is a wide space where plebeians and slaves can +stand as a gesticulating, shouting, steaming mass, gazing down on the +spectacles below. + + +=321. The Theater Less Popular than the Circus or Amphitheater.=--The +public exhibitions are three general kinds,--the theatrical +performances, the circus races, and the gladiatorial combats. + +For the great masses, the theater can never have the same vulgar appeal +possessed by its two rivals; on the other hand some men of intelligence +and rank do not hesitate to dismiss the latter as “for the mob” and +affect a great contempt for charioteers and “Thracians.” Even the most +sophisticated Romans, however, never are true Athenians. Tragedies +dealing with profound human problems, such as won trophies for Æschylus +and Sophocles, would fall absolutely flat beside the Tiber.[205] +There is even a growing distaste for the better kind of comedies. +What delights the Roman audience in the theater most is some kind of +elaborate horseplay. + + [Illustration: THEATER AT POMPEII.] + +The stage as a rule is long and narrow, some 120 by 24 feet, and is +raised only about three feet above the orchestra where a chorus can +dance and parade.[206] The rear of the stage has a fixed background +painted to represent the front of a palace; it is pierced by three +doors, and is adorned with columns and niches for the inevitable +statues of the Muses, of Apollo, and of like deities. A large curtain, +not dropped from above but rolled up from the bottom, can uncover the +most amazing spectacles upon this stage. Long ago Horace complained +of how a Roman audience would depart discontented if the play did not +require in its middle “either a bear or a boxing match.” For four hours +and more the curtain is “kept down” while “squadrons of horse and +bodies of foot are seen flying, while luckless kings with hands tied +behind their backs and chariots of all kinds and even ships go hurrying +along, and while spoils of ivory and Corinthian brass are borne by in +state.” + +There are, however, two kinds of performances more certain to crowd the +theater than these very cheap spectacular plays--they are the mimes and +pantomimes. + + +=322. The Mimes: Character Plays.=--The mimes are a native Latin +product, although they have a certain kinship with the Greek “New +Comedy.” They are character plays of everyday life without the actors’ +masks and buskins; and they are always coarse, vulgar, and in the +nature of roaring farces. The language is often exceedingly gross +and the situations frequently match the language. The actors wear a +kind of harlequin costume, extremely grotesque, and along with the +chief _mimus_, who takes the leading part, there is usually a second +actor who draws thunderous applause from the upper benches. He is the +_strepidus_ or _parasitus_, a kind of pantaloon, a clown with puffed +cheeks and shaven head, who has to stand a great amount of boisterous +slapping from the chief actor. + +Other parts can be taken by women, who are forbidden to appear on the +stage in “legitimate” tragedy and comedy. Often the dances and postures +of these actresses are indescribably vulgar, and their reputation for +easy conduct is too well established. For all that, their presence +brings unsteady youths to the theaters like flies, and affairs with +actresses are quite normal things with a type of young bloods. Once +Cicero was defending a free and easy client, a certain Plancus. “He’s +accused of having run off with an actress?” declared the advocate. “Why +_that’s_ just an amusement excellently sanctioned by custom!” + +The stories portrayed by the mimes correspond with their general +character:--a robber chief befooling the clumsy constables sent to +take him, a lover surprised by the return of a jealous husband and +forced to hide in a large box, a beggar who suddenly stumbles into a +fortune, a descent into the world of ghosts, episodes revolving around +the introduction of a very clever trained dog, etc. Some of the acting +is of high order, but there are few mimes which do not abound in lines +and situations extremely gross,--for all that the open-air theaters are +packed from morn until sunset. + + +=323. The Pantomimes: Their Real Art.=--All considered, the pantomimes +represent a higher degree of art. Here we have only one actor, who, +with the aid of a chorus and a great orchestra of lutes and lyres, +undertakes to tell a whole story merely by his dancing and rhythmic +motions. A really great _pantomimus_ wins and deserves the favor of +highly cultivated aristocrats. Pylades and Bathyllus in Augustus’s day +had the fashionable world practically at their feet, and Paris was one +of the prime intimates of Nero. + +The greater the skill the fewer the words that need to be spoken; the +chanting of the chorus while the pantomimus is changing his costumes +giving hint enough of the characters he is portraying. The music, +florid and descriptive, keeps the audience in mood for the dancing. +All sorts of subjects can thus be portrayed, including those of old +Greek tragedies, the actor slipping from one character to another with +consummate art:--now he is Agamemnon, now Clytemnestra, now Orestes. +He can take male or female parts alternately, delineate the deepest +passions, and tell a whole story with what his admirers call his +“speaking hands,” and his “eloquence of dancing.” + +To see a great pantomimus, clad perhaps in fleshings of soft light +red Canunian wool, setting off perfectly his graceful figure, dance +through the story of how Achilles disguised as a maiden was discovered +by Ulysses and summoned away to the Trojan War, is a joy to the most +sophisticated and intellectual. The dancer can take many parts--the +fair youth concealed in the palace of Lycomedes, the embassy of Ulysses +and Diomedes, the young warrior betraying himself by his interest in +the helmet and cuirass concealed in the mass of gifts intended for +women;--the whole impersonation in short may be wonderful. + +Not all the dances, however, are so innocent. Many of the coarsest +stories in Græco-Roman mythology are acted out on the stage, and the +grosser they are often the louder the applause of the groundlings. +Nevertheless, the leading pantomimi rightly have the entrée to lordly +houses, enjoy great incomes, and are among the most admired personages +in Rome. They are outdistanced, however, by two sets of more vulgar +rivals--the charioteers and the gladiators. + + +=324. Extreme Popularity of the Circus.=--When a series of superior +contests is announced for the Circus all Rome seems to become racing +mad. Words fail to describe the excitement, the tense discussion of +the charioteers and their fours, the wave of betting from the inner +Palatine to the most sordid insula, and then the exuberant joy or +immoderate grief over the results. + +Superior folk try in vain to appear disdainful of these contests. +Thus Pliny the Younger has recorded his deep disgust that “so many +thousands of men should be eager, like a pack of children, to see +horses running time after time with the charioteers bending over their +cars.” “The multitude,” he asserted, “were not interested in the +speed of the teams or the skill of the drivers, but solely in the +‘_racing colors_.’” “If in the middle of the race (he added) the +colors were changed, the enthusiasm of the spectators would change with +them, and they would suddenly desert the drivers and horses whom they +now recognized afar and whose names they shouted aloud. Such is the +influence and authority vested in one cheap tunic!” + + +=325. Popular Charioteers (_Aurigæ_): the Great Racing Factions.=--It +is all very well to write this, but neither Pliny nor anybody else +can prevent the greatest charioteers from enjoying temporary incomes +surpassing those of a majority of the senators. Many of these lucky +_aurigæ_ are Moors, dark-skinned, hawk-eyed rascals, with sharp white +teeth and sinews of iron; but a considerable sprinkling of them are +Spaniards, as was that Diocles, whose heirs proudly recorded on his +tombstone that in a professional career of twenty-four years he drove +in 4257 races, and conquered 1462 times, with total winnings of nearly +36 million sesterces (say $1,440,000). He, however, was not the most +fortunate--there are drivers on record who boast of at least 3500 +victories, though, of course, many of these were probably won in the +provinces. + +No sport will ever be more thoroughly standardized and professionalized +than that of the chariot races in Rome. When a magistrate or other +seeker for applause decides to give a series of contests he appeals to +the great circus syndicates (“factions”). There were originally only +the Red and the White; then the Blue and the Green have been added, and +finally the Purple and the Gold. Each faction maintains huge racing +stables with expert drivers, grooms, trainers, and veterinaries, as +well as many superb “fours” of horses. + +The donor of the games has to arrange with these organizations how +many contests he will require, each “faction” entering a chariot in +each race. Ten races a day is the minimum; twenty-four the ordinary +maximum. After the contracts have been signed and the programs posted +all over the city, anxious days follow for all concerned to insure an +honest race. The wagering is always so general and so reckless, that +infinite precautions are needful to keep the horses from being drugged, +the drivers from being bribed to throw the contests, or (if they prove +incorruptible) the charioteers from being poisoned enough to make them +lose. The tricks of the race-track will simply endure across the ages. + + +=326. The Circus Maximus.=--After such preparations and excitement +no wonder that people complain that the Circus Maximus is sometimes too +small. This long narrow depression between the Palatine and Aventine +has provided an excellent natural race course since the days of the +Tarquins. At first the slopes of the hills were simply lined with crude +wooden benches. By Julius Cæsar’s time many of these benches were made +of stone, and in all could seat at least 150,000 spectators. After a +great fire in 36 A.D. Claudius presently rebuilt the whole +structure so there are now seats, partly of marble and partly of wood; +and Trajan added still more tiers and more marble ornaments. At present +the Circus Maximus covers the enormous area of 600 by 2000 feet, and +it is declared that there is at least standing room, if not seats, for +385,000 spectators--a good fraction of the entire adult population of +Rome.[207] + + +=327. The Race-Track: Procession before the Races.=--Inasmuch as horse +races are not peculiar to the Imperial Age let a brief description +of the Great Circus and its contests suffice. The long reaches of +seats are, of course, portioned off to give the senators and equites +the coigns of vantage. There is a lofty imperial box (_pulvinar_) on +the northern side leading directly down from the Palatine. Here the +Emperor and his suite can refresh themselves, and from a wide terrace +command a marvelous view over the long area of the immense hippodrome. + + [Illustration: CIRCUS MAXIMUS. _Restoration by + Spandoni._] + +Down the center of this area runs its central “backbone” (_spina_), +forming a long low wall separating the outward and inward tracks, +adorned with an unusually elaborate set of statues, columns upholding +trophies, and even with one or two tapering obelisks imported from +Egypt. In a kind of open pavilion at either end of the spina can be +seen seven huge marble eggs and as many marble dolphins. One of each of +these will be removed as each lap is finished, there being seven laps +normally in every race. + +The great yellow race-track on gala occasions can be sprinkled with +some powerful perfumes, and with glittering particles of mica or with +red lead. When at last the multitudes have gathered, the contestants +enter in solemn procession by the Triumphal Gate at the extreme eastern +end of the Circus, and ahead of the array of chariots first of all +there goes the magistrate giving the games, himself in a magnificent +car and surrounded by a brilliant hedge of attendants on horse and +foot. Very likely he is then followed by certain priestly colleges in +pontifical vestments, by statues of deities piously borne on gilded +litters, by bands of trumpeters and harpists raising their clangor, and +then last, but not least, come the racing cars themselves. + + +=328. Beginning a Race in the Circus.=--The master of the games takes +his seat in the _podium_, the center of the reserved benches near +the end of the track. The chariots disappear in the great line of +_carceres_, “prison houses,” the carefully closed stalls at the western +end of the Circus. After due waiting, fidgeting, chattering, wagering +along the mountainous slopes of the benches, all the trumpets blow +together. Silence for an instant grips the tens of thousands, while the +president rises in his lodge and waves out a broad _mappa_, a white +cloth visible far up and down the entire circus. + +Instantly the doors of the carceres fly open; the six chariots[208] +dash forth at full bound. The aurigæ, in tight-fitting tunics of the +colors of their factions, stand erect in the light cars, the reins +looped around their waists, snapping the loose ends over the flying +horses. Instantly they have dashed to the three tall pillars of the +nearer goal (_meta_), and only by miraculous chance is a disastrous +collision avoided at the outset. Then the whole circus rises and shouts +together. The familiar figure of Scorpus the Moor, a brown giant in the +tunic of the Greens, shoots ahead. His magnificent _quadriga_ of bays +have taken the wall at one leap. The flying dust cloud, as the other +five cars dash after him, almost dims the sight of the race. The noise +from the benches is deafening. The backers of the trailing cars are in +an agony. + + +=329. Perils of the Races; Proclaiming the Victors.=--Scorpus’s chariot +whirls around the lower goal like lightning and comes tearing back on +the opposite track, while each one of the balls and dolphins is removed +to indicate the progress of the race. The other cars press hard; and +as the teams gather speed it is a marvel how the drivers keep their +stand with the cars leaping hither and thither under them, their wheels +barely touching the flying track.[209] + +Five times around they go, with Scorpus gallantly maintaining his lead. +Then at the sixth turn the “Gold” driver reins too sharply. His chariot +crashes over in a complete somersault, but, by a desperate maneuver +just as he is thrown, he whips out the knife held ready in his belt and +cuts the reins about his waist. By a miracle he is flung out sprawling +upon the yielding sands, yet escapes death under the car racing just +behind. The spectators, therefore, escape the brutal and familiar sight +of an auriga trampled or crushed to death by the rushing chariots and +horses. Meantime Scorpus losing not an instant has hurried again past +the upper goal; a frantic attempt by Cresconius, the “Red” driver just +behind, fails to head his steeds, and amid a deafening tumult he sweeps +past the president of the games to victory. + +The official _jubilatores_ immediately stride out into the track +crying with loud voice the name of the winner, and the news is soon +flying all over the city. Nay, some of the outlying towns are speedily +informed of the general results, for a certain sports-loving senator +has come with a cage of homing pigeons, each colored to match one of +the factions. The instant Scorpus is acclaimed, green pigeons are +released to tell all the gamblers in Ostia and Præneste that the +“Green” cars have won the first round. + + [Illustration: RACE IN THE CIRCUS MAXIMUS.] + +After the noise has subsided, the trumpets blow again, another set of +chariots is ready and the whole excitement is repeated. So the contests +keep up through the day. If there is a long interval between the +races, rope-dancers, acrobats, and trick-riders are ready to amuse the +populace. Probably at the end there will be the crowning and decisive +race between the winners of the preceding contests. If Scorpus can +triumph in this also, he will carouse with his companions, doubtless +more praised and fêted for one glad night than even the Emperor. + + +=330. Gladiatorial Contests Even More Popular than the Circus.=--Yet +Scorpus with all his adulation and ephemeral wealth turns green with +jealousy toward a rival for fame--the victorious gladiator in the last +combats in the Flavian. The sports of the arena perhaps excite greater +favor with the mob, betting more reckless, passions more frantic than +do even the contests of the Circus. + +The gladiatorial games are peculiar to Roman civilization; nothing +exactly like them will follow in later ages.[210] They illustrate +completely the pitiless spirit and carelessness of human life lurking +behind the pomp, glitter, and cultural pretensions of the great +imperial age. True it is that persons of intellectual tastes sometimes +affect greater contempt for these contests than they do for the Circus. +“No doubt the gladiators,” such men as Seneca write to one another, +“are criminals deserving their fate, but what have _you_ done to +deserve being compelled to witness their last agonies?” No matter; +nothing will gain “popularity” for a ruler or for a magnate sooner than +announcing a fight in the arena. + +The very best Emperors arrange elaborate series of combats--perhaps +with a sigh in their hearts, as colossal and bloody bribes which must +be thrown constantly to the mob; and Imperator, great officials, +senators, priests, nay, the Vestal Virgins themselves, will all be +on hand in the reserved front benches. There is even given out a +philosophical justification for the butcheries, namely, that the +spectators become hardened to the sight of death and are, therefore, +the more courageous when their own hour comes. The reigning Hadrian +considers the arena combats to be useful also for keeping up the +military spirit; in short the whole Latin half of the Empire delights +in them, although they never have become very popular in the Greek +portion.[211] + + +=331. Gladiator Fights at Funerals.=--Gladiatorial fights claim an +Etruscan origin, and in Rome they were first exhibited at funerals of +the great, possibly with the idea that the spirits of the slain would +serve the dead lord in the underworld. It is still very fashionable +to give a sizable gladiator fight as the aftermath of any pretentious +funeral, but this is perhaps more common in the provincial towns than +in Rome, where the government likes to control such martial spectacles. + +We actually hear of the populace of one small city that would not +let the funeral procession of a distinguished lady proceed through +the gates until her husband had promised them some public combats. +Pliny the Younger’s friend Maximus presented a gladiator fight to the +citizens of Verona “in honor of his most estimable wife,” a native +of the place, but the exhibition was not quite a success because “on +account of bad weather the numerous African panthers he had bought +failed to arrive on the expected day.” + + +=332. Gladiator “Schools” (_Ludi_): Inmates Usually Criminals.=--There +are four great imperial “schools” (_ludi_) of gladiators in Rome +maintained as public institutions. These can be drawn upon for the +regular public games; but there are plenty of private “schools” +maintained by speculators who can often supply quite as good fighters. + +If, as a magistrate, or as a bereaved kinsman or widower, you decide +to give some combats, and if your purse is full, the rest is easy. You +merely contract with the _lanista_ (keeper and trainer of a school) for +so many contests upon specified terms; although, in really pretentious +affairs, gladiators from several rival schools can be pitted +together--this adds to the excitement. When the fight is over the free +gladiators are paid off, the slave fighters are returned to their +owners and indemnification is given the owners of the slain--all on set +business terms. There is great expense in training good gladiators and +slain champions cannot fight again; and this solid fact often prevents +combats from being _too_ destructive, while wounded survivors may be +carefully nursed just as a sick race horse may be cared for. + +Anybody will tell us that no pity need be wasted on gladiators. Many a +low-born criminal is dragged from the præfect’s court with a relieved +grin on his felonious countenance; the magistrate has not ordered “To +the cross with him!” but merely “Train him for the amphitheater.” Many +an incorrigible slave has been sold to a lanista by his master instead +of being promptly whipped to death. + +Not a few unfortunate prisoners of war and kidnapped persons, however, +if they have stout physiques, find their way also to the lanistæ +instead of to the ordinary slave markets, and brutal masters will +sometimes sell perfectly innocent slaves if the latter appear likely +to make good swordsmen. On the other hand many plebeians of the baser +sort are caught by the glitter and glory of the arena, and submit +voluntarily to the discipline of the “schools,” while under the +tyrannous emperors even men claiming noble rank have fought upon the +sands to truckle to the whims of an evil Cæsar. + + +=333. Severe Training of Gladiators; Their Ephemeral Glory.=--The +lanistæ’s discipline is terribly severe, as is perhaps needful +considering the wretches placed under it. The gladiators are kept in +prison-like barracks. Nothing is omitted to brutalize them and to make +their whole life center around mere skill with their weapons. They are +fed upon great quantities of meat. Cruel floggings follow the least +breach of discipline, and in every _ludus_ is a lock-up, with a long +line of stocks and shackles, which never wants its many occupants. + +On the other hand many a stupid wretch is made to forget the doom +probably awaiting him in the next combats, by dreaming of the glories +promised a truly successful gladiator. If he can emerge victorious from +a series of combats, he is more talked of than even the most daring +charioteer; great nobles will visit his quarters to watch his training +and feel of his muscles; his owners will do everything to pamper +such a valuable piece of property; innumerable women, even among the +silken-robed _clarissimæ_, will dote upon him; and perhaps he can +actually elope with a senator’s wife. + +Not merely the youths but all the girls in Rome will sing the +champion’s praises and dream of his valor. He will be named in +countless wall-scribblings as “The Maiden’s Sigh,” “The Glory of the +Girls,” “The Lord of the Lasses,” or “The Doctor (_medicus_) of the +Little Darlings.”[212] If he has lost an ear, if his face is one mass +of disfiguring scars, the women run after him all the more. “Never mind +_that_,” scolds Juvenal, “he is a gladiator.” + +The end of this glory ordinarily comes speedily and tragically, but +sometimes the very fortunate and skilful fighter will win such favor +that, at the popular demand, the giver of the games will present him +with a wooden sword--the token of honorable discharge. If he is not a +slave-criminal, he can now quit the _ludus_ with plenty of money and a +merry life before him, but the taint of his “profession” will always +stick to him. He can never become a Roman citizen, much less can he be +enrolled as an eques whatever the extent of his wealth. + + +=334. Normal Arrangements for an Arena Contest.=--Strictly speaking the +amphitheater is used for two kinds of entertainments--wild beast hunts +(_venationes_) and direct combats between men. Each form is extremely +popular, although human gore appears a little cheap and ordinary +compared with that of an expensive tiger, panther, or lion. It always +makes a hit with the crowd to turn, for example, a tigress and a fierce +bull-elephant loose on the sands and watch the two brutes rend one +another. + +It is true nevertheless that nothing can really take the place of +a sustained combat between two thoroughly trained pupils of the +“schools.” Ordinarily the management will have the hunts in the morning +at the amphitheater and the human contests in the afternoon. That will +send the myriads away happily satiated after a day spent amid the +perpetual sniff of gore. + +No scene visited in our prolonged “day” in Rome can be more repellent +to non-Roman tastes than that of the amphitheater, but to complete the +picture it must not be omitted, although horrid deeds will be dismissed +with few words and still less of moralizing. Publius Calvus’s friend, +Decimus Cluentius, this year is Prætor. He is a wealthy senator and has +been saving money carefully for “his games.” He has already made a good +public impression by his program of races in the Circus; now he will +“add to the luster of his fame” by a day of contests in the Flavian. +Already the notice writers have distributed the list of the gladiators +that he has engaged, in every eating-house and wine-room in the city. + +The impression thus made has been excellent: “Cluentius is living up +to his riches. Many of his gladiators are freemen--the finest blades, +no running away, the kind of fellows that will stand right up and be +butchered in mid-arena. Besides, he’s been lucky enough to get from the +præfect a farm steward who was caught insulting his master’s wife--a +good dinner for the lions. These fights won’t be as when that miserly +Norbanus exhibited--his gladiators were such a cowardly, feeble lot +they’d have fallen flat if you breathed on ’em.”[213] + + +=335. The Flavian Amphitheater (Later “Colosseum”).=--Such an +exhibition can only be held in the Flavian Amphitheater, the vast +structure known to later ages as the “Colosseum.” In Republican days +gladiator fights were held in the open Forum or in the Circus, but +these were ill-adapted for the purpose. To see the fine points of the +combats the audience must be concentrated around the contestants as +closely as possible; hence the “amphitheater”--an immense oval of seats +looking down upon a central arena. + +The building of such a quantity of seats out of permanent materials is +very expensive and wooden structures were largely used until about 70 +A.D., when Vespasian and Titus began their vast “Flavian” (dedicated +in 80 A.D. by an enormous beast hunt), now among the chief wonders of +Rome. Common report has it that thousands of Titus’s Jewish captives +had to toil first on the masonry and then for the most part to lose +their lives fighting one another in the opening games. + +To avoid prolixity any description of this vast structure must be very +brief: it stands an oval cylinder, its outer major diameter 620 feet; +and the greatest diameter of its inner arena 287. Its innumerable +blocks of travertine are bound together by metal clamps; the exterior +is faced with marble and adorned with hundreds more of those statues +which populate Rome. The structure rises 157 feet in four stories. The +lower three of these tiers are composed each of a series of eighty +arches backed by piers. In the first story the flanking columns are +Doric, the second Ionic, the third Corinthian. The fourth story has +no arches but merely windows and pilasters of the “composite” order. +Between these upper pilasters project stone brackets which hold lofty +wooden masts for the great awnings that stretch over the arena. These +masts and awnings (red, blue, and yellow) when spread out under a +brilliant sky, make the Flavian look somewhat like an enormous galley +under a cloud of sail--the effect, of course, being heightened by the +sheen of the marbles of the exterior and the garish paint and gilding +covering the statues. + + [Illustration: FLAVIAN AMPHITHEATER (COLOSSEUM): + exterior, present state.] + + +=336. Exterior and Ticket Entrances to the Flavian +Amphitheater.=--Outside of the Amphitheater is a wide circular area +whereon converge many thoroughfares. This open space is scattered +with huckster’s booths and with small ticket stands much like those +around many amusement places in another age.[214] Here one can place +wagers, purchase programs for the day, obtain food to consume between +the events, and very probably buy or hire cushions in case the stone +benches prove too hard. + +Also on the outside and close to the foot of the main structure runs +a high wooden palisade. This is to aid in controlling the crowds. You +go in at one or two entrances, showing your tickets, then circle the +masonry until you reach one of the staircases, located under every +fourth arch, and next you can promptly mount to your reserved seat in +one of the seventy-six sub-sections (_cunei_). + + +=337. Interior Arrangements of the Flavian.=--Once inside, the +admirable arrangements of the structure impress the visitor no less +than its enormous mass. Everything converges upon the central arena; +even from the topmost seats one can see all the details of the contests +below. The seats are divided into three great terraces, so easily +accessible by the stairways and corridors that the fifty thousand +spectators can pass in and out with the minimum of confusion. The +lowest tiers, made of marble and comfortably cushioned, are reserved +here as elsewhere for the senators; and for the _editor_ (the +giver of the contests), his fellow magistrates, the chief priests, +and the Vestal Virgins, there are seats of peculiar honor directly +upon the _podium_, the crest of the twelve-foot wall girding the +arena;--seats which are protected alike from chance missiles and from +the leap of desperate beasts by a heavy trellis-work of gilded metal. + +Above this podium like the billows of a frozen ocean rise the enormous +tiers of masonry seats; first those for the equites, then the great +mass for the paying spectators, then the space crowded with wooden +benches for the slaves and least select plebeians. An open gallery +runs around the entire summit of the benches and here alone, by a +restriction doubtless often lamented, women are allowed to watch the +contests from afar, unless they are Vestal Virgins or ladies of the +Imperial family, with the special privilege of the podium. + +All the arches, stairways, sections, and tiers are numbered. If you +have a ticket, it may read “VIth section (_cuneus_), lowest row, seat +No. 18,” marked upon a round or flat piece of bone. The attendants are +lynx-eyed for impostors, but legitimate visitors are quickly seated. +A detachment of sailors from the fleet of Misenum shifts the enormous +awnings so that the thousands[215] can sit comfortably in the shade +while a full blaze of sunlight falls on the arena. + +By the middle of the morning the multitudes are in place; Cluentius +the Prætor, with full official magnificence, is in the central box of +the podium; and strong detachments of Prætorians have been quietly +distributed in certain half-concealed guard inclosures near the lower +railing--for gladiators _have_ been known to mutiny and desperate +lions can leap very high. + + +=338. Procession of Gladiators.=--Presently now trumpets and cymbals +announce the procession which files through one of the four gates +leading directly into the arena. The gladiators, some forty in number, +march two and two, nearly naked save for their glistening armor; +knitted foreheads, white teeth, wolfish scowls, magnificent physiques +are displayed by all of them. From far up the applauding benches they +can be recognized, and many favorite _retiarii_ and _Thraces_ are met +with a storm of cheering. + +The company marches solemnly down the arena led by an enormous lanista, +one of their trainers, the scarred hero of all the youth of Rome. +Before Cluentius on the podium they halt and flourish their weapons +defiantly. Everybody knows that they have just taken their fearful oath +“to be bound, to be burned, to be scourged, to be slain, and to endure +all else required of them as proper gladiators, giving up alike their +souls and their bodies.”[216] + + +=339. Throwing a Criminal to the Beasts. The Animal Hunt.=--However, +the contests do not begin immediately; there is a preliminary spectacle +in store. The Prætor’s friend, the City Præfect, most luckily has +handed over to him a vicious freedman caught maltreating his patron’s +lady. The wretch, of course, deserves death:--how proper, therefore, +that he can be made to amuse more honest folk by his very exit! Into +the middle of the arena they lead him, a pitiful gibbering object, +half-dead already with fright. The guards strike off his fetters, +thrust a cheap sword into his hands, and themselves hastily retire into +one of the numerous caged chambers lining the arena. A tense stillness +for an instant holds the Flavian. + +Suddenly the rattle of chains is heard. In the very center of the sands +(part of which are over wooden substructures) the arena opens; a cage +appears lifted by pulleys, and then is opened by some mechanism. Forth +bounds a tawny lion, lashing his tail and growling with hunger and +rage. The unskilled victim has been given a sword with the vain promise +that if he can actually kill the lion his own life will be spared. His +chances are infinitesimal, but a few desperadoes have thus actually +saved themselves. + +Will the prisoner fight? To the infinite disgust of the thousands he +collapses upon the sands in sheer terror before the lion can so much as +strike him. The beast finishes his life almost instantly. The multitude +hoot and curse--they have been cheated of their passionate desire to +see a human victim struggling in desperate combat with the great beast. +Fortunately, they remind themselves, this is only the beginning of the +performance. + +If one need not moralize, one need not linger. After the sacrifice +of the criminal there are more beasts turned loose in the arena. Of +course, no Prætor can be expected to show the hundreds of animals which +an Emperor will exhibit in his greater games, but Cluentius has done +the thing very respectably. He has in all ten bears, eighteen panthers, +five lions, and six tigers. + +First the animals are goaded on to fight one with another. A bear is +torn to death by a lion, but kills the lion in a last mortal hug. +Then the trumpet sounds--some of the gladiators rush into the arena. +The arena is now covered with frightened, snarling, reckless beasts. +Even with keen weapons and skill, it is desperate work to slay them. +One fine young German slips as a tiger bounds on him. His life is +crushed out at the very foot of the editor’s stand. One panther, driven +frantic, with a terrific leap almost clears the trellis directly before +a Vestal Virgin; there is a general scream and recoil from the podium +as the luckless beast drops back upon the spear of a hunter. + + +=340. Interval in the Contests: Scattering of Lottery Tickets.=--At +last the _venatio_ is over. All the beasts have been killed with +reasonable skill, and barring only the German, with no accidents. It +is now noon and a comfortable intermission follows. Food has been +brought by many, or is passed about by hawkers. Cluentius, with great +condescension, remains in the editor’s seat, and dines in public so +that everybody present can go home boasting merrily, “We have been to +prandium with the Prætor!”[217] + +After hunger has been appeased the spectators begin to grow restive. +It is the immemorial privilege of the crowds to shout out whatever +they wish in the Circus or Amphitheater. An unpopular Commissioner of +the Grain Supply is seen rising in the podium; instantly the great +awning quakes with the hootings. There is even a volley of date and +olive stones; when, luckily for the Commissioner, the Prætor orders the +attendants to begin scattering lottery tickets along the benches. + + [Illustration: BOXERS.] + +Instantly all else is forgotten; dignified men scramble over one +another. In the free benches there are several genuine fights and many +a torn toga or lacerna. The winning tickets to-morrow will draw jars of +wine, packages of edibles, or even quite a few denarii in cash; but if +the editor had been the Emperor the prizes could well have been fine +jewelry, pictures, beasts of burden, tidy sums of money, or even--as +the grand prize--a small villa. + +This distribution silences all the discordant howlings; and the people +are further amused by a kind of theatrical pageant, some popular +pantomimes giving the Judgment of Paris in a clever and not inelegant +manner, without scenery in the broad arena. After that two ostriches +are unloosed and the crowd is put in an excellent humor while four +Moorish riders on shining desert steeds chase down the speeding, +doubling birds and finally lasso them. All is at last ready for the +real business of the day--the gladiators. + + +=341. Beginning the Regular Gladiatorial Combats.=--The hunters of the +beasts, duly reënforced by many others, reënter the arena again in grim +procession. Approaching the editor’s seat on the podium they can be +seen passing up their weapons for Cluentius, to let him satisfy himself +that every edge is sharpened beyond the possibility of shamming. +He hands back each spear or sword with a nod, then the long file +straightens and every combatant lifts his right arm: “_Ave, prætor!_” +sounds the deep chant, “_morituri te salutamus!_” “_Ave!_” answers +Cluentius gesturing haughtily. “Low-browed scoundrels,” mutters Calvus +to a fellow senator; “Most of them are lucky to end up this way and to +escape the cross.--Ah! they begin.” + +First, however, to get well limbered, wooden swords are handed about, +and the troop fence with one another skilfully yet harmlessly; but +the people are waxing impatient--“Steel! Steel!” rings the shout from +the whole amphitheater, and the dense array of women in the upper +gallery is calling it as fiercely as the men on the ocean of benches. +A terrific blast of trumpets sounds from mid-arena, and a gigantic +lanista acting as a kind of umpire motions with his spear. Soon every +heart in the myriads is thrilled by the clash of weapons. + +Cluentius (an unoriginal though free-spending magistrate) has arranged +a very conventional series of combats. First two Britons dash about in +chariots pelting each other with javelins. Their armor turns the darts +for long, then one of the horses is wounded and while his driver is +struggling to control him another missile strikes through a joint in +the warrior’s armor. He totters in the car while all the amphitheater +rises and yells together “_Habet!_” “He’s got it!”--and then as the +poor wight tumbles back into the sands, “_Peractum est!_” “He’s done +for!” + + [Illustration: GLADIATORS SALUTING THE EDITOR BEFORE + JOINING IN MORTAL COMBAT.] + +Immediately there appears a grotesque figure, arrayed as Charon, +the dead man’s ferryman. He bears a hammer wherewith he strikes the +body of the victim to see if he is counterfeiting death. The fallen +chariot warrior stirs not--and “Charon” with a long hook drags away +the corpse into one of the dens under the podium. The benches are now +leaping, gesticulating, and yelling--the noise is indescribable, and +Cluentius’s friends hasten to tell him that the combats have started +admirably. + + +=342. Mounted Combats: the Signals for Ruthlessness and Mercy.=--The +surviving charioteer disappears amid plaudits. In his place ride out +four horsemen; and two mounted duels can thus take place at either +side of the arena. One pair contend evenly and stoutly, but the other +contest soon ends--the less skilful rider is dashed from his seat +by his opponent’s sword, and is so hurt he can barely lift himself +upon the sands. The victor leaps down and stands over him waving his +reddened blade, while his disarmed victim in sheer helplessness raises +the right hand, the fist clinched except for one upraised finger--the +demand for “Mercy!” + + [Illustration: DEFEATED GLADIATOR APPEALING FOR + MERCY: spectators, with Vestal Virgins in front seats, + turning “thumbs down.”] + +The conqueror obsequiously looks toward his employer Cluentius upon +the podium, and the Prætor, bound to be gracious to the populace, +motions somewhat inquiringly toward the spectators--let them decide! If +the defeated gladiator had fought more gamely and had striven to rise +and renew the fight, possibly enough white handkerchiefs--the token +of mercy--would have been waved to warrant the editor in flourishing +his own also;--but the fellow had collapsed too easily and the mood +of the crowd demanded blood. “_Occide! Occide!_” “Kill! Kill!” +is the yell; and thousands of thumbs are ruthlessly pointed downward. +Cluentius’s own thumb is pointed down likewise. The victor raises his +weapon and without scruple plunges it in the breast of the vanquished, +who sustains the honor of his profession by receiving the mortal blow +without flinching. + +Again the Charon enters with his hook and clears the arena. In the +interval the other mounted duelists, cool and experienced warriors, +have partly suspended their combat and now they profit through their +comrade’s death by the umpiring lanista’s declaration of a draw. The +people are sated for an instant and Cluentius nods approval as the two +ride out; he is inwardly glad to spare them, because the owners of dead +gladiators have to be indemnified. + + +=343. Combats between Netters (_Retiarii_) and Heavy-Armed Warriors +(Thracians).=--So combat follows combat, while the sands grow red and +one warrior falls simply by slipping upon the gore. The suffocating +fumes of blood rise through the bars of sunlight under the great +awning. The people grow more and more excited. There will be hundreds +of beggars to-night in Rome on account of the reckless wagering. + +At last the trumpets sound for what is always the crowning feature of +the exhibition--the chief thing which the multitudes have really waited +all day to see--ten _retiarii_ are to fight ten “Thracians.” The +retiarii (“netters”) wear not the least armor. They carry nothing but +three-pronged lances and thick nets, which last they endeavor to +fling over their adversaries, entangle them, and then stab with their +tridents ere they can cut loose. The “Thracians” have heavy suits of +armor and formidable swords.[218] If a netter misses his cast, there +is nothing for him to do but to fly for dear life. The sight of a +powerful, armed Thracian toiling after the leaping, dodging retiarius +is a source of universal joy to the amphitheaters. The people rise +on the benches and join in a kind of intoxication and blood orgy. +“_Verbera! Verbera! Occide! Occide!_” “Lay on! Kill!”--rises as a +thunder to heaven. + + +=344. End of the Combats: Rewarding the Victors.=--It profits not +to dwell on the half hour which follows. Plenty of skill, valor, and +swiftness are shown alike by netters and by heavy-armed warriors. One +by one part of the twenty drop, and for a while the passions of the +people permit no mercy. The Charon appears several times; but there is +a young Spanish netter whose nimbleness and reckless courage win great +favor, and many are muttering, “We want to see him again.” There is +also a very experienced Thracian whose owner will demand from Cluentius +a round indemnity, if the fight is pushed to a finish and his precious +chattel is slain. + +As a result when four wounded men together drop their weapons and +signal for mercy, white handkerchiefs begin waving all over the +amphitheater and Cluentius is glad to shake out his also. The combats +are over. The victorious gladiators, if they are unhurt enough to +stand, are led before the podium and to each are handed palms of +victory. + +There is furthermore a crowning ceremony. One Certus, a very famous +netter, has by previous understanding taken only a formal part in +the combats. Now, while the whole multitude leaps up to acclaim him, +Cluentius himself rises and gives him the wooden sword--the sign that +he need fight and risk his life no more. Henceforth Certus will become +himself no doubt a _lanista_, and train hundreds of other brawny +youths to yield up their lives for the amusement of Rome. + +The amphitheater empties from all its numerous _vomitoria_. The +crowd goes home well contented, praising Cluentius and hoping he will +be assigned a fine province to govern. True it has not been as if the +Emperor were present--then there might have been two hundred or more +gladiators, an enormous slaughter of beasts; fountains could have +played in the arena to refresh the air, and perfumes could have been +scattered from the awnings; or the arena might easily have been flooded +for a sea fight between two squadrons of small galleys. + +Nevertheless, Cluentius has done very well for a mere Prætor; and he +will have to pay indemnity for about fourteen of his forty gladiators, +a very fair average to get butchered. “It has been a pleasant enough +holiday (say many) in a toiling and busy world, and the rumor goes that +for the next Ides at the Consul’s games they have rounded up a whole +gang of robbers who will all be fed to the lions!” + + + + + CHAPTER XX + + THE ROMAN RELIGION: THE PRIESTHOODS, THE VESTAL VIRGINS + + +=345. Religious Symbols Everywhere in Rome.=--The circus races and +the amphitheater butcheries are nominally in honor of some god. It is +perhaps Vulcan in whose name Cluentius has hired the gladiators to +slaughter one another. Everywhere about Rome are imposing temples and +lesser shrines, and there are almost more statues of gods and demigods +than there are people in the swarming streets. The symbolic snakes +for the Lares of the locality or of the household, are painted upon +thousands of walls. All this would indicate that the Romans of the +Empire are extraordinarily religious. How far does this outward seeming +correspond to the actual facts? + + +=346. Epicureanism and Agnosticism among the Upper Classes.=--If +we penetrate the life of men like Publius Calvus and others of the +upper circle, apparently we are dealing with persons who are almost, if +not complete, agnostics. Some are cheerful Epicureans who formally deny +that there are any deities that concern themselves with mortal affairs, +and who for their own part look upon the world as a chance aggregation +of atoms, and upon life as one physical sensation after another with +nothing later awaiting a man but eternal slumber in the grave. Moral +“laws” merely exist to adjust human relationships, so that you can win +the maximum enjoyment from day to day. + +Theories like this can be justified in sonorous, noble language, +as in the great poems of Lucretius, but the underlying philosophy +remains the same. Cluentius, the Prætor, whose library is crammed with +Epicurean writings, has, in fact, just been ordering chiseled on his +ostentatious funeral monument, “_Eat, drink, enjoy yourself--the rest +is nothing._”[219] + +[Illustration: MAISON CARRÉE, NÎMES, FRANCE: the best +preserved temple of the Roman type in existence.] + + +=347. Stoicism: Revival of Religion under the Empire.=--Calvus +himself, a decidedly practical man not too fond of nice speculations, +takes greater pleasure in the theories of the Stoics. The stern +teaching that “duty” is the be-all and end-all of life, and that +true freedom and happiness come only by a scrupulous discharge of +every obligation, appeals strongly to many hard-headed Romans. It +fits in well with their old native religion, and they accept it +without much abstract philosophizing. But the “God” discussed by Zeno, +Cleanthes, and the later Stoics is only a hard, impersonal, resistless +force,--“Eternal Law” under another name. He is in nowise a merciful +Heavenly Father, any more than he is a youthful, beauteous, and very +human Apollo. Calvus, in short, is hardly more convinced than his +friend Cluentius, the Epicurean, that there really exists any personal +deity.[220] + +However, religion as an outward institution, has been steadily gaining +under the Roman Empire. Probably never were there ever more unabashed +atheists than such personages as Sulla and Julius Cæsar in the last +decades of the Republic,--men not without pet superstitions perhaps +and a belief in their “stars,” but who were almost cynical in their +expressions of disbelief in any ruling Providence, and to whom temples +and worship were only convenient political engines for befooling the +mob. + +Augustus nevertheless was probably somewhat more of a believing man +himself, and he grasped the enormous value of reinvigorating the old +cults, rebuilding the crumbling shrines, and finally of rekindling +the conviction that there existed a stabilizing and avenging host of +deities as a means for getting moral sanction and support for his new +imperial régime. Since the battle of Actium, temples have multiplied, +priesthoods have been carefully maintained, and solemn religious +ceremonies and sacrifices have been promoted by the government; in +short, a great and partially successful effort has been put forth to +galvanize into a kind of life that early “Religion of Numa,” which once +molded the ideals of the little city by the Tiber. + + +=348. Foreign Cults Intruded upon the “Religion of Numa.”=--Religious +beliefs and institutions at Rome, however, are only in part derived +from the cults and forms of old Italy, whether Etruscan or Latin. The +Greek mythology has been so taken over by the poets that often it is +hard to sift out the indigenous Italian stories from the great mass of +imported legends in which Jupiter and Juno manifestly are merely the +Latin names for Hellenic Zeus and Hera. Furthermore, there has come a +perfect influx of oriental gods: Egyptian Isis, Syrian Baal, Phrygian +Cybele, Persian Mithras--these are merely some of the more important. + +The Roman attitude toward foreign deities is tolerant; provided one +keeps up the outward forms of reverence for the old native deities, it +does no serious harm if people feel happier because they burn incense +to the dog-headed Anubis, or to the uncouth gods of Phœnicia. Of course +these alien rites must not be too gross; such as were the outrageous +old Bacchanals who were broken up in 186 B.C., or the Gallic Druids +who permitted human sacrifice. Otherwise a “foreign superstition” is a +matter merely for a contemptuous shrug or sneer. + +The result is that the cults seen in Rome under the Empire often appear +as a vast jumble of things Greek, Levantine, Oriental, and even Celtic. +The Emperor and Senate seldom bother themselves about matters of inward +belief; Rome has its gladiators but it has no Inquisition. + +Nevertheless, the old Italian religion is still the official cultus of +the state. Its forms are carefully cherished; it is insensibly modified +but it is never repudiated. There are almost the same priesthoods, the +same sacred formulas and machinery of religion as in the days of the +Punic Wars.[221] They are kept up partly out of patriotic pride in all +survivals of the heroic past, partly because they help the government +to control the “mob” and the highly superstitious soldiery, partly (it +must in fairness be added) because very intelligent persons believe +that the ancient Italian religion somehow contributes to the safety +and stability of the Empire,--that when Jupiter Capitolinus falls the +dominion of Rome will actually fall with him. + + +=349. Superstitious Piety of the City Plebeians.=--As for the +multitude, the enormous population in the insulæ, if it has little +intelligent faith, it has abundant ignorant credulity. The outward +service of the gods brings good luck. + +If the public rites fail and if blasphemers (like the execrable +Christians) arise, the corn ships will not get through from Alexandria, +the Tiber will overflow, the pestilence will sweep off thousands +and--almost equal calamity--the favorite aurigæ and gladiators on the +gamblers’ tablets will lose in the games. If a private man neglects the +gods, his shop or business ventures can go bankrupt, his children die, +his wife decamps with a freedman, disease can rack him, premature death +smite him, and his tomb be demolished to the complete obliteration +of his memory. Possibly even his ghost will drift about unhappily in +desert places. Every possible motive, therefore, requires governors and +governed to stand in well with the gods. + +Let us, therefore, examine this “Religion of Numa” which is living yet, +as the official cultus of Rome; then a few words can be said about its +alien competitors. + + +=350. Roman Religion Originally Developed by Italian Farmers.=--The +old Italian farmers who shaped this religion were singularly lacking +in imagination. Very few are the myths for which the poets can claim a +non-Greek origin. The world is conceived of as being full of deities +which often are so little personified that one cannot be sure of their +actual sex: “Be propitious, O Divine One (_numen_), be thou male or be +thou female!” is the proper formula for beginning many ancient prayers. + +Some of these divinities, to be sure, are well-defined and powerful +gods such as Jupiter the Sky-God, Mars the War-God, and Juno the potent +and matronly spouse of Jupiter. Such deities came with the ancestors of +the Italians when they wandered down from the North into that southern +peninsula which they occupied many centuries ago. + +Other divinities are ancient adoptions from the Etruscans or from the +Greeks. Minerva, the protectress of such female arts as weaving and +spinning and later of the more masculine arts, sciences, and learning, +is pretty clearly the Minerva of the Etruscans, and has caught many +attributes from the Pallas Athena of the Greeks. Apollo came, perhaps, +via Etruria, where they called him Aplu, and not directly from Hellas, +but no temple was built to him until after Greek as well as Etruscan +influence in Rome had become very strong. Diana or Luna (“Madame Moon”) +was an old moon goddess, possibly the same as the Etruscan Losna, and +only by a late and very unfortunate identification has she become +confounded with Apollo’s Greek sister Artemis, the virgin huntress on +the Arcadian hills. + +One great goddess, however, Venus, is probably a good old Italian +deity of substantial homely virtues: she is still invoked as Venus +Cloacina (“Venus the Purifier”), when it is necessary to cleanse the +great sewers; a function seldom remembered when giddy youths confound +her with the Greek Aphrodite, and beg her to help their illicit love +affairs! + + +351. =Native Italian Gods: Janus, Saturn, Flora. The Lares and +Penates.=--All these gods and certain other familiar deities such +as Mercury patron of trade and gain, Neptune lord of the sea, Vulcan +the clever smith, and finally, but in nowise least, Vesta the hearth +goddess, and Ceres the Mistress of the Corn, make up the official +“Great Gods” in whose honor the public games are held, and to whom +Emperors and Consuls proffer vows and sacrifice. + + [Illustration: FARMER’S CALENDAR: showing festivals + each month.] + +Highly important also is the strictly native Italian Janus, the +two-faced lord of beginnings and endings, probably an ancient Sun-God; +whom one should invoke at the opening of every fresh day, and in +whose honor (quite appropriately) the month of January is named with +New Year’s Day especially designated to his festival.[222] There is +furthermore Saturn, a rural deity, who has been identified with the +Greek Cronos (“Father Time”); there is Orchus who rules the underworld; +there is Liber the masculine field god, consort of Ceres and sometimes +confounded with the Greek Bacchus; there is Bona Dea (“Good Goddess”) a +mistress of agriculture, possibly only another aspect of Ceres; there +is Flora, the kindly patroness not merely of the flowers but of all +the prosaic vegetable gardens; and there also is Robigus, a malevolent +garden deity who must be propitiated with frequent offerings or he will +mildew the crops. + +All these gods (except the evil Robigus) are near and dear to the +average plebeian, and especially to the farmers. In addition there +are the Lares and Penates. We have seen how they are guardian spirits +of the households--never forgotten in any mansion or upon any social +occasion. + +The state has its own “Public Lares and Penates” as well as private +households; the former are the spirits of the gallant patriots of old +like the first Brutus, Cincinnatus, Camillus, and Scipio Major. The +second are the immortal “Twin Brethren”--Castor and Pollux, who have +ridden to rescue Roman armies on many a hard-fought field. No public +sacrifice can avail unless at least formal reference is made to the +public Lares and Penates along with the special god receiving honor. + +Reënforcing these divinities is a whole host of special rural deities, +who, in a country still very dependent on agriculture, receive special +honor in all the profitable villas and farms crowding up to the gates +of Rome; Faunus and Lupercus are herdsmen’s gods well matching the +Hellenic Pan; Silvanus presides over the woodlands and timber-lots, +Pales is a much beloved shepherd’s god, Pomona cares for the orchards, +Vertumnus for the normal change of the seasons; Anna Perena is the +goddess of the circling year; and Terminus takes care that the boundary +stones (so important to farmers) are not disturbed. + + +=352. Personified Virtues as Gods: Cold and Legalistic Character of +the Roman Religion.=--However, these deities are increased by a +great host of personified moral and civic qualities. Nothing is easier +in Rome than to assume that every desirable virtue must have some kind +of a numen (divine potence) behind it. Around the city one can find +temples, _e.g._ to Honor, Hope, Good Faith, Modesty, Concord, +Peace, Victory, Liberty, Public Safety, Youth, and Fame. This is only a +minor part of the list. + + [Illustration: CIRCULAR TEMPLE, PROBABLY OF OLD ITALIAN + GODDESS MATUTA: now Church of Sancta Maria del Sole, + Rome.] + +It is assumed in fact that every act or process of human life has its +special numen who can be invoked to make that act successful. Thus +after young Sextus, Calvus’s son, was born, his very pious nurses first +invoked Vaticanus who opened his mouth for his first cry, then Cucina +who guarded his cradle, then Edulia and Potina who taught him to eat +and drink, Stabilius who aided him first to stand up, and Abeona and +Adeona who watched over his first footsteps “going” and “returning.” +His sophisticated parents doubtless smiled at this scrupulous piety, +but they did nothing to discourage it. + +These cold impersonal divinities stand to man in a legal rather than +a theological relationship. Men and the numina have made a kind of +contract--so much prayer and ceremonial sacrifice must be offered in +return for so much good favor, prosperity, and protection. _Do ut +des_ (“I give that you may give”) sums up the whole spirit of the +Roman religion. + +Numa the alleged founder of so many cults was not a prophet or an +inspired poet but a king and lawgiver. A wise man is always pious; +that is, he always gives to the gods their precise due according to +carefully set forms, otherwise the divinities may evade their part of +the contract, just as a merchant is not bound to execute a bargain in +which the other party has failed to do precisely as was stipulated. + +If prayers and sacrifice fail in their purpose, it is reasonable to +suppose that the fault lies in the formula and the victims employed. +The pig, sheep, or other victim must then be sacrificed over again with +greater scrupulosity. On the other hand, willful neglect of worship is +as surely punished by the gods as willful neglect of paying one’s debts +is punished by the Prætor. The fate of the impious will be somewhat +like that of the absconding debtor, only much more dreadful. + +Needless to say this “Religion of Numa” contains no more spirituality +than the hard stones which pave the Forum. It does, however, put +a genuine premium upon the rigid performance of duty, and thereby +sometimes reacts favorably upon human conduct. + + +=353. Priestly Offices: Little Sacrosanct about Them.=--For these +necessary ceremonies mankind requires priests, but they are not +revered interpreters of the divine will, nor are they mysterious +mediators between Providence and men; they are rather attorneys +employed by men to represent them competently in their dealings with +the divinities. + +Small religious matters, the minor private sacrifices, etc., can be +attended to without a priest, just as you do not need a jurisconsult to +assist in petty purchases. Greater religious matters, private and still +more if public, however, require experts to see that the right formulæ +are spoken and sacrifices proffered. Any Roman of flawless birth and of +good character is eligible for most of the priesthoods, although there +are a few reserved for the narrow circle of the old patrician families. +Holding these religious offices does not ordinarily imply dropping +one’s secular interests or having the least philosophical belief in +the ceremonies so carefully performed. Julius Cæsar was Pontifex +Maximus while he was Proconsul of the Gauls, and while he was a firm +disbeliever in the existence of any gods at all. + +Of course every small temple has to have its proper custodians whom +we may call “priests,” to attend to the private sacrifices; and there +are besides plenty of unofficial diviners and soothsayers who can +answer your question, “Is this a lucky day for the wedding of my +daughter?” or “Do the omens warn against buying this farm?” The great +public ministers of religion, however, are really officers of state, +appointed by the Emperor,[223] and usually they are grouped in famous +“Sacred Colleges” wherein the members hold office for life. Ordinarily +the persons thus honored are distinguished senators selected after an +honorable civil and military career. + + +=354. The Pontifices.=--On the whole the greatest official glory comes +to the fifteen _pontifices_. Not merely do they possess the general +oversight of everything concerning cultus, but they have as their chief +colleague the Emperor himself, who always holds the post of _Pontifex +Maximus_--head of the Roman religion. + +Before Julius Cæsar reformed the calendar the pontifices had the +important task of settling each year what days were to be _dies +fasti_, whereon alone legal business could be lawfully conducted, +and they have still the power to interfere in almost any doings +concerning sacrifice, ritual, temple properties, etc. Their head, the +Pontifex Maximus, has particularly to watch over and control the Vestal +Virgins; and the college at large still has the custody of the famous +_Libri Pontificales_, the “Pontifical Books,” famous and ancient +volumes containing instructions for all kinds of unfamiliar religious +rites and procedure in strange religious emergencies.[224] + + +=355. The Augurs.=--The pontiffs, however, are really “Commissioners +for Religious Affairs” rather than actual priests, and along with them +goes another important group of “sacred” personages who seem almost +equally unpriestly. These are the _augurs_, the official interpreters +of the will of heaven; and almost every senator cherishes the hope of +being appointed to this college, notwithstanding the fact that long ago +Cicero remarked that “two augurs ought never to meet without winking!” +There are sixteen augurs, who are entitled to wear the embroidered +toga prætexta and to carry the sacred crooked staff, the lituus. The +science of augury, whereof they are supposedly the supreme custodians, +is something whereon the men of old, especially the Etruscans, expended +an enormous amount of energy. + +The Italians in general put relatively little trust in astrology +and not much more in dreams as revealing the divine intentions. +What greatly matters is the flight of birds, the strange actions of +animals, monstrous births, thunder, meteors, and like prodigies. Even +in Hadrian’s day plenty of intelligent men will shudder with dread if +they behold a crow cawing on their funeral monument; or will give up a +journey if a black viper shoots across the road just as their carriage +is starting. + +Sneezing or stumbling furthermore can mean much, and before many an +atrium the janitor is constantly shouting “_Dextro pede!_” “Right +foot first!” to every guest entering the vestibule. Certain signs are +very dreadful; _e.g._ any gathering at which somebody is seized +with epilepsy (a manifest token of divine anger) must be instantly +dissolved. + +If, however, the gods do not speak thus openly, no public act should +be performed without at least asking the formal question, “Is heaven +favorable?” This may be done by watching the consecrated chickens +while they devour the grain as at the opening of the Senate (see p. +340),[225] but more elaborate and reliable is a careful watching of +the heavens for signs. If an augur sees ravens on the right-hand side +of the sky, the sign is lucky; but a crow in order not to forbode evil +must appear on the left. The actions of eagles, owls, woodpeckers, and +certain other birds are more complicated. Their cries, the manner of +their flight, as well as the direction whence they come all have to be +considered. + +Time fails to describe the careful ritual necessary for the augurs, +when, at the request of some high magistrate, they interrogate the gods +to see if heaven is pleased at some proposed official action. It is +not necessary, however, to get a positively favorable sign; often it is +enough that during a suitable interval the augur should _fail_ to +observe any unhappy bird, any meteor, thunder claps, or the like. This +propitious interval constitutes a formal “silence” (_silentium_); +and many an augur has shown himself conveniently deaf or blind to +noises or sights that might prohibit some desired deed. Nevertheless +the solemn farce is always maintained, for when do Romans ever discard +any time-honored custom? + + +=356. The Flamines.=--The augurs rank with the pontiffs high in +public honors, but the most important actual priests in Rome are the +_flamines_. There are fifteen flamines distributed among the services +of the various gods, but three rank above all others--the flamens of +Jupiter, Mars, and of Quirinus (deified Romulus), with the first named, +called more particularly the _Flamen Dialis_, at their head. + +It is an extraordinary honor to be named Flamen Dialis, and Gratia +reckons it among the chief of her family glories that she has an uncle +now enjoying for life this high priesthood. The Flamen of Jupiter +is entitled to a curule chair as if he were a magistrate, and takes +social precedence above nearly everybody save the Emperor and the +consuls; he also wears the toga prætexta like other exalted personages, +although it must be of thick wool woven by the hands of his wife. In +addition he has to appear always crowned with a special high pointed +cap, not unlike the “fool’s-cap” of other times, and tipped with the +_apex_, a pointed spike of olive wood wound with a lock of wool. + +Old Papirius is among the most envied men in Rome, yet he complains +bitterly of the price he has to pay for his glory. He cannot mount a +horse, or even look upon an army in battle array. He cannot swear an +oath, or spend a single night away from the city, however comfortable +may be his family villas in the hot season. The cuttings of his hair +and nails must be carefully preserved and buried beneath an _arbor +felix_ (lucky tree). He must never eat of or even mention a goat, +beans, or several other forbidden objects. + +Above all Papirius’s wife, the _flaminica_, whom he had to marry +with special ceremonies, is indispensable to him in many acts of +religion and he is forbidden to divorce her, although his life with +the noble Claudia is none too happy. Worse still if she should die, he +must immediately resign his office. The other fourteen flamines enjoy +somewhat lesser glories, offset by slightly lesser taboos. They are, +however, the fifteen most sacred male individuals in all Rome. + + +=357. The _Salii_ (“Holy Leapers”).=--Of less glory than the flamines, +but nevertheless of venerable sanctity are the twelve other priests +of Mars, the college of the _Salii_ (“Holy Leapers”). To them are +committed the twelve holy shields, the _Anciliæ_, one whereof is +affirmed to have fallen from heaven. + +Calvus has an elderly cousin, Donatus, who lately was appointed by +Hadrian to the Salii. During the last Kalends of March nobody cracked +a smile when these twelve sedate and aristocratic gentlemen, wearing +their apex-crowned caps, long embroidered tunics, and brazen cuirasses, +with spear in one hand and the holy shields on the other, went through +the city stopping in many of the squares and before the larger temples +and executing violent dances, leaping, cavorting, and chanting with +loud voice “Salian Hymns”--verses in such ancient Latin that they +hardly understood their own shrill jargon. When the round of the city +was ended and they had danced and sung for the last time, the holy men +were quite exhausted. + +The consolation for these holy men followed quickly, however. That +evening they held a grand corporation dinner. The augurs are famous +for their elaborate banquets worthy of an Apicius, but the Salii on +the whole surpass the augurs. A _Saliares daps_--“Holy Leaper’s +dinner”--has become the synonym for the triumph of good eating. + + +=358. The _Fetiales_ (“Sacred Heralds”): Ceremony of Declaring +War.=--Calvus himself belongs to a religious college of rather +waning consequence, but of great antiquity. He is a fetial. + +Anciently at least no treaty was binding unless it had been ratified +with most solemn religious ceremonies. To deal with the gods in +international affairs Numa is said, therefore, to have established a +college of twenty _fetiales_--the holy heralds. Their president, +the _Pater Patratus_, represented the whole Roman people when it +came to swearing the oaths and offering the sacrifices for concluding +a treaty, and even in Hadrian’s day some of the ancient usages are +maintained. A peace has lately been made with the King of Parthia, and +in the presence of his envoy at Rome the venerable ex-consul, the Pater +Patratus, took his sacred flints, laid a special wreath of the holy +“verbena” plant on the altar, and kindled the fire for the sacrifice +that confirmed the peace.[226] + +More important once was the chief herald’s duty in declaring a war; +for it seemed useless to hope for victory unless first by legalistic +formula the enemy was put in the wrong before the gods. The Pater +Patratus with at least three of his colleagues was expected to march +solemnly to the hostile frontier, next with due ceremony to recite the +wrongs of Rome and demand redress and to hurl a spear dipped in blood +across the boundary; then and not till then could the legions march +forth in any offensive war. + +It is a great distance now, however, to the frontier of the Empire and +the white-headed Pater Patratus keenly dislikes to quit for months +his luxurious residence on the Quirinal; but legal ingenuity has long +since enabled him to preserve at once his bodily comfort and the good +old custom. Before the Temple of Bellona in the Campus Martius is a +bit of ground whereon stands a certain column. When recently it seemed +desirable to declare war on an unneighborly German tribe, a captive +from these barbarians was duly hunted up in the slave market at Rome, +and a legal deed was solemnly made out transferring this land to the +prisoner. The spot was now technically “hostile ground,” and the +Pater Patratus and his fellow fetials all ordered their litters and +were peacefully taken out to the Temple of Bellona. The Germans were +carefully summoned to “do the Romans right,” and no answer coming, the +head fetial with all the ancient formulas and curses flung the spear +into the column. + +The war could now proceed with the gods’ full blessing--a thoroughly +Roman proceeding, and very typical of many other survivals, religious +or secular. + + +=359. The Arval Brethren (_Fratres Arvales_).=--There is another +“ancient and honorable” religious brotherhood--the _Fratres Arvales_. +There are twelve Arval brethren, always including the Emperor. In May +they hold a three-day festival to the _Dea Dia_.[227] Besides regaling +themselves then with an extraordinarily luxurious feast, they assemble +in the grove of the Dea Dia and offer to her two pigs, a white heifer, +and a lamb. Next they clear her temple of all but the necessary priests +and attendants, and dividing themselves into two bodies of six, tuck +up their long tunics and execute a solemn dance around the holy house, +singing meantime a kind of hymn for the blessing of the fields, a hymn +preserved in such an uncouth antique Latin that the meaning of many +words is doubtful.[228] + +It is a most desirable thing to be one of these “Brothers of the +Fields.” The records of the college are kept with the greatest care and +their dinners compete with those of the Salii. + +These are _some_ only of the holy colleges, membership wherein +carries marked social prestige. The fifteen “Keepers of the Sibylline +Books,” the _Epulones_ who arrange many of the banquets in honor of +the gods, and the _Haruspices_ who assist the augurs particularly in +interpreting the omens from the entrails of slaughtered victims, are +all distinguished personages. How many of them have one scintilla of +belief in the deities they address and the rites they execute it were +most unbecoming to inquire closely! + + +=360. Rustic Ceremonies; Soothsaying, Astrologers, and Witches.=--This +religion, then, is one purely of outward ritual coupled with not a +little superstition. In the country the farmers at the festival to the +Lemures (malevolent ghosts of the dead) still may rise at midnight, +walk barefoot through the house, fill their mouths with black beans +which they spit forth nine times without looking around, saying each +time, “With these beans I redeem me and mine.” Then they clank two +brazen vessels together and nine times shout out, “Manes depart!” This +is a sample of many similar ceremonies. + +Soothsayers, who are often sheer charlatans, are very naturally in +constant demand among the unlearned to resolve such queries as, “Will +my mother-in-law recover from jaundice?” or “How long will my husband +live and keep me from my lover?” Such rascals usually tell the future +by examining the lungs of a dove. The entrails of a dog, however, are +better although much more expensive. + +Among the rich, however, “Chaldæan astrologers” are somewhat +fashionable, slippery Orientals who know how to wheedle the gold out +of credulous parvenus, even if the official religion sets no great +store upon star-gazing.[229] The women are inevitably the best patrons +of these pretenders, but their husbands and brothers often refuse to +start on a journey or to begin anything else important until assured +“the horoscope is favorable.” Time fails us to tell of the employment +of Etruscan witches, or of the belief in ghosts and goblins. The latter +are dreaded by many hard-headed epicureans who will argue convincingly +that there can be no such thing as a god or immortality. + + [Illustration: ROMAN ALTAR.] + + +=361. A Private Sacrifice.=--Nevertheless, with all its faults this +Roman religion has few truly _debasing_ superstitions. There are +practically no human sacrifices, no constant and outrageous use of +sordid ceremonies, no acts or beliefs which actually degrade one’s +manhood or womanhood.[230] All is deliberate, ordered, and, within +certain pagan limitations, tolerably reasonable. + +A typical Roman sacrifice is a dignified and well standardized +procedure. Only recently Publius Calvus enjoyed a birthday, and custom +required that all his kinsmen should come to congratulate him while he +offered to the gods a snow-white lamb, in gratitude for another year +of life and prosperity. The ceremony took place at a small temple of +Juno near the senator’s mansion on the Esquiline, Juno being accounted +the special patron deity of the Junii Calvi. The victim was carefully +selected by Calvus himself, who paid an extra price for a creature +newly weaned and with horns just sprouting. Ostentatious freedmen +sometimes offered a fat bull on their birthdays, and poorer folk +merely a small pig,[231] but a white lamb was a very fitting private +sacrifice, not too mean, not too pretentious, and fell in perfectly +with the Roman idea of dealing with the gods on honorable business +principles. + + +=362. Ceremony at the Temple.=--On the day of the ceremony Calvus +presented himself at the temple, with his toga girded tightly around +his body in the special “Gabinian Cincture” required in sacrifices. The +groups of kinsmen, friends, freedmen, etc., all followed decorously. +The special Flamen of Juno, a friendly senator, appeared with his +vestments and apex, to direct Calvus in the technical details of the +ceremony, but, be it noticed, the actual priest was Calvus himself. + +After all the company had gathered near the altar and put on chaplets +of ivy, a public crier (_præco_) commanded in loud voice, “Let there +be silence!” and a tense interval followed, every person holding +his breath lest an unlucky cough or sneeze should vitiate the whole +proceeding. Nothing ill-omened following, the elder of Calvus’s small +sons acting as camillus (acolyte) extended to his father a silver basin +of purifying water wherein the latter carefully washed his hands, dried +them upon a towel borne by his younger boy, then drew the great folds +of his toga over his head, almost but not quite concealing his face. + + [Illustration: A MILITARY SACRIFICE; TRAJAN’S ARMY ON THE + DANUBE: from Trajan’s Column.] + +At this juncture a flute player standing near promptly struck up +with a piercing blast, which he continued much of the time until the +ceremony was nearly over, not to supply music but simply to prevent any +ill-omened sound from being heard. Thereupon other youths led up the +lamb. Its little horns had been gilded and a heavy garland of flowers +twined about its neck. It was needful for the creature to _seem_ +to approach willingly, therefore the halter had to be quite slack, but +a little fodder spread under the altar made the brute only too ready +for its fate. + +Calvus approached the victim, and with the flamen at his elbow to +dictate every detail, took wine, incense, and a mixture of meal +and salt, and sprinkled a trifle of each upon the hungry creature’s +forehead. A professional attendant cut a few hairs from between the +horns and cast them on the burning altar. Then again prompted by the +flamen, Calvus prayed aloud: + + +=363. A Formal Prayer; the Actual Sacrifice.=--“O Mother Juno, I +pray and beseech thee that thou mayest be gracious and favorable to me +and my home and my household, for which course I have ordained that +the offering of this lamb should be made in accordance with my vows; +that thou mayest avert, ward off, and keep afar all disease visible +and invisible, all barrenness, waste, misfortune and ill-weather; +that thou mayest cause my family, affairs, and business to come to +prosperity; and that thou grant health and strength to me, my home and +my household!”[232] + + [Illustration: ROMAN ALTAR WITH DESIGN SHOWING A + SACRIFICE.] + +It was all very like the formulas used by the lawyers before the +Prætor. No waste of fine words, but very comprehensive and no +contingency unprovided for. + +When Calvus finished, the temple attendant (_popa_) standing near +by asked in set form, “Shall I strike?” “Strike him!” ordered Calvus. +Instantly the attendant smote the lamb a single merciful blow on the +skull with a heavy mallet. The creature dropped dead, and his slayer +immediately knelt and stabbed him with a knife. As the blood ran out, +it was caught in a basin and sprinkled upon the altar, along with some +wine, incense, and a consecrated cake. + +The lamb was now promptly cut up, and a crafty-looking haruspex +inspected the color and form of the still palpitating entrails. If +these had been declared “unfavorable” in form, color, or otherwise, a +second lamb must have been procured and the whole ceremony perforce +repeated until the results were fortunate, but the haruspex, certain of +his fee, after a decent studying of the gall, intestines, and liver, +lifted his head and said solemnly, “_Exta bona!_” “The entrails are +good!” Thereupon the flamen, hitherto passive or muttering formulas, +stepped forward, threw wine, meal, and incense upon the entrails; then +cast the whole mass of them upon the brightly kindled altar-fire. +Meantime the actual flesh of the lamb was being gathered up by Calvus’s +servants to take home for private consumption. + +Calvus himself now drew the toga up over his head the second time, +and then called on Juno with loud voice, “since thou hast accepted +this lamb, duly proffered,” to continue her favor on him and his house +during the coming year, “in which case I vow unto thee another lamb, +white and without blemish even as is this.” He was again, it would +seem, the lawyer reminding the other party to the contract that by the +acceptance of the payment proffered, he or she was strictly obligated +to continue friendly for the next twelve months. + +The ceremony was therewith ended. The flamen raised his hand and spoke +the solemn word of dismissal, “_Ilicet_,” “It is permitted to go.” +Sacrificer, flamen, spectators, and attendants all now hurried away +with shout and laughter to Calvus’s residence, there to join in a fine +feast wherein everybody received a portion of the slaughtered lamb. + + +=364. The Vestal Virgins: Their Sanctity and Importance.=--Great +are the pontiffs, the augurs, the flamens, and the members of the +other sacred colleges. But they are all too pragmatic and secular to be +taken quite seriously when they demand religious veneration. There is +one Roman college, however, which is beyond words holy, at whose claims +the most godless never scoff, and whose members will keep alive the +best traditions of the religion of Numa until old Rome is tottering to +its fall--the Sisterhood of the Vestal Virgins. + + [Illustration: VESTAL VIRGIN.] + +Numa himself, hoary tradition affirms, instituted this body of six +holy maidens, although no doubt similar companies could have been +discovered in many other primitive Italian communities. Their origin +is clear enough. To early man, fire was a thing very mysterious and +very necessary. Before the discovery of flint and steel it was no +trifling matter to kindle a new blaze by rubbing together a hard stick +and a soft; every village, therefore, maintained a central hearth +(_focus_) where some brands were ever smoldering and whither a boy +could be sent running for a spark to replenish the kitchen fires. + +But beyond all other peoples the old Latins made of this homely need +a sacrosanct institution and a ritual. The Temple of the Fire Goddess +was perhaps at first only the hearth of the king, and her priestesses +were the king’s own daughters. Then the king disappeared: the Pontifex +Maximus took his place; and quite naturally just as the high pontiff’s +official residence, the Regia, stood on the verge of the Forum, the +Shrine of Vesta and the home of her maiden ministers stood close beside +it. + +All across the ages this fire of Vesta has burned, tended with +inconceivable care; and for this humble shrine of Vesta and the six +Vestal Virgins all Romans from Emperor to lowest plebeian still retain +more genuine reverence than for anything else in the world, not +excluding the gilded Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus crowning the +Capitol and its pompous Flamen Dialis. + + +=365. The Temple of Vesta and the House of the Vestals.=--The Temple +of Vesta, directly on the verge of the roaring Forum and under the +shadow of the Imperial Palatine, is an ostentatiously small, simple +building, with a circular portico of pillars and surmounted with a low +cupola covered with sheets of metal. Often repaired, great pains have +been taken (so Ovid tells us) to preserve the original “style of Numa.” +Directly behind it, as you go east from the Forum, is the _Atrium +Vestæ_, the House of the Vestals, noticed when we traversed the Heart +of Rome. + +Very simple externally, once inside those privileged to enter the House +discover not merely a fine comfortable dwelling, suitable for ladies of +rank and their numerous female attendants, but a very beautiful garden +some 200 feet long by 65 wide. There are spreading trees, winding +paths, marble seats, fountains and even a tiny grove--all within easy +stone’s throw of the very center of the metropolis. + +The need for this garden, however, is obvious. The Vestals are women +of the very highest rank, yet they cannot leave Rome in the hot +season when nearly all other noble ladies flee to their cool villas. +The garden is their breathing spot and their recompense. Around the +garden runs a line of statues of the _Maximæ_ (Senior Vestals), +an imposing array of dignified elderly women of the grave Roman type. +Here too in the Atrium Vestæ, in a little room, is a small hand-mill +where the sacred virgins themselves can be seen each day laboriously +grinding the consecrated meal required in the cult of the Hearth +Goddess. + +Within this house also the six Sisters spend their lives in a routine +of holy duties, and although the building is not an officially +consecrated “temple” it is really the most revered and sacrosanct spot +in Rome. In the Atrium Vestæ, therefore, are deposited the wills and +other precious documents of half the nobility, and the gods pity the +wretch who may do the place violence,--his fate at human hands will be +awful! + + +=366. Appointment of Vestals.=--This little sisterhood is divided +always into three categories--the novices, the active members, the +senior Vestals, of two members each. When there is a vacancy the +Pontifex Maximus makes choice among the girls of between six and ten +years in the patrician families,[233] who have both of their parents +living and happily married. A girl has to be physically perfect and +intellectually acute, certain, in short, to do honor to the greatest +position open to women in Rome. + +The present Maxima is Salvia, a distant kinswoman of the late Emperor +Nerva. She was appointed many years ago in the reign of Titus. There +was such competition for the vacancy then that several noble families +offered their daughters, but Salvia was chosen because her parents were +on the best of terms, whereas her nearest rival’s father and mother +were known to have quarreled. The high pontiff (Titus) solemnly took +her by the hand repeating the ritualistic words, “I take you to be +‘Amata,’ that as Vestal Virgin you may perform the sacred rites lawful +for vestal virgins.” The title of _Amata_ was simply honorary. It +implied the gentle and loving character of the service of Vesta. + +Salvia was immediately led over to the house of Vesta, her hair was cut +off, and hung upon the sacred lotus-tree in the garden; she was clothed +in long white garments with a special white band around her head, the +holy _infula_; and next she took oath to abide in her office and +to maintain her virginity not less than thirty years. She was now a +lawful vestal, withdrawn from the power of her father, and subject only +to the jurisdiction of the Pontifex Maximus. + + +=367. Duties of the Vestals: the Maxima.=--The six vestals enjoy +no sinecure. From the fountain of Egeria by the Cœlian Hill they must +bear all the water required for kneading their sacred cakes.[234] Daily +they must carefully cleanse the actual Temple in front of their mansion +with a mop, and deck it around with laurel. There are various great +festivals in which they have to play an important part, especially in +the very important Vestalia held June 9th, when all Rome unites to +honor the beloved Hearth Mother; and on June 15th when there is the +official cleansing of the Temple, and all the refuse of the year is +collected and removed with scrupulous ceremonies just as a good farmer +should cleanse his barns before the harvest. + +The chief duty is, however, the simple and gracious task of tending +the sacred fire. For the first ten years of her sisterhood Salvia was +learning her responsibilities in this all-important particular; for the +next ten, she, or her associated second-class Vestal, had the actual +watch-care of the holy flame on the maintenance whereof seemed to rest +the prosperity of Rome; after that as one of the two senior Vestals she +could turn over to her juniors the active duties, confining herself to +the general oversight of the sisterhood. When the older senior Vestal +died she herself became Maxima--the most important woman in Rome, +enjoying a reverence and a certainty of tenure by no means shared by +every Empress. + + +=368. Punishments of Erring Vestals.=--To allow the sacred fire to +go out, by some fearful mischance, is an almost unheard-of calamity. +The ancient books ordain that the responsible Vestal on duty shall +first be stripped and scourged by the Pontifex Maximus, administering +his blows in the dark, then two pieces of wood must be taken from a +“lucky tree” and he must laboriously rekindle the fire with elaborate +ceremonies. After that other prolonged rites are needful to save the +state from the results of such a fearful “prodigy.” + +Such lapses in the service of Vesta almost never occur. Slightly more +frequent have been charges of breaking the vow of chastity. In the few +recorded cases the guilty sister after trial before the college of +pontiffs has been buried alive with a kind of funeral ceremony in the +“Accursed Field” (_Campus Sceleratus_) just within the Colline +Gate. It is “bad luck” actually to put to death a consecrated Vestal, +but a deep pit is dug and in it are placed a couch, a lamp, and a +table bearing a little food. Then the guilty woman is lowered into the +pit and earth heaped upon it. She has simply been dismissed from the +presence of men:--what occurs out of all human sight is strictly the +affair of gods! Meantime her paramour has been publicly scourged to +death in the Forum with every form of ignominy. + +The vow of virginity, nevertheless, is not perpetual. After thirty +years in the service, at an age still far below old womanhood, a Vestal +can quit the Atrium, and marry; but Salvia and her sisters seldom dream +of such a thing. Public opinion, though not the law, frowns upon the +act, and it means resigning a position of incomparable importance, +honor, and dignity. + + +=369. Remarkable Honors Granted the Vestals.=--If Salvia, for twenty +years at least, has thus taken her duties very seriously, she has +her great compensation. The Vestal Sisterhood is rich with a great +corporate income. The members alone of all Romans give their testimony +in court without the least oath. They have the seats of honor at all +public games and festivals. A lictor precedes each of them everywhere, +securing for his mistress the same public honors granted a magistrate, +and a magistrate’s lictors lower their fasces in respectful homage when +in a Vestal’s superior presence. + +The slightest molestation of these priestesses’ persons is of course +punished capitally. They have the right to intercede even with the +Emperor in matter of pardons, and they nominate to sundry public +offices--_e.g._ the librarianship of the Imperial library, and +certain military tribuneships. Finally if they chance accidentally +to meet a criminal bound for execution, upon their demand he must be +spared and released--not out of motives of mercy, but because it is a +bad omen for the State for any holy Vestal to meet a person formally +condemned to die.[235] + +One crowning honor also Salvia can anticipate: even Emperors +must ordinarily be buried outside the consecrated city limits +(_pomerium_), but the law specifically admits Vestals not merely +to the glories of a public funeral, but to burial inside the Heart of +Rome itself. What wonder that Salvia is loath to quit a post of such +glory and power for the uncertain prospects of matrimony! + +Despite all the ceremonies, irrational and vain though they may seem +to a later standpoint, the worship of Vesta, the goddess of the honest +home, and the corporate life of her six maiden ministers remain among +the fairest things of the Roman Empire. Matters cannot be hopelessly +bad, when thus, in the center of the great, luxurious, sensual Imperial +city, womanly purity and orderly virtue are preëminently honored. + + + + + CHAPTER XXI + +THE FOREIGN CULTS: CYBELE, ISIS, MITHRAS. THE CHRISTIANS IN PAGAN EYES + + +=370. Saturnalia: the Exchange of Presents on New Year’s Day.=--Could +our visit to Rome be prolonged across the year we should dwell on such +so-called religious festivals as the Saturnalia which lasts seven +days, beginning the 17th of December, when the whole city abandons +itself to carnival mirth, when slaves for a brief and happy interval +put on the tall pileus, the liberty cap, are allowed to be very pert +to their masters, and indulge in all kinds of pranks and liberties; +and when people exchange with all their friends semi-comic gifts of +wax tapers and amusing little terra-cotta images, or other gifts of +real value such as napkins, writing tablets, and dishes of preserved +sweetmeats.[236] + +More decorous is the ensuing holiday on the Kalends of January (New +Year’s Day) when ceremonious official calls are paid on every magnate +from the Emperor downward, and more gifts are exchanged, often of the +highest value.[237] In these festivities and distributions of presents +can perhaps be found the prototypes for the winter holidays of another +religion and later age. + + +=371. Multiplication of Oriental Cults.=--One dare not quit the +Rome of Hadrian, however, without a cursory inspection of something +extremely evident since we began our explorations on plebeian Mercury +Street--the foreign religions and their temples. + +Very reluctantly did the grave fathers of the old Republic admit +Anatolian, Syrian, and Egyptian cults into their beloved city. Even +unlicensed Greek ceremonies were frowned upon and the disorderly +orgiastic rites of the Eastern gods for long were extremely repulsive +to the dignified builders of the Commonwealth. But as the Republic +declined the foreign cults thrust themselves in and with the coming of +the Empire all attempts to prohibit them practically disappeared. The +most the authorities can now do is to see that these strange private +worships are conducted with a certain degree of decency. Rome has never +countenanced the vile revelings of the groves of Syrian Astarte, much +less the horrid child-burnings of the Phœnician Moloch. + +The votaries of these Eastern gods are not merely Orientals who +have drifted to Rome. The new religions have a great appeal to many +persons of good old Latin stock and especially to the women. The +reason for this is fairly obvious: the Roman official religion is a +legalistic religion devoid of the slightest spirituality. “Sin” except +in the sense of reckless contract breaking, “communion with God,” +“reconciliation with God,” “The Hereafter,” “Life Eternal,” and like +phrases are utterly unknown to pontiff, augur, or flamen. + +For intelligent persons to whom neither the Stoic nor the Epicurean +guesses at the riddle of existence prove satisfying, who are torn in +conscience, bowed with bereavement, or crushed by disaster, there +must be some outlet better than that of scrupulously offering a black +pig to Mars. Atheism can never satisfy for long,--and the Oriental +religions, appealing at once to the love for the mysterious, and to the +passionate desire for some supernatural explanation of the problems +of humanity, as a result draw in their votaries by thousands. Some +of these worshipers are utterly ignorant and credulous. Others are +men and women of wealth and deep learning, who can turn the Syrian or +Egyptian jargon into elegant Platonic myths, and see, behind the coarse +Levantine ritual, spiritual allegories which would have astonished old +Memphis or Tyre. + + +=372. The Cult of the Deified Emperors.=--The Imperial Government +itself has added to this tendency to multiply cults--it created a new +and a very important one, that of the “Deified Emperors.” Augustus +Cæsar was far too shrewd and matter-of-fact an Italian to permit +himself to be worshiped as an actual deity within his native land; +but he did not discourage Orientals (accustomed to adore almost any +successful monarch as a “god”) from setting up altars to him, and he +took a great satisfaction in having his adoptive father Julius Cæsar +officially deified at Rome, and then in accepting for himself the +glories coming to the _son_ of the “Divine Julius.” + +Furthermore, even a living Emperor has his _genius_--his special +guardian spirit, often to be half-confounded with his own personality. +The worship of Augustus’s genius was soon an important part of the +state religion. Oaths were taken by it; an insult to it became the +vilest blasphemy. If Augustus did not become a god in his lifetime, the +aura and effluence of divinity assuredly played all around him. + + +=373. The “Divine Augustus” and His Successors.=--The instant Augustus +died a solemn decree of the Senate forthwith made him “Divus Augustus,” +with temples, priests, and ritual--all the paraphernalia in short of a +prominent member of the Pantheon. Since then in the provincial towns +the priests of Augustus, _Augustales_, are ordinarily appointed from +among the rich freedmen--men of short lineage but of great economic +influence, who are delighted at the trappings and pompous honors +awarded this holy office, and who become, therefore, the ardent +supporters of the imperial régime. + +Since 14 A.D. there have been still other gods thus enrolled by vote +of the Senate--notably the “Divine Claudius” (“dragged to heaven by a +hook,” people sarcastically remark, remembering Agrippina’s poisoned +mushrooms), and the equally “divine” Vespasian, Titus, Nerva, and +Trajan. Their temples and cults are among the most splendid and +prominent in Rome. In the basilicas and in the government houses +(_prætoria_) and magistrates’ halls all over the Empire stand the +arrays of statues of these Deified Augusti along with that of the +“genius” of the reigning Hadrian himself. Every litigant and every +witness must cast his pinch of incense into the brazier before them and +swear by their godhead. + +Intelligent men, of course, understand that these Imperial “gods” +somehow differ in nature from Jupiter, but the homage offered to them +seems really an affirmation of loyalty to the great principles of law +and order which bind the vast Empire together. Every good Emperor +is entitled to expect this honor, after a worthy reign. “I think +I’m becoming a god!” muttered the pragmatic Vespasian while on his +death-bed. On the other hand the refusal of deification is a form of +branding a tyrant’s memory; and Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and Domitian +receive no incense.[238] + +The state thus teaches all its subjects how easily new deities can be +introduced--apparently by very human agencies. Of the host of Oriental +gods that have thrust themselves into Rome there are three or four +which have won peculiar prominence; notably the cults of Cybele, Isis +and Serapis, and Mithras. There is also the extremely despised sect of +the Christians. + + +=374. The Cult of Cybele, the “Great Mother.”=--The cult of Cybele +is the oldest and best recognized of this foreign group. Cybele is an +Asiatic goddess with her most famous temple at Pessinus in Galatia. In +the crisis of the Hannibalic War when public opinion was on edge, the +Romans fetched an image of this “Great Mother of Pessinus” to Rome and +set up a temple to her on the Palatine. The Roman matrons, henceforth, +honored her with the festival of the Megalesia. + + [Illustration: ARCHI-GALLUS, PRIEST OF CYBELE.] + +The worship of Cybele, the Great Mother, despite this naturalization, +retains something about it that is grossly orgiastic and un-Italian. +Everywhere over the city can be met groups of her priestesses, the +Corybantes, and especially of her smooth-cheeked, squeaky-voiced eunuch +priests, the _Galli_, executing their wild, noisy dances with drums, +cymbals, and trumpets, and leaping about in suits of armor which they +clash violently, while uttering screams alleged to be inspired. + +In the country districts bands of these Galli are reported to drift +frequently from village to village, exciting the rustics by displays +of “mysteries” which are simply a gross hocus-pocus, and which often +wind up in scenes of sheer depravity. Nevertheless, the cult has great +attractions for the superstitious. The processions of these effeminate +figures with redolent locks, painted faces, and soft womanish bearing +are always able to wheedle the sesterces out of the crowd. + +The coarse legends of the Great Mother are furthermore caught up by +the philosophers and given a refined, metaphysical meaning, and among +the priests at her temples about the city are enrolled many senators +and equites, and among the priestesses a good many more of these +noblemen’s wives. To be a chanter, drummer, or cymbal player at her +great spectacular “orgies” has a morbid fascination--all the more +because much of the cult of Cybele worship is so gross that words +may not describe it. The Great Mother is, therefore, one of the most +undesirable of all the gifts offered to Rome by the conquered East. + + [Illustration: SHRINE OF CYBELE.] + + +=375. Cult of Isis and Associated Egyptian Gods.=--Worthier and more +popular with the better classes is the worship of Isis. + +The Egyptian story of Isis and Osiris, of the temporary death of the +latter and the sufferings of the former, a story that connected itself +with the Greek myths about Demeter and Dionysus, and also those about +Adonis, had become very old a thousand years before the founding of +Rome. The cult was a late invader of Italy; not until the time of Sulla +did it figure even as an important private superstition, and on account +of the marked Oriental tendencies of the Isis worship the Senate for +long discouraged it; nevertheless the stately ritual and the appeal of +the mysterious made the cult extremely popular with the multitude. + +In vain in 50 B.C. the consul Lucius Æmilius himself (his +superstitious lictors hesitating) struck the first blow with the ax +to demolish a prohibited Isis temple. Augustus had to content himself +merely with forbidding the erection of such buildings within the +official pomerium of Rome, but these could multiply in the suburbs, and +by the time of Vespasian practically all restraints disappeared. + +Everybody now frequents the shrines of Isis, and many of the noblest +citizens and matrons are among her initiates. Her great temple in the +Campus Martius is among the stateliest in Rome and every morning before +its doors are arrayed a perfect host of votaries. + + +=376. Ceremonies at an Isis Temple.=--If we desire, it is easy +to witness a large part of the ritual, although the meaning of +the allegories is refused the unelect.[239] Before day-break the +shaven-skulled priests, clothed in trailing robes of snow-white linen, +enter the temple by a side entrance and throw back the great central +doors, although a long white curtain still hangs across the interior. +The multitude of the devout now stream into the temple. The curtains +whisk aside, and a statue of the goddess, a majestic female sculptured +somewhat in the Egyptian style, with her head crowned with a lotus +flower and in her right hand a holy rattle (_sistrum_), is exposed +to view. At her side stands her son Horus, a naked boy, holding his +forefinger in his mouth, a lotus flower also upon his head, and a horn +of plenty in his left hand. + +The worshipers now stand or sit on the stones for a long time in silent +prayer and contemplation; while the new light of the rising sun streams +athwart the silent columns and draperies of the great temple. Presently +a priest appears bearing a golden vessel of holy water from the Nile, +and he pours it over a sacrifice of fruits and flowers upon the altar +standing before the images. The worshipers all prostrate themselves in +awe, then rise. The ceremony is over. + +This is the ordinary side of the Isis worship but at times there +lack not violent dances; processions of all manner of harlequin +participants, men robed as soldiers, hunters, or gladiators, women +leaping in white gauzy garments, and shaven priests bearing holy +vessels--usually wrought with Egyptian hieroglyphics, and carrying +especially as center of all the tumult a sacred snake, lifting its +wrinkled and venomous head upon an ark of burnished gold. + +The Isis worship appeals often to men of high intelligence who grow +weary and disgusted at the failure of secular philosophy to solve the +great problems of existence. An elaborate explanation exists for all +these symbols; one might even add a spiritual meaning. It is even +claimed that Isis is simply “Nature,” and that her cult is merely the +worthiest expression of “the One Sole Divinity whom the whole earth +venerates under a manifold form.” + +To the initiates (into whose esoteric lore we cannot penetrate) is +promised in this world a very fortunate life and that then “having +accomplished the span of this existence, they shall descend to the +realms below, and even there, dwelling as they shall in the Elysian +fields, they shall frequently adore me--the goddess.”[240] + + +=377. Cult of Serapis and of Other Oriental Gods.=--The Isis +worship thus has its nobler side. Not unworthy too is that of her +Græco-Egyptian associate Serapis, the patron deity of Alexandria, +who has a considerable following in Rome, acclaiming him as “lord of +all the elements, dispenser of all good and master of human life.” +Unfortunately, however, along with these deities there goes a whole +swarm of lesser Oriental divinities who do nothing but provide fine +chances for the scoffers and the charlatans. + +The priests of the dog-headed Nile-god Anubis are denounced by Juvenal +as a “linen-clad and cheating crew,” who levy on silly women, and who +will declare any infamy to be morally “pardoned” for the bribe of a fat +goose or some thick slices of cake. Korybus, Sabazius, the bull Apis, +and the Syrian Baal cannot pretend to be better. Many a decent Roman +beholding their worship will reëcho Plutarch’s recent words, “Better +not to believe in a god at all, than to cringe before a god who is +worse than the worst of men.” Nevertheless there is _one_ Oriental +cult now penetrating Rome which seems to lay stress on moral purity and +on noble living--the religion of Mithras. + + +=378. The Cult of Mithras: Its Relative Nobility.=--Mithras is +by origin the Sun God of the Zoroastrian Persians.[241] He is the +“fiend smiter”; the beneficent light which disperses mental as well as +material darkness. _Sol Invictus_--“The All-Conquering Sun”--his +votaries call him, but in statues and pictures he is commonly +represented as a handsome youth, wearing the Phrygian cap and mantle, +and kneeling upon a bull which has been thrown upon the ground, and +whose throat the god is cutting. In the Mithras pictures there often +appear also the mysterious figures of a dog, a serpent, and a scorpion, +all somehow connected with the ritual of the god. + +This cultus first passed from the East to the hardy pirates of +Cilicia, whom Pompey the Great subdued in the last years of the old +Republic. Then gradually the Western world began to learn about the +Mithras “chapels,” about the seven grades of initiates, about solemn +purifications from sin, and about an esoteric teaching which laid great +stress on personal righteousness, condemned vicious pretenses and +claimed to reconcile man with god in a manner promising the former a +joyous and noble hereafter. + + [Illustration: MITHRAS THE BULL-SLAYER.] + +The Mithras cult is now making its way very rapidly, especially in the +imperial army. All up and down the great garrison towns and standing +camps along the frontiers “Mithras chapels” are being erected, small +chambers suitable for only a few dozen of initiates. The rites and +teachings are very secret, and it is impossible to penetrate them as we +can part of the worship of Isis. + +Mithras worship furthermore makes no pretense of being a cult for +the masses--it is a blessing reserved strictly for the proved and +purified. All we know about it, however, convinces us that its ethics +are noble, that it repudiates all coarse sensuality, and that it +leaves its votaries genuinely better men and women, summoning them to +be coadjutors of the “Unconquerable Sun” in his glorious war against +spiritual darkness. + +As yet the Mithras worship in the West is relatively young, but the +time will approach when great Emperors, Aurelian and Diocletian, +will proudly number themselves among its initiates, and in Mithraism +ancient paganism will make its last real proffer for the allegiance of +high-minded men.[242] + + [Illustration: MITHRAIC EMBLEMS.] + + +=379. The _Taurobolium_= (“=Bath in Bull’s Blood=”).--Connected with +these Oriental cults, worthy and unworthy, there has come in a ceremony +utterly strange to the religion of Numa, which, nevertheless, is +gaining increasing vogue,--the _Taurobolium_. Originally it belonged +to the votaries of Cybele, but the Mithras worshipers have adopted it +likewise. + +The rite is supposed to give one a peculiar cleansing from sin, and +being decidedly expensive appeals not a little to wealthy personages +who do not mind showing how their riches can put them on better terms +with heaven than is possible for the run of mortals. With increasing +frequency can be seen tombstones of magnates inscribed “Reborn to +Eternity through the Taurobolium,” and it is held by many that persons +submitting to this ordeal are assured of a happy immortality--at least, +if they should die within twenty years of the ceremony; after which it +can be repeated. + +Old line Romans ordinarily have not as yet felt a great need for the +Taurobolium,[243] but one of Calvus’s acquaintances, the senator +Faventinus, has followed his initiation into Mithraism by celebrating +the rite. It is indeed something which only deep religious convictions +can induce persons of sensitive and luxurious tastes to undergo, +although the special priests who conduct the proceeding know how to +render it an impressive ceremony. + +Faventinus appeared at the appointed place before a concourse of +Mithraic initiates, wearing a golden crown and with his toga tightly +girded about him; then he descended into a deep pit over which was +placed a platform of stout boards. With mystical words and songs +a consecrated bull was led upon the platform and there directly +slaughtered in a manner causing its blood to flow freely through the +chinks in the timbers upon the worshiper below. As the blood descended +Faventinus extended his arms and uplifted his face that as much might +cover him as possible. + +When the initiate was taken out--his whole person and garments +blood-soaked--other mysterious liturgies were recited over him. He +was now a “Father” in the Mithraic order--of the highest class of +initiates, purged of all human dross, and entitled to close communion +with the deity. After all, the price of a fine bull and round fees to +the priests seem little enough to pay for such an exalted privilege. + + +=380. The Christians: Pagan Account of Their Origin.=--There is still +another cult in Rome, although cultivated men and women no less than +the run of plebeians speak of it with utter aversion. Since the +reign of Claudius there has existed a sect of degraded creatures, at +first Jews[244] and Levantines, but later comprising also Greeks and +Italians, known as _Christians_. + +Excluding the vulgar tattle of the mob, as good an authority as Tacitus +writes thus: “Christus from whom the name of the sect is derived was +put to death in the reign of Tiberius, by the procurator Pontius +Pilatus. The deadly superstition having been checked for a while, began +to break out again not only throughout Judea, where this mischief first +arose but also at Rome, where from all sides all things scandalous and +shameful meet and become fashionable.”[245] + +By Nero’s time the Christians were in such disfavor with the populace, +being “misanthropes” and “enemies of the human race,” as well as +blasphemers of the gods, that the evil Emperor tried to make them +scapegoats for the burning of Rome--although the pretense was too +thin. People said the Christians were wicked enough, but that they were +not guilty at least of _that_! + + +=381. The Persecution of Christians: Their “Insane +Obstinacy.”=--Nowhere, in those respectable quarters in which our +visit has moved, can we get any detailed information as to what these +Christians really do and believe. Very few important persons have so +far adhered to them, although there is a story that Flavius Clemens, +a consul and a kinsman of Domitian (who put him to death along with +so many other nobles), was actually caught by their supposedly crazy +doctrines. + +The sect has been declared unlawful ever since Nero’s day, and from +time to time its members have been arrested and their conventicles +(usually held in half-concealed burial places or in sand pits in the +suburbs) have been broken up. The magistrates, however, are slack; the +vigiles are busy chasing down ordinary thieves and murderers; and the +Christians most of the time are left alone. Hadrian, in fact, with +his general tolerance, is said somewhat to have discouraged active +persecution. The Christians, nevertheless, are still under the ban of +the law; and being mostly slaves, freedmen, and resident foreigners, +get very short shrift if actually brought before the Præfect. + +It is extremely easy to convict them: there is no need of elaborate +testimony, you merely summon the defendants to burn incense to the +image of the Genius of the Emperor and to curse the name of Christus. +No Christian will ever do this. The trials therefore are usually very +brief, and soon after they occur the crowd at the Flavian is ordinarily +gratified by the sight of one of the Christians’ “overseers” (bishops) +or “assistants” (deacons) instead of an ordinary bandit, awaiting the +spring of the lion. + +These sectaries are said to be very bold, professing not to fear death +which will only give them a surer and a better immortality than that +secured by the Taurobolium. Beyond a doubt (any cultivated man will +tell us) such defiant persons ought to be executed, if merely for their +“insane obstinacy,” although the edicts are only enforced spasmodically +and the Christians are often allowed several years of peace.[246] + + +=382. Current Charges against the Christians.=--If popular gossip, +however, means anything, these people should deserve the worst possible +fate. At their nocturnal gatherings, where men and women assemble, +it is alleged, for a wild orgy, the central rite is said to consist +of killing a babe and drinking its blood, while celebrants pledge +themselves to commit every kind of wickedness. Finally they tie a dog +to the lamp standards and incite the brute to upset the lights; then in +the ensuing darkness follow deeds of violence indescribable. + +It is also rumored that their Christus (who, of course, died the basest +of possible deaths on the cross) actually had the head of an ass. You +can see crude wall drawings deriding his votaries, as for example, one +showing a youth kneeling before an ass-headed figure on a cross, with +the scribbled legend, “Alexander is adoring _his_ god.”[247] + +How far are these gross charges true? Such aristocrats as Calvus +merely shrug their shoulders; they are not interested. However, +about 112 A.D. Pliny the Younger, while governor of Bithynia, being +compelled to enforce the Anti-Christian laws, seized two Christian +women known as “deaconesses” and put them to torture in order to find +out what _really_ happened at their gatherings. He reported that he +had discovered that nothing criminal went on but only “a perverse and +excessive superstition.” Probably, senatorial circles will assure us, +there is not much to be dreaded from such a movement which cannot +possibly appeal to educated men well grounded in philosophy. Of +course, Mithraism is very much more respectable, and according to all +fashionable judgment has a far greater future before it! + + + + + CHAPTER XXII + + A ROMAN VILLA. THE LOVE OF THE COUNTRY + + +=383. Appreciation of Country Life by the Romans.=--No study of +Rome can be complete without recognition of one cardinal fact--the +intense desire of all Romans to get away from their turbulent city +for a large part of the year. The wealthier the citizen the longer is +likely to be his absence, although no doubt many a senator or eques +growing weary of his luxurious retreat begins to sigh again for the +Curia or the counting room long ere the formal “season” has ended. + +During the parching summer months the city is really deserted by a +great part of its inhabitants. Only the most needful business goes on; +the public games are attended merely by the humblest type of plebeians; +the rhetoric schools cease their floods of oratory; the great baths +really seem empty; and the Forum crowd becomes thinned and spiritless. +Every person blessed with a moderate income and leisure has sought the +seashore or the mountains. + + +=384. Praises of the Country Towns and Villas.=--Never in after +ages will the blessings of country as against city life be better +appreciated than under the Roman Empire. The congestion, the noise, the +hurly-burly of the world metropolis probably exceeds that of any future +competitor. + +The poets all sing the praises of existence amid rural charms. Martial +for example waxes enthusiastic over the chance to “get away” from the +porticoes of cold, variegated marbles and from the need of running on +morning greetings, so that he can empty his hunting nets before his own +fire, lift the quivering fish from the line and draw the yellow honey +from the “red-stained cask,” while his plump stewardess cooks his own +eggs for him. Juvenal extols the cheapness and satisfaction of living +in the country towns where for the rent of a dark garret in Rome you +can afford to buy a small house with a neat little garden and a shallow +well whence you can draw the water for your own plants. Wealthier folk +share the same passion, and Pliny the Younger writes that he longs for +the pleasures of his villas “as ardently as an invalid longs for wine, +the baths, and the fountains.” + + [Illustration: TRAVELING CARRIAGE (_Reda_).] + +The sentiment, indeed, is so common that no further instances need +be cited, save that of Similis, Trajan’s veteran prætorian præfect, +who, having retired under Hadrian, has just died after seven years of +honorable self-banishment in a quiet country retreat. On his tombstone +he has ordered to be graven: “_Here lies Similis, an old man, who has +LIVED just seven years._” + + +=385. Comfortable Modes of Travel: Luxurious Litters and +Carriages.=--So then at least by the time of the “tyrannous reign of +the Dog Star or the Lion” (mid-summer and September) all the roads +leading from Rome are covered with the great cortèges, if indeed, the +magnates have not quitted the city much earlier. + + [Illustration: ROMAN BRIDGE: typical of thousands + which covered the Empire.] + +This is no place to speak of the admirable Roman road system which +spreads as a vast network all over the Empire, and which is, of course, +at its best in Italy. Travel for the rich in Hadrian’s day is extremely +luxurious if not correspondingly rapid. If you are in no hurry, you can +ride in a comfortable litter borne by six or eight even-paced bearers +and so outfitted that you can read, write, sleep, and even play at +dice, while your retinue is winding its slow way over the Campagna, or +up into the mountains. If you are in greater haste, there are speedy +if somewhat less steady gigs and other open carriages which energetic +people drive themselves, although great folk, of course, demand plenty +of postilions and “well-girt running footmen.” In any case the journey +from Rome is a matter of great display for anybody with claims to +fortune. Fifty slaves and twenty baggage wagons are hardly enough to +become a senator; and four times as many of each is not an excessive +retinue. + +However, less distinguished people can drive about in their own light, +open two-wheeled carriages (_cisia_), or can hire them at the posting +stations just outside the gates, and time would fail to tell of all +the kinds of _carpenta_ (two-wheeled covered vehicles) or _redæ_ +(four-wheeled traveling carriages) which one can meet on the Via Appia +or the Via Latina. + +Since Rome is a city without railroads and without first-class shipping +facilities, necessity has developed this carriage service to a fine +point. Some people indeed still bestride mules, like that of Horace, +“short of tail and heavy of gait,” and government carriers ride +horseback--but the wheeled vehicles are excellent. It will be a long +time before they can be surpassed in comfort.[248] + + +=386. Multiplication of Villas: Seashore Estates at Baiæ, +etc.=--Distant journeys we cannot consider, nor the service of imperial +and private messengers to the provinces. Our concern is with the fact +that over the whole of west-central Italy, well up into the Apennines, +and all along the Etruscan, Latin, and Campanian coasts one luxurious +estate follows upon another. + +Many of these vast establishments indeed combine profit with pleasure. +Landed property is the most genteel form of wealth and close beside +the sumptuous _villa urbana_ which imitates the glories of the city +mansion, there often spreads the humbler and more utilitarian _villa +rustica_ which houses the great gangs of slaves or hireling laborers +who keep the broad acres under cultivation. + +One cannot turn aside to examine Italian agriculture, but the residence +villas are so essential to every Roman of breeding and property that +to ignore them is impossible. Persons of means seem always purchasing +more villa property, indeed there are not a few magnates who can take a +long journey up and down Italy, spending each night upon one of their +own estates. If Publius Calvus contents himself with only _four_ +country residences, he shows that he is poorer and less pretentious +than many fellow senators of prætorian rank. + +Inevitably certain places are preferred beyond others. Upon the Bay +of Naples people of leisure, who do not mind a hundred and fifty +mile journey from Rome, find a famous and delightful center at Baiæ; +and indeed in the entire region of this bay, recovering now from +the ravages of the outbreak of Mt. Vesuvius. Outward along the more +southerly Bay of Pæstum [Bay of Salerno] the shore is lined with one +lofty marble-crowned villa after another, often erected upon elaborate +jetties thrusting far out into the sapphire sea. + +There is, however, a whole series of handsome seaboard villas all the +way southward from Ostia--and Antium, Circei, Tarracina (where the +Via Appia strikes the coastline), and Formiæ are only a few of those +luxurious colonies to which the wealth and fashion of Rome scatter +during several months of the year. Many is the senator, eques, or great +freedman who can boast also of his magnificent yacht, painted in gay +colors, with purple sails, purple awnings on the poop, with rigging +entwined on gala days with leaves and flowers, and with liveried rowers +who are trained to swing together like automata. + + +=387. Villas in the Mountains; Small Farms near Rome.=--A great +many Romans, however, disperse towards the hills; indeed there are +many rich persons whose business will not permit them to go many miles +from the city, and others who keep a suburban villa for casual visits +from the town, reserving the seashore or the Apennines for the months +when the law courts are closed and the Senate forgets to assemble. +Calvus, we have seen, possesses a remote estate in the North by one of +the Italian lakes which he can visit only on set occasions, another +at Bauli close to Baiæ, also somewhat rarely visited, a third in the +Etruscan hills which is his regular retreat in hot weather, and a +fourth, a simpler affair, located a few miles up the Anio toward Tibur. + +This last near Rome, so the senator likes to boast, is of real Spartan +simplicity. He affects to take great pleasure there in his hennery +maintained so near to the metropolis, the great flocks of geese, +Numidian (guinea) fowl, and Rhodian cocks and hens and the fields of +vegetables very grateful when sent down by the _villicus_ (farm +steward) to the city mansion. One suspects, however, that there is +greater satisfaction taken in the hot houses where, under the expensive +but well-known luxury of glass, rare fruits are ripened in cold +weather, and whence roses, violets, narcissus, hyacinths, and lilies +are dispatched to Rome for the _clarissimus’s_ banquets. + + [Illustration: ROMAN SPADES.] + +This establishment near the capital is, in fact, hardly the kind of +retreat Calvus likes best, although a good many literary gentlemen, +like Suetonius the biographer of the Cæsars, retire to modest suburban +estates “large enough to engage their minds but not large enough to +give them worry.” In such retreats they can pursue their learned +labors, “get rid of their headaches and walk lazily around their +boundary paths,” and yet keep in touch with their city friends. + + +=388. Great Estates in the Hills: Pliny’s Tuscan Villa.=--It is the +great villa in the hills which is the normal retreat and joy of Calvus, +his noble Gratia, and their equally noble children. Such places, be it +noticed, the true Roman does not care to locate very near to grandiose +mountain scenery. He is not fond of overpowering sublime views; what +he prefers is a gentle aspect over smiling plains, lush meadows, and +fertile corn-fields. + +Lucretius rejoiced in the happy intervals when he could “recline by a +brook of running water beneath the leafage of a lofty tree,” and Virgil +desired “that he might always love tilled fields and streams that flow +among the valleys.” Hadrian is somewhat exceptional, among other ways, +in that he enjoys toiling up high mountains like Ætna for the sake of +the magnificent view. The average senator desires to ascend no further +than he can comfortably drive in his cisium, or be swung along in his +litter. + + [Illustration: RUINS OF HADRIAN’S VILLA AT TIVOLI + (_Tibur_): partial view.] + +The Tuscan villa of Calvus is easily visited. It constitutes, in fact, +an estate which the senator purchased some years ago from the heirs +of the younger Pliny. Few changes beyond needful repairs have been +made since its completion, and no words of ours can surpass those of +its former owner in explaining why life seems very pleasant to those +whom Jupiter or Destiny have made rich and fortunate in the imperial +age.[249] + + [Illustration: RUINS OF HADRIAN’S VILLA AT TIVOLI + (_Tibur_): partial view.] + + +=389. Charming Location of Pliny’s Villa.=--“This property (wrote +Pliny) lies just under the Apennines, which are the healthiest of +our mountain ranges. In winter the air is cold and frosty; myrtles, +olives, and all other trees which require a constant warmth the climate +spurns, although the laurel usually prospers. But in summer the heat +is marvelously tempered; there is always a breath of air stirring, +and mild breezes are more common than high winds. The contour of the +district is most beautiful. + +“Picture an immense amphitheater, wrought by Nature, with a +wide-spreading plain ringed with hills and the summits thereof covered +with the tall and ancient forests. Here there is plenty of hunting, +while down the mountain slopes there are stretches of underwoods, and +among these are rich deep-soiled hillocks which bear excellent crops. +Below these hillocks in turn, along the whole hillsides, stretch the +vineyards which present an unbroken line far and wide, bordered with +a fringe of trees. Then you can come down to the meadows and fields +where the soil is so thick that only the most powerful oxen can tug the +plows; but the meadows are jeweled with flowers, and produce trefoil, +and other herbs, always tender and soft. + + [Illustration: VILLA OF PLINY THE YOUNGER: restored.] + +“Through the middle of this plain flows the Tiber. Here it is navigable +for boats which carry down grain to the city in winter and spring, +although in summer the channel is only a dried-up bed. Gazing over the +district from the heights you think you are not looking so much upon +earth and fields but at a landscape picture of wonderful loveliness. + +“My villa, though, lies at the foot of the hill enjoying as fine a +prospect as though it stood on the summit, the ascent is so gentle, +easy and unnoticeable. Behind lie the Apennines, but at a considerable +distance, yet even on a cloudless day the spot gets a gentle breeze +duly tempered from the hills.” + + +=390. Terraces of the Villa: the Porticoes: Summer-Houses and +Bedrooms.=--“Most of the house faces southward inviting the sun as +it were into the portico which is broad and long to correspond, and +contains a number of apartments and an old-fashioned hall. In front +there is a terrace bounded with an edging of box, then comes a sloping +ridge of turf with figures of animals on both sides cut out of the box +trees, while on the level ground stands an acanthus tree, with leaves +so soft that I might almost call them liquid. Around about there is a +walk bordered by evergreens pressed and trimmed into various shapes; +then comes an exercise ground, round like a circus, which surrounds +the box trees which are cut into different forms, and the dwarf shrubs +that are kept well clipped.[250] Beyond these there stretches a meadow +delightful for its natural charm as the things just described are for +their artificial beauty. + +“At the head of the portico juts out the triclinium from the doors +whereof can be seen this terrace, meadow, and the expanse of country +beyond. Almost opposite the middle of the portico is a summer-house +with a small open space in the middle shaded by four plane trees. +Among them stands a marble fountain, from which the water plays upon +and sprinkles slightly the roots of the plane trees and the grass plot +around the four. + +“In this pavilion there is located a bed chamber which excludes all +light, noise and sound, and adjoining it is another dining room +especially for my friends, which commands also a delightful view. +There is still another bed chamber, however, which is embowered and +shaded by the nearest plane tree and built of marble up to the balcony; +above [in the ceiling] is a picture of a tree with birds perched in +the branches, equally as beautiful as the marble. Here, too, there is +a small fountain with a basin around the latter, and into it the water +flows from a number of little pipes which produce a most agreeable +liquid sound. + + [Illustration: ROMAN GARDEN SCENE.] + +“In the corner of the portico there is yet a third bed chamber leading +out of the dining-room, some of its windows looking forth upon the +terrace, others upon the meadow, while the windows in front face the +fish-pond which lies just beneath them: right pleasant it is both to +eye and to ear, as the water falls from a considerable height and +glistens like snow as it is caught in the marble basin. This bed room +is agreeably warm even in winter, for it is flooded with an abundance +of sunshine.” + + +=391. The Baths: the Rear Apartments: the Riding Course.=--“To the +last named room adjoins the calidarium of the baths, and on a cloudy +day we can turn in the steam heat to take the place of the warm sun. +Next comes an ample and cheerful undressing room for the bath, from +which you pass into the cool frigidarium containing a large and shady +swimming pool. Adjoining this cold bath is the mild tepidarium, for +the sun shines upon it lavishly, although not so much as upon the hot +bath which is built further out. Above the adjacent dressing room is +a ball court where various kinds of exercise can be taken and several +games can go on at once; and close to this are more bed-chambers all +commanding enchanting views over the gardens, meadows, vineyards and +mountains. + + [Illustration: MARBLE URN OR GARDEN ORNAMENT.] + +“Such is the front part of the villa. In the rear and to the sides are +still other dining rooms and bedrooms; especially there are certain +that are so far underground as to be perfectly cool even in the hottest +weather. There is also an elaborate set of quarters for the servants. + +“However, the most delightful part of the entire establishment is +perhaps the riding course. Around its borders are plane trees covered +with ivy, which creeps along the trunks and branches and spreading +across to the neighboring trees joins the whole line together. Between +the plane trees are set box-shrubs, and on the further side of the +shrubs is a ring of laurels which mingle their shade with that of the +plane. + +“At the farther end, the straight boundary of the riding course is +curved into a semi-circular form which quite changes its appearance. +It is inclosed with cypress-trees, casting in places a dark and gloomy +shade, though spots are left quite open to the sunshine; in these last +bloom roses, and the warmth of the sun gives a delightful change from +the cool of the shadows. All around these avenues run paths lined with +other box-shrubs; and here and there are more of the box trimmed into a +great variety of patterns, some being cut into letters forming my name, +as being the owner, or that of the gardener.” + + +=392. The Fountains and Luxurious Pavilions in the Gardens.=--“At +the upper end of this hippodrome is a couch of white marble covered +with a vine. Jets of water gush from under the couch through small +pipes, and look as if they were forced out by the weight of the +persons reclining on the pillows, while the water rushes down into a +graceful marble basin with an underground outlet so it fills but never +overflows. When I dine at this spot the heavier dishes and plates are +set by the side of the basin, but the lighter ones, made in the shape +of little boats and birds, float on the surface and turn round and +round. + +“Directly opposite this couch is a sleeping pavilion. It is formed of +glistening marble, and through the projecting folding doors you can +pass at once among the foliage, while from the windows you look upon +the same green picture. Within is a bed, and the shade is so dense that +little light can enter, while a wonderfully luxuriant vine has climbed +upon the roof and covers the whole building. You can fancy you are in +a grove as you lie here, only you do not feel the rain as you do amid +the trees. Here, too, a fountain rises, then immediately loses itself +underground. There are a number of marble chairs placed up and down, +very restful if you do not wish the bed. Near these chairs, yet again, +there are little fountains, and throughout the whole riding course you +can hear the murmur of tiny streams carried through pipes which run +wherever you please to direct them.” + + +=393. Life of Sensuous Luxury at Such a Villa. Contrast in Human +Conditions under the Roman Régime.=--“Besides the beauties herein +described one has perfect comfort, repose, and freedom from anxiety at +such a villa. I need not don the heavy toga; no neighbor ever calls to +drag me out; everything is placid and quiet; and this peace adds to the +healthfulness of the place, giving it, so to speak, a purer sky and a +more limpid air. Here I enjoy better health both in mind and body than +anywhere else, for I exercise the former by study, and the latter by +hunting. May the gods preserve to me this place in all its beauty!” + +If life can consist of nothing more than a series of delightful +sensations, the eye to be pleased by entrancing vistas of marble, +greenery, or wooded hills, the ear by the soft murmur of musical +fountains, and every creature want ministered unto by scores of highly +trained menials, whose sole object in life seems to be to anticipate +their masters’ needs,--what greater fortune, one may ask, can any age +provide than to be possessor of such a villa, with the wealth and rank +such possession must imply? Happy its former, happy its present owner! +Is it forbidden to regret that one’s lot is not cast for a lifetime in +Italy in these prosperous days of the Empire? + +Yet tarry--even while as Calvus’s guests we take our seats upon his +marble benches beside the musical fountain under the whispering +cypresses, and before we can converse amiably with the senator, +perhaps upon the Stoic theory of “The Highest Good” there are sounds +discordant--the clink of fetters, the snap of whips, the curses of +drivers, the groans of human cattle. + +Along the road concealed by the shrubbery, is passing the slave coffle, +the gang of “speaking tools” on its way from the underground dungeon +(ergastulum) upon the great farm attached to the villa, to the daily +toil in the fields beneath a broiling sun. The refined luxury of the +fortunate few is purchased by the squalor, the ignorance, and often by +the lifelong misery of the brutalized many. + + + + + CHAPTER XXIII + + THE RETURN OF THE EMPEROR + + +=394. Character of Hadrian: Prosperity and Good Government of His +Reign.=--Purposely we had visited Rome in the absence of Hadrian; +our interest had been in the city and its people, not in the versatile, +ever-wandering Cæsar and the administration of the Empire. But before +Publius Calvus could set forth for his Tuscan villa he and all other +Senators had to attend a great state ceremony--the reception of the +Emperor returning from his travels. + +More than any other Roman ruler Hadrian had been an insatiable +traveler. The frontiers of Britain, Syria, and Africa, the garrison +towns on the Rhine, and the Danube--he knew them all. The peaceful +cities of Gaul, Spain, and Egypt reaped the benefits of his intelligent +benevolence when he visited them. Twice he had sojourned in Athens, the +city which perhaps he loved the best in all the world, finishing the +great Temple of Olympian Zeus left uncompleted since the days of the +Peisistratidæ and otherwise beautifying the now sleepy old university +town, so that its grateful dwellers acclaimed him as a second founder +like unto the original Theseus. + +Hadrian’s personal life had been indeed marred with certain acts of +arbitrary caprice and even of cruelty; many senators grumbled at his +long absences from Rome and they somewhat dreaded his sudden judgments, +but the Empire at large had been incalculably happy under his sway. +The legions were under firm discipline, wars there were not save petty +rumblings on the frontiers and the embers of the last struggle of the +unhappy Jews, while peaceful commerce whitened the Mediterranean, and +merchants’ caravans wound confidently over the great road system with +little fear of bandits. + +Under such an Emperor laws were scientifically administered without +fear or favor. The provincial governors were, despite an occasional +plunderer such as we saw haled before the Senate, men of genuine +intelligence, probity, and zeal. If the Senate was becoming a venerable +debating club, if the other forms of political liberty were either dead +or dying, under Hadrian despotism was showing its fairest face--with +a highly capable monarch earnestly devoting himself to his subjects’ +good. What man, surveying the august fabric and social and governmental +machinery of the Empire, could have failed to echo the current +notion--that the dominion of Rome was divinely ordained and find that +her departed Cæsars were worthily ranked among the gods?[251] + + [Illustration: HADRIAN.] + + +=395. Return of Hadrian to Italy.=--But Hadrian had been growing +old and a little weary of his philanthropic wanderings. And now at +length a peaceful armada had borne him back from Greece to Puteoli. +Hence with an enormous cortège he had traveled by easy stages along +the “Queen of Roads,” the Via Appia, to the outskirts of the capital. +And now to welcome him back to the Palatine the obsequious magistrates +arranged the inevitable public spectacle. + +The Emperor is not returning as a conquering _triumphator_. No +formal triumph can therefore be ordained in his honor. He cannot wear +laurel as he rides in a gilded chariot, preceded by the long files of +fettered captives and, followed by the cohorts of his acclaiming army, +drive his car through the Porta Triumphalis near the Circus Flaminius, +next take a long circuit through the Circus Maximus and then down the +Via Sacra and across the Forum and finally mount upward to pay his vows +to Jupiter Best and Greatest on the Capitol. A magnificent procession, +nevertheless, is possible. At the third milestone from the city along +the Via Appia all the senators and equites in gala robes meet the +advancing Imperator. His Empress Sabina is greeted with equal ceremony +by the wives of the entire aristocracy. + +In the city all the vast colonnades are hung with garlands of spring +flowers, all business is suspended; all the fora and streets along the +line of march are packed with throngs in brilliant costumes and equally +brilliant chaplets. One grows weary counting the magnificent litters +everywhere passing, followed by the gorgeously liveried retinues of the +wealthy. + + +=396. Imperial Procession Entering Rome.=--At last after duly +impressive delays the imperial procession starts from the spot known +as the Three Fountains.[252] The Prætorians are there in full force, +the City Cohorts, and heavy drafts of the vigiles, all the tribunes, +centurions, and privates parading in silvered or gilded armor with +scarlet plumes and mantles. The magistrates and ex-magistrates all wear +the colorful toga prætexta. + +The ruler himself, “Holder of the Tribunician and Proconsular Power, +Pontifex Maximus, Cæsar Augustus, Father of his Country, First +Citizen and Imperator”; that is to say Hadrian in person rides in the +glittering chariot wherein Augustus rode in his triumph after the +battle of Actium. Four snow-white horses draw the car, and beside the +slim Greek charioteer stands the object of universal envy, the man +who is all but a god even in Italy, who is the “Son of the Divinity,” +Trajan, and who is actually worshiped as a deity before a thousand +altars throughout the subjected East. + +Hadrian is a handsome bearded man of stature above the average. The +gray of advancing age is streaking his hair, but he retains that +graceful presence and piercing glance which would make him a notable +figure had he never donned the purple. Before him, bound to the end of +staves, are carried placards in large letters reciting the benefits he +has conferred on hundreds of communities; there is also a large roll +of papyrus symbolic of the “Perpetual Edict” which he has inspired +the learned jurist Salvus Julianus to compile preparatory to the +codification of the vast Civil Law. + +Directly before the Emperor there is borne upon an open car a gilded +image of the beautiful youth Antinöos, Hadrian’s favorite companion, +whose mysterious death in Egypt the monarch has never ceased to mourn; +while behind the imperial chariot rides the marveling envoy of Chosröes +the Parthian King who has received peace at the hands of the Cæsar. +The hundreds of senators and thousands of equites marching in the +procession, now and again, perhaps at some signal, raise shouts of +applause to the master and sun of that glorious human universe wherein +they rejoice as the fortunate stars. + + +=397. Hailing the Emperor.=--So the procession enters Rome. At sight of +the tall, majestic Imperator, whose purple mantle gleams with gold, all +the streets and plazas burst into tumults of cheering. “_Io Triumphe! +Io Triumphe! Ave Cæsar! Ave Hadriane!_” while not a few in ecstatic +loyalty make haste even to salute him as “_Dominus et Deus!_” + +As the imperial car passes each crossing of the streets, victims are +sacrificed, while loud prayers are raised for the monarch’s safety. The +air grows heavy with the perfumes of the incense burning on hundreds +of improvised altars. From the balconies matrons rain down masses of +roses; and at many a turn great volumes of saffron are sprinkled over +the marchers. + +Onward Hadrian rides, his handsome features curling perchance with +pleasure but looking not to the right hand nor the left. Perhaps he +recalls that were this a formal triumph, a slave would have been +required to stand behind him whispering at intervals, “Remember, you +are but a man!” + + +=398. The Donatives, Fêtes, and Games.=--The procession thus +sweeps along the Sacred Way, pauses for a moment that the Emperor +may survey the latest touches upon his new Temple of Venus and Rome, +passes the holy House of Vesta and then turning away from the Forum +and the Capitol ascends into the Palatine. Here the gorgeously +arrayed companies of the official bureaucracy swell again the “_Io +Triumphe!_” and Hadrian dismounts from the car to offer his own +special thanksgiving for safe return, and to burn his own incense +within the Temple of Apollo of the Palatine. + +All that afternoon the fête continues. The great public baths stand +open, absolutely free, not even the petty quadrans being exacted +from the plebeian visitors. The grain and bread doles are doubled; +the ticket holders receiving to boot measures of oil and wine. The +Prætorians drink deeply the imperial health--for a special donative of +1000 sesterces ($40) per man has been ordered for the entire corps. + +In the Flavian Amphitheater Hadrian himself presides in the podium +while a lioness contends with an elephant, the most famous and skilful +netters and Thracians slaughter one another, and a desperate robber is +done to death by three panthers. Late into the evening the streets are +illuminated; there is feasting, dancing, reveling all through the wide +parks and the bosky groves stretching across the Campus Martius to the +Tiber. Everybody is praising the greatness and glory alike of Emperor +and Empire; and as for Rome, Imperial Rome, the center of all the +earth, who doubts that her power is ordained to stand forever? + +=399. A Christian Gathering.=--Not all Rome this night is given over +to roses, wine, and reveling under the torchlight. In one of those +subterranean burial galleries near the Via Appia, which a later age +will call “Catacombs,” in a spot where a chamber of some dimensions has +been excavated, a group of soberly clad folk have gathered. They have +met stealthily,--posting sentries to give the alarm, for the vigiles +may not have become too drunk that night to be active. + + [Illustration: VIEW IN THE CHRISTIAN CATACOMBS: + present state.] + +The leader of their service is the Bishop Higinius whose name will +stand as the eighth Pope following the Apostle Peter. During their +simple liturgies some strains of boisterous music from the luxurious, +sensual, pitiless metropolis outside interrupt their hymns, and the +good bishop signs to one of the deacons. The latter opens the scroll +of the Book of Apocalypse where under the cryptic name of “Babylon” is +forewarned the fate even of imperial Rome; and thus he reads: + +“For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her +iniquities; therefore shall her plagues come upon her in one day, death +and mourning and famine; and the kings of the earth who have committed +wickedness and lived deliciously with her shall bewail and lament her +when they see the smoke of her burning. + +“And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her, for no +man buyeth their merchandise any more;--the merchandise of gold and +silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen and purple +and silk and scarlet and all rare woods and all manner of vessels +of ivory, and all manner of vessels of most precious wood, and of +brass, and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and odors and ointments, +and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and +beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, _and souls +of men_.” + + + + + INDEX + + [References are to pages.] + + + _=Acta Diurna=_, 282 ff. + + =Advocates=, methods of, 345; + great importance of, 355; + cheap pettifoggers, 356; + high abilities of some lawyers, 358. + + =Agrippa=, Baths of, 361. + + =Aliens=, vast numbers of, 123; + colonies of, in Rome, 145. + + =Amphitheater=, 394 ff.; + (_see_ Gladiator Contests). + + =Antiques=, often spurious, 58. + + =Apicius=, the gourmand, 100. + + =Aqueducts=, 303–304. + + =Arch=, use of, 13. + + =Architectural Forms=, usually Greek, 12; + use of arch and vault in, 13. + + =Architecture=, very grandiose, 258. + + =Arena=, arrangement of, 392; + (_see_ Gladiator Contests). + + =Armor=, of legionaries, 318. + + =Army=, real master of the Empire, 307; + held under stiff discipline, 308; + stationed on frontiers, 308–309; + legions in, 309 ff.; + size of, 331; + efficiency of, 332; + no reserves to, 332; + (_see_ Legionaries). + + =Arria= (wife of Cæcina Poetus), 76. + + =Atrium=, 42, 43. + + =Auctions=, 226. + + =Audiences= with emperors, 296. + + =Augurs= and augury, 418–419. + + =Augustus=, tomb of, 372; + deified, 439. + + =Auspices=, taken in Senate, 340. + + =Auxiliary cohorts=, 327–328. + + + =Ball games=, 206. + + =Banks= and bankers, 227 ff.; + a great banker, 228; + forms of investment, 229; + trust business of, 229; + savings banks, 230; + safe deposits, 230; + deposits in Temple of Vesta, 231. + + =Banquets= (_see_ Dinners). + + =Barber shops=, 90, 91. + + =Basilica Æmilia=, 271. + + =Basilica Julia=, 272–274. + + =Baths=, popularity of, 358; + luxurious private, 359; + private-owned, 360–361; + large government-owned, 360; + great Baths of Trajan, 361 ff.; + crowds at, 362; + often a kind of club house, 362–363; + entrance to, 363; + interior of, 364; + cold room (_frigidarium_), 365; + swimming pool, 365; + _tepidarium_, 365–366; + hot baths (_caldaria_), 366; + extreme luxury of, 367; + restaurants and shops at, 367–368; + parasites at, 368. + + =Beards=, revival of, 91. + + =Beast fights=, 399. + + =Beggars=, multitude of, 252. + + =Bonuses= (_donativa_), 245. + + =Books=, 209 ff.; + format of, 210; + mounting and rolling of, 211; + copying of, 212; + publication of, 212, 213. + + =Bread=, 103, 104. + + =Breakfast= (_jentaculum_), 110. + + =Building materials= used in Rome, 10. + + =_Bulla_=, 186. + + + =_Caldaria_=, 366. + + =Camp= of prætorian guard, 311. + + =Camps=, military, 330. + + =Campus Martius=, view from, 7; + general description of, 280; + great porticoes along, 368; + public buildings upon, 369. + + =Carriages=, varieties of, 455–456. + + =Catacombs=, used by Christians, 473. + + =Cemeteries=, 179–180. + + =Cena= (_see_ Dinner). + + =Centurions=, in legions, 323–325. + + =Chairs=, forms of, 55–56. + + =Charioteers=, 383; + (_see_ Circus). + + =Chests=, 57. + + =Children=, legal status of, 184; + exposure of, 184; + very desirable, 185; + ceremonies after birth, 185; + names given, 186–189; + care in educating, 189; + toys and pets, 190; + taught Greek, 191; + schooling and education, 192 ff. + + =Christianity=, pagan account of, 449; + persecution of, 450–451; + charges against, 451; + attitude of educated men towards, 452. + + =Christians=, gathering of, in the Catacombs, 473. + + =Circus=, popularity of, 382; + charioteers in, 383; + racing factions in, 383; + wagering in, 384; + _Circus Maximus_, 384 ff.; + race track, 384; + procession before races, 385–386; + beginning of races, 386; + dangers in races, 387; + proclaiming victors, 387–389. + + =Circus=, Flaminian, 370. + + =_Circus Maximus_=, 384 ff. + + =Citizenship=, desirability of, 146; + case of St. Paul, 147. + + =Claudius Etruscus=, powerful freedman, 142. + + =Clientage=, old type, 147–148; + new type, 148. + + =Clients=, morning salutation by, 148–149; + doles given, 150; + attend their patron, 151; + undergo insults, 151, 152. + + =Clothing= (_see_ Garments). + + =Cohorts=, city (_cohortes urbanae_), 313. + + =_Collegia_=, 249 ff. + + =Color=, used upon sculpture, 259. + + =Column of Trajan=, 278–280. + + =Concrete=, great use of, 11. + + =_Congiaria_=, 244. + + =Cookery=, refinements in, 109, 110. + + =Correspondence=, 208. + + =Couches=, general use of, 54. + + =Country=, around Rome, 5; + view of, 5, 6. + + =Country-life=, Roman love of, 453–454; + (_see_ Villas). + + =Court=, imperial; + (_see_ Emperor). + + =Courts=, law, 353 ff.; + (_see_ Legal Procedure). + + =Crowds=, typical, upon a Roman street, 21. + + =_Curia_=, 272. + + =Curia Julia=, arrangement of, 339. + + =Cybele=, worship of, 441. + + + =Daily Gazette= (_Acta Diurna_), 282 ff.; + entries and gossip in, 284, 285. + + =Decurions=, provincial nobles, 152. + + =Deified Augustus= and later emperors, 439. + + =Dining room= (_triclinium_), 45, 46. + + =Dinner= (_cena_), 111 ff.; + time for, 111; + standard number for, 113; + preparing for, 114; + arranging couches, 115; + serving of, 116; + courses at, 117; + drinking bout after, 118; + garlands and perfumes at, 119; + very elaborate banquets, 120; + simple home meals, 121. + + =Dinner hunters=, 112; + at baths, 368. + + =Discomforts= of life in Rome, 33. + + =Doles=, public, of grain, 242, 243; + distribution of, 244. + + =_Domus_= (mansions), 39 ff.; + often several owned by one magnate, 39; + plan of early, 40; + plan of developed, 40, 41; + price of a handsome, 41; + entrance to, 42; + atrium of, 42, 43; + decorations of, 43; + _peristylium_, 44; + _triclinium_, 45, 46; + special rooms in, 47; + garden behind, 47; + slaves’ quarters, 48; + floors and windows of, 49; + frescos in, 50; + statues in, 51, 52, 53; + furniture in, 54 ff. + + =_Donativa_=, 245. + + =Drinking bout= (_commissatio_), 118. + + + =Eagle= of legion, 325. + + =Eating-houses=, 235, 236. + + =Education=, selection of school, 192; + extent of literacy, 193; + instruction of girls, 193; + for lower classes, 193, 194; + low-grade schools, 194; + cruelty in schools, 195; + superior types of schools, 196; + methods of teaching, 197; + reading and writing, 198; + arithmetic, 199; + grammarians’ high schools, 199; + passion for oratory, 200; + rhetoric schools, 201; + mock debates, 202; + popularity of rhetorical studies, 203; + philosophy, study of, 204. + + =Egypt=, worship of its gods, 442. + + =Emperor=, center of social life, 294; + “friends of Cæsar,” 295; + audiences with, 296; + ruin through disfavor of, 296, 297; + favor most valuable, 298. + + =Emperors=, cult of the deified, 439–440. + + =Emporium=, 240. + + =Encampments=, military, 330. + + =Entrance= to house, 42. + + =Epicureanism=, popular, 407. + + =Equites=, second class nobles, 153; + qualifications and honors of, 154, 155; + review of, 156. + + =Escorts=, of rich nobles, 25. + + + =Factions=, in circus, 383. + + =Fame=, passion for, in letters, 214, 215; + in poetry, 216. + + =_Familia_= of slaves, 129, 130; + organization of, 131. + + =Festivals=, great number of, 374; + passion for spectacles, 375; + (_see_ Games, Public). + + =_Fetiales_=, 422. + + =Fire department=, 304 ff. + + =Fish=, great demand for, 106. + + =Flamens=, 420. + + =Flavian amphitheater=, 394–397. + + =Floors=, of houses, 49. + + =Flowers=, varieties supplied from villa gardens, 458. + + =Flute-blowers=, guild of, 251. + + =Fora=, centers of Roman life, 254; + series of, 256; + crowds in, 256, 257; + centers for new, 257; + grandiose architecture in, 258; + use of color on sculptures, 259; + entrance upon the series, 260; + Temple of Venus and Rome, 261, 262; + colossal statue of Nero, 262; + Arch of Titus, 262; + Temple of Vesta, 265; + Temple of the Divine Julius, 265; + Old Forum, 265 ff.; + of the Emperors, 275 ff. + + =Foreign= cults, numerous in Rome, 437; + why popular, 438; + cult of Cybele or “Great Mother,” 441; + Isis worship, 442; + ceremonies at Temple of Isis, 443; + Serapis worship, 445; + Mithras worship, 445; + nobility of Mithras cult, 446; + _Taurobolium_ ceremony, 448–449; + Christianity, pagan view of, 449 ff. + + =Fortresses=, frontier, 330. + + =Forum=, morning visit to, 111; + of Julius, 276; + of Augustus, 277; + of Nerva, 278; + of Trajan, 278; + (_see_ Old Forum _and_ Fora). + + =_Forum Romanum_=, 265 ff.; + (_see_ Old Forum). + + =Fountains=, public, 20. + + =Freedmen=, how created, 140; + status of, 140, 141; + humble types of, 141; + wealthy, 142; + importance of, 143. + + =Frescos=, in a Roman house, 50, 51. + + “=Friends=” of Emperor, 295. + + =_Frigidarium_=, 365. + + =Fruits=, 104, 105. + + =Fullers=, 89. + + =Funeral monuments=, 179, 182. + + =Funerals=, great interest in, 172; + preliminaries to, 173; + procession of “ancestors,” 174; + exhibits in procession, 175; + orations at, 176; + tombs, 177–180; + funeral pyre, 180, 181; + for poorer classes, 182. + + + =Gain=, passion for, 220. + + =_Galli_=, 441. + + =Gambling=, mania for, 375. + + =Games=, children’s, 204; + played on boards, 205, 206; + out-door, 206. + + =Games=, public, passion for, 375; + mania for gambling at, 375; + vast scale of, 375–376; + great expense of, 376; + popularity of, 377; + seating at, 378; + (_see_ Theater, Circus, _and_ Amphitheater). + + =Gardens=, public, around Rome, 372. + + =Garlands=, at dinners, 119. + + =Garments=, types of, 80 ff.; + toga, 81; + tunica, 84; + capes, cloaks, and gala garments, 85; + women’s stola and palla, 86, 87; + materials of, 88; + use of silk, 89; + changing styles of, 89. + + =Gladiators=, notice of display of, 29; + popularity of, 392; + (_see_ Gladiator Contests). + + =Gladiator contests=, enormously popular, 389; + at funerals, 390. + + =Gladiator schools=, 390; + inmates usually criminals, 391; + severe training in, 392; + typical arrangement of, 393; + Flavian Amphitheater, 394–395; + its interior arrangements, 395–396; + procession before contests, 397; + criminals thrown to beasts, 398; + fights with wild beasts, 399; + interval in sports, 400; + distribution of lottery tickets at, 400; + beginning of regular, 401; + chariot warfare, 402; + cavalry combats, 403; + signals for ruthlessness and signals for mercy, 403; + “Netters” and “Thracians,” 404–405; + reward of victors, 405–406. + + =Glass=, used in windows, 49. + + =Gluttony=, 100–102. + + =Golden Milestone=, 269, 270. + + =Gourmandizing=, delight in, 100. + + =Government= of Rome, 299 ff.; + city præfect, 300; + curators and commissioners, 301; + water supply of, 301–302; + great aqueducts, 303; + police and fire department, 304–305. + + =Grain=, trade in, 242; + doles of, 243; + distribution of, 244. + + =Grammarians’ schools=, 199. + + “=Great Mother=,” 441. + + =Greek language=, constantly used in Rome, 22, 23. + + =Guests= at dinner, proper number nine, 113; + arrangement on couches, 115. + + =Guilds=, 249; + very ancient ones, 250; + importance of, 251; + festivals of, 252. + + + =Hadrian=, prosperity of his reign, 1, 468; + tomb of, 370; + his return to Italy, 469; + his procession entering Rome, 470; + how saluted, 472; + presides over fêtes, 472–473. + + =Hairdressing=, women’s, 93; + ornaments on hair, 93. + + =Heating= of houses, 49. + + =Hills=, Seven, of Rome, 9. + + =Hospitals=, almost nonexistent, 168. + + =Hotels=, (_see_ Inns). + + =House fronts=, on typical Roman streets, 18. + + =Houses= (see _Insulæ_ and _Domus_). + + + =Idlers=, vast number of, 27. + + =_Imagines_= (death masks), 54. + + =Impeachment trial=, before Senate, 343 ff. + + =Industry=, quarters for, 238; + conditions of labor in, 238, 239; + organization in guilds, 249 ff. + + =Inns=, usually sordid, 231; + type of, 232; + reckonings at, 233; + frequenters of, 234; + eating houses, 235 ff. + + =_Insulæ_= (tenement houses), 34 ff.; + typical _insula_, 35; + flats in, 36; + cheap attics in, 37; + dangers of, 37, 38. + + =Isis=, cult of, 442 ff. + + + =Janus=, 413. + + =_Jentaculum_= (breakfast), 110. + + =Jesus=, legal status of, 144. + + =Jewels=, 96 ff. + + =Jews= in Rome, 145. + + + =Kissing=, habit of, in public, 27. + + =Kitchens=, 109. + + + =_Lacerna_=, 85. + + =Lacus=, Curtius, 274. + + =Lares= and Penates, 414. + + =_Latrunculi_= (game), 205. + + =Lawyers= (_see_ Advocates). + + =Legacies=, 170; + hunting for, 171; + public bequests, 172. + + =Legal procedure=, highly scientific, 353; + great tribunals for, 354; + forms of verdicts, 355; + importance of advocates, 355; + cheap pettifoggers, 356; + character and slave witnesses, 357; + use of written evidence, 357–358. + + =Legate= of the legion, 329. + + =Legionaries=, enlistment of, 314; + organization of, 315; + training of, 316; + weapons of, 317–318; + armor of, 318; + rewards and punishment of, 319–320; + retiring bonuses for, 329; + pay and rations of, 320; + training of, 321; + non-military labors of, 322; + petty officers of, 322–323; + centurions of, 323–324; + _primipilus_ of, 325; + eagle of, 325. + + =Legions=, number of, 309; + organization of, 315 ff.; + location and names of, 326; + commanders of, 328; + (_see also_ Legionaries). + + =Letters=, 207, 208. + + =Libraries=, size of, 217; + private, 218; + public, 219; + of Trajan, 280. + + =Literary fame=, passion for, 214 ff. + + =Luncheon= (_prandium_), 111. + + + =Magistrates=, public honors paid to, 24. + + =Mansions= (see _Domus_). + + =Manumission=, 139, 140. + + =Marble trade=, 241. + + =Marriage=, men often reluctant to marry, 61; + usually arranged by girls’ parents, 63; + marriage treaties, 64; + betrothal before, 65; + dowries, 66; + dressing bride, 66, 67; + actual ceremonies of, 67 ff.; + contract of, 68; + wedding procession, 69; + ceremonies at bridegroom’s house, 70; + often unhappy, 72; + divorce, easy and frequent, 74; + happy marriages, 75. + + =Masks=, death (_imagines_), 54. + + =Matrons=, honors paid to, 71, 72; + (_see_ Women). + + =Meals= and meal times, 110 ff. + + =Meat= and poultry, 105. + + =Medicine= (_see_ Physicians). + + =Mimes=, 380. + + =Mithras=, worship of, 445–446. + + =Morning=, how spent by gentlemen, 110. + + =Morra=, game of, 205. + + =Mosaics=, in Roman mansion, 43. + + + =Names=, intricacy of, 186; + irregular, 187; + of slaves, 188; + of women, 188; + confusion of, 189. + + =Nero=, colossal statue of, 262. + + =Notices=, public, 29. + + + =Old Forum=, 265 ff.; + noble traditions of, 266; + impression created by, 267; + crowds in, 268, 269; + area of, 268, 269; + western end of, 269; + Rostra, 269; + Golden Milestone, 269, 270; + Tullianum, 270, 271; + Basilica Æmilia, 271; + Temple of Janus, 271; + Senate House, 272; + Basilica Julia, 272; + Lacus Curtius, 274. + + =Olive oil=, 107. + + =Omens=, belief in, 419–420. + + =Oratory=, passion for, 200; + training in, 201 ff.; + in Senate, 343 ff. + + =Ostia=, trade through, 239; + shipping at, 247; + naval shipping at, 248; + harbor town at, 249. + + + =_Pænula_=, 85. + + =Palace=, imperial, 288 ff.; + magnificent aspect of, 289; + famous buildings in, 290; + triclinium and throne-room of Domitian, 291–292; + enormous luxury of, 292; + swarm of officials present in, 293. + + =Palatine=, view from, 260; + history of, 286; + fine residences upon, 287; + Augustus settles upon, 287–288; + commanding view from, 288; + imperial palace upon, 288 ff. + + =_Palla_=, 88. + + =Pantheon=, 280–282. + + =Pantomimes=, 381; + high art in, 382. + + =Papyrus=, 209, 210. + + =Parasites=, swarm of, in Rome, 27; + at dinners, 112, 113; + at baths, 368. + + =Park system= around Rome, 280; + toward Tiber, 369. + + =_Patria Potestas_=, 184. + + =Paul=, legal status of, 147. + + =Pavements=, in Roman streets, 18. + + =_Pax Romana_=, blessings of, 1. + + =Pearls=, 97. + + =Perfumes=, 98; + at dinners, 119. + + =_Peristylium_=, 44. + + =Pet animals=, 58; + of children, 190. + + =Philosophy=, study of, 204. + + =Physicians=, no training required, 160; + superior class of, 161; + fashionable doctors, 161, 162; + instruments and books of, 163; + famous remedies of, 164; + absurd medicines, 164; + theriac, 165; + fear of poisons, 165, 166; + disciples of, 166; + quack doctors, 167. + + =Placards=, public, 28, 29. + + =Plebeians=, the “mob,” 145. + + =Pliny the Younger’s Tuscan villa=, 459; + charming location of, 460; + view from, 461; + terraces and porticoes of, 462; + bed-chambers of, 463–464; + gardens of, 465. + + =Poetry=, passion for, 216. + + =Police department=, 304–305. + + =Pontiffs=, 417. + + =Population= of Rome, 3, 4. + + =Porticoes=, along Campus Martius, 368–369. + + =Portrait busts=, trade in, 246. + + =Præfect=, of city of Rome, 300; + of the police (_vigiles_), 306; + of the camps, 328. + + =Prætorian guard=, 309–311; + præfect of, 311; + camp of, 311–312; + organization of, 313. + + =Prætorian præfect=, 311. + + =Prayer=, formal, at sacrifice, 428. + + =Priests=, duties of, 417; + (_see_ Flamens). + + =_Primipilus_=, 325. + + =Processions=, attending great nobles, 24. + + =Provincials=, status of, 143. + + =Public games=, 375 ff. + + =Publishers of books=, 213, 214. + + =Punishments=, of slaves, 136; + of soldiers, 320. + + + =Regia=, 265. + + =Regions= of Rome, 15. + + =Religion=, signs of, everywhere, 407; + upper classes sceptical, 407–408; + Stoicism popular, 408; + revival of, under Empire, 409; + many foreign cults, 410; + plebeians very superstitious, 411; + based on old Italian agriculture, 412; + native Italian gods, 413; + Lares and Penates, 414; + personified virtues as gods, 415; + legalistic character of, 416; + priests not sacrosanct, 417; + _Pontifices_, 417–418; + _Augurs_, 418; + Flamens, 420; + _Salii_, 421; + _Fetiales_, 422; + Arval Brethren, 423; + rustic, 424; + soothsayers and astrologers, 424–425; + sacrifices, private, 425; + ceremony at temple, 426; + slaughtering the victim, 427; + formal prayer, 428; + Vestal Virgins, 429 ff.; + (_see_ Foreign Cults). + + =Restaurants= (_see_ Eating-Houses). + + =Rhetoricians=, 201; + schools of, 202 ff. + + =Rings=, 96. + + =Robbers=, game of, 205. + + =Roman Empire= very prosperous under Hadrian, 1. + + =Rome=, beautified by Augustus and later Emperors, 3; + reaches architectural perfection about 135 A.D., 3; + population of, 3, 4; + crowded condition of, 4; + country around, 5; + view from Campus Martius, 7; + Seven Hills of, 9; + regions and social quarters of, 15; + typical street in, 16; + discomforts of life in, 33; + vast alien population in, 122; + divisions of society in, 123 ff.; + great Jewish colony in, 145; + plebeians in, 145, 146; + life in, extravagant and expensive, 221; + a city of investors and buyers of luxuries, 222; + great shopping quarters in, 223; + industrial quarters in, 210 ff.; + city government of, 299 ff. + + =Rostra=, 269. + + + =Sacrifices=, private description of, 425 ff. + + =_Salii_=, 421. + + =Salutations=, form of, in public, 26. + + =Sandals=, 95. + + =Saturnalia=, 437. + + =Schools= (_see_ Educators). + + =Scribblings=, upon every wall, 30, 31. + + =Sculptures=, trade in, 246; + often colored, 259. + + =Seat of honor=, at festivals, 378. + + =Secretaries=, 209. + + =Senate=, outward glory of, 334; + actual weakness of, 335; + actual authority of, 336; + organization and procedure of, 337–338; + _Curia_ (Senate House) for, 338; + arrangement of seats, 339; + precedence in, 339–340; + opening of session, 340; + auspices in, 340–341; + routine business in, 341; + taking of vote, 342; + impeachment before, 342–343; + use of water clocks, 344; + oratory in, 344; + advocates before, 345; + shouts and invectives during debates, 347; + taking the opinion of, 348 ff.; + speeches from floor of, 349; + uproar in, 350; + formal division in, 351; + decree of banishment, 352; + end of session, 352. + + =Senate House=, 272. + + =Senatorial order=, 156; + includes relatives of senators, 158. + + =Senators=, social glories of, 157; + form a high aristocracy, 158; + insignia and titles of, 158; + great importance of, 159. + + =Serapis=, worship of, 445. + + “=Seven Hills=” of Rome, 9. + + =Shipping=, merchant, 247, 248; + naval, 248. + + =Shoes=, 95. + + =Shop fronts=, 18. + + =Shops=, vast number of, 18; + shopping districts in Rome, 223, 224; + arrangement of shops, 224; + of barbers, 225; + superior retail stores, 226. + + =Shrines=, upon streets, 20. + + =Siege warfare=, 331. + + =Siesta=, custom of, 112. + + =Silk=, use of, 89. + + =Slaves=, notice to, 42; + vast numbers of, 124; + power of master over, 125; + city slaves and country slaves, 125–126; + purchase of, 126, 127; + auction of, 128; + sale of superior, 129; + size of household of, 129, 130; + workmen as, 130; + duties of, 131; + organization of, 131; + discipline of, 132; + frequently idle, 133; + degradation of slave system, 133; + evil results on masters, 134; + punishment of, 135; + branding of, 136; + pursuit of runaways, 137; + torture of, 138; + manumission of, 139. + + =Society=, divisions of, 123, 124. + + =Soldiers= (_see_ Legionaries). + + =Soothsayers=, 424. + + =Statues=, vast multiplication of, 51; + portrait busts, 52, 53. + + =_Status_=, in Roman society, 123. + + =Stoicism=, popularity of, 408. + + =_Stola_=, 87. + + =Streets=, typical in Rome, 16; + very narrow, 17; + paving of, 17, 18; + shops upon, 18; + shrines and fountains upon, 20, 21; + crowds in, 21; + noise and turmoil of, 23; + dark and dangerous at night, 32; + extremely noisy towards dawn, 33. + + =Suicide=, not condemned, 168. + + + =Tables=, 56; + costly, of citrus wood, 57. + + =Tablets=, writing, 207. + + =Tactics=, in battle, 330. + + =_Taurobolium_=, 447. + + =Taverns= (_see_ Inns). + + =Temple=, of the Divine Julius, 265; + of Janus, 271; + of Mars Ultor, 277; + of Peace, 276; + of Venus and Rome, 261, 262; + of Vesta, 265. + + =Tenement blocks= (_insulæ_), 34 ff. + + =_Tepidarium_=, 365. + + =Theater=, not extremely popular, 378; + stage in, 379; + spectacles in, 380; + mimes, 380; + pantomimes, 381; + high art in latter, 382. + + =Theaters= upon Campus Martius, 369. + + =_Thermopolia_=, 236. + + =Tiber=, and valley of, 6; + barges upon, 240; + trip down to Ostia, 247; + shipping upon, 248. + + =Time=, measured by water clocks, 344. + + =Titus=, arch of, 262. + + =Toga=, 81–84. + + =Toilets=, very elaborate, 94. + + =Tombs=, 177–180; + of Hadrian, 370; + of Augustus, 372. + + =Toys=, 190. + + =Trade=, through Ostia and Campania, 239; + Emporium and wharves, 240; + upon Tiber, 240, 241; + in marble and grain, 241, 242; + in sculptures and portrait statues, 246. + + =Trajan=, forum and column of, 278–280; + baths of, 361 ff. + + =Travel=, modes of, 454–456. + + =Traveler’s escorts=, 25, 26. + + =_Triclinium_= (dining room), 45, 46. + + =_Trigon_= (ball game), 206. + + =Triumph=, ceremonies of a, 470. + + =Tullianum=, 270, 271. + + =_Tunica_=, 84. + + =Turia=, story of, 78. + + + =Vegetables=, 104. + + =Veterans=, care and rewards of, 329–330. + + =Vesta=, Temple of, as safe deposit, 231. + + =Vestal Virgins=, 429 ff.; + origin and sanctity, 430; + temple and residence of, 431; + how chosen, 432; + duties of, 433; + senior vestal (_Maxima_), 433; + punishment of, 434; + great honors of, 435. + + =Via Sacra=, 261, 263 ff. + + =Victory=, statue of, in Senate, 340. + + =_Vigiles_=, city police, 28; + description of, 304 ff. + + =Villas=, several owned by one senator, 39; + greatly enjoyed, 453; + comfortable travel to, 454–456; + multiplication of, 456; + by the sea shore, 457; + in the mountains, 457–458; + near Rome, 458; + great estates in the hills, 459; + Pliny’s Tuscan villa, 459 ff. + + =Vitellius=, imperial glutton, 102. + + + =Wall scribblings=, 30. + + =War=, ceremony of declaring, 423. + + =Water clocks=, 57; + in Senate, 344. + + =Water supply of Rome=, 301 ff. + + =Wealth=, vast premium upon in Rome, 220, 221. + + =Weapons=, of legionaries, 317, 318. + + =Wills=, 169. + + =Windows= of houses, 49. + + =Wines=, 107, 108, 109. + + =Writing tablets=, 207. + + =Women=, honorable status of, 60; + rights and privileges when married, 61, 71, 72; + have control of property, 62; + selection of husbands for girls, 63; + marriage treaties, 64; + betrothal ceremonies, 65; + dowries of, 66; + marriage of, 66 ff.; + frivolous type of, 72, 73; + nobler types of, 75; + famous and devoted wives, 76, 77; + case of Turia, 78, 79. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] Outside of these limits were, of course, wide and populous suburbs +whose inhabitants might be included in the estimated total of 1,500,000. + +[2] At present, of course, largely a treeless waste, very sparsely +populated and afflicted with malaria. + +[3] These are modern heights; since the days of the Empire there has +been much leveling down. All the hills were then somewhat higher. + +[4] He wrote his great “Geography” not long after 1 A.D. + +[5] This and many other terms for Roman building materials are from the +modern Italian. + +[6] Very possibly the Etruscans were the actual inventors, although the +principle of the arch was known in the Old Orient. + +[7] He died about 110 A.D. + +[8] A well-known avenue in Pompeii was called “Mercury Street.” + +[9] In describing Roman street life and its scenes let it be said +once and for all that many very obvious things were so disgusting and +revolting to modern notions that any description thereof is perforce +omitted. Ancient life contained a great deal of social dross and filthy +wickedness. There is no need to dwell on such matters, but their +existence should not be forgotten. + +[10] If a magistrate had met any persons on horseback, they also would +have been bound to dismount on meeting him. + +[11] If a praetor had been acting as governor, he would probably have +had six lictors instead of merely two while he was a judge in Rome. + +[12] The wall placards and inscriptions quoted in this and the +following section are all substantially as found at Pompeii. + +[13] For quotations of election notices at Pompeii see the author’s +“Readings in Ancient History,” Vol. II, “Rome,” pp. 261–262. + +[14] These figures seem to come from the fourth century, but there is +no reason to think that housing conditions in Rome had changed very +much since the second century. + +[15] Rentals in Rome, for all classes of lodgings, were unreasonably +high, as compared with the relative cost of other necessities: just as +is now complained to be the case in New York, Paris, and other great +cities. + +[16] A familiar description of such a place by Juvenal. + +[17] In small provincial cities like Pompeii the proportion of the +people who could live in separate houses was much greater than in Rome; +in fact separate residences were somewhat the rule. The Pompeiian +houses were usually of two stories and nearly all were decidedly small. +In Rome itself real estate was far too valuable to permit separate +houses except for the wealthy. + +[18] That was the price that Cicero paid for his town house, at a time +when Roman real estate was worth probably much less than in the days of +Hadrian. + +[19] Petronius represents his rich upstart Trimalchio as having four +ordinary dining rooms and also a special second story dining room. + +[20] This heating by _hypocausts_ was used much more in Roman villas in +Gaul, the Rhinelands, and Britain, where winters were severe, than in +Italy. In Rome itself people ordinarily managed to shiver through the +relatively short cold spells by means of portable _charcoal braziers_, +placed in the more important rooms, and by piling upon themselves extra +tunics. + +[21] One can make a long list of the marbles constantly used at +Rome: _e.g._ white marbles from Carrara, Paros, and Pentelicos; +crimson-streaked from Phrygia; orange-golden from Numidia; white and +pale green from Carystos; serpentine from Laconia; porphyry from Egypt, +etc. + +[22] At this writing the number of wall paintings rescued from the +excavations of Pompeii runs well up to 4000; and Pompeii was a city +perhaps only a fortieth the size of Rome. + +[23] Most of the finer scenes in Roman frescos seem to have been +pretty good copies of famous paintings from Greek mythology originally +produced by the masters of the Hellenistic age. + +[24] It may be noted that the Romans seldom had built-in upholstery +upon their couches and chairs. They depended upon removable cushions +and apparently they had no metal springs. + +[25] It had been suppressed for all practical purposes soon after 14 +A.D. + +[26] Witness, as most famous example, the case of Cornelia, mother of +Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. Very many other instances could be cited. + +[27] Readers of Plutarch will recall the story of how Appius Claudius, +then “Princeps Senatus,” proposed to Tiberius Gracchus at an evening +banquet of the College of Augurs that he should marry Claudius’s +daughter. Young Gracchus promptly accepted and the older nobleman +rushed home in delight (Tiberius being a great “catch”). On entering +his house Claudius called out with loud voice to his wife “Antistia, +I’ve got a husband for Claudia!” “What’s all the hurry about,” answered +she, “unless he’s Tiberius Gracchus?” Antistia evidently had to be +informed first; the glad news could be broken to her daughter later. + +[28] This anecdote and the quotations are all from the letter of Pliny +the Younger to his friend Mauricius advising the latter (as per request +for counsel) to seek the hand of Minucius Ancilianus for his niece. + +[29] All silk was imported by extremely long caravan routes from China. +If this veil was actually of pure silk and not mixed with cotton, it +was of enormous value. + +[30] Possibly meaning “Hurrah for Talassus, the marriage god!” but the +exact significance of this time-honored shout had probably been long +since lost. + +[31] Both of these instances are from Pliny the Younger. + +[32] For a complete quotation of this highly interesting tablet, see +Fowler’s “Social Life at Rome,” pp. 159–167. + +[33] The use of this garment gave his familiar nickname to the Emperor +Bassianus, “Caracalla,” who reigned 212–217 A.D. The Gauls also had +kind of trousers. This was counted against them as a token of sheer +barbarism: _bracatæ nationes_ (“trouser-wearing peoples”) was a term of +extreme contempt in Italy. + +[34] Probably there were simpler and more complicated forms of togas. +The first were apparently shaped like an irregular semi-circle. We hear +of extremely large togas (in bad taste) whereof the total length was +four yards before draping. Experiments in certain American universities +at making and then draping a toga corresponding in effect to many +well-known statues have amply illustrated the great difficulty of +putting on the garment gracefully, and the real art required of a Roman +nobleman’s valet. + +[35] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 44. + +[36] There were various simpler garments, similar to the stola, +permitted to common women and to young girls. The distinctive feature +of the stola, forbidden to all save honorable matrons, seems to have +been the lower flounce, reaching to the feet. + +[37] About twenty years after the reign of Hadrian, Chinese annals +record that certain “Roman” (Græco-Levantine?) traders actually reached +China, and gave themselves out as envoys to the “Son of Heaven” from +“Antun” (Antoninus Pius). + +[38] Very like a modern copying press. + +[39] Apuleius, writing probably a little later than this time, asserts +that a lady, with no matter how fine clothes or jewels, cannot be +considered really handsome unless an equal amount of attention has been +bestowed upon her hair. + +[40] Called the “luna” (crescent); but the origin is really unknown, +although attempts were made to trace it back to some institution of +Romulus. + +[41] Diamonds were not unknown, but they were so hard to cut and so +scarce that they figured rather seldom in Roman jewelry. They do not +appear in the list of the twelve precious stones given in Revelation, +XXI: 19–20. + +[42] Stories about pearls are easily multiplied: _e.g._ how the son of +Asopus, a famous actor, on coming into a vast patrimony, deliberately +dissolved a large pearl in vinegar, then drank it down, in order to +boast that he had “tossed off a million sesterces ($40,000) at one +gulp!” + +[43] Even less profitable, it would seem, is to try to list the +cosmetics wherewith many Roman ladies, like their sisters of all times, +covered their faces. Rouge was used in great quantities, and effeminate +young men were known to have employed it. Eyebrows were blackened with +antimony; lips were reddened, and of course hair dye was a familiar +article. Propertius suggests that some women went so far as to trace +over the veins in their temples with blue. Other women indulged in +small black patches somewhat as did English ladies in the days of Queen +Anne:--“There is nothing new under the sun.” + +[44] In Capua there was a whole great square of the city, the Seplasia, +given over to perfumery shops and their wholesale trade. + +[45] Vitellius was by no means alone in this disgusting practice. +Seneca denounced the numerous gluttons who “Vomit that they may eat, +and eat that they may vomit.” + +[46] The difficulty of preserving fresh meat, once butchered, would +militate against its use as compared with poultry easily killed for +each customer. + +[47] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 20. + +[48] _Posca_ was probably the drink in which the sponge was steeped, +that was extended to Jesus as He hung on the cross. + +[49] A long and curious list of gourmand’s precepts are enumerated +ironically by Horace in a familiar Satire (_Sat._, bk. II. 4). + +[50] The very imperfect means of illumination alone available with +olive-oil lamps, would make many modern evening entertainments out of +the question. The ancient lamps were beautiful in shape but utterly +ineffective for lighting large halls, indoor theaters, etc. + +[51] The love of “first-seats” at feasts, denounced in the New +Testament, was anything but a strictly Jewish vice; Greeks and Romans +were every whit as bad as Orientals. + +[52] So given because here dispatches, etc., could be most readily +handed to a consul or other great officer if he were among the guests. + +[53] Sometimes a guest’s personal valet brought a special towel for +his own master. Diners of an objectionable variety were occasionally +charged with stealing the towels or napkins if the host supplied them. + +[54] This, of course, was a very simple private dinner. For the menu +of a really extensive banquet, see the citation from Macrobius, in the +writer’s “Readings in Ancient History,” Vol. II (Rome), p. 253. + +[55] Brought, of course, from the summits of the Apennines with +infinite labor. + +[56] They could not, of course, wear the toga, or, if female slaves, +the matronly stola. + +[57] The ancients had intense fear of epilepsy, supposedly a visitation +of the gods. The questions given were the points on which slave-venders +had to give assurance, or formally to waive all responsibility. + +[58] This is almost precisely the slave auctioneer’s speech in Horace. +(_Epodes_, bk. II, 1.)--If the dealer had failed to mention that the +boy had once tried to run away, he would have been legally liable. + +[59] Probably, however, it would be counted discreditable to sell a +slave born in one’s house (a _verna_) unless the fellow was wholly +reprobate, or the master was in great financial straits. + +[60] Slave unions had no legal status, but only a harsh and tactless +master would ordinarily break them up. + +[61] Of course, in a large slave household frequently there were unruly +elements who often had to be punished privately, when, if free men, +their actions would have landed them in the police courts. The stripes +might be inflicted as a mild correction with the cane, or leather +strap, or more severely with the terrific _flagellum_ (loaded whip), +usually with three chains set with metal. A sound lashing with this +could cause death (see below, p. 137). The prejudice against brutal +whipping and the like was growing steadily, thanks to the advance of +the Stoic philosophy, even before the triumph of Christianity. Juvenal +denounces those who inflict outrageous floggings for slight faults. +“Does a man set his son a good lesson by calling in the torturer and +having a slave branded for stealing a couple of towels? Does such a man +hold that the bodies and souls of slaves are of the same elements as +our own?” + +[62] “Three Letter Man” or “Man of Letters” became a common taunt among +slaves. + +[63] A slave might be lashed to a _furca_ for some hours, as a minor +penalty without desire to put him to death. + +[64] An actual proclamation from Petronius. + +[65] There would be just enough of negroes in Rome for them to cease to +be great curiosities. + +[66] It is impossible to estimate the proportion of the population +“enfranchised” finally by the oft-discussed edict of Caracalla in 214 +A.D. It must have been over one half of the entire total. + +[67] Apparently it was quite possible for impecunious persons to sleep +much of the year under the public arches and porticoes, and thus even +dispense with the need of paying rent! + +[68] These hopes had practically died out by Hadrian’s day. + +[69] That St. Paul was presently released after trial at Rome is the +consensus among very many competent scholars. + +[70] Women as well as men could sometimes be enrolled as clients. +Comical stories abounded; how a husband appeared with a litter claiming +that his “sick wife” was inside--“and would the steward please hurry +with the fee”--when, on brushing aside the curtains, the litter was +found to be empty. + +[71] Especially in Gaul, Spain, and North Africa; in the Eastern +provinces the city governments were not run so strictly in the Roman +mold and often kept their native characteristics. + +[72] Hence they were often called _Curiales_ from their seat in the +local Senate House (_Curia_). + +[73] This name is not wisely translated as “Knights,” unless there is +complete disassociation from the idea of the mediæval baron in armor. + +[74] Apparently at this time two thirds of the jurors were equites and +one third senators, but the point is not quite certain. + +[75] The Republican censors could also give the order, “Sell your +horse” without stigma to equites who appeared in the review when too +old or too fat! + +[76] By the age of Hadrian we see signs of that rigid separation +between upper-class citizens (_majores_) and lower-class (_minores_) +which marked the Later Empire. The equites tended to be mingled with +the senators in the _majores_. + +[77] Marcus Aurelius confirmed this legally about 170 A.D. + +[78] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 77. + +[79] Antoninus Pius, the ruler succeeding Hadrian, formally enjoined +the remission of civic burdens for “community physicians” in the +Province of Asia; five in small cities, seven in larger ones, and ten +in the largest. + +[80] Establishments selling ready prepared salves, plasters, and other +standard remedies were not unknown, and must have supplied many doctors. + +[81] Chemical analysis was, of course, unknown. + +[82] These titles and much more of the data here given are from the +writings of the great Galen--the master physician of the imperial age; +who wrote his books under Commodus about 185 A.D. + +[83] As in the case of the death of Cæsar Germanicus (19 A.D.) +whose death at Antioch was probably natural, but which all his friends +attributed to poison given by his personal enemy, the Proconsul Piso. + +[84] Probably there were such in the eastern provinces. + +[85] Without clinical thermometers or second-watches, the taking of +temperature, timing of pulse, etc., must have been a very tedious and +disagreeable as well as uncertain process. + +[86] Apparently the organization of _public hospitals_ in the +fourth century of our era, was among the earliest and worthiest of the +distinctly Christian charities, after the toleration of Christianity by +the Roman government. + +[87] Two similar cases are recorded in Pliny the Younger; in one +of them the person contemplating suicide, on being assured by the +physicians that his case was not quite desperate, “agreed to fight on a +little longer.” + +[88] The legal status of women made it needful to resort to various +legal fictions when they drew wills, but they could execute effective +testaments also. + +[89] Still greater revenge could be taken by making insulting +references in wills to old enemies, making them bequests of no value, +or burdened with unwelcome conditions, or even explaining at length, +without fear of a slander suit, why no bequest was left to them at all! + +[90] An actual tomb inscription. + +[91] A hundred imagines of curule ancestors would be a very respectable +but not an extraordinary showing. When young Marcellus (Augustus’s +nephew) died, _six hundred_ imagines of noble ancestors were borne +in his procession. + +[92] Under the Empire only the Emperor could actually ride in a +triumph; but his lieutenants could enjoy the “triumphal ornaments.” + +[93] The granting of an actual funeral pyre inside of Rome was an +extraordinary honor--reserved only for emperors and other unusually +favored personages. + +[94] This, of course, was the monument which Trimalchio, Petronius’s +famous character, arranged for himself. + +[95] Compare “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 57. + +[96] The father might have “taken up” the child earlier to indicate his +intentions not to expose it, but some later act of legal acknowledgment +before witnesses was necessary. + +[97] And hardly anybody outside the Claudian gens was ever named Appius. + +[98] Literally “Number Ten”; but that meaning had disappeared. + +[99] Very many such lengthy names are found under Hadrian. + +[100] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 63. + +[101] These verses have been preserved to the present age by being +inscribed upon the foot of the colossal statue of the “Speaking Memnon” +in Egypt, during the visit there of Hadrian and Sabina. + +[102] Of course, there would be many lower class Italians who, although +fairly at ease with Latin, would be entirely unfamiliar with Greek. + +[103] The writing end of the stylus (bone or metal) was sharp. The +opposite end was blunt and flattened for erasing on the soft wax. + +[104] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 64. + +[105] These are the words of Eumenius, a teacher of about 300 +A.D., but they would have been equally proper in the age of +Hadrian. + +[106] Persons who could recite the whole of the Iliad and Odyssey from +memory were not unknown, although they were usually learned slaves, not +Romans of the higher class. + +[107] A tombstone for a boy who died at the age of ten boasts that its +subject “knew the dogmas of Pythagoras and the teaching of the books of +the learned.” He was also alleged to have read all of Homer and to have +studied Euclid “tablets in hand.” + +[108] Senators, degraded and banished for reasons good or bad, could +earn a living in the provinces by opening rhetoric schools. Thus +Lucinianus did so in Sicily in Trajan’s time. Pliny the Younger records +that he began his first set oration by declaring: “O Fortune, what +sport you make to amuse yourself! You make professors into senators, +and senators into professors.” + +[109] An actual case for young orators as explained by the Elder +Seneca. Less advanced pupils could be pitted in arguments as to +“Whether country life is better than city life,” or “married life +better than celibacy.” + +[110] The zeal for philosophy and rhetoric, or at least for the +patronage thereof, is shown by the story of how Trajan, a very +simple-minded soldier, used to invite the great rhetorician Dion +Chrysostom to visit him and take long journeys with him. The Emperor, +greatly impressed by the other’s learning, openly declared to him, “I +don’t in the least understand what you keep talking about, but for all +that I love you like my own soul!” + +[111] It is impossible to recover the exact details of these two games. +We know of “solitaire” forms of these games, with the board made of +terebinth wood, and with crystal pieces, or with gold and silver coins +in place of the common black and white counters. + +[112] In very early Roman days public records seem to have been kept on +books of _linen_; but these soon disappeared. + +[113] We hear, however, of a single copy of Thucydides that required +578 pages, making a roll about 100 yards long--a most cumbersome volume. + +[114] The use of flat opening books of the style later so familiar came +in before the fall of the Roman Empire, but they were apparently used +only for merchants’ ledgers, etc., in the time of Hadrian. + +[115] This was the probable method of multiplying popular books, but we +lack very precise knowledge. + +[116] Pliny the Younger had a favorite reader Eucolpus. When he fell +ill his master was sadly tormented: “Who will read my books and take +such an interest in them? Where can I find another with so pleasant a +reading voice?” + +[117] Hadrian’s famous and pathetic poem “To his own soul” was not, of +course, composed until he lay on his death bed (138 A.D.). + +[118] These men were well-known poets according again to Pliny the +Younger. The world undoubtedly gained when their verses perished. + +[119] The record for a private collection--62,000 rolls, owned by the +senator Serenus, dates about 235 A.D., but there is no reason +to suppose that there were not libraries equally large under Hadrian. + +[120] Concerning the actual arrangement of these public libraries we +know very little. + +[121] Of course, by Hadrian’s time an increasingly large proportion of +the privates of the army was being recruited in the provinces. + +[122] All these hucksters’ stalls as well as the beggars and the +playing children are depicted in certain very informing frescos in a +house at Pompeii, showing life in the forum of that little city. + +[123] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 24. + +[124] This form of advertisement is given in Petronius. + +[125] 12 per cent (one per cent per month) was the lawful and normal +rate of interest. Greater interest could be demanded on risky ventures, +especially those by sea. Rates of 36 and 48 per cent, heard of under +the Later Republic, were excessive, and usually unlawful. + +[126] These verses are from the wall of an inn in Pompeii, and the +foregoing description is that of an actual Pompeiian inn. + +[127] This scene is a familiar one from Juvenal. + +[128] Another scene taken from an actual bas-relief and inscription. + +[129] Marcus Aurelius belonged to this rich family on his mother’s side. + +[130] The real name of such a vessel. + +[131] The expression “Sharer in the Public Grain Doles” appears on many +tombstones of worthy burghers, to indicate that they enjoyed the full +rights of citizenship. + +[132] It became so under the Later Empire. + +[133] When Commodus became Emperor in 180 A.D., the congiarium +came to the ruinous sum of 725 denarii per citizen. This was $96.00 +each, if the coins were of full weight and fineness, which probably at +that period they were not. + +[134] Figures given by Lucian for a craft of this type. + +[135] See “A Day in Old Athens,” pp. 125–134. + +[136] There was practically no naval warfare worth mentioning in +the whole course of Roman history from the battle of Actium (31 +B.C.) to 323 A.D., when considerable naval fighting +took place at the time Constantine captured Byzantium from his rival +Licinius. + +[137] As at Ephesus where Demetrius used the guild of the silversmiths +to start his riot against St. Paul. (Acts, 19:25.) + +[138] Such improvised gaming-boards have been discovered by the +archæologists. + +[139] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 216. + +[140] Later than the age of Hadrian this area was occupied by such +famous structures as the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, the Basilica +of Constantine, etc. + +[141] A difficult archæological question is connected with the exact +site of the Rostra _before_ Julius Cæsar’s time. Probably its +original position was nearer the other end of the Forum. + +[142] Janus was about the only Latin deity for whom there could not be +assigned a Greek counterpart. + +[143] Later visitors to the Forum would, of course, be impressed with +the fine, if ornate, _Arch of Septimius Severus_, erected about +211 A.D. at the northwest corner of the plaza. + +[144] The column of Marcus Aurelius, erected about 180 A.D. in +much the same style as that of Trajan, although a magnificent monument, +is not equal in execution to the older column. + +[145] He magnanimously allowed Agrippa’s name still to appear as the +builder of the temple. The Pantheon apparently owed its preservation +through the Middle Ages to the fact that it was early consecrated as a +Christian church, and hence was exempt from profanation. + +[146] At the end of his reign the Senate so disliked him that (although +he had been in the main an excellent ruler) his successor Antoninus had +much trouble in getting him voted a “_divus_,” as were all good +Emperors. + +[147] We have no copy of the Acta Diurna. We possess, however, what +seems a pretty literal parody of its style and contents in Petronius, +and can reconstruct part of an issue with some confidence. + +[148] Both of these are actual cases from the reign of Augustus. + +[149] Old Latin goddesses. + +[150] The only important addition after Domitian was made by +Septimius Severus, who, about 200 A.D., built the very lofty +_Septizonium_, a new palace at the south-east corner of the hill. + +[151] As is, of course, well known, such emperors as Tiberius, Nero, +and Domitian were popular with the provinces, which were usually well +governed under them. Their cruelties smote mainly upon the senatorial +nobility. + +[152] About 230 A.D. Alexander Severus caught a palace menial +selling gossip, and had him executed by being burned in a fire of damp +wood. “He is punished by smoke,” said the irate monarch, “who sold +‘smoke.’” + +[153] The ceremony was not unlike that of the _levée_ of French kings +like Louis XIV, under the Old Régime before 1789. + +[154] The Empresses would give a similar reception, however, to the +wives of their husbands’ “Friends.” + +[155] Sometimes, with an affectation of democracy, almost any decently +clad person would be admitted to present petitions or merely to pay +respects. Servile prostrations before the Emperor were not encouraged +under the Early Principate; once when a petitioner went through great +bowings and scrapings while presenting a scroll to Augustus, the latter +cried testily, “You act as if you were presenting some money to an +elephant.” + +[156] This was the form used by Augustus in announcing to Fabius +Maximus the withdrawal of imperial favor. + +[157] Polite chatter, as reported by Horace, such as was vouchsafed by +Augustus and his great associate Mæcenas, to their social favorites. + +[158] Hadrian, although not a bloody man, was so averse to being +opposed in argument that the philosopher Favorinus, with whom he took +issue on a point in etymology, promptly announced that “Caesar was +correct,” and so ended the discussion amiably. “But _you_ were +really correct,” protested Favorinus’s friends afterward. “Ah!” replied +he with a laugh, “the master of thirty legions must be allowed to know +better.” + +[159] These old “Republican” officers, now six in number, retained a +certain control of the public markets, baths, taverns, etc. + +[160] As discovered by modern archæologists. + +[161] For the attitude of provincials under Roman rule the student can +with interest read the speech put in the mouth of King Agrippa, the +descendant of Herod, by Josephus (“Jewish War”: book II, ch. 16) in +which he tells the Jews of Nero’s day, (1) that on the whole the Roman +rule is so reasonable and tolerable they have no real cause to revolt +against it; (2) that all nations, including the most warlike such as +Sparta, Macedonia, the turbulent Gauls and Spain, have long since +submitted; (3) that these have not merely submitted but keep obedient +with only a trifling local display of armed force; (4) that resistance +to Rome is so hopeless in any case that a revolt would be impious +suicide. + +[162] About 200 A.D. they were raised to 33. + +[163] Its site to-day is occupied by the chief railroad station of +Rome, by which most foreign visitors enter the city and depart. + +[164] An ever larger proportion of legionary troops had to be enlisted +in the provinces, although preferably in the parts somewhat Romanized. + +[165] In Hadrian’s time a change was taking place whereby the first +cohort in a legion contained about twice as many men as there were +in any of the other nine; but this alteration became only gradually +effective. + +[166] In the earlier Empire it was only 900 sesterces ($36). + +[167] It might be added that Roman legions appear to have had a medical +department under a _medicus legionis_, which cared efficiently +for the health of the troops. Camp sanitation was well understood, and +epidemics in the army were rare. + +[168] The only materials for a crown assumed to be available in a +rescued fortress. + +[169] The distribution of the legions varied somewhat from one period +to another according to the probable dangers on the exposed frontiers, +but the largest armies were always stationed along the Rhine, the +Danube, and the Euphrates. In Hadrian’s time apparently the main forces +lay thus: + +Britain, 3 legions. + +Germany (Rhinelands), 4 legions. + +Danubian lands and Dacia, 10 legions. + +Syria and Palestine, 5 legions. + +Cappadocia, 2 legions. + +In all the other provinces requiring legionary troops at all +(_e.g._ Egypt, Spain, Numidia, etc.), only one legion. + +Apparently in the second Christian century the greatest danger point +seemed near the Danube, and the second greatest along the Euphrates, +with the Rhinelands relatively more secure than earlier, when more +legions had been stationed near them. + +[170] Some legions were named for their organizers: Augustus, +Claudius, etc.; some for real or alleged martial qualities, “Ferrata,” +“Fulminata,” “Victrix,” and the like; one, the “Alauda,” from the +lark’s wings worn on the helmets; several which were made by dividing +existing legions were known as “Gemina,” and some from their place of +original recruiting, “Gallica,” “Italica,” etc. + +[171] The centurion to whom St. Paul’s custody was intrusted (Acts +XXVII, 1) was of the “Augustan band,” _i.e._ one of the somewhat +numerous cohorts named for Augustus--the special number not being given. + +[172] Also we know from the by-laws of these soldiers’ benefit clubs +that every member was entitled to a fine funeral, to an allowance for +travel money if obliged to go on a long journey, and finally to a fixed +sum as consolation money in case he was demoted! + +[173] The process of demilitarizing the population went so far that +Trajan even discouraged the organization of regular bands of firemen in +cities of Bithynia “lest they become the prey of factions”--_i.e._ +somehow start a movement against the government. + +[174] The Roman Empire has been rightly called a “military monarchy,” +but was such only because the disarming of the civilian population +and the extreme efficiency of the professional army put the former at +the mercy of the latter. The imperial army and navy hardly exceeded +350,000 men, and _may_ have been as small as 300,000. At the time +this book was written the United States, with a population not greatly +exceeding that of the Roman Empire, had a total of some 250,000 men in +its standing forces (army, navy, and marine corps) not counting any +organized militia. Almost nobody would have pretended that the addition +of some 100,000 men to this force could have rendered a “military +monarchy” possible in America except as very peculiar conditions +favored it--as they did in the Roman Empire. + +[175] Bad Emperors, _e.g._ Domitian, made it a practice to +_speak first_ in the Curia; any senator who later opposed their +opinions was liable to charges of disloyalty. If, however, an Emperor +spoke last he also left the groundlings miserable because they might +unwittingly have opposed him. + +[176] The last avowedly constitutional “Princeps” was Alexander Severus +(murdered 235 A.D.); then followed the military monarchy. +Aurelian (270–275 A.D.) took on practically all the trappings +of a despot, and with Diocletian (284 A.D.) the absolute +monarchy existed without concealment. + +[177] The law required, however, a minimum of certain specified numbers +for the passing of various important kinds of decrees. + +[178] He did this because as holder of the military power it +was unlawful for him to come inside the consecrated city limits +(_pomerium_); so he built a suburban Senate House outside of these +confines. + +[179] So called because, being last on the Senate list, and seldom +called upon to speak, they could express themselves with their “feet” +only--_i.e._ by voting when they walked out in divisions of the +house. + +[180] Under the later Empire this statue (originally set up by +Augustus) came to be looked upon as the “Palladium” of Rome and its +removal from the Senate House in 384 A.D. by Valentinian the +Second, despite vigorous protests by the pagan party, was looked upon +as an official announcement of the triumph of Christianity. + +[181] The other consul in 134 A.D. was Gaius Julius Servianius. The +consuls would settle as to their presidency from day to day either by +mutual agreement, by taking turns in rotation, or by the casting of +lots. + +[182] This trial follows closely the account of the prosecution of +Marius Priscus, proconsul of Africa, before the Senate by Pliny the +Younger and Tacitus the historian; but in Priscus’s trial the mere +oratory actually took three whole days! (See Pliny the Younger: Book +II, 11.) + +[183] Any student interested in the coarse and violent personalities +permissible in speeches before the Senate, should read Cicero’s speech +“Against Piso.” + +[184] Short-hand reports of the Senate meetings were taken, and +seemingly embodied everything said, including even the applause and the +unfriendly interruptions. We do not know, however, whether they were +taken by senators, or by reporters brought in for the purpose. + +[185] Apparently men not of prætorian rank rather seldom got the floor, +although in highly important cases the presiding officer had to call +for _sententiæ_ down through the ex-quæstors. + +[186] As did, of course, Cicero in his “Orations against Verres,” and +in other orations. + +[187] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 135. + +[188] Very few civil cases involving merely private rights would be +heard by the Emperor, although they might by his deputy, the Prætorian +Præfect. Claudius sometimes seems to have sat on the tribunal, out of +a pedantic sense of duty, but often falling asleep until the advocates +bawled “O Cæsar!” loudly enough to wake him. + +[189] “Eloquence” was looked upon as indispensable for everybody +expecting any kind of a public career. Even in the army there was much +speech-making prior to a pitched battle. Tacitus speaks of how an army +was so utterly surprised that its general “could neither harangue +his men nor draw them up in battle array”--two operations apparently +equally necessary. (Tacitus, “History,” iv, 33.) + +[190] Litigants were required by law to take oath that before the trial +they had not promised any sum to their advocates or entered into any +bargain with them. After the trial they were “allowed” to “offer” their +lawyers not over 10,000 sesterces if they wished. + +[191] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 138. + +[192] Space lacks for a discussion of the formal training of the Roman +lawyer-orators, or concerning those public recitations which sometimes +were the means of winning even greater reputation than any ordinary +successes in the courts. + +Some of these recitations in hired halls, with the audience carefully +sprinkled with a paid claque, were worse than pedantic and artificial. +Pliny the Younger, although he denounced the use of a claque, repeated +with pleasure how he gave a reading from his own works and plays which +lasted two days, “necessitated by the applause of my audience”; and +boasted how he “had not allowed himself to skip one word.” + +[193] The Roman week, _nundinæ_, had eight days--seven working days, +then a market day. The Jewish week of seven days (_hebdomas_) became +known to the Romans by the time of Pompeius Magnus, but it was not +generally adopted until Christianity became the state religion. + +[194] Undoubtedly along with this incessant bathing there often went +the presence of much squalor, dirt, obnoxious insects, etc. which seem +inescapable in Mediterranean countries. Probably many persons injured +their health by excessive and debilitating bathing. + +[195] An actual inscription. From the small provincial towns we have +other inscriptions, advertising bath-houses “in city style (_more +urbico_) and fitted with every convenience.” + +[196] The great Baths of Caracalla (built _circ._ 215 A.D.) and those +of Diocletian (_circ._ 300 A.D.) were not in existence, of course, +in the days of Hadrian. Their ruins are at present among the most +imposing in Rome, and they were probably somewhat larger than the Baths +of Trajan, which are to-day nearly demolished, but their aspect and +general arrangement were hardly different. + +[197] Houses near private baths were counted undesirable for residence +or investment purposes on account of the noise, which, in private +baths, often kept up late into the night. + +[198] The famous group of Laocoön and his sons, now in the Vatican, was +found in the ruins of these Baths of Titus and Trajan. + +[199] Petronius’s “Satyricon” gives a vivid and informing picture of +the amusements and horseplay in the thermæ. + +[200] The tepidarium in the later Baths of Diocletian was about 300 +feet long by 92 feet wide, but probably that in the Baths of Trajan was +somewhat smaller. + +[201] The Tomb of Hadrian was not actually completed until 139 +A.D.--after his death. + +[202] Under the Republic the ædiles had to preside over very expensive +games. Augustus, however, turned the _Cura Ludorum_ (“supervision +of the games”) over to the prætors, and the ædiles only gave spectacles +voluntarily. + +[203] In the later Empire we hear of the case of Symmachus, an +office-holder whose games cost him 2000 pounds of gold, about $400,000. + +[204] Italian audiences stowed very close. According to the marking +upon the stone seats in the theater at Pompeii, only 16 inches were +allowed for each spectator. + +[205] High-flying tragedies were indeed ground out by Seneca and +by many inferior literary dabblers, but these “dramas” were hardly +intended to be genuine acting plays, but only to be read aloud. + +[206] The ancient orchestra was of course for the dances of the chorus +never for seating the spectators. + +[207] This figure seems decidedly too high; but the present ruinous +state of the Circus Maximus makes it very difficult to determine the +number more exactly. + +[208] As many as ten cars could contend at once in the greatest games. + +[209] The description of the Roman-style chariot race in Lew Wallace’s +famous novel “Ben Hur” is technically as well as rhetorically admirable +and accurate. However, no high-rank Roman, such as Messala is +represented to have been, would have driven a quadriga in the public +circus. The drivers were nearly always low-born men of provincial if +not of servile origin. + +[210] The Spanish bull fights at their very worst were a relatively +harmless imitation. + +[211] The gladiatorial games were never introduced in Athens. Once +when, in the local council, it was proposed to imitate Rome and build +an amphitheater, a prominent philosopher quashed the whole project by +moving “first to abolish the altar of Pity.” + +[212] Actual epithets bestowed on gladiators in the Pompeiian wall +inscriptions. + +[213] Taken from the “Gladiator Gossip” at Trimalchio’s Dinner in +Petronius’s “Satyricon.” + +[214] As we know from paintings showing the surroundings of the +Amphitheater at Pompeii. + +[215] Ordinarily it is stated that there was room for about 87,000 +persons in the Flavian Amphitheater. There were seats, however, for +only some 50,000, although possibly 20,000 more could find standing +room in the great upper sections. + +[216] The regular gladiatorial oath. + +[217] Augustus once protested against the custom of eating in the +amphitheater as being undignified and said he would prefer to go away +and return. “That is all right for _you_,” answered his hearer, +“but _your_ seat is sure to be kept for you!” + +[218] There were at least two other types of heavy-armed gladiators +who are often mentioned--the “Samnites” and the “Myrmillones”; but it +hardly seems profitable to examine the small particulars in which their +arms differed from those of the “Thracians.” + +[219] An actual Roman epitaph. The Epicurean theory was capable of +statement in much more pleasing language than is given above, but the +effect of such a philosophy upon the ordinary human viewpoint and +conduct was inevitable. + +At the Roman colony of Thamugade in Africa, a checkerboard was found +scratched in the pavement of the Forum, and beside it this plebeian +version of the Prætor’s inscription: “_To hunt, to bathe, to gamble, +to laugh--that’s living!_” + +[220] In all the extensive correspondence of Pliny the Younger there is +hardly a single reference indicating that he had any religious beliefs, +or took the least interest in religious matters save as they involved +outward ceremonies or official policies. + +[221] This apparently continued true until well into the fourth +century, when the whole pagan system was swept away by Christianity. + +[222] Janus had no Greek counterpart. It was one of the absurdities of +the late Græco-Latin mythology that his wife Diana (_Dia Jana_ = +“Madame Goddess Jana”) should have been confounded with Artemis. + +[223] Under the later Republic these sacred colleges were filled +according to the majority vote of 17 tribes of the people, selected +by lot from the entire 35 tribes into which the Comitia Tributa was +divided. + +[224] In early times the Pontifex Maximus also kept a kind of dry +annals of sacred and profane events (_Annales Maximi_), valuable +for the preservation of many facts in early Roman history. + +[225] A general in the field had to “take the auspices” to get good +omens for his army, but of course he could not always have an augur +present. Once in the first Punic War, Publius Claudius, a consul about +to engage in a naval battle, was disgusted to be told, “The chickens +will not eat.” “Very well then,” he retorted, “let them drink!” and +flung them into the sea. To his own ruin and to the vindication of +the official religion he was thereupon completely defeated by the +Carthaginians! + +[226] These plants (_verbenæ_) seem to have been grown within one +special inclosure on the Capitol hill. They were carried by one of the +fetiales known as the _verbenarius_. + +[227] A rustic goddess sometimes also called Ops. + +[228] For a translation of this “Song of the Arval Brethren,” see the +author’s “Readings in Ancient History,” vol. II, p. 6. + +[229] As is well known Tiberius in his ignoble retirement on the +Isle of Capri surrounded himself with “Chaldæans” and other types of +stargazers and magicians. + +[230] There were a few isolated survivals in Italy of the practices of +ancient savagery. For example at Aricia, in Latium about 16 miles from +Rome, there was a holy grove of Diana wherein the priest was always a +runaway slave who obtained his position by killing his predecessor. +He was then safe from pursuit as long as he remained in the grove, +until another fugitive slave in turn killed him--and so on through a +succession of tragedies! + +[231] Pigs were very common Roman offerings and were the regular +victims in most of the rustic sacrifices. + +[232] Slightly adapted from the form of prayer given in Cato the +Elder’s “Handbook on Agriculture.” + +[233] This qualification of patrician birth was sometimes waived under +the Empire, when genuine old-line patricians had become extremely few, +but great pains were taken as to all the other requirements. + +[234] Alone of all the important buildings in Rome, the Atrium Vestæ +had no piped water-supply; everything had to be borne in by the vestals +or (for non-religious purposes) by their numerous attendants. + +[235] This did not prevent Vestals from attending the arena spectacles. +The gladiators and persons thrown to the beasts had in theory a chance +for life. + +[236] It was quite proper to play “April Fool” jokes at the Saturnalia: +_e.g._ to present what seemed a platter of delicious food when all +the viands were actually of clay. + +[237] Substantially on the scale of “Christmas presents.” + +[238] Owing to rough dealings with the Senate, Hadrian himself came +near missing deification, but Antoninus won his title of “Pius” by +his zeal for vindicating his adoptive father’s memory. Antoninus Pius +himself and Marcus Aurelius after him were, of course, promptly deified. + +[239] Much of what we know of these cults of the pagan Orient comes +from early Christian writers who have no hesitation in betraying the +“Mysteries,” but whose statements naturally are often biased and very +incomplete. + +[240] The quotations are from Apuleius, “The Golden Ass” (book XI, +_passim_), and are given at greater length in the author’s +“Readings from Ancient History,” vol. II (Rome), pp. 282–284. + +[241] Technically he was the highest archangel under the one actual god +Ahura-Mazda, but the Persian “magi” soon attributed to him practical +divinity. + +[242] Nearly all our evidence for Mithraism is archæological; we +know little of either its doctrines or its ritual. Apparently it had +a system of priests not unlike the Christian clergy and a ceremony +resembling the Christian sacrament. It owed its success largely to +the real nobility of its doctrines, but could not in the end maintain +itself by appealing simply to a remote myth, while Christianity was +able to appeal to a personal Founder. + +[243] Mithras worship was only beginning to be important in the Age of +Hadrian, and the Taurobolium was then still comparatively rare; by 200 +A.D. it had become decidedly common; by 300 A.D. it +was very frequent indeed. + +[244] From the age of Augustus to that of Nero Judaism had a +considerable popularity in Rome. Its austere monotheism coupled with +the mysterious Mosaic law and ceremonies made a considerable appeal +to public opinion, and many fashionable persons--including apparently +Nero’s Empress, the notorious Poppæa Sabina--gave “Jewish doctrines” +a superficial patronage. It was also somewhat the fad to treat the +Hebrew Sabbath as a kind of “holy day.” All this favor collapsed after +the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. The Jews became a scattered +and persecuted sect, without influence. As for Christianity, after 70 +A.D. it lost nearly all its Jewish element and became pretty +strictly a Gentile religion. + +[245] Tacitus undoubtedly obtained his statement about Christ and +Pilate from the official government reports in the Roman Record Office. +There is no reason to suppose that he, any more than his friend Pliny, +investigated Christian sources. + +[246] The following are _some_ only of the reasons why the Roman +government insisted on persecuting the Christians, despite its usual +policy of religious tolerance: + + 1. The Christians persistently refused to sacrifice to the + deified Emperors and to the Genius of the reigning Emperor, + an act practically amounting in common opinion to a denial + of loyalty to the government, or at least capable of that + construction. + + 2. The Christians demanded the repudiation of the old gods, + including, of course, the official gods of Rome; they were not + content with simply worshiping “Christus” along with Jupiter, + Apollo, etc. as were for example the devotees of Isis. + + 3. The Christians maintained a tight interior organization, + separate socially from the pagans, under the control of its + bishops, presbyters, and deacons, and so far as possible judging + the disputes of its members. This seemed meddling with political + matters, a ticklish business with any Emperor. + + 4. The private meetings of the Christians, and the + misconstructions laid upon their ceremonies, gave rise to the + vilest possible stories. + + 5. The great proportion of slaves and of the lowest grade of + plebeians in the early Church seemed to justify the belief that + here was a subversive, degraded, and illicit movement. + + +[247] An actual wall-picture. For the charges here given against +Christian assemblies and for many gross details, see Minucius Felix +(“Octavius” VIII, 9.), who quotes the stories in order to refute them. + +It seems needless in a book concerned strictly with pagan Rome, to +discuss the actual tenets and liturgies of the Early Christians. The +only point to be understood here is the vile character of the charges +brought against them by the ignorant heathen. + +[248] Probably the Roman carriages were more convenient than anything +known later in Europe prior to 1800; and travel facilities in general +were as good, the inns possibly averaging worse but the roads decidedly +better, than at the dawn of the Nineteenth Century. + +[249] The following is an abridgment of Pliny the Younger’s well-known +description of his Tuscan villa. + +[250] The Romans delighted in formal and highly artificial gardens such +as were in vogue in the Italian Renaissance and the France of Louis XIV. + +[251] Well known, of course, is the famous dictum of Gibbon (“Decline +and Fall of Roman Empire”: vol. i, chap. 2. Bury edition, p. 78): “If +a man were called to fix the period during which the condition of the +human race was most happy and prosperous he would, without hesitation, +name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of +Commodus.” From the standpoint of a believer in aristocracy or monarchy +this opinion is largely justifiable. + +[252] Where according to firm Christian tradition St. Paul was beheaded +in the days of Nero, having been rearrested after having once been set +at liberty. + +[252] Where according to firm Christian tradition St. Paul was beheaded +in the days of Nero, having been rearrested after having once been set +at liberty. + + +Transcriber’s Notes: + +1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been +corrected silently. + +2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the +original. + +3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have +been retained as in the original. + +4. Italics are shown as _xxx_. + +5. Bold print is shown as =xxx=. + + + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76087 *** diff --git a/76087-h/76087-h.htm b/76087-h/76087-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..68e28bf --- /dev/null +++ b/76087-h/76087-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,22007 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + A Day in Old Rome | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + font-weight: normal; +} + +h2 {font-size: 110%; } + +.subhed { display: block; margin-top: 1em; font-size: 80%; font-weight: bold; } + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; + text-indent: 1.2em; +} + +.p0 {margin-top: 0em;} +.p1 {margin-top: 1em;} +.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} +.p4 {margin-top: 4em;} + +.p-left {text-indent: 0em; } + +.p-min {margin-top: -.5em;} + +hr { + width: 33%; 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} + +.center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em;} + +.r2 {text-align: right; + margin-right: 2em;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.allsmcap {font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;} + +/* Images */ + +img { + max-width: 100%; + height: auto; +} + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnotes {border: 1px dashed;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: + none; +} + +/* Poetry */ +.poetry-container +{ +text-align: center; +font-size: 90%; +} + +.poetry +{ +display: inline-block; +text-align: left; +margin-left: 2.5em; +line-height: 100%; +} + +.poetry .stanza +{ +margin: .5em 0em .5em 1em; +} + +.poetry .ileft {margin-left: -.4em;} +.poetry .i1 {margin-left: 1em;} +.poetry .i2 {margin-left: 2em;} + +/* Transcriber's notes */ +.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + font-size:small; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; +} + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76087 ***</div> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_frontis" style="max-width: 376px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_frontis.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller">Interior of Great Public Baths in Imperial Rome.</p> + <p class="p0 smaller"><i>Restoration according to Von Falke.</i></p> + </div> + + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h1>A DAY IN OLD ROME</h1></div> + +<p class="center lg p2">A PICTURE OF ROMAN LIFE</p> + +<p class="center sm p4">BY</p> + +<p class="center">WILLIAM STEARNS DAVIS</p> + +<p class="center xs">PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE<br> +UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA</p> + + <div class="figcenter"> + <img + class="p4" + src="images/i_title.jpg" + alt=""> + </div> + +<p class="center p4"><span class="lg">ALLYN</span> AND <span class="lg">BACON</span></p> + +<p class="center sm">BOSTON   NEW YORK   CHICAGO<br> +ATLANTA   SAN FRANCISCO   DALLAS</p> + +<p class="center p4 xs">COPYRIGHT, 1925<br> +BY ALLYN AND BACON</p> + +<p class="center p2 xs">PAP</p> + +<p class="center p4 xs">Norwood Press<br> +J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.<br> +Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.</p> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iii">[iii]</span></p> + +<h2 class="p4">PREFACE</h2> +</div> + + +<p>This book tries to describe what an intelligent person would have +witnessed in Ancient Rome if by some legerdemain he had been translated +to the Second Christian Century, and conducted about the imperial city +under competent guidance. Rare and untypical happenings have been +omitted, and sometimes to avoid long explanations <i>probable</i> +matters have been stated as if they were ascertained facts: but these +instances it is hoped are so few that no reader can be led into serious +error.</p> + +<p>The year 134 after Christ has been chosen as the hypothetical time of +this visit, not from any special virtue in that date, but because Rome +was then architecturally nearly completed, the Empire seemed in its +most prosperous state, although many of the old usages and traditions +of the Republic still survived, and the evil days of decadence were +as yet hardly visible in the background. The time of the absence of +Hadrian from his capital was selected particularly, in order that +interest could be concentrated upon the life and doings of the great +city itself, and upon its vast populace of slaves, plebeians, and +nobles, not upon the splendid despot and his court, matters too often +the center for attention by students of the Roman past.</p> + +<p>To acknowledge all the modern books upon which the writer has drawn +heavily would be to present a list of almost all the important +handbooks or discussions of Roman life and antiquities. It is proper +to say, however,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_iv">[iv]</span> that such secondary sources have been mainly useful +so far as they reënforced a fairly exhaustive study of the Latin +writers themselves, especially of Horace, Seneca, Petronius, Juvenal, +Martial, and, last but nowise least, of Pliny the Younger. Inevitably +this volume follows the lines of its companion “A Day in Old Athens,” +published several years ago, a book which has enjoyed such public favor +as to prove the usefulness of this method of presentation; but life +in the Roman Imperial Age has seemed so much more complex than that +in the Athens of Demosthenes, and our fund of information is so much +greater, that the present volume is perforce considerably longer than +its companion. The “day” devoted to Rome will probably seem therefore a +somewhat lengthy one.</p> + +<p>To my colleague and friend Dr. Richard C. Cram, Professor of Latin in +the University of Minnesota, I am deeply grateful for a careful reading +of the manuscript and for many helpful and incisive suggestions; and +for a careful checking over of every feature of the work I must once +again gladly acknowledge the gracious and untiring services of my wife.</p> + +<p>The illustrations, which, it is hoped, add considerably to the interest +of the book, have been collected from many sources. Many of the highly +informational “restorations” included are from the monumental work of +Jakob von Falke, <i>Hellas und Rom</i>, the English version whereof has +long ceased to be available to American readers.</p> + +<p class="r2">W. S. D.</p> + +<p class="smcap p-min sm">The University of Minnesota</p> +<p class="smcap p-min sm left">Minneapolis</p> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="p2">CONTENTS</h2> +</div> + +<table class="smaller" style="max-width: 40em"> + <tr> + <th class="chap"></th> + <th></th> + <th class="pag">PAGE</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn"></td> + <td class="cht smcap">List of Illustrations</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_xxi">xxi</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter I. The General Aspect of the City</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="chap">SECTION</th> + <th></th> + <th class="pag"></th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">1.</td> + <td class="cht">The Prosperity of Rome in the Reign of Hadrian (<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> 117–138)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">2.</td> + <td class="cht">Increasing Glory of the Imperial City</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_2">2</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">3.</td> + <td class="cht">Population and Crowded Condition of Rome</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">4.</td> + <td class="cht">The Country around Rome</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_5">5</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">5.</td> + <td class="cht">The Tiber and Its Valley</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_6">6</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">6.</td> + <td class="cht">A View over Rome from the Campus Martius</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_7">7</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">7.</td> + <td class="cht">The Seven Hills of Rome</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">8.</td> + <td class="cht">Building Materials Used in Rome</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">9.</td> + <td class="cht">The Great Use of Concrete</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">10.</td> + <td class="cht">Greek Architectural Forms Plus the Arch and Vault</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_12">12</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter II. Streets and Street Life</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">11.</td> + <td class="cht">The Regions of Rome: Fashionable and Plebeian Quarters</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">12.</td> + <td class="cht">A Typical Short Street, “Mercury Street”</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_16">16</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">13.</td> + <td class="cht">The House and Shop Fronts</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">14.</td> + <td class="cht">Street Shrines and Fountains</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_20">20</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">15.</td> + <td class="cht">Typical Street Crowds</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">16.</td> + <td class="cht">Frequent Use of Greek in Rome</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">17.</td> + <td class="cht">Clamor and Thronging in the Streets</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">18.</td> + <td class="cht">The Processions Attending Great Nobles</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">19.</td> + <td class="cht">A Great Lady Traveling</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">20.</td> + <td class="cht">Public Salutations: the Kissing Habit</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">21.</td> + <td class="cht">The Swarms of Idlers and Parasites</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">22.</td> + <td class="cht">Public Placards and Notices</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">23.</td> + <td class="cht">Wall Scribblings</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">24.</td> + <td class="cht">The Streets Dark and Dangerous at Night</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">25.</td> + <td class="cht">Discomforts of Life in Rome</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter III. The Homes of the Lowly and of the Mighty</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">26.</td> + <td class="cht">The Great <i>Insulæ</i>—Tenement Blocks</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">27.</td> + <td class="cht">A Typical Insula</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">28.</td> + <td class="cht">The Flats in an Insula</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">29.</td> + <td class="cht">The Cheap Attic Tenements and Their Poor Occupants</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">30.</td> + <td class="cht">A Senatorial “Mansion” (<i>Domus</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">31.</td> + <td class="cht">The Plan of a Large Residence</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">32.</td> + <td class="cht">Entrance to the Residence</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">33.</td> + <td class="cht">The Atrium and the View across It</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">34.</td> + <td class="cht">The Rooms in the Rear and the <i>Peristylium</i></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">35.</td> + <td class="cht">The Dining Room (<i>Triclinium</i>) and the Chapel</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">36.</td> + <td class="cht">The Garden and the Slaves’ Quarters</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">37.</td> + <td class="cht">The Floors and Windows</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">38.</td> + <td class="cht">Frescos, Beautiful and Innumerable</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_50">50</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">39.</td> + <td class="cht">The Profusion of Statues and Art Objects</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">40.</td> + <td class="cht">Family Portrait Busts</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">41.</td> + <td class="cht">Death Masks (<i>Imagines</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">42.</td> + <td class="cht">Couches, Their General Use</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">43.</td> + <td class="cht">Elegant Chairs and Costly Tables</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">44.</td> + <td class="cht">Chests, Cabinets, Water Clocks, and Curios</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">45.</td> + <td class="cht">Spurious Antiques</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">46.</td> + <td class="cht">Pet Animals</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter IV. Roman Women and Roman Marriages</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">47.</td> + <td class="cht">Honorable Status of Roman Women</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">48.</td> + <td class="cht">Men Reluctant to Marry</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">49.</td> + <td class="cht">Rights and Privileges of Married Women</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">50.</td> + <td class="cht">Selection of Husbands for Young Girls</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">51.</td> + <td class="cht">A Marriage Treaty among Noble-Folk</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">52.</td> + <td class="cht">A Betrothal in Wealthy Circles</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">53.</td> + <td class="cht">Adjusting the Dowry</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_66">66</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">54.</td> + <td class="cht">Dressing the Bride</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_66">66</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">55.</td> + <td class="cht">The Marriage Ceremonies</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">56.</td> + <td class="cht">The Wedding Procession</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">57.</td> + <td class="cht">At the Bridegroom’s House</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">58.</td> + <td class="cht">Honors and Liberties of a Matron</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_71">71</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">59.</td> + <td class="cht">Unhappy Marriages and Frivolous Women</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">60.</td> + <td class="cht">Divorces, Easy and Frequent</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_74">74</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">61.</td> + <td class="cht">Celibacy Common: Old Families Dying Out</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">62.</td> + <td class="cht">Nobler Types of Women</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">63.</td> + <td class="cht">Famous and Devoted Wives</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">64.</td> + <td class="cht">The Story of Turia</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter V. Costume and Personal Adornment</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">65.</td> + <td class="cht">The Type of Roman Garments</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_80">80</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">66.</td> + <td class="cht">The Toga, the National Latin Garment</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_81">81</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">67.</td> + <td class="cht">Varieties of Togas</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_83">83</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">68.</td> + <td class="cht">Draping the Toga</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_83">83</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">69.</td> + <td class="cht">The Tunica</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">70.</td> + <td class="cht">Capes, Cloaks, and Gala Garments</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">71.</td> + <td class="cht">Garments of Women: the <i>Stola</i> and the <i>Palla</i></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">72.</td> + <td class="cht">Materials for Garments. Wool and Silk</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">73.</td> + <td class="cht">Styles of Arranging Garments. Fullers and Cleaners</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_89">89</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">74.</td> + <td class="cht">Barbers’ Shops. The Revived Wearing of Beards</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">75.</td> + <td class="cht">Fashions in Women’s Hairdressing. Hair Ornaments</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">76.</td> + <td class="cht">Elaborate Toilets</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_94">94</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">77.</td> + <td class="cht">Sandals and Shoes</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">78.</td> + <td class="cht">The Mania for Jewels and Rings</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">79.</td> + <td class="cht">Pearls in Enormous Favor</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">80.</td> + <td class="cht">Perfumes: Their Constant Use</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_98">98</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter VI. Food and Drink. How the Day is spent. The Dinner</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">81.</td> + <td class="cht">Romans Fond of the Table. Gourmandizing. The Famous Apicius</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_100">100</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">82.</td> + <td class="cht">Vitellius, the Imperial Glutton</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_102">102</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">83.</td> + <td class="cht">Simple Diet of the Early Romans</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_102">102</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">84.</td> + <td class="cht">Bread and Vegetables</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">85.</td> + <td class="cht">Fruits, Olives, Grapes, and Spices</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_104">104</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">86.</td> + <td class="cht">Meat and Poultry</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">87.</td> + <td class="cht">Fish in Great Demand</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_106">106</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">88.</td> + <td class="cht">Olive Oil and Wine: Their Universal Use</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">89.</td> + <td class="cht">Vintages and Varieties of Wine</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">90.</td> + <td class="cht">Kitchens and the Niceties of Cookery</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">91.</td> + <td class="cht">A Roman Gentleman’s Morning: Breakfast (<i>jentaculum</i>) +and the Visit to the Forum</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">92.</td> + <td class="cht">The Afternoon and Dinner-Time. Importance of the +Dinner (<i>cena</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">93.</td> + <td class="cht">Dinner Hunters and Parasites (“Shadows”)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">94.</td> + <td class="cht">The Standard Dinner Party—Nine Guests</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_113">113</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">95.</td> + <td class="cht">Preparing the Dinner and Mustering the Guests</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_114">114</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">96.</td> + <td class="cht">Arrangement of the Couches: Placing the Guests</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_115">115</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">97.</td> + <td class="cht">Serving the Dinner</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_116">116</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">98.</td> + <td class="cht">The Drinking Bout (<i>Comissatio</i>) after the Dinner</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">99.</td> + <td class="cht">Distribution of Garlands and Perfumes. Social Conversation</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_119">119</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">100.</td> + <td class="cht">Elaborate and Vulgar Banquets. Simple Home Dinners</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter VII. The Social Orders: The Slaves</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">101.</td> + <td class="cht">Enormous Alien Population in Rome. The “Græcules”</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_122">122</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">102.</td> + <td class="cht">Strict Divisions of Society. The Régime of <i>Status</i></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_123">123</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">103.</td> + <td class="cht">Vast Number of Slaves. Universality of Slavery</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_124">124</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">104.</td> + <td class="cht">Power of Master over Slaves</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">105.</td> + <td class="cht">The City Slaves and the Country Slaves</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">106.</td> + <td class="cht">Purchasing a Slave Boy</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">107.</td> + <td class="cht">Traffic in the Slave Pens</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_127">127</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">108.</td> + <td class="cht">Sale of Slaves</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_128">128</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">109.</td> + <td class="cht">Size of Slave Households (<i>Familiæ</i>). Slave Workmen</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_129">129</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">110.</td> + <td class="cht">Division of Duties and Organization of Slave Households</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">111.</td> + <td class="cht">Discipline in a Well-Ordered Mansion. Long Hours of Idleness</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">112.</td> + <td class="cht">Inevitable Degradation Caused by Slavery. Evil +Effect upon Masters</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">113.</td> + <td class="cht">Punishment of Slaves</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">114.</td> + <td class="cht">Branding of Slaves. <i>Ergastula</i>—Slave Prisons</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">115.</td> + <td class="cht">Death Penalties for Slaves. Pursuit of Runaways</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter VIII. The Social Orders: Freedmen, Provincials, +Plebeians, and Nobles</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">116.</td> + <td class="cht">Manumission of Slaves Very Common</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_139">139</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">117.</td> + <td class="cht">The Ceremony of Manumission</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_140">140</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">118.</td> + <td class="cht">The Status of Freedmen. Their Great Success in Business</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_140">140</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">119.</td> + <td class="cht">Humble Types of Freedmen</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">120.</td> + <td class="cht">Wealth and Power of Successful Freedmen</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_142">142</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">121.</td> + <td class="cht">Importance of Freedmen in a Roman Family</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">122.</td> + <td class="cht">The Status of Provincials. The Case of Jesus</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">123.</td> + <td class="cht">Great Alien Colonies in Rome</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_145">145</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">124.</td> + <td class="cht">The Roman Plebeians, the “Mob” (<i>Vulgus</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_145">145</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">125.</td> + <td class="cht">The Desirability of Roman Citizenship. The Case +of St. Paul</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_146">146</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">126.</td> + <td class="cht">Clientage: Its Oldest Form</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_147">147</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">127.</td> + <td class="cht">The New Parasitical Clientage: the Morning Salutation</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">128.</td> + <td class="cht">The Dole to Clients (the <i>Sportula</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_150">150</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">129.</td> + <td class="cht">Attendance by Clients in Public. Insults They Must Undergo</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_151">151</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">130.</td> + <td class="cht">The Decurions: the Notables of the Chartered Cities</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">131.</td> + <td class="cht">The Equites: the Nobles of the Second Class</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">132.</td> + <td class="cht">Qualifications and Honors of the Equites</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_154">154</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">133.</td> + <td class="cht">Review of the Equites. Pretenders to the Rank</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_156">156</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">134.</td> + <td class="cht">The Senatorial Order. The First-Class Nobility</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_156">156</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">135.</td> + <td class="cht">Social Glories of Senators</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">136.</td> + <td class="cht">The Senatorial Aristocracy Greater than the Senate</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_158">158</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">137.</td> + <td class="cht">Insignia, Qualifications, and Titles of Senators</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_158">158</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter IX. Physicians and Funerals</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">138.</td> + <td class="cht">Scanty Qualifications and Training of Doctors</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_160">160</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">139.</td> + <td class="cht">Superior Class of Physicians</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">140.</td> + <td class="cht">A Fashionable Doctor</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">141.</td> + <td class="cht">Medical Books and Famous Remedies</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_163">163</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">142.</td> + <td class="cht">Absurd Medicines. Theriac</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_164">164</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">143.</td> + <td class="cht">Fear of Poisoning. Popularity of Antidotes</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">144.</td> + <td class="cht">Medical Students, “Disciples,” Beauty Specialists</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_166">166</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">145.</td> + <td class="cht">Cheap Doctors: No Hospitals</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_167">167</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">146.</td> + <td class="cht">Suicide as Escape from Hopeless Disease</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_168">168</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">147.</td> + <td class="cht">Execution of Wills. Numerous Legacies Customary</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">148.</td> + <td class="cht">Regular Incomes from Legacies. Professional Legacy Hunters</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">149.</td> + <td class="cht">Public Bequests</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">150.</td> + <td class="cht">Great Funerals Very Fashionable. Desire to Be +Remembered after Death</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">151.</td> + <td class="cht">Preliminaries to a Funeral</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_173">173</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">152.</td> + <td class="cht">The Funeral Procession. The Display of Masked “Ancestors”</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_174">174</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">153.</td> + <td class="cht">The Exhibits in the Procession. The Retinue around the Bier</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">154.</td> + <td class="cht">The Funeral Oration in the Forum</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_176">176</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">155.</td> + <td class="cht">Family Tombs. The <i>Columbarium</i> and the Garden</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_177">177</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">156.</td> + <td class="cht">The Funeral Pyre and Its Ceremonies</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_180">180</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">157.</td> + <td class="cht">Funeral Monuments. Memorial Feasts to the Dead</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_182">182</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">158.</td> + <td class="cht">Funerals of the Poor. “Funeral Societies”</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_182">182</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter X. Children and Schooling</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">159.</td> + <td class="cht">Theoretical Rights of Father over Children. The +<i>Patria Potestas</i></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_184">184</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">160.</td> + <td class="cht">Ceremonies after Birth of a Child. The <i>Bulla</i></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_185">185</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">161.</td> + <td class="cht">The Roman Name: Its Intricacy</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_186">186</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">162.</td> + <td class="cht">Irregular and Lengthy Names under the Empire. +Names of Slaves</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">163.</td> + <td class="cht">Names of Women. Confusion of Roman Names</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_188">188</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">164.</td> + <td class="cht">Care of Parents in Educating Children</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_189">189</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">165.</td> + <td class="cht">Toys and Pets</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_190">190</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">166.</td> + <td class="cht">The Learning of Greek by Roman Children</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_191">191</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">167.</td> + <td class="cht">Selection of a School</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_192">192</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">168.</td> + <td class="cht">Extent of Literacy in Rome. Education of Girls</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">169.</td> + <td class="cht">Schools for the Lower Classes</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">170.</td> + <td class="cht">Scourging, Clamors, and Other Abuses of Cheap Schools</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_195">195</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">171.</td> + <td class="cht">A Superior Type of School</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_196">196</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">172.</td> + <td class="cht">Methods of Teaching</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_197">197</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">173.</td> + <td class="cht">Training in Higher Arithmetic</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">174.</td> + <td class="cht">The Grammarians’ High Schools</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">175.</td> + <td class="cht">Oratory Very Fashionable</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_200">200</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">176.</td> + <td class="cht">Professional Rhetoricians</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_201">201</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">177.</td> + <td class="cht">Methods in Rhetoric Schools: Mock Trials</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_201">201</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">178.</td> + <td class="cht">Enormous Popularity of Rhetoric Studies</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_203">203</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">179.</td> + <td class="cht">Philosophical Studies: Delight in Moralizing</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_204">204</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">180.</td> + <td class="cht">Children’s Games. “Morra” and Dice</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_204">204</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">181.</td> + <td class="cht">Board Games of Skill: “Robbers” (<i>Latrunculi</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_205">205</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">182.</td> + <td class="cht">Out-Door Games. Ball Games, Trignon</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter XI. Books and Libraries</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">183.</td> + <td class="cht">Letters and Writing Tablets</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">184.</td> + <td class="cht">Personal Correspondence and Secretaries</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_208">208</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">185.</td> + <td class="cht">Books Very Common: Papyrus and the Papyrus Trade</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_209">209</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">186.</td> + <td class="cht">Size and Format of Books</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_210">210</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">187.</td> + <td class="cht">Mounting and Rolling of Books</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">188.</td> + <td class="cht">Copying Books: the Publishing Business. Horace’s +and Martial’s Publishers</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">189.</td> + <td class="cht">Passion for Literary “Fame”</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_214">214</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">190.</td> + <td class="cht">Zeal for Poetry: Multiplication of Verses</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_216">216</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">191.</td> + <td class="cht">Size of Libraries</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">192.</td> + <td class="cht">A Private Library</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_218">218</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">193.</td> + <td class="cht">The Great Public Libraries of Rome</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_219">219</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter XII. Economic Life of Rome: I. Banking, +Shops, and Inns</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">194.</td> + <td class="cht">Passion for Gain in Rome</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_220">220</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">195.</td> + <td class="cht">Life in Rome Expensive. Premiums upon Extravagance +and Pretence</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_221">221</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">196.</td> + <td class="cht">Rome a City of Investors and Buyers of Luxuries</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_222">222</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">197.</td> + <td class="cht">Multiplicity of Shops. The Great Shopping Districts</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_223">223</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">198.</td> + <td class="cht">Arrangement of Shops. Streets Blocked by Hucksters</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_224">224</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">199.</td> + <td class="cht">Barbers’ Shops and Auction Sales</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">200.</td> + <td class="cht">Superior Retail Stores</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_226">226</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">201.</td> + <td class="cht">Numerous Banks and Bankers</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">202.</td> + <td class="cht">A Great Banker and His Business</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_228">228</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">203.</td> + <td class="cht">Trust Business: Savings Banks</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">204.</td> + <td class="cht">Places of Safe Deposit: The Temple of Vesta</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_230">230</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">205.</td> + <td class="cht">Inns: Usually Mean and Sordid</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_231">231</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">206.</td> + <td class="cht">Reckonings and Guests at a Cheap Inn</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">207.</td> + <td class="cht">Noble Frequenters of Taverns</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_234">234</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">208.</td> + <td class="cht">Respectable Eating-Houses</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_235">235</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">209.</td> + <td class="cht"><i>Thermopolia</i>—“Hot Drink Establishments”</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_236">236</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter XIII. Economic Life of Rome: II. The +Industrial Quarters. The Grain Trade. Ostia. +The Trade Guilds</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">210.</td> + <td class="cht">Industrial Quarters by the Tiber</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_238">238</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">211.</td> + <td class="cht">Conditions of Industrial Labor</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_238">238</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">212.</td> + <td class="cht">Great Trade through Ostia and the Campanian Ports</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_239">239</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">213.</td> + <td class="cht">The Emporium and Its Wharves: The Tiber Barges</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_240">240</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">214.</td> + <td class="cht">The Marble and Grain Trades</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_241">241</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">215.</td> + <td class="cht">The Public Grain Doles</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">216.</td> + <td class="cht">Distribution of Free Bread: Extraordinary Bonuses +(<i>Congiaria</i> and <i>Donativa</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_244">244</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">217.</td> + <td class="cht">The Trade in Sculptures and Portrait Statues</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_246">246</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">218.</td> + <td class="cht">The Tiber Trip to Ostia: The Merchant Shipping</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_247">247</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">219.</td> + <td class="cht">Imperial Naval Vessels</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_248">248</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">220.</td> + <td class="cht">The Harbor Town of Ostia</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_249">249</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">221.</td> + <td class="cht">The Roman Guilds (<i>Collegia</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_249">249</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">222.</td> + <td class="cht">Very Ancient Guilds. The Flute-Blowers</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_250">250</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">223.</td> + <td class="cht">Importance of the Guilds</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_251">251</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">224.</td> + <td class="cht">Multitude of Beggars</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_252">252</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter XIV. The Fora, Their Life and Buildings. +The Daily Journal</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">225.</td> + <td class="cht">The Fora, the Centers of Roman Life</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_254">254</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">226.</td> + <td class="cht">Incessant Crowds at the Forum. The Centers of Gossip</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_256">256</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">227.</td> + <td class="cht">Grandiose Architecture: Vast Quantities of Ornaments +and Statues</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_258">258</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">228.</td> + <td class="cht">Use of Color on Sculptures and Architecture</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_259">259</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">229.</td> + <td class="cht">Entering the Series of Fora: the Temple of Venus and Rome</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_260">260</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">230.</td> + <td class="cht">The Arch of Titus: Continuation of the Sacred Way</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_262">262</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">231.</td> + <td class="cht">House and Temple of Vesta: the Regia: the Temple +of the Divine Julius</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_265">265</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">232.</td> + <td class="cht">The Old Forum (<i>Forum Romanum</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_265">265</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">233.</td> + <td class="cht">The Forum Area: the Posting of Public Notices</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_268">268</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">234.</td> + <td class="cht">Western End of Forum: Rostra: the Golden Milestone: +the Tullianum Prison</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_269">269</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">235.</td> + <td class="cht">The Basilica Æmilia: the Temple of Janus: the Senate +House (<i>Curia</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_271">271</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">236.</td> + <td class="cht">The Basilica Julia, the Greatest Court House in Rome; +the <i>Lacus Curtius</i></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_272">272</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">237.</td> + <td class="cht">The New Fora of the Emperors: the Temple of Peace</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_275">275</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">238.</td> + <td class="cht">The Fora of Julius, Augustus, and Nerva</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_276">276</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">239.</td> + <td class="cht">The Forum, Column, and Libraries of Trajan</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_278">278</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">240.</td> + <td class="cht">The Park System of the Campus Martius: the Pantheon</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_280">280</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">241.</td> + <td class="cht">The Daily Gazette (<i>Acta Diurna</i>). How Rome Gets Its News</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_282">282</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">242.</td> + <td class="cht">Contents of the Acta Diurna</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_283">283</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">243.</td> + <td class="cht">Miscellaneous Entries and Gossip in the “Gazette”</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_284">284</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter XV. The Palatine and the Palace of the +Cæsars. The Government Offices, and the Police +and City Government of Rome</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">244.</td> + <td class="cht">History of the Palatine: Its Purchase by Augustus</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_286">286</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">245.</td> + <td class="cht">Extension of the Imperial Buildings: Central Position of +the Palatine</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_287">287</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">246.</td> + <td class="cht">Commanding View from the Palatine Hill</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_288">288</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">247.</td> + <td class="cht">Magnificence of the Palatine Structures</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_288">288</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">248.</td> + <td class="cht">The More Famous Buildings on the Palatine: Enormous +Display of Art Objects</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_290">290</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">249.</td> + <td class="cht">The Triclinium and Throne Room of Domitian</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_291">291</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">250.</td> + <td class="cht">Swarms of Civil Officials Always on the Palatine</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_293">293</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">251.</td> + <td class="cht">The Emperor Center of High Social Life</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_294">294</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">252.</td> + <td class="cht">Friends of Cæsar (<i>Amici Cæsaris</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_295">295</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">253.</td> + <td class="cht">The Imperial Audiences</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_296">296</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">254.</td> + <td class="cht">Social Ruin through Imperial Disfavor</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_296">296</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">255.</td> + <td class="cht">Enormous Value of Imperial Favor</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_298">298</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">256.</td> + <td class="cht">City Government of Rome: the “City Præfect” (<i>Præfectus Urbi</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_299">299</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">257.</td> + <td class="cht">The Municipal Superintendents and Commissioners +(<i>Curatores</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_301">301</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">258.</td> + <td class="cht">Excellent Water Supply of Rome</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_301">301</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">259.</td> + <td class="cht">The Great Aqueducts</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_303">303</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">260.</td> + <td class="cht">The Police System Instituted by Augustus</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_304">304</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">261.</td> + <td class="cht">The Police-Firemen of the Watch (<i>Vigiles</i>). The +<i>Præfectus Vigilum</i></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_304">304</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter XVI. The Prætorian Camp. The Imperial +War Machine</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">262.</td> + <td class="cht">The Army the Real Master of the Roman Empire</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_307">307</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">263.</td> + <td class="cht">Army Held under Stiff Discipline and Concentrated +on Frontiers</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_308">308</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">264.</td> + <td class="cht">The Prætorian Guard of the Emperors</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_309">309</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">265.</td> + <td class="cht">The Prætorian Præfect and the Prætorian Camp</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_311">311</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">266.</td> + <td class="cht">Organization and Discipline of the Prætorians</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_312">312</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">267.</td> + <td class="cht">The City Cohorts (<i>Cohortes Urbanæ</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_313">313</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">268.</td> + <td class="cht">A Private in the Legions. The Legionary Organization</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_314">314</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">269.</td> + <td class="cht">Training of the Legionaries: the <i>Pilum</i> and the +<i>Gladius</i></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_316">316</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">270.</td> + <td class="cht">Defensive Weapons</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_318">318</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">271.</td> + <td class="cht">Rewards and Punishments for Soldiers</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_319">319</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">272.</td> + <td class="cht">Pay and Rations in the Army: Soldiers’ Savings Banks</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_320">320</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">273.</td> + <td class="cht">The Training of Soldiers: Non-Military Labors</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_321">321</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">274.</td> + <td class="cht">Petty Officers in the Legions</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_322">322</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">275.</td> + <td class="cht">The Centurions: Their Importance and Order of Promotion</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_323">323</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">276.</td> + <td class="cht">The <i>Primipilus</i>: the Great Eagle of the Legion</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_325">325</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">277.</td> + <td class="cht">Locations and Names of Legions</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_326">326</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">278.</td> + <td class="cht">The Auxiliary Cohorts: the Second Grand Division of the Army</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_327">327</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">279.</td> + <td class="cht">The Præfect of the Camps and the Legate of the Legion</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_328">328</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">280.</td> + <td class="cht">Care for Veterans: Retiring Bonuses and Land Grants</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_329">329</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">281.</td> + <td class="cht">Barrier Fortresses; System of Encampments; Flexible +Battle Tactics; Siege Warfare</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_330">330</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">282.</td> + <td class="cht">Limited Size of the Imperial Army: Its Great Efficiency</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_331">331</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter XVII. The Senate: A Session and a Debate</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">283.</td> + <td class="cht">Apparent Authority and Importance of the Senate</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_334">334</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">284.</td> + <td class="cht">Actual Weakness of the Senate</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_335">335</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">285.</td> + <td class="cht">Amount of Power Left to the Senate</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_336">336</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">286.</td> + <td class="cht">Organization and Procedure of the Senate</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_337">337</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">287.</td> + <td class="cht">The <i>Curia</i> (Senate House) and Its Arrangement of Benches</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_338">338</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">288.</td> + <td class="cht">The Gathering of the Senators</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_339">339</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">289.</td> + <td class="cht">Opening the Session: Taking the Auspices</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_340">340</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">290.</td> + <td class="cht">Presentation of Routine Business: Taking a Formal Vote</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_341">341</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">291.</td> + <td class="cht">Presenting an Impeachment at a Senate Trial</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_342">342</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">292.</td> + <td class="cht">The Water Clocks; Method of a Prosecutor; Applause +in the Senate</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_344">344</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">293.</td> + <td class="cht">Speech for the Defendant: Methods of a Professional Advocate</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_345">345</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">294.</td> + <td class="cht">Concluding Speeches; Interrupting Shouts; Personal Invectives</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_347">347</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">295.</td> + <td class="cht">Taking the Opinion of the Senate</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_348">348</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">296.</td> + <td class="cht">An Uproar in the Senate: An “Altercation”</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_350">350</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">297.</td> + <td class="cht">Taking a Vote of the Senate. A Sentence of Banishment</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_351">351</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter XVIII. The Courts and the Orators. The +Great Baths. The Public Parks and Environs of Rome</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">298.</td> + <td class="cht">Roman Court Procedure Highly Scientific</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_353">353</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">299.</td> + <td class="cht">The Great Tribunals in the Basilicas</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_354">354</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">300.</td> + <td class="cht">Great Stress on Advocacy</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_355">355</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">301.</td> + <td class="cht">Cheap Pettifogging Lawyers</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_356">356</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">302.</td> + <td class="cht">Character Witnesses; Torture of Slave Witnesses</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_357">357</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">303.</td> + <td class="cht">Written Evidence; High Development of the Advocate’s Art</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_357">357</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">304.</td> + <td class="cht">Popularity and Necessity of the Baths</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_358">358</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">305.</td> + <td class="cht">Luxurious Private Baths</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_359">359</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">306.</td> + <td class="cht">Government and Privately Owned Public Baths: Both +Very Popular</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_360">360</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">307.</td> + <td class="cht">The Great Baths of Trajan: Baths, Club-House, and Café</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_361">361</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">308.</td> + <td class="cht">Heterogeneous Crowds in the Great Baths</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_362">362</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">309.</td> + <td class="cht">Entering the Thermæ</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_363">363</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">310.</td> + <td class="cht">Interior of the Baths: the Cold Room (<i>Frigidarium</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_364">364</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">311.</td> + <td class="cht">The Great Swimming Pool and the <i>Tepidarium</i></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_365">365</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">312.</td> + <td class="cht">The Hot Baths (<i>Caldaria</i>): Their Sensuous Luxury</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_366">366</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">313.</td> + <td class="cht">Restaurants, Small Shops, and Sports in or around the Baths</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_367">367</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">314.</td> + <td class="cht">The Great Porticoes along the Campus Martius. The +Park System towards the Tiber</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_368">368</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">315.</td> + <td class="cht">Public Buildings upon the Campus Martius</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_369">369</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">316.</td> + <td class="cht">The Tombs of Hadrian and Augustus</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_370">370</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter XIX. The Public Games: the Theater, +the Circus, and the Amphitheater</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">317.</td> + <td class="cht">Roman Festivals: Their Great Number</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_374">374</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">318.</td> + <td class="cht">Passion for Public Spectacles: Mania for Gambling</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_375">375</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">319.</td> + <td class="cht">Expenses of Public Spectacles to Great Officials</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_376">376</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">320.</td> + <td class="cht">Indescribable Popularity of the Games</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_377">377</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">321.</td> + <td class="cht">The Theater Less Popular than the Circus or Amphitheater</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_378">378</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">322.</td> + <td class="cht">The Mimes: Character Plays</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_380">380</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">323.</td> + <td class="cht">The Pantomimes: Their Real Art</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_381">381</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">324.</td> + <td class="cht">Extreme Popularity of the Circus</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_382">382</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">325.</td> + <td class="cht">Popular Charioteers (<i>Aurigæ</i>): the Great Racing Factions</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_383">383</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">326.</td> + <td class="cht">The Circus Maximus</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_384">384</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">327.</td> + <td class="cht">The Race-Track: Procession before the Races</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_384">384</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">328.</td> + <td class="cht">Beginning a Race in the Circus</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_386">386</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">329.</td> + <td class="cht">Perils of the Races; Proclaiming the Victors</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_386">386</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">330.</td> + <td class="cht">Gladiatorial Contests Even More Popular than the Circus</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_389">389</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">331.</td> + <td class="cht">Gladiator Fights at Funerals</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_390">390</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">332.</td> + <td class="cht">Gladiator “Schools” (<i>Ludi</i>): Inmates Usually Criminals</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_390">390</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">333.</td> + <td class="cht">Severe Training of Gladiators; Their Ephemeral Glory</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_392">392</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">334.</td> + <td class="cht">Normal Arrangements for an Arena Contest</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_393">393</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">335.</td> + <td class="cht">The Flavian Amphitheater (Later “Colosseum”)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_394">394</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">336.</td> + <td class="cht">Exterior and Ticket Entrances to the Flavian Amphitheater</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_396">396</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">337.</td> + <td class="cht">Interior Arrangements of the Flavian</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_396">396</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">338.</td> + <td class="cht">Procession of Gladiators</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_397">397</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">339.</td> + <td class="cht">Throwing a Criminal to the Beasts. The Animal Hunt</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_398">398</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">340.</td> + <td class="cht">Interval in the Contests: Scattering of Lottery Tickets</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_399">399</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">341.</td> + <td class="cht">Beginning the Regular Gladiatorial Combats</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_401">401</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">342.</td> + <td class="cht">Mounted Combats: the Signals for Ruthlessness and Mercy</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_403">403</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">343.</td> + <td class="cht">Combats between Netters (<i>Retiarii</i>) and Heavy-Armed +Warriors (“Thracians”)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_404">404</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">344.</td> + <td class="cht">End of the Combats: Rewarding the Victors</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_405">405</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter XX. The Roman Religion: the Priesthoods, +the Vestal Virgins</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">345.</td> + <td class="cht">Religious Symbols Everywhere in Rome</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_407">407</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">346.</td> + <td class="cht">Epicureanism and Agnosticism among the Upper Classes</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_407">407</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">347.</td> + <td class="cht">Stoicism: Revival of Religion under the Empire</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_408">408</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">348.</td> + <td class="cht">Foreign Cults Intruded upon the “Religion of Numa”</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_410">410</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">349.</td> + <td class="cht">Superstitious Piety of the City Plebeians</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_411">411</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">350.</td> + <td class="cht">Roman Religion Originally Developed by Italian Farmers</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_411">411</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">351.</td> + <td class="cht">Native Italian Gods: Janus, Saturn, Flora. The +Lares and Penates</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_413">413</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">352.</td> + <td class="cht">Personified Virtues as Gods: Cold and Legalistic Character +of the Roman Religion</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_414">414</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">353.</td> + <td class="cht">Priestly Offices: Little Sacrosanct about Them</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_416">416</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">354.</td> + <td class="cht">The Pontifices</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_417">417</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">355.</td> + <td class="cht">The Augurs</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_418">418</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">356.</td> + <td class="cht">The Flamens</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_420">420</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">357.</td> + <td class="cht">The <i>Salii</i> (“Holy Leapers”)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_421">421</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">358.</td> + <td class="cht">The <i>Fetiales</i> (“Sacred Heralds”): Ceremony of Declaring War</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_422">422</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">359.</td> + <td class="cht">The Arval Brethren (<i>Fratres Arvales</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_423">423</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">360.</td> + <td class="cht">Rustic Ceremonies; Soothsaying, Astrologers, and Witches</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_424">424</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">361.</td> + <td class="cht">A Private Sacrifice</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_425">425</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">362.</td> + <td class="cht">Ceremony at the Temple</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_426">426</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">363.</td> + <td class="cht">A Formal Prayer: the Actual Sacrifice</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_428">428</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">364.</td> + <td class="cht">The Vestal Virgins: Their Sanctity and Importance</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_429">429</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">365.</td> + <td class="cht">The Temple of Vesta and the House of the Vestals</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_431">431</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">366.</td> + <td class="cht">Appointment of Vestals</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_432">432</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">367.</td> + <td class="cht">Duties of the Vestals: the Maxima</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_433">433</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">368.</td> + <td class="cht">Punishments of Erring Vestals</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_434">434</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">369.</td> + <td class="cht">Remarkable Honors Granted the Vestals</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_435">435</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter XXI. The Foreign Cults: Cybele, Isis, +Mithras. The Christians in Pagan Eyes</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">370.</td> + <td class="cht">Saturnalia: the Exchange of Presents on New Year’s Day</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_437">437</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">371.</td> + <td class="cht">Multiplication of Oriental Cults</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_437">437</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">372.</td> + <td class="cht">The Cult of the Deified Emperors</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_439">439</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">373.</td> + <td class="cht">The “Divine Augustus” and His Successors</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_439">439</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">374.</td> + <td class="cht">The Cult of Cybele, the “Great Mother”</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_441">441</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">375.</td> + <td class="cht">Cult of Isis and Associated Egyptian Gods</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_442">442</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">376.</td> + <td class="cht">Ceremonies at an Isis Temple</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_443">443</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">377.</td> + <td class="cht">Cult of Serapis and of Other Oriental Gods</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_445">445</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">378.</td> + <td class="cht">The Cult of Mithras: Its Relative Nobility</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_445">445</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">379.</td> + <td class="cht">The <i>Taurobolium</i> (“Bath in Bull’s Blood”)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_447">447</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">380.</td> + <td class="cht">The Christians: Pagan Account of Their Origin</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_449">449</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">381.</td> + <td class="cht">The Persecution of Christians: Their “Insane Obstinacy”</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_450">450</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">382.</td> + <td class="cht">Current Charges against the Christians</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_451">451</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter XXII. A Roman Villa. The Love of the Country</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">383.</td> + <td class="cht">Appreciation of Country Life by the Romans</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_453">453</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">384.</td> + <td class="cht">Praises of the Country Towns and Villas</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_453">453</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">385.</td> + <td class="cht">Comfortable Modes of Travel: Luxurious Litters +and Carriages</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_454">454</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">386.</td> + <td class="cht">Multiplication of Villas: Seashore Estates at Baiæ, etc.</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_456">456</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">387.</td> + <td class="cht">Villas in the Mountains; Small Farms near Rome</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_457">457</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">388.</td> + <td class="cht">Great Estates in the Hills: Pliny’s Tuscan Villa</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_458">458</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">389.</td> + <td class="cht">Charming Location of Pliny’s Villa</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_460">460</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">390.</td> + <td class="cht">Terraces of the Villa: the Porticoes: Summer-Houses +and Bedrooms</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_462">462</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">391.</td> + <td class="cht">The Baths: the Rear Apartments: the Riding Course</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_464">464</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">392.</td> + <td class="cht">The Fountains and Luxurious Pavilions in the Gardens</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_465">465</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">393.</td> + <td class="cht">Life of Sensuous Luxury at Such a Villa. Contrast in +Human Conditions under the Roman Régime</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_466">466</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <th class="header" colspan="3">Chapter XXIII. The Return of the Emperor</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">394.</td> + <td class="cht">Character of Hadrian: Prosperity and Good Government +of His Reign</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_468">468</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">395.</td> + <td class="cht">Return of Hadrian to Italy</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_469">469</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">396.</td> + <td class="cht">Imperial Procession Entering Rome</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_470">470</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">397.</td> + <td class="cht">Hailing the Emperor</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_472">472</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">398.</td> + <td class="cht">The Donatives, Fêtes, and Games</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_472">472</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="chn">399.</td> + <td class="cht">A Christian Gathering</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_473">473</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht1 smcap" colspan="2">Index</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_475">475</a></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxi">[xxi]</span></p> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> +</div> + +<table class="smaller" style="max-width: 40em"> + <tr> + <th></th> + <th class="pag">PAGE</th> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Interior of Great Public Baths in Imperial Rome</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_frontis"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Map of Rome in the Days of Hadrian</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_006">6</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Capitoline Hill and Temples as seen from Palatine</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_008">8</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Typical Temple Front</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_012">12</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Arch of Constantine</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_013">13</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Street in Pompeii</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_016">16</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Stepping Stones across a Side Street</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_017">17</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Street Scene before a Cook-Shop</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_019">19</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Shrine at the Crossways</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_020">20</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Monument of a Wine Seller</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_028">28</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Tenants Paying Rent to a Landlord’s Agent</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_038">38</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Atrium of House in Pompeii</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_041">41</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Plan of a Roman Mansion</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_043">43</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Interior of a Roman Mansion</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_044">44</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Scene in a Peristylium</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_045">45</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Roman Type of House at Pompeii</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_046">46</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Corner in a Garden in Rear of a Roman House</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_048">48</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Portrait Bust—Pompey the Great</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_052">52</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Typical Roman Portrait—Marc Antony</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_053">53</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Roman Lamps</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_055">55</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Altar with Design of a Curule Chair</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_056">56</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">A Roman Matron</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_062">62</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Wedded Pair with <i>Camillus</i></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_076">76</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Seated Noblewoman</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_077">77</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Romans wearing the Toga</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_081">81</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">A Roman Matron: showing the <i>stola</i> and <i>palla</i></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_087">87</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Scene before a Barber’s Shop</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_091">91</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Roman Female Heads</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_092">92</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Sandals</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_095">95</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Roman Jewelry and Ornaments</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_096">96</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Roman Banquet Scene</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_101">101</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Grist Mill turned by Horse</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_103">103</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Nine Guests in a Triclinium</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_116">116</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Roman Serving Forks</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_117">117</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Drinking Cup</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_118">118</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Slaves working in a Bakery</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_131">131</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Clients gathering in the Rain, before their Patron’s Door</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_149">149</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Invalid with Attendants</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_162">162</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Scene along the Appian Way</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_178">178</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Pyramid—Tomb of Gaius Cestius</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_179">179</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">View along the Appian Way showing Funeral Monuments</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_180">180</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Street of the Tombs at Pompeii</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_181">181</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Boy Studying</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_194">194</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">School Discipline</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_196">196</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Grammarian instructing Two Upper Pupils</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_200">200</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Wax Tablet with Stilus Attached</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_207">207</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Writing Tablets and Stilus</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_208">208</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Book Cupboard</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_209">209</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Book Container</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_210a">210</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Double Inkstand</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_210b">210</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Pen and Scroll</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_211">211</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Book Scroll</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_212">212</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Old Forum, looking towards Northern Side: restoration</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_216">216</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Tradesmen’s Scales and Balances</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_224">224</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Monument of a Hostler</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_231">231</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Gateway at Pompeii: present state</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_232">232</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Cheap Grocery and Cook-Shop</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_235">235</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">River Boat Loaded with Hogsheads of Wine</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_241">241</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Distributing Bread</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_243">243</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Oven and Grist Mill in a Bakery</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_245">245</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Environs of Rome</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_247">247</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">General View of Old Forum and Capitol</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_254">254</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Old Forum: present state, looking towards the Capitol</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_255">255</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">The Heart of Rome; the Fora, the Palatine, etc.</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_261">261</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Spoils from Jerusalem: Arch of Titus</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_263">263</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">View through the Arch of Titus</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_264">264</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Old Forum: looking west. Restoration</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_266">266</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Old Forum, looking towards Capitol. Restoration</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_267">267</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Old Forum, present condition, looking east</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_270">270</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Interior of a Basilica: restored</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_273">273</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">The Tarpeian Rock</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_275">275</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Forum of Augustus and Temple of Mars the Avenger: restored</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_277">277</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">An Imperial Forum, near the Column of Trajan. Restoration</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_279">279</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Interior of the Pantheon. Restoration</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_281">281</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Arch of Titus</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_287">287</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Palatine and Palace of the Cæsars. Restoration</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_289">289</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Roman Urn</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_290">290</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Cæsar Augustus</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_298">298</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Ruined Aqueduct in the Roman Campagna</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_302">302</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Prætorian Guardsmen</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_310">310</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">A Slinger</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_315">315</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Roman Siege Works. Restoration</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_316">316</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Storming a City with the <i>Testudo</i></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_317">317</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Catapult</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_318">318</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Cuirass</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_319">319</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Javelin: <i>pilum</i></td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_320a">320</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Sword</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_320b">320</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Helmet</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_321">321</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Shield of the Legionary</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_322">322</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Military Trumpet</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_323">323</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Legionaries</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_324">324</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Roman Officer</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_325">325</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Light-Armed Soldier</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_327">327</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Storming a Besieged City</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_331">331</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Coop of Sacred Chickens</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_341">341</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Cicero denouncing Catiline before the Senate</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_346">346</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Plan of Roman Public Baths</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_363">363</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Castle of St. Angelo: Tomb of Hadrian in its present state</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_371">371</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Tomb of Hadrian. Restored</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_372">372</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">At the Theater Entrance</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_376">376</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Theater at Pompeii</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_379">379</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Circus Maximus. Restoration</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_385">385</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Race in the Circus Maximus</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_388">388</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Flavian Amphitheater (Colosseum): present state</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_395">395</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Boxers</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_400">400</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Gladiators saluting the Editor</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_402">402</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Defeated Gladiator Appealing for Mercy</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_403">403</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Maison Carrée, Nîmes</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_408">408</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Farmer’s Calendar</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_413">413</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Circular Temple, probably of Goddess Matuta, Rome</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_415">415</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Roman Altar</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_425">425</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">A Military Sacrifice</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_427">427</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Roman Altar</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_428">428</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Vestal Virgin</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_430">430</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Archi-Gallus, Priest of Cybele</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_441">441</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Shrine of Cybele</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_442">442</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Mithras the Bull Slayer</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_446">446</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Mithraic Emblems</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_447">447</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Traveling Carriage (<i>Reda</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_454">454</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Roman Bridge</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_455">455</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Roman Spades</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_458">458</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Ruins of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli (<i>Tibur</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_459">459</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Ruins of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli (<i>Tibur</i>)</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_460">460</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Villa of Pliny the Younger; restored</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_461">461</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Roman Garden Scene</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_463">463</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Marble Urn or Garden Ornament</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_464">464</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Hadrian</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_469">469</a></td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">View in the Christian Catacombs</td> + <td class="pag"><a href="#i_473">473</a></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[1]</span></p> + +<p class="center p4 xl">A DAY IN OLD ROME</p> +</div> + +<h2>CHAPTER I<br> +<span class="subhed">THE GENERAL ASPECT OF THE CITY</span></h2> + +<p class="p2"><b>1. The Prosperity of Rome in the Reign of Hadrian</b> (117–138 +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>).—In the year 134 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> the great Emperor +Hadrian was turning his steps back to Rome after three long journeys of +inspection over his enormous dominions. Never before had that Empire +seemed so prosperous. No serious war was upon the horizon. The Parthian +king and the Germanic chiefs were only too happy to keep beyond the +Euphrates or the Rhine and the Danube, highly respectful before the +disciplined power of the guardian legions.</p> + +<p>In the provinces there was generally loyalty and contentment, save +only in unhappy Judæa where the Roman generals were stamping out +the last embers of a desperate rebellion, undertaken by those Jews +allowed to remain in Palestine after Titus’s capture of Jerusalem +(70 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>). The imperial government created by Augustus and +strengthened by later emperors appeared an unqualified success, while +the tyrannies of Nero and Domitian were becoming things merely of +frightened memory.</p> + +<p>All over this vast Empire with a population and area nearly equal to +that of the United States there reigned the blessed <i>Pax Romana</i>. +Robbers had been cleared from the roads and pirates from the seas. +Commerce went to and fro with surprisingly little interference from +customs barriers or provincial boundaries. The same coin was current +from the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[2]</span> cataracts of the Nile to the Caledonian Wall across Britain. +A scientific system of law, on the whole administered with remarkable +firmness and justice, prevailed between the same wide boundaries.</p> + +<p>The central government was, indeed, in essence a despotism, but it was +a despotism infused with an extreme intelligence, and it left many of +the forms of liberty, especially of local liberty, in the municipal +matters which touch men nearest home. The Emperor Hadrian, himself, +although sometimes guilty of eccentricities and even harshness, was, in +the main, a ruler singularly intent upon benefiting his subjects. In +all his constant travels he had showered favors upon the communities +which he visited. It was as if he (and his great predecessor Trajan) +had set out to justify monarchy as an ideal government by showing how +much good monarchs could do to the governed.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>2. Increasing Glory of the Imperial City.</b>—All this prosperity +had inevitably reacted upon the city of Rome itself. In a most literal +sense of the word “all roads led to Rome,” not merely the vast network +of government highways and the paths of maritime commerce, but those of +intellectual, artistic, and moral influence. Rome was incomparably the +best market for the merchant, it provided the largest audiences for the +philosopher or rhetorician, the wealthiest patrons for the sculptor. It +had, in fact, become the common center and crucible for everything good +and bad in the huge, teeming Mediterranean World.</p> + +<p>Outwardly the city was near the summit of its architectural perfection. +In Cicero’s day it could not compare in the elegance of its squares +and avenues, and the magnificence of its buildings with Alexandria, +Antioch, or several lesser cities which lay at the mercy of the +legions; but with the coming of the Empire there has been an incessant +process of demolishing, rebuilding, and extending. “I found Rome<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span> +built of brick; I leave it built of marble,” Augustus had boasted when +near his end (14 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>). However, even after him, there had +been only a gradual transformation until the great fire of Nero in 64 +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> Terrible as has then been the devastation, the calamity +has at least required a general rebuilding of almost half of the city +usually upon a much handsomer and more artistic scale. Since then each +succeeding Emperor has tried to leave some great architectural memorial +behind him. Vespasian and Titus have built the Flavian Amphitheater +(Colosseum), Trajan a noble Forum, and Hadrian is now completing a +magnificent “Temple of Venus and Rome.”</p> + +<p>After this time there will perhaps be a few more remarkable structures +erected, <i>e.g.</i> the Baths of Caracalla and of Diocletian and the +Basilica (Court House) of Constantine, but for practical purposes +imperial Rome has now been created. In 134 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> it is already +architecturally what it will be in 410 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> (except then for a +certain decadence) when Alaric’s Goths knocked at the gates. There is, +therefore, hardly a better time than this year, 134 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, to +visit the “Eternal City,” if we would discuss the best and the worst, +the strength and the weakness of that Roman society which is to hold +men fascinated across the ages. Let it be assumed, therefore, that on +a warm spring morning we are being guided about the enormous capital +of which bronze-skinned Arabs and blond-haired Frisians alike speak in +awestruck whispers; the city apparently ordained by the gods to be the +center and ruler of the conquered world.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>3. Population and Crowded Condition of Rome.</b>—Before entering +such a metropolis it is a fair question to present: “How large is +Rome, at this time of our supposed visit?” Unfortunately the imperial +government will fail to transmit to later ages its census statistics, +and the conjectures of learned men will vary most seriously. By +taking into account<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span> some data as to the number of citizens receiving +grain doles, by adding to these the known size of the garrison, by +establishing the extent of a great colony of resident foreigners and +the still greater hordes of slaves, assertions can be made that the +population exceeds 2,000,000, and again that it is barely 800,000. +Both reckonings may be quite wrong. It seems reasonable to suppose +that in Julius Cæsar’s day the city lacked considerably of 1,000,000 +inhabitants, but these probably increased with the rising prosperity +of the Empire. Hadrian’s “City Praefect” perhaps has to administer the +peace for some 1,500,000 people. In later generations, however, the +population will again slowly dwindle with the wave of the imperial +system.</p> + +<p>However, this million and a half produces a sense of immensity greater +perhaps than that in a later New York or London. Rome is, roughly +speaking, some three miles long and nearly the same in breadth, no +remarkable area as American cities will go;<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> but, as duly explained, +population within these limits is extraordinarily congested. The +streets overflow with pedestrians to the exclusion of most wheeled +traffic. There are no “rapid transit” cars, no taxicabs, no telephones, +and even no public postal service.</p> + +<p>If, therefore, you have the slightest business across the city, you +must walk the entire distance, or be borne in a litter or send a +messenger—methods taking about equally long. As will be seen, even +the use of horses and carriages is largely prohibited. Besides, the +mild climate and method of building the houses compel people to spend +a great fraction of their day in the streets, or in the public plazas +and buildings. Human life teems everywhere. One is overwhelmed by +the jostling multitudes even in the remoter<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span> quarters. Everything +(including many personal acts which other ages keep in strict privacy) +seems going on in public. There is, in fact, no city where it is easier +to be “lost in a crowd” than in Rome; no city where the good and the +bad, the divine and the bestial in humanity are so incessantly in +evidence and in such abrupt contact.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>4. The Country around Rome.</b>—Rome is some thirteen miles from +the nearest seacoast, but the distance down the twisting “yellow” Tiber +to Ostia (“River Mouth”) is nearly twice as great. The city itself lies +near the northerly end of that broad plain later called the Campagna +which stretches southeasterly for nearly seventy miles but whereof the +width betwixt ocean and Apennines seldom exceeds twenty-five. Looking +off from any of the heights of Rome towards the east, the whole horizon +from north to south seems traced by a continuous chain of mountains +about ten to twenty miles distant. Very beautiful they are when seen +through a soft blue or golden haze beneath the Italian sky; and by +facing straight north one can discover the round isolated peak of +Mount Soracte (2420 feet high), made famous by the poets, near whose +southeastern base the Tiber winds on its tortuous progress towards the +sea.</p> + +<p>Then following the line of mountains southward one can notice the chain +of the Sabine hills, some with peaked and lofty summits, and next is +discovered the spot where the Tiber rests embosomed in its gray olive +groves. More southward still are the hills on whose slopes rests “Cool +Præneste,” and then, running over a horizon of four or five miles and +ending in the plain, is beheld the noble form of Mount Albinus, the +isolated volcanic peak sacred to the Latin Jupiter and at whose base by +tradition lay Alba Longa, the parent town of Rome; after that the view +takes in nothing but the undulating plain, which at length sinks off +into the sea.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_006" style="max-width: 686px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_006.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 center smaller">Map of ROME in the Days of Hadrian about 135 A.D.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>5. The Tiber and Its Valley.</b>—Near at hand, of course, is the +Campagna itself, a series of gentle ridges, covered at this epoch with +one long series of delightful suburban villas and thrifty produce +farms, sometimes grouped into rich little villages.<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> In a general +direction of north to south the Tiber flows along the western skirts of +Rome, with only a minor settlement on the western banks. If it ran by +a less famous city, the Tiber would pass for a rather ordinary stream. +Its yellow, turbid waters come with such force from the Apennines +that there can be little navigation for part of the year beyond the +point where the Anio flows into it from the east, about three miles +above Rome. Grain and timber can, however,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span> be floated down on barges, +and when the mountain snows are melting the river swells to a truly +dangerous size, flooding all the lowlands near the city and sometimes, +despite a careful system of dykes, causing freshets which are simply +ruinous to large sections of the metropolis inhabited by the very +poor. The Emperors Augustus and Tiberius set up a regular board of +“Tiber Commissioners” to keep the rebellious river in bounds, but their +efforts are still often vain.</p> + +<p>Between Rome and Ostia the Tiber is indeed navigable at most seasons +for the smaller kind of vessels, but, as will be seen, Rome is scarcely +a first-class seaport; however, special river craft easily bring up +heavy freight from Ostia—an enormous economic advantage for the great +city.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>6. A View over Rome from the Campus Martius.</b>—Before descending +into the city it is well to ascend some height or lofty building well +to the western verge of the <i>Campus Martius</i> (“Field of Mars”) +at the great bend of the Tiber as it sweeps by its levees. Before the +onlooker there spreads what seems at first an indescribable confusion +of enormous buildings, gilded roofs, stately domes, serried phalanxes +of marble columns and far-stretching porticoes, some on level ground, +others upon the summits or clinging to the slopes of several hills. +Mixed with these are an incalculable number of red-tiled roofs +obviously covering more humble private structures. Here and there, +mostly on the outskirts, are also broad patches of greenery, public +parks, and private gardens.</p> + +<p>After more study, however, the first confusion begins to adjust itself +into a kind of order. It is possible, for example, to recognize +directly in the foreground a small and comparatively abrupt hill +crowned at either end by temples of peculiar magnificence. This is +the <i>Capitol</i>, particularly the seat of the fane of <i>Jupiter +Optimus Maximus</i> (“Jupiter Best and Greatest”), officially the chief +temple of Rome. Beyond it at a certain distance rises a gray cylinder +of enormous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span> bulk. That, of course, is the <i>Flavian Amphitheater</i>, +and in the hollow between it and the capitol but nigh concealed by +many structures stretches the <i>Old Forum</i> of the Republic—the +most famous spot in Rome. To the south of the Forum, and in no wise +concealed, lifts another hill covered with a vast complex of buildings, +which, even when seen in the distance, is of extraordinary splendor. +This is the <i>Palatine</i>, the present residence of the Cæsars and +the seat of the government.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_008" style="max-width: 750px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_008.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 center smaller"><span class="smcap">Capitoline Hill and Temples as seen from +Palatine</span>: restored according to Von Falke.</p> + </div> + +<p>Just to the south and right of the Palatine there runs a long hollow, +the edges of which flash with settings of marble; it is the <i>Circus +Maximus</i>, the chief race course. These are the structures or +localities that stand out clearly at first glance. Close at hand, +in the Campus Martius itself, is a perfect labyrinth of covered +promenades, dome-capped public baths, theaters, and circuses, as well +as the remarkable <i>Pantheon</i> and other far-famed structures, the +details whereof can wait. Behind the onlooker is winding the Tiber, +spanned by at least eight bridges; and across the river, before the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span> +view wanders off into the hills of Etruria, are seen numerous suburban +settlements and heights whereof the most conspicuous is that around +<i>Mount Janiculum</i> crested with verdant gardens. But our attention +must be centered upon Rome itself. Before descending from the coign of +vantage it is needful to distinguish her Seven Hills.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>7. The Seven Hills of Rome.</b>—The two most famous of these +hills (the <i>Capitoline</i> and the <i>Palatine</i>) have been +named already, but they have five distinguished rivals. Probably in +prehistoric days all these “mountains” rose like separate islands from +a treacherous marsh or even from a lake connected with the Tiber; but +long since they have silted down, and presently man came to add his +drains and channels. They are now, therefore, connected by valleys +which are crammed with habitations, although in any case the most +desirable residences are near the summits of the hills and the humble +folk are compelled to live in the gulleys. Each of these hills has a +history: for example, the Aventine is alleged to have remained apart +from the others for long after the founding of the city, merely as a +fortified outpost for the protection of shepherds; but we cannot stop +to recite pleasant legends.</p> + +<p>The “Seven Hills” of Rome have really become eight, as the city has +extended. Not one of these is lofty, but they give a diversity to the +city that prevents the great masses of blank walls and of ungainly +tenement houses lining most of the streets from becoming too ugly, +and they secure light and air to many quarters that are grievously +congested.</p> + +<p>These hills can be thus catalogued:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>1. <i>Capitoline</i>, about 150 feet above sea level.<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> + +<p>2. <i>Palatine</i> (S. E. of Capitoline), about 166 feet high.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span></p> + +<p>3. <i>Aventine</i> (South of Palatine), about 146 feet high.</p> + +<p>4. <i>Cœlian</i> (East of Palatine), about 158 feet high.</p> + +<p>5. <i>Esquiline</i> (North of Cælian), about 204 feet high.</p> + +<p>6. <i>Viminal</i> (North of Esquiline), about 160 feet high.</p> + +<p>7. <i>Quirinal</i> (N. E. of Capitoline), about 170 feet high.</p> + +<p>To the familiar “seven” ought to be added the hill of the great +northern suburb.</p> + +<p>8. <i>Pincian</i>, or “Hill of the Gardens” (North of Quirinal), +about 204 feet high.</p> +</div> + +<p>Highest of all rises the <i>Janiculum</i> beyond the Tiber, 297 feet +high; commanding a noble prospect over the city and the whole Campagna +beyond. It formed, therefore, in the olden days, a very proper place +for the fort with its watch-tower and its sentinel, when Rome dreaded +an Etruscan raid from the north, and when the citizens dropped their +tools to seize their weapons the minute the “flag on Janiculum” was +struck as signal that the foe was at hand.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>8. Building Materials Used in Rome.</b>—The most cursory view of +the city gives an overwhelming impression of the <i>enormous quantities +of building material</i>, as well as of the expenditure of human labor +which has gone into the creation of Rome. Strabo the geographer<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> +has wisely observed that it is lucky that the city can get a constant +supply of stone, timber, etc., on account of “the ceaseless building +which is rendered needful by the pulling down of houses and on account +of the great fires and constant sales of [house] property,” everybody +being incessantly scrapping old buildings, erecting new ones, and +speculating generally in real estate.</p> + +<p>Of course, the great public buildings are erected with extremely +durable materials which will defy the assaults of time, but the +vast districts of ugly tenement houses are often<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span> thrown together +in as flimsy a manner as those in the least elegant quarters of +American cities of another age. However, there are almost no wooden +houses in Rome; and for the better structures there is provided most +excellent building stone. The standard masonry is of <i>tufa</i>, +a soft red or black stone needing a stucco to protect it from the +weather; for superior work there is dark brown <i>peperino</i>, golden +<i>travertine</i>, and last but not least, for the finest buildings, +white and many colored <i>marble</i>. The marble trade, as will be +explained, is, in fact, one of the greatest commercial activities of +the city.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>9. The Great Use of Concrete.</b>—Going about Rome one is led to +imagine, however, that many very pretentious structures are of solid +brick. This is seldom the case. Bricks and tiles are often in evidence +because they can be worked into the face of naturally ugly concrete to +disguise the nakedness of its surfaces. <i>Concrete</i> has really made +it comparatively easy to create Rome as an enormous city. If concrete +has not been invented by the Romans, they are at least the first great +people to put it to a very general use. In their neighborhood can +be found huge quantities of <i>pozzolana</i>,<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> a volcanic deposit +which can be readily worked up into admirable cement. It is this very +practical material which makes the vast domes, cupolas, and other +architectural triumphs possible. Many a pretentious temple or residence +flaunts a marble exterior; this, however, is a mere shell and covering; +strip it away, and within is an enormous mass of concrete.</p> + +<p>This material can be handled by comparatively small labor gangs, +rendering it feasible to erect huge structures without mobilizing such +wholesale man-power as was needed for the great monuments of Egypt. +It is very durable,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span> almost nothing can destroy it. Indeed it will be +written later that “This <i>pozzolana</i> [for concrete] more than any +other material contributed to make Rome the proverbial ‘Eternal City.’” +[Middleton.]</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>10. Greek Architectural Forms Plus the Arch and Vault.</b>—Every +building by the Tiber apparently bears the impress of Greece. Greek +architects are said to have designed many of the finest public +edifices, while Greek artists have chiseled the statues or painted the +pictures which all the Roman world admires. The “orders” of the columns +everywhere in evidence are the Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian that one +might find at Athens, although it can be complained that the Romans are +over-fond of the most ornate form—the florid Corinthian.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_012" style="max-width: 440px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_012.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Typical Temple Front.</p> + </div> + +<p>In general, lovers of the purer architectural types of Hellas may +allege that Roman architecture and ornamentation is too elaborate and +extravagant. There are too many scrolls and floriated designs. Every +possible surface is covered with statuary or bas-reliefs, often in +decidedly inferior taste. There is too garish a display, also, of blue, +green, white, and orange-colored marble. The whole effect of most Roman +buildings is, therefore, <i>grand rather than beautiful</i>. It is the +architecture of a civilization apparently growing a little weary and +striving to startle itself by remarkable effects.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_013" style="max-width: 631px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_013.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Arch of Constantine</span>: typical of many triumphal +arches: date about 315 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span></p> + </div> + +<p>Nevertheless, this borrowing from Greece has not been slavish. Romans, +if not great artists, are master adapters. Perhaps they have not +invented the <i>arch</i> and the <i>vault</i>,<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> but in any case they +have utilized them in connection with the Greek system of columns to +produce magnificent effects whereof Argos and Ephesus never dreamed. +By concrete vaulting can be made those enormous substructures which +sustain the great palaces, and again, the lofty domes of such splendid +creations as the Pantheon. By the arches can be upheld the tiers of the +Flavian Amphitheater, the pretentious company of theaters and circuses, +and last but not least the long arrays of stately aqueducts which bring +the great water<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span> supply so many miles to Rome. Underground also the +arch system is upbearing the vast network of sewers which has redeemed +the city from a quagmire. In the <i>fora</i> and across many avenues +are thrown in their turn the imposing <i>triumphal arches</i>, crowned +with heroic statues or with prancing chariots which are unmatched by +anything in Greece.</p> + +<p>Having taken in the generalities, it is now proper to go down from our +viewpoint and plunge boldly into the vast city. The wise man should +not, however, visit at first the Fora, the Palatine, and the other +“show places” which officious guides here as everywhere are always glad +to display to visitors. More helpful it is to examine at the outset +certain typical streets first in a poor and next in a more aristocratic +quarter, to enter the houses, and to penetrate the daily lives of the +masses of the people. Then with better understanding can one approach +the famous “Heart of Rome.”</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER II<br> +<span class="subhed">STREETS AND STREET LIFE</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>11. The Regions of Rome: Fashionable and Plebeian Quarters.</b>—The +great Augustus divided the capital into 14 <i>regiones</i> or “wards” +and these in turn into 265 <i>vici</i> or precincts. Obviously some +of these districts are more select than others. No citizen of decent +tastes will, unless compelled by dire poverty, live in the network of +hovels beyond the bridges and under the brow of the Janiculum, where a +great colony of Jews and other Orientals exist in what is alleged to be +extreme squalor. If you go south also from the Forum and Palatine, you +are likely to run into a wide complex of unlovely industrial districts +and laborers’ quarters, especially along the Tiber, although there are +still some very good residential streets upon the Aventine.</p> + +<p>In general the northern end of the city is the fashionable section, +although the Subura, the street running out between the Esquiline and +the Viminal, is notorious for containing some of the vilest tenements +in all Rome. To live in a “Subura garret” is about the greatest +possible degradation socially. Right above this ill-favored avenue, +however, slopes the Esquiline itself, lined with the palaces of many +of the most exclusive Senators. Pliny the Younger resided there in his +lifetime,<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> and a rich ex-consul has his house at present. Rome is, +in fact, decidedly like many later cities; walk only a few blocks, +and one can pass from the bottom to the top of the social ladder. +Further north, in the regions of the parks and public gardens, the fine +residences are probably<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span> more continuous, but one can never know Rome +by merely visiting its ultra-genteel quarters. There is, consequently, +no better place to begin an investigation than near the Esquiline, +let us say where the disreputable Subura runs northeast towards the +somewhat more select “Patrician Street” (<i>Vicus Patricius</i>).</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_016" style="max-width: 665px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_016.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller"><span class="smcap">Street in Pompeii</span>: present state. Note the +pavement, the stepping stones, the wayside fountain, and the numerous +subdivisions into small houses or shops.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>12. A Typical Short Street, “Mercury Street.”</b>—We may wisely +take our stand facing somewhat southward, with our backs to the Viminal +and with the domes of the huge Baths of Trajan partially in sight upon +the heights ahead. It is a little after dawn on a warm spring morning; +but all Rome, we shall discover, rises very early, and normally goes to +bed correspondingly early. Even the sedate “Conscript Fathers” of the +Senate are supposed to convene at <i>prima luce</i>,—gray morn. What +can be seen?</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span></p> + +<p>To any later judgment this “Mercury Street” (so named from a local +temple)<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> is very narrow, not over fifteen feet from housewall +to housewall. Although the sun has now risen the way is still +uncomfortably dark, because the houses pressing on either side rise +to at least thirty or forty feet. The roadway, one discovers, is +skillfully and durably paved with heavy lava blocks, and since it forms +a regular thoroughfare it has been swept reasonably clean; although to +right and left in the semi-darkness can be descried impossible alleys +barely ten feet wide winding off between the tall buildings, and these +side passages are more than dirty. This street, like the great majority +in Rome, is comparatively short. You come to an abrupt turn, or perhaps +to an ascending flight of stone steps worn slippery by innumerable +sandals, and immediately enter into a quite different quarter.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_017" style="max-width: 353px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_017.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Stepping Stones across a Side Street</span>: a +gentleman followed by personal slave with umbrella. <i>After Von +Falke.</i></p> + </div> + +<p>There is a very narrow stone sidewalk but it differs slightly before +each house, every owner being required to make his own repairs. In +the pavement broad ruts have been worn<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span> by the wagons, despite the +restrictions (presently stated) upon wheeled traffic. Very few streets +of Rome are wide enough for two carts to pass freely; and every driver +has to look ahead and frequently to wait at corners to let other teams +get by. Upon the pavement and especially at intersecting crossways are +set groups of four or five large oblong stepping stones; these seem +needless at present but can be a veritable godsend in the rainy season +when every “Via” and “Vicus” in Rome seems converted into a raging +torrent.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>13. The House and Shop Fronts.</b>—Looking upward now, one is +instantly confronted by a long expanse of stuccoed walls—some pink, +yellow, or bluish, but mostly an ugly brown. The lower story, quite on +the street level, is broken either by the petty shops which open their +shutters and thrust their counters clear out upon the pavement, or else +it is merely a solid blank space with only here and there a doorway, or +a few small windows, mere peepholes for fear of burglars. The second +and upper stories, however, are less solid. There are many larger +windows set with window-boxes displaying bright flowers, or even with +projecting balconies which reach out so far that neighbors in opposite +houses can sometimes clasp hands above the hurrying life below.</p> + +<p>Shops abound almost everywhere. In the great commercial quarters by +the fora, the Tiber and the Campus Martius, will be found the splendid +establishments which cater to wealth, but no quarter of Rome is +too mean for its bakeries, vegetable stands, wine shops, and cheap +restaurants. In fact, the absence of a speedy means of interurban +communication makes a multiplication of small shops absolutely +necessary. Most of these retailers do business on the pettiest scale, +and a glance reveals that nearly the whole stock in trade is spread +on the counter facing the street. As for the shopkeeper, ordinarily +he lives and sleeps either in a dark cell just in the rear or in an +equally narrow chamber directly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span> above his business. “Born over a +shop,” snobbish people say when they wish to brand some person as a +nobody.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_019" style="max-width: 409px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_019.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Street Scene before a Cook-Shop.</span> <i>After Von +Falke.</i></p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>14. Street Shrines and Fountains.</b>—Nevertheless, commonplace and +darksome as this street may seem, there are clear tokens both of an +active religious, also of an artistic life. On the flat wall, beside +a grocer’s stand, two serpents are crudely painted in yellow—emblems +of the guardian genii of the place. Opposite, by a money-changer, is +painted a fairly presentable Mercury, the god of Gain. As one goes +about the city the painted snakes appear almost everywhere, and also +pictures of Jupiter, Minerva, and Hercules.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_020" style="max-width: 344px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_020.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Shrine at the Crossways.</p> + </div> + +<p>At the nearby crossroads, however, is something more important. Set +against the side of a building is a little niche let into the wall +in lieu of an altar. Upon this pious neighbors can deposit small +articles of food for the “Gods of the Street Crossings” (<i>Lares +Compitales</i>), and above is a low relief of two youthful deities, +male and female. Early as it now is, an old woman has already stolen up +to deposit a small crust—for the little neighborhood Lares are good +and trusty friends; they will never be forgotten.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span></p> + +<p>Opposite this shrine, however, a group of laughing, chattering girls is +mustering around a gushing fountain. Romans are justly proud of their +excellent water supply. Every house of any pretentions has its separate +faucets, perhaps in great number; but the poor tenement dwellers must +depend upon the street fountains. Pure, clear water is shooting from +a metal pipe into a broad separate stone basin. The stream is issuing +from the sculptured head of a Medusa executed with admirable detail and +vigor, although this is only one of thousands of similar fountains all +over the city. At the next corner the water is spouting from an eagle’s +beak; at another from the mouth of a calf, or the head of a Mercury.</p> + +<p>The surplus water overflowing the basin trickles away in a streamlet +down to the middle of the street, and although this adds to the +inconvenience of pedestrians the pitch of the ground makes the flow +carry away much of the rubbish (often very filthy) which is thrown +out recklessly from the shops and even from the upper windows. It is +thanks partly to this admirable water system that Rome is not even more +scourged by epidemics, than is unhappily the case.<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>15. Typical Street Crowds.</b>—So much for the inanimate objects in +Mercury Street; what now of its surging humanity? A wise law of Julius +Cæsar has indeed forbidden the ordinary use of wheeled vehicles in the +city streets between sunrise and the “tenth hour” (4 <span class="allsmcap">P.M.</span>). +This is a blessed regulation considering the narrow width of even +the finest avenues, but, nevertheless, the wagons that were allowed +to enter by night bringing heavy building materials to the Senator +Rullianus’s new mansion have now to be suffered to depart, and also the +wain that had rattled up in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span> darkness with flour for the nearby +public bakery. Also one may possibly see a Vestal Virgin or one of the +superior priests exercising their special privileges and driving in a +chariot.</p> + +<p>The street, however, is crowding with life, even if not a horse is in +sight. The most conspicuous are literally dozens of men, each with +a heavy toga wrapped carelessly around him, hurrying frantically in +every direction. In other cities and other ages they might be “making a +train.” Here they are in fact “clients,” duty bound to be at the doors +of their patrons early every morning to pay their respects and seek +their bounty (see p. <a href="#Page_149">149</a>)—but almost every other type of humanity is +represented. Great numbers of boys and girls are trudging reluctantly +along to their schools, the poorer bearing their own packages of +writing tablets, the better dressed each followed by a sedate male +attendant, a pedagogue, bearing the weapons of learning.</p> + +<p>In and out there also go youths in humble attire, often running at +breakneck speed, thrusting and jostling to make their way; they are +the slave messengers from the great houses flying on early errands for +their masters. One of them elbows aside a tall and venerable man with a +prodigiously long beard and wrapped in a trailing but none too spotless +mantle—he is a Greek philosopher on his way to some mansion where he +will perhaps expound the theories of Epicurus to a pleasure-loving +nobleman. A few steps further and there is seen a fair-haired German +clad in his outlandish costume of undressed wolf skins; hardly behind +him is a red-headed Gaul in a short tartan cloak; one can speedily +recognize also a hawk-eyed, white-robed Arab from the edge of the +deserts and presently appears a grinning negro, black as ebony and in +a splendid gilt and scarlet livery—the foot-boy probably of some rich +lady.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>16. Frequent Use of Greek in Rome.</b>—The bulk of the crowd, to be +sure, is Italian, with keen, olive faces, dark<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span> hair, and rather short +stature, graceful and incessantly gesturing. But the Latin chattered +on every hand is full of uncouth idioms, the <i>sermo plebis</i> +calculated to make Cicero turn in his grave, and there is a great +co-mingling of foreign words; above all, about one person out of every +four seems to be <i>speaking Greek</i>, now abominably corrupt, now +in the purest Attic, and upon penetrating the great houses one would +discover Greek to be even more truly a familiar language.</p> + +<p>All educated Romans write and speak Greek as Englishmen and Americans +will never learn to use French. Learned books are being written by +the Tiber in the incomparable tongue of Hellas, and only the most +ignorant Romans fail to understand simple Greek sentences. In short +Rome seems close to becoming a bi-lingual city. The reigning emperor +is so enthusiastic for things Hellenic that his foes brand Hadrian as +“the Graecule.” Athens and Corinth seem almost to have conquered their +conquerors.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>17. Clamor and Thronging in the Streets.</b>—As the sun rises, +every instant the street becomes more crowded. A great din is rising +from a forge just inside an alley; a second noise from a carpenter +shop. As if determined to be heard above everything else, from a +second story comes a voice bawling out some kind of a declamation—it +is a rhetoric school getting into action, and an ambitious youth is +denouncing the dead tyrant Phalaris at the top of his lungs. By yonder +wall, almost completely blocking the sidewalk, a nondescript barber has +set down a stool and is clipping a victim with huge scissors. Close +by him stands a cook’s boy guarding two braziers, on one of which are +boiled peas, on the other small sausages that are kept smoking hot. +Early as the hour may be, workmen and others who have an active day +before them are standing around and laying in a hearty breakfast. +Almost upsetting this throng comes a countryman flogging a donkey whose +huge paniers laden with garden truck project dangerously to either +side.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span></p> + +<p>The noise increases continually. From another lane there comes more +shouting. An auctioneer is knocking down the furniture of a poor +bankrupt, and the bidding is growing violent. All the shopkeepers are +bawling their wares to each prospective purchaser. Now there is a clang +and jangling; pushing the crowd aside march ten soldiers, five abreast, +with insolent strides, their <i>optio</i> (sub-centurion) stalking +before them. Their gilded armor and helmets and the scarlet kilts +peeping under their cuirasses, proclaim them to be “Praetorians,” proud +members of the imperial guard. Gilded shields clatter on their backs; +they warn the slaves and hucksters away with their spear butts while +their officer’s red plume nods arrogantly.</p> + +<p>Hardly are they gone before there comes the crash of some barbaric +music; one hears castanets, trumpets, drums, and sistra (a kind of +glorified bronze rattle), and unmelodious singing. Tossing their arms, +waving blunted swords or pounding them on light shields, along comes a +troupe of the priests and priestesses of Cybele, the uncouth Asiatic +goddess; the women, dark-skinned Syrians, whirling in wild dances with +hair aflying, the priests puff-cheeked, smooth-faced creatures, busily +pounding with their noise-making instruments. They are headed for their +temple to spend a day of orgy.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>18. The Processions Attending Great Nobles.</b>—Suddenly there +is a partial silence. Youths in livery are moving down the street +flourishing white wands: “Way, way for his Excellency,” they are +shouting. Instantly the word flies around, “The Praetor Fundinus!” +Hucksters cease shouting. Everybody stands still and all who wear +hoods or hats hastily bare their heads,<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> for the praetor represents +“The Majesty of the Roman People.” Behind his <i>viatores</i><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span> “Way +Clearers”) a full score of toga-clad clients swing into sight marching +ahead of the great man. He rides in a blue tasseled litter borne by +eight tall Cappadocians of equal height and pace. Just in front of them +march two haughty lictors, attendants of honor, with bundles of rods, +the official “fasces,” conspicuously resting upon their shoulders.<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> +Close beside the litter walks a well-groomed man with a marked +Greek profile—the confidential freedman and man of business of the +magistrate. Behind trail more clients and a greater retinue of slaves. +Fundinus himself heeds little the incessant greetings cast at him. He +can be seen lolling on his cushions, with the little curtains thrown +back just enough to show the purple embroidery on his official toga. +A book, half unrolled, is in his hand—for it is the best of form to +affect a certain bookishness in scenes of great distraction.</p> + +<p>As the praetor’s train advances, however, it is met by another headed +in the opposite direction. A great concourse appears of handsome +slaves, all wearing brown coats and each bearing a box or package upon +his shoulder; then follows a group of pretty Levantine slave-girls +gaudily clad, then a brown Egyptian boy carrying a pet monkey; then a +simpering Celtic maid with a large basket from which peers a small and +very uneasy lap-dog; next a perfect hedge of upper slaves and freedmen, +some carrying musical instruments, some small caskets obviously crammed +with valuables, and some conveying ostentatiously costly garments, and +then borne high by her eight slaves in light red livery comes a great +lady herself—an ex-consul’s wife, the multi-millionaire Faustina.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>19. A Great Lady Traveling.</b>—“Her Magnificence” +(<i>Clarissima</i>) also leans back on her cushions with a studied +attitude of indifference and boredom, letting the whole<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span> street take +in the silky sheen of her embroidered mantle, the gem-set handle of +her ostrich fan, the gold dust that her maids have sprinkled on her +tall pile of brown hair, and the great pearls that shed luster from her +ears, neck, and every finger. She is merely making one of her incessant +pilgrimages between her Viminal palace and some one of her ten country +villas. She would feel disgraced to travel with less than about two +hundred slaves and freedmen. Very likely her grandfather was a freedman +himself; what matter?—official rank yields to the conquering flash of +gold.</p> + +<p>Fundinus’s lictors lower their fasces; his litter is set down hastily. +As the trains meet the great man hastens to the side of the greater +<i>matrona</i>. Faustina is evidently in a gracious mood. She is seen +to flip the praetor’s face daintily with her fan. The magistrate climbs +back to his own litter smilingly—perhaps he has been bidden to an +ultra-select house party at Tusculum. The two trains of attendants +elbow past each other, and the street resumes its plebeian bustle.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>20. Public Salutations: the Kissing Habit.</b>—As the crowds thin +a little, so that the types and faces are more easily seen, several +things become noticeable. First the salutations—there are surely +advantages in being borne high in a litter. No person in good clothes +can proceed far without being incessantly beset with greetings. +Everybody seems to know everybody else. It is polite to cry <i>Ave!</i> +(“Hail”) or <i>Salve!</i> (“I hope you’re well”) to persons of the +scantiest acquaintance, and then, when they return your salute, if +there is nothing more to add, <i>Vale!</i> (“Good luck”).</p> + +<p>More serious, however, is the incessant kissing. A sedate old gentleman +with a narrow purple stripe on his tunic (the token of the “equestrian” +rank) appears followed by two spruce slave boys. A nondescript fellow +immediately pushes up to him, seizes his hand, then smacks him roundly +on the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span> cheek. Doubtless the rascal’s lips are foul and his breath +charged with garlic; it is nevertheless most discourteous for the older +man to resent it. There is no escaping the incessant attacks, unless +you can have a litter, and the poet Martial has vainly complained of +acquaintances who insisted on kissing him in December “when round his +nose hangs a veritable icicle.” Even the Emperor has to submit to the +usage, although the privilege is confined to that envied and exalted +circle known as “Cæsar’s friends.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>21. The Swarms of Idlers and Parasites.</b>—Another thing becomes +obvious after a short scrutiny—<i>the vast number of idlers</i>. +People are incessantly lounging up and down the street manifestly with +nothing important to do. Hard work and common trade are, as later +explained (see p. <a href="#Page_146">146</a>), by no means genteel; and many a Roman who +possesses merely a threadbare toga and has his name on the list for +corn doles prefers living by his wits in busy idleness, fawning on the +great, and hunting dinner invitations to doing a stroke of honest labor.</p> + +<p>Most of the idlers nevertheless are slaves. In the vast <i>familia</i> +of the palaces the tasks are all so subdivided that the average slave +has far too much time on his hands. He puts in many hours, therefore, +wandering about the sights of the city, gaming, following coarse love +affairs, and seeking tips on the circus and amphitheater contests. The +amount of worthless chatter is infinite. Even at this early hour from +the tables of a wine-shop comes the rattle of dice boxes. Another dirty +group is actually throwing dice on the pavement under pedestrian’s +heels. The law nominally forbids open gaming, but the police are very +busy men. Rome, one discovers thus promptly, is all too much a city of +“parasites.” By exploiting the world, she is able to maintain a horde +of human bipeds, bond or free, who minister nothing to her prosperity.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span></p> + +<p>The gamesters on the pavement halt, however, instantly, when a tumult +arises from a neighboring vintner’s stall. A Spanish boy has tried to +steal a jar of fine old Massic, but the vessel has been wisely fastened +to a pillar with a chain. While he tugs to break this the dealer spots +him: “Stop thief!” rises the cry. Instantly appear two broad-shouldered +men, in half armor with small steel caps. They carry stout poles +tipped with strong hooks useful in fires. These are <i>vigiles</i> +(police-firemen) of the city watch. The thief is seized and hustled +off howling and protesting, to tell his troubles at the court of the +City Praefect. Before the players can resume, they have to stand aside +also for a funeral procession—flute players, professional mourners +screaming and gesticulating, manumitted slaves of the deceased wearing +liberty caps, mourning relatives around the bier; all headed for the +cremation-pyre outside the gates.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_028" style="max-width: 362px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_028.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Monument of a Wine Seller.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>22. Public Placards and Notices.</b>—Just as the dice are about +to rattle again a shrewd-looking fellow with a piece of red chalk is +seen stepping up to a space of blank wall. “Celer, the notice writer,” +whispers everybody. A large crowd elbows and gathers around him, +as to general delight, with quick strokes he letters the following +announcement of a gladiator fight:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span></p> + +<div class="border"> + +<p class="center"><b>IN THE AMPHITHEATER OF TAURUS +THE GAMES OF THE AEDILE BALBUS</b></p> + +<p class="center"><b><i>From the 12th to the 15th of May</i></b></p> + +<p class="center">THE ‘THRACIAN’ PUGNAX</p> + +<p class="center xs">OF THE</p> + +<p class="center">NERONIAN GLADIATORIAL SCHOOL</p> + +<p class="center sm">Who Has Fought Three Times Will Meet</p> + +<p class="center">THE ‘MURMILLO’ MURANUS</p> + +<p class="center xs">OF THE</p> + +<p class="center">SAME SCHOOL</p> + +<p class="center sm">And The Same Number of Fights</p> + +<p class="center">THE ‘HEAVY ARMOUR FIGHTER’ CYCNUS</p> + +<p class="center xs">FROM THE</p> + +<p class="center">SCHOOL OF JULIUS CAESAR</p> + +<p class="center sm">Who Has Fought Eight Times</p> + +<p class="center xs">WILL MEET</p> + +<p class="center">THE ‘THRACIAN’ ATTICUS</p> + +<p class="center xs">OF THE</p> + +<p class="center">SAME SCHOOL</p> + +<p class="center sm">And of Fourteen Fights</p> + +<p class="center sm"><b><i>Awnings will be provided against the sun</i></b></p> +</div> + +<p>“<i>Euge! Euge!</i> Bravo, Balbus!” cry the expectant idlers as they go +back to their game, and Celer hurries off to repeat his notice on some +wall in the next street.</p> + +<p>The dice contest can be omitted. Not so with the wall inscriptions +which we now discover are scattered over almost<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span> every space of +available stucco along the thoroughfare. Some are formal notices of +games, articles for sale, auctions, tenements to let, etc., written +with some skill, although with many puzzling abbreviations, by +professional sign-writers like Celer. Thus on one building can be read +in tall red letters: “<i>To rent, from the first of July, shops with +the floors above them and a house in the Arrius Pollio block, owned by +Nigidius Maius. Prospective lessees may apply to Primus his slave</i>,” +and another sign advertises the “<i>Venus baths, fitted up for the best +people, shops, rooms over shops and second story apartments, in the +property owned by Julia Felix</i>.”<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>23. Wall Scribblings.</b>—More interesting really are the wall +scribblings of the humble. “The walls were the writing paper of the +poor,” will be declared later by students of Rome. All kinds of +sentiments are scratched upon the stucco; sometimes with considerable +care with a stylus; sometimes with merely a finger nail; sometimes +drawn with charcoal or a red crayon. There are indeed so many writings, +especially in frequented places, that we notice a wag has actually +added a word of protest:</p> + + <div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div>I wonder O wall,</div> + <div>That your stones do not fall</div> + <div>All scribbled thus o’er</div> + <div>By the nonsense of all!</div> + </div> + </div> + </div> + +<p>Every kind of opinion is to be found along a limited stretch of wall. +Coarse insults abound where your enemy can promptly see them: “Vile +wretch,” “Bold rascal,” “Old fool,” “I hope you’ll die!” “May you be +crucified!”—these are merely the mildest. Then other sentiments are +more friendly: “Luck to you!” “Good health to you everywhere!” “A Happy +New Year and a lot of them,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span> and “What wouldn’t I do for <i>you</i>, +dear eyes of Luscus” (the names of the enemy or friend involved being +often added).</p> + +<p>Lovers also take up their tale. A girl records her frank opinion: +“Virgula to her dear Tertius—You are mighty mean.” A penitent swain +spreads forth this “personal” to his mistress: “<i>Do</i> have pity +on me and let me come back.” A young lady announces tartly: “Where +Verus is there’s nothing <i>veracious</i>” (a pun on words). A gay +philanderer explains, “A blonde girl taught me to hate brunettes, and +I <i>will</i> hate them if I can—but loving them would come so much +easier!” And another youth demands passionately: “My dear Sava, please +do love me!” While finally a jealous suitor has broken into verse:</p> + + <div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div>If any man shall seek</div> + <div>My girl from me to turn,</div> + <div>On far-off mountains bleak,</div> + <div>May Love the scoundrel burn!</div> + </div> + </div> + </div> + +<p>The prosing moralist must likewise have his say. Somebody has +sagely scribbled, “A trifling ailment if neglected can grow to be +very serious.” There are in addition conundrums and children’s +sketches—pictures of playmates, friends, foes, and especially of +popular gladiators, marked with red ochre or charcoal, and sometimes +limned with considerable vigor, but usually in the manner of the +childish drawings in all ages, with forehead and nose marked by a line +and with two dots serving for eyes. School boys have scratched down +some of the verses in Vergil and Ovid that have just been flogged into +them by their masters.</p> + +<p>The only thing we can miss in Rome are the election notices which would +abound on the walls of all chartered provincial or free Italian cities, +entreating us to vote for soand-so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span> for <i>duumvir</i> “he’s a good +man”; or declaring that “all the fullers’ guild are out for —— as +aedile.”<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> Rome, alas! has lost her liberty; the city is paternally +governed by the Emperor aided by the Senate, and popular elections are +a thing of the past.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>24. The Streets Dark and Dangerous at Night.</b>—One is warned, +however, not to tax the patience of the adjacent shopkeepers and linger +too long in this street. Written above a drug seller’s stand appears +clearly, “<i>No idlers here! Move on you loungers!</i>” and a little +distance along upon a wall, “<i>Here you! What are you loitering +for?</i>” Indeed the passing throngs are becoming somewhat monotonous. +The hurly-burly abates. About noon almost everybody will take first a +fairly hearty luncheon, and then a siesta. Nearly every shop will be +closed. Then the bustle will be resumed while the more genteel element +will be seen headed in great numbers towards the public baths.</p> + +<p>By four o’clock, however, the shops will be closing behind heavy +shutters, the clamor from the work rooms will cease, and even the +humble will begin to prepare for the crowning event of a Roman’s +day—dinner, often begun still earlier. After sundown the silence +almost of the grave shuts down upon avenues which a few hours earlier +were simply swarming with life. There are no street lights. Nobody +stirs outdoors if possible, unless accompanied by friends or slaves +with lanterns or torches; and it is no harm to carry heavy bludgeons, +for despite the watch there are all too many sneak thieves, cutpurses, +and even open bandits, “dagger men” (<i>siccarii</i>), with their “your +money or your life.” Also lawless young nobles sometimes get an evil +pleasure (as did Nero and his companions) by ranging the streets and +beating up harmless and poorly guarded citizens.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>25. Discomforts of Life in Rome.</b>—People also tell you that +at night there is no small peril of being brained by loose tiles +which rattle down from the lofty house-tops, or less dangerous but +most disgusting, of being drenched by buckets of filthy slops flung +recklessly from upper windows into the streets. Then toward dawn your +sleep is ruined by the incessant rumbling of the wagons with timber, +brick, building stone, cement, and all kinds of food supplies which +have to be excluded from the city in the day hours. These are all part +of the general discomforts of life in Rome, along with the squalid +flat-buildings, the peril from the collapse of rickety houses, the +occasional great floods of the Tiber, the fearful conflagrations, the +ubiquitous throngs of people, and the grievous absence of privacy.</p> + +<p>The complaints are incessant. “School masters in the morning; corn +grinders at night; and braziers’ hammers day and night” are subjects +for standard diatribes of poets like Martial and Juvenal. And they, +like everybody, first praise the quiet simple life possible in the +Italian country towns—and then they remain in Rome. The great city +with its multitudes, its ceaseless variety of all things good and bad, +its appeal to every kind of human interest holds them with so many +other mortals fascinated. They are unhappy while in Rome; but still +more unhappy until they can return to her.</p> + +<p>So much for the merely outward side of a typical street on the slopes +of the Esquiline. We can now penetrate the homes of the people, first +visiting an <i>insula</i>, a great tenement block of the lowly, and +then investigating a more elegant <i>domus</i>, the residence of a +magnate.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER III<br> +<span class="subhed">THE HOMES OF THE LOWLY AND OF THE MIGHTY</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>26. The Great <i>Insulæ</i>—Tenement Blocks.</b>—Perhaps another +age will imagine that most Romans have lived in vast marble palaces, +moving through spacious halls amid stately pillars and spraying +fountains. Nothing like this is the case for the great majority. +A census report declares “there are some 44,000 tenement blocks +(<i>insulæ</i>) in the city and only about 1750 separate ‘mansions’ +(<i>domus</i>).”<a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> Such figures can merely imply that an overwhelming +proportion of “the toga-wearing race, the Lords of the world” (to quote +Virgil’s threadbare line) are flat-dwellers.</p> + +<p>Considering the extreme congestion of population, no other solution +than this is possible if Rome is to remain Rome. There is a great +profit in building these huge, ungainly “islands,” the tenement blocks. +Everywhere around the city we meet the gangs of laborers mixing the +concrete whereof the structures are mostly constructed, or setting the +wooden molds to shape the material as it solidifies; or else tearing +down and carting away the wreckage of insulæ that have begun to decay. +Such property employs a great amount of capital. Nearly every senator +has his men of business caring for his housing investments and rentals, +and the “realtor” is a very familiar personage.</p> + +<p>Rightly is it complained also that many insulæ are put up in a cheap +and absolutely dangerous manner, and at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span> best are dark, dirty, and +unsanitary. The very name implies that they should be built with a free +space all around them. The old law of Twelve Tables (450 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>) +required a passage way (<i>ambitus</i>) of at least two and a half feet +on either side, but this law was recklessly disregarded until the great +fire of Nero enabled the government to enforce a fairly scientific +building code. Even now, however, the tenement houses are often hemmed +in on all sides by miserable black alleys hardly accessible to the +public scavengers.</p> + +<p>This struggle to use every scrap of ground is completely matched by the +effort to build as high as possible. “The immense size of Rome,” wrote +Vitruvius, about 1 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, “makes it needful to have a vast +number of habitations, and as the area is not sufficient to contain +them all on the ground floor, the nature of the case compels us to +raise them in the air.”</p> + +<p>There are no passenger elevators in Rome; furthermore, the concrete +construction does not permit the safe erection of extremely high +buildings without unusual precautions, and with such narrow streets +tall structures obstruct both light and air; nevertheless, the real +estate interests grumbled loudly when Augustus limited the height of +dwellings to seventy feet. Hadrian has just vexed them still more by +a decree that if an owner allows his insula to fall into dangerous +repair, he must either sell it, or rebuild it thoroughly. For all that, +many insulæ seem to be towering rookeries, ready to collapse at any +flood or earthquake.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>27. A Typical Insula.</b>—Upon Mercury Street, which we have just +examined, stands a very average insula, built about forty years ago, +and, therefore, loyally named the <i>Flavia Victoria</i> for the then +reigning dynasty. It belongs to the widow of the rich eques Gaius +Macer, and is managed by the lynx-eyed procurator, or bailiff, who +superintends her estate. Despite the fact that it is safer than some +of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span> its neighbors, the tenants complain on rent days that the upper +stories are built so largely of wood as to be in peril of fire, and +that one of the outer walls is so cracked that it has to be propped up +with heavy timbers.</p> + +<p>The <i>Flavia Victoria</i> is just under the legal building height, +and contains five stories. On the street there are several shops of +the usual kind, also several separate entrances whereof the doorways, +flanked with pillars, give access to certain extra-select flats above; +but most of the tenants have to go in through the central portal under +the eyes of a porter.</p> + +<p>Upon entering they find themselves in a fairly ample square court, upon +which open many windows of the tiers of rooms in the upper stories. +There is a fountain in the court, but the pavement below is decidedly +slimy and dirty. Quantities of half-naked small children are scampering +about in noisy play. The windows, however, like those facing upon the +streets, often have balconies on which simple boxes of flowers are +blooming. The blue Italian sky above and the bars of intense sunlight +upon the flag-stones make the filthiness of the court and the dinginess +of the yellow stuccoed walls less obnoxious. Dirt and even the numerous +fleas lose part of their terrors amid picturesque surroundings in a +mild climate.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>28. The Flats in an Insula.</b>—From the courtyard several +staircases, often dark and dank, rise to the tenements above. The +<i>Flavia Victoria</i> is a fair-sized insula, and just as in +European flat buildings later, can contain many social strata under +one ample roof. In the apartments on the first floor, there are +really comfortable suites, each with a series of rooms—living room +(<i>atrium</i>), dining room, kitchen, bedrooms, and the like, chambers +not large indeed, but sufficient for a modest household keeping perhaps +ten slaves. The walls are covered with bright frescoes, and the floors +with very fair mosaics. Such a superior apartment can bring some +10,000<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span> sesterces ($400) per year, and a good many flats rent for even +more.<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p> + +<p>The rentals fall rapidly as the tenants scale higher. In the second +floor the apartments are much smaller; there is merely a living room +and a few smaller chambers. The appointments are correspondingly +mean and dingy, while the annual rent is only 2000 sesterces ($80); +and between the prosperous grain factor on the third floor and the +hard-working brickyard superintendent on the fourth there is never the +least sociability.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>29. The Cheap Attic Tenements and Their Poor Occupants.</b>—Both +unite, however, in despising the wretched creatures who plod wearily up +to the dirty, vermin-infested sleeping pockets upon the fifth or sixth +stages, where, under the roof tiles, the hot sun beats pitilessly. If +we care to thrust ourselves into the tiny chambers of the unfortunate +Codrus, the bath attendant, we will find, perhaps “a bed too small for +the dwarf Procula, a marble slab whereon are set six small food jars +and a small drinking cup, a statue of Chiron [some decaying heirloom], +and an old chest of Greek books gnawed by the unlettered mice.”<a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p> + +<p>Vainly do Codrus and his wife complain to the bailiff that the roof is +collapsing over them. He merely laughs and bids them “sleep at ease,” +although a deadly crash is threatened any night. They have another +peril, because fire may at any time break out in Ucalegon’s flat below +and leave them cut off, possibly while in their beds, and with no +chance of escape after the alarm spreads.</p> + +<p>Such poor tenants never stay in one place long. Rome is a city of +inveterate flat-hunters. The first of July (the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span> Calends) is the +regular moving day. Every tenant who cannot or will not pay his rent, +has to go forth seeking even cheaper and more squalid quarters. There +are endless family processions bearing off the few poor chattels. +The satirists make ungenerous fun of their plight, telling how a +wretched man has to march away followed by “his carroty-headed wife, +his white-haired mother and his giantess of a sister.” Between them +they carry off “a three-legged bed, a two-footed table, a lamp, a +horn-cup, a rusty brazier, some cracked dishes, some jars of very stale +pickled fish,” also a supply of cheese and onions, and “a pot of resin +belonging to the poor fellow’s mother and used by the beldame for +anointing herself.”</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_038" style="max-width: 650px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_038.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Tenants paying Rent to a Landlord’s Agent.</p> + </div> + +<p>Such luckless plebeians, of course, may delude some house agent in a +distant part of the city into giving them a dark garret in the vain +hope that they can pay their rent; “but really,”—says the bailiff with +a shrug, “they belong at the Aricine bridge—the haunt of the beggars.”</p> + +<p>Unfortunately a large fraction of Rome is little better off than this. +Poverty stalks everywhere. There are plenty of fetid insulæ which do +not contain a single family that can be sure of next week’s dinners. +Nevertheless there are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span> mitigations; as will be seen, the government +takes great pains that in Rome nobody will actually starve; and again, +there are so many free circuses and gladiatorial shows that a man has +abundant diversion from his troubles. There is a magnificent water +supply, and the kind Italian sun prevents heavy fuel bills. Poverty, +therefore, does not imply the acute misery which it does in the North.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, the most fortunate insula dweller probably dreams of the +day when he can crown his inevitable ambition. “When can I cease to +live in a <i>cenacula</i> (flat) and live in a <i>domus</i>?”<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>30. A Senatorial “Mansion” (<i>Domus</i>).</b>—Publius Junius +Calvus is a senator of ancient lineage, whose domus lifts itself +arrogantly near the summit of the Esquiline, at the head of Mercury +Street, looking down upon the tiles of the humble insula <i>Flavia +Victoria</i>.</p> + +<p>Calvus, although a member of the upper aristocracy, is not +extraordinarily wealthy. He does not, like some of his friends, possess +simultaneously three large city houses, often moving from one to +another according to season and mood. He has only four country villas, +one far in the North by the Italian lakes, one in the Etruscan hills, +one fairly close to Rome, and a fourth on the delightful Bay of Naples. +His city residence is inferior in magnificence not merely to those of +many senators but even of many equites (second-class nobles) and of +a whole cohort of rich, upstart freedmen. Nevertheless, it is a fine +mansion, which has been in the Calvian family for many generations, and +it is crammed with treasured heirlooms. Calvus, unlike certain noble +colleagues,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span> is happily married and rejoices in two half-grown sons and +a daughter. For them a <i>familia</i> of only one hundred and fifty +slaves suffices, although the noble Gratia sometimes complains to her +husband: “Our staff is disgracefully small.”</p> + +<p>The Calvi are really an extremely old family in what is now becoming a +city of upstarts. Publius’s forebears have lived for centuries on the +Esquiline and their domus has been rebuilt many times. In Punic War +days it probably consisted only of a central atrium, with an opening +in the ceiling to admit light and emit smoke, and a few dark cell-like +chambers radiating from the great living room. This hall rightly +received its name of the “black place” (<i>ater</i>) from the soot +from the open hearth which was perpetually caked around the rafters. +The walls were of rubble, the floor of simple tiles or even merely of +pounded earth, and the roof was of thatch. Such a house could stow away +the many children and the relatively few servants of a senator who +helped to humiliate Carthage.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>31. The Plan of a Large Residence.</b>—Very different is the +domus now as we approach the lofty Ionic pillars before its portal, +nevertheless, the plan of the old house has not quite vanished in the +stately mansion. The Roman house is always (like the Greek) essentially +the typical <i>southern</i> dwelling built around <i>courts</i>, and +getting its light thence, and with little dependence upon exterior +windows. What has happened now is that the old living room has expanded +into a magnificent light-bathed hall, with the sun streaming not +through a smoke-hole but an ample opening. The rooms leading from this +court have multiplied in number and vastly increased in size. Then +through a series of passages one enters a second court even larger and +handsomer, and with another array of dependent chambers.</p> + +<p>In such a house the main apartments are on the first floor, but there +is a second story for the lodging of the retinues of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span> slaves. In +the rear of all there is usually a garden. Every domus has its own +particular plan and pretentions but all conform to the general scheme +of two main courts, just as almost every house of another civilization +will demand its parlor and its dining room.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_041" style="max-width: 662px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_041.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Atrium of House in Pompeii looking towards the +Peristylium</span>: present condition.</p> + </div> + +<p>Calvus’s mansion is priced by the real estate experts at about +3,500,000 sesterces (say $140,000);<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> but there are not a few houses +of richer senators worth four times as much. The structure faces a +street which is reasonably clear of shops and where all the neighbors +are at least equites or else very wealthy freedmen. The building does +not rise as high as an insula; in fact it possesses only two stories: +the first<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span> broken by mere peepholes in the solid stuccoed walls, the +second by larger windows all heavily grated. One can guess part of the +reason for these bars from a placard hanging in the entrance:</p> + + +<div class="border"> +<p class="p-left">NO SLAVE IS TO QUIT THE HOUSE WITHOUT<br> +THE MASTER’S ORDERS. PENALTY 100 LASHES</p> +</div> + +<p class="p2"><b>32. Entrance to the Residence.</b>—The entrance itself, however, +is handsome. The columns on either side are of fine Luna marble. +Pass between these, and you enter a vestibule, a considerable outer +chamber with fine pilasters let into the walls, where at this moment +a swarm of the Senator’s clients are mustering. Then you approach the +actual doors of the <i>ostium</i>. These stand open but every passer +is being scrutinized, and if questionable, is stopped by a janitor, a +highly responsible slave, who has a seat just inside. Many a janitor +is supported in his duty by a surly dog, but here there is merely a +life-like mosaic creature, wrought in the tiles of the pavement, with +<span class="allsmcap">CAVE CANEM</span> (“Beware the dog”) written beneath him. Overhead in +a gilt cage however is swinging a tame magpie, and the creature croaks +out his “<i>Salve! Salve!</i>” as the guests press into the atrium.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>33. The Atrium and the View across It.</b>—The moment we are +inside the transformation of scene from the dusty, dingy street is +startling. If other persons do not obstruct the view, you can see clear +down the long vistas of the house from the entrance to the greenery +of the garden. Before us is the atrium, a magnificent court, paved +with elaborate mosaics, and with four elegant Corinthian columns in +pink marble upholding the roof around a wide light-well. Under this +light-well is a complicated fountain, where bronze tritons<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span> and dancing +nymphs are shooting great jets into a white marble basin in which grow +luxurious water plants. On the inner sides of the atrium, and on either +of the numerous doors opening into the same, stand statues, bronze or +marble, upon carved stone pedestals.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_043" style="max-width: 332px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_043.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Plan of a Roman Mansion</span> (<i>Domus</i>): +strictly conventionalized.</p> + </div> + +<p>Many of the doorways around this elegant hall are closed by heavy +curtains, of rich saffron, purple, olivine, or blue, the hues being +selected to blend marvelously with the tints of the columns. Where the +walls are not a sheen of marble, they are spread with elaborate and +wonderfully decorative frescos—of which more hereafter. On special +pedestals of honor are fine art objects, valuable bric-a-brac, tripods, +vases, silver cups, war trophies. The mosaics on the floor (could we +stop to gaze) are more beautiful than any carpet. In brilliant jewel +work, for it is little else, has been wrought out a series of pictures +showing the campaigns of Alexander. There is another series giving the +legend of Perseus. The sunlight, the spray from the fountain,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span> the +sheen of the marbles, the brilliance of the frescos, all combine in an +effect that is dazzling.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>34. The Rooms in the Rear and the <i>Peristylium</i>.</b>—But +this hall is merely the beginning, not the end of the domus. In the +rear of the atrium there is the master’s office, the <i>tablinum</i>, +a very large alcove, a handsome apartment where he will receive +those guests who are come strictly on business. This and the atrium, +however, are merely the public rooms of the house; the real living +rooms are beyond, although, by a survival of old custom, the symbolic +marriage couch of the master and mistress stands on a back wall by +the tablinum. The heavy curtains have been swept aside from the broad +passageways (<i>fauces</i>) which lead into the second court—the +<i>peristylium</i>.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_044" style="max-width: 706px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_044.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Interior of a Roman Mansion, looking from the Atrium +into the Peristylium</span>: restored.</p> + </div> + +<p>Here the atrium is duplicated—but on a much more elaborate<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span> scale. +There is another column-girdled court; but the pillars are taller and +of an exquisite blue-veined marble. A huge curtain swings on its cords +ready for expansion as the sun grows hot. Beneath the light-opening, +there is not merely a second fountain, but a real plat of greensward, +a <i>viridarium</i>, with a bright bed of rare flowers and even a +few tropical plants. There is another phalanx of statues. Under the +long quadrangular colonnades around the court are spread out deeply +upholstered couches, easy chairs, small tables, and other appurtenances +for luxurious existence. The ceilings of the colonnades and of the +rooms leading thence are covered with metallic fretwork gilded in a +soft sheen, while the intense light filters down gratefully between the +columns, and sinks to a pleasant twilight in the niches and nooks in +the walls of the peristylium.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_045" style="max-width: 650px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_045.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Scene in a Peristylium.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>35. The Dining Room (<i>Triclinium</i>) and the Chapel.</b>—From +this second court to left and to right open doors which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span> lead to the +master’s and mistress’s sleeping chambers, and those of their children, +their guests, and their upper servants. The rooms are small, but are +always daintily frescoed.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_046" style="max-width: 650px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_046.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center"><span class="smcap">Roman Type of House at Pompeii, looking across the +Atrium</span>: present condition.</p> + </div> + +<p>Far more important than these chambers is the great dining room +(<i>triclinium</i>). Calvus’s friends tell him he really ought to +rebuild his residence and provide a special “summer dining room” on +the north side of the house, and a warmer “winter dining room” on the +south side as in all the newer mansions.<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> However, his triclinium is +very handsome; with good pilasters of Hymettus marble, fine statuary, +sideboards loaded with rare old plate, and a ceiling fretted with ivory +and arranged so that it can be partly opened at the climax of a feast +to drop garlands and to spray down unguents upon the guests.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span></p> + +<p>In the rear of the house there are also a smaller breakfast room, +and a special hall (<i>oecus</i>) for the display of even additional +art objects, likewise a library, and a private bathroom, both to be +described later; while in the rear of the peristylium is one of the +most important rooms assuredly in the entire mansion—the kitchen +(<i>culina</i>), where Gratia’s proudest possession, a truly superior +cook, prepares dinners that atone for the sorrowful fact that “we have +only one dining room.”</p> + +<p>Off the peristylium, too, one notes what amounts to a miniature chapel. +Before a temple front composed of short columns mounted on a kind of +table are set several little images of beautiful fairy-like creatures +of both sexes. These are the family <i>lares</i>, the honored guardians +of the old house of the Calvi. Once they stood in the atrium, but in +later days although withdrawn to the more private peristylium, they +have not ceased to be dear. Calvus discusses with his philosopher +friends, “Are there really any gods?”; but he never fails to cast his +incense night and morning upon the small gilt brazier which smokes +before his family lares. In the kitchen, also, there is a second little +niche and still other images of the lares, where they receive bits of +food and innocent prayers from all the servants—even more devotedly +than from the lordly folk in the peristylium.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>36. The Garden and the Slaves’ Quarters.</b>—Another passage +beside the kitchen leads us into what can be just glimpsed as one +enters the atrium—the rear garden set in by high walls. Land is too +valuable in Rome for Calvus to permit himself much more than a short +graveled walk under a few fine old box trees, but by an intensive +gardening that another age might style “Japanese” there is laid out a +miniature brooklet, a cascade plunging into a little pool containing +tame lampreys, and some small pines, which have been forced into +the semblance of a tiny forest. A broad marble seat now strewn with +cushions, a good statue<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span> of a dancing Pan, the rushing music of +the water, and the breeze rustling the foliage—all these make the +tumultuous, squalid street and the dirty garrets of the <i>Flavia +Victoria</i> seem very far away.—In reality they are barely a stone’s +throw down the hill.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_048" style="max-width: 366px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_048.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Corner in a Garden in Rear of a Roman House.</p> + </div> + +<p>Where do Calvus’s slaves keep themselves? Undoubtedly in the very +cramped barracks of the second story, a section of which looks down +from an upper tier of columns above the court of the peristylium. Even +lordly Romans spend little time in their chambers and need only small +bedrooms. For the slaves there is extremely little accommodation; any +kind of a sleeping pocket, very truly called a “cell” (<i>cella</i>) +will answer, where a stool, a blanket, and a thin mat on the floor +suffice for all save the upper servants.</p> + +<p>Under the house there are ordinary cellars for the storage of +provisions. Somewhere, too, is a strong room, with barred windows, and +heavy door, and inside, fastened upon the floor, a set of stocks and +manacles. Lucky is the day when, in a slave-familia of this size, this +lock-up has not at least one backsliding occupant.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>37. The Floors and Windows.</b>—Inquiring about certain details of +such a mansion we discover that like most other Roman houses, it is +built of concrete, faced with brick or coarse stone and stucco, and +then with as many interior surfaces as possible, covered with slabs of +marble or decorative frescos. The roof is of brick tiles; the floors +in the humbler chambers, where mosaic is unnecessary, are partly of +concrete and partly of small pieces of stone and tile roughly fitted +together and then pounded down by a rammer (<i>pavimentum</i>). Two +or three rooms most used in winter have a special and very luxurious +device—part of their floors are made of hollow tile pipes, and through +these hot air from a furnace can be forced to warm them precisely as is +done at the baths.<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p> + +<p>Little thus far has been said about the windows. These open mainly upon +the courts, and they are so few that very many rooms, especially those +used by the slaves, seem disagreeably dark, although in the long, hot +season this drawback somewhat vanishes. Most of the windows are closed +merely by board shutters swinging in leaves, and rather handsomely +paneled; but shutting them results in a state of artificial night.</p> + +<p>For certain rooms used by the master and mistress there is a much +better arrangement. Numbers of small pieces of glass are set in bronze +lattices and inserted in the windows. Glass cannot be made that is +strictly transparent, but it is highly translucent. Such rooms are +delightfully illuminated all day long. Certain other wealthy houses +use windows set with translucent talc (soft magnesium silicate), but +these openings are hardly as satisfactory. Glass is slowly coming<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span> into +general use, and the window panes will improve as glass-makers learn +how to blow larger sheets and to make their product more transparent.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>38. Frescos, Beautiful and Innumerable.</b>—From the house itself +we can turn to its ornamentation and furniture. The use of marble +columns and of great slabs of marble veneer has been repeatedly +mentioned. Africa, Egypt, and Greece as well as Italy have been +ransacked by Roman contractors for their treasures of stone.<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> Even +this private mansion of the Calvi boasts its green and black monolithic +pillars, as well as its ceiling of gilded fretwork.</p> + +<p>Where the sheen of polished marble does not meet the eye almost +invariably there are bright <i>frescos</i>. These are the <i>Roman wall +paper</i>. Even in the poorest insulæ we have met them, cheap hackneyed +things, garish in color, the work not of artists but of common +craftsmen. Yet most of even these are not without a certain decorative +beauty and their number is enormous.<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> In the humble tenements the +pictures often consist of pillars painted upon the walls, with gardens +and landscapes represented as if seen between the portico, so the +lodgers may have the pretence of looking upon the greenery reserved for +the mighty.</p> + +<p>In a fine domus, however, the frescos, infinite in number, often +approximate real works of art. There is no time to discuss their types +and history; it is sufficient to say the decorative effect is amazingly +effective. Some rooms have their walls covered with a variety of bright +conceits and patterns,*<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span> —balconies, perches, tapestries of fruit and +flowers, garlanded columns and flying sprites and maidens. Another +room has pictures of all the possible handicrafts and trades; but with +cupids working the forges and wine presses, or chaffering as merchants. +Gratia’s boudoir is full of amorous scenes of brides adorning +themselves and of lovers’ meetings. In the triclinium there are elegant +pictures of still life—fishes, fruit, birds; and in the peristylium +and atrium are elaborate landscapes, scenes from Greek mythology, and a +series of pictures depicting the voyages and adventures of Æneas.<a id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> +There are no picture frames, but a skilful use of colored lines and +sometimes of a painted setting of columns and architectural pediments +makes each scene stand out to great advantage.</p> + +<p>The colors of all these frescos are very brilliant but they are never +painfully crude. Where the walls are not covered by painting or marble +they are tinted a soft brown or gray; and where the columns are not of +naturally shaded marble they also are gently tinted to a neutral tone, +although the lower third is usually painted a bright red or yellow.</p> + +<p>The numerous statues about the house are all in their turn given a kind +of flesh color, with some other hue laid upon their drapery. Perhaps +in the open, under the light of a northern summer these features would +appear barbaric and offensive; under the gentle radiance diffused from +the apertures of the atrium and the peristylium they create a scene of +marvelous beauty, fascinating, and generally restful to the eye.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>39. The Profusion of Statues and Art Objects.</b>—So much for the +wall decorations, and we must turn to the statues. The mansion seems +to swarm with slaves, yet they are hardly more numerous than the +sculptures in bronze and marble.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span> Many of these are good copies of the +best masterpieces of Greece. The splendid athlete in the atrium is from +an original by Praxiteles; the Penelope in the peristylium follows +precisely the noble work of Scopas. Many others are simply graceful and +ornamental but less pretentious works by lesser geniuses, often adapted +in detail by the clever copyists.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_052" style="max-width: 235px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_052.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Portrait Bust—Pompey the Great.</p> + </div> + +<p>The whole quantity of art objects in such a house is enormous. The legs +and arms of the chairs and every knob and handle upon the furniture +are chased or carved with an amazing skill. The veriest knick-nacks +and articles for everyday life have been transformed into things of +beauty. In the triclinium is a long series of statuettes presenting the +myths of Bacchus—the god himself, the drunken Silenus, the satyrs, +bacchants, and all the other revelers. It would be easy, indeed, to +reconstruct a good part of the standard Græco-Roman mythology from +the statues, statuettes, and reliefs, no less than from the frescos +scattered about the mansion and garden.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>40. Family Portrait Busts.</b>—However, there is one lengthy array +of sculptures in the atrium that does not bear the hand of Greece. +These are the portrait busts of the Junii Calvi. There they stand, a +full score of them; all the more distinguished members of the great +house since sculpture became a facile art in Rome.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_053" style="max-width: 277px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_053.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Typical Roman Portrait—Marc Antony.</p> + </div> + +<p>It is an array of cold, hard, yet withal terribly efficient faces. +Slightly battered is the broad homely countenance of that tough old +Calvus who was Scipio’s legate at Zama. Here also is the sharp shrewd +face of his great-grandson who was prætor under Sulla; here the more +refined and intellectual lines of the grandson of the last named +worthy who won Octavius’s thanks at Actium for gallantry with his +bireme, and afterward was a famous governor of Syria; here the high +forehead of that courageous Stoic, the present master’s grandfather, +who bade Nero do his worst, and who calmly “opened his veins” when the +centurion arrived with the tyrant’s order to commit suicide. There are +also displayed the busts of several distinguished women of the family +including that Junia who was the bosom friend of the Empress Livia.</p> + +<p>In addition to these, there are the portrait busts of the present +Publius Calvus, of his wife Gratia, and of his three children. They +are all executed with remarkable verisimilitude and without the least +flattery. Customs with the hair often change, and the headdress of +Gratia is made detachable so that if her style of headdress alters, the +portrait may be promptly brought up to date. Young Sextus the second +boy had a birthday yesterday; his statue is still hung with wreaths; +flowers too hang around the likeness of Gnæus Calvus, Publius’s +brother, who lately died while proprætor of Bætica (South Spain).</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>41. Death Masks (<i>Imagines</i>).</b>—The sight of these busts +is a constant incentive to both the young Calvi to remember their +lordly lineage; but they have a still prouder treasure. The enormously +rich freedman Vedius just down the street would give twenty million +sesterces for the social preëminence implied by the possession of the +great cupboard all bound with gilt and bronze bands which stands in the +tablinum. Here, carefully labeled, are kept several scores of waxen +death masks, blackened, marred, and ugly enough now, but all taken when +the successive heads of the family lay in their last slumber.</p> + +<p>Many of these date from before the production in Rome of sculptured +portrait statues. Here, for example, is the mask of the Calvus who +helped win the consulship for the plebeians; and here of him who +seconded Appius Claudius in the Senate when he turned away the glozing +envoys of Pyrrhus. When alien upstarts complain of “noble pride,” +it is easy for a Calvus to toss his head: “Have we not something to +be proud of!”—and later, it will be duly explained how these waxen +<i>imagines</i> appear very conspicuously at public funerals (p. 175).</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>42. Couches, Their General Use.</b>—One cannot, however, sit +or lie down upon statues or portrait busts, and the domus is well +provided with conventional furniture. In general the Romans prefer +to <i>recline</i> when men of a later age may prefer to <i>sit</i>. +Visitors sprawl down on couches for a little conversation, and the +regular method of writing is not at a desk but lying on a couch with +the right leg doubled and the tablet held on the knee. Long habit makes +this attitude quite comfortable.</p> + +<p>There are many special kinds of beds for reading, dining, and for +sleeping. Of course the latter are the most elaborate, and in Calvus’s +and Gratia’s chamber the wooden bed is so high that it has to be +reached by a footstool. The legs are of bronze, elaborately turned and +carved, the frame is veneered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span> with tortoise shell and the supports at +the sides of the sloping pillow-rest are set with plates of silver. +As for the thick mattresses they are of the finest down and the ample +blankets are dyed purple and embroidered with gold thread. The couches +in the triclinium are lighter and lower although of very fine cabinet +work,<a id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> but they have to be made larger for they must accommodate +three diners. The reading couches (<i>lectuli</i>—“little beds”) +are still lighter and simpler, although of elegant design, and those +scattered under the peristylium are overlaid with plates of gold leaf.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_055" style="max-width: 585px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_055.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Roman Lamps</span>: collection in Naples Museum.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>43. Elegant Chairs and Costly Tables.</b>—Excluding the couches +the furnishings of a Roman domus seem much simpler<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span> than those used +in a later age. There are few carpets, no great loss in view of the +beautiful mosaic floors, although there are rich, heavy portières +across many passages. The chairs, frequently of light and elegant +workmanship, are as a rule simple and often backless. Some, however, +are splendidly inlaid with silver, and there are a few great +<i>cathedræ</i>, ponderous arm chairs with lofty backs.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_056" style="max-width: 203px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_056.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Altar with Design of a Curule Chair.</p> + </div> + +<p>In the atrium, moreover, there stands an object surveyed with great +pride by Calvus’s children—their father’s <i>sella curulis</i>, the +folding, backless arm chair with a seat of leather straps which the +senator had occupied while prætor. Presently (they hope) he will sit +again thereon before the admiring Senate house, this time presiding as +the veritable consul. The “curule chair,” despite its gold and ivory +arms and cushions covered with purple Alexandrian fabrics, is anything +but a comfortable seat through a tedious official ceremony; but who +thinks of personal comfort when reckoning the glories of its public +occupancy!</p> + +<p>Besides the chairs there are everywhere the tables. These are numerous +but low and small. In the dining room they are round and barely two +feet in diameter; but what a wealth of art and taste has gone into +their making! All are of extremely fine wood, but the three reserved +for the regular couches of the dinner guests have their legs overlaid +with plates of magnificently embossed gold, and the material<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span> upon the +tops is composed of single thin slabs cross-sawn from the trunks of the +great citrus trees (a form of cypress) on Mount Atlas.</p> + +<p>This wood can be finished to show an exquisite wavy pattern or +curly veins—“tiger citrus,” “panther citrus,” or “peacock-tail +citrus”—the experts call the varieties. Over really fine specimens +true connoisseurs go into ecstasies, and fortunes can be wasted. A +table somewhat larger than Calvus’s has been known to sell for 500,000 +sesterces ($20,000); and there is a record price of twice that figure. +The tables in the present mansion are nowhere nearly so valuable; yet +they are among the most precious objects in the house. If there is a +fire, they will be rescued almost before anything else, always barring +the waxen <i>imagines</i>.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>44. Chests, Cabinets, Water Clocks, and Curios.</b>—Of course +there are many other articles of furniture like the great <i>arca</i>, +the master’s strong box in the tablinum; heavily locked and riveted +down upon the stone beneath. There are the elegant tall candelabra, +of bronze or even of silver, elaborately ornamented and swinging at +night with such batteries of olive-oil lamps as to make the marbles, +frescos, and mosaics give back an alluring glitter. There is the water +clock in the peristylium, a kind of glorified hour-glass, so adjusted +as to record small fractions of time, and beside which a special slave +usually stands all day long to call off the passage of each hour to the +family. There are great cabinets, chests, and cupboards full of plate, +fine blankets, and extremely elaborate wardrobes.</p> + +<p>In addition to all these upon a kind of sideboard there stand forth +real or alleged objects of value or antiquity, a silver cup taken +at the capture of Syracuse; a tall black and red vase signed by the +master potter Callisthenes; and a statuette of a dancing girl which +is probably a true work of Lysippus. Conspicuous, too, is a silver +bowl, battered and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span> discolored, and of extreme simplicity. Mock it +not, however, it is “the ancestral salt cellar” (as remarks Horace), +the one silver dish possessed by the good old Calvi, when in all the +Roman Senate there was only a single complete silver dinner service +to be exchanged from house to house when high officials entertained +ambassadors.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>45. Spurious Antiques.</b>—Publius Calvus is happy in possessing +undeniably genuine antiques. He can afford to laugh at the collection +of the rich freedman across the way. That poor fellow, anxious to +“keep in style” and to display an art collection, has fallen into the +clutches of unscrupulous dealers. He has filled his atrium with absurd +specimens such as “cups from the table of Laomedon, a double vase +that belonged to Nestor and a tankard used by Achilles.” His citrus +tables are of very thin veneer, and in his atrium his impossible wife +has actually on display a ponderous golden box in which her husband’s +first beard is deposited. It is also gossiped about that this crude +fellow actually pretended sickness lately, merely that he might receive +condoling friends in bed and display to them the gold chasings on the +bedstead, the magnificent scarlet coverlets, and proclaim his riches by +having the mattress steeped in expensive perfumes.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>46. Pet Animals.</b>—One thing more must be stated about the house +of the Calvi before passing to its human denizens. There are a great +many tame animals in evidence. Over the doorway one already notes +the caged magpie. From a dark corner within a large cage blinks a +morose-looking owl. The master’s fine greyhound has a litter of puppies +which are now scrambling around the peristylium with a special slave to +look after them. Behind a column is seen gliding a slinky civet. The +children delight in a small monkey tethered now in the garden. Gratia +especially has her own beloved<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span> lap dog and its personal slave-boy +custodian. She does not, however, imitate a certain female friend who +dotes upon snakes, and who has a whole cage of the creatures which she +often twines about her neck to scare her companions.</p> + +<p>So much for the material aspects of a Roman insula and a Roman domus. +It is time to examine their inhabitants.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER IV<br> +<span class="subhed">ROMAN WOMEN AND ROMAN MARRIAGES</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>47. Honorable Status of Roman Women.</b>—Calvus is the lordly +senator when his litter swings him down to the Curia by the Old Forum +to participate in what is still the most venerable council in the +world, but in his own house his authority is divided. He is not even +sure that one-half the power is really his. In all private matters his +sway is shared by his spouse Gratia.</p> + +<p>Many are the evils inflicting Imperial Rome, but oppression of women is +not one of them. By the age of Hadrian it has long since come to pass +what Cato the Elder sadly predicted three centuries earlier, when Roman +women were learning the way to freedom: “On the day that women are our +equals, they will be our masters.”</p> + +<p>Roman women are, indeed, excluded from seats in the Senate and from +the long-defunct right to vote in the public assemblies.<a id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> They +cannot command armies nor receive governorships, although every now +and then an angry senator vainly proposes a resolution that governors +shall not take their wives along with them to their provinces, lest the +latter constitute themselves the real rulers of the district. Women do +not act as judges or jurors. Nay more: legally they are under legal +disabilities calculated to stir the rage of their “equal suffrage” +sisters of a later day. They have always the status of minors, and are +subject to the legal control of either father, guardian, or husband to +their dying hour.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span></p> + +<p>All this is true, yet, what of it? The jurists have long ago devised +fictions of the law whereby the women have practically as complete +control of their property as have their brothers; and the government +of the Empire is peculiarly a government of backstairs intrigues and +of secret influence. What chance have mere men against women in such +warfare? Custom also assigns to women an amount of freedom in most +social matters which makes Imperial Rome a feminine paradise that can +only be matched by Twentieth Century America.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>48. Men Reluctant to Marry.</b>—Long since leaders of the bolder +sex have had to reason with their fellow citizens on the necessity of +marriage as a patriotic duty. The pragmatic old censor Quintus Metellus +in 102 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> delivered a kind of a lay sermon: “If we could +get along without wives, fellow citizens (<i>Quirites</i>) we should +all spare ourselves the <i>tedium</i> of marriage, but nature has +ordained that we can neither live pleasantly with wives, nor exist at +all without them—therefore let us sacrifice our personal interests +to those of society.” After him Emperor Augustus enacted stiff laws +to decrease the alarming number of bachelors, and to give special +privileges to the parents of three children. This does not prevent +many prominent Romans from looking upon a wife as a kind of expensive +bondage often to be shunned altogether.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>49. Rights and Privileges of Married Women.</b>—The great majority +of all Romans are married. Even the slaves are allowed to join in a +kind of unofficial wedlock known as <i>contubernium</i>, which only a +very harsh master will dissolve. As for the free married women they +go everywhere and do almost everything. No husband’s permission is +needed when they visit the Forum or theater. They can sue and be sued +or give testimony in the courts without his intervention. They manage +their own property. Gratia, for example, is well off in her own right. +Her estates are in charge of a dapper<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span> young freedman Ephorus, who is +incessantly visiting her, and who never dreams of taking orders from +her husband. So long as Gratia is barely faithful to Calvus he has no +right to complain. He thanks his “Good Genius,” therefore, that things +are not as in his friend Probus’s house, where the mistress’s factotum +is suspected of being on altogether too familiar terms with his fair +employer.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_062" style="max-width: 262px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_062.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">A Roman Matron.</p> + </div> + +<p>Nevertheless, this freedom is supposed to carry with it corresponding +responsibilities. Every Roman woman theoretically is responsible for +her husband’s good name and for the wise ordering of his family. No +right-minded woman dismisses the hope that at the end they will put +the great words on her tombstone: “<i>She counselled well. She managed +well. She spun wool.</i>”</p> + +<p>The control of the vast <i>familia</i> of slaves is usually in a +matron’s hands, a duty calculated to bring out every executive quality +within her. She largely conducts the education of her sons, no less +than of her daughters. No Roman is ashamed to admit (as an Athenian +in Pericles’s day might have been ashamed) that in the great crises +of life he took the authoritative advice of his mother.<a id="FNanchor_26" href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span> Roman +civilization is, therefore, for better or worse, a civilization to +which women no less than men have been suffered to apply the full +powers of their genius. <i>It is a “hundred per cent civilization”</i>; +whereas, that of Athens, considering the manner in which Athenian women +were confined and ignored, was hardly more than a “fifty per cent +civilization.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>50. Selection of Husbands for Young Girls.</b>—It is a fact, +however, that in one great and vital matter Roman women are not +free agents. They usually have their husbands, at least their first +husbands, chosen for them by their parents. This comes to pass largely +because usage requires that girls should be married so young that no +rational romance on their part is really possible.</p> + +<p>Custom amounting to law requires that a girl shall be at least twelve, +and a boy fourteen before marriage. In the case of girls this minimum +is often adhered to pretty closely, but betrothals can be arranged +still earlier. Cicero’s daughter Tullia was betrothed at ten and +married at thirteen—a very common arrangement. Nobody imagined she had +the least right to complain. Marriage involves a great shift in family +relations, and the control of the family pertains strictly to the +<i>pater familias</i> and to his <i>matrona</i>. They will ordinarily +exercise loving pains in selecting a suitable spouse for a daughter, +but the decision must be very largely theirs.</p> + +<p>Boys as a rule marry much later, often not until well into manhood. +They can demand inevitably a certain right of choice, although the +parents still exercise a marked authority. As for bachelors, if they +indulge in various coarse “affairs” with dancing girls, only very +peevish persons are critical. After marriage, however, they must treat +their wives with reasonable outward respect, if by no means always +with austere faithfulness. In any case a girl is likely to be married +off<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span> too young either to resist her parents’ choice or to pick out +intelligently any proper husband for herself.<a id="FNanchor_27" href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>51. A Marriage Treaty among Noble-Folk.</b>—When Gratia’s parents +decided she was old enough to “become settled” they applied to a +distinguished kinsman, an ex-consul, to help them to find a suitable +bridegroom. This noble gentleman looked over a list of his younger +friends, selected Calvus, and wrote a careful letter commending him, +praising his lineage, and his firm hopes of official distinction, +and telling how “he had a frank, open countenance, fresh colored and +blooming and a handsome well-knit figure”; in short “he was quite +the fellow to deserve so fine a girl.” The great man went on to add +that the favored candidate had a respectable fortune, for “though I +dislike to speak of the financial aspects of the matter, still one must +consider the tendencies of the day.” Not one word was said as to how +Gratia herself might want to be consulted; her consent was taken for +granted.<a id="FNanchor_28" href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p> + +<p>Gratia’s parents, therefore, approached Calvus’s guardian, his uncle. +He being satisfied as to dowry and social adjustments, both young +people were informed of what had been determined for them. Gratia +and Calvus alike had always expected some such arrangement and +capitulated with reasonable grace. The ensuing marriage, founded not +on any romance,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span> but on a cold-blooded study of what supposedly made +for domestic happiness, in this case at least has been fortunate and +fruitful. The wedded pair have come truly to love one another, and they +dwell in great harmony. In this general manner marriages are arranged +every day in Rome.</p> + +<p>Of course these are first marriages. Let Gratia become a widow, or let +her imitate so many of her friends and divorce her husband, and her +second spouse will ordinarily be of quite her own choosing; and Calvus, +of course, in selecting again, would be completely his own master.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>52. A Betrothal in Wealthy Circles.</b>—Gratia’s daughter Junia +is only ten, yet her parents are already beginning to think about +betrothals; but only a block up the street there has just been the +excitement of an actual wedding. Aulus Statilius Pomponius is only an +eques, but the gods have blessed him with a hundred million sesterces +($4,000,000). He and his wife have a daughter who will inherit vast +possessions, and wealth is a splendid substitute for lineage. They have +found a young Gaius Ulpius Pollio, already in the Senate, who claims a +distant cousinship to the Emperor himself. Pollio is none too wealthy +and is already a widower, but Statilia and her mother are infinitely +delighted at an alliance with the edges of an imperial house. Nothing +has lacked, therefore, for an ultra-fashionable wedding, the talk of +the entire capital.</p> + +<p>First came the betrothal, a great social concourse in Pomponius’s +atrium, a throng of equites and senators with their wives, jewels +flashing, countless tongues gossiping, with Statilia led in by her +father to the center of the circle to meet the bridegroom-to-be. +Statilia said not a word through the entire proceedings. All Pollio’s +dealings were with her father, and in clear voice the two men exchanged +the legal formulas: “Do you promise to give your daughter, Statilia to +me, to be my wedded wife?” said the younger man.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span></p> + +<p>“The gods bring luck! I betroth her.”</p> + +<p>“The gods bring luck!”</p> + +<p>After that technically Statilia became a bride-elect; she was a +<i>sponsa</i>. Either side had legally the right still to break the +agreement, but it was socially ruinous to do so. Pollio presented +Statilia with various valuable toilet articles, and especially with a +ring to be worn on the third finger of the left hand, because everybody +said that “a nerve ran directly from this particular finger to the +heart.” It was the engagement ring of a later age almost precisely.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>53. Adjusting the Dowry.</b>—Then followed weeks of frantic +preparation: the women busy with the things which always have +made women busy over weddings long before the days of Romulus and +Remus; Pomponius and Pollio with wrestling over the very nice legal +adjustments of Statilia’s dowry. How much would the old eques give +in all, in cash, land, and banker’s securities? How much for his +daughter’s special use? How much as <i>dos</i>, the funds which the +new son-in-law could touch? How could the property be arranged so that +if the marriage ended presently in a divorce (as spiteful wagers were +already being laid that it might) the <i>dos</i> could be given back to +Statilia without grievous loss of principal?</p> + +<p>At one time the betrothal almost had to be cancelled, such extreme +shrewdness was shown on both sides. But finally the matter was +adjusted. Three noble friends for either side pressed their seal rings +in witness to the contracts. The day came for the wedding.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>64. Dressing the Bride.</b>—Family exigencies required a +springtime wedding, when there were a great many unlucky days to be +avoided; but an expert Etruscan haruspex at length found a day that +satisfied Statilia and her parents’ scruples. On the night before +the great event she laid all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span> her playthings, her childish amulet +(<i>bulla</i>), and her childish garments on the altar of the paternal +Lares whose protection she was quitting forever. Then she went to bed +in a <i>tunica recta</i>, a fine, yellow garment woven in one piece, +supposedly an article of extremely good omen.</p> + +<p>The next day the bride was dressed personally by her mother with +unusual care. However expensive her ornaments she had to wear this +same one-piece tunic next to her skin, the gown being held around the +waist by a band of wool tied with a complicated “knot of Hercules.” +She wore, of course, all the jewels loaded upon neck, ears, arms, and +fingers which by the contract she was to bring Pollio in her trousseau. +Her long hair had been parted according to ancient custom by a spear +into six locks, braided now with ribbons weighted down with pearls. +Her shoes were of finest white leather covered with more pearls. Over +her head streamed a long, gauzy flame-colored veil of silk—worth +very literally more than its weight in gold.<a id="FNanchor_29" href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> Pressing down this +bridal veil was a garland of flowers picked, as custom required, by the +bride’s own hand, and interspersed with sprigs of the sacred “verbena” +herbs. Pollio, when he presented himself, was in the best gala costume +of a senator, but there were no special “wedding garments” for the +bridegroom, corresponding to the bridal veil.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>55. The Marriage Ceremonies.</b>—The afternoon was at hand, and the +insulæ in neighboring quarters emptied their plebeian throngs to gaze +at the gilded litters which went swinging up to the house of Pomponius, +the armies of scarlet-clad running footmen, the pompous freedmen +marching beside their patron’s sedans, the bravery of purple robes, +the flash of gold and of jewels. Of course, the atrium had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span> been hung +with garlands. The air inside was heavy with the perfumes of flowers, +of costly unguents, and of the finest Arabian incense, while the noble +guests elbowed and pushed one another to get near the altar near the +tablinum and win the best sight of the happy pair.</p> + +<p>Roman marriages are pretty strictly civil ceremonies. There is no legal +requirement for any religious rites. Hardly anybody now is married +according to the stale old formula of the <i>confarreatio</i>, when the +betrothed couple became wedded by eating a cake which had just been +consecrated by the Pontifex Maximus. A much simpler form is now used, +but before the ceremony there always has to be the sacrifice.</p> + +<p>Amid a decently pious hush a sheep is led to the side of the water +tank (<i>impluvium</i>) in the atrium; the shrewd-eyed old haruspex, +trailing his long robe and muttering jargon that passes for Etruscan, +is aided by two skillful assistants in killing the creature promptly +and avoiding disgusting gore; then in ripping open its belly and +examining with expert eye the still quivering entrails. (See p. 429.) +It is proper now for Statilia to turn pale and clutch the arm of her +mother. What if the signs were unfavorable? “Whoever heard of bad omens +being discovered at a great wedding?” cynically whispers a senator. +“<i>Bene</i>—good!” announces the haruspex with a leer. “<i>Bene! +Bene!</i>” echo all the guests. The soothsayer retires. The wedding can +proceed.</p> + +<p>The final ceremony is very simple. First the tablets of the marriage +contract and the transfer of the dowry are produced, read, and, if not +already witnessed, are signed by the proper attestors. Then a young +matron-of-honor, Statilia’s <i>pronuba</i>, leads the bride up to +Pollio. She thrusts out her hand from under her great veil and takes +the hand of her husband-elect. Everybody listens while he, and not any +priest or official for him, puts the direct question: “Will you be my +<i>mater familias</i>?” “Yes,” answers Statilia, perhaps<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span> a little too +readily; and then she asks him openly: “And will you be my <i>pater +familias</i>?” “Yes,” and immediately there is a general shout of +congratulation.</p> + +<p>These decisive words once spoken, Pollio, his bride, and her parents +unite in placing a cake of coarse bread upon the altar, uttering brief +dedications of the food to Jupiter and Juno, and also to the quaint +rural gods Tellus, Picumnus, and Pilumnus who will bless the estates +of the new couple. The cakes are presented in a basket held by a young +boy, Statilia’s cousin, her <i>camillus</i>, both of whose parents are +required to be living. The company now redoubles its cry of “Good luck! +Good luck! <i>felicitas!</i>”—and everybody is assuredly in excellent +appetite for the ensuing wedding feast.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>56. The Wedding Procession.</b>—This is not the place for +describing a great banquet (see p. <a href="#Page_113">113</a>); it is enough here to state +that Pomponius is obliged to justify his wealth by a prodigal +hospitality. Vain has proved Augustus’s law limiting the cost of +wedding feasts to one thousand sesterces ($40). Such regulations win +only laughter!</p> + +<p>As the climax after the dainties comes the distribution of pieces of +the huge wedding-cake (<i>mustaceum</i>), made of fine meal steeped in +new wine and served upon bay leaves. By this time everybody has drunk +enough good Massic and Falernian to be excited and talkative, it has +become twilight in the street, and Pomponius’s chief freedman (the +master of ceremonies) gives the signal: “The procession!”</p> + +<p>In the vestibule musters a squad of flute players and torch bearers. +As the music strikes up, good form requires Statilia to cast herself +into her mother’s arms and weep and scream violently. Good form +equally requires Pollio to tear her thence with playful violence—“a +remembrance,” people say, “of the Romans’ rape of the Sabines.” +Statilia promptly ceases struggling and submits cheerfully to being led +through the door.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span></p> + +<p>The wedding procession is an indispensable part of the ceremony. +Probably if Pollio lives in another city, some family friend will +now loan his residence for “leading home the bride.” As it is, the +bridegroom fortunately possesses a handsome house about a mile distant +on the Quirinal. For all her wealth Statilia has to walk the entire way.</p> + +<p>First go the flute players bringing the crowds out of all the insulæ +when they cross the Subura; then long files of the younger guests of +both sexes, talking vivaciously, and flourishing white-thorn torches; +then the camillus and a youthful assistant bearing ostentatiously the +bride’s spindle and distaff, token of the household labors presumably +ahead of her; then the bride herself, led on either hand by a boy both +of whose parents are living, while a third of like good fortune carries +a special torch of honor. Pollio himself walks just behind the bride, +and is kept busy tossing walnuts to all the children in the crowd +in token of the fact that he has now (for the second time) put away +childish things. After them, with more flambeaux and in merry disorder, +taking pains to exhibit their fine robes and jewels, follow all the +older relatives and friends of both parties. The torchlight, the music, +the brave colors, and gems gleaming out of the darkness make the scene +bewitching. No wonder all the gaping crowds join in the marriage shouts +“Io Talasse!”<a id="FNanchor_30" href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> or in the oft-repeated “Felicitas!”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>57. At the Bridegroom’s House.</b>—The guests and many of the +spectators fail not also to raise the “Fescinne songs” proper for +marriage processions; old folk songs very coarse, and interspersed with +extremely broad quips and personalities. At last the house of Pollio is +reached. It is a blaze of light from vestibule to garden, and all the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span> +<i>decuriæ</i> (squads of ten) of slaves are mustered to greet their +new <i>domina</i>.</p> + +<p>At the entrance Statilia stops to wind the door pillars with bits of +wool, and to touch the door itself with oil and fat, the emblems of +plenty. She is then promptly <i>lifted</i> over the threshold to avoid +an ill-omened stumble, and is immediately confronted by her husband who +has slipped in before her and who now presents her with a cup of water +and a glowing fire brand, token that she is entitled to the protection +of his family Lares. Statilia accepts these and in clear voice repeats +the very ancient and famous marriage formula, “Where thou art Gaius, I +am Gaia” (<i>Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia</i>).</p> + +<p>The invited guests now sweep inside and there is more elbowing while +Statilia produces three silver coins; one of these she gives to her +husband as emblem of her dowry; one she lays on the altar for the +Lares of her new home; one she casts back into the street, a gift to +the “Lares of the Highway” who guarded the door. Then her marriage +torch is blown out, and tossed away to be scrambled for as emblem of +supreme good luck by all the younger guests. The matron of honor has +already arranged the luxurious marriage chamber, and the happy pair +are led inside and the door shut upon them, while all their friends +join in the rollicking “nuptial song” just outside the portal. There +is nothing left now for the guests to do but to go home; all being +invited, however, to return to Pollio’s house the next day to join in +a second great feast, with Statilia this time presiding as mistress of +the establishment.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>58. Honors and Liberties of a Matron.</b>—Before her marriage +Statilia had been a mere girl, completely controlled by her parents, +unable to appear in public save under severe restrictions, and +apparently with hardly a will of her own. The day after entering +Pollio’s house she finds herself become by one act a noble +<i>matrona</i>, with the destinies of a huge<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span> retinue of slaves and +freedmen at her disposal, enjoying a great property, meeting her +husband’s friends as their equal, going where she pleases, saying what +she pleases, almost (within wide limits) doing what she pleases.</p> + +<p>Abroad in crowds, her dress, the <i>stola matronalis</i>, secures +the young married woman extreme respect. Every March, she, with +all the other honorable wives in Rome, enjoys the honors of the +<i>matronalia</i>, an official festival, kind of “Mother’s day” devoted +to celebrating the virtues of the gracious heads of each household. +On this day no less than on her birthday, she receives presents from +her husband, her family, and all her dependents. Finally, being a +Senator’s wife, when she comes to die, she probably will be entitled +to a great state funeral, with a formal eulogy in the Forum as if she +were a public personage. No wonder that Roman girls yearn eagerly for +marriage! It is their astonishing emancipation.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>59. Unhappy Marriages and Frivolous Women.</b>—Will a fashionable +alliance like that of Statilia and Pollio turn out happily? There +are scoffers even among the friends who bore the torches. Nobody +expects Pollio (a gay young aristocrat) to prove an example of austere +faithfulness, although he must never do anything to insult his wife +publicly. As for Statilia the cynics about the fair sex are very many. +Long ago Ovid has written, “Every woman may be won if only she’s +rightly tempted.” If a young wife is light-minded, she has plenty +of opportunities to acquire lovers, and at the great festivals and +banquets, at the theaters, gladiator fights, and circuses women have +every chance to meet intriguing men without interference by their +husbands.</p> + +<p>The very fact that as unmarried girls Roman matrons were denied +all chance for lawful romances, now makes devious love affairs +seem all the more racy. Any number of fine ladies have indulged in +unwise “friendships” with dissolute<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span> actors, public dancers, or even +gladiators. In many a mansion there is a handsome freedman or even a +slave who can become extraordinarily familiar with his mistress. There +are said to be coarse-grained mothers who actually teach their married +daughters how to push intrigues and to smuggle in or out love-letters +under the very noses of their husbands; and there are plenty of young +men, rich, “noble,” and very idle, who spend their time philandering +with married ladies.</p> + +<p>With every deduction and allowance for scandal the number of such +unsteady women is very great. “What snakes are driving you mad,” cried +Juvenal, “that you think of taking a wife? Why not leap from a high +window or from the Æmilian bridge rather than submit to a she-tyrant?”</p> + +<p>However, even if women lead lives that are outwardly respectable, there +are plenty of minor charges against Roman ladies. Some are utterly +extravagant; haunting the fine shops along the Via Lata and running +up ruinous bills. Some are laughed at for taking up music, poetry, or +Greek antiquities as shallow fads and “chattering in a mixture of Latin +and Greek, and making their tongues go incessantly like a gong.” Some +are said to take fencing lessons and to waste their days practicing +on a dummy antagonist with a foil, and learning to handle a shield +as if intending to join the army. Others are never happy unless they +know all the latest news: “What the Thracians and the Seres (Chinese) +are doing”; “Who has just married a notorious widow”; “Whether a +comet threatens the King of Parthia.” Others are utterly selfish and +heartless; they will weep at the loss of a pet sparrow, but treat their +slave girls with hideous brutality, and “let a husband die to save a +lap-dog’s life.” Worst of all are certain women actually suspected of +giving their unloved husbands a dose of poison when various reasons +make a divorce inconvenient.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>60. Divorces, Easy and Frequent.</b>—However, divorce is the +regular outcome of very many unlucky marriages. Every Roman girl, when +her parents tell her “We have chosen for you—”; knows in the back +of her mind: “Marriage will give me freedom. If this wedlock isn’t a +success, my next husband will probably be my own choosing.”</p> + +<p>The first divorce mentioned in Roman history was in 231 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> +when a certain Ruga put away a truly beloved wife, out of a high sense +of public duty—because she bore him no children. The public was +shocked at such action then, but soon it was shocked no longer. Under +the later Republic lucky was the nobleman or noblewoman who was not +divorced at least once. Cicero divorced Terentia after a long wedded +life seemingly because he wanted a new marriage portion; Cato the +Younger (immaculate Stoic) repudiated his wife to please a friend, then +calmly took her back again at the friend’s death.</p> + +<p>Under the Empire things hardly seem to have become any better. “Trial +marriages” are not a recognized institution; but surely they exist. It +is direfully easy for either a man or woman to take the initiative. +No court proceedings are necessary. “Take away your property!” spoken +formally and before witnesses is sufficient to break up the household, +although the more usual method is to “<i>send a messenger</i>”; +<i>i.e.</i> dispatch a delegation of friends to the other party to +break the news. Vainly did Augustus try by legislation to make divorces +less prompt and convenient. The whole proceeding is still grievously +popular and simple.</p> + +<p>Of course, divorced persons are under no stigma in the fashionable set. +Many a time a couple has separated, married elsewhere, separated again, +and then resumed the old wedlock. Women are charged with “flitting +from one home to another, wearing out the bridal veil”; and indeed, +spicy instances are cited of ladies who boasted “eight husbands<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span> in +five autumns, a fact worthy of commemoration on their tombs”; or of +reckoning the years not by the annual consuls but by their annual +husbands.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>61. Celibacy Common: Old Families Dying Out.</b>—Under such +conditions what wonder many a rich Roman prefers celibacy! They often +proclaim the “advantages of childlessness.” Old men of property +without children are fawned upon with offers of every kind of service. +Social and even public honors are thrust upon them. Their atria are +crowded every morning with genteel visitors; their least wishes +anticipated—all in the desperate hopes that “when their tablets are +opened” they will have remembered the swarm of lackeys in their wills. +Indeed, adventurers have been known to go far in Rome by making a false +show of wealth, concealing the fact they actually have children, and +“seeming bilious and complaining of indigestion.” Everybody apparently +will give them favor or credit. It is a familiar scandal.</p> + +<p>Under such circumstances what wonder most of the old Republican +families have died out by the age of Hadrian, that the Calvi feel very +isolated; and that of the strictly patrician families only the famous +Cornelii appear now to survive.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>62. Nobler Types of Women.</b>—But do the above stories represent +the true moral condition of most women in Rome? Certainly not, or +society could not exist. In the first place such women represent the +rotten crust of the nobility; the ordinary equestrian and middle-class +women are still relatively modest and moral, efficient managers, good +mothers, and, if they are poor, hard workers. In the second place, even +among the upper Senatorial nobility, there are plenty of matronæ of the +very best type; true props to their husbands, wise mothers to their +children, kindly mistresses to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span> their slaves. Gratia has many friends +whose households are schools of virtue, and many a Roman, from the +Imperial Augustus down, has confessed that his wife has been his tower +of strength.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>63. Famous and Devoted Wives.</b>—People still talk of the famous +Arria, wife of Cæcina Pætus, who, when the Emperor Claudius ordered him +to commit suicide, and he could hardly pluck up courage for a manly +exit from life, as an example plunged the dagger in her own breast, +then held it out to her husband, saying, “Pætus, it doesn’t hurt me.” +Her own daughter, the younger Arria, and Fannia, the wife of the +philosopher Helvidius Priscus, grossly murdered by Nero, won hardly +less reputations for fortitude. Pliny the Younger has recorded a more +humbly born Italian dame, who, when her husband was suffering from +incurable ulcers, but lacking the hardihood to kill himself alone, tied +herself to him and with him jumped into the lake at Larium so that both +were drowned.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_076" style="max-width: 482px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_076.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Wedded Pair with Camillus</span> (Boy Attendant).</p> + </div> + +<p>Fortunately the days of tyrannous emperors seem long since over. Wives +usually can show their virtue by living for their husbands and not by +dying with them. Rather lately there passed away an old man, Domitius +Tullus. Vast was his wealth but it brought him no pleasure; he was so +crippled and racked in every limb “that he could only enjoy his great<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span> +riches by looking at them. He was so helpless that he had to get others +to clean and wash his teeth.” He had a young and a very pretty wife; +but so far from neglecting him or trying to hasten his end, she kept +him alive for years by extraordinarily faithful personal care. Lately, +too, the venerable Senator Macrinus has lost his wife, “who if she had +lived in the good old days would have been counted an exemplary woman. +They lived together for thirty-nine years, with never a single quarrel +or disagreement.”<a id="FNanchor_31" href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_077" style="max-width: 407px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_077.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Seated Noblewoman.</p> + </div> + +<p>These are simply random cases. Of course, many people know the tribute +Pliny the Younger paid to his own wife Calpurnia, much younger than +himself but absolutely devoted to her husband: “She has a keen +intelligence, she is wonderfully economical, and she loves me.” He went +on to add that she read all his literary effusions most carefully, +sat behind a curtain to listen when he gave public recitations before +a male audience, and that when he had to argue in court had relays +of runners to keep her informed as to how well he was impressing the +judges. When the twain were separated she “would embrace his letters as +though they were himself,” while he (if he got no new letters from her) +“would read over her old letters and take them up again and again as +though they were new ones.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>64. The Story of Turia.</b>—One day when Gratia had caught young +Junia overhearing a very uncanny story of a rich old lady who kept a +whole troupe of profligate actors for her own private amusement, she +took her out upon the magnificent avenue of stately tombs along the +Appian Way to visit the memorial to a venerated ancestress,—a certain +Turia who had lived in the troubled days of the Second Triumvirate, +and who by her rare courage, fortitude, and intelligence had saved her +husband the noble Vespillo from disgrace and death.</p> + +<p>Turia’s husband in a long inscription recited how she had saved his +life in the Civil Wars at sore peril to her own, and how she had lived +with him afterward in perfect affection and harmony, although, being +childless, such was her devotion to him that she actually offered +to let Vespillo divorce her that he might have children by a second +marriage, promising very literally “to be a sister” to his new wife. +But her husband repudiated the strange idea with anger: “That you +should have ever thought it possible we could be separated save by +death was most horrible to me. The one sorrow that was in store for me +was that I was destined to survive you.”</p> + +<p>And thus the tablet concluded: “You were a faithful and obedient wife; +you were kind and gracious, sociable and friendly; you were assiduous +in your spinning; you followed our family and national religious rites +and admitted no foreign superstitions; you did not dress conspicuously, +nor make any kind of household display. Your management of our house +was exemplary; you tended my mother as carefully as if she had been +your own. You had innumerable other excellencies, common to the best +type of matrons, but these I mention are peculiarly your own.”<a id="FNanchor_32" href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span></p> + +<p>Turia has been dead over a hundred years, but there are still high-born +women in Rome who are her equals. One of them, Calvilla, has a fine +young son now about thirteen, who owes an infinite debt to his mother, +and whom the Emperor will presently select as the heir presumptive to +the throne. History will call him Marcus Aurelius.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER V<br> +<span class="subhed">COSTUME AND PERSONAL ADORNMENT</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>65. The Type of Roman Garments.</b>—How is it possible to mention +Roman women and Roman weddings without thoughts also of Roman costume +and personal adornment? Seldom, indeed, has there been or will there be +an age in which fine wearing apparel, and jewelry, and elaborate hair +dressing can occupy so great a place in the thoughts of both sexes as +it does in this era of the Roman Empire.</p> + +<p>Good clothes and fine rings are in fact so important that if you do +not possess them, on many social occasions you must hire them. There +were several guests at Statilia’s wedding who appeared in gala robes +with handsome jewels to match. With them went attendants who passed +for confidential freedmen; yet it was whispered they were actually the +agents of costume purveyors charged to see that every hired banqueting +gown and topaz-set ring was promptly returned.</p> + +<p>Roman garments are like the Greek: they are usually <i>wrapped on</i>, +they are not like those of a later age which must be <i>put on</i>. +Pins, buckles, and brooches usually take the place of buttons. +Sometimes, however, costumes of a different type can be met with in +the cosmopolitan crowds in the fora. Occasionally are seen Persians +and Parthians wearing tight-fitting leathern casings around their +lower limbs, like the articles that another day will style “trousers”; +and more frequently are met blond or red-headed Gauls wearing +<i>caracallæ</i>, close-fitting garments with long sleeves, slit down +in front and reaching to the knee.<a id="FNanchor_33" href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> Such dresses are, however,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span> +exceptional. Loose shawl-like apparel prevails in Rome just as with +nearly all the classical Mediterranean peoples.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_081" style="max-width: 650px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_081.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Romans wearing the Toga.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>66. The Toga, the National Latin Garment.</b>—But Roman tailors +have never been servile imitators of Sparta or Athens. Long before +Greek costumers became familiar visitors by the Tiber, the Latin folk +had found their own national garment—the <i>toga</i>. Every true +Roman is proud of the right to wear this distinctive garment, and +its use is prohibited to non-Romans, however princely or wealthy. A +group of ex-slaves has just come from the prætor, where their master +has emancipated them—thereby making them Roman citizens. In a body +they are flocking to the clothiers’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span> stalls whence they can emerge +as arrogant <i>togati</i>—lawful members of the imperial race. An +unfortunate senator has lately been condemned for malfeasance in office +and sentenced to banishment. It is not the least of his penalty that +he must also divest himself of his toga: it can never be worn by a +degraded exile. Clients have to wear this gown <i>de rigueur</i> when +they visit their patrons in the morning—he would feel insulted if they +omitted it.</p> + +<p>Anybody also having the least official business at the palace must +wear the toga; and the reigning Hadrian has just issued an edict +commanding all senators and equites to wear the garment on the city +streets at all times except when returning from dinner parties; while +the distinguished rhetorician Titus Castricius has lately delivered a +public lecture,—probably by imperial request, on “the proper costume +for senators walking about Rome,” urging obedience to the law. The toga +in short occupies a place in Roman manners hardly equaled by any other +garment in any other nation.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, many a client or nobleman, as he dons this mantle, +inwardly curses the folly of the men of “the good old times” in +selecting the toga as the national garment. It is very hot, very +clumsy, very hard to drape around one’s self without expert assistance.</p> + +<p>Everybody knows the story of old Cincinnatus, how when he was out +plowing and the committee of Senators suddenly appeared to say, “You +are named dictator; make haste to save the imperilled army”, would +not receive them until his wife had run and fetched his toga and he +was suitably clad. In his day, however, the toga was almost the only +garment worn and was hardly more than a small-sized woolen shawl. Now +one always wears a <i>tunica</i> as a house and undergarment, and the +toga has been growing ever larger and more elaborate. Dandies still +wear togas so huge as to justify Cicero’s sneer: “They wrap themselves +in <i>sails</i> not in togas.” But even for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span> decent citizens the +garment is disagreeably complicated. The use thereof is one of the +penalties for the splendid right to boast, “Civis Romanus sum!”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>67. Varieties of Togas.</b>—The normal toga is always of wool +and is usually of a dull white, the natural color of the wool; but +in the Republican days seekers for election to public office would +have their togas bleached to a conspicuous snowy whiteness, and hence +their name, <i>Candidati</i>—“extra-white” men. Boys wear the <i>toga +prætexta</i>, a toga with an elaborately embroidered purple hem. When +they put this off on reaching manhood (fourteen to sixteen) they +proudly assume the pure white toga, inwardly hoping, however, that +they can some day reappear in the <i>prætexta</i>—for it is also the +official robe of the high “curule” magistrates.</p> + +<p>More glorious still is the <i>toga picta</i> entirely of purple and +with gold embroidery, which can be worn by great officials while they +are presiding over public games, and which is used by the Emperors +on all state occasions. Quite different, of course, is the gloomy +<i>toga pulla</i>, dyed to some dark color, and worn as mourning or to +excite sympathy in some threatened calamity; <i>e.g.</i> if one is the +defendant in a dangerous lawsuit.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>68. Draping the Toga.</b>—The plain white toga, however, suffices +in most cases for most Romans. Of course, there is a vast difference +between the dirty shawls not without moth holes, which some of Calvus’s +clients have thrown around them the morning we visit his mansion, and +the garment which his special valet, Parmenio, drapes about him when +presently the Senator announces, “I must visit the Forum.”</p> + +<p>Parmenio has to be assisted by no less than three other slaves while +he literally winds the soft white mass of fine Milesian wool around +his master. When skillfully draped, the toga appears to be an easy and +elegant garment, leaving<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span> the right arm at liberty, and flowing around +the person in noble lines implying dignity and deliberation. Well can +it be called “one of the handsomest dresses ever worn by man”; but who +can tell the pains required to get the huge semi-circular fabric into +shape.<a id="FNanchor_34" href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p> + +<p>Every fold has to settle with precision; every corner has to trail to +exactly the right length; and the whole has to be so adjusted that +Calvus can walk easily without fear of dislocating his toga, although +it is without brooches or other fastenings. When at last, however, all +is ready, the results justify the effort. Its wearer appears every inch +a Senator: one of the leaders of the arrogant imperial race.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>69. The Tunica.</b>—The toga has to be worn everywhere in public, +but the instant he is back from the hot Forum, Calvus is more than +glad to fling it off. Indoors he, with all other Romans, wears the +<i>tunica</i>. The tunic is a comparatively new garment in Italy. In +early Rome probably the toga was the only clothing worn at all except +a simple undershirt or loin cloth. The tunic in fact resembles closely +the Greek <i>chiton</i>,<a id="FNanchor_35" href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> and is made much the same for men and +for women. It is a kind of long shirt fashioned by sewing two pieces +of cloth together, with holes for the arms or with short sleeves, and +secured around the waist by a girdle. Long sleeves (Gallic style) are +not unknown but they are accounted very effeminate. Without the belt +the tunic falls well down to the ankles, but it is easily shortened by +drawing the cloth up<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span> through the girdle and letting it tumble around +the waist in a loose fold.</p> + +<p>In warm weather the tunic is often the only garment that a Roman wears +indoors. In cold weather he will put a second tunic (or two or three +extra, as did Augustus) under his outer one. Like the toga the tunic is +ordinarily made of white wool, the finer the better, but, unlike the +toga, if the wearer is of the nobility, the tunic is never plain. When +the owner is an eques a narrow strip of purple (<i>angusticlavia</i>), +if a senator a broad strip (<i>laticlavia</i>), runs down the entire +length of the garment both behind and in front. This is the official +token of his rank, that all men may reverence his nobility, and one of +the chief tasks of a great man’s valets is to hang the toga so that the +purple strips on the tunic will always peep out conspicuously from the +undergarment.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>70. Capes, Cloaks, and Gala Garments.</b>—The toga and the tunic +are the two standard male garments in peace times, but they do not meet +every requirement. On festival days, unless the imperial edict is very +strictly enforced, most of the younger citizens will be seen streaming +to the theater or circus in the <i>lacerna</i>. This, at first, was +merely a short sleeveless mantle of light stuff thrown over the toga to +protect against dust or rain. Presently it was made into a more festive +garment, usually of brilliantly dyed wool, and was substituted for the +toga outright. There is a hood usually attached and it is convenient, +therefore, to wear the lacerna if one is not anxious to be recognized +on the streets; it is so very easy to conceal one’s face.</p> + +<p>In bad weather, and with poor country people in general, however, +the <i>pænula</i> is more useful. This is much like the lacerna, a +sleeveless (“Shaker”) cloak or cape, also provided with a hood, but +always made of coarse heavy material. Most travelers wear the pænula, +and it is a common garment for the slaves.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span></p> + +<p>Like the pænula in turn is a third type of swinging cloak, but usually +cut shorter,—the <i>sagum</i>, issued to soldiers. Sometimes it is +of rough material for the severest purposes, sometimes it is a truly +elegant garment for officers, floating in bright colors over flashing +armor. The generals wear a special sagum of conspicuous red, the +<i>paludamentum</i>. The sagum is, in fact, so decidedly the military +cloak that the phrase “changing the toga for the sagum” has become a +regular way of saying “being suddenly called to arms.”</p> + +<p>One can see many Oriental and Greek-style garments in Rome, but +native gentlemen have only one other article of apparel that must +be mentioned. Everybody ought to keep a gauzy and brilliantly dyed +<i>synthesis</i> for indoor wear at formal dinner parties, to wear over +the tunic. It can never be worn outdoors except during the jolly riot +of the Saturnalia, but indoors it is light, comfortable, and a fine +contrast to the heavy togas. Saffron, amethystine, and azure are the +favorite colors, and at ultra-fashionable parties it is good form for +a male guest to rise between courses and put on a new synthesis of a +different hue, held ready by his slaves.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>71. Garments of Women: the <i>Stola</i> and the +<i>Palla</i>.</b>—Calvus, of course, keeps many specimens of all +these garments in his wardrobe. The average poor citizen gets along +with a toga, a tunic or two, and probably a pænula. Gratia’s clothes +chests and presses are inevitably more ample than her husband’s, but +the garments of a Roman lady resemble those of a Greek—they are far +more like the masculine garments than are those of women of a later +age. Gratia really seldom wears any save three kinds of garments: her +tunics, her stolæ, and her pallæ.</p> + +<p>Roman ladies anxious about their figures cannot squeeze themselves +with corsets, but sometimes they do wear bands of soft leather pressed +tightly around their bodies. Then comes the tunic, extremely like the +inner tunic worn by the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span> men, but it fits the body rather more closely; +sometimes it has no sleeves, and it falls only to the knee and it +needs no belt. Over this single garment is the essential dress of the +Roman matrona, her <i>stola</i>. It is decidedly more elaborate than +the outer tunic of the men. In the main it is not sewn, but is held +together by a whole series of clasps and pins—giving an admirable +opportunity for the display of gem-set buckles. There is a girdle, +passing high, above the waist; the many folds tumble to the feet, but +at the very bottom there is an embroidered flounce or hem, and with +noble women at least this flounce is always of purple as is the border +around the neck.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_087" style="max-width: 262px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_087.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">A Roman Matron</span>: showing the <i>stola</i> and +<i>palla</i>.</p> + </div> + +<p>Like the toga, the stola is an extremely ample garment, giving its +owner a chance to display innumerable graceful folds; and like the +toga, good taste requires that it should usually be of clear white. To +wear the stola is the proud privilege of Roman matrons, and in it no +woman of light character is permitted to flaunt herself.<a id="FNanchor_36" href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> Girls put +on the stola immediately<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span> after their marriage, and even more than the +toga it is a garment of grace, permitting beautiful poses of statuesque +dignity.</p> + +<p>Outdoors a Roman lady will wrap herself in her <i>palla</i>. This +is merely a large shawl, although often with elaborate arrangement. +Gratia’s maids usually throw one third of its length over her left +shoulder, letting the end trail almost to her feet, while the remainder +is carried behind the back and wound skilfully around the wearer, +although if a head covering is needed, one can draw up some of the +cloth and form a loose and convenient hood.</p> + +<p>Every woman in Rome possesses a palla; and the wealthy, of course, own +whole arsenals of them in every possible size, weight, material, color, +and embroidery, suitable for all purposes from winter travel to snaring +susceptible youths beside one in the theater.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>72. Materials for Garments. Wool and Silk.</b>—So much for the +types of garments. Needless to say that their fabrics and details are +infinite. <i>Wool</i> is still the standard material. Even now “in +these degenerate days” the best Roman matrons keep the spindles and +distaffs working with their maids in the peristylia, and make up a +large part of all the coarser garments needed by the household. Calvus +takes pride in wearing and exhibiting a really handsome toga and in +telling his friends “my Gratia made that”; but various other senators +can utter like boasts, their wives merely imitating such empresses as +Livia, who wove all Augustus’s everyday garments.</p> + +<p>On the great villa estates the slaves are kept from busy idleness in +winter by weaving cloth, not merely for themselves, but for their +masters’ families in the city. But such fabrics, ordinarily, are +decidedly coarse. There are really fine woolens made in southern Italy, +but the very best comes from the East. “Milesian wool” is a trade name +in every market,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span> though very likely much of it actually is from Tyre, +Sidon, or Alexandria. A good deal of linen is woven up into comfortable +house dresses. Enough cotton comes in from the Orient to make it no +rarity for superior garments, but it is too scarce for any common use. +What every Roman of fashion dotes upon, however, is <i>silk</i>.</p> + +<p>Far away in the East is a half-mythical land, <i>Serica</i> or +<i>Seres</i>. Hardly any European has ever penetrated there,<a id="FNanchor_37" href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> but +caravan traders pass along small parcels of a wonderful material +alleged to grow on trees. Garments made thereof are incomparably +lovely; but the material is worth its full weight in gold or even +more. As a result the stuff is spun up into the flimsiest and gauziest +gala dresses imaginable, and these are often partly made of cotton. +Seneca has written in disgust “We see silken garments, if indeed, they +can be called ‘garments’ which neither afford protection to the body, +nor concealment to modesty.” For all that women like Statilia and her +mother will be miserable if they have not plenty of “Serician tissues” +wherewith to float into the Amphitheater or Circus and dazzle their +rivals in a city where, as complains Juvenal: “Everybody always dresses +above his means.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>73. Styles of Arranging Garments. Fullers and Cleaners.</b>—With +garments so simple in their sewing as togas and stolas there is little +call in Rome for exclusive tailoring establishments or for fashionable +makers of “gowns.” Practically all purchased clothing, however costly, +is “ready-made,” although the shifting styles in girding, arranging the +folds, buckles, etc., are infinite. For example, there is a special +arrangement of the toga in peculiarly ample folds known as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span> the +“Gabinian cincture,” and this form is practically required every time a +man joins in an important sacrifice.</p> + +<p>If, nevertheless, the dressmaker’s skill is simple, there is constant +demand for that of the <i>cleaner’s</i>, whose art is brought to great +perfection. The huge squares of fine woolen seem continually going +to or coming from the fullers’ establishments. The fullers pass for +peculiarly jovial, friendly people, and the “jolly fuller” is a stock +character in comedy.</p> + +<p>Soap is a Gallic invention and it is just coming into fairly common +use. Garments are still cleansed, however, with “fuller’s meal,” a +kind of alkaline earth. Wherever you go around the humbler parts of +Rome you hear a monotonous song being trolled over and over, and +coming usually from a pungently smelling establishment. It is the +fullers’ <i>tripudium</i> (“three step”), sung as they tread out the +clothes in the great vats all day long. After the direct cleaning, a +fine garment has to be recarded to bring up the soft nap, then it is +carefully smoothed in a large wooden press with powerful screws.<a id="FNanchor_38" href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> +Every household can do its own laundry work, but in no later age will +the “cleaner” reign with the supremacy which he enjoys in Rome. His +justification comes when, at great public assemblies, thousands of +togas and stolas veritably shine under the Italian sun like newly +fallen snow.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>74. Barber Shops. The Revived Wearing of Beards.</b>—Rome, too, is +a city of barbers. Their shops abound everywhere and are great places +for lounging and gossip. Most men have their hair clipped quite short, +although a good many dandies delight in wearing fringes or rows of +short crisped curls (as did Nero) often reeking with pomatum. People +who dislike appearing old sometimes use black hair dye; and not a few +elderly senators are said to wear wigs.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_091" style="max-width: 676px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_091.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Scene before a Barber Shop.</p> + </div> + +<p>The barber shops, however, have recently received a terrific blow; and +loud is the lament of the entire profession shared in by all those +private “house barbers” who care for the wealthy. Since not long after +300 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> Romans have been smooth shaven, beards ordinarily +being counted the sign of rusticity or of poverty; although teachers +of philosophy wore long whiskers as a kind of professional badge. The +day when a youth shaved off his first beard was celebrated almost as +elaborately as the day he assumed the pure white “manly” toga. But to +general consternation the reigning Emperor Hadrian, in his passionate +admiration for Periclean Athens, has astonished all Rome by appearing +with a full beard. Of course, every courtier and government official +has loyally imitated him. Of course, every senator and eques has with +equal loyalty done likewise. Feminine protests have been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span> utterly +vain. Beards, sometimes closely trimmed, sometimes long and venerable, +have blossomed on almost every manly chin across the entire Empire. +Imperial Rome will henceforth continue bearded until the era of +Constantine, nearly two hundred years, when the razor will suddenly +resume its sway. Such is the power of Cæsarian example!</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_092" style="max-width: 750px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_092.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Roman Female Heads</span>: showing elaborate +arrangement of the hair.</p> + </div> + + +<p><b>75. Fashions in Women’s Hairdressing. Hair Ornaments.</b>—If the +barbers are unhappy, their gentler rivals, the <i>ornatrices</i>, who +dress the hair of ladies, still reign in full glory. No Roman girl +dreams of cutting off her hair, but the modes of arranging it are, as +says Ovid, “More numerous than the leaves on the oak or the bees on +Mount Hybla.” Fashions come and go with astonishing rapidity, and we +have seen how Gratia’s statue was devised so that a new coiffure could +be substituted for the old (see p. <a href="#Page_53">53</a>).</p> + +<p>As a rule young girls bind back their hair in simple coils or clusters +of curls, but some of the styles permitted to them from the moment +they become matrons defy easy description. The prevailing mode rather +favors building up the hair in an elaborate semi-circular mound in +front with ringlets and plaits behind; but many a lady appears with +a perfect tower-like structure that would collapse instantly were it +not an affair compacted with extreme art. Of course, such edifices put +a premium on false hair, preferably blonde from Germany, or even on +wigs. Auburn hair, however, is extremely fashionable, and many a lady +buys the expensive “Batavian caustic” supposed to bleach to the proper +shade. Even very modest women can rejoice in great treasure chests of +hair ornaments, elaborate hair pins, and combs made of precious metal +or fine boxwood, ivory, and tortoise shell; besides all kinds of snoods +and wimples usually of scarlet, amethystine, or ivory. Noble dames +will keep at least one <i>diadem</i>, a long band of golden chains set +with as many pearls and jewels as possible. On simple social occasions +they will wear<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span> their hair in a net of gold thread. As for the very +wealthy, they have one simple and favorite method of displaying their +riches—that of bidding their maids, almost every day, to sprinkle the +whole coiffure liberally with pure gold dust.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>76. Elaborate Toilets.</b>—Needless to say, the toilet is, to +ladies of fashion, a slow and serious business, consuming most of the +morning.<a id="FNanchor_39" href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> Statilia’s mother, for example, who is now old enough to +have to guard her complexion, has as her first duty that of suffering +her maidens to peel off the thick layer of cosmetic paste smeared upon +her face ere retiring. She complains that her husband is stingy because +he will not let her imitate Poppæa (Nero’s Empress), who took a bath in +asses’ milk every morning to improve her looks.</p> + +<p>Such a lady, of course, requires two maids to dress her and to pile the +masses of hair upon her head; the pair being supported and directed by +an old freedwoman who “assists at the council,” skilfully improves and +flatters, and who perhaps can do something to assuage the domina’s fury +if the latter’s silver mirror reveals a misplaced curl, and she stabs +the clumsy maid’s arm with a sharp hairpin, or even shrieks out in +wrath “Bring in the whipper!”</p> + +<p>Blessed with such “tiers and storys” upon their heads, Roman women +seldom need anything else out-of-doors except a veil or hood in extreme +heat or bad weather. There are no milliners’ shops along the Via +Lata or Vicus Tuscus. The men likewise seldom bother about hats, and +everybody on normal days goes about town bareheaded, although travelers +have the hoods upon their pænulas. Workingmen, however, who are +continually exposed to the weather, wear small conical felt hats—the +pilei; and travelers who find hoods<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span> irksome can keep off the sun by a +comfortable broad-brimmed hat, the <i>petasus</i>.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>77. Sandals and Shoes.</b>—Shoes, however, are more necessary and +nobody but a slave goes barefooted around the streets. In the house +nevertheless it is sufficient to wear very light and simple sandals, +mere leather soles fastened to the foot with thongs; and even these are +laid aside when you stretch out on the couch for meals. To “call for +your sandals” is the same thing as “leaving the table.”</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_095" style="max-width: 437px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_095.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Sandals.</p> + </div> + +<p>Outdoors one often puts on the <i>calceus</i>, which is practically +like the shoe of other ages, although fastened not so much by lacings +as by a complicated system of straps. Women’s shoes are much like +men’s, although inevitably lighter and more often made of brightly +colored leathers. High magistrates are proud to wear red “Patrician +shoes” with an extra elaborate scheme of bands and an ivory ornament +“C” conspicuous upon the outside of the ankle.<a id="FNanchor_40" href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> Ordinary senators +wear red shoes without the “C”; and equites a kind of tall boot +recalling the days when to be an eques really implied being a horseman. +Soldiers naturally clatter about in hob-nailed <i>caligæ</i>, ponderous +sandals with such heavy straps and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span> thongs that they become practically +marching boots. As for stockings, they are all but unknown in Rome.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>78. The Mania for Jewels and Rings.</b>—But what dandy and what +fashionable woman is content to appear merely with the standard +quantity of clothing? The mania for jewelry is inordinate. Teachers of +oratory have to warn their pupils as did the great Quintilian that “the +hand [of a good public speaker] should not be covered with rings, and +especially these should not be set below the middle joint.” Exquisites +of both sexes, in fact, often wear half a dozen rings at once; all with +as fine jewels as possible, and with a separate “light” set of rings +for summer, and a “heavy” set for winter.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_096" style="max-width: 285px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_096.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Roman Jewelry and Ornaments.</p> + </div> + +<p>The jewelry work is, of course, exquisite. In the best shops by +the Campus Martius can be seen rings of magnificent chasing and +carving, set with onyx, sard, banded agate, amethyst, ruby, and +sapphire,<a id="FNanchor_41" href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a>—some plain,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span> some engraved, and all of a beauty which +any later age can envy. Inevitably there are pendants, coronets, and +innumerable brooches, and buckles every whit as fine.</p> + +<p>In addition, every Roman of equestrian or senatorial rank will wear +with pride one perfectly <i>plain</i> gold ring (like a later wedding +ring) as the token of his own nobility, and as the memorial of a time +when a simple gold ring was the sign of real wealth. Every person of +consequence also will wear a special signet ring, often an intaglio cut +with some mythological character. The impression of this frequently +takes the place of a personal signature, and the illicit use of such a +ring constitutes the gravest kind of forgery.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>79. Pearls in Enormous Favor.</b>—Time fails to speak of the +beautiful cameos, intaglios, engraved medals, and huge engraved +gems which are the triumphs of the lapidaries, and which many rich +connoisseurs put in their collections; but one must not omit certain +precious objects which Romans seem to prize above all others: +<i>pearls</i>. The more pearls apparently that the fashionable can +spangle upon shoes, dress, fingers, and (for women) upon the hair, the +better. The great jewelers will say that they sell more pearls than all +the ordinary gems put together.</p> + +<p>The imperial councilors protest in vain at the ceaseless export of gold +to India to pay for the unprofitable imports of pearls from Taprobane +(Ceylon), but the mania for such gems continues. People still tell +how Julius Cæsar gave to Servilia, the mother of Marcus Brutus, a +single weight pearl worth six million sesterces ($240,000); or how +the inordinately rich Lollia Paulina, one of Caligula’s overnumerous +wives, appeared at a dinner party, with great pearls spangled over +her unlovely person worth all together every whit of forty million +sesterces ($1,600,000).<a id="FNanchor_42" href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> There are no such<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span> tantalizing collections +as hers now in Rome, but many a lady of modest means has in her coffers +a few pearls large and beautiful; and the cynics declare that in a +crowd “the sight of a big pearl in a woman’s ear is better than a +lictor to clear the way for her.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>80. Perfumes: Their Constant Use.</b>—Nevertheless, something +else is needful for a fine toilet beyond clothes, rings, and pearls, +namely, perfumes. The old-line Italians were a coarse and hardy folk; +and later the Orientals, whom slavery or self-interest has brought +into Italy, have a truly barbaric love for powerful odors. Even modest +women, therefore, of reputed good taste like Gratia, will appear in +public charged with scents which another generation would find highly +unwelcome.</p> + +<p>There is no alcohol in which to carry perfumery. The odorous substances +have to be dissolved in olive oil, making them at best greasy and +liable to grow flat and obnoxious after a little exposure. But +perfumery is practically indispensable. Men use it hardly less than do +women. At fine banquets vials of perfumery are passed among the guests +to pour over their heads and hands. The foppish youths who wave the +hair on their heads, and render the rest of their bodies sleek and +shiny with depilatories, simply reek with strong perfumery.</p> + +<p>On almost every important street you can find the little shops, usually +kept by women, where are sold scented powders, fragrant oils for +bathers, and the precious bottles of gold, silver, glass, and alabaster +for the unguents, as well as the standard perfumes themselves. +Profitless it is to catalogue these last; Pliny the Elder has listed +twenty-one standard varieties mostly named after favorite flowers +(<i>e.g.</i> narcissus)<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span> or Oriental spices (cinnamon, etc.).<a id="FNanchor_43" href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> Every +funeral demands its supply of myrrh; every sacrifice a quantity of +Arabian frankincense. The perfume trade with the East is an important +factor in Roman commerce, but very many of the popular unguents are +compounded in Italy. The great city of Capua in Campania grows rich +by the industry;<a id="FNanchor_44" href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> and the “perfumery interest” is one of the prime +business elements in the economic life of the Empire. So much for the +garments and ornaments which typical Romans put upon their persons. It +is now right to ask concerning a more important matter still—what do +they have for dinner?</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER VI<br> +<span class="subhed">FOOD AND DRINK. HOW THE DAY IS SPENT. THE DINNER</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>81. Romans Fond of the Table. Gourmandizing. The Famous +Apicius.</b>—Seldom can there be another age when the importance of +good eating and drinking occupies the place that it does in Rome. +Vast numbers of coarse-grained people devoid of the least ability to +criticize fine bronzes or to comprehend Homer or Virgil can go into +ecstasies over superior oysters. Epicurean philosophers can argue +that “the true, the beautiful and the good” are to be as genuinely +apprehended by the enjoyment of ravishing tastes as by ravishing music. +Gastronomy has become a kind of supreme science and art, and no slaves +sell for better prices than truly expert cooks.</p> + +<p>Repeatedly huge fortunes have been ruined merely because their +possessors wished to surpass all rivals with the extravagant +refinements of gluttony. Since 69 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> and the coming to power +of the simpler Flavian Cæsars there has been a fortunate decline in +many absurdities, but there are still plenty of people who admire and +envy the fame of Apicius, the true example for the gourmand.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_101" style="max-width: 384px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_101.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Roman Banquet Scene.</span> <i>After Von Falke.</i></p> + </div> + +<p>Marcus Apicius flourished in Tiberius’s age; and he developed a +positive genius for inventing new sources of culinary delight. Every +quarter of the Roman world was ransacked to find strange objects +whereon to whet his appetite. In Hadrian’s day people continue to +eat Apician cakes and Apician sauces, such as are described in his +encyclopædic cook books. But although he inherited a hundred million +sesterces<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span> ($4,000,000), at last his steward reported glumly, “You +have only ten million ($400,000) left.” How was it possible for a true +gourmand to exist in such poverty?—Apicius, therefore, committed +suicide rather than live on commonplace fare! Many will tell you that +he showed the right spirit and that his busts stand as a kind of +inspiration for dozens of rich epicures in their marble triclinia.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>82. Vitellius, the Imperial Glutton.</b>—One of Apicius’s +disciples, Vitellius, rose to Empire. In his brief reign +(April-December 69 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>) before Vespasian’s troops killed him, +he taught his subjects how truly a man can live to eat. He had trained +himself by the constant use of emetics to devour four heavy meals per +day.<a id="FNanchor_45" href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> His senatorial friends, obliged to invite him to their houses, +never dared to offer him a dinner costing less than 400,000 sesterces +($16,000). His brother gave him a banquet at which were served “2000 +choice fishes and 7000 birds”; but he returned the favor by giving a +feast at the imperial palace in which he served his favorites with +“The Shield of Minerva”—a kind of salad-supreme made of “the livers +of charfish, the brains of pheasants and peacocks, the tongues of +flamingoes, and the entrails of lampreys.” Warships had been sent as +far as the Ægean or Spain to round up some of these viands. It was +lucky for the treasury that his reign was a very short one.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>83. Simple Diet of the Early Romans.</b>—And yet these worthies +gorged and guzzled in a city whose founders had been famous for their +abstemiousness. For many a generation even prosperous Romans had lived +very largely on coarse bread or even on a coarser wheat porridge +(<i>puls</i>). Wheat porridge was what supplied the brawn and courage +to the legionaries who brought to ruin Pyrrhus, Hannibal, Philip<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span> of +Macedon, and Antiochus. They were fortunate if their meal was not made +of barley, later counted as being barely fit for inferior slaves.</p> + +<p>Even senators, we are told, were glad to pick a few green vegetables in +their gardens to help out the porridge. On feast days there would be a +little pork or bacon from the hanging rack, and if there was a public +sacrifice the worshipers might each take home a lump of beef. Such was +the dietary of the men who originally made possible the fortunes of an +Apicius, and as late as 174 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> there were no professional +cooks in Rome. Now, however, there are plenty of purple-fringed +exquisites who “can tell at first bite whether an oyster comes from +Circeii, or the Lucerine rocks or clear from Britain; or at one glance +discover the native shore of a sea-urchin.”</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_103" style="max-width: 342px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_103.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Grist Mill turned by Horse and filled and emptied by +a Slave.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>84. Bread and Vegetables.</b>—However, there are still multitudes +who have to be content with very simple fare, and for them bread in +some form is (as with all the Mediterranean peoples) very literally +“the staff of life.” In the great mansions there is, of course, a +bakehouse for the huge familia, but the bulk of people frequent the +numerous public bakeries, near which the mills driven by patient +donkeys or by less patient slaves are incessantly grinding flour.</p> + +<p>The standard loaves are made very flat, of moderate size, and about +two inches thick, their backs often marked with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span> six or eight notches. +There is a cheap bread of coarse grain (<i>panis sordidus</i>) for the +humblest; a second quality (<i>panis secundus</i>) for better class +purchasers, and also the very white and sweet <i>siligineus</i>. You +ask for “Picenian bread” if you want fine biscuit, and for <i>libæ</i> +if you desire smaller rolls. At feasts there will be wonderful +structures of pastry, and by use of honey and chopped fruits sweet +“cake” truly delectable comes out of many ovens.</p> + +<p>Vegetables and fruits can hardly play the part that they will in +later gastronomy: potatoes, tomatoes, oranges, lemons—all these are +grievously wanting. But there are admirable cabbages, “the finest +vegetable in the world,” declared Cato the Elder, and turnips, the +favorite dish of tough old Manius Curius, conqueror of the Samnites. +Around Rome, for many miles, are long stretches of profitable truck +gardens, which send an incessant supply of artichokes, asparagus, +beans, beets, cucumbers, lentils, melons, onions, peas, and pumpkins +into the city. A visitor to Rome should promptly accustom himself to +garlic; and there is a certain fashionable rusticity about garlic +eaters, as if they were trying to bring back the flavor and odor of +“the good old times.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>85. Fruits, Olives, Grapes, and Spices.</b>—Italy, of course, is +an excellent fruit country. In the markets are apples, pears, plums, +and quinces, besides an abundance of very fine nuts, such as walnuts, +filberts, and almonds. Peaches, apricots, cherries, and pomegranates +are familiar, although some of these are rather late introductions to +the peninsula from the East. Of course, in season there never fail +magnificent olives and grapes which have abounded in Italy since time +immemorial.</p> + +<p>A great demand exists, too, for all kinds of salad greens; cresses +and fine lettuce, also edible mallows. Poppy-seed mixed with honey is +a standard dish for desserts, and such<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span> seasonings as anise, fennel, +mint, and mustard can be bought in all the innumerable little grocery +shops scattered over Rome. In the larger foodshops can be had likewise +those Oriental spices in heavy demand by the epicures; and also very +costly imported fruits, often preserved with great ingenuity in an age +that knows not the use of canning processes, refrigerating plants, or +sugar.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>86. Meat and Poultry.</b>—The demand for meat has been steadily +increasing with the growth of luxury and economic prosperity. Butchers’ +shops abound. Poor people buy goats’ flesh, which, however, is +completely disdained by the finical. Many citizens nevertheless never +taste beef or mutton except when it is distributed in the form of a +sacrifice at some of the great public festivals; and even for the rich +beef is not in extraordinary favor.</p> + +<p>Pork, however, is always popular. The despised Jews never seem to the +Romans to show their national folly more clearly than in refusing to +eat thereof. Pork in all forms, especially bacon and pork sausages +figure in every important banquet; and up in the Apennines in the vast +acorn forests, uncounted herds of swine are always fattening to satisfy +the incessant demands of the great capital. Poultry is on the whole in +greater demand than meat.<a id="FNanchor_46" href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> Squawking coops of common fowl, ducks, +and geese are on sale at almost every street corner. There is also +good money in raising upon country preserves quantities of partridges, +thrushes, and grouse, and even of cranes. In Cicero’s day peacocks made +a very fashionable dish, and they are still in request, although losing +their old popularity. Hares, rabbits, venison are comparatively cheap, +and everybody with a price can buy wild boar at the better purveyors’ +shops.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>87. Fish in Great Demand.</b>—Rome, however, somewhat resembles +Athens in one particular; the butcher shops are less important than the +fish dealers’ stalls.<a id="FNanchor_47" href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> Poor people eat salt fish or pickled fish, +from little sardines to slices of the big <i>cybium</i>, as forming +frequently the only break in an otherwise vegetarian diet. They also +make up salt fish with various vegetables and cheese into a kind of +fishballs. A man of income, however, is unhappy without his fresh +fish daily. This creates a serious and expensive problem for Rome. +There are a few eels and pike of good flavor caught right in the Tiber +between the bridges, but the great fish supply must be brought from a +distance—often in warm weather without aid of refrigerating plants. +Frequently along the road from Ostia, and very often down the Via Appia +clear from Puteoli can be seen large wagons tearing in hot haste. They +bring not government dispatches but fresh fish that will frequently +command absurd prices in the city.</p> + +<p>Often all kinds of sea-food are transported still alive in small tanks; +and sometimes the distance whence they can be imported is astonishing. +The best turbots (large flat fish) come from Ravenna on the Adriatic. +Eels can be brought in good flavor from Sicily and even from Spain. +Gourmands go into ecstasies over oysters from Circeii or Baiæ, but of +late people wishing to astonish their fashionable friends have actually +claimed to import such shellfish from Britain. The real fish for the +epicure, notwithstanding, is by common confession the noble mullet. The +flavor of the best specimens is ravishing, and, for a truly large and +perfect mullet, the prices paid are astonishing. It is a common story +that a certain Crispinus, a satellite of Domitian’s, once gave 6000 +sesterces ($240) for a single six-pound mullet; “More than the cost of +the slave-fisherman!” indignantly exclaimed the outraged Juvenal.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span></p> + +<p>Many great nobles, however, disdain having to depend on the public +markets. At their seaside villas they have huge salt-water tanks and +artificial fishponds; therein mullet, turbot, carp, and eels can be +bred, fattened, and brought to perfection, and on the day of a feast a +slave will hurry them up to Rome still gasping.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>88. Olive Oil and Wine: Their Universal Use.</b>—Supplementing +the salt fish and bread, the poor of the capital, like all genuine +Mediterranean folk, seldom fail to get their oil and wine. Olives are +gladly eaten green, ripened, or preserved in great quantities with salt +or pickle, but their greatest value comes from their oil. To Rome as +to Athens olive oil is not merely food; it largely takes the place of +toilet soap, and it supplies also the most common illuminant (see “A +Day in Old Athens,” p. 177). It is a complete substitute for butter in +the average dietary, often making dry or moldy bread palatable, and as +earlier stated (p. 98), it is the basis for most of the ointments and +perfumery wherein the average citizen delights.</p> + +<p>As for drink, practically every Roman has his wine. There are, indeed, +beverages made from wheat and barley, and also from fermented quince +juice, but for daily purposes beer and distilled liquors never appear +at Italian banquets. Cider is sometimes drunk, and a little so-called +“wine” made from mulberries; but the enormous vineyards existing in +every part of the country testify to the importance of ordinary grape +wine.</p> + +<p>Vintners’ stalls are almost as common along the streets as bakeries. +The drink they sell in jars, skins, or small flagons is sometimes +decidedly resinous after the Greek fashion, and in any case is +extremely sour, so that a large admixture of honey is often required +to make the favorite sweet <i>mulsum</i>. In any case only sheer +barbarians will drink their wine undiluted, and really good wine can +stand as much as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span> eight parts of water to one of itself without losing +too much flavor.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>89. Vintages and Varieties of Wine.</b>—There are as many varieties +of wine as there are regions around the Mediterranean. Each produces +a vintage that is tolerable, and some are highly select. Your average +poor plebeian can get a large jug of palatable stuff for a sesterce +(4 cents). The wealthy will think nothing of paying heavily for +<i>amphoræ</i> (tall jars) of choice old Setinian (the best wine in +Italy), or for Falernian, Albanian, or Massic which count next among +the native vintages. If, however, you are giving a formal dinner +party, etiquette dictates that at least one imported drink should be +served. It makes an excellent impression to bring in Chian, Thasian, or +Lesbian from the Ægean, or even Mareotian from Egypt and the splendid +Chalybonium from Damascus, the delight of Oriental kings.</p> + +<p>In summer time wines, of course, are drunk cold, and at luxurious +banquets they are even chilled with snow water. In winter, however, +you will often see a kind of bronze samovar, heated by charcoal, used +for preparing <i>calda</i>, warm water and wine, heavily charged with +spices; and at the cheap eating houses the calda counter is often +thronged, especially on chilly afternoons. Common soldiers, slaves, and +plebeians of the lowest class have a special beverage all their own, +namely <i>posca</i>, which is simply vinegar mixed with enough water to +make it palatable. It probably forms a really refreshing drink, if one +can acquire the taste for it.<a id="FNanchor_48" href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p> + +<p>Time fails to tell of various rare vintages which are treasured by the +epicures as if worth their weight in gold. In 121 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> there +was a wonderful yield of wine called Vina Opimia from the then Consul +Opimius. By Hadrian’s day<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span> the last drops of this precious liquor have +long since disappeared, but men still discuss the traditions of its +nectarous flavor. In every great house the wine cellar retains a number +of web-covered and dirty glass jars carefully sealed with gypsum, and +with labels showing that they were laid away perhaps a hundred years +ago. As for the undesirability of wine-drinking, that idea has hardly +crossed any man’s head; and Horace in Augustus’s day voiced a universal +thought when he sang that good wine, “Made the wise confess their +secret lore; brought hope to anxious souls, and gave the poor strength +to lift up his horn.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>90. Kitchens and the Niceties of Cookery.</b>—With such attention +to good eating and drinking a Roman kitchen necessarily requires +an elaborate equipment. Cook stoves there are none; but there are +extensive masonry or brick hearths. The charcoal fire heats the stones +until a broad surface is glowing and ready for remarkable culinary +achievements. The head cook in Calvus’s house rejoices in a great +battery of copper utensils often of truly elegant shape; and copper +ware (more expensive than tin, but far more durable) appears in every +Roman kitchen. There are pastry molds, dippers, ladles, great spoons, +little spoons, baking pans for small cakes, in short, everything to +delight the heart of the housewife of another age.</p> + +<p>Nobody expects us to investigate rudely the peculiar dishes evolved in +the kitchen of a genuine gourmand. Cookery, the disciples of Apicius +aver, is not a common handicraft, but the noblest of sciences. Only a +thrice-initiated epicure, a man who has carefully trained his tongue +to discriminate the least shades of taste, and his fingers to endure +hot viands so that he may pluck out the morsels at precisely the proper +temperature, can appreciate many of the refinements.</p> + +<p>Calvus laughs, indeed, at a friend of his who lately insisted on +serving “a wild boar from Lucania caught when the South<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span> wind was +blowing,” with “honey apples picked under a waning moon,” and +“lampreys caught just before spawning.” Such people will also explain +dogmatically that “eggs of oblong shape have better flavor than round +ones;” and that “after drinking wine the appetite is better stimulated +by dried ham than by boiled sausage,” or that “it spoils the flavor of +Massic wine to strain it through linen; but you can clear it by mixing +with the lees of Falernian and then adding the yolk of a pigeon’s +egg.”<a id="FNanchor_49" href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> A new dish coming loyally into favor is that to which Hadrian +is personally so partial—a huge meat pie wherein pheasant, peacock, +sow’s udder, and wild-boar flesh are all baked up together.</p> + +<p>Needless to say many coarse fellows who boast themselves “epicures” +really are merely gluttons. Their appetites have become simply animal. +Rome has plenty of twin-brothers to that Santra derided by Martial, who +at a banquet “asked three times for boar’s neck, four times for the +loin, then for hare, thrushes, and oysters.” After that he bolted sweet +cakes, and finally devoid of all decency hid some fruit and a cooked +dove in the folds of his gown and sneaked home with a small jar of wine!</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>91. A Roman Gentleman’s Morning: Breakfast (<i>jentaculum</i>) +and the Visit to the Forum.</b>—However, even gluttons like Santra +spend all the earlier part of the day under conditions of relative +abstemiousness. Romans never eat three hearty meals a day; they merely +stay their stomachs until dinner, the event they ordinarily look +forward to from early morning. In Calvus’s house everybody is supposed +to rise at gray dawn. Just as the first bars of light are making +darkness visible a <i>decuria</i> (squad of ten) of slaves under a +chamberlain (<i>atriensis</i>) brushes down the atrium and peristylium +before the master and mistress rise and are dressed by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span> their body +servants. As promptly as possible these noble folk are served, often +in their chambers, with their breakfast, the <i>jentaculum</i>—merely +a few pieces of fine bread, sprinkled with salt or dipped in wine, and +with a few raisins and olives, and a little cheese added. If Calvus is +now expecting to go on a journey or to put in a hard day debating in +the Senate, he may however call for some eggs and a cup of heartening +mulsum.</p> + +<p>After that, the clients are let into the atrium, greet their patron +with their <i>aves</i>, receive his counter greetings, and get their +money doles for service (see p. <a href="#Page_150">150</a>). Next, upon an ordinary day, +Calvus calls for one of his second-best togas, and issues forth. If the +Senate is convening, he, of course, seeks the Curia. If not, he will +often visit his banker upon the Via Sacra to talk over investments, +will call at the mansion of a sick friend, will go to witness a will +for another friend (a very familiar ceremony), or will go to one of the +Basilicas, where still another friend is arguing a case, and expects +all his best acquaintance—the more distinguished the better—to sit +near him and applaud as he makes his points. During all these rounds +Calvus is, of course, followed by some two dozen clients and freedmen +as well as by at least as many slaves.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>92. The Afternoon and Dinner-Time. Importance of the Dinner +(<i>cena</i>).</b>—After that it is near the sixth hour (12 +<span class="allsmcap">M.</span>). All over Rome work ceases almost automatically; the +poorer classes make for the cook shops or itinerant food venders; while +people of rank either go home or accept the hospitality of friends for +the mid-day lunch, the <i>prandium</i>. This is a real meal, although +taken as informally as possible. The food is mostly cold,—bread, +salads, olives, cheeses, and meats remaining from last night’s dinner; +although sometimes there are hot dishes, such as hams and pigs’ heads, +and a good deal of common wine is drunk.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span></p> + +<p>During the next hour everybody who can possibly spare the time takes +a short siesta. Rome, in fact, in summer seems to have gone to sleep +under the glaring sun. Then for the humbler folk toil resumes; +while the fortunate classes make for the great baths where, indeed, +under the guise of sociability a great deal of real business can be +transacted. By the ninth hour (3. <span class="allsmcap">P.M.</span>) Calvus and Gratia +alike have usually finished all the formal duties for the day and are +being escorted homeward preparatory to the standard climax of every +four-and-twenty hours—the dinner.</p> + +<p>The dinner (<i>cena</i>) is always eaten at home or at the house of +some friend. It is so strictly personal an affair that there are +almost no first-class, handsomely appointed, public restaurants in +Rome, although there is a superabundance of cheaper eating houses, +yet many of these close up during the afternoon. There are almost no +other evening entertainments—no receptions, no balls, no theaters, +no concerts.<a id="FNanchor_50" href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> But Italians in every age have been a sociable, +talk-loving, gregarious people, and the dinner seems to many of them +apparently the “be all and end all” of existence.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>93. Dinner Hunters and Parasites (“Shadows”).</b>—Wealthy and +popular personages never have to bother about the dinner problem; every +night they can invite whom they desire, or be sure of a summons to a +congenial board. Plenty of substantial citizens are willing and happy +to join in a simple family meal in the good old style, the master +reclining on a couch, with his wife in a somewhat more conventional +attitude beside him, the younger children sitting on a lower couch, the +freedmen and more important slaves arranged on benches at a respectful +distance.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span></p> + +<p>The city nevertheless abounds in shabby-genteel individuals or social +climbers who are miserable every afternoon because some senator or an +eques does not tell them, “Come home to dinner!” For example, there +is a certain ubiquitous Selius. He hangs about the law courts, and +if a pleader is rich and noble, is always interrupting with a loud +“Excellent!” or “How clever!” Some afternoons, however, he is seen +dragging about, “the picture of misery.” Has his wife just died or his +steward embezzled? Not so. He “must dine alone at home.” Thus there +develops a type of high-class parasites, “<i>shadows</i>,” men of thick +hide and nimble wit who snap at every possible excuse for thrusting +into a dinner party, and who are willing to pay for the least honored +place on the couches by becoming the butts of the jests, or by bringing +laughter on themselves by such feats as swallowing whole cheese cakes +at a mouthful.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>94. The Standard Dinner Party—Nine Guests.</b>—In Athens in other +days a delightful informality prevailed at banquets. The number of +guests was seldom fixed, and it was quite proper to intrude two or +three more at the last minute. Romans are more grave, methodical, and, +be it said, more commonplace. The standard size for a dinner party is +determined by an almost inflexible custom—nine. Three couches, three +guests to a couch;—that number can concentrate around a single set of +serving tables, and let everybody mingle easily in the conversation.</p> + +<p>Of course, you can get along with fewer guests, but it is the height +of meanness to have more than three to a couch. For a larger affair +one must therefore have two or three or more triclinia,—eighteen or +twenty-seven guests, etc. Unlike Athens, however, it is perfectly +proper to invite high-born ladies to mixed dinner parties, although +not to the free and easy drinking bouts that sometimes follow; and +the women apparently recline on the couches with perfect decorum and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span> +modesty. Nevertheless, “stag” parties are extremely common, and one +such, of a very conventional nature, Calvus gave recently in honor of a +friend, Manlius, who was just departing as <i>proquæstor</i> (assistant +governor) of Africa.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>95. Preparing the Dinner and Mustering the Guests.</b>—The guests +were invited by personal greetings at the Forum or Baths of Trajan +except one who had to be summoned by slave messenger at his home. +However two places on the couches have been left vacant deliberately +to let Manlius invite any two acquaintances he desired—a frequent +prerogative of the guest of honor. The dinner was to be a strictly +decorous affair, and, therefore, it did not begin before the tenth hour +(4 <span class="allsmcap">P.M.</span>). If Calvus had desired a carouse, he might have begun +at 3 <span class="allsmcap">P.M.</span> in order to get plenty of leeway for a long riotous +evening; but “early dinners” are ordinarily as great a reproach in Rome +as “late dinners” will be later.</p> + +<p>During the morning while the master-cook was tyrannizing over his +scullions in the kitchen, and evolving various triumphs in pastry, the +chamberlain, an upper-slave, was standing whip in hand over a whole +platoon of lower slaves, giving orders like a centurion: “Sweep and +scrub the pavement!” “Polish up those pillars!” “Down with all those +spider webs!” “One of you clean the plain silver ware, and another +the embossed dishes!” The whole mansion, therefore, was furbished up +thoroughly, for a few signs of dirt before dinner guests is the most +disgraceful of shortcomings.</p> + +<p>By the tenth hour the triclinium was in perfect order. The three +elegant sofas with purple cushions embroidered with gold thread were +arranged around the finest citrus-wood table. Small pillows were +laid upon the cushions to mark the positions of the feasters and for +them to thrust under their elbows as they lay and ate. Presently the +street before the vestibule became jammed with the retinues of the +eight<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span> guests as each swung up in his litter. Calvus greeted each of +the invited friends in the atrium, while the bulk of their escorts +turned back home to return again with torches when the party should be +over; but each guest was followed into the house by his own special +valet, who took off his shoes as soon as he stretched himself out upon +the couch, and then stood by to help Calvus’s servants serve his own +master. The triclinium was thus a decidedly crowded place, with eight +strange slaves present, besides a mobilization of all the handsomest +and most efficient of the house servants.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>96. Arrangement of the Couches: Placing the Guests.</b>—The guests +were each in the gay <i>synthesis</i> or other gala costume, and +quite in the mood to obey the grave <i>nomenclater</i>, a handsome +and experienced slave of the host who pointed out to each his place +on the couches. This location of feasters, however, was an extremely +solemn business. How many social feuds have been created by blunders +concerning it! Nay, if the guest chances to be a public character, a +certain position is really a matter of legal right to many dignitaries +and its refusal possibly can give matter for a lawsuit.<a id="FNanchor_51" href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> The three +couches were set around three sides of the table, the fourth being left +open for the service. Approaching from the open side that couch to +the right was reckoned the first (<i>summus</i>), then the middle one +opposite (<i>medius</i>), then the one on the left (<i>imus</i>).</p> + +<p>The best place of all was reckoned to be the third position on the +middle couch “The Consul’s Post,”<a id="FNanchor_52" href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> and here, of course, Manlius +was consigned. Calvus by custom took the host’s place, on the third +couch, but nearest the guest of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span> honor. The distribution of the other +places was a matter for great discrimination, but peace was kept by +placing the two African gentlemen whom Manlius brought, upon the middle +couch beside him, and setting the young eques Nepos (the junior of the +company) at the outer end of the third couch. All nine, therefore, +spread themselves out unconventionally and chattered about the newest +jockeys in the circus, while a troupe of slave-boys, half-stripped +but pomaded and curled, passed around silver bowls of water and fine +towels for washing and wiping the hands.<a id="FNanchor_53" href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> This ceremony happily +accomplished, a tall upper slave magnificently arrayed nodded from the +doorway to Calvus that the cook had declared himself ready, and Calvus +nodded back his approval. The dinner could begin.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_116" style="max-width: 650px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_116.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Nine Guests in a Triclinium.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>97. Serving the Dinner.</b>—The giver of this feast only desired +a grave and conventional dinner for sedate people, and a strictly +normal order was followed without epicurean niceties or a low revel +as a climax. No tablecloths; the serving<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span> boys running to and from +the kitchen set on the beautiful polished surface of the table before +the guests first a preliminary course, the <i>gustatio</i>, supposed +to stimulate the appetite. On silver dishes were served some choice +crabs, salads, mushrooms, and also eggs. The guests ate these without +forks, dexterously picking up the food in their fingers. The handsomely +embossed silver cups were handed about filled with sweet mulsum +properly diluted in order not to befuddle the intellect; after that +followed the formal dinner itself.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_117" style="max-width: 399px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_117.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Roman Serving Forks.</p> + </div> + +<p>At really elaborate feasts there would be six or even seven courses, +but Calvus had merely ordered the orthodox number of three—a +succession of daintily cooked meats and fish tastily garnished with +vegetables, but with no rarities such as heathcock from Phrygia or +sturgeon from Rhodes. The honor of the house, however, required that +every viand should be arranged carefully on its dish, and every dish +upon its tray by a special slave, the <i>structor</i>, a true artist, +who also acted as master carver, cutting up a roast of boar with his +knife keeping time to a flute-player. The mere fact, however, that one +man was allowed both to arrange the dishes and then to do the carving +was a sign that Calvus was among the less ostentatious senators.</p> + +<p>Between each course water and towels were again passed about, and the +guests washed their hands. Finally for dessert there was brought on +a great quantity of curious pastry—artificial oysters and thrushes +filled with dried grapes and almonds; and a great dish whereon stood +an image, made of baked dough, of the orchard god Vertumnus, holding a +pastry apron full of fruits, while heaped around his feet were sweet<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span> +quinces stuck full of almonds, and melons cut into fantastic shapes.<a id="FNanchor_54" href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_118" style="max-width: 452px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_118.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Drinking Cup.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>98. The Drinking Bout (<i>Comissatio</i>) after the +Dinner.</b>—This concluded the regular dinner, but Calvus had invited +his friends (since Manlius had much to talk about) to stay to a +<i>comissatio</i>, a social drinking spell afterwards. The nine guests +rose and adjourned to the host’s private baths, whence, after they had +refreshed themselves and taken a turn around the colonnades in the +peristylium, they returned to the triclinium to find that the slaves +had changed all the couch covers and pillows, had swept the floor, and +had actually brought in new tables. It was now quite dark, beautiful +silver lamps gleamed on high against the fretwork of the ceiling and +on the tall inlaid sideboard stood two great silver tankards; one was +filled with snow;<a id="FNanchor_55" href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> the other had a charcoal brazier beneath it and +steamed with hot water.</p> + +<p>If Calvus’s party had now been composed of younger merrymakers, some +one would have called out, “Let’s drink in the ‘Greek style’ and elect +a king”; and everybody would have joined in throwing dice to select +the <i>rex</i>, or lord of the revels. That potentate would have been +obligated to decide how much water was to be mixed with the wine, and +how<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span> many cups must be drunk to the health of each feaster’s lady love, +and to arrange the forfeits, riddles, and practical jokes inseparable +from a jolly evening. If the party had been still more uproarious, +Spanish dancing girls might have been provided by the host, or a corps +of pantomimes, acrobats, or farce players, and the whole scene could +have ended in a very coarse orgy.</p> + +<p>In the present case Calvus had decided to let his friends merely drink +enough to loosen their tongues and to exchange their best wit and +wisdom. The slaves, therefore, brought in with decent solemnity the +little images of the family lares, and a small smoking brazier, and +Calvus cast a trifle of meal and salt and a few drops of wine upon +the fire. “The gods are propitious!” announced a slave in loud voice, +after which the guests preserved a reverent silence for an instant, to +be followed by vigorous conversation the moment the divine images were +carried out.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>99. Distribution of Garlands and Perfumes. Social +Conversation.</b>—While one corps of slaves was passing about +the wine, asking each guest whether “Hot?” or “Cold?” others were +distributing wreaths of fragrant flowers, to put on the forehead and +even around the neck (by their odor supposedly preventing drunkenness) +and also little alabaster vials of choice perfumes which the guests +immediately broke and poured upon their hands and hair. Then followed +long conversations, grave or gay according to the mood. Calvus had not +provided any professional entertainers, but all through the drinking +a good flute-player and a good harpist hid behind a curtain kept up a +soft pleasing melody.</p> + +<p>While Manlius and the older guests discussed the control of the Moorish +tribes of Numidia, young Nepos and one or two others found much to say +about a new “Thracian” who had just fought at the Flavian Amphitheater, +and presently all the others pressed the host (knowing him to be a +little vain<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span> on the subject) to show some new moves in “robbers” +(<i>latrunculi</i>, a board game with men extremely like checkers) +which he had evolved with peculiar pride. It would have been good +form also to have played at making impromptu verses, or at matching +riddles, but for a Roman gentleman to indulge in anything like singing +a song, even before a group of friends, would have been undignified; +Nero possibly shocked public opinion even more by appearing openly as a +common theater performer than he did by killing his mother!</p> + +<p>At last the evening ended. It was only 8 o’clock by later reckoning; +but everybody had to be up again by gray dawn. The streets were already +dark and deserted save by prowlers and the police-watch. “My shoes, +boy,” called Manlius to his valet. All the other guests imitated him, +and already their retinues with slaves and torches were crowding in the +vestibule. The eight diners departed after thanking Calvus. The slaves +cleared out the triclinium, and quenched the lights. Soon the whole +domus was asleep.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>100. Elaborate and Vulgar Banquets. Simple Home Dinners.</b>—Such +was a very decorous and ordinary dinner. It could easily have run +off to greater follies and vastly greater magnificence, useless to +describe. Space lacks, also, to describe the magnificent imperial +banquets at the palace when all the gold, glitter, and luxury of the +capital is on display. Calvus is no great philosopher, or he might have +followed the mode and insisted upon his guests conversing solely about +the “Stoic Conception of Duty”; or the “Immortality of the Soul.”</p> + +<p>A host of another type might have imitated certain very mean patrons +who would invite poor clients to fill up the triclinium and then +deliberately serve them with cheap wine and coarse scrappy food, +while the best was being set before himself and the guests of honor. +Such great men were also equal to pettiness of stationing special +slaves behind each<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span> less-favored guest to watch lest the latter +should with his finger nails pick out the gems set in the drinking +cups. Pliny the Younger has already recorded his emphatic opinion of +noblemen who will not serve dependents with as good fare as they get +themselves,—declaring that if the host <i>must</i> economize, he +should eat and drink nothing better that night than what he gives his +clients and freedmen.</p> + +<p>Of course, many an evening meal is far simpler than the one just +described. If the triclinium is not full, Calvus and Gratia may +sometimes offer their near acquaintances merely “some lettuce, three +snails, two eggs, spelt mixed with honey and snow, olives from Spain, +cucumbers, onions, and a few like delicacies.” Old Roman simplicity +still—but every dish will be perfect of its kind, and the cookery +excellent; and even the modest Calvi are none too fond of this diet +praised by the philosophers. Rome is not merely the mistress of the +world, she is the citadel of the gourmands.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER VII<br> +<span class="subhed">THE SOCIAL ORDERS: THE SLAVES</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>101. Enormous Alien Population in Rome. The “Græcules.”</b>—Rome, +as already discovered, is a city with an enormous cosmopolitan +population, and in that population is a sadly large proportion of +drones, parasites, and selfish purveyors to the vices or luxuries of +the rich. The influx of aliens, of course, impresses one at every turn, +be the visit to obscure Mercury Street or to the famous Old Forum. +“The Syrian Orontes (quoting lines of Juvenal hackneyed already) has +long since poured into the Tiber, bringing its lingo and its manners, +its flutes and its timbals, and its coarse girls who hang around the +Circus.”</p> + +<p>A large fraction of these invaders, however, are not confessed +Orientals, but olivine-featured, nimble creatures of very Levantine +morality who like to be called “Greeks.” The poet, just cited, has +other familiar lines deriding their suppleness, servility, and +willingness for any shift promising favor or reward. The self-same +adventurer is ready to be “grammarian, orator, geometrician, painter, +trainer, rope-dancer, augur, doctor, or astrologer,” or if you bid +“‘Græculus’ to mount to heaven—why, to heaven he’ll go!’” They squeeze +out tears or split with laughter at a sign, and, of course, they +readily sell themselves for any well-paid villainy.</p> + +<p>Do these creatures prosper? If so, Roman citizenship comes next. They +change their names, assume the toga, and their sons or at least their +grandsons will be borne along in their high litters toward the Senate +House. There is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span> another large group of “Conscript Fathers” who, +Calvus angrily tells Gratia, are only crude Celts from Spain, Gaul, +or even distant Britain. Another group can only speak Latin with a +pronounced North African accent. There is even a certain dark-skinned +“Julius” (a good Roman name surely), who wears his broad purple stripe +proudly enough, but who,—every one swears,—was born far up the Nile +in Egypt—“How did he get the Emperor’s favor!” At first thought, +therefore, Rome seems one of the most democratic cities socially in the +world.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>102. Strict Divisions of Society. The Régime of +<i>Status</i>.</b>—But closer acquaintance discloses the fact that +Roman society is utterly undemocratic. Wealth to be sure can surmount +many barriers, but even a hundred-million sesterces plus imperial +patronage cannot <i>quite</i> do everything. The whole Roman Empire +is founded not on the basis of human brotherhood and equality, but on +“<i>piety</i>.” “Pious Æneas” is the hero of the national epic poem. +But what in fact is this piety? Not the rendering of due homage to +the gods merely, but the bestowing of exact justice upon every man +according to his <i>status</i>—the great stratum in society in which +the law has placed him, and whence he can neither rise nor fall without +important formalities. Are you brought into court? Instantly the +question is, “What are you?” And on that answer, regardless of guilt or +innocence, your fate will largely depend.</p> + +<p>The Roman Empire in reality is essentially <i>a régime of +status</i>—giving to every man a certain social and legal due. This +accent on <i>status</i> has been increasing ever since Augustus founded +his dominion; and it will intensify even more rapidly down to the very +end of the Empire.</p> + +<p>In the 1,500,000 odd people in Rome, there are these six well-defined +social classes, each with a distinct legal condition: I. <i>Slaves</i>; +II. <i>Freedmen</i>; III. <i>Free Provincials</i>;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span> IV. <i>Ordinary +Roman Citizens, or “Plebeians”</i>; V. <i>Equites</i>; VI. +<i>Senators</i>. In Rome the third class, of course, is necessarily +small, being made up solely of visitors and resident aliens, some +of whom, if notables from such free allied towns as Athens, enjoy +excellent protection and privileges. Nearly all the freedmen are +technically Roman citizens but are still under certain civil and social +disabilities. The Plebeians, Equites, and Senators are all reckoned +officially as “majores,” persons with superior legal rights, however +much the two upper orders may scorn the one inferior. Socially, +however, there are many cross sections, with the upper slaves of rich +noblemen despising the petty tradesmen, who wear moth-eaten togas, and +the higher “Cæsarians” (slaves at the imperial palace) have been known +to patronize equites and even senators.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>103. Vast Number of Slaves. Universality of Slavery.</b>—The +slaves, however, are always officially at the bottom of the human +ladder. Their number is great, making up close to half, if not quite +half, of the population of Rome. They are not required to wear a +special dress.<a id="FNanchor_56" href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> Some years ago it was proposed to order this in the +Senate, but the motion was voted down: “It would be dangerous to show +the wretches how numerous they really were.” Ordinarily they go about +in sad-colored tunics and long cloaks like most of the common citizens, +or else they wear some bright livery devised by their masters.</p> + +<p>Only a few of these unfortunates have Italian countenances and can +speak Latin without some foreign accent. Plenty of alien adventurers, +it is true, drift to Rome as willingly, but probably the great bulk +of the cosmopolitan multitudes everywhere observable, even if free at +present, come to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span> Latium involuntarily—as slaves imported to wait on +the masters of the world.</p> + +<p>Almost no one has questioned the rightfulness and necessity of slavery. +Seneca, indeed, has written that no man can be enslaved beyond a +certain point—his body is his master’s, but his mind is his own. +Horace has written grandiloquently “Who is truly free? The wise man +alone; who is stern master of himself.” This sounds well but does not +alter the practical results of a situation wherein, for example, all +farm implements are solemnly classified in the handbooks under three +heads: I. <i>Dumb tools</i>—plows, mattocks, shovels, etc.; II. +<i>Semi-speaking tools</i>—oxen, asses, etc., that can bellow or bray; +III. <i>Speaking tools</i>—slaves useful as farm hands.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>104. Power of Master over Slaves.</b>—Until very lately, before +Hadrian’s time, these “Speaking Tools” have had rather less legal +protection than may be granted to horses by the “humane” legislation +of later civilization. The reigning Emperor, however, a remarkable +innovator, and tinctured with the Stoic philosophy, has lately issued +an edict that a slave cannot be killed outright by his master without +some kind of consent by a magistrate.</p> + +<p>Every owner of human bipeds has probably grumbled that “discipline is +now made impossible,” but the new law is of little practical help to +the slave. His master can still order a punishment so brutal that death +is certain, and if he should murder a servant, slave witnesses can give +no valid testimony, and almost no citizen will turn traitor to his +class and prosecute. Half of Rome, therefore, continues in the absolute +power and possession of the other half.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>105. The City Slaves and the Country Slaves.</b>—Calvus and Gratia +have a familia of about one hundred and fifty slaves in their city +house. Scattered upon their villas there<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span> are always at least as many +more, but between the <i>city slaves</i> and the <i>rustic slaves</i> +there is a great gulf fixed. The first class utterly despises the +latter. The city slaves are mostly soft-handed ministers to their +owners’ luxuries. The country slaves are toiling farm hands often +under extremely severe discipline. When the master, attended by a +great retinue from his town house, sojourns at a villa, squabbling +and even fights between the two contingents are extremely probable. +Let a serving boy become too insolent, or a tiring maid fail in her +duty—the master or mistress can simply order, “Send him or her to the +villa!” The wretch will then beg instead to be flogged in sheer mercy. +Banishment to the rustic slave colony seems a mere death in life.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>106. Purchasing a Slave Boy.</b>—In any large city familia, +the purchase of new slaves to replace vacancies caused by death or +otherwise is an everyday occurrence. Very lately a new errand boy was +wanted by Calvus, who could not condescend to purchase such a menial +in person; and he left the task to a competent freedman, Cleander. The +latter conscientiously went through the great slave bazaars near the +fora and especially along the Sæpta Julia, the great porticoes lining +the Via Lata.</p> + +<p>Here any quantity of human bipeds were on sale as in a regular cattle +market. There were numbers of little stalls or pens with crowds of +buyers or mere spectators constantly elbowing in and out, and from many +of them rose a gross fleshly odor as from closely confined animals. At +the entrance to these pens notices, written on white boards with red +chalk, recited the nature of the slaves inside, and sometimes the hour +when they would be sold at auction. Every nationality was represented +among these vendable commodities—Egyptians, Moors, Arabs, Cilicians, +Cappadocians, Thracians, Greeks and alleged Greeks, Celts from Gaul, +Spain, and Britain, and a good many Teutons, fair-haired<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span> creatures +from beyond the Rhine. They were of both sexes and of all ages, but +with youths and grown-up girls predominating. As Cleander went about he +heard a crier announcing that a new coffle of Jews was just being put +on sale, the results of the latest success of the Emperor’s generals in +capturing one of the last rebellious strongholds in Palestine.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>107. Traffic in the Slave Pens.</b>—It avails not to dwell on the +hideous brutality and degrading character of many of the scenes. The +slave-dealers were men counted the scum of the earth socially, but the +vast gains from lucky speculation in human flesh drove many shrewd +scoundrels into the trade. At last Cleander found the stall he desired. +Several boys from the Black Sea region were about to be knocked down. +They did not seem so very miserable. Truth to tell their barbarous +parents had probably sold them in way of regular trade, and the boys +looked forward to entering a fine Roman familia as a great adventure.</p> + +<p>The lads stood in line on raised stones, stripped almost naked and with +white chalk on their feet as a token that they were for immediate sale. +Cleander and other would-be purchasers examined them as they might so +many cattle; felt of their muscles, examined their teeth, and made them +converse enough to be sure they could speak fair Greek and a little +Latin. Another buying agent was accompanied by a physician to give the +proffered merchandise a regular physical examination, and Cleander in +his turn interrogated the selling clerks very specifically: “Did they +warrant the health of a certain boy, especially his freedom from fits? +Was he thievish? Was he prone to run away? Did he get despondent and +attempt suicide?”<a id="FNanchor_57" href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span></p> + +<p>One ill-favored youth was standing with a tall felt hat on his head. +That implied he was being sold “as is,” without the least warranty; “An +incorrigible thief” went the whisper, and the great welts on his back +betrayed repeated whippings. If the sellers failed, however, to “cap” +their chattels, they had to answer all queries truthfully, and take +back the slave if he developed various defects within six months. Such +a liability, however, was hard to enforce. A slave trade involved all +the points of shrewdness, hard bargaining, and smooth prevarication of +the proverbial horse trade.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>108. Sale of Slaves.</b>—At last a bell rang. A boy whom Cleander +had inspected approvingly was stood on a higher block. The glib +auctioneer began his patter to the little group before him: “The +lad’s clear-skinned and well-favored from head to foot, a well-bred +fellow carefully trained for good service. Has a smattering of Greek +learning—you can educate him for a secretary if you want to. He can +also sing a bit at dinners—not professionally, but enough to make +you jolly over your wine.—All this is sheer and simple truth. You’ll +wait long for another such bargain. Just one point (with a deprecatory +smirk) I am obliged to warn about—once he <i>did</i> have a lazy fit, +and hid himself for fear of a lashing,—Well, he’s yours for a mere +8000 sesterces.” [$320.]<a id="FNanchor_58" href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p> + +<p>“Take 2000,” stolidly retorted Cleander, naming the standard price +for male slaves of no extra qualities. Counter bidding and much +chaffering followed. All ended when “Crœsus” (slaves were often given +fancy oriental names) was knocked down to Cleander for 4000 sesterces +($160), a very fair bargain if the youth had not been praised too<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span> +extravagantly. On the same errand the freedman also purchased for +his master a stout Gaul, needed as an expert muleteer on one of the +farm villas,—such a fellow if at all capable was well worth the 6000 +sesterces asked for him.</p> + +<p>The next day, however, it was announced by Gratia that she required +a first-class lady’s maid, a girl not merely versed in all toilet +mysteries, but comely to look upon should she have to appear with her +mistress in public. Such damsels commanded a high price, and Gratia and +Calvus together condescended to do the shopping. Along the Sæpta Julia +they visited special booths, from which vulgar idlers were carefully +excluded, and where human chattels of the superior grades were shown to +bona fide purchasers.</p> + +<p>The dealer whom they visited had handsome slave boys to act as +statuesque cup bearers and worth up to 100,000 sesterces ($4000) +apiece; he also had a truly competent physician at the same price; a +good private schoolmaster; two very expert dancers, and a remarkably +fine cook just thrown on the market by a bankrupt ex-consul. Girls +fit for kitchen service could be had in the common stalls as cheap as +1000 sesterces ($40); but Gratia and her husband had to pay a round +25,000 ($1000) for a truly pretty little Greek, who was a dexterous +hair-dresser and who could read aloud to her mistress with a good Attic +accent.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>109. Size of Slave Households (<i>Familiæ</i>). Slave +Workmen.</b>—Thus the <i>familia</i> of the Calvi has been made up. +People complain that owing to the surcease of great wars the supply of +cheap slaves fit for farm service is running down. Great landowners +are actually being driven to fall back on free hired labor or a system +of tenantry; but kidnapping, the sale of children by their barbarian +parents, the ceaseless petty wars in Africa, Asia, and along the +Rhine, as well as the sale of slaves born and bred on the Roman farms +or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span> mansions themselves<a id="FNanchor_59" href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> keep up a sufficient supply for domestic +service.</p> + +<p>The very poor plebeians are, of course, slaveless and servantless, and +plenty of small tradesmen or minor officials get along with only two or +three slaves-of-all-work; but it is impossible to be a “somebody” and +to exist in Rome without <i>at least ten slaves</i>. The social ladder +and the size of the familiæ ascend together until we find senators and +very rich equites who boast many more than two hundred in their city +houses alone. “How many slaves has he got?” is the regular formula +for asking “What’s his fortune?” In Augustus’s day there was a very +wealthy freedman who owned 4116 slaves, although the majority of these +were scattered on his numerous farms; but well known is the story of +Pedanius Secundus, City Præfect under Nero: One of his slaves murdered +him, and by the harsh old law making the entire familia liable for the +killing of its master by one member, all of the slaves in his Roman +mansion, almost 400 in number, were actually put to death, although his +farm slaves were spared.</p> + +<p>There are many slaves, however, in Rome that are not strictly servants. +They act as craftsmen and tradesmen of every kind, sometimes hired +out by their masters to contractors, sometimes working on their +own account. Custom, though not law, entitles them to a part of +their earnings; this is their <i>peculium</i> (“special property”) +and only a very harsh owner will deprive them of it. Indeed it is +clearly understood that an intelligent slave cannot be expected to +do his best without a personal incentive. You can even find savings +banks and really large commercial enterprises run by slaves, often +put in positions of great trust, but such<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span> persons undoubtedly have +an understanding about being manumitted if they are faithful and +successful.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_131" style="max-width: 650px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_131.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Slaves working in a Bakery.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>110. Division of Duties and Organization of Slave +Households.</b>—In Calvus’ house as in every other great mansion one +is impressed with the multitude of attendants. The master, mistress, +and their friends are dependent on every kind of menial service. Before +Calvus rises from bed, he is massaged every morning by an expert +masseur, and some of his more effeminate friends insist on having not +walking sticks but handsome slave boys of convenient height always at +hand, on which to lean as they move about. In a well-ordered mansion, +indeed, it seems needless really for the master to do much more than +feed himself and draw his own breath—the servants can do all the rest +for him!</p> + +<p>A familia of one hundred and fifty slaves, such as Calvus’s, requires +a semi-military organization. Everything should run smoothly. At +the head of all are the upper slaves, proud, arrogant beings with +their own body servants, the commissioned officers of the army. The +<i>procurator</i> (sometimes a freedman), who does the purchasing and +outside business; the <i>dispensator</i>, who manages the storerooms; +the <i>atriensis</i>, who acts as general chamberlain, and especially<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span> +the <i>silentarius</i>, who enforces “silence” and general discipline +form the heads of this category. They are often petty tyrants, and the +newcomer Crœsus will have far more to fear from their harshness than +from Calvus, who will hardly know him by sight.</p> + +<p>The staff at large is carefully split up into <i>decuriæ</i> (squads +of ten) each under its special chief. There are the house cleaners, +the table retinue, the kitchen force, the chamber boys and maids, the +keepers of the wardrobes, the master’s valets, the mistress’s maids, +the special attendants of Calvus’s children, the litter bearers, the +corps of messengers—each forming a separate contingent. The master, +too, has several secretaries, expert copyists and readers, and a +librarian. There are several slave physicians although their duties are +largely confined to the familia; the masters will call in fashionable +free professionals for their own serious ills. The two sexes are about +equally divided, and a great many slaves are respectably if informally +married,<a id="FNanchor_60" href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> although a familia is anything but a school of social +virtue.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>111. Discipline in a Well-Ordered Mansion. Long Hours of +Idleness.</b>—In such a mansion the master and mistress have little +acquaintance with the lower run of the human beings over whom they +possess absolute power. Calvus, however, knows his upper servants, his +favorite valets, and his first secretary, and being a genuinely kindly +man has come to esteem them and trust them familiarly; and it is the +same between Gratia and her confidential maids.</p> + +<p>The other slaves they treat fairly humanely, all things considered, +but absolutely impersonally—their presence is to be taken for granted +like articles of furniture, and their personal problems are ignored. +In the peristylium there is always posted a bulletin board informing +the slaves of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span> nights when their master is going out to dinner, +and although Calvus does not imitate certain very haughty individuals +by trying to give all his orders through signs and never addressing +a menial, it is good breeding to speak to ordinary slaves as seldom +and then as curtly as possible, just as one should not waste words +addressing a yoke of oxen.</p> + +<p>Roman house-slaves have their sorrows but they need not ordinarily fear +two mortal evils—hunger, or overwork. They have, of course, their own +dining quarters and are kept on sufficient, if simple rations of meal +cakes, salt, oil, common wine, and a little fruit. Butcher’s meat they +seldom touch, except as the kitchen staff get the leavings from the +banquets, although the upper servants naturally fare more sumptuously.</p> + +<p>As for slaves’ working hours, they are absurdly short. Every servant +has some limited appointed task. When that is finished nothing else +is expected of him, and to require other duties would not merely make +the master unpopular with his servants, it would stamp him before his +equals as an extremely mean and sordid man. Thus, on very many days, +Calvus’s six litter bearers have absolutely nothing to do. On the many +nights that he and Gratia dine out the great kitchen staff is concerned +mainly with the dice-box. The boudoir maids are usually idle from the +time their mistress is dressed until she must dress again for dinner. +All this makes for gossiping, gaming, and for the worst kinds of busy +idleness.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>112. Inevitable Degradation Caused by Slavery. Evil Effect upon +Masters.</b>—Are these “speaking tools” very miserable? Calvus’s +familia is not exceptional in that a tolerably kindly relation often +exists between owner and owned. The Stoic philosophy is making its +impression, and there are plenty of theoretical arguments that “a slave +is also a man” and entitled to humane treatment. A master<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span> or mistress +who is habitually cruel is frowned on socially as might be a man +accustomed to abuse his horses.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, the status of a slave is always morally degrading. He +feels himself a mere chattel. Whatever he enjoys, he enjoys merely on +suffrance. Any sort of iniquity is condoned in his mind “if the master +orders it,” and he is likely to be honest and faithful more through the +fear of harsh punishment than because of any high ethical motives.</p> + +<p>On the other hand just because slavery has perforce its brutal, +soul-destroying elements, it is almost equally evil for the master. +It is seldom good for a man to have the lives often of hundreds of +fellow beings in his power; or to be relieved of every possible kind of +honest exertion by a swarm of officious menials. Furthermore, slavery +being inevitably so brutal, masters often live in terror of a mutiny by +the brutes themselves. “<i>So many slaves, so many enemies</i>,” is a +standard maxim; not always true, but true enough to excuse many horrid +practices.</p> + +<p>The slave revolt led by Spartacus in 73 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> is now half +forgotten in history, but that rebel gladiator had later several almost +as successful imitators. Every now and then something happens which +makes senatorial blood run cold. Only in Trajan’s day there was one +Lagius Macedo, an ex-prætor, a cruel and overbearing master, indeed, +who was beaten to death by his slaves while he was bathing at his +Formiæ villa. The wretches were all crucified, of course, but (as wrote +Pliny the Younger just after it happened): “You see what we masters +are exposed to; and nobody can feel safe because he’s an easy and mild +master; for it’s sheer villainy, not premeditation, that prompts our +murder.”</p> + +<p>Another danger, especially under evil emperors, comes from the +incessant presence of slaves at the most private affairs of their +lords, their willingness to tattle, to assist informers, and often to +help ruin their masters outright in return for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span> freedom and reward. +“The tongue is the worst part of a bad slave,” runs a familiar saying, +and even an honest and high-minded man must shudder at the idea of +having all his intimate doings passed on to delight his enemies.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>113. Punishment of Slaves.</b>—Under these circumstances, and with +so many slaves who are undoubtedly by origin and nature unreliable if +not incorrigible, every large house has its small private dungeon, and +also a low-browed wolfish creature who serves as jailer and official +“whipper.” Even in Calvus’s house he finds occupation, for in so large +a familia some luckless boy or maid is often caught loitering or +pilfering, and gets a dose of the many-lashed scourge—at the orders of +the upper-slave managers.<a id="FNanchor_61" href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> Under-slaves, indeed, think nothing of a +lashing beyond its mere pain; there is no disgrace, it is all part of +one’s lot in life.</p> + +<p>There can be much worse things than this in many houses. Servilia, one +of Gratia’s acquaintances, often beats her tire-women cruelly with the +flat of her bronze mirror for the most trivial offenses. Ambustus, the +new ædile, lately ordered a boy to get one hundred stripes merely for +being slow in bringing hot water. The rich widow Lepidia so enjoys +having her slaves flogged, that she makes the whipper actually do his +pitiless work in her dressing room, while she is reading<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span> the “Daily +Journal” (<i>Acta Diurna</i>, see p. 282) and having her face rouged. +Many a slave has been whipped to death because of some small folly +which sent his master or mistress into a rage, and noblemen have been +known to keep huge flesh-eating carp in their fish ponds, and to toss +in a recalcitrant slave occasionally to improve the flavor of the fish, +although such actions disgust all decent people.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>114. Branding of Slaves. <i>Ergastula</i>—Slave Prisons.</b>—If a +slave’s offense is too great to be rewarded by a mere whipping, and yet +does not provoke the death penalty, there are plenty of intermediate +punishments. Toiling around Calvus’s atrium is an ill-favored lad with +the scars of branding barely healed on his forehead: “FVR” he is marked +“Thief”)<a id="FNanchor_62" href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a>. He is taking the place of another youth who, to cure +extreme laziness, has been sent for a month to the “mill gang”—chained +to the great lever which turns the grist mill and forced to toil all +day like a hard-driven ass—an excellent cure for idleness.</p> + +<p>This fate is not so bad, however, as what befell one of the eques +Pollio’s valets, a bright clever lad, who foolishly became too pert +to his master. In a fit of anger Pollio ordered, “Give him six months +in the <i>ergastulum</i>.” The soft-handed boy was, therefore, not +merely shipped off to severe farm labor, itself utterly repulsive, +but was obliged to work in the fields in a chain-gang along with the +very scum of slave-criminals; always in fetters, lashed by brutish +keepers themselves slaves, and confined at night in underground prisons +(<i>ergastula</i>) that were mere kennels.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>115. Death Penalties for Slaves. Pursuit of Runaways.</b>—If +a slave really deserves death, there are, of course, two standard +methods of capital punishment, both very degrading<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span> as well as fearful. +Everybody knows about crucifixion with its hours and perhaps days +of hideous agony; but more common and nearly as painful is death on +the <i>furca</i>.<a id="FNanchor_63" href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> The victim’s head is placed at the opening of +two “V”-shaped beams and his arms tightly lashed upon them; then the +professional floggers strike the wretch with their loaded whips, the +leaden balls worked into the thongs making them a terrific weapon, +until death comes as blessed relief. It has been a long day since there +has been an execution at Calvus’s house, but some years ago a Spanish +boy who murdered an upper-servant perished thus under the lash. There +is, however, a much simpler way of disposing of criminal slaves, one +bringing a certain return to their masters,—namely, to sell them to +the givers of public shows to train as gladiators or merely to set in +the arena to give sport to the bears or lions.</p> + +<p>Of course, under such conditions slaves will often try to run away. +They seldom really succeed, however, unless they are persons of marked +intelligence and can make off with considerable money. The Roman +Empire is one vast police unit, unattached strangers are everywhere +scrutinized carefully and when a slave disappears a reward is promptly +offered. Only now a crier has gone down Mercury Street, with a crowd +after him, as he proclaims: “<i>Disappeared from the public baths, a +boy aged about sixteen. Free and easy habits. Curly hair. Good-looking. +Answers to name of Giton. A thousand sesterces to anybody haling him +back to Aulus Sulpicius near the Temple of Ops, or to anyone who will +betray his whereabouts!</i>”<a id="FNanchor_64" href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a></p> + +<p>If Giton is retaken, he can thank the gods if he is merely flogged +almost to death, and is not also given a year in the ergastulum.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span></p> + +<p>Naturally slaves can only testify in court by their master’s consent +and under torture, although the reigning humane Emperor has just issued +a decree limiting its use to the last resort. Hadrian, also, contrary +to the usage in Nero’s day, has ordained that if a man is murdered by +his slaves, only the slaves near the actual scene of crime are to be +tormented, and he has actually banished a certain matron, Umbricia, for +“abusing her slave girls most atrociously for trivial reasons.” All +this perhaps dimly foreshadows a new day; but what human chattel can +wait to see the abuses of slavery whittled down by the law across the +centuries?</p> + +<p>Have the slaves along Mercury Street any nearer hope? Possibly. The +other day many of them saw in the front benches of honor at the +Circus a man of dignity. His hands glittered with sardonyx rings; his +lacerna was of Tyrian purple; his shoes were scarlet, his hair reeking +with costly essences; a great train bowed and cringed to him. But +his forehead was covered with “numerous white patches like stars”; +“sticking plaster,” everybody whispered, to cover up the FVR once +branded on his countenance. He was an ex-slave, an exalted freedman, +who, a couple of decades before, had stood on the auction block, but +now was a mighty power in Roman high finance.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER VIII<br> +<span class="subhed">THE SOCIAL ORDERS: FREEDMEN, PROVINCIALS, PLEBEIANS, AND NOBLES</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>116. Manumission of Slaves Very Common.</b>—A Roman slave’s legal +position may be miserable, but usually he is not under that fearful +stigma of race and color weighing upon the slaves of another era. His +complexion and his brain power do not differ essentially from his +master’s.<a id="FNanchor_65" href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> If he is a Greek or Levantine, often his mental acuteness +may be greater than that of his lord. An intelligent slave under not +too harsh a master will devote himself to the latter in every possible +way, expecting pretty certainly the great reward for faithfulness and +zealous service—freedom. Of course, many dull hardened wretches, +especially upon the farms, will die as the toiling chattels they have +lived; but freedom comes often enough to make manumission something for +which to hope eagerly.</p> + +<p>Often the death of a master is the signal for a grand enfranchisement +of all the older members of his familia. It costs nothing thus to +reward faithful service at the expense of your heirs; and it is a fine +thing to have a long file of newly created freedmen, all wearing the +tall red caps of “liberty,” march in your funeral procession. Everybody +will praise your “generosity,” and the freedmen can be expected to +cherish their lord’s memory. Incidentally, also, there are few better +ways of punishing a generally incompetent slave than having him +ostentatiously <i>refused</i> freedom when all his comrades go about +rejoicing.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>117. The Ceremony of Manumission.</b>—Nevertheless, many slaves +need not wait for their masters to die. They are perhaps suffered to +work at a trade, and accumulate their “peculium,” and then very likely +to purchase their own and their wives’ and children’s liberty. With +rich masters of the better sort, it is also a gracious act at certain +intervals to select a few extra-deserving slaves and say to them the +blessed words, “Come with me to the prætor!”</p> + +<p>When they are all before the magistrate a solemn legal formality +is gone through. One of the official lictors steps forward, gives +a light tap with his rod upon the head of each slave and says +loudly, “I declare this man is free!” The master laying hold of the +slave and turning him around, replies, “And I desire that this man +should be free!” adding a slight blow on the cheek; whereat the +magistrate declares officially, “And I adjudge that this man is free.” +This completes the “manumission”; then home the happy “freedman” +(<i>libertinus</i>) goes to be greeted with the congratulations of his +former fellow-slaves, showers of sweet cakes, dates, and figs and all +kinds of humble rejoicings.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>118. The Status of Freedmen. Their Great Success in +Business.</b>—Henceforth, the ex-slave is the freedman of his former +master. He takes the first part of his master’s name; thus that +Cleander, manumitted a few years ago by Publius Junius Calvus, now +swells about proudly as Publius Junius Cleander. His children will +henceforth be Junii, no less lawfully than Calvus’s children; with a +result that the gentile names of some of the proudest houses in Rome +are now also borne by families perforce acknowledging swart Africans or +tow-headed Batavians as very near ancestors.</p> + +<p>Once escaped from actual slavery a great career in life can open before +an energetic freedman. If his ex-master is a Roman citizen, he also +is now a Roman citizen without any naturalization process. True he +is under a social stigma.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span> Not merely he, but his children also, are +excluded from the Senate and all the higher offices of the state; but +an ex-slave is not likely to suffer from thinness of skin. Compelled in +his youth to use his wits and put forth all his energies, he now often +possesses abilities, often not very refined or delicate, which carry +him far in trade, general business, and finance.</p> + +<p>Usually before a master manumits a slave it is arranged that he shall +remain in the mansion as some kind of an invaluable “man of business” +for handling a large estate. Many a senator is like Cicero, in all +private affairs completely at the mercy of a confidential <i>alter +ego</i>, a freedman like Cicero’s able and beloved Tiro. Practically +every dignitary in Rome will refer his business matters to “my +freedman,” a shrewd consequential fellow, probably of Græco-Levantine +origin, who has the right to use his patron’s seal ring, and who knows +all the family secrets. Supple, obsequious, and indispensable, he is +certain of a great legacy when his patron dies; and if the patron is +childless, he often becomes his heir. There are, indeed, plenty of +cases where a slave-boy who entered a house as a valet, first earned +freedom, then became a general confidant, and ended not merely with +inheriting the house itself but with marrying the late owner’s widow.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>119. Humble Types of Freedmen.</b>—Of course, the bulk of freedmen +have no claim to such expectations. They are petty shop keepers or +skilled craftsmen. They make up the great bureaus of upper clerks in +the huge government offices on the Palatine. Everywhere they compete, +as a rule very successfully, with the free born, and, of course, they +add to the cosmopolitan multitudes in Rome.</p> + +<p>An ex-slave cannot avoid becoming substantially the client of his +former master. He is supposed to show his patron and his patron’s +family constant respect and usually a certain<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span> amount of service +without compensation. Thus a while ago Calvus manumitted a very +faithful slave-physician. It was stipulated that he should continue +to physic the familia without charge. For a freedman to show himself +neglectful of these obligations, above all to do anything to injure +his ex-master, is the depth of depravity. The legal penalties for such +“ingratitude” are very severe, and in extreme cases the actual act of +manumission itself can be cancelled.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>120. Wealth and Power of Successful Freedmen.</b>—Nevertheless, +top-lofty freedmen abound. Their ready wits bring them riches—the +power before which all the Empire bends. Once more Juvenal describes +an obnoxious type: “Though I’m born on the Euphrates, a fact which +the little windows [holes for earrings] in my ears would prove if I +denied it—yet am I the owner of five shops which bring me in 400,000 +sesterces [$16,000] per year. What better thing does a senator’s robe +bestow? Therefore, let everybody give way to one who but yesterday +with the chalked feet of a slave entered our city.” Freedmen, of +course, get ahead marvellously because nothing is too sordid if only +it promises gain. “He [a certain freedman],” says Petronius, “started +with an <i>as</i> [large copper coin], and was always ready to pick a +<i>quadrans</i> [farthing] out of the filthy mire with his teeth. So +his wealth grew and grew like a honey comb!”</p> + +<p>Very probably, the ideal set before this species of persons is that of +becoming all-powerful imperial freedmen, such as that pair, Pallas and +Narcissus, who literally ruled the Roman Empire through their patron, +Claudius. Trajan and Hadrian have, indeed, greatly reduced the power of +freedmen around the Palace, turning the great secretarial offices over +to equites, but there are still ex-slaves in the service of “Cæsar,” +who have only a little less influence than that mighty Claudius +Etruscus who died of old age under Domitian after having served six +Emperors. He<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span> began life in Rome as a slave boy from Smyrna. Tiberius +manumitted him. He rose to become practically the head of the Treasury. +His wealth was great, but his integrity matched his vast power, and +few senators had such commanding influence in the government as he +possessed.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>121. Importance of Freedmen in a Roman Family.</b>—In such a house +as that of Calvus there are neither imperial ministers nor miserly +speculators. The freedmen are honored and trusted members not of the +slave familia but of the actual “family.” When they are sick Calvus and +Gratia are greatly concerned, as was Pliny the Younger over the illness +of his beloved reader, Zosimus. If there is any domestic crisis, their +counsel is sought and they take a zealous interest in the education of +their lord’s children.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, on the nearby Flora Street spreads the huge garish +palace of the ex-slave Athenonius, who won his freedom by catering to a +foolish master’s worst passions, and then gathered enormous wealth by +speculating in Egyptian corn. “<i>Freedmen’s riches</i>” have become a +proverb. Not all freedmen are by any means wealthy, but enough of them +have risen to the seats of the mighty to make every toiling slave dream +dreams and see visions of something better than a dishonored, servile +grave.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>122. The Status of Provincials. The Case of Jesus.</b>—All freedmen +are Roman citizens, albeit citizens under a formal handicap, but in a +city like Rome there are always many free persons who are not citizens +at all—visiting provincials. Every year the Emperors issue some edict +granting the franchise to a new group of non-citizens, but the numbers +of the latter in all the provinces of the Empire is still great.<a id="FNanchor_66" href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> +At Rome their position is ordinarily comfortable<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span> enough, although if +arrested, they are liable to a more summary trial than Roman citizens +and in case of famine or public disturbance they are liable to sudden +expulsion from the city (as Claudius expelled the Jews) without any +redress. The real disadvantage which they endure is that they cannot +be appointed to any kind of public office under the Roman government. +They are also sometimes under a legal handicap in making and enforcing +commercial contracts; and last but not least in their own provinces +they cannot “appeal to Cæsar” (if in an “Imperial” province) or to the +Senate (if in a “Senatorial” province) against the decision, however +arbitrary, of the Roman governor.</p> + +<p>If you search the public records at the great <i>Tabularium</i> (Public +Record Office) by the Forum, you can find for example the report of the +trial of a certain Jew, one Christus, who was accused of sedition in +Judæa, about a hundred years before our visit to Rome. The procurator +Pilatus yielding to popular clamor had him executed ignominiously by +crucifixion. This was, of course, within Pilatus’s legal authority. +Christus was only a provincial and he could take no appeal.</p> + +<p>The status of the provincials depends much on whether their communities +enjoy any treaty with or charter from Rome. Athens and a few other +favored places are nominally “equal allies” with full rights of +self-government, and their citizens can claim a favored position among +the mass of provincials. Other places possess charters giving great +privileges but revocable in case of gross abuse.</p> + +<p>The bulk of the provincials are mere “stipendiaries,” often permitted +local self-government, but subject to Roman taxation, and to the +complete jurisdiction of the Roman governor. Under the Empire these +governors are only by exception corrupt and arbitrary, but their +decisions must usually be final.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>123. Great Alien Colonies in Rome.</b>—Apart from the great alien +slave population there are inevitably large groups of resident aliens +in various parts of the capital. There is a Little Syria, Little Egypt, +Little Spain, and a Little Greece as surely as in certain great cities +of a later civilization, but the most famous and conspicuous is the +great Jewish colony.</p> + +<p>This exists mainly in the Trans-Tiber district under the shadow of the +Janiculum, although Jews are allowed to settle and to do business in +any section of the city. The total number of free Jews in Rome has been +set at 35,000 in Augustus’s day, and it received a great reinforcement +through the captives of Titus, many of whom regained their liberty. The +Jews are obliged to pay to the Capitoline Jupiter that tribute which +they formerly paid to their Temple in Jerusalem, but otherwise they +are not harassed by the government. For the most part, however, they +are very poor; few of them are great bankers or merchants, but nearly +all the rest are petty shopkeepers and peddlers—also a great many are +alleged to increase their living by fortune-telling and by like dubious +arts.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>124. The Roman Plebeians, the “Mob” (<i>Vulgus</i>).</b>—Greatly +surpassing the resident aliens in number are inevitably the ordinary +Roman plebeians. It is a fine thing in the provinces to boast, +“<i>Civis Romanus sum</i>,” but in the capital many a freedman, many +an upper-slave of a magnate even, looks down with scorn on a large +fraction of this “common herd” (<i>grex</i>) that still claims to +form “the Roman People.” However, if you are really a Roman citizen +entitled to wear a toga, and to share in the grain doles and other +public distributions, you can really live on very little. Somehow you +must find means for the rental of a sleeping garret in an insula, +but the daytime you can spend hanging around the fora, porticoes, +or the entrances to the circuses<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span> and gladiator schools, playing +<i>morra</i> and checkergames (see p. <a href="#Page_205">205</a>); idling in the great public +baths; frequenting every possible public exhibition in the theater or +amphitheater and often getting a bare income by toadying most abjectly +to the rich.</p> + +<p>Everybody despises this Roman “mob,” and yet cringes to it. Its yells +across the circus send the blood from the cheeks of very tyrannous +emperors. The mild Italian climate renders an existence amid dirt and +sunshine, eked out by very little labor, decidedly tolerable.<a id="FNanchor_67" href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> +Assuredly very many of these “citizens” are simply honest thrifty +industrialists, trades people, or professional men, holding their +own stubbornly against the competing slaves, freedmen, and aliens. +Nevertheless, the proportion of undesirables is dangerously great. Many +of the idle plebeians are the sons of freedmen, who have inherited +their parents’ non-Italian vices but who have not been under their +necessity of hard work and faithfulness; and when one examines the +moral and social qualities of the alleged heirs of the virtuous +old-time plebeians the idea of “restoring the Republic,” still +sighed after by a few aristocratic philosophers, appears absolutely +laughable.<a id="FNanchor_68" href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>125. The Desirability of Roman Citizenship. The Case of St. +Paul.</b>—It is as contrasted with the status of provincials that +Roman citizenship still preserves its remarkable value. A citizen can, +indeed, no longer go to the Republican assemblies to elect magistrates +and vote on proposed statutes, but he has his personal and property +rights protected by the best kind of “Quiritian” law. The government is +never, indeed, iniquitous enough to enact that, as between<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span> Roman and +provincial, the judge must always decide for the former, nevertheless +the advantages of the citizen are great.</p> + +<p>A Roman can command all sorts of protection not open to provincials. +The judge will almost inevitably be a little prejudiced in his favor. +If arrested, a citizen can ordinarily demand the right to give bail. It +is a gross outrage to “examine him by scourging.” He cannot be put to +torture. If he is finally sentenced to die, he cannot be crucified, but +ordinarily must be beheaded—a very merciful end. Particularly, unless +the case is extremely clear, in matters touching his life and status as +a citizen he can appeal from the decision of a provincial governor to +“Cæsar” or to the Senate (if in a province governed by that body).</p> + +<p>If we visit the Record Office again, this matter is clearly +illustrated. About twenty-five years after the crucifixion of +Christus, one of his followers, a certain Paulus, was also arrested +in Jerusalem on much the same charges of attempted sedition and +inciting disturbance. But Paulus, when arrested, promptly pleaded his +Roman citizenship. Vainly the local mob clamored for his life even as +they had demanded that of Christus. When the local procurator Festus +hesitated to set him at liberty, the prisoner demanded to be sent to +Rome—and thither at great trouble and expense he had to be shipped; +to be tried ultimately before the Prætorian Præfect sitting as Nero’s +deputy; and the charges were dismissed and he was set at liberty.<a id="FNanchor_69" href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> +If he had not been a Roman, assuredly the weak-kneed governor of +Palestine would have sacrificed him “to please the Jews” just as +Pilatus sacrificed Christus.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>126. Clientage: Its Oldest Form.</b>—Between the poorest classes +of plebeians, sleeping within porticoes and despised<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span> by the superior +slaves, and those dignified well-to-do gentlemen who have almost the +means to pass as equites, there are, of course, an infinite number of +social strata. The most important section of the better plebeians is +undoubtedly to be numbered among the <i>clients</i>.</p> + +<p>Clientage is a very old Roman institution. The kings and nobles of +Rome in the very twilight of history had their clients. Those were +the days when poor plebeians had little or no legal protection unless +they enlisted the patronage of a magnate. They entered his <i>gens</i> +(inner-clan), followed him in war, voted (when they obtained the vote) +in his interest, assisted him in certain money matters, in short, +became members of his household although very much better off than the +slaves. In return the patron was bound to defend their legal rights +in the courts and to protect them from all forms of outrage. Men were +proud to confess themselves as clients of a Fabius or an Æmilius. But +by the end of the Republic the institution had practically disappeared +in its original form. There was little legal discrimination then +against poor citizens, and about all the real clients who now remained +were freedmen, who, as just seen, were bound to be loyal and helpful to +their <i>patroni</i>.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>127. The New Parasitical Clientage: the Morning +Salutation.</b>—Now, however, a new and wholly parasitical clientage +has come into being. Early every morning the clients can be seen +hurrying down Mercury Street in their hastily donned togas. Sometimes +a patron lives a great distance across the city; sometimes a fawning +myrmidon hopes to visit <i>two</i> patrons in the same morning and get +a double reward. Calvus does not rejoice in a great horde of clients, +but being a senator his dignity requires that he should maintain +perhaps a score of them.</p> + +<p>These clients are an assorted lot. Some are merely cheap hangers-on, +some are adventurers visiting Rome and expecting<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span> to prosper by earning +the favor of the great, there is also a mediocre poet who hopes for a +tidy gift some day because of laudatory verses about his “Rex” and the +latter’s family, there are several distant relatives of the Calvi, poor +relations to whom the doles are a form of pension; and finally there +are two or three men of good family and tolerable incomes who actually +dance attendance on Calvus just to get a little extra pocket money.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_149" style="max-width: 650px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_149.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Clients gathering in the Rain, before their Patron’s Door.</p> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><i>After Von Falke.</i></p> + </div> + +<p>The clients gather in the vestibule at dawn, rubbing their eyes, +rearranging their hastily donned togas, and each trying to induce the +not very civil porter to permit him to enter first. At last the word +is passed to the door that, “The patron is ready.” The valves open; +the clients swarm inside together. Publius Calvus dressed for the +morning is standing in the rear of his atrium, just behind the pool of +the impluvium. At his elbow is his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span> nomenclator, the slave who “knows +everybody,” to whisper a name in case he should not connect it promptly +with a face.</p> + +<p>“<i>Ave, patrone, ave!</i>” cries each client coming up in turn. +“<i>Ave, Marce!</i>” or “<i>Sexte!</i>” or “<i>Lucie!</i>” answers +Calvus with a more or less formal smile.</p> + +<p>If his mood is very gracious, each client is allowed to seize his hand, +and two or three in extra favor are suffered to kiss his cheek. The +nomenclator meantime prompts him in undertone, “Ask about his wife,” +“Congratulate him on his niece’s marriage,” etc. And if that evening +there are not more important guests in view, the senator will delight +the souls of several by saying affably, “Come to-night to dinner.” The +clients in any case congratulate themselves that their patron is not +like some of those very haughty parvenus, who simply hold out their +hands to be kissed and never speak a word, and who like to be called +“dominus,” as if their clients were merely slaves.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>128. The Dole to Clients (the <i>Sportula</i>).</b>—After the +clients will appear more pretentious visitors—equites and fellow +senators—who call to see Calvus on business. Their own clients are +probably waiting listlessly in the street, while Calvus’s dependents +have to stand respectfully near their lord until an upper slave beckons +them toward the office—the tablinum. He has a list in his hand and +checks off all present as might a master the pupils in his school, +and then comes the reward which brought all these toga-wearing gentry +thither, a distribution of money.</p> + +<p>In former years every client had received an actual portion of +victuals, known as <i>sportula</i> from the “little basket” which +everybody brought to bear the viands hence. But this custom of +distributing actual food was inconvenient, and far more pleasing is an +actual gift of money. Only regularly listed clients can receive this; +and no client, sick<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span> or lazy, can send a deputy.<a id="FNanchor_70" href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> He must appear in +person or stand his loss. At length, to every lawful retainer present +is carefully counted out a hundred <i>quadrantes</i>, small coppers +(rather under 25 cents), and besides the clients entertain a few hopes +of a fairly liberal present at New Year’s Day, and at some other +festivals, and as seen, in a kind of rotation they are invited at broad +intervals to dinner.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>129. Attendance by Clients in Public. Insults They Must +Undergo.</b>—After the sportula has been paid, the clients look +anxiously toward Calvus. Will he tell them, as he does about half of +the time, “Nothing more to-day,” and let them scatter down the streets? +Not so; “My litter” he orders. The clients are obliged to march before +and behind, along with the slaves, helping to elbow aside the crowd, +while the senator visits other senatorial houses, next his banker at +the Forum, and then the law courts for a consultation, and so goes his +round. If he detains the clients through the noon hour, he is obligated +to give them some kind of luncheon; but he can command the attendance +of them all even up to the tenth hour, when he may turn them loose to +refresh themselves in the public Baths of Titus, after they have left +him perhaps at the more select Baths of Agrippa.</p> + +<p>As for the clients invited to Calvus’s dinner, if the fare is plainer +than on the night of a high banquet, there is at least no insulting +discrimination. A decent patron and patrona are bound to show +themselves “friends” of their clients and to keep up a pretence of +democratic manners. But as stated earlier (see p. <a href="#Page_120">120</a>), many a vulgar +plutocrat, feeling that he has paid good money to get a proper retinue<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span> +to follow him to the Forum, delights to insult his clients’ feelings +when he invites them. The host enjoys his fine white loaf, while the +client’s is almost too hard to break; the host a splendid lobster +garnished with asparagus, the client “a crab on a tiny plate hemmed in +by half an egg”; the lord “noble mushrooms,” the client “toadstools of +doubtful quality,”—and all other treatment is to match. Yet such is +the servility and pettiness of many that they will endure all this and +worse merely in order to boast the next day of “last night when I dined +with my friend the senator——!” “You think yourself a citizen and the +guest of a grandee,” cries the indignant poet. “<i>He</i> thinks, and +he’s nearly right, that you’ve been captured by the fine smell from his +kitchen.”</p> + +<p>Clientage then is a typical institution of imperial Rome—a means for +letting rich men flatter their desire for a huge company of obsequious +attendants by trading on the wretched ambition of so many to appear +to be on familiar terms with the great. It multiplies the horde of +shabby-genteel persons around the city, and the vast number of those +who flee from their greatest aversion—honest work.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>130. The Decurions: the Notables of the Chartered Cities.</b>—Above +the run of clients or even of the better plebeians is the actual +nobility. Strictly speaking only the senators and equites are reckoned +in this group, but always in Rome are sojourning a certain number of +other men who hold themselves decidedly better than any plebeians—the +<i>decurions</i> from the enfranchised towns covering all Italy and +dotted over the entire Empire.<a id="FNanchor_71" href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></p> + +<p>The decurions are the notables of the smaller chartered cities. In +their own communities they are local senators and enjoy in a small way +the position of an actual Senator<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span> in Rome.<a id="FNanchor_72" href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> Nobody can be elected +decurion without a reasonable property qualification, in many cities +100,000 sesterces ($4000), and from their body of wealthy dignitaries +the local public assemblies still elect (even under the Empire) city +magistrates, duumvirs, ædiles, etc., who take the place in each +community of the old consuls and censors of Republican Rome.</p> + +<p>Since the loyalty of the population and the popularity of the imperial +régime often depends on this very influential class of decurions, the +government makes much of them; allows them high-sounding titles and +tinsel honors, and any who visit Rome are given social precedence +directly behind the actual equites. Furthermore, many high Roman nobles +themselves are proud to be enrolled as patrons and <i>honorary</i> +decurions of the Italian towns, looking after the interest of their +client communities in the capital, and, if they visit the smaller +cities, being received as particular guests of honor. The number of +decurions, however, in Rome itself is always small, although their +importance everywhere else in the Empire is vast, and they virtually +form a third order of nobility.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>131. The Equites: the Nobles of the Second Class.</b>—Everywhere +around the metropolis you meet the second-class nobles—the +Equites.<a id="FNanchor_73" href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> This “Splendid Order” dates, of course, from the oldest +days when to keep a cavalry horse implied having considerable property. +The equites sank to unimportance in the prosperous era of the Republic, +but were revived to great power by Gaius Gracchus; they were later +reorganized and made an effective part of the new imperial régime by +Augustus.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span></p> + +<p>The dividing line between Senators and Equites is not always sharp. +Young men of senatorial family who renounce a political career have to +“make narrow their purple stripe,” as did Ovid, and without disgrace +appear henceforth as second-class nobles. Supposedly no persons but the +sons of free-born men are eligible for enrollment as equites, but the +members of the old-line families fume vainly at the way the Emperors +(who have complete dispensing power) will grant “the right of the +gold ring,” not merely to the sons of freedmen, but sometimes even to +downright ex-slaves. There are in truth very few equites in Rome who do +not reckon a slave among their not remote grandparents.</p> + +<p>The equites are all carefully enrolled in a public bureau under +imperial control, and one of the surest holds which the Emperor +possesses upon the government lies in the fact that he can refuse +enrollment arbitrarily to any young man and thereby practically exclude +him from any kind of high public office except in the municipal towns, +or from any military rank above that of centurion. The senators, all +the more important officials, and all the commissioned officers of the +army are equites, although their greater honors cause them to ignore +the lesser, while if the Emperor has an eligible son or heir, he is +often proclaimed the <i>princeps juventutis</i> (“Chief of the Roman +Youth”) and is nominally the first member of the Equestrian Order.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>132. Qualifications and Honors of the Equites.</b>—To be enrolled +as an eques one must possess besides unstained birth (with exceptions +above noted), a good public reputation, and taxable property worth at +least 400,000 sesterces ($16,000); sufficient therefore to pass for +a tolerably rich man. The honor comes for life, subject to demotion, +however, for disgraceful conduct, or lapse into poverty. A son normally +inherits his father’s status, if his own share of the patrimony comes +to over 400,000 sesterces; and of course,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span> to make up that magic figure +many plebeians pinch and slave.</p> + +<p>The honors of an eques are great in any age laying such stress on +outward praise and glory. Besides the right to the plain gold ring, +the narrow purple stripe running down the front of the tunic proudly +proclaims the fact, “I am of the nobility.” The equites also enjoy +fourteen rows of seats in the public games and theater directly behind +the four front ones reserved for the senators. They provide a large +fraction of all the jurors in the great civil tribunals which handle +most of the litigation.<a id="FNanchor_74" href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> Very many of the great imperial ministries +and superintendencies are reserved for them, for the Emperor does not +like to trust the senators too implicitly, and some of the smaller +provinces have equestrian “Procurators” as their governors, as also +does the enormously wealthy province of Egypt.</p> + +<p>The majority of the equites, however, are in private life. Senators +ought not (except through convenient middlemen) to engage in +commerce and trade. Not so the equites—the powerful bankers with +whom the imperial treasurer may confer; the owners of the peaceful +armadas that enter Puteoli or Ostia; the proprietors of the finer +retail establishments along the Sæpta Julia as well as of the huge +wholesale houses; the directors of the vast brickyards, and other +highly developed industries; the owners of so many of the squalid but +profitable insulæ—nearly all will show their “Angusticlave”—their +narrow purple stripe. Equites appear at banquets with senators without +the least awkwardness; and they like to be addressed by fine booming +titles: <i>insignes</i>, <i>primores</i>, <i>illustres</i>, or, if +holding high office, <i>eminentissimi</i>, but in most cases as +<i>splendidi</i>; and “splendid” they appear to the envious slaves and +plebeians.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>133. Review of the Equites. Pretenders to the Rank.</b>—The equites +are still in theory a military body. Every 15th of July, unless the +review is deliberately omitted, all members who are physically able are +supposed to procure horses and take part in a grand parade before the +Emperor. Sometimes there are at least 5000 equites in the procession. +The Emperor still has the right of the ancient censors to brand a man +as a bad citizen by the public command, “Sell your horse!” as he rides +by the reviewing stand;<a id="FNanchor_75" href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> but the parade has now become merely an +unpleasant formality for portly men unaccustomed to horseback, and old +gentlemen are usually excused.</p> + +<p>In so large a body of “gentry,” however, imposture becomes fairly +common. Nearly every Emperor issues an edict for the purging of the +order, and every now and then some adventurous nobody is divested of +his “narrow stripe.” Calvus came home lately from the Flaminian Circus +laughing heartily. Just behind his senatorial tier a perfumed and +beringed fellow set off with a splendid lacerna sat down saying loudly, +“Now at last, thanks to our Cæsar, due honors have come to the Roman +equites, and the vulgar are kept away”; but hardly had he spoken ere a +lynx-eyed usher identified him and amid the jeering of hundreds “forced +that very fine lacerna to get up!”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>134. The Senatorial Order. The First-Class Nobility.</b>—The first +class in the nobility is the Senatorial. The actual functioning of +the Senate which is still a most venerable and powerful council will +be told later (see p. <a href="#Page_334">334</a>); here we have to see its members merely +in social and unofficial life. They number six hundred and entrance +into their gilded circle comes usually by a kind of hereditary right. +The sons of a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span> senator can almost always count on becoming senators +themselves if the family fortune is not too impaired and they have +not fallen under imperial disfavor. To win the honor you must either +be elected (by the Senate itself) to some one of the old Republican +offices—quæstors, ædiles, prætors, consuls, etc.,—which carried a +life seat in the Senate with them, or be appointed outright by fiat of +the Emperor. The latter, furthermore, is always pushing forward his +favorites by “inviting” the senators to elect them to office, and the +“Conscript Fathers” never disregarded such a broad hint from “Cæsar.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>135. Social Glories of Senators.</b>—Senators alone are eligible +for the highest commands in the army, for the governorships for the +more important provinces, except Egypt, and for most of the other +exalted offices which do not involve a vulgar handling of money. The +Emperor himself ranks as the head of their noble body. Even when he +is at bitter odds with them, he must not forget that they share part +of his glory. Still is told the story of how one of Nero’s parasites +raised a laugh from the tyrant one day. “I hate you, Cæsar!” he +announced. “And why is that?” “Oh, just because you are a senator.”</p> + +<p>All the senators are officially the “friends,” <i>amici</i>, of the +monarch.</p> + +<p>These great nobles are entitled to visit the Emperor in the palace +somewhat as clients visit their patron. He is expected to extend his +hand to them; to treat them as a kind of social equals; and to allow +the more important of them to kiss him. They and their wives must be +invited to all the greater palace banquets. Finally all the better +monarchs are expected to take oath at the beginning of their reigns +that they “will never put any senator to death”—that is, that the +Senate shall be the supreme judge over its own members.</p> + +<p>Although parvenus are promoted by even the best of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span> emperors, the +senatorial families average much older than do the equestrian; and it +is still a very desirable thing to boast of “ancient blood and the +painted visages of one’s forebears.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>136. The Senatorial Aristocracy Greater than the Senate.</b>—The +“Senatorial Aristocracy,” nevertheless, is something greater than the +actual membership of the great council itself. Not merely the sons +but all the male descendants of a senator to the third degree are +reckoned as equal socially to the actual “Conscript Fathers,” though +many such connections dress merely as equites with the narrow stripe. +This may be from “lack of ambition” or it may be from desire to engage +in trade. Gratia has two brothers. One is a senator, his wealth +invested in lands, and at present he is imperial legate over part of +Britain. The second is technically only an eques, busy with enormous +financial transactions with Alexandria; but the second is the richer +and probably the more influential man of the two. Of course, all the +wives of senators rank with their husbands, and every cousin, niece, or +nephew of the latter feels a reflected luster. The six hundred senators +are, therefore, the center of an upper aristocracy with at least six +thousand actual members.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>137. Insignia, Qualifications, and Titles of Senators.</b>—The +actual senators make no concealment of their honors. They have their +special shoes (see p. <a href="#Page_95">95</a>), and most important of all they have the +broad purple stripe running down the front of their tunics, the +precious <i>laticlave</i>, distinguishing them instantly from the +equites. Nobody, furthermore, can be enrolled as senator unless +he possesses the taxable fortune of at least 1,000,000 sesterces +($40,000); and this insures that he is a passing rich man, above petty +bribes and able to live with the dignity becoming a Lord of the Empire.</p> + +<p>The public glories of these dignitaries match their fortunes. At all +the public games and spectacles the senatorial<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span> tiers are directly +behind the Emperor’s loge. In the public feasts the senators are not +merely entitled to the seats of honor, but frequently to extra-generous +portions of the food. If a senator tours the provinces, he can command +every kind of servile attention, even if the Emperor refuses him +the “right of free legation”—the privileges of traveling with the +honors of an ambassador. Finally if he is arrested, not merely is he +ordinarily tried before his peers—in the Senate; he is subject to much +lighter penalties than the run of citizens in case of conviction.<a id="FNanchor_76" href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a></p> + +<p>Finally the senators have a title of nobility which they are +able to command practically as a formal right<a id="FNanchor_77" href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a>—<i>vir +clarissimus</i>—“Very distinguished Lord” or “Your Magnificence.” +Gratia, like every senator’s wife, is a <i>femina clarissima</i>; even +her small sons can be addressed pompously as <i>pueri clarissimi</i>. +To the multitude who make way for their litters, the rank of +<i>clarissimus</i> appears the acme of attainable happiness.</p> + +<p>The political power of the Senate has waned, but emperors are only +mortal individuals. They come and go; the existence of the great, +proud, wealthy, landed aristocracy seems to go on forever. Emperors +usually succeed so far as they win its loyalty and favor; they somehow +fail, and are branded across history as tyrants (often cut short by +dagger thrusts) when they earn its hate. In an Empire of nigh one +hundred millions the six thousand of the Senatorial Order form the +normal apex of the human pyramid. It is a fine thing to be a senator.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER IX<br> +<span class="subhed">PHYSICIANS AND FUNERALS</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>138. Scanty Qualifications and Training of Doctors.</b>—People +fall sick in Rome quite as much as in every other great center of +humanity, but the healing art has not really progressed a great deal +beyond that in Athens in the days of Hippocrates nearly five hundred +years earlier.<a id="FNanchor_78" href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> A great proportion of even the most fashionable +doctors are freedmen, and nearly all of these have Greek (or sometimes +Egyptian) names. There is no medical examination. Anybody who has made +a failure in other callings is welcome to pose as a physician and try +to extract money from the unfortunate. There are many “surgeons” and +“therapists” around the city who, a little while ago, were shoemakers, +carpenters, or smiths, and who, perhaps, keep up their old handicraft +on the side. Six months is time enough to learn a little medical jargon +while serving as “disciple” to some experienced doctor; after that, let +the invalids beware.</p> + +<p>Under such circumstances the glory of the medical profession suffers. +Rightly did Pliny the Elder complain of doctors: “Any voluble person +has powers of life and death over us, just as though thousands of +persons did not live on without doctoring, as Rome existed for six +hundred years [before the first physicians came].” Such gentry +inevitably, if they fail at quackery, can then drift off to something +else, and very familiar is Martial’s epigram: “Diaulus has been a +surgeon and is now an undertaker. At last he’s begun to be useful to +the sick in the only way that he’s able.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>139. Superior Class of Physicians.</b>—Nevertheless, the physicians +of Rome are by no means all of them charlatans. If their theories are +grossly imperfect, many of them are men of wide experience and keen +insight. A sick man able to command the best, need not give up in +despair unless his case is really complicated and difficult. Great +cures are recorded, as that of Augustus, whose life was saved in a +most critical illness by the “cold-water treatment” ordered by his +doctor, the wise freedman Antonius Musa—a cure which by saving an +all-important life affected the world’s history.</p> + +<p>Whatever their qualifications, physicians, if not highly educated, +assuredly abound in large numbers. Every chartered city maintains +a corps of them for the free treatment of the citizens, and keeps +up public <i>hiatreia</i>—well-lighted, spacious halls for offices +and dispensaries.<a id="FNanchor_79" href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> Every cohort of the army has four physicians +attached, with superior medical officers over the larger divisions, and +camp sanitation has been worked out excellently by the Roman military +experts.</p> + +<p>In the Imperial Court, the <i>archiater</i> (“head physician”) is a +well-paid and very important dignitary. Between him and the miserable +slave doctors who bleed and physic their fellows in the private familia +there are any number of gradations. Most of the doctors, of course, +practice for fees, although in Rome, too, a system of free clinics and +dispensaries is coming in, with a special public physician for each of +the fourteen regions of the city.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>140. A Fashionable Doctor.</b>—A doctor of the superior kind is +Symmachus whom Calvus summons whenever any of his own family are +seriously ill. He has one of the most fashionable practices in Rome, +and his annual income is not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span> much under that of Quintus Stertinus +whose fees in Claudius’s day brought him 600,000 sesterces ($24,000) +per year. A high-grade physician does not render a monthly bill. He +expects to be paid once annually—on the first of January. Besides he +counts on receiving a substantial legacy whenever a regular patient at +length escapes him and dies. Lower grade doctors, however, are less +delicate. They are charged with being greedy for unreasonable fees and +with prolonging illnesses easily curable, demanding outrageous sums for +common medicines, and taking every sordid advantage of the needs of the +sick.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_162" style="max-width: 508px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_162.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Invalid with Attendants.</p> + </div> + +<p>Symmachus is apparently above all such <i>gaucheries</i>. He has been +trained to bear himself as a polished gentleman. His visits are long +or short according to the desires of his patients. He never blurts +out unpleasant truths and he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span> always repeats the Hippocratic maxim, +“A cure depends on three things, the sick man, his sickness, and the +physician”; and that the physician’s business is to help the sick man +to cure himself. The result is that while his anatomical theories would +distress a later age, and some of his medicines are very crude, he +often effects excellent results especially in those cases where mental +therapeutics can avail a little.</p> + +<p>Such a doctor possesses a set of surgical instruments quite as good +as any available in a later age until at least the time of the French +Revolution, and assuredly he knows how to use them very skillfully. He +can dull pain for operations or induce sleep by juice of mandragora or +atropin, and he can operate for cataract by distending the eye-pupil +by anagallis. Delicate surgical operations, however, he will probably +turn over to specialists. There are such surgeons who operate, no +doubt with reasonable success, for hernia and fistula, who take out +gall-stones, and deal with very dangerous fractures. There are also +lesser specialists who can remove or fill aching teeth and can banish +superfluous hair, and there is one shrewd old fellow who commands a +princely income—he can really erase the degrading marks of branding +upon slaves, after they become lordly freedmen.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>141. Medical Books and Famous Remedies.</b>—Symmachus affects to +be a man of professional learning. He possesses and claims to have +studied carefully the great medical treatises of Hermogenes of Smyrna +in 72 books, and that of Tiberius Claudius Menecrates in 156 books. To +impress his patients he will talk learnedly of the jangling theories +of the “Dogmatics,” and “Methodics,” “Pneumaticists,” etc., although +professing himself to be an “Eclectic.” However, his own shrewd common +sense is usually of greater avail than all his books.</p> + +<p>A large part of a popular physician’s gains come not from regular +fees, but from supplying his patients with medicine.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span> There are +many shops selling crude drugs in Rome but no regular prescription +pharmacists.<a id="FNanchor_80" href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> Public opinion avers that the more costly remedies are +always the best, and Symmachus does not discourage that idea too much, +although telling his select patients that cheap medicaments often are +as effective. It is often hard, however, to get pure drugs, and genuine +ingredients.<a id="FNanchor_81" href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> Even the best doctors will be deceived by oriental +drug dealers palming off false balsams, and similar commodities.</p> + +<p>Many physicians consider it professional to keep their remedies secret, +and boast of private formulas, which they will not share with their +rivals. In Tiberius’s day there was a Paccius Antiochus who prepared +a marvellous powder, a kind of panacea for many ills. He compounded +it behind locked doors and mystified even his assistants as to its +nature; but on his death he had the decency to bequeath his formula +to the Emperor who had it deposited for inspection in all the public +libraries; and Hadrian has just done the same with some formulas left +by the great Marcellus of Side.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>142. Absurd Medicines. Theriac.</b>—Some of these remedies are +of an extraordinary nature and so intelligent a man as Symmachus can +have no confidence in them. Still plenty of good doctors will tell +you that a piece of hyena-skin is an excellent remedy for mad-dog +bites, and that certain very filthy substances make good poultices for +swellings. The imperial government actually employs several slaves to +catch adders, whence are derived several important medicaments; and it +is claimed that medicines to cure gall-stones must be pounded with a +pestle that contains no iron. There is no need to dwell on the absurd +articles foisted on the gullible<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span> by the quacks; pills made from dried +bugs and centipedes are among the very least obnoxious.</p> + +<p>There is supposed to be a specific medicine for every disease, and +Symmachus’s office is crammed with little chests bearing such labels as +“<i>Drug from Berytus for watery eyes. Instantaneous</i>”; “<i>Ointment +for gout. Made for Proculus, imperial freedman. Safe Cure</i>”; +“<i>Remedy for scab. Tested successfully by Pamphilius during the great +scab epidemic</i>,” or “<i>Eye-salve tried by Florus on Antonia, wife +of Prince Drusus, after other doctors had nearly blinded her</i>.”<a id="FNanchor_82" href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> +There is also a large box of a famous compound to be used whenever +diagnosis is uncertain. <i>Theriac</i> is a mixture of sixty-one +different elements including dried adders. Whoever takes it is sure to +find at least <i>one</i> substance that will assist his disease; and +it is prescribed by almost every physician at the opening stages of a +malady, before he can attempt diagnosis.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>143. Fear of Poisoning. Popularity of Antidotes.</b>—A large +part of the doctor’s drug collection is, however, made up of +<i>antidotes</i> for poisons. Everybody dreads being poisoned. Many +peculiar deaths which ought to be diagnosed as caused by natural +illness are charged up to venomous drugs<a id="FNanchor_83" href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> and indeed a deadly dose +rather than a deadly dagger seems a favorite means for murder. People +still whisper stories of that awful poison-vender, the woman Locusta, +who probably supplied Nero’s mother Agrippina with the fatal powder +she sprinkled on her husband Claudius’s dish of mushrooms, and then +another dose to Nero himself to kill his stepbrother, Britannicus, with +a highly spiced goblet.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span></p> + +<p>If a man has many deadly foes, he is likely to take a potion of the +precious theriac daily—because antidotes for so many poisons are +carried in the compound; and all histories tell how Mithridates of +Pontus, that famous adversary of Sulla and Pompeius, used to take +antidotes so constantly that he became entirely immune to the venoms +prepared by all his enemies. Symmachus, as part of his stock in trade, +therefore, keeps the proper antidotes for all such familiar poisons as +hemlock, opium, henbane, gypsum, white lead, etc., as well as for many +obscurer foods of evil. Rumor says that not long since he had to use +several of them on the old ex-consul, Annæus, whose spendthrift sons +seemed very anxious to get their inheritance.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>144. Medical Students, “Disciples,” Beauty +Specialists.</b>—Symmachus like all responsible physicians keeps an +office on a good street, but although patients can visit him there, +the place is mainly for the compounding of medicines by various slaves +under the direction of several “disciples.” There are no medical +schools in Rome,<a id="FNanchor_84" href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> and these young disciples follow their master +about, study a little, and learn by watching him. They are kept away +from his most select patients; but are allowed to troop into the sick +room of the poorer, feel of the pulse, examine the wounds, etc., in a +manner most distressing. People, in fact, dread to call in a doctor—it +often means being felt over not by one but by a half dozen clammy +hands, usually when one is very ill.<a id="FNanchor_85" href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a></p> + +<p>In addition to the men of medicine are the “beauty +specialists”—persons who claim to have reduced the supplementing of +nature to a science. A court physician Crito once wrote four books of +standard authority on the compounding<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span> of cosmetics. Every physician is +called upon to prescribe skin washes, depilatories for rendering the +bodies of young dandies perfectly hairless, and formulæ for fragrances +for clothes or chambers; but it takes a specialist to know the +intricacies of rouge and enamel, and otherwise to assist the ladies. +The dividing line also between the physician and the hair-dresser is +not always easy to mark. Petronius tells about the dames who not merely +have abundant false hair, but “take their eyebrows out of a little box” +and “put their teeth away at night just as they do their silks.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>145. Cheap Doctors: No Hospitals.</b>—The inferior grades of +doctors do a great deal of office work. In mere booths or small shops +opening upon the street they receive patients, sometimes even standing +by the door and bidding the hesitant “Step in!” Their surgeries are +decked out with a display of ivory boxes, silver cupping glasses, and +golden-handled lancets,—the more incompetent the leech the greater +often being the display.</p> + +<p>To advertise their skill practitioners of this class will often set +bones and perform minor operations before a gaping crowd just outside +in the streets—actions denounced by men of Symmachus’s caliber; and +all their patients are examined with great publicity. Lower still are +the itinerant quacks who will diagnose diseases on a street corner +and vend alleged theriac and other “medicines” from a pedlar’s pack. +There are other unlovely members of the profession who grow rich +by performing criminal operations, and to whom unfaithful wives or +legacy-seekers can appeal, begging them to “put the patient out of +his misery!”—with results deliberately murderous. More legitimate of +course are the numerous women who attend to the maladies of their own +sex. Some of these women are said to be physicians of high capacity and +able to command generous compensation.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span></p> + +<p>A serious handicap to medicine exists because there are no public +hospitals in Rome, although sick strangers are probably allowed to lie +around the Temples of Asculapius or of other healing deities.<a id="FNanchor_86" href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> The +control of epidemics is very imperfect. Rome has been visited severely +by the plague, and in the reign of Marcus Aurelius it will be ravaged +yet again. The age is a brutal one. Much is done to keep the populace +amused and to delight the eye; relatively little to preserve precious +human lives. In the great slave familia, however, self-interest if no +better motive impels the owners to try to keep their chattels healthy. +As already explained nearly every slave household has its special +slave physicians, men of tolerable competence; and there is also the +<i>valetudinarium</i>, the infirmary—a detached building or a large +room in which sick slaves can be properly tended, and also isolated to +prevent infection.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>146. Suicide as Escape from Hopeless Disease.</b>—Symmachus, +despite his reputation for “wonderful cures,” has just lost a wealthy +patient. The circumstances were somewhat unusual but by no means +unprecedented. Quintus Gordianus, an elderly senator, had been +suffering from a very painful internal disease. Symmachus assured him +the case was incurable, but that he might, nevertheless, live for +years. Thereupon Gordianus announced that he would commit suicide.</p> + +<p>The right of a sane man voluntarily to surrender his life is undoubted. +Philosophers have written fine essays on the desirability of suicide; +only it must be entered upon discreetly and not as a cowardly means +of escaping the duties of life. Many of Nero’s and Domitian’s noble +victims obviously<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span> obeyed the mandate “Open your veins” more because +they were tired of existence than because a desperate attempt to +overthrow the tyrant would have been hopeless. Many a Roman aristocrat +has sucked all the sensual pleasure so completely out of life that the +latter has become one great boredom, and no religion commands “Live +on!” when it is evident that the remainder of existence must merely be +months or years of helplessness and pain.</p> + +<p>As soon, therefore, as Gordianus was satisfied that his case was +hopeless he declared to his relatives that, “He would starve himself to +death.” They pleaded with him faithfully and caused most tempting food +to be always within his reach, but later they took pride in telling of +his iron will which rejected all their efforts. At last the end came, +and all his circle remarked that Gordianus died as became a Roman +senator and a true philosopher. Suicides for more trivial reasons than +the above are, of course, reported every day.<a id="FNanchor_87" href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>147. Execution of Wills. Numerous Legacies Customary.</b>—Before +Gordianus became too weak, he called in a group of friends to witness +the revision of his will. The right to execute a will is a precious +privilege for Roman citizens,<a id="FNanchor_88" href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> and the law allows wide options in +disposing of one’s property. A Roman gentleman makes his will many +times and is constantly revising or adding codicils to the same. Slaves +are not supposed to make testaments—their small <i>peculia</i> must +legally revert to their masters; but the more decent owners allow even +slaves to bequeath their belongings to fellow-slaves.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span></p> + +<p>A will implies much more than merely distributing one’s property among +near kin. Gordianus’s widow and son were in fact well content when +they found not more than two-fifths of the large estate was to pass +outside the family. It is a deadly insult—all the more deadly because +the departed are beyond retaliation—to fail to remember a familiar +acquaintance with a sizable legacy.<a id="FNanchor_89" href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a></p> + +<p>“When the tablets are opened” all Rome knows how a man has paid his +social debts, usually to people who have no blood connection.</p> + +<p>Was the ex-ædile Numerius angry because he only received 10,000 +sesterces ($400)? And why was that ill-mannered old eques Albinus +left 20,000? And why was the banker Velocius, once such a confidant, +left nothing at all? Did Gordianus wish to brand the last-named as +a scoundrel? The list of slaves enfranchised, and also of those +specifically refused enfranchisement is carefully scanned; as well as +various legacies to certain great advocates who have evidently rendered +Gordianus service in tight lawsuits, and above all a sum of 100,000 +sesterces ($4000) to “Our Lord Hadrianus Augustus Cæsar.” Gordianus +had been by no means a great intimate at the palace, but it would +have been most untactful to fail to remember the Emperor. Under bad +rulers such a slight would probably involve the actual setting aside +of the will, posthumous charges of treason, and the ruin of the heirs +by the confiscation of the entire property. Under a good Emperor such +an insertion puts the donor’s son in good odor with the government, +and insures that the imperial procurators (who guard their master’s +property) will assist in defending the will if disgruntled kinsmen +should try to break it.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>148. Regular Incomes from Legacies. Professional Legacy +Hunters.</b>—The granting of legacies is in fact so ordinary a part +of Roman life that distinguished men like Cicero and Pliny the Younger +can almost count on a steady flow of bequests (often from people whom +they know but slightly) as part of their income. Gordianus is leaving +a mature and proper son to take over his great name, clients, and a +good share of his property. His bequests therefore are relatively +small, and that fact robs his will of most of its interest. If, +however, he had been childless, all Rome would have been agog as soon +as people knew that he was dying. Great, if evil, are “the advantages +of childlessness.” The rich bachelor is sure of obsequious service from +innumerable quarters. The more he coughs and the paler he grows, the +more the presents he receives and the more do loudly condoling friends +press to his bedside. They reach the very depth of servility, and +sometimes they are rewarded.</p> + +<p>Years ago Horace gave directions to the successful legacy hunter. “If +a man hands you his will to read, be sure to refuse and push the wax +tablets from you—-yet take a side-glance to catch the second line +of the first table [below the preamble]. Run your eye quickly along +to see whether you are the <i>sole</i> heir or one of many.” If the +prospective victim has a “crafty woman, or a freedman looking after the +dotard, strike a partnership with them and praise them to him, that +they may praise <i>you</i> behind your back.” Then when the testator +at last dies lament him loudly, as a “worthy and true friend,” shed as +many tears as you can, and don’t grudge a splendid funeral.</p> + +<p>Thus fortunes can be and often are won, but not invariably. In Trajan’s +reign there died a rich Domitius Tullus. He allowed the legacy hunters +to fasten upon him; to shower him with all kinds of favors—then he +actually left everything to a niece and to grandchildren. All Rome +was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span> divided: “Perfidious hypocrite!” some gossips buzzed in the great +baths; but others praised him for “cheating the hopes of the rascals.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>149. Public Bequests.</b>—Gordianus, besides these legacies to +friends, also makes some public bequests. This is an age when the rich +are expected to justify their good fortune by showering favors upon the +community. If the rich testator had lived in a municipal town, he would +have been expected in his life time to have provided feasts, public +games, new civic buildings, and probably to have repaired the city +walls. As it is, he leaves the cost of a good gladiator fight to an +Italian town that once elected him patron; increases the endowment for +a public library which he had earlier founded at another such town near +one of his villas; and institutes a trust fund to provide an annual +feast in honor of his “Manes” to be shared in by all the freedmen of +his family and by their own descendants.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>150. Great Funerals Very Fashionable. Desire to Be Remembered after +Death.</b>—Before he died, Gordianus also gave particular orders about +his funeral. Every Roman seems to look forward to his obsequies with +a melancholy, but an enormous interest. If he is poor, he hoards his +money and joins a coöperative burial society to provide for final rites +that will be long remembered. If he is rich, he will leave nothing +undone to succeed in impressing the entire city that it has lost an +important citizen. Under the Republic the funerals of great personages +were really public pageants, deliberately calculated to teach young +nobles the glory of a long career spent in the service of the state. +Under the Empire these customs are still maintained, although often +they are nothing more than vulgar displays showing forth the wealth of +the deceased.</p> + +<p>The age does not believe earnestly in immortality. Epicureans<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span> deny +it outright, and Stoics more than doubt. Sometimes a very gross view +of death is taken, that it is merely the careless end of a round of +sensual pleasures. You can occasionally read on tombstones inscriptions +like this: “<i>Bathing, wine, and love-affairs—these hurt our bodies, +but they make life worth living. I’ve lived my days. I revelled, and +I drank all that I desired. Once I was not; then I was; now I am not +again—but I don’t care!</i>”<a id="FNanchor_90" href="#Footnote_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a> But most persons, especially grave +Stoics like Gordianus, view death otherwise. Death means a going out +into the dark; a process of being forgotten by those who once loved or +admired you. If, by a splendid funeral, you can make your memory last +a little longer, who would fail having one? Hence the excuse for very +costly obsequies, often for unimportant individuals.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>151. Preliminaries to a Funeral.</b>—The moment Gordianus seemed +to be breathing his last his son bent over his face as if to catch +his final sigh. Then immediately the young man called his father +three times “Quintus! Quintus! Quintus!” partly to make sure he was +dead; partly as a signal to start off all the expectant slaves and +freedmen in loud and frenzied lamentation through all the wide domus. A +messenger promptly summoned a fashionable <i>libitinarius</i> (funeral +director) who undertook to conduct everything in the best possible +style. While the house rang with outcries, professional experts washed +the body in warm water and took immediately a waxen impression of the +features.</p> + +<p>The dead was thereupon dressed in an embroidered toga, such as he might +have worn when a magistrate, and was placed on a gilded couch in the +atrium with the feet towards the door, beside which was set a bunch +of cypress or pine, in token of the sorrow in the house. Skillful +embalmers<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span> were available and the actual funeral could have been +delayed as much as a week. This was not necessary, however, and the +ceremony took place in two days—time enough to arrange the great pyre +and other necessary matters.</p> + +<p>The old practice was for every funeral to be held at night, and +“funeral torches” were once about as common along the streets as the +more festive marriage torches. But under the Empire the greater display +can, of course, be made by daytime, although by a peculiar survival a +few torch bearers will solemnly march along in the procession as if to +outvie the sunlight.</p> + +<p>The mustering of a large funeral procession calls for no mean executive +skill. If the deceased is from an old family, persons must be hired to +wear all the death masks found in his atrium, and costumes improvised +or rented so that the wearers can appear as consuls, prætors, etc., +and all the various articles and exhibits needful for the procession +must be assembled. Above all there must appear at the house of mourning +a clever Greek actor, selected partly because of some physical +resemblance to the dead. This is the <i>archimimus</i>, who carefully +confers with Gordianus’s freedmen and even with his son to learn the +speech, mannerisms, and the personal foibles of the departed.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>152. The Funeral Procession. The Display of Masked +“Ancestors.”</b>—At last at a time sure to command the best attention, +the criers begin going about all the streets where Gordianus is likely +to have had friends. They shout a formula in quaint, archaic Latin. +“This citizen, Quintus Gordianus, is being surrendered to death. For +those who find it convenient, now is the time for his funeral. He is +being borne from his house!” and the procession sets forth commanded by +a master-undertaker—the pompous <i>designator</i>.</p> + +<p>At the head marches a band of players, their flutes, lyres, and +dulcimers keeping up a most melancholy music. Then<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span> unavoidably follows +a whole platoon of professional clowns and buffoons singing ribald +songs and shouting very coarse jokes to the thronging spectators. +Next, apparently, there walks Gordianus himself—it is the archimimus +dressed like the ex-consul, imitating his gait, gestures, and voice, +and even making broad personal jests at the expense of the deceased. +Then follows the really imposing part of the display, and the bereaved +widow and her son thrill with aristocratic pride at the thought of +it. Theirs is a very old house, and a hundred actors are needed to +wear all the wax <i>imagines</i> (often battered and blackened) from +the great cupboards in the atrium. All his “curule ancestors” going +back to the Gallic invasion seem to be accompanying Gordianus to the +grave. The spectators are checking off the “consuls” and “ædiles” on +their fingers, and at last some cry “a censor,” and presently even +more admiringly a “dictator.”<a id="FNanchor_91" href="#Footnote_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> One can almost feel that it is no +misfortune to die, if only one can look forward properly to this moment +of posthumous glory.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>153. The Exhibits in the Procession. The Retinue around the +Bier.</b>—Behind the procession of death-masks come slaves bearing on +poles large crudely sketched pictures upon boards, showing incidents +in the Dacian wars where their master commanded as one of Trajan’s +legates. Gordianus also had dabbled in literature, and copies of +his essays and poems are now tied on tall rods and carried along +conspicuously by the marchers. Next comes the corpse itself—exposed to +view, upon a couch decked with purple, fretted with gold, and carried +aloft upon the shoulders of eight picked bearers. All can see that +Gordianus wears the “triumphal<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span> ornaments,” the laurel wreath as well +as the toga prætexta awarded the favorite generals in the army.<a id="FNanchor_92" href="#Footnote_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a></p> + +<p>After that follows the family procession. Young Gordianus is robed +in black, and leads by the hand his mother, a venerable matron, who +wears the mourning color for women, white, and who lets her gray locks +stream in disorder over her shoulders. If he had possessed sisters, +they would now tear their hair, dig their nails in their cheeks, and +utter piercing cries of grief. This clamor is produced sufficiently by +a group of slave women led by two or three professional female wailers +who, at intervals, set up a shrill chant of lamentation for the dead. +Next follow a great company of Gordianus’s more distinguished friends, +all walking with down-cast looks and clad in black or sad-colored +togas. After them is the large retinue from the familia, first the +older freedmen, then groups of ex-slaves wearing tall caps—token of +manumission by will, and trying not to appear <i>too</i> exultant in +their new freedom, then bringing up the rear the whole group of actual +slaves, supposed to be torn with grief at the loss of “so good a +master.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>154. The Funeral Oration in the Forum.</b>—The procession heads at +first not toward the place of the final pyre but toward the Old Forum. +The honor of a public funeral oration is granted to practically every +distinguished citizen, including many noblewomen. Indeed, this use +of the Forum is an extremely common occurrence. The space around the +orator’s stand (the <i>rostra</i>) has been cleared of idlers, and an +array of suitable “curule chairs” has been set out for all the wearers +of the death masks, as if they were again sitting like the magistrates +of old.</p> + +<p>After a suitable delay a kinsman of the deceased, a senator somewhat +vain of his reputation as an orator, mounts the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span> rostra and delivers +a fulsome eulogy. It is notorious that such “laudations” never stick +closely to the truth. The audience is made to understand that Gordianus +was a very Cato the Elder in personal virtue and a Scipio Africanus in +his success as a general. When that ceremony is completed the whole +company sets forth again—this time toward one of the gates beyond +which is the funeral pyre.<a id="FNanchor_93" href="#Footnote_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>155. Family Tombs. The <i>Columbarium</i> and the +Garden.</b>—Burials are not unknown in Rome, but most bodies are +disposed of by cremation. Even persons of very modest means will try to +provide money for a good pyre. This is partly because the very poor, +the worthless slaves, and the lowest of the plebeians, are not burned, +but their bodies simply are dumped in hideous open pits not far from +the Esquiline itself. Nothing is done to the bodies thus exposed except +to leave them to the dogs and ravens, and only the favor of Jupiter +averts from the city an incessant pestilence in consequence. Long +since, however, Gordianus’s family has erected along the Appian Way +(though another frequented highroad could have been selected) a stately +tomb, calculated to attract attention from all passers.</p> + +<p>Handsome tombs can take many forms; there is even a good-sized stone +pyramid, 116 feet high, erected to guard the ashes of Gaius Cestius, +a great man under Augustus. That of the Gordiani is of a more modest +character; a circular masonry tower, about fifty feet in diameter and +rather higher, surmounted by a castellated battlement adorned with +life-sized marble statues of famous members of the family. Inside there +is no huge chamber for a sarcophagus, but simply a series of arched +vaults the walls of which are honey-combed with little niches, each +intended to receive a funeral urn.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span> This kind of interior, therefore, +is not unhappily called a <i>columbarium</i>—a “pigeon-cote”; and here +will be placed not merely the urns of all the regular scions of the +family, but (in inferior niches of course) those of all the freedmen +and even of all the better loved slaves. The ashes of the Gordiani, +mighty or humble therefore rest all together.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_178" style="max-width: 633px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_178.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Scene along the Appian Way</span>: showing the tombs +and the gay crowds passing.</p> + </div> + +<p>Outside this massive tower there is a considerable open compound, laid +out as a pleasant garden, with shrubbery, flower-beds, and a little +lodge for the slave in residence who acts as caretaker. There is even a +small but handsome building, where members of the family can meet for +the periodic feasts in honor of the dear departed. Handsome statues +and fine bas-reliefs on the inclosing walls abound, and the place in +short seems much more like a small pleasure park than a cemetery. This +mortuary compound, however, is one of the better types of inclosures. +The taste displayed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span> in some adjacent is execrable. Already across +the Appian Way opposite, a rich freedman has purchased a large lot +and is erecting in his own lifetime a tall central statue of himself, +flinging money from a bag to the populace, with the base surrounded by +bas-reliefs showing his favorite small dog, some gladiator fights, and +deep-laden craft under full sail—to explain how he made his money.<a id="FNanchor_94" href="#Footnote_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_179" style="max-width: 614px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_179.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Pyramid—Tomb of Gaius Cestius</span>: Ostia Gate +of the Wall of Aurelian (built <i>circ.</i> 275 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>) in +background.</p> + </div> + +<p>For many miles out into the Campagna around Rome extend these strange +cemeteries—not in seclusion, but passed by incessant traffic. Some +of the monuments are magnificent, some simple; they illustrate almost +every type of sculpture—but the object of nearly all is the same, +to remind the living of the one-time existence of the dead, and so +to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span> provide a kind of spurious immortality often for very commonplace +persons, in an age when the immortality of the soul seems no favored +doctrine.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_180" style="max-width: 649px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_180.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">View along the Appian Way showing Funeral +Monuments.</p> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><i>Restored after Von Falke.</i></p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>156. The Funeral Pyre and Its Ceremonies.</b>—At last the funeral +procession has reached the great mausoleum of the Gordiani. The pyre +of choice wood, sprinkled with perfumes, unguents, and costly spices +is ready at a safe distance. The sides of the pile have been covered +with dark leaves, while cypress boughs have been set upon the top. +Amid these the bier and the corpse, just as they have been borne, are +now planted and various articles of clothing, jewelry, trinkets, etc., +used by the deceased are next placed upon the pyre. If the ex-consul +had been a younger man fond of hunting, deer nets and boar spears might +have been added; or favored horses and dogs slaughtered and their +carcasses added to the pile.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_181" style="max-width: 564px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_181.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Street of the Tombs at Pompeii, showing Typical +Monuments of the Smaller Class.</p> + </div> + +<p>At length all is ready. Young Gordianus is handed a torch, and with +averted face he touches it to the wood impregnated with perfumed oils. +Instantly a great blaze shoots up, the smoke from the aromatic wood +smelling most sweetly. The company waits in mournful silence until the +tall pyre collapses and the bier has been utterly consumed. Then as +the fire glows away, several loyal freedmen dash forward and quench +it with great jars of chilled wine. Certain calcined bones and ashes +are collected, wrapped in fine linen cloths and placed in a superb +funeral urn, blue and white glass cut into exquisite designs, showing +boys piping and treading the grapes in a festival of Bacchus. The last +mortal remains of the departed senator are, therefore, at rest amid +scenes eminently cheerful.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>157. Funeral Monuments. Memorial Feasts to the Dead.</b>—The +ceremony is over. “<i>Vale!</i>”—and again “<i>Vale!</i>” cries all +the company ere departing. The urn will now be placed in one of the +niches in the columbarium; but in Gordianus’s honor they will erect a +special statue, at its base chiseled a peaceful ship gliding steadily +toward a distant shore; the son and widow evidently recalling the +peaceful thoughts of Cicero in his essay “On Old Age”—“I find the +nearer I come to the time of death the more I feel like one who begins +to see land, and knows that sometime he will enter the harbor after the +long voyage.”</p> + +<p>On Gordianus’s birthday, on the anniversary of his death, and also +for eight days in February sacred to the honored dead, his heirs and +loyal freedmen will visit the spot, deck his statue with wreaths of +roses, violets, and other flowers, sacrifice a black sheep or pig to +the “Manes,” and indulge in a feast in his honor. This will be kept up, +perhaps, until his own son is placed on the pyre and the fame of the +“great Gordianus” has sunk to the barest memory.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>158. Funerals of the Poor. “Funeral Societies.”</b>—We have +witnessed obsequies of a rich senator. Less favored persons, of course, +are buried with ever-increasing degrees of simplicity. There is almost +no religious element in Roman funerals. The bodies of unfortunates +can be disposed of with brutal abruptness and lack of decorum, but +the great host of plebeians and of those freedmen who cannot hope +for an urn in the columbarium of a noble family have a recourse. +They often club together in a “Funeral Society.” Everybody pays a +fixed assessment into a common chest; out of these funds space is +hired in one of the great public columbaria which are often erected +as legitimate speculations. When a member dies he is assured of a +respectable procession of buffoons and weepers (imagines being out +of the question), a private harangue in his honor, and a thoroughly +adequate<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span> funeral pyre. Funds not needed for this purpose are spent +on feasts once or more a year in which the names of dead members are +solemnly commemorated.</p> + +<p>Some of these funeral “colleges” are really elaborate affairs, with +considerable ritual, a permanent hall, and a corps of elective +officers, “prætors,” “curators,” etc., whose tinsel pomp makes the +wearers forget that most of the time they are humble plebeians or even +slaves. The collegia, in other words, appeal to those who in another +age may find a certain inferior type of “lodge” very congenial. They +are grandiloquently named for some patron god, calling themselves “The +Worshippers (<i>cultores</i>) of Apollo,” or perhaps for an Oriental +deity, “The Servants of Serapis”; but their fundamental purpose is the +same; to insure against the horrid thought of having one’s body flung +into the open pits of the potter’s field and then perhaps having one’s +ghost wander in misery over sea and land instead of finding a calm +oblivion in Hades.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER X<br> +<span class="subhed">CHILDREN AND SCHOOLING</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>159. Theoretical Rights of Father over Children. The <i>Patria +Potestas</i>.</b>—When a child is born into a Roman home the father +has complete legal rights even as in Athens to determine whether it +is to live or to die.<a id="FNanchor_95" href="#Footnote_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> If theoretically he has the terrific power +as <i>pater familias</i> to kill his children in later life if they +merely displease him, how much more can he claim the right to decide +that “This boy will be one too many,” or “We can afford no more +girls,” or “This child will be sickly and deformed.” If his decision +is adverse, mother and nurse may beseech in vain; the babe is simply +“exposed”—that is, carried by a slave to some spot by the highway and +left to perish. This harsh old law is unrepealed.</p> + +<p>Possibly such deserted children will be taken up by those whose homes +are desolate and who require consolation. There is a greater and +fouler chance that such babes will be carried away and reared by human +harpies who raise boys and girls to sell as victims of gross wickedness +among the rich, or who even mutilate the children to convert them into +grotesque buffoons or pathetic beggars to wheedle the coppers from +the tender-hearted. Perhaps some of those horribly deformed creatures +who cry “Give! Give!” behind the litters of the senators are blood +relations to the gilded lords themselves. This is physically possible, +if we can believe many ugly stories.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span></p> + +<p>Legal right and actual custom can often, however, stand miles asunder. +No Roman gladly will see his house dying out, despite the “advantages +of childlessness.” In fact to keep up the family name, resort is often +had to <i>adoption</i>, sometimes of mature adults, to an extent +quite unknown in other ages. The upper classes under the Empire are +dwindling so rapidly, thanks to many causes, that rare indeed is the +house where a lawful child is unwelcome; and in the lower classes +fathers are fathers still. In short though the cruel old “right of +exposure” exists, it is not exercised often enough to make its practice +a wholesale evil, and a man of distinction who exposes a babe (unless +his family is remarkably large and expensive) will fall under social +ostracism; in fact the Emperor may even be advised to strike him from +the list of senators or equites as “a bad citizen.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>160. Ceremonies after Birth of a Child. The <i>Bulla</i>.</b>—The +birth of a child in a good family is, therefore, the signal for no +common rejoicing, and thanks to the favored position of Roman women, +girls are not a serious discount as against boys. Then comes the grand +celebration—the <i>lustratio</i>, the name-day for the babe.</p> + +<p>This occurs nine days after the birth of boys and the eighth after that +of girls; the idea being not to name the child prematurely lest it die +in first infancy. The ceremony takes place in the atrium. The mother +cannot, perhaps, be present, but there is a general gathering of the +near friends, kinsmen, clients, etc., before whom the nurse solemnly +presents herself and then lays her little bundle of swaddling clothes +at the feet of its father. With equal solemnity the father bends and +takes up the infant and with his formal “lifting up” the whole company +raises a shout of joy.<a id="FNanchor_96" href="#Footnote_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span> Henceforth, the babe is of undoubted +legitimacy, a member of the family, entitled to the protection alike of +the family lares and of the public law, and a new citizen of the Roman +state. Then the father, turning to the company, if the child is a boy, +announces in clear voice his prænomen, <i>e.g.</i>, “Let the lad be +called Marcus!”</p> + +<p>After these formalities are ended the kinsmen and also the favorite +slaves rush forward and throw around the neck of the infant cords +bearing little metal toys, tiny swords, axes, flowers, or even dolls, +all called <i>crepudia</i>, from the manner in which they clank +together. Most important of all, however, is the golden <i>bulla</i>, +an elaborate locket containing charms, which the father himself hangs +about the child’s neck. If the family is poor, one of painted leather +may answer, but a bulla there must be. It will never be laid aside +permanently until the proud day when the grown-up lad “assumes the +manly toga,” or when the girl leaves her parents’ house as a bride.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>161. The Roman Name: Its Intricacy.</b>—It is no slight thing, this +matter of the Roman personal names, and they are far more complicated +than are the Greek. Under the Republic names were so standardized among +the upper families, that those of a young nobleman were practically +determined the moment he touched the cradle. How many “Appii Claudii” +figure in the history of the Commonwealth! Omitting technicalities, +practically every Roman citizen then had three names: his +<i>prænomen</i>, a personal designation something like the Christian +“John” or “George,” his <i>nomen</i>, fixed on him by his <i>gens</i> +(special clan) such as Cornelius, Fabius, Julius, etc., and finally +his <i>cognomen</i>, which marked the particular family of the gens +to which his father belonged. Cæsar, Sulla, Cicero, Scipio, and the +like were all cognomens corresponding closely to later-day surnames, +and were anything but the individual property of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span> certain famous +holders of the same. Thus even a cognomen could have many bearers, and +sometimes a second cognomen was added—such as Publius Cornelius Scipio +<i>Nasica</i>.</p> + +<p>This is all very well, but how few are the options left to the parents +in selecting the prænomen! There are only eighteen regular Roman +prænomens, of which Marcus, Gaius, and Lucius are perhaps the most +common. Certain families confine themselves to a very few prænomens. +Thus no Cornelian ever names his sons anything but Gnæus, Lucius, and +Publius unless the gods bless him with a fourth boy. The Domitii were +nearly all either Gnæus or Lucius. Rare was the Claudian eldest son who +escaped being called Appius.<a id="FNanchor_97" href="#Footnote_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a></p> + +<p>These cases simply register what is true in most of the old families. +The rule is to name your first son always after your own father. Thus +Publius Calvus’s young Titus is the grandson of a Titus and the great +grandson of a Publius. His younger brother, however, was not thus named +by rigid precedent. He could be named Decimus.<a id="FNanchor_98" href="#Footnote_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>162. Irregular and Lengthy Names under the Empire. Names of +Slaves.</b>—Things are far more irregular, however, since the Empire +has brought the Roman name along with the Roman citizenship to hordes +of freedmen and foreigners. They Latinize their alien names, or +they take an altered form of their ex-master’s names, for example, +Claudianus Licinianus; or often, being complete upstarts, swell around +with absurdly long names often meaning nothing at all. This is true +even of some high officers, and there is now ruling as proconsul of +Africa a senator calling himself pompously Titus Cæsarinus Statius +Quintius Statianus Memmius Macrinus, while that of the governor of +North Britain, a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span> certain “Pollio,” has <i>nine</i> names if you give +him his full title.<a id="FNanchor_99" href="#Footnote_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a></p> + +<p>As for slaves they were ordinarily called in simpler days of the +Republic merely “Marcipor,” or “Lucipor,” etc.,—“Marcus’s boy,” or +“Lucius’s boy”; but such descriptions in the days of the great familiæ +become impossible. Most house slaves are either named for Greek +deities or heroes, or else for some Oriental potentate, precisely as +“Cæsar” and “Pompey” will figure on slave plantations of another day. +“Mithridates,” “Pharnaces,” “Cyrus,” and the like appear in every +atrium. There are also plenty of handsome boys answering to such +fine names as “Eros,” “Polydorus,” “Xenophon”; or who are named for +their native country as “Syrax” for a Syrian, and “Cappadox” for a +Cappadocian.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>163. Names of Women. Confusion of Roman Names.</b>—When a girl is +born in an old family her chance of a distinctive name seems even less +than that of her brothers. There are really no recognized prænomens for +girls, and until lately there have been hardly any regular cognomens. +Calvus’s daughter should have been merely called Junia for her gens: +“The Junian Woman.” If it is needful, however, to separate her from her +cousins, she can be called <i>Junia Calvi</i>—“Calvus’s Junia.” If +she had a younger sister, she would be simply “<i>Junia Prima</i>” as +against “<i>Junia Secunda</i>”—Junia No. 1 and Junia No. 2.</p> + +<p>This kind of effacement is, however, becoming very displeasing to +high-spirited Roman women. They are now asserting their personality by +demanding special names. The result is that they are getting a kind of +irregular cognomens. Calvus’s daughter is, therefore, known as Junia +<i>Gratia</i> (from her mother), and should the house be favored<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span> with +another young mistress, she will probably be Junia <i>Calva</i> in +compliment to her father’s cognomen.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, with every explanation, the names alike of men and women +at Rome are utterly confusing. Duplication seems incessant and anything +like a complete directory of the city would apparently carry many pages +of identical entries. Of course, a ready use of nicknames (constantly +invented by Italian ingenuity) overcomes the actual difficulty. Among +near friends or dependents it is quite proper to cry “Hail, Spurius!” +or “Well said, Tiberius”; but it is an impolite familiarity to employ +the prænomen except for intimates. Ordinarily the cognomen is the +proper form, used, be it said, without any “Sir” or “Mister,” and +in the Senate the archaic usage requires that the Conscript Fathers +should be summoned by prænomen and gentile name only. “<i>Dic, Marce +Tulle</i>,” “Speak, Marcus Tullius,” was the form by which Cicero was +often called before he began his great orations.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>164. Care of Parents in Educating Children.</b>—So a Roman child +receives that great thing, his name. What is the course of his life if +he grows to manhood? Very much the same as in other civilized lands, +where most parents are loving and where most children bring joy to +the house. Boys and girls, until school age, are largely in the hands +of the womenfolk. Gratia’s old nurse, brought with her to Calvus’s +house, is still more of a beloved mentor and tyrant to Gratia’s +children, usually bribing her charges to be good “with honey, nuts and +sweet-cakes.” But as soon as boys, at least, begin to pass out of early +childhood their fathers are expected to take them in hand, and even a +man of high rank is criticized if he leaves his sons too much to the +guidance of paid tutors and of slaves.</p> + +<p>This paternal discipline may be harsh but it is seldom negligent. Boys +are taught to go with their fathers almost everywhere; to watch and +listen in silence, but to ask intelligent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span> questions afterward. Thus +young Titus is already old enough to accompany his father Calvus to +the sessions of the Senate itself. On a seat reserved near the door +for senators’ sons he listens through many a solemn debate. Presently +the routine of business is so familiar to him, that he presumptuously +thinks he can correct the consul on certain points of order. He and +his companions of like rank already are playing “prætor’s court”—with +one of them on the tribunal and the others (like their parents) the +orators in the great basilica. As the good old customs have waned this +companionship of fathers and sons has perhaps somewhat waned also—but +it still remains one of the worthiest features of the Roman training.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>165. Toys and Pets.</b>—Roman children lack nothing in playthings. +All but the elaborate mechanical toys of a later age are at their +disposal. Little children have their rattles, balls, and carts. Small +Junia plays with very life-like dolls of ivory, wax, and painted terra +cotta, often fashioned by exceedingly skilful Greek craftsmen. She and +her brothers rejoice in swings and hobby horses, while Titus and young +Decimus also make glad in a finely painted “century” of wooden soldiers +and in tops, hoops, and marbles—such as are transmitted almost +unchanged across the ages, and they receive somewhat suspiciously (as +soon as they are of proper age) a gift of a carefully carved set of +wooden letters, a sly device for teaching the alphabet.</p> + +<p>Much more welcome than these last are, of course, the New Year and +birthday presents of tame nightingales, talking parrots, and caged +blackbirds, of dogs, large and small, of that somewhat rare animal from +Egypt—a delightful furry cat, and best of all—when they grow a little +older—being children of a senator, each a well-broken pony—of little +use in Rome, but a splendid comrade when the family goes to its villas.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span></p> + +<p>As they get older still a decent allowance of pocket money is added +and an earnest attempt is made to teach the children financial +responsibility, to add accounts, to save their sesterces, and not to +run up bills. It is not ungenteel, however, for a youth of family to +be an easy spender, and Pliny the Younger has scolded a friend as +outrageously severe for “thrashing his son because he was too lavish in +buying horses and dogs.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>166. The Learning of Greek by Roman Children.</b>—Even before +formal schooling begins, the young Calvi, like all other Romans of the +better class, have begun an important part of their education—the +learning of Greek. The Athenian education was a single-language +education with no studies outside those of the mother tongue.<a id="FNanchor_100" href="#Footnote_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> The +Roman education is a bi-lingual education.</p> + +<p>Without Greek everybody confesses that a full half (probably more) +of the world’s entire wit and wisdom is locked away. Without Greek +not merely must a man refuse to claim the least real culture; he is +handicapped in all the professions and in most forms of business. He +can have no commercial dealings with the Levant. If he travels anywhere +East of the Adriatic, he can hardly make himself understood outside of +the governors’ prætoria and the camps. Even into the literary Latin +there have crept an enormous number of Greek terms, mostly having to +do with matters of learning or luxury. In short without the mastery of +Greek a Roman of any ambitions is hopelessly lost.</p> + +<p>A scholar need not, however, bother about any third language. +Practically all Levantines can jabber <i>some</i> Greek, even though +their accent be abominable, and their native tongue Syriac or Coptic. +As for Spaniards, Gauls, and Britons doubtless interpreters are needful +if you visit their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span> crude villages, but all their upper classes are +now busily learning Latin just as they are learning the joys of Roman +baths, circus races, and cookery. With Latin and Greek you are ready to +meet the world.</p> + +<p>Greek is taught in the schools, but hardly as a painfully acquired +foreign language. From infancy Titus, Decimus, and Junia have had +Greek-speaking attendants, and their own parents (very fair Greek +scholars) take pains to talk in good Attic part of the time while they +play with them. As the children grow up about half of all the more +elegant and refined conversation they must hear will be in Greek—and +so through all their education. The result will be that Junia may turn +out to be a learned lady like the poetess Julia Balbilla, the Empress +Sabina’s friend, who has written some very fine Greek elegiacs,<a id="FNanchor_101" href="#Footnote_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> +“worthy of Sappho,” say her friends; or Titus if he dabbles in +philosophy, may write a long treatise in good Attic prose as well as +can his contemporary the destined emperor, Marcus Aurelius.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>167. Selection of a School.</b>—In the good old days a father was +expected not merely to give his son moral and practical lessons, but +actually to be his schoolmaster—to flog reading, writing, and a little +arithmetic into him; even as Cato the Elder (234–149 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>) +boasted that he did with his own son. But that stage has long passed, +and the main question now for every boy or girl is, “tutors or school?” +No doubt families of the highest rank find private tutors fashionable +and convenient; thus such a personage as Augustus employed the skilful +freedman, Verrius Flaccus, to teach his grandsons; but the advantages +of contact with other children of about the same social class are +clearly understood. The young Calvi, therefore, have been sent to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span> +a carefully selected school. This arrangement is exceptionally good +because their father’s colleague, the ex-prætor Aponius, owns a +remarkably gifted slave, one Euganor, who is allowed not merely to +teach his master’s children but (by a recognized custom) to take in +others; their fees going toward his <i>peculium</i> saved up to buy his +freedom.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>168. Extent of Literacy in Rome. Education of Girls.</b>—Schools +exist everywhere in Rome, and there are all sorts and conditions of +schools. There is no system of public education, and probably a good +many poor plebeians and slaves are barely literate enough to spell out +the gladiator notices and to jot down a few accounts or memoranda; but +public opinion condemns parents who deny their children at least a +little schooling, and absolutely illiterate persons are rare.<a id="FNanchor_102" href="#Footnote_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a></p> + +<p>Girls in poor families are rather less sure of instruction than +boys, and in superior families they seldom pass on to the upper and +the rhetoric schools; but apparently in the ordinary schools they +frequently go with their brothers on terms of perfect equality. There +seems to be no prudish separation of the sexes, although when the grown +boys go off to learn the tricks of orators and philosophers, nobly-born +girls spend the years just before their marriages under good tutors +learning the poets, and being taught a graceful proficiency in harp +playing and also enough of dancing to give them the erect carriage and +the stately, calm movements of destined matrons.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>169. Schools for the Lower Classes.</b>—Between the select +establishment of Euganor in a side apartment of Aponius’s great mansion +and the cheapest type of school along Mercury Street there is a great +gulf fixed. Any kind of a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span> shelter will do for a low-grade school, and +any kind of a half-educated fellow can set up as a school teacher.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_194"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_194.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Boy Studying.</p> + </div> + +<p>Take for example poor Platorius who, having failed as an inn-keeper +at Ostia, is trying to earn a living by leasing a vacant shop near +the Insula Flavia. The shallow room opens directly upon the noisy +street, and the passing throngs divert the children, while the clamors +of the children distress all the semi-invalids in the big insula. +Every thrashing by the master attracts a knot of brutal idlers just +outside. Platorius’s school is of the lowest grade, but he has to make +a certain pretence of learning by setting up a few chipped busts of +Homer, Virgil, Horace, etc., and erecting a high seat (<i>cathedra</i>) +for himself. His class sits before him on long backless benches. +There are no desks, and every child holds his smudgy wax-covered +tablets uncomfortably upon his knee, as he copies or erases with his +stylus.<a id="FNanchor_103" href="#Footnote_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a></p> + +<p>To all the better schools the children come each accompanied by his or +her “pedagogue,” much after the Greek manner; a private slave being +especially assigned to each boy or girl, and obligated to lead his +charge to and from school, help with the lessons, guard the child’s +morals, and even assist in chastising.<a id="FNanchor_104" href="#Footnote_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a> But few of Platorius’s +pupils come<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span> from parents who can afford the luxury of a pedagogue +for their children. They appear by themselves so early in the morning +in winter time that they have to bear smoky lanterns; the most +self-sufficient of them being “the sons of centurions, with satchels +and tablets hung on their left arms, and carrying every Ides (middle +of the month) their fee of eight brass pieces each.” [Horace.] Each +boy has devoured a crust before leaving home and the school continues +without recess until noon when there is an intermission of fair length +to get the prandium or at least to buy some sausages from the street +dealers, and perhaps to indulge in a short siesta. After that the +deafening study is resumed, and there is relief in the neighboring +tenements only when the school is dismissed towards dusk.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>170. Scourging, Clamors, and Other Abuses of Cheap Schools.</b>—A +school is no asset to the neighborhood. Vainly do the satiric poets +implore a teacher to “be kind to his scholars” and to “lay aside his +Scythian scourge with its horrible thongs” and his “terrible cane, the +schoolmaster’s scepter.” Poor Platorius knows well enough that the type +of parents who employ him believes the old maxim “he who is not flogged +is not educated.” The Romans are a military people and the ideal of a +school is always somewhat the stern discipline of the centurion with +his vinestock (see p. <a href="#Page_323">323</a>). Precepts in many a classroom are enforced +with curses and blows, and Seneca has declared in disgust that it is a +common thing “to find a man in a violent passion teaching you that to +be in a passion is wrong.”</p> + +<p>The children, too, are often permitted to study their lessons aloud +even as in the schools of the Orient. All this adds to the buzzing +confusion, so that it is claimed that a school causes more noise than +a blacksmith at his anvil or the amphitheater applauding a favorite +gladiator.</p> + +<p>The teaching and the flogging keep up through a long<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span> season. The +school year begins on March 24th, when Platorius painfully counts the +entrance fees brought by each scholar, reckoning himself lucky if he +does not have to split his gains with the pedagogues who attend a +favored few of the children. There is a considerable holiday in summer +when it is too hot to study, and children of good family are likely to +be attending their parents in the country. There is another interval of +about a week at the Saturnalia and over New Year’s Day; another just +before the new school year begins in March. Otherwise, except for the +more important religious festivals, and the “Nones” (5th or 7th days +of each month), the studying and the beating go on, with rather fewer +holidays than in the twentieth century.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_196"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_196.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap sm center">SCHOOL DISCIPLINE.</p> + </div> + +<p>Platorius is near the bottom of the educational ladder. His fees are +only about four sesterces (16 cents) per month per pupil, and he is +none too sure of prompt payment. The miserable room costs something +for rental. If his pupils fail to progress, their parents storm at him +and promptly shift to another master. In short he leads a dog’s life. +The green grocer and the copperpot monger who have stalls opposite the +school despise him as entirely beneath them.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>171. A Superior Type of School.</b>—Quite different is the +atmosphere of Euganor’s schoolroom. He is technically a slave, but a +slave of very superior class. The children come to him accompanied +not merely by extremely genteel pedagogues but by subordinate +slaves, <i>capsarii</i>, who carry their books and tablets, and the +establishment has a convenient<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span> ante-room, where all these gentry can +foregather and match gossip, “My master says”—while their charges are +being instructed.</p> + +<p>The school itself is held in an elegant chamber adorned with fine +frescos of historical events such as the campaigns of Alexander, +speaking statues of great literary figures, and, conspicuous upon the +wall, an elaborately painted map of the Roman Empire, “for,” affirms +Euganor, “the boys should have daily before their eyes all the seas +and lands, and all cities and peoples comprehended therein; for the +name and position of places, the distance between them, the source +and outflow of rivers, the coastline with all its seaboard, its gulfs +and its straits are better taken in by the eye than by the ear.”<a id="FNanchor_105" href="#Footnote_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> +Euganor, too, has his rod and does not bear it in vain, but he never +allows his discipline to degenerate into stupid cruelty. He is, in +short, an extremely competent man who studies each of his charges +carefully and who would prove an excellent teacher in any schoolroom in +any age.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>172. Methods of Teaching.</b>—All Roman schools are small. The idea +of vast “graded” establishments where year after year pupils are passed +from teacher to teacher and at last “graduated” has occurred to no man. +Platorius conducts his school entirely alone. Euganor has a couple of +efficient monitors, but neither he nor Platorius tries to handle more +than say thirty pupils. Many of Euganor’s pupils came to him while +little more than babies and will only leave him when actually ready +for the rhetoric schools. He is largely responsible for their entire +elementary education, although many of the higher class children know +the Latin and Greek alphabet and can spell a little before being put +under his charge.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span></p> + +<p>This is no place for a real discussion of the actual forms of +education. First there comes the mere teaching of reading, writing, and +simple arithmetic, with very little use of books, the master dictating +sentences and correcting the tablets whereon the children write them +down. Such a teacher as Platorius may have a few musty rolls of papyrus +which his charges are allowed to handle gingerly, but “First Readers” +as understood in later schools are unknown. Euganor is better off, and +a considerable library is at his disposal, although barring a few books +of fables it contains little that is directly appealing to children.</p> + +<p>In the poorer schools the average master congratulates himself if his +charges stay long enough to become fairly literate, but the better +establishments, of course, accomplish far more. When a child can once +read with tolerable fluency, and can write the characters on his wax +tablets without wandering from the traced lines or needing too many +corrections, he begins to have the great poets, especially Virgil and +Horace in Latin and Homer in Greek, pounded into him. He is compelled +to learn very long passages of such authors by heart,<a id="FNanchor_106" href="#Footnote_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a> and as an +especially desirable exercise he is forced to translate both from Greek +into Latin and also from Latin into Greek.</p> + +<p>Since many of Euganor’s pupils will presumably become orators, they +are furthermore aided to improve their diction also in every possible +manner, to acquire a good stock of metaphors, and to have on hand a +great supply of apt, pungent quotations. All the possible meanings +in the literary texts are explained, likewise the mythological, +historical, and geographical allusions, etc. The study of literature +thus becomes what is really a form of a “General Information” course.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>173. Training in Higher Arithmetic.</b>—Before the children leave +Euganor they are also taught the higher forms of arithmetic. Prior +to the coming of Arabic numerals this is pretty serious business, +yet every Roman of property must be able to keep elaborate accounts, +and not be too dependent upon his stewards. Indeed, in some superior +schools a special arithmetic teacher is called in; a <i>calculator</i>, +who is entitled to demand extra large fees, although one suspects +that most of his pupils are equites’ sons who will probably engage +in commerce. One thing, however, Euganor does not have to bother +about—physical culture. The Greeks can send their sons to the +<i>palæstra</i> and to the harpist to learn gymnastics and music. The +Romans try merely to see that their boys get exercise enough to keep +them in good health, but they cannot grasp the practical value of a +training that neither makes the lads better soldiers nor better men of +business. Many Romans, of course, learn also about the fine arts, but +never in the regular classroom.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>174. The Grammarians’ High Schools.</b>—By their early teens, +however, even Euganor’s pupils begin to forsake him. They are passed +on to a higher teacher, a regular “grammarian” (<i>grammaticus</i>), +who assumes that his charges are well grounded in the fundamentals, +and who endeavors to instruct them in the real niceties of Greek and +Latin literature. Sometimes also there is a specialist in each of the +languages.</p> + +<p>In these high schools great stress is laid on proper pronunciation +and elocution. Euclid’s theorems in geometry are studied, and a good +deal of history is fluently if not very critically taught. Much of +the learning is superficial, for it is a fine thing in many circles +to <i>affect</i> to be erudite,<a id="FNanchor_107" href="#Footnote_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a> and more<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span> stress is sometimes +laid on absurd problems of mythology than upon learning sober facts. +Grammarians who teach the sons of the parvenu rich are liable, indeed, +to be scolded if they cannot themselves explain instantly “Who was +Anchises’s nurse?” But the better grammarians’ schools turn out pupils +who are not perhaps men of deep learning but who have a great fund of +information, who can write a clear accurate Latin (and often a Greek) +style, and generally carry themselves as cultivated young gentlemen. +Those, however, who aspire to pass as highly educated will inevitably +go on to the still higher school of the <i>rhetor</i>.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_200" style="max-width: 692px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_200.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Grammarian Instructing Two Upper Pupils</span>: an +attendant (<i>capsarius</i>) standing at one side.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>175. Oratory Very Fashionable.</b>—Oratory seems the keystone to +success. True, the fall of the Republic makes it impossible to harangue +the assembled Comitia in behalf of favorite candidates or proposed +laws. Even in the Senate there are now grave limitations upon free +eloquence. Nevertheless, the desirability of “fame” as an orator seems +incalculable. To win your cause in the courts; to make a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span> crowded hall +resound with applause at your set orations seems the height of peaceful +triumph. Never will another age set more store on high-soaring formal +<i>talk</i> than this age of the Roman Empire. The actual performances +of professional orators and “readers” we can glance at later, and, of +course, space lacks for any presentation of the “Science of Eloquence”; +but mention must be made of the rhetoric schools in which by ardent +anticipation young Titus and Decimus Calvus are already winning laurels.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>176. Professional Rhetoricians.</b>—No slave or ordinary grammarian +can hope to conduct a rhetoric school. The masters are either Romans +of such rank that they can mingle with senators, or are distinguished +Greeks fresh from the schools of Rhodes or Athens.<a id="FNanchor_108" href="#Footnote_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> Not many years +ago in Trajan’s reign, a certain Isæus came to Rome from Greece. He +dazzled the noblest circles by his proficiency; his diction was the +purest Attic; his sentences sparkled with epigrams. He called on his +audience to name any mooted subjects it liked for discussion and to +state on which side it wanted him to argue. Instantly he would rise, +wrap his gown around him and “without losing a moment, begin, with +everything at his finger tips no matter what subject was selected.” +Presumably his thoughts and the information behind them were very +superficial; no matter, the flow of his logic, learning, and language +set his audience into ecstasies. Calvus only hopes he can find an +equally distinguished master for his own sons.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>177. Methods in Rhetoric Schools: Mock Trials.</b>—Rhetoric +schools are arranged rather as halls of audience<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span> than as ordinary +classrooms. The students are expected to sit in a proper manner, “to +look steadily at the speaker, not let their minds wander or to whisper +to their neighbors, yawn sleepily, smile, scowl, cross their legs, or +let their heads drop.” The training in its earlier stages, however, +seems decidedly academic. Great models in Greek and Latin oratory are +examined and discussed. Then the young advocates-to-be are put to work +preparing their own orations. They are not, however, allowed to take +any live and fresh topic. Instead they must seek one in distant history.</p> + +<p>Every day the streets of Rome resound with noise from the rhetoric +schools—some youth is laboriously inciting the Athenian patriots, +Harmodius and Aristogeiton, to screw up their courage and to free their +country by slaying the foul Hipparchus. Still more threadbare are the +ceaseless orations urging Hannibal to advance (or not to advance) on +Rome after his victory at Cannæ. There are a number of stock subjects +of a more private kind. Mimic prosecutors work themselves into a +passion against “The Ravisher,” “The Poisoner,” or “The Wicked and +Thankless Husband.”</p> + +<p>Often a couple of pupils a little more advanced can be pitted against +one another in an imaginary lawsuit. Suppose a father orders a son to +kill the youth’s brother, whom the father suspects of intending to +turn parricide. The boy pretends to have obeyed the order, but the +second lad really escapes. The father at length discovers the facts and +prosecutes his first son for “The Crime of Disobedience,”<a id="FNanchor_109" href="#Footnote_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a>—what +endless opportunities now for “eloquence” either proving that a parent +must be obeyed at any cost, or that no one can be compelled to commit +fratricide!</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span></p> + +<p>Again it is supposed that a young girl has been kidnapped, but rescued +and her ravisher later arrested. Imagine now that the law gives her the +choice—either the kidnapper must marry her and give her the status +of an honorable wife or she can require that he be put to death. The +rhetor will put two of his best pupils to prepare counter exhortations +to the perplexed girl: “Marry the fellow to assure your social future!” +or “Let justice be done—summon the executioner!” It is all very +ingenious, but equally unreal, and it is often hopelessly artificial. +Angrily wrote Seneca of such debates that by them “we are learning not +for life but for school.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>178. Enormous Popularity of Rhetoric Studies.</b>—-However +impractical this study, the upper classes at Rome assuredly dote upon +it. When each youth in turn mounts the orator’s stand in the school and +begins his <i>suasoria</i> (set oration) or his <i>controversia</i> +(pretended legal argument) all his fellows are duty bound to cry in +Greek, “<i>Euge!</i>” or “<i>Sophos!</i>” at every booming sentiment or +well-rounded climax. At least once during the oration it is good form +for them to rise from their seats and join in a salvo of applause—they +will all get like courtesies when their own turns come.</p> + +<p>When the young declaimer has finished the master will arise. He will +show how to gesture, making his garments fall in picturesque folds. +He will take the subject just handled and repeat the argument showing +how each point can be better developed; how new matter can be brought +in; how allusions to the gods, the worthies of old, and perhaps to +the reigning Emperor will improve the effect; how to use one’s voice +at each particular turn, etc., etc. If the only object of oratory is +to tickle the ear, the result is magnificent. The students dutifully +applaud their master even more loudly than they do their fellows, and +each goes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span> home wondering anxiously, “When can I argue my first case +before the prætor?”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>179. Philosophical Studies: Delight in Moralizing.</b>—A good many +Roman nobles of intellectual type advance a step further than the +rhetoric schools. They study philosophy; and even go to Athens (now a +quiet, delightful university town) to listen to lectures by the alleged +successors of Epicurus or of Zeno the Stoic, but to Greece one need not +follow them. It is proper to say, however, that a certain dabbling in +philosophy is extremely fashionable.<a id="FNanchor_110" href="#Footnote_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> There are plenty of stories +about noblemen who have treatises on philosophy read to them while +they are being carried to and fro in their litters under the porticoes +of their villas; or even of ladies who listen to lectures by a +professional philosopher every morning while their maids are arranging +their hair.</p> + +<p>Such personages, needless to say, never improve upon the familiar +guesses at the riddle of human existence; but sometimes their desire +to moralize becomes worse than comical. People still repeat stories +of Agrippinus, a high-born victim of Nero. When he caught a fever he +immediately dictated a panygyric on the moral excellencies of fever. He +was ordered into exile; he wrote a treatise on the benefits of exile. +He was made a high judge; he added to the anguish of those he condemned +by giving his victims long orations to prove that he passed sentence on +them only for their own good!</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>180. Children’s Games. “Morra” and Dice.</b>—It is a long cry from +child-rearing to philosophy. One must return<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span> to the first topic enough +to notice the games played by young Romans and also by their elders. +Tag-games, blindman’s buff and its refinements, and like sports, can be +seen in every street and dusty area in Rome. A favorite game is that +of “King”; when a group of children elects a <i>Rex</i> who commands +them to perform all sorts of fooleries. Time fails to tell of all the +contests with tossing knuckle bones and at “odd and even,” guessing +at concealed pebbles, shells, and nuts. The later-day Italian game of +“morra” (<i>micare digitis</i>) in which both players hold out a hand +with a certain number of fingers extended, and then each one tries to +shout out the correct number of his rival’s fingers before the other +can do the like by his, is a highly popular if noisy method of killing +time. At the eating houses and taverns it is regularly used among +friends to settle who shall pay the score.</p> + +<p>All too early boys, and likewise girls, learn also to rattle the dice +box. Some of the dice are ordinary six-sided cubes, some are oblong, +with the numbers “2” and “5” omitted from the narrow ends. Almost +always three dice of bone or fine wood are used; and the familiar +expression “three sixes or three aces” is the same as saying “all or +nothing.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>181. Board Games of Skill: “Robbers” (Latrunculi).</b>—Altogether +too much time and money are wasted at dice even by fairly grave people, +while professional gamblers abound; but the Romans have two games in +which men are moved on a gaming board according to rules involving +very high degrees of skill. You can play <i>Duodecim Scripta</i> very +much like later-day backgammon; fifteen white men and fifteen black +men are shifted about on a board marked with twelve double lines +(whence the name) according to the casts of the dice. More abstract +and learned is <i>Latrunculi</i> (“Robbers”), a game without dice and +seemingly very much like later-day checkers or chess. Some of the +pieces are called “soldiers”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span> and others “officers”—and the moves +are very elaborate.<a id="FNanchor_111" href="#Footnote_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a> Of course, such games are far removed from a +mere youthful sport. Consuls and Emperors delight in them, and while +playing forget everything but the problem involved. Devotees cite with +pride the story of Julius Kanus, one of the mad Caligula’s victims. +He was in prison but was allowed to have a friend visit him, and the +two were busy over “Robbers,” when a centurion came in to say he must +be immediately executed. Kanus at once arose unmoved, but carefully +counted the men on the board; then said to his friend, “Mind you, don’t +tell a lie after I’m dead, and say that you won”; then turning to the +centurion, “Please bear witness for me that I was one man ahead,”—and +so did Stoicism find its way even to the gaming table!</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>182. Out-Door Games. Ball Games, <i>Trigon</i>.</b>—Among +out-of-door amusements, we find that young Romans and some of their +elders enjoy fairly elaborate games of ball. There are various +exercises which show that the world is on its way to handball, tennis, +and even to polo, but hardly any contests foreshadow such things as +baseball, foot ball, or cricket. The most common game is <i>trigon</i>, +when three players stand at the corners of a triangle, and at least +three, or even six balls, are kept flying around the circle with +great rapidity; the points being made on catching and throwing with +as few misses as possible. The players stand close together, and the +whole sport is more a mild form of juggling than it is any real field +exercise.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER XI<br> +<span class="subhed">BOOKS AND LIBRARIES</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>183. Letters and Writing Tablets.</b>—The multiplication of schools +presupposes the constant use of books, correspondence, and other forms +of writing. What are these like?</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_207" style="max-width: 229px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_207.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Wax Tablet with Stilus attached.</p> + </div> + +<p>“Tablets” are seen everywhere. Upper-class people delight in scribbling +down memoranda. The story even runs that Augustus wrote out his +intended conversations with his wife Livia “lest he should say too much +or too little,” a testimony at once to the need of circumspect dealings +with the lady and to a great mania for writing. Ordinary tablets are +made of two or three thin strips of wood joined together like later-day +book-covers, and spread over the inside with a thin coating of wax. On +this wax, often black and dingy, day accounts and business messages can +be scratched with facility. But really important fashionable letters +demand something better. The leaves can be made of fine citrus wood or +even of ivory. As for very special correspondence, love letters, and +the like, these are written on very small tablets in contrast to the +broad slabs carrying the merchant accounts.</p> + +<p>If you want a handsome note book, you can buy one with a number of +folding leaves and with outside covers of finely chased ivory, silver, +or gold, and such handsome note books make very convenient presents +among friends. By a convention<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span> attached to the high office, when +Calvus became prætor, he presented his intimates with tablets adorned +with his own portrait in low relief on ivory, and with scenes of the +prætor’s tribunal. If he had been consul, he would have been expected +to give around bunches of tablets even more elegant.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_208" style="max-width: 451px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_208.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Writing Tablets And Stilus.</p> + </div> + +<p>When a letter is written no envelope is needed. The tablets are folded +over upon themselves, fastened with crossed thread and then at the +point when the ends are knotted is placed a round piece of wax, stamped +before it can cool with a signet ring. The name of the person to +whom the letter is going can be written on the outside, and then the +communication is ready. Letters can be transmitted to distant places +usually only with tedious difficulty, but around Rome delivery from +writers of any high position is extremely prompt. The carrying of +letters is one of the commonest duties for otherwise idle slaves, and +from a mansion like Calvus’s it is easy every morning to send off ten +packets each by its own hurrying messenger.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>184. Personal Correspondence and Secretaries.</b>—Calvus, like +every man of distinction, has a heavy correspondence. It is a fine +thing to be a good letter writer, to make your epistles seem easy, +natural, gossipy, and yet in such faultless language that they can +be collected presently and published in a book. To a few special +correspondents, especially to absent relatives, Calvus writes almost +daily in his own hand.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span> But he dictates even more frequently. He has a +couple of slave <i>amanuenses</i> who are with him constantly; they can +take down his dictation in a kind of abbreviated long hand; then write +it out in handsome script, always submitting the final text to their +master not for his signing but for sealing. As a consequence of all +this correspondence, the demand for new tablets in Rome is prodigious. +The wax, indeed, can be melted upon letters which one does not care to +preserve, and the wood used a second time, but the waste inevitably is +great.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_209" style="max-width: 252px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_209.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Book Cupboard.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>185. Books Very Common: Papyrus and the Papyrus +Trade.</b>—Nevertheless, the activity of such secretaries is vastly +less important than that of another set of scribes, the makers of +books. Poor is the tenement suite that does not contain a few musty +papyrus scrolls, while a parvenu freedman will inevitably acquire a +large library (which he may never read) just to show himself a man of +fashion. Books are so common that their divided sheets are wetted, and +used in kitchens to keep fish in fresh condition, or, if dry, to make +wrappers for incense and spices.</p> + +<p>Paper is unknown, and parchment although not unknown is used mainly for +very important correspondence, public documents, and the like, which +require extremely durable material. Practically all books are written +on papyrus arranged in rolls.<a id="FNanchor_112" href="#Footnote_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a> The papyrus is strictly an Egyptian +monopoly, and if the importation of this precious article should cease, +apparently all Greece and Italy would be doomed to partial illiteracy.</p> + +<p>The papyrus plant grows in the swamps by the Nile to a height of about +ten feet. The pith of its tall stalks is first cut<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span> into strips; next +the latter are placed one by another upon a wetted board and smeared +over with a paste. On these there is next laid a second layer forming +a cross pattern or kind of net work. Then the whole combination is +pressed and beaten down into a solid sheet and smoothed with an ivory +knife or a shell. After that it is ready for export from Egypt and to +be put to proper use.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_210a" style="max-width: 291px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_210a.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Book Container.</p> + </div> + +<p>The papyrus trade is well standardized. There are eight well-recognized +grades of the commodity. The best is <i>hieratica</i>, so called +because it is fine and firm enough to be used by the Egyptian priests +for their sacred books. The cheapest is <i>emporetica</i>, not fit +for writing but only for wrapping parcels. The intermediate qualities +answer for the run of books. When the papyrus sheets are ready +separately, either they can be pasted together at once into a long +scroll making a complete volume, or first the book can be written off +and the sheets pasted later.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>186. Size and Format of Books.</b>—Books can, therefore, be of +all sizes but everybody usually agrees with the Greek saying, “<i>Big +book, big evil!</i>” It is an indescribable nuisance to fumble over a +roll of more than a certain length hunting for a desired passage. Not +many volumes run over 100 pages,<a id="FNanchor_113" href="#Footnote_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a> and many are much smaller. Each +sheet constitutes a separate page (varying between six to twelve inches +high), with the writing usually in a single column, four to six inches +broad, on each page, and a blank space crossed by a red line before the +next page begins.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_210b" style="max-width: 250px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_210b.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Double Inkstand.</p> + </div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span></p> + +<p>It is impossible to read with any convenience writing on more than +one side of the papyrus prepared in this manner. The result is that +discarded books are often used for schoolboys’ exercises or for mere +scribbling “paper”; although, if the papyrus is very firm, often the +writing can be sponged out and a whole new work can be written over the +vanished sentences. Books being of this character, it is impossible +really to prepare the “ponderous tomes” of a later day. “Volumes” are +very short. The Iliad of Homer is ordinarily in twenty-four separate +rolls, one for each of its “books”, and the same arrangement obtains +for other standard works. Very many “books” in the Roman libraries, +therefore, are really little more than pamphlets.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_211" style="max-width: 250px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_211.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Pen and Scroll.</p> + </div> + +<p>For writing on parchment, of course, one cannot use the stylus. Reed +pens skilfully cut may suffice, with a thick ink made of lampblack and +gum for ordinary purposes and also a red ink, rich and permanent, for +ornamental lines. In Calvus’s library, as in almost every other, are +two large beautifully wrought ink wells, made of bronze with silver +chasings, and attached together—one for the black ink and one for the +red.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>187. Mounting and Rolling of Books.</b> The mounting of the papyrus +long roll is a great art, especially if the book is intended for a fine +library. First, the whole long strip of papyrus is dressed with cedar +oil to repel worms—thus giving the pages a pleasing yellow tinge. +Then the last leaf is fastened to a thin cylinder of wood or of rolled +papyrus called the <i>umbilicus</i>. The ends of the roll itself are +carefully cut and smoothed with pumice stone, and the ends of the +umbilicus are often gilded. Next a strip of solid parchment<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span> bearing +the title of the book in handsome red letters is attached by a string +at one end, where it will hang down when the volume is rolled.</p> + +<p>After the book itself is ready a neat cylindrical cover or case must +be made of parchment, colored red or yellow, and also marked with the +title. For really fine volumes additional elegancies are possible; for +example, a handsome portrait of the author can be painted or pasted +upon the first page, and the edges of the entire scroll can be colored. +Handsomely illustrated works grace every good library.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_212" style="max-width: 302px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_212.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Book Scroll.</p> + </div> + +<p>To read these books will seem to persons familiar only with +<i>codexes</i> (flat opening books) extremely cumbersome.<a id="FNanchor_114" href="#Footnote_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> You have +to take the volume in both hands, unrolling with the right while you +roll up with the left. It seems nigh impossible to “run through” such a +volume, and hard to trace down a passage; and there are apparently no +indices. However, practice can make almost perfect. Calvus can roll and +unroll his books with remarkable dexterity and by a kind of instinct +hit promptly upon almost any allusion. It will be a real gain for the +world, nevertheless, when the roll is supplanted by the many-leaved +book.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>188. Copying Books: the Publishing Business. Horace’s and Martial’s +Publishers.</b>—Books abound, although of course all are multiplied +by painful human effort. This is because slave copyists are relatively +cheap. Atticus, Cicero’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span> friend, seems to have made a real fortune in +the publishing business—that is, he owned a great corps of skilful +slaves incessantly busy transcribing manuscripts. The finest copies +must be made deliberately one by one, but ordinary volumes can be +multiplied more summarily. As you go about Rome you will perhaps come +on large rooms where a great number of scribes are seated in a kind +of lecture hall desperately following word for word some reader who, +in a smooth, monotonous voice, is giving out the text either of an +established classic or the newest essays or epigrams of the successors +of Pliny the Younger or Martial. In this way what is really an +“edition” of say a hundred or even two hundred copies can be produced +in a remarkably short time, without the aid of the printing press.<a id="FNanchor_115" href="#Footnote_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a></p> + +<p>The publisher, and even more the authors who try to live by their +literary genius, are, however, under a grave handicap. There is no +copyright. What you “publish” to-day, may be flagrantly recopied +and sold under your very nose to-morrow—possibly with errors and +interpolations calculated to drive an author frantic. The average +aspirant for literary fame unless he has personal means is therefore +constrained, as were Horace and Martial, to hunt up a rich patron who +for the joy of being “immortalized” will keep him from starving.</p> + +<p>However, every aspiring author tries to find some bookseller, who will +turn his works over to a corps of competent slaves, and then vend the +products. There is a regular booksellers’ quarter in Rome down by the +Forum of Cæsar in the heart of the commercial district. Here Horace’s +old publishers, the Sosii, had their stalls; and Martial’s publishers, +the firm headed by the clever freedman Allectus, are still there in the +business.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span></p> + +<p>At Allectus’s shop they will tell you how the epigramist used to drop +in with pardonable vanity to see how from “the first or second shelf +they would hand down a ‘Martial,’ well smoothed with pumice stone and +adorned with purple—all for five denarii (80 cents).” On the columns +by the entrance to this and the rival shops are plastered up long lists +of new publications—often with sample extracts to prove their wit or +learning; or announcement of new or old copies of standard works from +Homer down to that clever Greek litterateur Plutarch, who has recently +died in Bœotia; or in Latin from old Nævius and Ennius to the recent +biographies of the Cæsars by the imperial secretary Suetonius.</p> + +<p>Considering the labor of copying, the price of books is moderate; a +small volume of poems by a popular writer can be had for as little as +two denarii (32 cents), although such a scroll would probably be only +equivalent to a thin pamphlet of later-day printing, and the works of +a really voluminous author like Pliny the Elder might appear ruinously +expensive.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>189. Passion for Literary “Fame.”</b>—Expensive or cheap, by men +of education a certain number of books must be had. Perhaps the Age +of Hadrian will fail to leave a great mark in the history of either +Greek or Latin letters, but that will not be because <i>literary +fame</i> is not passionately sought after. Everybody is anxious +to dabble in authorship. Everybody (in the upper circles) seems +incessantly compounding formal “epistles,” memoirs, essays, rhetorical +and sentimental histories, and last but not least great quantities of +verses which pass as “poetry.” Pliny the Younger (not long dead) was +incessantly urging his correspondents to write: “to mould something, +hammer out something, that shall be known as yours for all time.” +The same pathetic desire for immortality which leads to ostentatious +funeral monuments and to endowed funeral feasts, perhaps puts a premium +upon this mania.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span></p> + +<p>The fine gentlemen and ladies who share these tastes boast that nothing +can interrupt their furious pursuit of “letters.” Senators like to +inform their friends that even while hunting boars in the Apennines +they keep their writing tablets and stylus near them when watching for +the beaters to drive the game into the nets—what precious sentences +might escape them otherwise! They like also to have freedman or +slave “readers” always at their elbows to keep up a flow of poetry +or philosophy apparently all the time when they are not eating, +exercising, or conversing.<a id="FNanchor_116" href="#Footnote_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a></p> + +<p>It is also a kind of etiquette for all members of the gilded literary +circle to keep sending their unpublished effusions around among their +friends with demands for “entirely frank and severe criticism”; +the response always being a long letter of praise even for very +mediocre efforts. “Terse, lucid, brilliant, stately,” or even “keen, +impassioned, graceful”—these are grievously overworked adjectives, +although perhaps at the end of the answers there are a few polite hints +suggesting a slight improvement.</p> + +<p>The Latin-speaking provinces are said to follow Roman literary +celebrities intently. Nothing delights the latter more than to learn +that their fame has spread to distant parts. Tacitus was certainly +a great historian, but he was a man of his time and also a very +warm friend of Pliny the Younger. Oft repeated is the story of a +conversation he had in the circus, where on the front benches for +notables he met a “certain learned provincial.” The twain, without +introduction, fell into a delightful literary conversation, until the +stranger who manifestly was very up-to-date asked: “Are you from Italy +or the provinces?” “Ah,” said Tacitus,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[216]</span> “you know me very well from +my books that you’ve read.” “Then,” cried the other, “you are either +Tacitus or Pliny!”</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_216" style="max-width: 650px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_216.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Old Forum</span>: looking towards northern side, with +the Curia shown behind the high columns in foreground; restoration by +Spandoni.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>190. Zeal for Poetry: Multiplication of Verses.</b>—Prose +compositions in smooth and fastidious Latin, or in very passable +Greek are common enough, but even the authors of genuinely superior +histories or literary essays, often desire to become something more +magnificent—they wish to be poets. Very famous Romans have put forth +their energies over iambics, elegiacs, or hexameters; Sulla, Cicero, +Hortensius the Orator, Julius Cæsar, Brutus, Augustus, Tiberius, +Seneca, Nerva—the list of such celebrities could be made much longer. +Of course, every loyal subject knows that the reigning Hadrian is +the author of clever epigrams, which would really deserve a certain +fame even if their author had lived in the Subura and not upon the +Palatine.<a id="FNanchor_117" href="#Footnote_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[217]</span></p> + +<p>Probably if there could be physical measuring rods wherewith to +determine it, the sheer quantity of Latin, and also of Greek verses, +being thrust upon the world every year would seem prodigious. At +Allectus and Company they will tell you that Romanus has just brought +out some very acceptable “Old Comedies” in the style of Aristophanes, +and some other “New Comedies” in iambics worthy to be classed with +Plautus and Terence. The noble Caninius, too, has at last completed +and published a remarkable Greek epic: “The Dacian War”—celebrating +Trajan’s victories in a manner quite worthy, let us say, of Homer and +Hesiod. True, the uncouth names of Dacian barbarians do not fit well +into the hexameters, and especially that of their king, “Decebalus,” +is metrically almost impossible, but ingenious poetical license has +overcome the difficulty. Who can doubt that Caninius’s “long poem” will +live across the ages?<a id="FNanchor_118" href="#Footnote_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a></p> + +<p>Such a practical man of affairs as Calvus does not take all the +smooth compliments proffered his efforts over-seriously; but even our +friendly senator can feel a thrill of pleasure when he dashes off a +dozen elegiacs in praise of his mountain villa, and hears the “<i>Euge! +Euge!</i>” (he hopes not <i>too</i> insincere) of his guests as he +reads them at a dinner party.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>191. Size of Libraries.</b>—With such an affectation for books +and literary fame there are inevitably great libraries. Long ago +the old Hebrew gloomily recorded, “Of making of many books there is +no end,” and his sighs would have increased could he have seen the +collections in Rome. The small size of the volumes indeed makes it +hard to compare these libraries with those of other ages. The largest +library in the world is that at Alexandria with some 400,000 rolls, +but there are public collections in Rome not very much smaller. As for +private libraries, a certain rich and learned<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[218]</span> senator has about 60,000 +rolls.<a id="FNanchor_119" href="#Footnote_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a> Calvus and his friends make no such boast, and he contents +himself with some 4000 volumes. This is respectable, but nowise an +unusual collection for a man of refined tastes, and it has plenty of +counterparts all over the city.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>192. A Private Library.</b>—The library in the house of Calvus +is small but sumptuously furnished. Around a large part of the walls +extend great tiers of large pigeonholes made of finely carved wood, +and in each hole is a group of rolls, either the complete works of +a voluminous author, or a collection of smaller books on a single +subject. The bright red lettering on the dangling labels, the gilt ends +of the rolling rods, the pleasing soft yellow of the end of the papyri +(if these are not also colored red) give a luxurious appearance to the +collection.</p> + +<p>Set above the tiers of books in such a room is a long array of fine +busts in bronze and marble of nearly all the distinguished literary +figures of Greece or Italy. Calvus has just added a handsome bronze of +the comedian Menander. The careful frescos on the exposed walls have to +do with learned mythological subjects; there is also a fine life-sized +statue of Minerva the patroness of letters, and on a long shelf stand +really beautiful silver statuettes of all the Nine Muses. Along one +side of the library there are also tables where Harpocration, Calvus’s +truly learned and capable freedman librarian (<i>librarius</i>), who +assists in all his patron’s studies, can spread out rolls for patching, +rewinding, or even for recopying; also a convenient writing couch for +the senator himself when he wishes to take his tablets and compile +those fine “extracts” which the literary world delights to cull from +every possible author, or to try his own hand at original composition.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[219]</span></p> + +<p>Calvus is not a virtuoso, however, and does not imitate such wealthy +enthusiasts as the poet Silius Italicus who collected all kinds of rare +editions, crammed his house with every imaginable writer, and “kept +Virgil’s birthday more carefully than he did his own.” For all that +Harpocration has been commended for hanging a small wreath around the +bust of Sophocles, this day being the reputed anniversary of the death +of the great tragedian.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>193. The Great Public Libraries of Rome.</b>—Into the Public +Libraries of Rome we cannot enter. They exist nevertheless as great +and beneficent institutions although probably only a favored few are +permitted to read their treasures except inside their ample halls.<a id="FNanchor_120" href="#Footnote_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a> +The oldest public library is that founded by Asinius Pollio (an officer +of Julius Cæsar) and is located on the rather distant Aventine. Cæsar +himself projected two very grand Greek and Latin Libraries but did not +live to create them; Augustus founded a very fine library in the Temple +of Apollo on the Palatine (making it virtually the imperial palace +library), and his sister Octavia created another. There is still a +fourth good library in the Temple of Peace founded by Vespasian; but +all these are now overshadowed by the relatively new “Ulpian Libraries” +established by Trajan at his new Forum. These enormous collections +of Greek and Latin rolls make Rome by far the greatest repository of +literary treasures in the entire world, barring always the famous +collection in Alexandria.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[220]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER XII<br> +<span class="subhed">ECONOMIC LIFE OF ROME: I. BANKING, SHOPS, AND INNS</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>194. Passion for Gain in Rome.</b>—Much has been said about Roman +trade and riches, but this is no place for an economic survey of the +realm of the Cæsars. It is impossible, however, to ignore the outward +side of that commercial activity which is everywhere in evidence around +the imperial capital.</p> + +<p>The desire for gold, doubtless, had its potence in old Egypt and +Babylonia, and most certainly in old Tyre and Carthage, but never has +the fierce passion burned much keener than along the Seven Hills. Go +into many a pretentious vestibule; in the mosaic pavement are set +as mottoes, “<i>Salve Lucrum!</i>” (“Hail, Profit!”) or “<i>Lucrum +Gaudium!</i>” “Profit is pure joy!”). Hearken also to the cynical poets +of society, for example, to Juvenal: “No deity among us is held in such +reverence as <i>Riches</i>; though as yet, O baneful Money, thou hast +no temple of thine own! Not yet have we reared fanes to Money in like +manner we have to Peace and Honor, Virtue, Victory, and Concord.” And +he speaks again: “No human passion has mingled more poison bowls, none +has more often plied the murderer’s dagger than the violent craving for +unbounded wealth.”</p> + +<p>His less sedate but not less cynical contemporary, Martial, echoes +his words. He recommends that an honest friend should leave Rome; he +cannot succeed for he is neither a rake nor a parasite; he cannot tell +lies like an auctioneer, wheedle old ladies out of their property, +sell “smoke”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[221]</span> (“empty rumors,” in other words political, gaming, or +commercial tips), nor otherwise earn a corrupt living. Martial tells +us too of despicable misers who, as their vast fortunes increase, let +their togas become even more dirty, their tunics still worse, their +wine mere dregs, and their main diet one of half-cooked peas.</p> + +<p>Perhaps such sordid creatures, however, are no worse than the others +who struggle for riches simply to enjoy gross material vanities; +who desire “that their Tuscan estates may clink with the fetters of +innumerable toiling slaves in order that they may own a hundred tables +of Moorish marble supported pedestals, that gold ornaments may jingle +from their couches, that they may never drink anything but Falernian +cooled with snow from large crystal goblets, and that a crowd of +clients may follow their litters; etc., etc.” And long before Martial, +Horace has asserted, “All the arches of Janus [the typical Latin deity] +from end to end teach one lesson to young and old ‘Oh, fellow citizens, +fellow citizens, <i>money is the first thing to seek—virtue after +money</i>!’”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>195. Life in Rome Expensive. Premiums upon Extravagance and +Pretence.</b>—With every deduction from such charges Rome is +undoubtedly an extremely expensive city to dwell in, probably the most +expensive in the whole Empire, and in all but very limited circles +the pressure for wealth is inconceivable. A typical man-of-affairs +is represented as boasting to his cronies, “Coranus owes me 100,000 +sesterces ($4,000); Mancinus 200,000; Titius 300,000; Albinus 600,000; +Salinus a million; Soranus another million; from the rent of my insulæ +I get three million ($120,000); from the flocks on my pasture lands +600,000.” On any night at half the triclinia, the mighty equites +and senators can be heard talking about investments, real estate +transactions, government contracts, and foreign trade prospects, far +more vigorously than concerning either the wisdom of the Emperor’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[222]</span> +policy in building the wall across Britain, or the philosopher’s +doctrine of the immortality of the soul.</p> + +<p>The very life of the city puts a premium in fact on getting and +spending. A youth inheriting a modest fortune in the provinces comes to +Rome. In a few months his patrimony has drifted away on fish-mongers, +bakers, luxurious baths, ointments, and garlands, not to mention fine +clothes, gamesters, and dancing girls. In many circles an outlay +of 40,000 sesterces ($1600) is “a mere pinch of poppy seed for an +ant-hill.” You must at least <i>seem</i> rich or you amount to nothing.</p> + +<p>Half the young men of fashion are therefore, good authorities aver, +up to their ears in debt; but anybody with a little ready money can +put on a bold countenance to make an impression. Many is the apparent +aristocrat who is swung along in a fine litter, his violet robes +trailing, and with a long train apparently of clients and slaves +following him, who has actually hired litter and attendants, nay, the +gown which he wears from a ready contractor—in order perhaps to carry +his part in some business conference at the Forum. And if you are to +plead a case as advocate but are unluckily a poor man, nevertheless be +sure to hire a fine toga and a couple of handsome rings to wear through +the morning, or the jurors will assume you are a nobody and promptly +vote against you.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>196. Rome a City of Investors and Buyers of Luxuries.</b>—Everybody +declaims against this scramble for wealth and yet joins in it. Even +Martial and Juvenal, it is peevishly averred, would have held back +their jibes if their financial hopes had prospered. Be it said also +that this struggle in Rome is probably not much more sordid than it +can become in other capitals in other ages. The standards of business +honesty are relatively high. Most bargains are faithfully kept. A great +credit system has been built up—itself a witness to the fact that most +traders are honorable.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[223]</span></p> + +<p>The business life of Rome flows in many channels, but in general the +Eternal City does not compete with Alexandria, or even with certain +smaller Græco-Levantine cities, as an industrial or distributing +center. Rome <i>receives</i> much. The great incomes from investments +in the provinces and from the expenditure in the city of the imperial +revenues, make it possible to pay for enormous quantities of luxuries +for which no corresponding articles are exported in return. There are +many petty industries but they exist mainly for local needs. Rome +exports legions and law-givers, so her inhabitants assert proudly,—is +it not right, therefore, that she should wax fat upon the tributes +of the world, when she can repay them with the blessed <i>pax +Romana</i>?<a id="FNanchor_121" href="#Footnote_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>197. Multiplicity of Shops. The Great Shopping Districts.</b>—But +if the industrial life of the city is relatively weak, never before +has there been such a “wilderness of shops” as spreads itself along +the streets of Rome. A certain type of shops can be found everywhere; +hardly a street but has grocers’ stalls; the terra cotta plaque with a +goat, the sign of a milk dealer; the stone relief of two men tugging a +great jar slung up on a pole, the sign of a wine shop, and the like.</p> + +<p>There are nevertheless certain great retail quarters to visit if you +are seeking for articles of <i>vertu</i> and price. The fashionable +fish-mongers have their odoriferous stalls under the great porticoes +and basilicas by the fora; the fruit sellers are along the ascent +from the Old Forum to the top of the Velia (a spur of the Palatine +flung out toward the Esquiline); while the jewelers, goldsmiths, and +makers of musical instruments as well as the great bankers have their +headquarters directly along the Sacred Way itself. The perfumers’ +shops in turn are well concentrated under the south-east brow of the +Capitoline.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[224]</span></p> + +<p>In addition to these, however, there exist two grand shopping districts +for Rome outside the Fora themselves: for the cheap trade, where +elbowing plebeians struggle for bargains, we find that the little shops +are wedged all along the swarming Tuscan Street (<i>Vicus Tuscus</i>) +going south from the Old Forum toward the Circus Maximus and the +adjacent cross streets; but for the more select purchases high-born +ladies and gentlemen order their litters to take them northward along +“Broadway” (<i>Via Lata</i>), where by the Sæpta Julia and the vast +series of porticoes adjoining or opposite are the finest retail shops +in the entire world.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_224" style="max-width: 196px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_224.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Tradesmen’s Scales and Balances.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>198. Arrangement of Shops. Streets Blocked by Hucksters.</b>—What +the inferior shops were like has been already seen in the local survey +of Mercury Street. They are almost countless in number but are very +small, the bulk of their wares being on sale upon the open counters +facing the street, and often you can make all your purchases without +going inside. The proprietor and his wife with a slave or two manage +the entire business, unless, indeed, they manufacture, let us say, the +shoes which they retail; in which case a workroom directly in the rear +keeps busy a few more slaves or free wage-workers.</p> + +<p>The shop fronts are protected at night and on holidays by heavy wooden +shutters which, when raised, project into the street serving as a kind +of awnings. They are the more necessary to guard against thieves and +also against a riot. Shop-keepers are proverbially timid folk, and to +say “all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[225]</span> the shutters are being closed down” is practically to say +that a brawl or a tumult seems possible. The small size of these shops +makes their owners encroach upon the streets whenever they can. The +counters thrust out over the scanty sidewalk, while pedestrians trip +over the boards with placards set in front of the shops advertising the +wares inside.</p> + +<p>In such narrow streets a little knot of bargain hunters can readily +halt all traffic. Every now and then, indeed, the City Præfect orders +his deputies, “Enforce the shop edicts!” A few offending hucksters are +hailed into court and the rest draw back their counters. “Now the city +is Rome again and not one vast bazaar,” rejoice the poets of the hour. +Then, after a little, official zeal abates, and the streets are as +badly cumbered as before.</p> + +<p>A great deal of the trading, however, goes on without any permanent +shops at all. In almost any cross-street or little square one can +get a license to locate a table and to set thereon a small stock of +such articles as copper or iron pots, the cheaper grades of women’s +and men’s shoes, or pieces of cloth, probably woven by the huckster +himself, not to mention all kinds of edibles, also the stands of +menders of old pots, and others of public letter-writers for the +illiterate. Through the midst of all these, beggars glide whining for +alms, and children dash about playing hide-and-go-seek.<a id="FNanchor_122" href="#Footnote_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>199. Barber Shops and Auction Sales.</b>—An institution almost as +familiar in Rome as in Athens<a id="FNanchor_123" href="#Footnote_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a> is the barber shop. Not that a shop +is really needful. Many a dirty tonsor will put down a low stool in +the middle of the crowd in the very street and ply his shears or razor +upon any poor wight who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[226]</span> can find a <i>quadrans</i> (small copper). +The finer barber shops, however, are really elegant establishments, +fitted to please the fastidious. Here men of parts and fashion can +meet to hear the latest gossip, and perhaps to read a copy of the +“Daily Gazette” (see p. <a href="#Page_282">282</a>). A complete manicure service is afforded; +superfluous hairs are removed with tweezers or depilatories, and nails +polished and faces massaged very skilfully; although some inferior +barbers are railed at bitterly, and it is charged that their patrons +“may count the scars on their chins like those on an aged boxer, or +those marks produced by the nails of enraged wives.”</p> + +<p>Another institution much frequented is the auctioneer’s room. Auction +seems at Rome an ideal method for realizing quickly upon property, and +bidding is often keen. The auctioneers are past-masters in stimulating +the bidders, and in praising-up worthless articles. An auction sale is +the normal end for the career of a spendthrift when his creditors seize +his plate and furniture. A dozen times around the city one can see +placards like the following, tactfully worded to save the pride of the +unfortunate debtor:<a id="FNanchor_124" href="#Footnote_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a></p> + + +<div class="border"> +<p class="p-left sm">GAIUS JULIUS PROCULUS<br> +WILL OFFER FOR SALE<br> +CERTAIN ARTICLES<br> +HERE-UNDER NAMED<br> +FOR WHICH HE HAS NO FURTHER REQUIREMENT</p> +</div> + +<p class="p2"><b>200. Superior Retail Stores.</b>—However, besides the petty shops +and street traders there are the really magnificent stores, especially +toward the Campus Martius where articles of <i>vertu</i> attract the +wealthy. If you have wealth, you can delight yourself in splendid +establishments offering citrus-wood<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[227]</span> tables, veneered with ivory and +gold, with other articles of furniture to match, or candelabra that are +massy works of art, or vases and mirrors of every possible style and +elegance, and where all kinds of fine pottery, plate, and bric-a-brac, +as well as gorgeous upholsteries, tapestries, and carpets, can be had +for a price.</p> + +<p>To thrust into these places that welcome only the most aristocratic +clientele is the delight of those professional shoppers, which abound +in Rome as in many another city. Martial’s Mamurra will have many +survivors in the next generation. This worthy fellow put in his days +at the richest bazaars along the Sæpta Julia. He would force his way +to inner rooms where the handsomest and most expensive slaves were +on private exhibition. He made obsequious clerks uncover fine tables +“square and round, and next asked to see some rich ivory ornaments +displayed on the upper shelves.” He measured a tortoise-shell veneered +dinner couch five times, then sighed, “It’s not long enough for my +citrus table.” He smelled of rare bronzes “to see if they were real +Corinthian”; criticized a statue by Polycleitus, had ten porcelain cups +“set aside” to be taken by him later, examined some splendid antique +goblets, made a jeweler let him inspect some emeralds in a splendid +gold setting, also some valuable pearl ear pendants, and complained +aloud that he was seeking “<i>real</i> sardonyxes.” At last, just as +the shops closed for the day, utterly wearied, “he bought two earthen +cups for one small coin and bore them home himself.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>201. Numerous Banks and Bankers.</b>—All this trade implies the +handling of great sums of money, and for its care banks and bankers are +everywhere in evidence. The Romans naturally run to finance. It appeals +to their keen sense of the practical. Even before Cæsar’s conquest +it was boasted that rarely a large sum changed hands in Gaul without +its being entered in an Italian account book; while in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[228]</span> Nero’s day a +serious revolt in Britain was said to have been precipitated by the +act of the millionaire philosopher, Seneca, in calling in his British +loans, thereby reducing certain tribes to beggary.</p> + +<p>Stocks, bonds, and long-time government securities do not indeed exist, +and there is no regular stock exchange, but in many respects about +all the other financial conveniences of a later age can be found by +the Tiber. There are two kinds of money handlers—mere coin-changers, +dealing in foreign mintages and often no doubt accepting sums merely +for safe keeping in their strong boxes; and above them are the real +bankers acting under a kind of state license and doing business on the +largest scale.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>202. A Great Banker and His Business.</b>—The highest classes of +these <i>argentarii</i> are men whom the Emperor will gladly consult if +the Parthians break loose in an expensive war, or great public works +have to be undertaken in Africa. They are strictly under government +supervision, their business honor is high and bankruptcy is a great +disgrace.</p> + +<p>On this day in question Calvus must needs visit his own personal +banker, Sextus Herrenius Probus, head of the firm of the Probi, one +of the oldest houses on the Via Sacra. Probus is an eques, though +his wealth surpasses that of most senators. His father helped such +personages as the philosopher Seneca to make and to manage their huge +fortunes, but the real origin of the firm went back to Augustus’s +settlement of Egypt, when the successful liquidation of the royal +estates of Cleopatra provided enormous and lawful commissions. Probus +now is practically the Custodian of many of the noblest patrimonies in +Rome. He is all the time consulted concerning investments, and Calvus +has particularly desired to-day to ask whether his own freedmen are +wise in urging their patron (acting, of course, through themselves +as middlemen) to put 300,000 sesterces into a transaction in Arabian +frankincense.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[229]</span></p> + +<p>Probus, of course, runs a regular banking business. Besides several +junior partners he has a great corps of clerks, some freedmen, and +some slaves. His office has all the signs of a well-ordered commercial +establishment. Every item of his business is entered in an elaborate +system of ledgers, which are regularly brought into court as the most +reliable kind of evidence.</p> + +<p>Such a banker issues bills of exchange on correspondents in such places +as Athens, Alexandria, Antioch, Lugdunum, Gades, and even on distant +Londinium in Britain. Money is deposited with him, then withdrawn by +personal checks (<i>perscriptio</i>) in a manner very familiar to +another age. On long-time deposits he pays interest; and, of course, +he is always loaning money for long or short terms on what seems good +security.</p> + +<p>On the day that Calvus comes to him Probus has just loaned 200,000 +sesterces on a mortgage on a well-rented insula, at the standard +rate of 12 per cent; and also a sum to a merchant planning a trading +voyage to Spain at the heavier rate of 24 per cent until the ships are +safe in harbor.<a id="FNanchor_125" href="#Footnote_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> Probus, too, exchanges foreign moneys at a fair +commission, although by the reign of Hadrian the coinage of all the +Mediterranean world has become decidedly Romanized; one seldom now +has to change drachmas and shekels into sesterces and <i>aurei</i> +(gold pieces), although the old Græco-Oriental coins have not quite +disappeared.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>203. Trust Business: Savings Banks.</b>—Besides its strictly +banking business Probus’s firm also does much that could at another +time be referred to a “Trust Company.” It makes sales or purchases +for its clients, undertakes to close<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[230]</span> up estates, attends to legal +business, collects debts, and above all conducts auctions of large +quantities of goods in the most responsible manner possible. Somewhat +on the side the firm also maintains several small savings banks to +attract the sesterces of the humble.</p> + +<p>These modest savings institutions, paying the depositors a fair +interest, are numerous all over the city; and such concerns also +make loans for small sums on chattel mortgages—in short, doing a +business that is sometimes highly legitimate, sometimes griping and +usurious. Probus’s savings banks, like many others, are intrusted to +slave managers (<i>institutores</i>) who are expected to invest their +own <i>peculium</i> in the business to insure their watchfulness and +honesty. The management of such small establishments is naturally held +in little social esteem, and the heads of Probus and Company affect to +ignore their savings banks just as much as possible, although the gains +from them are, perhaps, almost as great as from the dealings with the +lofty <i>Clarissimi</i> of the Senate.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>204. Places of Safe Deposit: The Temple of Vesta.</b>—At all the +banks there are very strong brass-bound treasure boxes carefully +guarded and protected by elaborate locks. These boxes if not actually +“safe deposit vaults” can defy any ordinary burglars. However, objects +of great value, caskets of jewels, large sums of bullion, and the like, +can be deposited in the Temple of Castor at the Old Forum, where (under +the double sanctions of law and religion) the government undertakes +their storage for a moderate fee. There is also a second government +deposit vault at the Temple of Mars Ultor on the Augustan Forum, but +this unfortunately “lost its helmet” (<i>i.e.</i> its reputation for +inviolability) when it was successfully entered by burglars some years +ago.</p> + +<p>There exists, however, a still safer place than the Temple of Castor, +although obviously it can only give room to protect<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[231]</span> very small packets +and highly precious documents. The Vestal Virgins in their House of +Vesta, sacrosanct and absolutely guarded, have now in their keeping +the wills of half of the Senators and of many other distinguished men. +There they are safe from tampering not merely by common criminals, but +by designing heirs and even by greedy Emperors; but this service, of +course, is only at the disposal of the aristocracy.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_231" style="max-width: 327px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_231.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Monument of a Hostler.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>205. Inns: Usually Mean and Sordid.</b>—The very nature of a city +like Rome presupposes an enormous floating population. The metropolis +is always full of strangers. The more distinguished of these almost +inevitably find hospitality at least as “paying guests” in some private +quarters, so that large hotels for the gentry are almost nonexistent; +and as stated (p. 112) the universal custom of either dining at home or +being a dinner guest of friends largely obviates the need of luxurious +restaurants. But all visitors cannot command noble hospitality; and +many a plebeian, freedman, or slave cannot go home from his work either +to the noon-time prandium or to the regular evening dinner. Besides +there are plenty of loose fellows who desire congenial places for +tippling and carousing. The result is that Rome is provided with inns +and with eating houses; although nearly all of both types are sordid +and held in little aristocratic favor.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[232]</span></p> + +<p>The inns (<i>tabernæ</i>) usually combine the reception of travelers +with the providing of meals for chance visitors. Since driving in the +city is seldom permitted, nearly all wagons have to unload near the +gates, and around these there is a perfect sprinkling of inns primarily +for the accommodation of teamsters.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_232" style="max-width: 597px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_232.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Gateway at Pompeii</span>: present state. Note the +small entrance for foot passengers, available after the main gate for +beasts and wagons has been closed.</p> + </div> + +<p>A few of these establishments are very large but the most are decidedly +small. Take for example the “Inn of Hercules,” just outside the Porta +Capena, where the Appian Way commences. It is kept by one Proxenus, a +sly-eyed, strong-limbed fellow, who pretends he is an Athenian Greek, +but who probably comes from somewhere much nearer the Orient. His inn +stands side by side with a number of competitors, all much alike. There +is a broad entrance through<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[233]</span> which wagons can drive; and on either side +of this passage are rooms, one for the proprietor’s personal use, the +others for serving meals, drinking, and idling. On the walls are coarse +frescos, showing besides the Lares (the serpent Genius of the place, +and the god Hercules) views of the wine trade, perhaps of a man pouring +wine from a large jar into a still larger earthen hogshead. In the rear +of these rooms there is a fairly large court for wagons, a stable, and +a watering trough. Near these are three small chambers for teamsters +who have to sleep near their beasts; but most of the guests are +accommodated in small, dirty cubicles in the story above the wine-rooms.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>206. Reckonings and Guests at a Cheap Inn.</b>—Proxenus is not more +filthy or extortionate than the majority of his kind. He takes it as +part of his perquisites to hear his tavern cursed as “dirty,” “smoky,” +“vermin infested”—or things much worse, and laughs heartily when +he finds that a departing guest has scratched upon the walls of his +sleeping chamber such doggerel verses as</p> + + <div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="ileft">“Landlord, may your lies malign</div> + <div class="i1">Bring destruction on your head!</div> + <div>You, yourself drink unmixed wine</div> + <div class="i1">Water sell your guests instead!”<a id="FNanchor_126" href="#Footnote_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a></div> + </div> + </div> + </div> + +<p>He can at least claim that his ordinary charges are moderate. His +regular bill to a driver is likely to be:</p> + +<table class="smaller"> + <tr> + <td class="cht">“Bread and a pint of wine</td> + <td class="cht">1 as;</td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Meat dish</td> + <td class="cht">2 asses;</td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Mule provender</td> + <td class="cht">2 asses;</td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td class="cht">Night accommodation</td> + <td class="cht">2 asses.”</td> + </tr> +</table> + +<p>The bronze <i>as</i> is hardly more than 2 cents; and the whole charge, +including the mule, is thus about 14 cents later-day reckoning. The +real profit, however, comes when for example<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[234]</span> a burly soldier off duty +tramps in with his hob-nailed boots, swings back his military cloak, +and orders, “Come, mine host (<i>copus</i>), some really good wine with +a little water!” If congenial spirits, male and female, are now ready, +such may be the beginning of a long sousing evening, when the dice will +clatter furiously and the soldier will awake in the morning with not +one sesterce in his pouch.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>207. Noble Frequenters of Taverns.</b>—Sometimes Proxenus rejoices +in still more exalted company. Certain fast young nobles enjoy “doing +the rounds” of low taverns; and the Inn of Hercules has fairly regular +visitors of this very profitable type. When Proxenus sees Gnæus +Lollius, Gratia’s black sheep of a cousin, entering, he makes haste to +anoint his own locks with pungent musk, and runs to greet his visitor +as ‘Dominus’ and ‘Rex,’—while the young profligate, boasting that he +has come to enjoy a perfect “Liberty Hall” (<i>æqua libertas</i>), +commands the host at once to call in all the loose rascals in the +neighborhood and insists that they drink with him from the same goblet. +At last they are all sprawling about the tavern, the noble Lollius +“cheek by jowl with cut-throats, bargees, thieves, runaway slaves, +hangmen, and coffin makers.”<a id="FNanchor_127" href="#Footnote_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a></p> + +<p>All Rome has been laughing in loyal glee at the retort in verse which +the clever Hadrian has just made to a certain Florus, who wrote some +lines saying “he would rather not be Cæsar” because the latter was +always gadding off to outlandish places. Florus is notoriously a +frequenter of all-night taverns, and the Emperor instead of imitating +Nero and sending him a centurion with a death message, has hit back +roundly:</p> + + <div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="ileft">“Florus would I never be,</div> + <div>Now a-tramp to taverns he,</div> + <div>Sulking now in cook-shops see,</div> + <div>Victim of the wicked flea!”</div> + </div> + </div> + </div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[235]</span></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_235" style="max-width: 530px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_235.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Cheap Grocery and Cook-Shop.</span> <i>After Von +Falke.</i></p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>208. Respectable Eating-Houses.</b>—But not all people are +teamsters seeking a lodging, or rascals seeking a carouse. Honest +hard-working men and women must buy their meals every day. The simplest +method, if you care nothing for appearances, is to halt before one +of the cooks who station themselves in the open street with caldrons +over small charcoal fires. At the end of copper sticks they attach +little cups with which they bring up boiled peas, or some form of +stew to be eaten on the spot. Of better grade are the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[236]</span> <i>cauponæ</i> +(eating-houses); these are ordinarily arranged with a long counter open +to the street whereon is arrayed a tempting display of dainties, and +above this are marble shelves set with cups and glasses. We see also a +place for heating liquids over a charcoal fire.</p> + +<p>On going inside a typical restaurant, one comes to a long room filled +with small tables and backless stools for the use of the guests. The +walls are covered with tolerable frescos showing scenes of eating +and drinking, while from the ceiling dangle strings of sausages, +hams, and other eatables. Really good meals can be ordered here, also +good wine at reasonable prices. Most of the guests are honest, quiet +tradesmen who go about their business, and every sign of a brawl is +promptly repressed. When two youths in servile dress begin to exchange +blows over a cast of dice, the strong-armed proprietor promptly gives +them a push toward the door with the firm injunction, “Please fight +outside.”<a id="FNanchor_128" href="#Footnote_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>209. Thermopolia—“Hot-Drink Establishments.”</b>—Such places +are genuine restaurants where more attention is given to the food +than to the beverages. Hardly any eating-house, however, can really +be popular unless it does business also as a <i>thermopolium</i>, a +“hot-drink establishment.” Coffee and tea are unknown; but hard-working +folk around the city find <i>calda</i> very refreshing especially +after the toil of the morning. Calda is a kind of diluted wine mixed +with spices and aromatic herbs, and heated up into a sort of negus. +It is in constant demand. In fact a cup of calda and a little bread +and peas make up the average poor laborer’s luncheon; therefore the +samovar (<i>authepsa</i>) is continually steaming in all the Roman +eating-houses.</p> + +<p>Needless to say most inns and even the better restaurants enjoy such +an evil reputation among the high and mighty that the latter never +frequent them save, as does Lollius, for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[237]</span> the naughty “experience.” +Even when traveling through Italy, so general is the custom of +extending hospitality, that only rarely will a great man like Calvus +have to lodge with his retinue at an inn. The result is that country +inns are hardly more select than those in the city, with sometimes the +additional reputation of being the holds of unabashed robbers. Ladies +and gentlemen, and even their more fastidious slaves, groan when they +have to put up at country taverns, and what Cicero, Horace, Propertius, +and other writers have thought of inns and inn-keepers has passed into +literary history.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[238]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER XIII<br> +<span class="subhed">ECONOMIC LIFE OF ROME: II. THE INDUSTRIAL QUARTERS. THE GRAIN TRADE. +OSTIA. THE TRADE GUILDS</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>210. Industrial Quarters by the Tiber.</b>—We have said that Rome +was not primarily an industrial or commercial city. A million and +a half people cannot, however, exist without a great deal of local +manufacturing and an elaborate organization for importing staples and +luxuries. If we go down the Vicus Tuscus or some other streets leading +near the Tiber and toward the southern part of the city, the fine +mansions grow fewer, the insulæ become more squalid, and even these +last are interspersed with dingy structures of concrete which by the +noise and smells proceeding thence are obviously factories.</p> + +<p>These industrial plants are for the most part small according to the +standards of another age; there is also a marked absence of complicated +machinery and a conspicuous dependence simply on patient man-power; but +some establishments are really on a great scale. The noble House of +Afer, for example, has a practical monopoly of the brick industry.<a id="FNanchor_129" href="#Footnote_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a> +Its products are used all over the city, as may be proved by the name +stamped on almost every brick, and in the Afer yards and kilns are +employed several thousands of slaves and free workers.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>211. Conditions of Industrial Labor.</b>—Slave labor has crowded +free labor hard but has not actually destroyed it. You can never get +quite the same efficiency from a “speaking<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[239]</span> tool” as from a man to +whom life affords honest prospects. Furthermore, the supply of slaves +is unsteady. While the legions were overrunning helpless kingdoms, it +was easy enough to buy a hundred more hands for your pottery works or +metal factory; but now the campaigns of Trajan (the last period, it +will prove, of the great conquests) are over. There are barely enough +prisoners in the slave market at present to provide a fair supply of +servants.</p> + +<p>There are other drawbacks to servile labor: though a slave worker +cannot “strike” against terms of employment, his employer cannot cease +to feed and clothe him during slack times, when he will gladly lay +off free labor. As a result the average industry employs slaves and +free men side by side; the latter are a little more self-sufficient, +but seemingly they do not object to having slaves as fellow workmen. +In any case the hours of labor are long and the conditions hard. A +denarius (16 cents) is apparently wages enough to provide an artisan +with a few rooms in a dingy insula and to keep his wife and children +from starvation—especially if they can get the government grain doles; +greater reward he dares seldom to demand.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>212. Great Trade through Ostia and the Campanian Ports.</b>—But +Rome, as stated, imports more articles than she manufactures. The +commerce from the interior of Italy, down the Tiber and along the +main roads from the north, the Via Cassia and the Via Flaminia, is +not of first importance—mostly garden produce, stone, and timber. +Not so that from Ostia, the harbor town, or that coming by the famous +southern highways, the Via Appia and the Via Latina. Navigation along +the Italian coast to Ostia has its dangerous features, and a great +many merchants try to unlade at such south-Latin ports as Antium or +preferably at the busy harbor of Puteoli in Campania. The result is +that the southern roads are often black with great trains of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[240]</span> heavy +wagons bumping over the hard pavement all the hundred and fifty odd +miles from Puteoli to Rome. However, a very large fraction of the +entire commerce of Rome passes up the Tiber from Ostia, and is set down +on those long arrays of wharves southwest of the Aventine, known as the +Emporium.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>213. The Emporium and Its Wharves: the Tiber Barges.</b>—The +Emporium is not the most beautiful section of Rome, but it is one +of the most important. From its murk and bustle many a lordly eques +is swung away every night in his litter for the quiet, aristocratic +Quirinal or Esquiline; but it is the Emporium trade which makes +possible his great mansion with its hierarchy of soft-footed slaves. To +reach the Emporium we go down the Vicus Tuscus past the upper end of +the tall gray masses of the far-stretching Circus Maximus, then turn +down narrow lanes where the Aventine crowds closely toward the Tiber. +Immediately the river opens before us with a scene of teeming life.</p> + +<p>We are now below all the regular bridges and at the head of deep-sea +navigation. In truth the Tiber is too shallow and uncertain a river +to be very practical for large ships, even of the Græco-Roman type. +Only small vessels, mostly of the coasting variety, come up to Rome on +direct voyages. But the regular procedure is to unload the deep-sea +craft at Ostia and then bring up their lading along the twenty odd +miles of the crooked river, in light-draft barges. These barges—some +worked by long oars, some towed by their crews walking along the +shore—are constantly coming and going. To-day as every day the river +is alive with them, and many others are moored closely, prow following +stern, all along the magnificent stone embankments which serve as quays.</p> + +<p>Approaching one of these ungainly flat-bottomed craft, we see it has a +little cabin on the poop, and its name, the “Isis<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[241]</span> of Geminus,”<a id="FNanchor_130" href="#Footnote_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a> +is marked in large red letters upon the black hull. The captain is +now standing by the mooring cable passed through a sculptured lion’s +mouth, directing a great gang of porters carrying sacks of grain +down a bank to the wharf, where Geminus, the owner himself, assisted +by a government clerk carefully checks off every sack upon their +bills of lading. A little scrutiny reveals that while all kinds of +commodities abound on the Emporium two take wide precedence over +all others—<i>grain</i>, from Egypt and provincial Africa; and +<i>marble</i>, from Numidia, Greece, and Asia Minor.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_241" style="max-width: 650px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_241.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">River Boat loaded with Hogsheads of Wine.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>214. The Marble and Grain Trades.</b>—The marble trade, indeed, +demands a special section of the wharves. For the government buildings +the imperial procurators in the marble-producing provinces are +constantly sending in valuable cargoes, and for monolithic columns and +extra large blocks specially constructed barges are used to bring them +from Ostia. Even now a great labor gang is painfully<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[242]</span> disembarking a +splendid column of Egyptian porphyry for the new Temple of Venus and +Rome.</p> + +<p>Behind the Emporium stretches an ugly complex of offices, warehouses, +porters’ barracks, and the like, but most conspicuous and ugly of all +are the public <i>horrea</i>. These are tall gaunt storehouses for the +keeping of grain, enormous fabrics of dull gray concrete, “elevators” +in fact, carefully maintained by the government for the victualing of +the capital. There are said to be more than three hundred horrea, and +the largest are named for the emperors who built them—the Horreum of +Augustus, of Domitian, and the like. Thousands of men are employed +around them, and the state of their contents can give anxious nights to +the Imperial Council. Unlovely as they seem, they are vital to the life +of Rome.</p> + +<p>It is no small task to provide grain for so huge a city, and that, too, +without the aid of railways or steamships. Even a top-lofty Emperor +like Domitian can fear the howls of the crowds in the circus if the +price of wheat becomes high and the customary free distributions are +not forthcoming. Hence these horrea must be large enough to supply +a large margin against possible delay in the annual arrival of the +“Alexandrian” or “African” fleets on which the provisioning of the +capital depends.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>215. The Public Grain Doles.</b>—All the world knows that one of +the most precious prerogatives of a plebeian in Rome is the right to +receive about 5 <i>modii</i> (about 10 gallons dry measure) of grain +every month at government charges. Is it not only right that the +wearers of the toga should live on the bounty of the subject world?</p> + +<p>In the past there have been, indeed, efforts to make the populace pay +<i>part</i> of the price of their grain, with the government simply +discharging the balance. This half measure has broken down because of +unpopularity. All that the authorities<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[243]</span> can do now is to see that the +list of recipients is limited to genuine citizens, and that the alien +riffraff of the great city is strictly excluded.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_243" style="max-width: 449px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_243.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Distributing Bread.</p> + </div> + +<p>There are now, as since the time of Augustus, about 200,000 citizens +upon the precious “Frumentary Lists.” The recipients are not paupers, +but include very many “small citizens” of the worthier kind. It is an +honor in many circles to win the precious <i>tessera</i> (metal or +bone ticket) entitling<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[244]</span> one to stand in line at the numerous grain +dispensaries all over the city and get the monthly allowance.<a id="FNanchor_131" href="#Footnote_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a> +Every adult male Roman in the city receives this privilege, but under +some circumstances the tessera can be alienated. You hear of persons +selling theirs or even bequeathing them by will; and some of the +holders are thus not merely freedmen but even ex-criminals.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>216. Distribution of the Free Bread: Extraordinary Bonuses +(<i>Congiaria</i> and <i>Donativa</i>).</b>—For a long time this food +has simply been portioned out unbaked at the numerous grain stations +all over the city; after which it has to be made into bread at home, or +to be handed over to private bakers who will return so many loaves per +measure, deducting a commission in kind. There is a growing tendency, +however, towards government bakeshops as a new means of pampering the +“Sovereign People” and towards passing out the food in the form of +handsomely baked bread.</p> + +<p>The custom nevertheless is not yet universal.<a id="FNanchor_132" href="#Footnote_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a> The private bakeries +continue to flourish, and since each baker must grind his own flour, +no sound is more common all over the city than the rasping of the +millstones worked either by long-suffering donkeys, blindfolded to +keep them from eating, or by the most recalcitrant and sodden class of +slaves.</p> + +<p>These distributions of free grain are part of the normal life of Rome. +Inevitably they multiply the number of parasites, busybodies, and sheer +beggars. Ever since Gaius Gracchus started the evil system, thoughtful +men have groaned over its consequences, but all have been helpless, and +the demoralization increases when an Emperor, to insure<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[245]</span> popularity at +the beginning of his reign, or to confirm it later, orders a special +<i>congiarium</i> to all the citizens.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_245" style="max-width: 596px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_245.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Oven and Grist Mill in a Bakery.</span> <i>After Von +Falke.</i>]</p> + </div> + +<p>This gift can take the form of special distributions of oil, wine, and +meat to all the lucky holders of the tesseræ; but presents even more +lavish are possible. When Trajan died in 118 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> and Hadrian +was proclaimed, the latter, not quite certain of public favor, put all +the insulæ to roaring in his praise by proclaiming a gift of three +aurei (gold pieces of $4.00 each) to every “frumentary citizen” in +Rome. What wonder that later <i>donativa</i> (bonuses) become necessary +at dangerously frequent intervals to prevent even the most loyal +plebeians from praying for a new reign!<a id="FNanchor_133" href="#Footnote_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[246]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>217. The Trade in Sculptures and Portrait Statues.</b>—But it +is time to return to the region about the Emporium. Near the marble +wharves are naturally the huge establishments where all the day long +the chip, chip of many mallets and chisels indicates that great masses +of sculptured stone are being turned out—magnificent capitals, +pediment groups, bas-reliefs that are splendid works of art, for all +the needs of the government buildings and the mansions of the wealthy.</p> + +<p>Many large concerns devote themselves to manufacturing single statues, +life-size or miniature. Standing around in their courtyards are rows +of sculptured deities, mostly copies of good Greek masterpieces, +representing the whole host of Olympus from Jupiter down to the +inferior demigods; there are also numerous statues displaying orators +posing in their togas, magistrates in their official robes, and +generals in their armor, but with the features left in the rough—to be +finished up on order at short notice to adorn some atrium or small-town +forum.</p> + +<p>A great array of statues of the Emperor are also kept in stock. These +are needed in every government building, and the demand is constant; +but it must be admitted that Hadrian’s handsome bearded features are +often outrageously distorted by the careless journeymen, so that loyal +folk protest even as does the governor of Pontus, Arrianus, who has +just written his master, “Your statue at Trapezus [on the Euxine] is +beautifully placed, but it is not the least like you. Please send on +another at once from Rome!”</p> + +<p>Special markets and warehouses also exist for almost every other +major commodity. Near the Circus Maximus there is the noisy, fetid +cattle market where horses, kine, and asses change hands amid coarse +chaffering very much as in the trade for slaves. There are likewise +great repositories for oil, flax, lumber, wool, spices, etc.—some +private, some under government supervision; the clang from all kinds +of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[247]</span> smithies and metal workshops is incessant, and the factories for +manufacturing bronze statues are almost as large as those for the stone +sculptures.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_247" style="max-width: 672px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_247.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 sm center">ENVIRONS OF ROME</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>218. The Tiber Trip to Ostia: the Merchant Shipping.</b>—If, +however, one would learn the real sum of Roman industry and commerce, +it is needful to charter a slim swiftly-pulling wherry and to glide +down the yellow Tiber to Ostia. All the way the craft has to dodge the +enormous barges, but the shores are covered with delightful villas, +small villages, or with prosperous farms raising poultry, flowers, +vegetables, and the like for the city trade. In the distance across the +level campagna can be seen the impressive array of the solemn arches of +the great aqueducts, reaching back into the hills and bringing their +supply of pure water to Rome. Ostia itself, however, is strictly a +harbor town, with an elaborate<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[248]</span> series of breakwaters, dredged basins, +naval docks, mercantile docks, and a perfect jumble of shipping.</p> + +<p>The vessels have come from all parts of the Mediterranean, and there +is even a battered trader that has coasted all the way from Britain +with a cargo of tin ore. The smaller craft can trust sometimes to their +oars in a calm, but all the larger must depend on their unwieldy lateen +sails which swing from two or three long yards crossing as many masts.</p> + +<p>By far the largest merchantmen are the Egyptian corn ships, and one +of these, that is just being moved to the quay by a gang of shouting +half-naked stevedores, is of somewhat unusual size. We are informed she +is fully 180 feet long and 45 feet in beam.<a id="FNanchor_134" href="#Footnote_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a> She is provided with +elaborate and decidedly comfortable cabins for many passengers, so that +it is easy to believe the story that when the Jew Paullus (previously +mentioned) on his compulsory trip to Rome was wrecked off Malta, 276 +persons were rescued from the Alexandrian merchantman whereon he and +his guards had embarked.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>219. Imperial Naval Vessels.</b>—At Ostia, too, can be seen a few +triremes of the Imperial Navy. Enemies to the Roman dominion have +practically disappeared from the seas, but there is still a certain +danger of pirates or local insurrection; therefore, although the clumsy +four- and five-bankers of the Punic War periods disappeared soon after +the battle of Actium, small patrol squadrons of swift triremes, pulling +about 170 oars, or of smaller craft are maintained by the government. +These ships are extremely like the Athenian triremes of the golden age +of Greece and call for no special description here.<a id="FNanchor_135" href="#Footnote_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a> The Romans are +not naturally a seafaring people. Nearly all the larger merchant ships +are manned if not owned by Greeks or Levantines; and it has<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[249]</span> been with +real satisfaction that the Emperors have felt that they could allow +their navy to dwindle down to insignificance. With the army, as will be +seen, things are very different.<a id="FNanchor_136" href="#Footnote_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>220. The Harbor Town of Ostia.</b>—Ostia has all the accompaniments +of a busy port: a great mass of squalid lodging-houses for sailors, +innumerable taverns overrun with dirty loiterers of both sexes, a +great many uncouth faces along the quays, ear-ringed Syrians, and even +quaintly jabbering negroes. There are, however, some good houses for +the rich merchants and directors of the shipping, and a forum flanked +with handsome temples and government buildings befitting the harbor +town of the Mistress of the World.</p> + +<p>In the outskirts of Ostia one can quickly get out into delightful +country stretching all along the seashore. The villas of city magnates +look forth upon the blue Tyrrhenian Sea, or are bowered in lush +groves surrounded by rich gardens and fruitful orchards. The melons +raised around Ostia are in demand by every epicure in the capital. +Who can believe a prophecy that this active bustling port, with its +enormous shipping, and all these villas, groves, and gardens will +some day vanish like a dream, and that Ostia will lie in a desolate +fever-stricken country,—with hardly a house in sight along the +deserted shores, and with the harbor town of the Eternal City reduced +itself to a few miserable cabins?</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>221. The Roman Guilds (<i>Collegia</i>).</b>—Ere turning one’s +glance from the economic life of Rome it is needful to regard the +organization of industry. Nearly all free workmen are members of +“guilds” (<i>collegia</i>) which nominally exist for the purpose +of worshiping some patron deity; thus the bakeries are the special +votaries of Vesta the hearth goddess, the fullers<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[250]</span> of Minerva the +protectress of wool-working, the smiths of Vulcan, and so with others.</p> + +<p>These “colleges” are not labor unions for the protection of the +wage-earners against exploitation; they are more like the guilds that +are to be developed in the Middle Ages. The chief members are the +employing “masters,” and paid journeymen and apprentices have little +share in the control of the organization. However, most industries in +Rome are on so small a scale and the situation is so complicated by the +competition of slave labor that the friction between wage-earners and +their employers seldom becomes dangerously acute.</p> + +<p>The trade guilds are carefully watched by the government lest they +become the hotbeds of sedition and disturbing intrigue,<a id="FNanchor_137" href="#Footnote_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a> on the +other hand their existence is often useful in helping to mobilize +industry in behalf of the army and to keep up the public works in +general.</p> + +<p>They have a fairly tight organization, with their own officials, +“prætors” and “presidents,” and the like, and the election to such +a post by one’s fellow craftsmen is no slight honor. The guilds, +too, have their special corporate property; and many of them possess +elaborate guild halls for their feasts and meetings.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>222. Very Ancient Guilds: the Flute-Blowers.</b>—Some of the +colleges are of decidedly recent origin, but eight of them boast that +their history goes back to the very early days of Rome. These are +the fullers, cobblers, carpenters, goldsmiths, coppersmiths, dyers, +potters, and last but not least, the flute-blowers, so important at +funerals and all public festivals.</p> + +<p>From the “good old times” come many quaint stories about these +guilds, and everybody remembers especially the tale concerning the +flute-blowers. About 314 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> the censors<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[251]</span> saw fit to forbid +these somewhat riotous and irregular gentry from joining in the sacred +banquets to Jupiter in which they had formerly participated. In anger +the whole college struck and retired in dudgeon to the friendly city +of Tibur. Soon the Senate found it difficult to conduct the religious +rites properly without the aid of the flute-players, and endeavored to +cajole them home, but the strikers had found their fare and quarters +in Tibur very pleasant and refused any reasonable terms. The people of +Tibur, however, wearied of their guests and to get rid of them gave +the whole corporation a generous banquet, during which all the members +became so drunk that they could be loaded into wagons, trundled back +to Rome and then laid down in a helpless stupor in the very Forum. The +next morning the entire guild awoke, rubbed its collective eyes and +found a vast crowd of jeering friends pressing around. The result was +an honorable compromise. The censors relented, and the flute-players, +in return for giving solemn attention to their religious duties, were +awarded the right to three days of high carnival, with songs, dances, +and every kind of coarse gayety.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>223. Importance of the Guilds.</b>—The complete list of the guilds +is very long. Besides those mentioned, among the more prominent are the +barbers, perfumers, fruit sellers, garment cutters, pack carriers, mule +drivers, gig drivers, and fishermen, not to mention the great guild +of the bakers. There is as yet no formal compulsion upon a craftsman +to join a college, but in fact any “non-union” workman is subject +to discrimination and sabotage which make his life unhappy. Cases +are known of funerals being halted amid an unseemly scuffle when a +non-member of the guild of bier-carriers has been discovered helping to +carry the litter for the dead.</p> + +<p>Certain crafts have perforce to be distributed all over the city but +inevitably fellow guildsmen like to flock together.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[252]</span> In the industrial +quarters each craft tries to concentrate upon a certain street which is +then called by its name. Well known is the case of how Catiline’s gang +had its rendezvous at Marcus Læcas’s house on Scythemaker’s Street. +There is no annual “labor day” when all the guild members of the city +hold festival together. On the contrary each college has its own +separate festival, when the united craft is entitled to parade through +Rome with horns, pipes, cymbals, and gaudy banners; its officers +appearing in the guise of magistrates. The whole company with their +families ordinarily head for the outskirts, where, beside convenient +temples and hospitable taverns, the good people can spread themselves +for picnics under the trees, join in vulgar dances, and very often +spend the night under improvised tents of leaves—everybody sleeping +the sounder because of much strong wine.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>224. Multitude of Beggars.</b>—To these honest plebeians must be +added another less noble multitude. Rome literally swarms with beggars. +The parasitical habits taught by slavery and by the grain doles go +far to make begging somewhat respectable. At every turn you can run +on whining wretches often repulsively mutilated in order to excite +sympathy. They have their regular stand, however, upon the bridges, +where they crouch on dirty mats shouting their “<i>da! da!</i>” “Give! +Give!” and at the gates where travelers take or leave their carriages +they are thicker than the flies. Near Ostia and along the Emporium +may also be seen real or pretended sailors escaped from shipwreck, +identifiable by their heads, which are shaven because of vows made in +peril, and who hold out their caps for coppers while “delighting in +garrulous ease to tell the story of their perils.”</p> + +<p>Downright thieves, professional robbers, and petty pilferers are held +in reasonable restraint by the active police, but the absence of street +lights makes it risky business to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[253]</span> go about after dark without torches +and a good escort. Serious burglaries are often reported, and every +now and then the body is found of some wayfarer who was stabbed while +resisting a hold-up. As for certain districts going down the river +toward Ostia, or along the Via Appia toward the Pomptine Marshes, their +reputation is so bad that even in daylight a company of armed slaves is +desirable.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[254]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER XIV<br> +<span class="subhed">THE FORA, THEIR LIFE AND BUILDINGS. THE DAILY JOURNAL</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>225. The Fora, the Centers of Roman Life.</b>—Hitherto in our +prolonged “day” in Rome we have carefully avoided visiting those famous +quarters or buildings which are the glory of the imperial city. These +can only take on true significance when we have first seen the ordinary +life of rich and poor. It is now time, however, to visit the “Heart of +Rome”—the splendid system of fora in that great hollow where five of +the “Seven Hills” almost come together just north of the Palatine, and +then to visit the Palatine itself with its abodes of official majesty.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_254" style="max-width: 750px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_254.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">General View of Old Forum and Capitol</span>: a +simplified restoration.</p> + </div> + +<p>The renowned and original “Forum” is known technically<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[256]</span> as the +<i>Forum Romanum</i>, or the Old Forum, and down to Julius Cæsar’s time +it was the only great plaza inside the official limits of the city. +Under the emperors it is still revered and famous, but the needs of an +enormous metropolis have caused first Cæsar, then Augustus, Vespasian, +Nerva, and finally Trajan to add other wide public squares surrounded +by buildings far more magnificent than most of those around the ancient +rallying spot of the men of the Republic.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_255" style="max-width: 750px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_255.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Old Forum</span>: present state, looking towards the +Capitol.</p> + </div> + +<p>All these fora are closely connected together, sometimes by no +very sharp lines of demarkation. You can start in near the Flavian +Amphitheater and follow down the Sacred Way across the Old Forum, with +one soaring edifice, triumphal arch, or memorial column succeeding +another until at the Temple of Trajan you find yourself on “Broadway” +(<i>Via Lata</i>), upon the great avenue leading through the select +shopping districts, and then past the Campus Martius, and onward to the +northern suburbs. “Going to the Forum” means visiting any place in this +crowded, swarming district, where every public and private interest +seems to have its stronghold, and where the litters of Senators go past +so frequently that nobody stops to count them.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>226. Incessant Crowds at the Forum. The Centers of Gossip.</b>—If +driving is impossible in the ordinary Roman streets by day, it is +doubly impossible in this congested region where only those who delight +in crowds should endeavor to force their way from one building to +another. Nevertheless, with that informality so characteristic of +Mediterranean countries, all the fora are allowed to be overrun with +idlers. Ragged boys are scampering between the columns fronting the +most sacred temples, and on the steps of the same adult idlers from +morn till eve are playing “Robbers” on boards scratched upon the +stonework,<a id="FNanchor_138" href="#Footnote_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a> or rattling dice<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[257]</span> (nominally forbidden) if the police +are not too near. The foul and the elegant therefore are often in +amazing juxtaposition.</p> + +<p>For the average senator or eques a morning visit to the Forum, after +he has received his own callers or clients, is almost a required act +of the day. All his associates are doing the same thing; he can easily +meet almost any friend without making an appointment, he can read that +“Daily Journal” presently to be described (see p. <a href="#Page_282">282</a>), hear the latest +tittle-tattle from the palace and get all the trade reports—all this +even if he has no real business at the Senate House, the government +bureaus on the Palatine, or the Record Office on the slopes of the +Capitol.</p> + +<p>If the great men do this, all the lesser fry and above all the genteel +idlers must do the same. The women frequent the fora almost as much +as do the men. If there is nothing else to busy one, one can always +wedge into the crowds listening to the distinguished advocates in the +Basilicas (Court Houses). It is quite a proper thing to imitate Horace +who put in many days simply wandering around the business quarters. “I +go on foot (said he) and go alone. I ask the price of kitchen-stuff +and grain. I often stroll down toward the cheating [gambling] Circus +and around the Forum; then perhaps I stop toward evening at the +fortune tellers. Presently I go home to my supper of leeks, pulse, and +macaroni.”</p> + +<p>Across the fora will parade all personages who wish to put men’s +tongues to wagging. People laugh at a certain pretentious senator who +likes to pass for a great hunter and who is incessantly sending his +slaves around the plazas at the crowded morning hour, bearing nets and +spears and driving a mule apparently bearing home a wild boar “which +we all know,” whisper the cunning, “he has just bought in the game +market.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[258]</span></p> + +<p>Here in the fora also the magistrates with their lictoral fasces pass +so often that it is really inconvenient the number of times you have +to bow your head to them, or, if in a litter, to dismount and stand at +polite attention: and in such frequented places the kissing nuisance +takes on its greatest bane. The merest chance acquaintance, if only +he is a citizen, will thrust his damp salute upon you, little heeding +whether you have a vile cold or his own lips be ulcered and his breath +foul.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>227. Grandiose Architecture: Vast Quantities of Ornaments and +Statues.</b>—In viewing these great public squares and buildings +instantly one is impressed by a single fact—the grandiose character of +the ornaments and the architecture. All the enormous public buildings +are literally overladen with adornments. The architects seemed to have +abhorred the idea of blank spaces. There are no reposeful vistas. +Everything seems striving to be magnificent and ornate. Statues, singly +or in groups, occupy all the gables, roofs, niches, intervals of +columns, and even the stairways. The Triumphal Arches are surmounted +by equestrian figures or by prancing four-horse chariots. Reliefs and +medallions cover all the friezes. If there is any space that cannot be +seized for the mounting of sculptures or at least for bas-reliefs, it +can be used for painting designs in stucco or colored mosaics. Every +detail down to the gutters is highly decorated.</p> + +<p>Very different, therefore, are these fora from the chaste elegance of +the public places in Athens. On the other hand much of the effect is +splendid as well as startling. The utilization of concrete permits the +erection of vast soaring domes, often covered with gilded tiles. The +elaborate Corinthian pillars before many of the buildings are often +simply superb polished monoliths of colored marbles. The use of the +arch (practically unknown in Greece) permits new effects often graceful +and pleasing.</p> + +<p>The sculptures permitted in such public places are, of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[259]</span> course, always +of the highest order. Sometimes they are original Greek masterpieces +carried as spoils to Italy. Often they are excellent copies of those +masterpieces but with small variations, not inelegant, which give the +reproductions a real character of their own. At every turn one sees +these triumphs of bronze and marble, Apollos, Minervas, Victories, +Winged Mercuries, Centaurs, Homeric Heroes, and all the legendary host +of Græco-Roman mythology—now singly, now in groups. Interspersed with +these gods mounted on pedestals or on the entablatures of the buildings +are the honorary statues of the worthies of Rome. Hardly a great leader +is absent from Romulus to the reigning Hadrian.</p> + +<p>A mere walk about the fora with an explanation of their portrait +statues becomes therefore a detailed lesson in Roman history. Besides +the images of the truly great and good, there are so many others of +sheer mediocrities or worse that one is left wondering whether the +honor of a “statue in the Forum” is so important after all. Even in +old Cato’s day the abuse was such that he remarked sarcastically that +“he would rather that men asked why he had <i>not</i> a statue in the +Public Square, than whisper questioning why he had one.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>228. Use of Color on Sculptures and Architecture.</b>—Needless to +say, in Rome as in Athens very many of these buildings are brilliantly +painted.<a id="FNanchor_139" href="#Footnote_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a> The great columns of colored or of snow-white Carrara or +Græcian marbles are usually left in their natural aspect, but nearly +all the backgrounds, architectural members, and details are colored +in brilliant greens, reds, and blues. The nude statues are nearly all +tinted in flesh color, and the hair darkened, and there is perhaps an +overplus of gilding.</p> + +<p>Under a bright Italian sky these color combinations make the vast +succession of enormous buildings stand out with indescribable<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[260]</span> +grandeur; and to this spectacle must be added the huge crowds +incessantly moving about the fora, great masses of soft white togas +giving to the wide areas all the exuberance of teeming life. There can +be many other great plazas in the future capitals of the world; there +will never be any more clearly marked out as the veritable center of an +enormous Empire than the succession of fora in Rome.</p> + +<p>We are not concerned with archæological descriptions. The arrangement +of the fora in this reign of Hadrian must be sketched over lightly +or explained completely, otherwise the result is not knowledge but +confusion; here a very brief survey will suffice. If we are following +Publius Calvus’s litter as it traces the Esquiline on routine business +of a senator, a series of convenient side streets probably will bring +it past the great baths of Trajan and then down the slope to the +spot where the vast bulk of the Flavian Amphitheater rears itself +arrogantly. The baths and the Amphitheater both will be visited later +(see p. <a href="#Page_361">361</a> and p. <a href="#Page_394">394</a>), and we can, therefore, ignore them. Then the +litter bearers swing west and slightly north—and before us lies the +veritable Heart of Rome.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>229. Entering the Series of Fora: the Temple of Venus and +Rome.</b>—To avoid being overwhelmed by details only the most +conspicuous objects and buildings will be mentioned. Some structures +are obvious at the very first. To the left, lifting vauntingly above +the visitors’ heads, rise tier upon tier the domes, balconies, and +pinnacles of the Imperial Palace upon the Palatine, sustained at their +base by an enormous mass of arches and buttresses of masonry and +concrete. The lords of the palace at any moment can look down from +a gilded balcony upon the Old Forum and its bustling life, and they +need only descend an inclined plane in order to mingle with the mob, +or cross the Plaza to visit the Senate House. Directly ahead—at the +end of the vista, rises the Capitol, crowned by the rebuilt Temple of +Jupiter Best and Greatest<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[261]</span> (<i>Jupiter Optimus Maximus</i>), its roof +flashing with the gold tiles; its enormous pillars proclaiming it the +most splendid fane in Rome.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_261" style="max-width: 552px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_261.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center">MAP OF<br>THE HEART OF ROME</p> + <p class="p0 smaller center">The Fora, the Palatine, the Capitoline etc. as in Period of Hadrian: +about 135 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span></p> + </div> + +<p>At the head of the Via Sacra (for this famous route of the great +Triumphators now opens before us), upon our right, is the new and +indescribably splendid Temple of Venus and Rome, a building just +completed by Hadrian. This edifice has been reared by demolishing the +last of the ruins of the impossibly extravagant “Golden House,” the +architectural monstrosity of Nero.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[262]</span></p> + +<p>In order to get sufficient room for his new structure Hadrian also was +compelled to move the colossal statue of Nero (99 feet high) located +near the site and to set it nearer the Flavian Amphitheater. This had +been a great task, executed by the clever architect Decrianus, with +the aid of twenty-four elephants—performed to the delight of all the +idling crowds in Rome. The statue now towers upon its new pedestal, +with Nero’s unworthy head sagaciously lifted from its shoulders and one +of the Sun God substituted. The new Temple of Venus and Rome is a truly +magnificent object; rising as it does upon a terrace 26 feet high, +500 feet long, and 300 broad, and surrounded by an enormous portico +of 400 columns each 40 feet high. The versatile Emperor boasts that +he has been the architect himself, and whatever are the real facts no +vestibule to the fora could well be more impressive.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>230. The Arch of Titus: Continuation of the Sacred Way.</b>—With +the Temple of Venus and Rome to our right and the substructures of +the Palatine to the left we go straight ahead to the Arch of Titus. +Everybody recognizes the shape of that impressive but relatively simple +structure. Its bas-reliefs showing the spoils of Jerusalem—the “Golden +Table” and more particularly the “Seven Branched Candlestick”—are +destined to be reproduced countless times.</p> + +<p>Old men in Hadrian’s day can still recall the Triumphal Procession +when the son of Vespasian returned in glory; how the great throng of +cheering soldiers and citizens swept up toward the Temple of Jupiter +Capitolinus, then halted at the portal of the Temple while Simon +Bar-Giora, the captive Jewish leader who had been dragged in the +procession, could be taken to a high place overlooking the Forum and +deliberately scourged to death. At the news that he had perished all +the vast company made the crags and columns quake with their brutal +“acclamation,” and Titus entered the shrine to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[263]</span> sacrifice and to bear +witness how much mightier was Latin Jove than Palestinian Jehovah.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_263" style="max-width: 656px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_263.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Spoils from Jerusalem</span>: Arch of Titus.</p> + </div> + +<p>And now the Via Sacra turns at right angles, or, to be more accurate, +its thronging ways divide. Go to the left and you will come upon a high +street passing under the brow of the Palatine. It runs a considerable +distance toward the Capitol, receiving several sloping avenues or +broad staircases leading down from the Palatine. This is “New Street” +(<i>Nova Via</i>), the most convenient route to certain buildings on +the southern side of the Forum.</p> + +<p>It is better, however, to follow the denser crowds which are swerving +somewhat to the right, and then by a second turn go straight onward +again between magnificent structures, with the gilded roofs of the +Capitol ever looming ahead more clearly. We are now on the Via Sacra +proper; and caught<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[264]</span> in the eddying throngs of litters, litter bearers, +running footmen, following clients, elbowing plebeians with now and +then a masterful squad of Prætorians in gilded armor, we find it +perhaps impossible to get more than the names of the structures in +passing.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_264" style="max-width: 451px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_264.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">View through the Arch of Titus, showing the Flavian +Amphitheater in Distance.</p> + </div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[265]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>231. House and Temple of Vesta: the Regia: the Temple of the Divine +Julius.</b>—The venerable temple near which the ways divide is that +of Jupiter Stator where Cicero convened the anxious Senate when he +delivered his great assault on Catiline. Next comes to view a long +high wall broken only by narrow doorways until you see a stately +portal at the western end, nearest the Old Forum. From above the wall +can be glimpsed the tiles and marble of an elegant mansion inside, +also the foliage trees of a really fine garden. This is the House of +the Vestals, the abode of the six sacrosanct virgins who are the most +revered personages in all Rome, hardly barring the Emperor.</p> + +<p>As we advance there come next to view two buildings—one a small round +temple of antique and simple structure; the other a handsome arched +building of no great size. The first is the Fane of Vesta itself, where +burns the eternal hearthfire of Rome, guarded by the Vestals, and the +most sacred structure in the entire city. The second is the Regia, the +official home of the Pontifex Maximus, the head of the Roman religion, +and actually occupied (since that official is now the reigning Emperor) +by various clerks and administrative bureaus relating to the upkeep +of the State cultus. To the right of these buildings are government +warehouses and offices;<a id="FNanchor_140" href="#Footnote_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a> and then, closing off the Old Forum proper +from these structures just named, stands another extraordinarily +magnificent Temple, that of the deified Julius Cæsar.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>232. The Old Forum (<i>Forum Romanum</i>).</b>—We are now close +upon the actual Forum. It can be entered by two methods: you can go +between the Temple of Vesta and that of Cæsar, very likely walking +through the triumphal arch of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[266]</span> Augustus, in which case you will see +the pillared façade of the stately Temple of Castor and Pollux (the +divine helpers of Rome at the half legendary battle of Lake Regillus), +and then across that busy shopping street, the Vicus Tuscus, before +reaching the quieter portico of the great Basilica Julia; or you can +take a better way by keeping on past the northern side of the Temple of +Cæsar and coming out pretty directly upon the Forum. In so doing you +will have the second great court house, the old but capacious Basilica +Æmilia to the north on your right. Let tribunals and litigants, +however, wait—before the visitor at last is opening one of the most +famous areas in the entire world—the <i>Forum Romanum</i>.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_266" style="max-width: 750px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_266.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Old Forum</span>: looking west towards the Capitol. +Restoration by Nispi-Landi.</p> + </div> + +<p>Of the Old Forum well may one say what Cicero declared of Athens, “On +whatever spot we tread we awake a memory.” There is hardly an event +connected with the long reaches of Roman history which is not also +connected in one manner or another with this public square. The first +impression, to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[267]</span> be sure, may be one of disappointment: the whole open +plaza barely measures 300 by 150 feet. It seems the more confined +because a large part of the southern side is hemmed in by the huge +Basilica Julia, while directly above the square rise the two hills of +the Capitoline and the Palatine, their summits crowned with lofty and +noble buildings looking down upon the Forum as a kind of common center.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_267" style="max-width: 750px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_267.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Old Forum, looking towards Capitol from before the +Temple of Castor</span>: the building on the left, with statues beneath +its upper arches, is the Basilica Julia. Restoration after Von Falke.</p> + </div> + +<p>As one advances, however, the impression deepens as to how earnestly +the Romans have tried to concentrate their whole life around this +beloved square. If statues abound elsewhere in the city, they seem here +more numerous than even the surging throngs around their pedestals. +Every kind of human activity is apparently going on simultaneously. +Along the north side, as we have seen, are the offices of those<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[268]</span> great +bankers who hold the nations in fee from the Euphrates to Hibernia, yet +pedlers are now wandering about, almost under the feet of the consul’s +lictors, hawking hot sausages, strings of garlic, and pots of eye +salve, while a snake charmer has obtained the license to exhibit two +stupid serpents on the actual steps to the Temple of Janus just beyond +the Basilica Æmilia.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>233. The Forum Area: the Posting of Public Notices.</b>—Walking +out into the area itself, we find it solidly paved with rectangular +blocks of travertine. The days are gone when closely packed throngs of +quirites stood for hours upon this pavement listening to the orators +bidding them vote upon peace or war, or for or against some proposed +law, as lay in their right as free citizens. Gone, too, is the day of +that great funeral pyre of garments, ornaments, trinkets, tables and +benches, which the frenzied mob heaped around the corpse of Cæsar after +Marcus Antonius had thundered his invective against Cassius and Marcus +Brutus. But not gone is the Senate House (the <i>Curia</i>), looking +out across the plaza from the northern side of the square, just beyond +the Temple of Janus. And around the orator’s stands, the Rostra, at the +western end of the area there is still another elaborate funeral in +progress; the wearers of the imagines sitting in their curule chairs, +and the orator pompously lauding “the noble departed.”</p> + +<p>Truth to tell the Forum is frequented every morning largely to get +the news. Not merely can you meet the bearers of all sorts of public +or confidential information; you can spend an hour merely reading the +great “white boards” (<i>albums</i>) bearing official and private +notices which stand around everywhere. The “Daily Gazette” is here +posted, and we shall consider its contents presently; but apart from +that, whether you wish to know the price of grain or the day set for +a lawsuit; whether Syphax the Moor will race his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[269]</span> four in the next +circus, or Epaphroditus the Athenian will lecture to-morrow on the +nature of the soul, the Forum placards will tell you everything. Gossip +incalculable, often of a kind which no man dare put in writing, you may +also pick up, as well as accost half of your acquaintance. A visit to +the Forum, therefore, is almost as important to a Roman of parts and +activity as in another age will be the perusal of the paper.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>234. Western End of Forum: the Rostra: the Golden Milestone: the +Tullianum Prison.</b>—At the extreme western end of the area, more +temples are seen rising on the slopes of the lofty Capitol. Here is the +Temple of Saturn; and higher still the Temple of the deified Vespasian, +the Temple of Concord, and the great “Public Record Office,” the +Tabularium, and the Rostra are reached just before you quit the level +area and take the winding ascents towards the Capitol.</p> + +<p>These famous stands for the orators constitute an elaborate platform, +with a fine marble balustrade which is adorned with exceptionally good +bronze statues of notables such as Sulla and Pompeius; although all +these ornaments were added by Julius Cæsar and know not the days of +the Old Republic. Some of the original “beaks” (<i>rostra</i>) from +captured warships which gave the famous pulpit its name are still in +position, however, with others from such battles as Actium added.<a id="FNanchor_141" href="#Footnote_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a> +Even if the Republic is dead, the place remains of decided utility not +merely for funerals, but also for formal speeches on state occasions; +and sometimes an emperor will still condescend to harangue the loyal +quirites from its platform.</p> + +<p>Close by the Rostra and near its southern end rises a tall stone pillar +coated with gilded bronze. This is the “Golden<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[270]</span> Milestone” whereon +Augustus inscribed the names of the great roads leading out of Rome, +and the distances to the chief towns along their course. “<i>All roads +lead to Rome</i>,” and leading to Rome find their convergence in the +“Golden Milestone.” It comes close, therefore, to being the “Hub” of +the entire Roman Empire.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_270" style="max-width: 650px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_270.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Old Forum</span>: present condition, western end +looking east. In foreground pillars of Temple of Saturn.</p> + </div> + +<p>Near the other, the northern end of the Rostra, when one goes a little +of the way up to the Capitol, there is quite a different landmark, far +more venerable—the old prison of the city, the Tullianum, prepared, +according to the story, by King Ancus Martius. It was originally +nothing but a kind of well let into the damp rock, with an upper and a +lower compartment; this second chamber is only accessible by means of +a hole in its vaulted roof through which prisoners were lowered by a +rope.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[271]</span></p> + +<p>The Tullianum has long since been discarded as the public jail, but +state prisoners are sometimes confined or executed there. Familiar +is the story of how Jugurtha, the luckless Numidian, was starved to +death in the lower dungeon; and how Lentulus and the other Castilinian +conspirators were strangled in the upper. Since then, if one accepts +the story told by those very despised creatures, the Christians, their +great leader, Peter, one of the associates of Christus, was kept there +in chains before he was taken out to be executed by Nero’s orders. It +is assuredly a gloomy and fearsome enough place to strike terror even +into such “Haters of all Mankind,” as official documents assure us +these Christians must be.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>235. The Basilica Æmilia: the Temple of Janus: the Senate House +(<i>Curia</i>).</b>—But to return to the great buildings lining the +Forum. The Basilica Æmilia on the north side was erected as early as +179 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, and, though often repaired, it is a substantial +monument of the great days of the Republic. It is so like the greater +Basilica Julia, however, that one description will do later for both. +Directly by this court house stands the venerated Temple of Janus, a +structure with many arches and sacred to the most characteristic if not +the greatest of all the gods of Rome.<a id="FNanchor_142" href="#Footnote_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a> The gates of the shrine, +one notices, are standing carefully open, as a token that some petty +frontier wars are still raging. When absolute peace prevails these +doors, however, will be carefully shut. The Romans are thrifty and +practical people. Why waste good sacrificial victims and incense on +the god when his help against the foe is not needed? It would be like +paying a doctor when one is feeling entirely well.</p> + +<p>Leading away from the Forum and this Temple is a series of vaulted +passages also called <i>janus</i>, which form a large<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[272]</span> part of the +banking district. Here, because the Sacred Way is too limited, many +great financiers have their offices; here countless clerks are +busy with their account books; here great loans are negotiated or +investments are placed hourly. It is almost a regular exchange and the +scene of many speculations. Regularly one hears of fortunes made or +lost “between the janus,” <i>i.e.</i> by the workings of high finance.</p> + +<p>Beside the Temple of Janus rises the magnificent porch of the +<i>Curia</i> (Senate House). The Conscript Fathers are not yet in +session, and a visit to the interior can wait. The structure is very +splendid, but it is not the grand old Curia Hostilia, built according +to legend by King Tullus Hostilius, and the scene of nearly all those +famous Senatorial debates across the long annals of the Republic. +That ancient building was burned in 52 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> during the riots +following the murder of the idol of the populace, the demagogue +Clodius. Julius Cæsar, therefore, had a good excuse for building a +stately new Senate House. This in turn was damaged in Nero’s great +fire, but Domitian carefully repaired it—and with its fine pillars, +bronze doors, and galaxy of statues, it forms a worthy meeting place +for what is still a venerable and powerful body.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>236. The Basilica Julia, the Greatest Court House in Rome; the +<i>Lacus Curtius</i>.</b>—The Basilica Julia on the southern side of +the Forum is a building into which it is best to enter. The structure +was begun by Julius Cæsar to meet the imperative need for a larger +court house. More important business is transacted under its roof and +ample porticoes, perhaps, than in any other building in Rome; and in +bad weather nearly all the Forum loungers take refuge beneath its ample +shelter. Its size is worthy of its important functions; it is 270 feet +long and in addition to the regular exterior colonnade has a fine inner +colonnade.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[273]</span></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_273" style="max-width: 750px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_273.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Interior of a Basilica</span>: restored.</p> + </div> + +<p>These double porticoes are the special lounging spots of fashionable +idlers of both sexes. Young men of fashion seeking to meet congenial +ladies of easy habits have only to loiter around and stroll about a +little—their hopes are gratified. Assuredly Venus can hardly reckon up +the love affairs that here have ripened. The pavements are even more +marked up for gaming boards than elsewhere and some of the players, we +note, actually wear the equestrian stripes, while there are senatorial +laticlaves in the interested throngs standing around them. Along the +sides of the building are roomy offices, where a large corps of city +officials and clerks conduct the various municipal boards and bureaus.</p> + +<p>The glory of the Basilica Julia, however, is its great hall, used +for the chief courts of justice, barring always those of the Emperor +and the Senate. The hall is paved with colored marbles of price; the +pillars running down either side are splendid monoliths of still rarer +marbles, and the ceiling is heavy with gilt fretting and painting. +In every possible<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[274]</span> niche rise statues of famous jurisconsults and +advocates. The light streams down abundantly through the windows in +the upper clerestory, and in this second story at the present moment +there are standing or sitting groups of very respectable men and women +listening to the orator pleading before one of the tribunals below. Any +guide will tell how the mad Emperor Caligula used to delight to stand +in these upper balconies, fling down money, and roar with delight when +the crowds trampled one another struggling to get the coins.</p> + +<p>So large is this hall that not one but <i>four</i> tribunals have +been set up in different quarters of the building, and litigation +often proceeds before all four of them simultaneously, although in +the absence of partitions strong-lunged advocates sometimes interfere +with their neighbors; they tell of a certain stentorian Trachalus who +once while speaking before one tribunal not merely was heard by but +drew applause from the audiences in the other three. Here Quintilian, +Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, and other orators of the generation just +departed, won their fame, and at present every windy amateur in the +rhetoric schools dreams of the day when he can wave out his toga in the +Basilica Julia before a crowded and cheering balcony.</p> + +<p>These are some of the more famous monuments in and around the Forum +Romanum. Were one to descend to particulars the task were endless. +Perhaps there should be mentioned a certain modest altar in the +very center of the open plaza. This marks the so-called <i>Lacus +Curtius</i>. Antiquarians give one several stories concerning it, but +the accepted version is this.—Once in the good old days a yawning +gulf opened at this very spot, the portent, perhaps, of the devouring +of the entire city—when lo! the brave youth, Marcus Curtius “devoted” +himself for his country and plunged unflinchingly into the abyss. The +earth closed over<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[275]</span> him, he was seen no more, but Rome held his name in +eternal remembrance. Doubtless he had thus taken upon himself the anger +of the infernal gods and had saved the state!<a id="FNanchor_143" href="#Footnote_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_275" style="max-width: 616px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_275.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">The Tarpeian Rock</span>: on slopes of the Capitol. +(From this traitors were hurled in the time of the Republic.</p> + </div> + +<p class="p2"><b>237. The New Fora of the Emperors: the Temple of Peace.</b>—After +surveying the Forum Romanum we are told that five other fora—the +creations of high-minded Emperors—still await inspection. Truth to +tell, however, these great plazas—not marking the growth and events +of centuries, but the mandates of wealthy despots—give one a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[276]</span> sense +of anticlimax. Of them it will be properly written: “The fora of the +Empire were as much superior in magnificence to the Forum Romanum as +they were inferior in historical interest and association.”</p> + +<p>They are the work of master architects mobilizing armies of laboring +slaves, stone cutters, and artists. The eye becomes weary with the +incessant sheen of costly marble; the equestrian statues, the forests +of ornate Corinthian pillars, the great reaches of tessellated +pavements, the quantities of colored paint, enamel, and heavy gilding. +At first these imperial fora appear to the visitor as a hopeless +complex of pretentious splendor; but after a little, a clever method +appears in their arrangement by which one great plaza or system of +public buildings joins itself to another.</p> + +<p>Four of these public squares join closely together, but the fifth +stands a little apart. This last is located near the northeast end of +the Old Forum, verging toward the Subura and the Esquiline, and is the +“Forum of Peace,” constructed by Vespasian about 75 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> The +open area, however, is relatively small, for its center is occupied by +the imposing “Temple of Peace.” This temple is adorned with a perfect +gallery of sculptures and paintings, nearly all of them masterpieces +by the Greeks. These works of art had formerly occupied Nero’s Golden +House until that grandiose structure was destroyed by the thrifty +Vespasian. In this Temple of Peace likewise are kept those precious +Jewish spoils shown on the Arch of Titus, and there is not merely a +fine library but a hall for the savants and scientists when they meet +for their learned conventicles.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>238. The Fora of Julius, Augustus, and Nerva.</b>—In dealing +with the four connected fora it profits little to multiply detailed +descriptions; one glittering marble edifice succeeds another around +each square. Nearest to the Old Forum lies the Forum Julium. Julius +Cæsar paid out<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[277]</span> 100,000,000 sesterces ($4,000,000) merely for the land +which it occupies, and its buildings are worthy of the costly soil +whereon they stand. In its center rises the great Temple of Venus +Genetrix, “mother” of the Julian line. Here at times the Senate can +convene, while the shops under the porticoes around are among the +finest in Rome.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_277" style="max-width: 650px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_277.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Forum of Augustus and Temple of Mars the +Avenger</span>: restored.</p> + </div> + +<p>Directly north of this Forum Julium is the Forum Augustum. When young +Octavius went forth to avenge his adopted father against Brutus and +Cassius he vowed a temple to Mars Ultor (“Mars the Avenger”). Later +as the Emperor Augustus, most splendidly he fulfilled this vow. The +porticoes around the plaza are of Numidian marble, and variegated +marbles compose the pavements; the open area is covered with bronze +<i>quadrigæ</i> (four-horse chariots), triumphal arches, and, of +course, numerous statues, some of precious metals, while the Temple of +Mars Ultor itself matches all its rivals in magnificence.</p> + +<p>To the south-east of the Forum of Augustus and joining it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[278]</span> to the Forum +of Peace is the smaller Forum of Nerva. This plaza was really begun by +Domitian, but when that tyrant perished ere completing the task, it was +finished and named by the eirenic Nerva. It is really a kind of broad +thoroughfare leading down from the Subura district, although upon it +fronts a fine Temple of Minerva. One of the features of this square is +a stately avenue of statues of the deified Emperors.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>239. The Forum, Column, and Libraries of Trajan.</b>—By far the +finest of the imperial fora, however, is that of Trajan—and all the +buildings, when we visit them, are still relatively new. It opens to +the northwest of the Forum of Augustus, and is not really a single +square but a genuine series of squares.</p> + +<p>To get the level space for their great areas, it was needful to cut +away a whole spur of the Quirinal, excavating to a depth equal to the +height of Trajan’s Column (128 feet). On entering this precinct, if one +has been marveling before, it is right to be astounded now. First there +comes the <i>Forum Trajani</i> proper, a square of most imposing size, +with lofty porticoes, semi-circular at the ends; and in the center +stands a remarkable equestrian statue of the imperial founder himself. +Then there is the vast <i>Basilica Ulpia</i>, the third great court +house of the city, which spreads lengthwise across the northwestern +boundary of this forum. It is 300 feet long, 185 feet broad, and five +lines of pillars divide it into four separate halls for different kinds +of business; in fact it is really a finer building than the older +Basilica Julia.</p> + +<p>Going through this enormous but very open structure, we come to a +second smaller plaza, and here rises one of the noblest sights of +Rome—a monument that will draw the admiration of all ensuing ages—the +<i>Column of Trajan</i> itself. The bas-reliefs telling in picturesque +detail the whole story of the Dacian Wars, the 2500 human figures +executed with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[280]</span> infinite fidelity and care, wind spirally from the top +of the 18 foot pedestal clear to the summit. This last is crowned by a +colossal bronze-gilt statue of Trajan looking down upon the sculptured +record of his military glory.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_279" style="max-width: 417px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_279.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">An Imperial Forum, near the Column of Trajan</span>: +restoration after Von Falke.</p> + </div> + +<p>This column is, perhaps, the worthiest monument of the whole imperial +age.<a id="FNanchor_144" href="#Footnote_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a> The marvels of Trajan’s forum-system, however, are not +exhausted. North and south of the Column are two fine buildings of +moderate size; these are the <i>Bibliothecæ</i>, the two public +“Libraries of Trajan,” one Latin, one Greek—containing on the whole +the finest collections of books in Rome; and directly facing the Column +and the Libraries across another open area of considerable extent +is the <i>Temple of Trajan</i>, where the priests daily offer their +sacrifice to the deified manes of the terror of Dacia and of Parthia.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>240. The Park System of the Campus Martius: the Pantheon.</b>—These +exhaust for the moment the structures we can survey around the fora: +and it were well to stop lest sheer confusion may follow. With time, +however, we could wander after the throngs again northwestward along +“Broadway” past the great porticoes and fine shops of the Sæpta Julia, +and saunter about the great park system of Campus Martius.</p> + +<p>The public baths there located and such structures as the Theater of +Pompey and the Flaminian Circus can, perhaps, be explained later; but +a word must be spoken for the one great temple which is here situated +away from the center of Rome. The <i>Pantheon</i>, dedicated to +Mars, Venus, the deified Cæsar, and to all the other deities of the +Julian line was the erection of Marcus Agrippa, the mighty coadjutor +of Augustus. It has just been rebuilt from its very foundations +by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[282]</span> Hadrian.<a id="FNanchor_145" href="#Footnote_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a> Its noble dome shines with the golden tiles. The +soaring rotunda inside is encircled with stately altars to the gods +the building honors. Already one can stand and look upward 143 feet +to that patch of blue 18 feet in diameter through which sun and +stars will shine down across at least eighteen centuries of changing +history—making the Pantheon the one great building, not a ruin, which +shall link the Rome of the Cæsars with the Rome of another day.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_281" style="max-width: 344px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_281.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Interior of the Pantheon</span>: restoration according +to Von Falke.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>241. The Daily Gazette (<i>Acta Diurna</i>). How Rome Gets Its +News.</b>—One thing, to avoid complexity, we omitted while crossing +the old Forum Romanum. It behooves us to return and to explain it. +Before a series of tall white boards set up against certain pillars is +gathered an elbowing, gesticulating throng. Many of the company have +tablets and seem copying vigorously. The crowd is always receiving +additions, while others are departing. The white boards (“albums”) when +we get near enough are seen to be covered with somewhat fine writing. +There is a special rush and flutter in the crowd when a petty official +sets up still another white board, and a hundred styli instantly become +busy. It is easy to learn the excitement caused by these notices: they +constitute the publication of the new <i>Acta Diurna</i>.</p> + +<p>Even without the Acta Diurna (“Daily Doings”) a city like Rome +would have its supply of news. There are professional gad-abouts +who make themselves desirable guests at dinner-parties merely +because they are “very well informed.” They have picked up all the +stories about the Parthian king, the new chiefs of the Germans, +the number of legionaries mobilized on the Rhine, and the corn +prospects in Africa and Egypt, as well as every kind of commercial +information.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[283]</span> Other wiseacres of a less reliable cast are known as +“<i>subrostrani</i>,”—“Rostra-haunters,”—for at the Rostra all +gossipers have their tryst. These people specialize in rumors of +calamity, reports of great military disasters, of the sudden death of +magistrates, etc., and take a peculiar glee in circulating vile stories +about the Emperors—the danger of repeating such rumors only adding +spice to their game. Usually, however, they are too insignificant fry +for the government to consider worth prosecuting.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>242. Contents of the Acta Diurna.</b>—The Acta Diurna, however, +is issued by a government bureau, and a certain degree of official +responsibility is attached to the more formal statements. The editors, +nevertheless, are allowed to add racy anecdotes of a personal nature, +especially concerning the higher aristocracy. The relations between +the senatorial nobility and the freedmen and equites in the imperial +government bureaus are none the best; and Hadrian himself is not on +perfect terms with the Conscript Fathers.<a id="FNanchor_146" href="#Footnote_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a></p> + +<p>Official circles, therefore, are never careful to suppress spicy bits +about the aristocrats. The public record offices and dispatches from +the provinces supply most of the items, but some of the material can +only have come from direct reportorial activity. In any case the +interest in this Daily Gazette is enormous. Its single copy will be +multiplied many times, copies being made of the copies, and the same +sent to wealthy people in all parts of the Empire. A month from now +groups will probably be gathering in Spanish Corduba and Syrian Antioch +to read the items published to-day in Rome.</p> + +<p>Owing to the limitations of space, despite the use of many “white +boards,” the Acta Diurna has to maintain a very<span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[284]</span> dry journalistic style +indeed. The lively Italian imagination, however, can provide most of +the details, even if they are not at once eked out by quantities of +that “smoke,” oral rumor, which is passed about amid the copyists the +moment the new gazette is posted. This is a very commonplace issue, and +the albums read something like this:<a id="FNanchor_147" href="#Footnote_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a></p> + +<p>“Records for the tenth day of June. Yesterday —— boys and —— girls +were born in the city of Rome. —— bushels of grain were landed at +the Emporium. —— head of cattle [and other commodities specified] +were also brought into the city. On this same day the palace slave +Mithridates was ordered crucified for blaspheming the guardian genius +of his master the Emperor. At the imperial treasury —— million +sesterces, which it proved impossible to loan out at interest, were +ordered returned to the public funds. A fire broke out in the insula of +Nasta in the Viminal district but was extinguished.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>243. Miscellaneous Entries and Gossip in the Gazette.</b>—The +entries go on to give the doings in the petty police courts, the copies +of important wills with especial mention of any bequests that were left +the Emperor, the statement that a certain eques had caught his wife +in gross misconduct and divorced her; that a procurator for a large +trading house was being prosecuted for embezzlement, and a summary of +the evidence in a great violation of contract case between two marble +importers now on trial in the Basilica Æmilia. Then follow magisterial +edicts, lists of judicial appointments, and careful entries about +all the doings of the Emperor and of his progress back toward Rome. +Next is given a rather elaborate summary (evidently made by shorthand +reporters) of the latest debate in the Senate, with careful entry of +the applause and interruptions which the orators received.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[285]</span></p> + +<p>All this is more or less “official”; but the newsmongers are really +more interested in “human interest stories” added by the publishers’ +private authority. Thus it makes good reading to tell how a frantic +admirer of a certain “Red” charioteer who was killed in the last races, +cast himself on the funeral pyre of the beloved jockey, in order not to +survive his idol; or to relate how a citizen of Fæsule has just visited +Rome and sacrificed to Jupiter along with “eight children, thirty-six +grandchildren, and nineteen great grandchildren.”<a id="FNanchor_148" href="#Footnote_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a> Furthermore, the +report of love affairs among the noble and mighty is never omitted—how +a senator’s wife has eloped with a gladiator, and how a certain +oft-mentioned lady is about to wed an eighth husband. Finally (perhaps +the most copied of all) there are, of course, the announcements for the +coming exhibitions in the theater, amphitheater, and circus, with lists +of the actors, gladiators, and charioteers, and other data, which can +enable all Rome to arrange its wagers and its holidays.</p> + +<p>The Acta Diurna therefore goes about as far as is possible to create a +real newspaper in the days of mere penmanship. Its vogue is immense. +Many a fine lady sends her slave or freedman to the Forum every day to +bring home a special copy. Its items will focus the conversation at a +thousand dinner tables.</p> + +<p>Finally this publication will enjoy a certain degree of historic +importance. After each issue has served its daily purpose, fair copies +are deposited in the Public Record Office, and here they can be +consulted many years later by the learned. It is from the files of the +Acta Diurna that Tacitus and Suetonius have apparently drawn a great +many of their anecdotes about the days of the early Emperors.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[286]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER XV<br> +<span class="subhed">THE PALATINE AND THE PALACE OF THE CÆSARS. THE GOVERNMENT OFFICES, AND +THE POLICE AND CITY GOVERNMENT OF ROME</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>244. History of the Palatine: its Purchase by Augustus.</b>—There +is one other great quarter of Rome, from the political standpoint the +most important of all, the Palatine.</p> + +<p>The Palatine originally was a hill of modest height, in shape fairly +rectangular, some 1400 feet on the side. Here according to firm +tradition was that first settlement by the Alban shepherds led out +by Romulus. The hill seems to have been encompassed by its own crude +wall, and presently it figured as the earliest “Rome,” often called +from its squarish configuration <i>Roma Quadrata</i>. Time fails to +count the various memorials such as the “House of Romulus,” alleged to +have survived since this primitive time. Note should be made, however, +of certain small but very old temples such as those of Victoria, +Viriplaca, and Orbona,<a id="FNanchor_149" href="#Footnote_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a> which are now carefully preserved amid +surroundings of artificial magnificence.</p> + +<p>After the growth of the Republic the Palatine became one of the most +fashionable residence sections of the city. Public leaders liked to +mount the roofs of their mansions and see the whole Forum with the +familiar Senate House spread out at their feet. Here were erected +the earliest of those sumptuous mansions wherein the aristocracy +invested their spoils from the great conquests. Marcus Scaurus had +his pretentious dwelling on the Palatine, and so did Catiline,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[287]</span> and +Marcus Antonius, and Cicero. Last but not least, Hortensius the Orator, +Cicero’s professional rival, erected an extremely fine dwelling here +shortly before his death in 50 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, which mansion was later +purchased by Augustus when he had assumed the government and desired +a suitable residence; and thus it was that the Palatine became the +“Palace” of the Emperors.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_287" style="max-width: 714px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_287.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Arch of Titus</span>: part of Palatine visible to the +left.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>245. Extension of the Imperial Buildings: Central Position of the +Palatine.</b>—Augustus, posing merely as the “First Citizen” among his +fellow Quirites, and with a studious abhorrence of the outward forms of +monarchy, had avoided establishing anything like an Imperial court; but +he was, of course, entitled to a large senatorial mansion. In addition +to his private residence elaborate offices had also to be provided for +the great corps of secretaries and clerks through<span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[288]</span> whom he governed +half the provinces and controlled the army. This corps of bureaucrats +has grown with every new accretion to imperial power; furthermore, +Augustus’s pretence of democratic simplicity has been utterly discarded +following the extravagances of Caligula and Nero.</p> + +<p>One enormous building has, therefore, been added to another. The last +private dwellings upon the hill have been condemned, and the Cæsars now +control every inch of the Palatine, making it so completely the abode +of majesty that “palace” will remain across the centuries as the name +for any seat of princely authority.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>246. Commanding View from the Palatine Hill.</b>—This is the +smallest of the Seven Hills, but it is the real focus of the other six, +which “seem to surround it with their homage, as being their king.” It +is so close to the Capitol that the crazy Caligula erected a bridge +(now long demolished) leading from his mansion clear over to the Temple +of Capitoline Jove, in order that he might frequently “go and visit +his friend Jupiter.” The view from the crest of the palace structures +is superb: northward across the Forum, and all the thickly clustered +roofs on the slopes of the Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline, westward +to the Capitol where the magnificent temples seem within a stone’s +toss, southward across the great hollow of the Circus Maximus and then +across to the densely covered Aventine. Whether the Emperor desires to +harangue the Senate, to sacrifice to the greater gods, or to grace the +chariot races—Curia, temples, or circus are all close at hand; with +the Flavian Amphitheater to the northeast, almost equally near.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>247. Magnificence of the Palatine Structures.</b>—But the Palatine +itself is perhaps the most glorious sight of all. It rises above the +city two and three hundred feet to its upper parapets, lifting itself +on several tiers of arches and pillared stories which gleam with +marble below and present a perfect<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[289]</span> treasure house of gilded tiling +above. Under the morning light with the sun flashing the gold of the +multitudinous domes back into the clear azure the whole effect is +incomparable. The natural foundations of the hill are covered with +enormous substructures of masonry and concrete, and these are continued +by long tiers of many-arched buildings which house the great government +bureaus and ministries. Crowning these can be seen equally long forests +of columns, upbearing a whole complex of gabled roofs covered not +merely with the gilded tiles, but with a whole legion of gilded or +richly toned bronze statues. Here and there show forth bits of greenery +and foliage betraying the gardens and the parks reserved for the Lords +of the World.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_289" style="max-width: 750px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_289.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Palatine and Palace of the Caesars</span>: restoration +by Spandoni.</p> + </div> + +<p>The effect of this entire mass is overpowering. The eye wearies of +counting the sweeping porticoes, tall monoliths, colossal statues, and +quadrigas. The result is also enhanced by the use of great numbers of +huge awnings, hung over nearly every opening and window, usually made +in brilliant<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[290]</span> colors, with the imperial purple very conspicuous. There +will never be another Palatine in the history of the world.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>248. The More Famous Buildings on the Palatine: Enormous Display of +Art Objects.</b>—This vast residence compound—it cannot be called +a single building—can be reached by a number of inclined planes +or stairways upon all four sides. Access is easy enough and crowds +of slaves, plebeians, and nobles are incessantly coming and going, +although a couple of Prætorians loll carelessly on their spear-shafts +beside each ingress. Possibly the easiest entrance is by the <i>Clivus +Victoriæ</i> (“Ascent of Victory”) which starts upward from the edge of +the Old Forum very near to the Shrine of Vesta.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_290" style="max-width: 288px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_290.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Roman Urn</span>: typical art object.</p> + </div> + +<p>To find one’s way about the Palatine is, however, far more difficult +than about the fora. It is not, of course, an area but a jumble of +buildings, all splendid, but often thrust upon one another without +any real system. Augustus added extensively to the old house of +Hortensius, and particularly he built a very pretentious Temple to +Apollo. Tiberius, the next Emperor, added a new wing, the <i>Domus +Tiberiana</i>, almost doubling the bulk of the former structures. +Caligula thrust on more buildings still. Across the ages will be +pointed out that <i>Cryptoporticus</i>, the twisting underground +gallery connecting parts of the palaces, where the stout tribune Cherea +struck down and slew the insane despot, January 24th, 41 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, +to the great profit of the entire world. Nero<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[291]</span> added other wings and +structures, some of which had to be rebuilt after his great fire. +Finally, Domitian added a whole series of enormous halls, baths, +banqueting rooms, and government offices. The Palatine is now virtually +complete: Trajan and Hadrian have erected their monuments elsewhere, +and so will most of the later Emperors.<a id="FNanchor_150" href="#Footnote_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a></p> + +<p>We do not propose to explore all these buildings in so vast a complex. +It is enough that one superb court or façade follows another; that +almost every hall and ante-room is of sumptuous splendor; that veined +marbles, porphyry, elaborate bas-reliefs, and profuse gilding seem +multiplied until they become commonplace. All the artificiality and +over-elaborate art of the age seems concentrated around the Palatine. +Within the great substructures and the arched terraces which bear up +the more important buildings, even in the cells for the slaves and the +offices for the toiling clerks there are fine frescos and handsome +stucco reliefs.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>249. The Triclinium and Throne Room of Domitian.</b>—As for some of +the special areas and chambers, they justify the praises of the servile +court poets: “Olympian” is the mildest word which they can use. Take, +for example, the porticoes of Domitian. On the inner side of their +vast length, they are lined throughout with marble so highly polished +that it shines like mirrors. What matter if the original cause for +their use was the desire of the suspicious tyrant to have a promenade +wherein nobody could glide upon him without warning from behind. The +result is indescribably brilliant. But let us go rather into the +“House of Domitian” itself, and inspect the great banqueting hall, the +Triclinium. “The gods themselves might quaff their nectar there!” cried +the enraptured Martial.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[292]</span></p> + +<p>This magnificent apartment leads off from a marvelous peristyle-court +of more than 10,000 square feet in area. The chamber itself is not +huge, but is arranged so that three tables (each for nine guests) can +be placed laterally along the walls, with the third, opposite the +door of entry, for the Emperor and his chief guests. Twenty-seven +dignitaries thus can dine together. On each side of the hall five large +windows are separated by massive columns of red granite.</p> + +<p>As the guests of majesty repose on their silken cushions they can see +between the columns still another court where water is softly gushing +from a fountain, and purling in a small cascade over steps of marble, +verdure, and flowers. The ornamentation may be grievously overdone; the +taste of some of the reliefs and wall pictures is questionable, but the +effect of the sheen from the many colored marbles, the gilding, and +the heavy fretwork around the lofty dome undeniably justifies all the +enthusiasm of the verse-mongers.</p> + +<p>Equally striking is the Throne Room built by Domitian. It is called the +tablinum as in humbler dwellings, but it is actually used for great +state audiences. It is a hall of imposing size. You enter past the +guards, and directly across the broad area is a niche where sits “Cæsar +Augustus” upon a gilded dais and curule-chair, every whit as truly a +throne as that of the Great King of Parthia. The walls of the room are +covered with extraordinarily costly marbles, and around the circuit +rise twenty-eight Corinthian columns of intricate workmanship. Eight +large niches contain as many colossal statues wrought of adamantine +basalt, and a Hercules and a Bacchus are particularly noteworthy. +The entrance door is flanked by two enormous columns of <i>giallo +antico</i>, deep yellow marble flushed with pink, imported from +Numidia. The threshold is a single immense slab of a whiter marble +brought from Greece.</p> + +<p>Words thus exhaust themselves describing these grandiose,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[293]</span> +overpowering, magnificent courts, halls, and apartments. We can +perforce ignore such features as the separate hippodrome and the +luxurious gardens reserved for imperial amusement or recreation. Better +it is to concentrate attention upon the human life wherewith the +Palatine ordinarily abounds.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>250. Swarms of Civil Officials Always on the Palatine.</b>—All the +Palatine revolves around the Emperor. Rome is not yet governed by an +unabashed despotism, yet it would be hard to name a deed that a king of +old Babylon could perform which a <i>Princeps et Imperator</i> could +not perpetrate if his heart really desired, although certain restraints +and decencies make this absolutism endurable save under a Nero or a +Domitian.</p> + +<p>The thousands of persons who dwell upon or are employed upon the +Palatine are all employed with one of two things, the imperial court or +the imperial public service. Since Hadrian (despite the grumblings of +his Italian subjects) is still absent from Rome the court ceremonial +has practically ceased. A few of the Emperor’s relatives dwell in +gilded ease in certain wings of the palace, but except for the +caretakers the great army of self-sufficient slaves and still more +self-sufficient freedmen who act as valets, cooks, waiters, musicians, +chamberlains, and in every other menial capacity, can eat, play dice, +and discuss the races in idleness.</p> + +<p>Now as always, however, the imperial public service which sends +its impulse to the remotest borders of Dacia, Syria, or Britain is +functioning actively, and most of the vast bureaus and ministries have +huge offices upon the Palatine. The Prætorian Præfect, as high judge +for the Emperor’s half of the provinces, daily mounts his supreme +tribunal. The four Imperial Secretaries for Finance, for Petitions, +and for Official Correspondence (one for the Greek provinces and one +for the Latin) direct their great corps of subordinates. The chief +Procurators (Superintendents) of the enormous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[294]</span> Imperial Estates all +over the Empire are receiving reports and protecting their masters’ +interests; and so with a great body of other high officials.</p> + +<p>The huge administrative machine perfected by the practical Roman genius +is running steadily—so steadily that even under a very bad Emperor, +even a Nero, it will function for years with no great harm to the +governed millions. The only condition is that the tyrant will reserve +his cruelties for the nobility and refrain from tactless interference +with the secretaries instead of indulging merely in vicious personal +pleasures.<a id="FNanchor_151" href="#Footnote_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>251. The Emperor Center of High Social Life.</b>—Into these high +political concerns we dare not enter, but the social life of the Palace +cannot be so well ignored. Already the imperial freedmen are busy +planning the great receptions and state banquets which Hadrian must +give soon after his return. In half the atria of Rome men and women +are discussing vigorously, “When ‘Cæsar’ returns will he have any new +‘Friends,’ and will he have discontinued any old ones?”</p> + +<p>Already it is rumored that certain freedmen (supposedly in their +lord’s confidence) have received a great bribe to get them to induce +the “Dominus” (so loyal etiquette calls the monarch) to summon back +to favor a certain Jallius, an indiscreet senator whom, on his last +sojourn in Rome, Hadrian had ordered excluded from his personal +receptions. Rome is a city of rumors, but nowhere do these abound more +than about the Palatine, always centering on the doings, words, and +even the health of the Emperor. “Smoke” from the valets, barbers, and +table-servitors of the Augustus<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[295]</span> can often be sold for precious aurei. +Self-respecting monarchs punish the tale-bearers pitilessly, but the +latter can seldom be caught in the act.<a id="FNanchor_152" href="#Footnote_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a> Every Emperor knows that +he is the constant victim of outrageous tattling.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>252. Friends of Cæsar (<i>Amici Cæsaris</i>).</b>—But an Emperor’s +company is not confined to menials; neither does he spend all his time +at council with his ministers. Being a Roman among Romans he is forced +to spend a good deal of his day receiving the social attentions of +those who proudly list themselves as his “Friends.”</p> + +<p>To be an <i>Amicus Cæsaris</i>, to be entitled to greet as a kind +of social equal the personage who is worshiped as a god in all the +Oriental provinces, who is (by adoption in Hadrian’s case) the son of a +Divinity, the “Deified Trajan,” and whose own “divine genius” (guardian +spirit) receives prayer and incense in every government building—this +honor seems almost dazzling. Every Emperor ranks his “Friends” in two +classes—“<i>First Class Friends</i>,” great secretaries, ministers, +and generals who must have constant access to his cabinet, certain very +distinguished members of the Senate, certain near relatives, and also +a few congenial personal companions—poets, and philosophers, with +great Emperors, or jockeys, gamesters, and debauchees with the bad; +and “<i>Second Class Friends</i>,” which great catalogue includes all +the rest of the Senate, many of the more distinguished equites, and a +select sprinkling of such plebeians as Cæsar delights to honor.</p> + +<p>The First Class Friends, it is true, pay for their glory by a heavy +obligation—to appear at the Palace every morning usually before +daylight, and greet the Lord of the World<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[296]</span> while he sits up in bed and +is dressed by his valets.<a id="FNanchor_153" href="#Footnote_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a> Very much of state business is then +transacted, but the obligation to appear merely to say an “<i>Ave</i>” +is imperative provided the Emperor is in his residence. Sometimes +merely to avoid giving gouty ministers great inconvenience Hadrian has +been known considerately to pass the night away from the Palace in +order to dispense with the ceremonial in the morning.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>253. The Imperial Audiences.</b>—After the Emperor has been clad +with due ceremony, has conversed with his intimates, and perhaps has +sealed some urgent rescripts, he is ready for the morning audience. A +full cohort (1000 men) of the Prætorian Guard is always on service at +the Palace and a platoon of these without armor, but in magnificent +cloaks, stands by the entrance to the hall of state. Only men as a +rule are admitted.<a id="FNanchor_154" href="#Footnote_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a> Under certain evil or very suspicious Emperors +such as Claudius there has been the humiliating custom of searching +every visitor (whatever his rank) for weapons, ere admission; but that +abomination has ceased at last, beginning with Nerva.</p> + +<p>In the broad courts before the audience chamber some dozens of senators +dismount from their litters every morning when the monarch is in Rome, +and sometimes the delay ere the doors are opened is so long that much +personal business can be transacted and philosophical disquisitions +indulged in. Second Class Friends do not have to appear every morning, +but it is a serious error to fail to use your entrée fairly often.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>254. Social Ruin through Imperial Disfavor.</b>—The process +resembles that with the clients in the noble lords’ own<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[297]</span> houses +a little earlier in the day, although with greater solemnity and +formality.<a id="FNanchor_155" href="#Footnote_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a> A group of gorgeously dressed “admissioners” +(<i>admissionales</i>) keep the doors, and scan every applicant +closely, but besides the regular Friends they frequently admit certain +distinguished visitors from the provinces, especially members of those +provincial delegations that are always junketing to Rome to proffer the +homage of their district to the Emperor, or to present some kind of a +public petition.</p> + +<p>The last day that Hadrian gave audience ere leaving Rome, when our +friend Calvus waited upon him, there was an awkward happening. A very +roistering and immoral young nobleman, Calvisius, presented himself +when the doors were opened, whereupon an imperial freedman took him +by the arm, announcing: “You are no longer admitted to the palace.” +Calvisius instantly slunk away, overwhelmed by his calamity. He would +have suffered less if he had forfeited half his fortune.</p> + +<p>Even worse was in store for the aforementioned Jallius, who was said +to have mocked at Hadrian’s pretentions as an art critic (a tender +point) while over-drunk at a dinner party. He was suffered indeed +to enter and to approach the imperial seat: “<i>Ave, Cæsar!</i>” he +called out boldly, hoping that his indiscretion had been unnoticed. +“<i>Vale, Jallie!</i>”<a id="FNanchor_156" href="#Footnote_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a> (“Good-by, Jallius”) answered the monarch, +turning his face from him. The insult was offered in the presence of at +least<span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[298]</span> fifty tale-bearers and that night it was over Rome. Under a bad +Emperor, Jallius’s life would have been in sore jeopardy, and as it was +he was socially ruined; every time-serving nobleman closed his house to +him and his innocent wife and children shared his ostracism. His only +hope now is that when Hadrian returns he can be induced to let Jallius +call again, and will answer affably “<i>Ave!</i>” to the visitor’s +greeting. Then the poor senator can hold up his head in the world.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_298" style="max-width: 288px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_298.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Cæsar Augustus</span>: showing costume of a Roman +general.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>255. Enormous Value of Imperial Favor.</b>—On the other hand Calvus +returned walking on air from this particular audience. The Emperor +answered his greeting by calling him “My very dear Calvus”; then asked, +“And how are your Gratia and the boys?” and actually added, “Do you +think Gallinas, the Thracian, is going to be a good match for Syrus +in the arena?”—finally, throwing in the sage advice, “These morning +frosts now are sharp if you don’t dress warmly.”<a id="FNanchor_157" href="#Footnote_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a></p> + +<p>When Calvus quitted the hall all his friends swarmed around +congratulating him on “the remarkable favor of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[299]</span> Emperor,” and +intimating that he was surely destined to be Consul within a few +years and then the imperial legate of a great province. He can hardly +persuade them that he has received no private information about the +boundary settlement with Parthia and the terms being offered the chiefs +of the Quadi. In fact the imperial looks and moods are studied as +carefully as is the weather. “Did <i>he</i> frown or look pleased when +so and so was mentioned?” “Did he offer his cheek graciously to be +kissed by that ex-consul?” “Did he invite the chiefs of the delegation +from Provincial Asia to dinner?” “Did he cast down his eyes gloomily +when they said N—— was about to be tried to-morrow in the Senate?” +No marvel if bad Emperors are easily persuaded that they are gods on +earth, and even good Emperors have to strive hard not to allow their +heads to be turned!</p> + +<p>Hadrian is still away from Rome, and both First Class Friends and +Second Class Friends are probably a little relieved not to have to play +the client to him. If the days of bloody tyranny seem past, the fate of +poor Jallius can still overtake almost any of them.<a id="FNanchor_158" href="#Footnote_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a> But though the +vast hall of audience stands vacant save for gaping sightseers, there +are plenty of distinguished visitors upon the Palatine come to transact +business at the imperial ministries, or very likely at the great +offices of the City Præfect (<i>Præfectus Urbi</i>), who is essentially +the Mayor of Rome.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>256. City Government of Rome: the City Præfect (<i>Præfectus +Urbi</i>).</b>—It was one of the greatest sins of the defunct Republic +that it permitted Rome to grow until it became an enormous metropolis +without providing any<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[300]</span> respectable police force, fire department, or +other efficient means of securing law, order, and public safety. The +old <i>ædiles</i> (commissioners of public works) were overburdened +men, with imperfect authority, few constables, and great political +interests. In the days of Cicero great fires, great riots, and serious +crimes occurred almost daily. In self-protection many prominent men +had actually to arm their slaves in regular companies and even to hire +the assistance of armed bands of gladiators. Augustus ended all this. +Thanks to him, Rome has become one of the best policed and protected +cities in the world.</p> + +<p>The old ædiles<a id="FNanchor_159" href="#Footnote_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a> are now supplemented and largely superseded by a +corps of officials all named by the Emperor, for indefinite terms and +removable by him at pleasure. At their head is that high “Clarissimus,” +the City Præfect. He is always a senator who has held the consulship, +and who often has governed great provinces. To be named City Præfect +is almost the highest civil honor in the gift of the Cæsars, and it +ordinarily comes to a veteran nobleman of approved experience and +integrity. He is really in part a military officer because at his +command stand the “City Cohorts,” the regular armed garrison of Rome, +four Cohorts of reliable troops, one thousand men in each, ready to +assist the ordinary police in repressing rioting.</p> + +<p>The City Præfect is responsible for the general good order of the +metropolis; it is his business not merely to punish evil, but to +take measures to prevent it, <i>e.g.</i> by breaking up illicit +societies and assemblies, such as those of the “debased” Christians. +In conjunction with the other magistrates he also takes measures to +keep down the price of provisions. In addition he is the high judge in +most cases arising around Rome, which are not especially reserved to +other tribunals.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[301]</span> Particularly he and his deputies have jurisdiction +over cases involving outrageous usury, betrayal of trust by guardians, +unfilial conduct of children, and disrespect shown to patrons by +freedmen. And to his court go all the charges of serious crimes sure +to arise in a great city, barring, however, lesser police court +cases—these last falling to his colleague, the Præfect of the Watch.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>257. The Municipal Superintendents and Commissioners +(<i>Curatores</i>).</b>—Aiding the City Præfect are several high +superintendents or commissioners usually of at least prætorian rank +among the senators. The two “Curators of the Public Works” obviously +have to look after the municipal buildings and especially the temples +and the considerable endowments often attached to them. The Præfect of +the Grain Supply (<i>Præfectus Annonæ</i>) is a magistrate who—in view +of the importance of his function (see p. <a href="#Page_242">242</a>)—will often be chosen +with almost as great an eye to his efficiency as the City Præfect.</p> + +<p>Besides the corps of agents collecting grain in the provinces, the +special deputy at Ostia, the “Official Grain Measurers,” the “Grain +Magazine-Keepers” (<i>horrearii</i>), and the staff of clerks and +porters, all the bakers of the city also are under the Præfect of the +Grain Supply, and he can sit as high judge in all cases, criminal and +civil, where the provisioning of the city is affected. As for the +Tiber, it is so often bursting its levees and flooding the lower city +that a special board of five senators, “Commissioners for the Tiber, +River-Banks, and the Sewers,” attends alike to the care of the dikes +and also to the great sewer system which drains the capital.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>258. Excellent Water Supply of Rome.</b>—An official board with +duties of the first order is that of the “Curators of the Water +Supply.” There is a chief curator and two assistants, and since the +task calls for expert professional knowledge,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[302]</span> these are not senators +but imperial freedmen, or at the highest only equites. No sinecure, +however, is their task. Justly are the Romans proud of the excellent +water supply of the imperial city. As early as Augustus’s time Strabo +the geographer warned his fellow Greeks that while they could boast +that their cities excelled the Roman in artistic adornments, Rome +rejoiced in a far better water system, in better pavements, and in +better sewers. Certain of the latter, he declared in admiration, were +“arched over with hewn stone and were so large that in some parts hay +wagons can drive straight through them!”</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_302" style="max-width: 650px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_302.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Ruined Aqueduct in the Roman Campagna.</p> + </div> + +<p>By Hadrian’s day the aqueducts supplying the city have become wholly +admirable. Time fails us to go out into the Campagna or to the distant +hills and see how, by gravity alone, and without the aid of pumping +engines, “copious streams are conducted great distances despite the +obstacles<span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[303]</span> presented by mountains, valleys, or low-lying level plains, +sometimes rushing along in vast subterranean tunnels, at other times +supported on long ranges of lofty arches, the remains of which [in +after ages] will still be seen spanning the waste of the Campagna.” +[Lanciani.]</p> + +<p>There is difficulty in making very large iron pipes capable of standing +high pressure over long distances; and as a result the Roman engineers +prefer to carry the water in channels lined with solid cement and borne +across the open ground on a vast series of arches. Besides, most of the +good water near Rome leaves a calcareous deposit; and it is much easier +to clean out large channels than an underground piping system.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>259. The Great Aqueducts.</b>—When we try to understand the +water system of Rome we come upon astonishing figures for the great +aqueducts. There are nine of these huge conduits in constant use. +The oldest is the <i>Aqua Appia</i>, built in 312 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> by +that tough old censor, Appius Claudius, and it starts only about +eleven miles from the city, with nearly its entire bed underground; +but when this supply proved inadequate the engineers had to reach +much farther back into the hills to find powerful jets. An increasing +proportion of the channels of the newer aqueducts has also to be on +arches; for example, the <i>Aqua Julia</i>, built by Agrippa in 33 +<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, has to go back fifteen and a half miles, and six and +a half of these are on arches; while the <i>Aqua Claudia</i>, built +about 40 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, is no less than forty-six miles long with nine +and a half on elevated arches. There are two others, the older <i>Aqua +Marcia</i> and the slightly newer <i>Aqua Anio Novus</i> (taking water +from the river Anio), that are not much shorter either upon the ground +or in their elevated sections.</p> + +<p>Once inside the city this enormous volume of water is distributed +in a most scientific manner according to a scheme worked out by the +mighty Agrippa. There are 700 public<span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[304]</span> pools and basins and 500 public +fountains drawing their supply from 130 collecting heads or reservoirs. +Only the poorest or tallest tenement houses, consequently, are bereft +of a water supply, clear, sanitary, and abundant, such as most later +cities can desire in vain until close upon the twentieth century.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>260. The Police System Instituted by Augustus.</b>—Almost as +important, however, as the excellent water supply came the blessing of +the firm police system instituted by Augustus. There was an end at last +to the fearful riots and even private wars of the later Republic, as +when those cheerful desperadoes Clodius and Milo played at being the +“Hector and Achilles of the Streets,” and ordinary crime soon became +comparatively rare.</p> + +<p>The city has also been divided into 14 “regions” (<i>regiones</i>) +and these into 262 “precincts” (<i>vici</i>) distributed among the +“regions.” Each vicus is in theory a religious unit. It has its own +little <i>ædicula</i> (petty temple) containing the images of the two +guardian Lares of the neighborhood plus inevitably a statue of the +Genius of the Emperor. Each vicus also has its two special curators, +worthy tradesmen usually, elected by their fellow wardsmen and clothed +with enough importance to make the office desirable. Their chief +official duty is to keep up the sacred rites at the central shrine and +to help to compile the census lists, but they are also a kind of local +arbitrators or justices of the peace who assist the police and look +after the general weal of the precinct.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>261. The Police-Firemen of the Watch (<i>vigiles</i>): the +<i>Præfectus Vigilum</i>.</b>—However, the actual security of Rome is +not intrusted to any such unprofessional guardians. Augustus understood +clearly the need of an effective police force apart from a mere armed +garrison; besides he had to protect the capital against the fearful +and incessant fires;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[305]</span> as a result his new <i>vigiles</i> (“watchmen”) +were a combination of policemen and firemen. The fourteen regions of +Rome have now been coupled together into seven police districts, each +possessing a regular police station (<i>excubitorium</i>) and two +subordinate watch houses.</p> + +<p>Each district is intrusted to a separate cohort of vigiles about 1000 +men strong, thus giving Rome a total force of some 7000. The vigiles +are not actually soldiers, and not being honorable legionaries they are +recruited almost entirely from the freedmen. However, after faithful +service they can be transferred to the army. They are under a rigid +discipline, nevertheless, and are divided into “centuries,” each +under a centurion, with a tribune over the entire cohort. They have +various weapons for an emergency, but the crowd usually mocks them +for the fire-fighting apparatus with which they often hurry down the +streets—hooks, ladders, axes, simple hand-pumps, and above all, many +buckets made of rope rendered water-proof with pitch.</p> + +<p>By their promptitude, discipline, and daring, even with such +inadequate apparatus, these patrolmen can often stop very dangerous +fires, and their familiar equipment gives them their nickname. “The +‘<i>Bucketmen</i>’ are coming!” is the yell that frequently disperses a +knot of thieves or of turbulent bullies.</p> + +<p>At their different police stations the vigiles when off duty scribble +many things upon the walls,<a id="FNanchor_160" href="#Footnote_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a> which give a vivid idea that life “on +the force” is much the same in every age. At night these “Bucketmen” go +out in little groups bearing tallow lanterns and patrol the pitch-black +streets, rounding up evil-doers and detecting incipient fires.</p> + +<p>At each station there is a good-sized lock-up which never wants its +unhappy occupants, also, it must be added, a professional<span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[306]</span> torturer +(<i>quæstionarius</i>) to wring confessions out of slaves and other +non-privileged prisoners without any tedious “third degree” process. +Petty offenses are tried summarily before the Præfect of the Watch or +his deputies in police court at these stations; and for great crimes +the alleged offenders can be conveyed to a central jail, or admitted to +bail, prior to a formal trial before the City Præfect.</p> + +<p>The Præfect of the Watch (<i>Præfectus Vigilum</i>), the head of this +very important organization, is really the most important municipal +official in Rome except the City Præfect. Since he has to do with +much sordid detail, he is not a top-lofty senator, but only an eques; +nevertheless, his honor and dignity are great. The subpræfect under him +is also a highly respected officer. The entire force of the vigiles, +although, of course, incessantly criticized and jeered at, is a very +capable body of men, whose faithfulness and energy go far to make life +and property better protected in Rome than in most great cities at any +age.</p> + +<p>So with this glance at the municipal government of a metropolitan +community of 1,500,000 we quit the Palatine. A new opportunity has +presented itself: we can visit the Prætorian Camp.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[307]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER XVI<br> +<span class="subhed">THE PRÆTORIAN CAMP. THE IMPERIAL WAR MACHINE</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>262. The Army the Real Master of the Roman Empire.</b>—The Romans +beyond all else have been a military people. Their great abilities +as law givers, administrators, disseminators of civilization through +Western Europe apparently would have been almost in vain if the +legions had failed against Hannibal, against Mithridates, against +Vercingetorix. Furthermore, the power of the Cæsars is primarily +that of war chiefs. Let the army revolt, and Senate, plebeians, +and provincials can protest their loyalty ever so frantically—the +Princeps, the “First Citizen,” nevertheless is a lost man.</p> + +<p>Every Emperor knows this fact. His memory goes back to those two +fearful years 68 and 69 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> when first a revolt in Gaul and +a mutiny by the Prætorians in Rome overthrew Nero and set up Galba, +then a second mutiny of the Prætorians set up Otho, then a revolt of +the Rhine legions set up Vitellius, then a counter-revolt by the Danube +and Syrian legions set up Vespasian; with the civilian population +looking on helplessly, and being almost as helplessly plundered, while +decidedly small bodies of professional swordsmen settled the fate of +the Empire. Still later they remember how after Domitian’s murder, the +Prætorians (whom that despot had caressed and corrupted) forced his +successor Nerva to punish the very conspirators to whom Nerva himself +owed the throne.</p> + +<p>Hadrian, in turn, who passes for a very “constitutional” ruler, when +his kinsman Trajan died (117 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>), allowed himself<span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[308]</span> to be +“proclaimed” immediately by the soldiers in the East where he then was. +Next he wrote with studious modesty to the Senate begging the Conscript +Fathers to “excuse” the zeal of the army and to ratify its action in +choosing him Imperator. Every senator knew the blade might soon be +at his own neck if he openly opposed confirming the mandate of the +legionaries. The army, in short, is the final authority in the Roman +Empire. Presently there may even be an Emperor [Septimus Severus about +210 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>] who will give his sons direfully blunt and effective +counsel: “Enrich the army and then you can do anything.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>263. Army Held under Stiff Discipline and Concentrated on +Frontiers.</b>—Nevertheless at present the army is under a tight rein. +Trajan and Hadrian by a mixture of donatives and severity have restored +firm discipline. The Roman world functions freely and normally behind +the frontier barriers held by the legions, with the great chaos of +barbarism tossing harmlessly outside. Furthermore, this army, if very +formidable, is, we shall see, decidedly small. It is distributed mainly +along the northern and eastern frontiers, with a sizable garrison and +guard-corps at Rome.</p> + +<p>In the arrangement of the army, most of the provinces seem absolutely +divested of regular soldiers save those in transit, and their governors +only require a good constabulary to arrest brigands and rioters. The +collapse of the Jewish insurrection has practically ended the last +serious attempt to cast off Roman authority, and the provinces submit +not simply because of fear, but because they are now bound to the +imperial régime by great cultural and economic interests.<a id="FNanchor_161" href="#Footnote_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[309]</span> In +Rome itself, thanks to the presence of the imperial guard, soldiers +are frequent sights upon the streets, but in many other great cities +of the Empire they are comparative rarities. Their duties are in the +frontiers, and their officers know well the demoralization wrought by +keeping their men in city garrisons.</p> + +<p>When Augustus found the world at his feet he also found himself with +armies which were very expensive and somewhat ready to mutiny against +him. Very promptly, therefore, he reduced his 45 legions to only about +18. This number proved too few, and by the end of his reign they had +risen to 25; these in turn have been gradually increased to 30; and +this will be the ordinary number for a good while longer.<a id="FNanchor_162" href="#Footnote_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a> The +legionaries are the regular troops of the line, on whose disciplined +fighting the safety of civilization may well depend. There are, +however, no ordinary legionaries stationed in Rome, although we can, of +course, obtain full information in the capital about them. Their place +is taken by a magnificent and arrogant guard-corps—the Prætorians.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>264. The Prætorian Guard of the Emperors.</b>—The Prætorian guards +are the successors of the old <i>Prætoriani</i>, picked men, who +guarded the Prætorium (general’s residence or tent) in the armies of +the old Republic. But the new Imperators were entitled to a much larger +and more permanent guard, and they also desired to have a reliable +body of troops always in or near Rome to protect against an uprising. +Augustus, therefore, organized nine “prætorian cohorts,” although +keeping only three directly in Rome; his successor, Tiberius, however, +boldly concentrated<span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[310]</span> them all in the imperial city, and built for them +an enormous camp behind the Viminal hill, on the northeast side of the +metropolis.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_310" style="max-width: 612px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_310.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Prætorian Guardsmen.</p> + </div> + +<p>Here they have remained as the dreaded engine of the Caesars. Disguise +the fact as he may, every senator knows in his heart: “If the Senate +defies the Emperor, the Prætorians can and will sack the Curia.” So +long as the Prætorians are obedient no Emperor need tremble overmuch +at stories of a provincial uprising. When the Prætorians desert he had +better, as did Nero, slink away to commit suicide.</p> + +<p>The guard-corps is jealously regarded by the frontier legions who +sometimes turn against it, but thanks to its position at the capital +its power is tremendous. Even the privates walk down the streets with a +confident swagger—can they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[311]</span> not make and unmake Emperors? If the army +really controls the Empire, the Prætorians go far to control the will +of the army.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>265. The Prætorian Præfect and the Prætorian Camp.</b>—Such being +the case, there is one high official whom the Cæsars will always select +with greater care than any other—the <i>Prætorian Præfect</i>. On this +general rests responsibility for the military efficiency and loyalty +of the corps. If he is a scheming bloody man, he can, like Tiberius’s +præfect Sejanus, almost place himself upon the throne; and if he is +simply a faithful competent officer, his public services excel that of +any civil functionary.</p> + +<p>Since curiously enough the Emperor usually intrusts to the Prætorian +Præfect the task of hearing legal “appeals to Cæsar” from the imperial +half of the provinces, it is not unusual to name two præfects, +nominally of equal authority but with one of them often a trained +jurist, and the other more concerned with the military management of +the corps. This has the additional advantage of making it harder to +start an insurrection,—each Præfect will keep watch upon his colleague.</p> + +<p>Inasmuch as the Emperor is now absent from Rome a detachment of the +guard is away with him, but the world being in general peace there +is no need (as in a major war) for the entire corps to go forth to +reinforce the frontier legions. The Prætorians are therefore on duty +as usual; one cohort at the Palatine, the remainder barracked at their +great camp.</p> + +<p>The <i>Castra Prætoria</i><a id="FNanchor_163" href="#Footnote_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a> is more than a mere cantonment; it +is a real fortress, only to be stormed after desperate fighting. We +enter it from the central gateway (<i>Porta Prætoria</i>) which looks +straight westward upon the city. A lofty wall of masonry,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[312]</span> brick, and +concrete, crowned by suitable battlements, surrounds a vast rectangular +area about 1400 feet wide, and 1100 feet deep. The greater and lesser +gates are crowned with fine marble sculptures almost worthy of the +Palatine. In the center of the area rises a mass of office buildings, a +residence for the Præfect and a small temple to the military gods such +as Mars, and especially to the deified emperors. The side walls of the +inclosure are extended on the inside by an enormous system of arches +and vaulting, making many deep chambers where thousands of men are +easily barracked.</p> + +<p>In the open area fountains are playing, and the sun is sending a flying +glory from the burnished armor of a cohort standing at rest, while +certain officers affix medals of honor, or bestow spears and banners of +honor upon various men who have lately distinguished themselves during +some detached duty in Mauretania. Everything about the place betrays a +perfect “police”; all commands are executed with extreme promptness; +and every individual seems absolutely to know his part, as being one +cog in an enormous war machine, into the making of which has entered an +almost inconceivable amount of skill and energy.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>266. Organization and Discipline of the Prætorians.</b>—The +Prætorians are organized much as the ordinary legionary troops with +certain proud modifications. The regular legions can be recruited +from all over the Empire; the Prætorians are still drawn only from +Italy. They receive twice the pay of the legionaries, and their term +of service is only sixteen years as against twenty with the regulars. +Besides these advantages, and the joy of living near to the pleasures +of Rome, their discipline is said to be much easier.</p> + +<p>The emperors, who fear the mutterings of the guard-corps much more than +they do those of the Senate, often shower special bonuses upon the +Prætorians. Their centurions and still more their tribunes are welcome +guests in the most aristocratic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[313]</span> houses in Rome. Their weapons are the +same as the legionaries’, but, of course, their armor is of the finest; +and on gala occasions when the whole corps is ordered out with gilded +or silvered helmets and cuirasses over purple military cloaks, the +sight of these thousands of tall powerful warriors marching in perfect +rhythm is astonishing beyond words.</p> + +<p>In one important respect the organization of the Prætorians differs +from that of the regular legionaries: their nine cohorts number 1000 +instead of 600 men each and the whole guard-corps therefore amounts +to about 9000 men. Considering that these troops are chosen for their +splendid physiques, and are trained for years in every military +accomplishment, remarkable will be the foe of like numbers that can +withstand them. As for the city of Rome, its whole raging populace is +like mere chaff and straw if the trumpets sound through the camp, and +the centurions thunder down their files, “Open the gates and clear the +streets!”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>267. The City Cohorts (<i>Cohortes Urbanæ</i>).</b>—The +Prætorians, however, have some humbler comrades in Rome, in addition +to police-firemen, the vigiles. Sometimes the guard-corps must follow +the Emperor on campaign, but nevertheless the capital needs a fixed +garrison. The City Præfect (see p. <a href="#Page_300">300</a>), therefore, commands four +additional cohorts (<i>cohortes urbanæ</i>) also of 1000 each, in +a special camp in the northern part of the metropolis. These “City +Cohorts” are organized much like the Prætorians, and in a grave +emergency would act with them; but they have longer terms of service, +lesser pay, severer discipline.</p> + +<p>It is far less of an honor to belong to this force than to the +Prætorians, and there is little “fraternizing” between its members and +the haughty guard-corps. However, they make 4000 more armed men always +available for the defense and control of the city. Added to these +can, of course, be the vigiles (7000 strong), easily changeable into +genuine<span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[314]</span> soldiers in a crisis. This makes the total garrison of Rome, +while the Prætorians are in the city, around 20,000 men, plus usually +some marines detached from the squadrons at Ostia and Misenum.</p> + +<p>The frontiers are far away, but the central direction of the great +imperial war machine is inevitably at Rome. From the Prætorian barracks +issue those orders which can set the legions marching against the +Caledonians of North Britain or the Arabs of the Syrian deserts. There +can be no better place, therefore, for inquiry about the organization +and discipline of that grim efficient engine which maintains the +Pax Romana and makes possible the splendid, artificial Græco-Roman +civilization.</p> + +<p>High officers are constantly passing through Rome. Some of these men +have had long and distinguished careers, and among them is a certain +Aulus Quadratus, a gray and grizzled veteran, now in the capital for +honorable retirement, after an unusual term of service. By tracing his +experience, a good insight can be gained into the organization and +duties of the legionaries.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>268. A Private in the Legions: the Legionary +Organization.</b>—Quadratus was born in South Gaul (<i>Gallia +Narbonensis</i>), a country that has already been well Romanized, and +from which the government draws many excellent legionaries.<a id="FNanchor_164" href="#Footnote_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a> He +was a poor free laborer on a great estate, but when he was only about +eighteen an enrolling officer appeared and demanded a certain number of +recruits of his master. The latter naturally suggested taking several +of the youngest and least valuable of the hands. Quadratus was strong, +courageous, and adventuresome, and he did not object to this informal +type of “selective draft.” Thus he soon found himself a private in the +camp of the “Second Augustan Legion”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[315]</span> (<i>legio secunda augusta</i>) +stationed in a great fortified camp guarding the Rhine somewhere near +later Mayence or Strassbourg in “Upper Germany” (Alsace and the Rhenish +Palatinate).</p> + +<p>Once enlisted, Quadratus realized that at least twenty years of +unremitting service lay ahead of him. Home life and marriage were +forbidden the soldiery, and their whole lives revolved around the army. +The Roman discipline caught each man, and each became a valuable and +contented soldier only so far as he submitted to this discipline and +merged his personality in the vast organization.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_315" style="max-width: 335px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_315.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">A Slinger.</p> + </div> + +<p>Quadratus was, therefore, promptly “put under the vinestock,” +the stout cudgel of twisted vine twigs with which the centurions +vigorously corrected their tyros. At first he was a very ignorant and +unimportant part of the “Second Augustan,” but soon he understood its +organization and became proud of its history. Every legion consisted +of ten <i>cohorts</i>, each in turn divided into six centuries.<a id="FNanchor_165" href="#Footnote_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a> +Each century contained in theory a hundred infantry, making 6000 for +the entire legion. Besides these, there was a small cavalry force for +scouting attached to each legion, four <i>turmæ</i> (squadrons) of 30 +horsemen each. The various contingents,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[316]</span> however, were seldom quite +full. When the Second Augustan went to battle it reckoned, therefore, +somewhere under 6000 men.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_316" style="max-width: 700px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_316.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Roman Siege Works</span>: restoration of Caesar’s +siege works at Alesia.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>269. Training of the Legionaries: the <i>Pilum</i> and the +<i>Gladius</i>.</b>—Quadratus, under very severe drill masters, +learned the use of weapons. Nothing could take the place, so he was +taught, of cool proficiency with sword and javelin. It was the trained +valor of the average Roman legionary, not the skill often of his +commanders, that had given to the Cæsars the mastery of the world, and +while the discipline was strict, and the training incessant, pains were +taken not to destroy the young man’s self-respect, or those powers of +initiative which were the glory of his profession.</p> + +<p>He was taught furthermore to despise those enemies, who, like the +old Macedonians, were so lacking in personal resources that they had +to go into battle wedged together shield to shield with long spears +bristling in front—the rigid “phalanx” formation. This is excellent on +level ground when the foe is all ahead, but often becomes a source of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[317]</span> +danger to itself because the closely packed soldiers are deprived of +any chance to display personal valor, and are almost helpless to change +position if attacked on flank or rear. Quadratus in his training was +taught to stand five feet from his comrades on either side with plenty +of room to swing his shield and javelin.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_317" style="max-width: 707px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_317.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center"><span class="smcap">Storming a City with the</span> <i>Testudo</i>.</p> + </div> + +<p>Long exercise made him a master of his two weapons. The heavy javelin +(<i>pilum</i>) is a devilish missile, as every foe of Rome has learned +to his cost. It is about six and a half feet long with a heavy wooden +butt and a long blade-like head, usually barbed and razor keen. Flung +by a practiced soldier at short range it can knock down any adversary +who is not firmly braced, even if it does not pierce his shield. Once +lodged in the shield it is no light thing to draw it out and not expose +oneself to a second deadlier blow.</p> + +<p>The pilum, they told Quadratus, was what had really made the Roman +Empire possible; but it is duly supplemented by the Spanish short sword +(<i>gladius</i>). This is a weapon borrowed,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_318">[318]</span> perhaps, from Spain but +thoroughly Italianized. The blade is about thirty-three inches long, +two-edged, sharp-pointed, and always used for thrusting. The instant a +legionary has flung his pilum, and while his foe if not wounded is at +least utterly demoralized from the shock, he whips his gladius from his +thigh and leaps upon him. A single good thrust will disembowel a man, +and he who is thus assailed by a trained Roman swordsman should pray to +his native gods—he will need all aid possible.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_318" style="max-width: 364px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_318.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Catapult.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>270. Defensive Weapons.</b>—These two very simple weapons Quadratus +was taught to handle to perfection, until across the years their use +became simply mechanical to him. Meantime he was learning to march, +leap, and fight in his heavy defensive armor. He wore a stout metallic +cuirass of fish-scale plates, and a solid helmet of brass upon which in +parades and in actual battle he set a nodding plume of horse-hair. This +helmet had brow- and cheek-pieces giving very perfect protection, but +was so heavy that while marching he was allowed to carry it swung from +a strap upon his breast.</p> + +<p>Of course, however, his chief defensive weapon was his shield. This +capital piece of armor is a rectangle of solid leather about four by +two and one half feet, rimmed with iron and with handles for carrying +on the left arm. A trained legionary knows how to fend and lunge with +his shield with marvelous agility, and by means of the solid metal +base in the center he can strike a tremendous blow. Almost no weapon +can penetrate the shield, and thanks to it and his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[319]</span> cuirass and his +helmet, a soldier can march unscathed amid a perfect shower of arrows. +Every technical point about his armor has, of course, been worked out +scientifically. Simple as it appears, it represents a triumph of human +skill.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_319" style="max-width: 270px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_319.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Cuirass.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>271. Rewards and Punishments for Soldiers.</b>—Thus accoutered +Quadratus gained his first experience when the Second Augusta was +ordered over the Rhine to punish a tribe of Germanic raiders in +later-day Hessen. In the fighting that ensued he so proved his skill +and courage that he received his first decoration, the right to wear +a small banderole upon his pilum when his cohort appeared on parade +ground. Discipline was severe, but rewards for faithfulness and valor +were prompt and conspicuous. He had long seen his older comrades +marching about with “spears of honor,” banderoles, and above all with +huge medals and medallions, which, upon gala occasions, they wore upon +their breasts.</p> + +<p>Long before Quadratus’s career was ended, he, like many others, had +a perfect collection of these medals, which hung jangling over his +cuirass almost like a second coat of armor. Everybody knew the honors +awarded his comrades, and there was constant emulation to deserve like +decorations as well as more substantial rewards. No system could be +better<span class="pagenum" id="Page_320">[320]</span> devised to call out the valorous service of simple-hearted and +often very uncultivated men.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_320a" style="max-width: 200px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_320a.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Javelin</span>: <i>pilum</i> of the legionary.</p> + </div> + +<p>While Quadratus, without too many blows from his centurions’ vinestock, +was thus on his way to promotion, he could witness the punishment of +less fortunate comrades. Stripes, docking of pay, and extra duty were +the standard penalties; but sometimes there were worse inflictions. +Once a whole century acted in a cowardly manner. It was sentenced for +one month to bivouac outside the camp and to eat bread of barley,—not +of wheat, the food of brave and obedient troops.</p> + +<p>Sometimes, of course, capital penalties were demanded. Once a private +was guilty of gross insubordination; he had to “run the gantlet” +(<i>fustuarium</i>) between two long files of soldiers who beat him +with cudgels while he dashed vainly down the line, perishing ere he +could reach the end. Once a detachment of half-drilled auxiliaries fled +in an outrageous manner before the enemy. To teach a stern lesson these +irregulars were “decimated”; being forced to stand disarmed before the +whole legion, while lots were cast selecting every tenth man, who was +forthwith dragged from the ranks and beheaded.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_320b"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_320b.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Sword.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>272. Pay and Rations in the Army: Soldiers’ Savings +Banks.</b>—While a private Quadratus, of course, drew the private’s +pay, 1200 sesterces ($48) a year,<a id="FNanchor_166" href="#Footnote_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a> out of which, however, was +deducted a certain part of his upkeep and equipment. Even as it was, +however, this gave fairly ample spending money, and every soldier was +required to deposit a part of his wages<span class="pagenum" id="Page_321">[321]</span> in the legionary savings bank, +accumulating against the day of his happy discharge, and protected from +barrack-room gambling and squandering. Besides this, brave service +often won an increase of stipend, more valuable than many medals; and +Quadratus was presently a <i>duplarius</i>, a “double-pay man,” to the +great envy of certain comrades.</p> + +<p>Army rations would have seemed to another age extremely monotonous, a +mere succession of huge portions of coarse bread or of wheat porridge. +There were also distributions of salt pork, vegetables, etc., but the +legionaries did not care greatly for meat. There were even cases when +they protested against “too much beef and too little wheat.” As for +drink, everybody in camp enjoyed plenty of <i>posca</i>—the dilution +of cheap wine and vinegar.<a id="FNanchor_167" href="#Footnote_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_321"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_321.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Helmet.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>273. The Training of Soldiers: Non-Military Labors.</b>—Drilling +went on incessantly. Even soldiers versed in their spear play seemed +forever under arms merely to keep up the camp routine and morale. Every +man was trained to be a good swimmer, to run, jump, and indulge in +acrobatic feats like the <i>testudo</i> (when one group of men climbed +upon their comrades’ heads) so useful in storming walls. Thrice a month +the whole legion went on a forced practice march, going at least twenty +miles at four miles (or more) per hour, each man bearing, besides his +heavy armor, an elaborate baggage kit, half a bushel of grain, one or +two tall intrenching stakes, a spade, axe, rope, and other tools—a +weight of sixty pounds.</p> + +<p>If strictly military work failed, there were endless civilian<span class="pagenum" id="Page_322">[322]</span> labors. +Quadratus learned to use his spade almost as well as he could his +pilum. He assisted in making and in repairing the great network of +magnificent military roads leading to the frontiers. He worked in the +legionary brick kilns, making bricks for the camps and the numerous +small <i>castella</i> used to hold back the onthrusting Germans. +He helped also to rebuild a temple of Jupiter at the garrison town +of Mogontiacum (Mayence), and later to tug up the stones for a new +amphitheater in that city. If he had been attached to a Syrian legion, +he and his comrades might even have been ordered out to repel an +invasion not of Parthians but of the more devastating locusts.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_322" style="max-width: 248px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_322.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Shield of the Legionary.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>274. Petty Officers in the Legions.</b>—All this experience came +to him while he was earning his first promotions. Everybody in the +legion—except those lowest and highest—had somebody, indeed, whom he +could command while some one else could command him, and there was a +very ingenious division and interlocking of power and responsibility.</p> + +<p>Petty officers abounded, and having approved himself, Quadratus became +one of the <i>principales</i> (high privates,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_323">[323]</span> and corporals)—first +he became a <i>tesserarius</i>, “bearer of the watchword” for his +century; then the “horn blower,” responsible often for important +signals, then the <i>signifer</i>, the bearer of the small red flag +(<i>vexillium</i>), surmounted with a small image of Victory, which was +the standard of the cohort; then he was named <i>optio</i> (“chosen” +man by a centurion), a centurion’s deputy and assistant, entitled to +rank as a real officer and responsible for the control of a large squad +of men.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_323" style="max-width: 371px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_323.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Military Trumpet.</p> + </div> + +<p>At last came one of the most important days of his life. At a general +parade of the legion the commanding general (<i>legatus legionis</i>) +announced that Quadratus was appointed centurion and solemnly intrusted +him with the terrible vinestock. There was no danger he would show +mercy to the raw recruits!</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>275. The Centurions: their Importance and Order of +Promotion.</b>—Quadratus was now a member of that group of officers to +which the Roman army owed the greater part of its entire discipline, +morale, and efficiency. There were sixty centurions in every legion. +They were usually self-made men, sturdy peasants’ sons like himself, +who had risen from the ranks and then been selected by the general on +account of merit.</p> + +<p>The six military tribunes of each legion were, indeed, of higher rank, +but they were often untested young noblemen, obliged to get a certain +“military experience” before returning to Rome to sue for seats in the +Senate and the favor of the Emperor. The centurions, however, were +a permanent body. They had enlisted in the legion, and their whole +life was tied up with it. If their methods were harsh, they prided +themselves on showing an example of daring yet scientific valor in +every battle. They were intensely devoted to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_324">[324]</span> their corps, its honor, +and the honor of their comrades. With good centurions a motley host of +raw recruits soon became formidable legionaries; without them the most +skilful general might strive in vain to organize an army.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_324" style="max-width: 318px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_324.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Legionaries (Regular Troops-of-the-Line)</span>: one soldier +is carrying his equipment upon a “Marius’s Mule,” a staff +arranged to serve as a knapsack, invented by Marius about 110 +<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span></p> + </div> + +<p>As centurion Quadratus found a straight line of promotion before him. +He was obliged to begin as the sixth centurion of the tenth cohort, +and by process of seniority he was entitled to rise to first centurion +of the first cohort. He was making fair progress but advancement was +discouragingly slow, and he might have ended (as did most of his fellow +officers) only part way up the ladder before he reached the retiring +age, when a great good fortune came to him.</p> + +<p>While only a private he had won the “civic crown” (<i>corona +civica</i>) of oak leaves for saving the life of a comrade in battle; +he had also gained the golden “mural crown” (<i>corona muralis</i>) +for being the first in a desperate storming party over the parapet of +a crude fortress held by the Germans. But now, while acting as senior +centurion of a large detachment, with the commanding tribune absent, +he learned that a Roman garrison somewhere in the heart of the Black +Forest region was hard pressed by a horde of Chatti. He led up his men +suddenly and skilfully, broke through and dispersed the Barbarians and +saved the garrison when it was at last gasp. For this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_325">[325]</span> he was awarded +the “siege crown” (<i>corona obsidionalis</i>), a remarkable honor +given by the rescued garrison, and plaited out of grass and weeds +plucked on the spot of battle,<a id="FNanchor_168" href="#Footnote_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a> to the leader who had saved them.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>276. The <i>Primipilus</i>: the Great Eagle of the Legion.</b>—This +distinction made it inevitable that when the post of first centurion +in the legion fell vacant, Quadratus should be jumped over the heads +of many others and made <i>primipilus</i> (“first javelin”)—the head +of the whole corps of centurions, entitled to participate with the +tribunes in a council of war, and—being, of course, now a man of great +practical experience—allowed to speak very openly to the Legate of the +Legion himself. Quadratus was now in some respects the most important +man in the Second Augustan. His war pay was considerable, and he added +to it by the permitted usage of taking fees from the men for certain +exemptions from duty.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_325" style="max-width: 305px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_325.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Roman Officer.</p> + </div> + +<p>As primipilus he had the weighty responsibility of taking charge of the +great golden eagle of the legion. In battle he would sometimes pluck it +from the ordinary bearer (<i>aquilifer</i>), and electrify his comrades +by dashing ahead with the full-sized golden eagle with outspread wings, +surrounded by brilliant streamers, now borne on its pole high above his +shoulders. Where the eagle went, there honor and devotion made every +legionary follow with the fury of a man possessed. In a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_326">[326]</span> certain shrewd +tussle with the Hermunduri, the valor of the whole phalanx of those +Barbarians was snuffed out when they saw the glistening <i>aquila</i> +bearing down on them heading a six-thousand-man wedge, with all the ten +cohort flags like obedient retainers thrusting on behind, and when next +came the pitiless beat of the pila succeeded instantly by the rush of +the expert swordsmen.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>277. Locations and Names of Legions.</b>—Having become primipilus +while still a fairly young man, Quadratus was not at the end of his +promotion. He had carefully saved his money, and presently he gained +official nobility as an eques. Now he was appointed to an independent +command not in the legionary regulars, but in the “auxiliary cohorts.”</p> + +<p>Only about one half of the imperial forces are in the legions. These +are for the heavy fighting; they are kept in large garrisons and are +used for secondary work as little as possible, nor are they moved from +province to province except in serious emergencies.<a id="FNanchor_169" href="#Footnote_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a> The Second +Augustan has always been in Upper Germany and there presumably it will +stay for generations more. The same is true of the Third Augustan in +North Africa, of the Fourth Scythians on the Danube, of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_327">[327]</span> the Twelfth +Thunderers in Syria, and of a good many others. The result is that +each legion, largely recruited in the nearby provinces, has small +desire for distant service; and there is little love between, say, the +“Twenty-first Ravagers” in Upper Germany and the “Sixth Ironclads” +stationed along the Euphrates.<a id="FNanchor_170" href="#Footnote_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_327" style="max-width: 230px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_327.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Light-armed Soldier.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>278. The Auxiliary Cohorts: the Second Grand Division of the +Army.</b>—But it is absolutely necessary to have a mobile force, +composed of troops of many kinds, especially cavalry, archers, +slingers, and light spearmen for scouting. These men are often enlisted +in the un-Romanized provinces, and are allowed to keep their native +arms and discipline. As a rule they are organized in unattached +cohorts, either in “large” cohorts of 1000 men with ten centuries, or +“small” cohorts of 480 with six so-called centuries. Their commander +is regularly a “Præfect,” commonly an officer who, like Quadratus, has +graduated from the stern school of the centurion in a legion.</p> + +<p>Auxiliary cohorts are often embodied and disbanded, they have no +such glorious history and traditions as the legions, but they have a +distinctive name and a number. Quadratus was assigned to the command +of a new “large” cohort made up of tall blonde Germans who were glad +to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_328">[328]</span> forget their feuds with the Romans, cross the Rhine, and take the +Emperor’s pay, swearing to him the great oath of implicit military +allegiance (<i>the sacramentum</i>). The government is far too wise, +however, to leave such aliens too near their homes. Quadratus was, +therefore, promptly ordered to march his “Sixth Nervan” (so named in +honor of the then Emperor Nerva)<a id="FNanchor_171" href="#Footnote_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a> to the Danube.</p> + +<p>The day the new Præfect quitted his old comrades of the Second Augustan +he drew from the legionary chest all the savings from his pay, plus +the sums deposited there after each bonus or donation wherewith the +Emperors were always conciliating the army. He had also long since +joined a self-help organization among the officers whereby he was to +receive a fixed sum for his outfit whenever he received promotion.<a id="FNanchor_172" href="#Footnote_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a> +He thus started upon his career as an upper officer a tolerably rich +man.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>279. The Præfect of the Camps and the Legate of the Legion.</b>—As +Præfect of the Sixth Nervan he won the good opinion of Trajan in both +of the desperate Dacian Wars and then in the campaign against Parthia. +As the next step, he was appointed by imperial patent “Præfect of the +Camps”—the second in command of a legion, not responsible, indeed, +for its conduct in battle, but with almost complete authority over +its management and discipline while in its great permanent garrisons, +subject only (in extreme cases) to the final authority of the +commanding legate.</p> + +<p>This was as high ordinarily as even a very fortunate soldier, who +had enlisted as a mere private, could advance. Even<span class="pagenum" id="Page_329">[329]</span> as Præfect of +the Camp Quadratus was looked down upon socially by the six young +military tribunes, scions of senatorial families, who hung around +the headquarters (<i>prætorium</i>), wrote verses, patronized the +centurions, and boasted of how “they commanded the legion.” But +Quadratus was, we repeat, an extraordinarily lucky officer. Grizzled +now and battle-scarred, he impressed Hadrian as absolutely to be +trusted. The Emperor, therefore, raised him to the rank of “Legate of +the Legion,” which carried with it a seat in the Senate, and for the +past few years accordingly Quadratus has been on the Rhine in chief +command of that same Second Augustan where once he had “submitted to +the vinestock” as a raw recruit.</p> + +<p>He has now returned to Rome to be honorably retired and to end his +days in a luxurious villa in the hills, having enjoyed every honor +possible in the Roman army save that of being Imperial Legatus over an +entire province, a post ordinarily combined with the command of several +legions. It is men like Quadratus, hard and fit soldiers of absolute +faithfulness, coolness, courage, and efficiency; steeped in the +traditions of the army, and obeying automatically the call of military +duty, that have been the soul of the Roman war-machine. Perhaps some +day there will be degeneracy in the camps, even as in the luxurious +city. Then the perils of the Empire will draw nigh—but not in the +reign of Hadrian.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>280. Care for Veterans: Retiring Bonuses and Land Grants.</b>—Few +enough of Quadratus’s messmates kept near to him in his upward career. +To the average recruit, the most to be hoped for is that, before the +end of his twenty years’ enlistment, he can be somewhere near the rank +of centurion. But many men learn to enjoy the military life even as +privates, and when the time for honorable discharge comes, will often +be glad to reënlist in picked corps of <i>veterani</i>, bronzed and +hardened warriors who make invaluable<span class="pagenum" id="Page_330">[330]</span> scouts and bodyguards for the +upper officers, and who have quite forgotten the modes of civilian life.</p> + +<p>If, however, they elect to be mustered out, not merely are there +accumulations of pay and donations given them from the legion’s savings +bank, but along with the <i>honesta missio</i> (honorable discharge) +they receive either a grant of land for a modest farm, or a lump sum +(some 3000 sesterces—$120) to start them on a peaceful career. If they +become sick or disabled while in service, reasonably good care is taken +of them. In any case the constant award of honorary spears, pennons, +and medals appeals to the soldier’s vanity, and helps to reconcile him +to a very long enlistment and an equally stiff discipline.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>281. Barrier Fortresses; System of Encampments; Flexible Battle +Tactics; Siege Warfare.</b>—Into the details of the Roman war +machine we cannot enter. We cannot discuss the wonderful system of +barrier fortresses along the junction of the Rhine and Danube upon +which the northern tribes beat in vain, nor the newly completed “Wall +of Hadrian” sundering peaceful and guarded Britain from the stark +savagery of Caledonia. We cannot explain the scientific system of +temporary encampments, whereby every night—when a legion is on the +march,—it occupies a square of ground fortified by solid palisades and +with every tent in precisely the same spot as in the old camp of the +preceding night—a method insuring that every camp becomes practically +a fortress, almost impregnable in case of a defeat in the field. We +cannot visit the permanent garrison towns, such as Colonia Agrippina +(Cologne) on the Rhine, or Vindobona (Vienna) on the Danube, where +extensive cities, with all the paraphernalia of civilization, have +grown up around the cantonments on the very edge of raw barbarism.</p> + +<p>It is still less possible to offer here a discussion of the flexible +legionary battle tactics, whereby each particular foe is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_331">[331]</span> met with +the formations most formidable to his special arms and weaknesses; +and of the carefully adjusted order of march whereby an army can move +with all its baggage train through a hostile country defiant of any +ordinary harassment and flank attack. We must pass over also the system +of siege warfare, and the use of long-range casting engines—a genuine +artillery; and finally the wonderfully scientific engineering service, +building high-roads through deserts, and throwing strong bridges even +across such mighty streams as the Rhine, and—on Trajan’s Dacian +campaigns—the Danube.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_331" style="max-width: 750px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_331.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Storming a Besieged City</span>: casting engines in +foreground.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>282. Limited Size of the Imperial Army: its Great +Efficiency.</b>—Two or three things about the army, however, call for +particular comment. The size of these forces seems decidedly small, +considering the vast extent of the Empire, the slow communications, +the careful demilitarizing of the provincials, and the absence of any +reserve corps or efficient militia. The thirty legions (5000 to 6000 +men each) reckon<span class="pagenum" id="Page_332">[332]</span> perhaps 175,000 troops of the line. The Prætorians +at Rome, the heterogeneous and scattered auxiliary cohorts, the small +naval force, and other armed groups at the command of the government, +in all reckon, perhaps, as many more; 350,000 men, however, is a very +limited number when spread out from Britain to the confines of Arabia +and the Nile cataracts, although only along the Rhine, the Danube, and +the Euphrates are there now enemies creating serious military problems.</p> + +<p>Except at Rome, we have seen that the bulk of these troops is held +in the frontier garrisons, with all their corps kept on edge in full +battle efficiency. Let a frontier be in real peril, however, and there +is no means of reënforcing the local legions save by calling off other +legions from posts at great distance. Governmental policy has not +merely disarmed the provincials, it has systematically discouraged +maintaining the military virtues.<a id="FNanchor_173" href="#Footnote_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a> If the frontiers are forced +and the legions fail, the civilian population of the Empire (possibly +some 80 to 100 millions) will be nigh helpless before a Parthian raid +or Germanic invader; they can only call on the gods and the distant +Emperor for aid.<a id="FNanchor_174" href="#Footnote_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_333">[333]</span></p> + +<p>However, as yet, the legions have not failed. The Roman armies, never +large, but unsurpassed in quality and composed of highly expert +soldiers steeped in martial tradition, and organized, and commanded +with scientific skill, lie as a solid barrier around the Mediterranean +world, and in Hadrian’s day they are holding back possible invaders +by the mere terror of their name. When one looks, marveling, upon the +huge, luxurious, sophisticated capital, let it not be forgotten that +Rome is imperial Rome because far away on the frontiers thirty brigades +of iron-handed men night and day keep watch and ward.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_334">[334]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER XVII<br> +<span class="subhed">THE SENATE: A SESSION AND A DEBATE</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>283. Apparent Authority and Importance of the Senate.</b>—Powerful +is the army and powerful its Emperor, yet there is a body to which +they both pay lip-service, and which still enjoys a prestige and moral +authority that stamps itself upon the imagination of every man in the +Roman Empire—the “venerable Senate.”</p> + +<p>Theoretically the Senate shares the government with the Emperor, +controls the state when there is a vacancy in the palace, selects +the new ruler and bestows on him the “proconsular” and “tribunician +power,”—the legal bases of his authority. It must be consulted by +him in every important act, and when he dies it decides whether he +is to be deified as a god, or suffer the awful “damnation of memory” +(<i>damnatio memoriæ</i>) branding him for all time as a tyrant. It +can also declare him suspended or deposed from office, set a price +on his head and order the armies to refuse him obedience. Its formal +decrees (<i>senatus consulta</i>) constitute, now that the old public +assemblies have been abandoned, the most binding kind of law.</p> + +<p>The Senate also governs directly all of those provinces (about half of +the whole Empire) which do not require any army for defense or control. +It has its own treasury, and it can strike copper money, although +gold and silver are reserved to the Emperor, making a considerable +profit on the seignorage. It acts as supreme court of appeal on all +cases which rise in the provinces under its government. By the vote of +its members are elected all those “old Republican” magistrates<span class="pagenum" id="Page_335">[335]</span> from +consul down to <i>quæstor</i> (treasury supervisor) which carry along +with the temporary glories of office the right to a life seat in the +Senate itself—making the latter practically a self-perpetuating body. +A good Emperor swears at the beginning of his reign, “I will never put +any senator to death”—<i>i.e.</i> the Senate shall judge all capital +charges against its members, even those involving treason.</p> + +<p>Besides these prerogatives senators alone are eligible for the highest +military commands and the governorships of all the larger imperial +provinces. As already stated (see p. <a href="#Page_156">156</a>), the senators in addition +constitute the highest aristocracy; they must each possess at least +1,000,000 sesterces ($40,000) taxable property, and they enjoy all +the influence that comes to vested prestige and wealth in an age that +cringes to titles and fortunes. On this showing, the 600 senators +apparently constitute the most powerful organ in the government.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>284. Actual Weakness of the Senate.</b>—Unfortunately much of +this brave showing is only a glittering mask. The Senate has not one +swordsman in Rome or in any of its provinces to obey the summons, +“Resist the Emperor and his Prætorians.” It ordinarily has to stand +helpless while the army decides who is to be the next Cæsar in case of +a contested succession.</p> + +<p>After Caligula’s murder in 41 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> the Conscript Fathers +debated earnestly: “Shall we restore the Republic? If not that, which +aspiring nobleman can we elect as Emperor?” Meantime, the Prætorians, +pillaging the palace, found the terrified and demoralized Claudius +hiding in a closet; they dragged him forth and discovered a survivor +of the Cæsars whose dynasty they greatly wished to perpetuate. “<i>Ave +Imperator!</i>” rang their shout. Soon the senators were informed +that their debates were unnecessary—Claudius was being proclaimed in +the Prætorian Camp. The Fathers made haste to bestow on Claudius full +imperial powers and to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_336">[336]</span> congratulate him on his succession. Nobody +doubted after that where the real power lay.</p> + +<p>Besides all this, without mentioning the army, the Emperor has every +senator personally within his grasp. He can strike any member from the +<i>album</i> (Senate List) by use of his irresponsible Censorial Power. +Through that same power he can appoint any favorite to the order by his +mere fiat. In the elections held within the Senate, he can control the +choice for any office by announcing that he favors the aspirations of +such and such a friend; the “Candidates of Cæsar” are always elected. +In the debates it is a bold senator who dares to face the unpopularity +of opposing the Emperor’s suggestions;<a id="FNanchor_175" href="#Footnote_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a> and once let the monarch +indicate the slightest wish, a whole pack of servile favor-seekers +will instantly champion the proposition with fervent loyalty. Finally +by his “tribunician authority” the Emperor can veto any senatorial +proposal which he dislikes. The power of the “venerable Senate” seems, +therefore, to have vanished in thin air.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>285. Amount of Power Left to the Senate.</b>—This last is not quite +true, however. The Cæsars do not, as yet, represent an unvarnished +despotism; they need a cover for their autocracy,<a id="FNanchor_176" href="#Footnote_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a> and they have to +leave to the Senate a certain show of power. No new Emperor’s throne +furthermore is secure against pretenders until, after the army has +proclaimed him, the Senate has confirmed him, and no Emperor likes to +feel that his sole refuge is with the irresponsible swordsmen.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_337">[337]</span></p> + +<p>Besides all this, the moral prestige of the Senate is still so great +that even a Nero or a Domitian hesitates to flout that famous body +too openly. Finally, be it said, the task of governing the enormous +Empire is a tremendous burden. A reasonable monarch is glad enough to +throw upon the Senate a great many problems over which the “Fathers” +can exhaust their eloquence and which they probably can settle quite +as wisely as he. If they fail and the case is then dutifully referred +back to “Cæsar,” his own importance becomes all the greater. If they +succeed, he gains a reputation for moderation and liberality. The +senators, on their part, have long since ceased to dream of restoring +the old Republic. Since the accession of Nerva, 96 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, an +era of good feeling and equilibrium on the whole has existed. The +Senate therefore still vaunts itself as a coördinate branch of the +Roman government.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>286. Organization and Procedure of the Senate.</b>—The Senate of +the Empire exists in form and procedure very like its predecessor under +the Republic. Its debates are the talk of the capital and are duly +reported in the Acta Diurna; and at present, with Hadrian out of the +city, its supreme presiding officers, the two consuls, affect to be the +most powerful personages in Rome, although some of the great permanent +ministers on the Palatine, and especially the Prætorian Præfect, have +firm doubts on the subject.</p> + +<p>When Publius Junius Calvus is compelled to attend sessions of the +Senate, he has ordinarily been informed a couple of days in advance +by a <i>viator</i> of one of the consuls bringing a personal notice +to his home, although urgent meetings can be summoned on much shorter +notice merely by sending forth a crier. There is no fixed quorum for +the Senate; although there are 600 lawful members, many of these are +high government officials absent in the provinces, others are retired, +elderly dignitaries very loath to quit their luxurious ease in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_338">[338]</span> their +Etruscan or Campanian villas. Since the post of senator is ordinarily +for life, the body contains an undue proportion of superannuated, +doddering old men who will only appear on great occasions.</p> + +<p>Sessions can thus be held with only a very thin number, say fifty,<a id="FNanchor_177" href="#Footnote_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a> +although if the gathering is disgracefully small, those attending +can shout to the presiding officer, “<i>Numera! Numera!</i>” (“Take +the number!”) and insist on adjournment until the consul’s tipstaffs +and bailiffs have rounded up a respectable fraction. On this day in +question, however, there is no danger of a slim attendance. Every +member in Rome is sure to be present, including certain invalids who +have to be helped out of their litters and led inside by their freedmen.</p> + +<p>Sextus Annius Pedius, ex-proconsul of Asia has been impeached by +Publius Calvus and a fellow senator, Titus Volusius Atilius, for gross +extortion and malfeasance in his government. The case has been referred +to the Senate by Hadrian as lying within its special competence. Pedius +is of the highest aristocracy, but like most great men has made plenty +of enemies. Every possible social influence has been mobilized for and +against him. A great state trial, with an abundance of soaring oratory +is consequently in prospect. Every senator is in his element.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>287. The Curia (Senate House) and Its Arrangement of +Benches.</b>—On days when the Senate convenes, the clients can stream +into the empty atria of their noble patrons, collect their money doles +and depart—the patrons themselves have set off at first dawn for +the council, accompanied very probably (if it is not summertime) by +link-boys to guide them through the still darkened streets. They gather +thus at <i>prima luce</i> in the rebuilt Curia at the Forum, although +sessions can be held in almost any other duly consecrated spot, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_339">[339]</span> +Pompey built a special Curia near his own mansion in the Campus Martius +for use when he wished to deliberate with the Fathers.<a id="FNanchor_178" href="#Footnote_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a></p> + +<p>The Curia Julia has a magnificent hall with tiers of comfortable and +highly carved benches (<i>subsellia</i>) curving in a semi-circle +not unlike the legislative chambers of other times. The six hundred +senators sit fairly close together, so that the debates can be in easy +voice. At the entrance the consuls’ viatores and lictors check off the +Fathers entering to exclude interlopers, but there is no real secrecy. +The doors are numerous and stand wide, and a curious crowd is permitted +to linger around them; especially are the young sons of a good many +senators seen there, eagerly following all the proceedings wherein they +hope soon to have a part. (See p. 190.)</p> + +<p>Facing the benches rises a low dais whereon is a line of curule chairs +for the consuls and prætors, also a long solid settee whereon ten +of the younger senators sit down solemnly together. These ten are +the tribunes of the Plebs,—shorn now of nearly all their ancient +authority, but still maintaining the “shadow of a great name,” a name +surviving from the time when, as in the days of such personages as +Gaius Gracchus, a tribune could be mightier than a consul.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>288. The Gathering of the Senators.</b>—The Fathers drop into their +seats. No law adjusts their precedence, but etiquette gives the front +row to the ex-consuls, the next banks to the ex-prætors, behind them +the former ædiles, tribunes, and quæstors with the <i>pedani</i><a id="FNanchor_179" href="#Footnote_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a> +(senators who have never held elective office) modestly in the rear. +The defendant<span class="pagenum" id="Page_340">[340]</span> Pedius attended by several distinguished senators, his +relatives, all clad in the gray togas of distress and mourning, and +also by his two advocates both in conventional white, take seats in the +front benches. As they do this it is noted as of ominous significance +that several ex-consuls, who had come in first, promptly shift to the +other side of the hall.</p> + +<p>At the center of the platform is observed a majestic, gilded statue of +Victory, with expanded wings, flowing robes, standing upon a globe, and +stretching forth a laurel crown.<a id="FNanchor_180" href="#Footnote_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a> Before it, upon a little altar, +a few coals are smoking. Presently a door at the side of the platform +opens, and a lictor signs with his fasces. The chatter across the now +crowded hall ceases instantly; all the toga-clad figures rise together, +while the presiding consul, Gaius Juventius Varus,<a id="FNanchor_181" href="#Footnote_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a> leads in the +array of magistrates, each in the ornate toga prætexta.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>289. Opening the Session: Taking the Auspices.</b>—Gravely this +official company seats itself in the curule chairs; gravely Varus casts +a handful of incense upon the altar before the Victory, and a cloud of +fragrance fills the hall. Then Varus, a tall and very majestic figure, +signs to the senators; they also are seated, next his voice sounds +clearly: “Bring forth the chickens!”</p> + +<p>Not a lip twitches in all that sedate audience as two attendants appear +upon the platform setting down a small coop containing a few barnyard +fowls. The consul rises and stands beside them; next to him takes +station an elderly senator also wearing the prætexta and holding a +staff with a peculiarly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_341">[341]</span> shaped spiral head, a <i>lituus</i>—the badge +of office of an <i>augur</i>, lawfully entitled to proclaim the will +of the gods. In a dead hush the servitors pass a small dish of grain +to the consul who carefully scatters the grain within easy reach of +the chickens. The latter, carefully starved since yesterday, snap up +the grains eagerly. They even devour so fast that the wheat drops from +their bills, a most excellent sign. The augur bends forward intently, +watching their action, then motions with his staff: “<i>There is no +evil sight nor sound!</i>” he announces in solemn formula.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_341" style="max-width: 375px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_341.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Coop of Sacred Chickens used in Divination.</p> + </div> + +<p>A mutter of relaxation passes around the Senate. The servitors carry +out the chicken coop. The consul shakes his great draperies around +him with studied dignity and turns to the waiting assembly. “Affairs +divine” have been attended to; “affairs human” can now begin.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>290. Presentation of Routine Business: Taking a Formal +Vote.</b>—Even under the Empire it is a glorious thing to be consul, +with the twelve lictors, the temporary colleagueship with the Emperor, +and the right to preside over the most magnificent council in the +world. Varus carries himself with the dignity of a nobleman who has +enjoyed a long career in the Senate and now is at the summit of his +aspirations. Every tradition of the ancient body has been cherished; +and the solemn forms still differ little from those in the great +conclave that piloted the overthrow of Carthage.</p> + +<p>The chief business of the day is the trial of Pedius, but a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_342">[342]</span> certain +lesser matter demands prior disposition. The consul has received a +dispatch from the proprætor of Sicily (a “senatorial” province) asking +if he can be empowered to remit the taxes of certain peasants near +Agrigentum, whose crops have suffered from the blight. Varus begins +with the time-honored formula, “That it may be well and fortunate to +the Roman people, the Quirites, we refer this thing to you, <i>patres +conscripti</i>.” Then in well-chosen words he gives the substance of +the governor’s request, and reads certain correspondence explaining the +plight of the peasants; having thus finished his <i>relatio</i>—the +“presentation of the problem”—he ends with another formula, “What is +it your pleasure to do concerning this matter?”</p> + +<p>If the business be contentious, now might begin a vigorous debate; but +the governor’s request, based on wise policy, is not worth questioning +and almost everybody wants to proceed to the trial. The consul, +therefore, after a pause, demands, “Is it your will to grant this +thing? Let then all the Conscript Fathers favoring pass to the right!”</p> + +<p>One garrulous old senator anxious for a chance to speak, indeed begins +shouting “<i>Consule! Consule!</i>” (“Take counsel!”—<i>i.e.</i> start +a debate.) If many others join him, Varus can be forced to permit a +long-winded discussion; but the troublemaker is without a second. The +senators with one accord seem rising and passing to the right side of +the Curia. Nobody ventures to go to the left. The motion thus carries +unanimously. The company resume their seats; then all eyes are again +upon the consul when with clear voice he commands: “Let the accusers of +Sextus Annius Pedius stand forth.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>291. Presenting an Impeachment at a Senate Trial.</b>—Publius +Calvus rises from the front benches opposite the defendant, allows the +many folds of his toga to fall magnificently around him, thrusting +them back just enough to reveal<span class="pagenum" id="Page_343">[343]</span> the purple laticlave running down +his tunic, and carefully adjusts a ring so its great emerald will +give precisely the correct flash as he gestures. Directly behind him, +inconspicuously garbed stands a favorite freedman, avowedly to pass +him papyri and tablets which he will read, but really quite as much to +whisper, “Drop your tones!” “Speak louder!” or “Not so shrill!” and +like promptings as the oration progresses.<a id="FNanchor_182" href="#Footnote_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a></p> + +<p>The Senate, of course, cannot be expected to put in weary days +listening to intricate and sordid testimony. All this has been taken +before a special board of judges, and on their report there is no real +doubt of Pedius’s guilt. He has taken a bribe of 300,000 sesterces +($12,000) to banish a Roman eques from his province and has put seven +less-protected provincials, friends of this eques, to death; worse +still, he has taken still another bribe of 700,000 sesterces ($28,000) +for committing the unspeakable outrage of causing yet a second eques +to be first beaten with rods, next hustled off to the mines, then +actually strangled in prison. The prominent provincials from Asia have, +therefore, presented an absolute case against their evil ex-governor. +The lesser culprits have mostly confessed and received appropriate +penalties—and the only question really before the Senate is fixing the +punishment of Pedius.</p> + +<p>He is a great noble with great connections. Ought a senator who has +held the consulship be banished and ruined even if he <i>has</i> +misgoverned his province, taken bribes and done to death an eques—one +of those upstart half-nobles whom every true senator should scorn? +Pedius does not lack friends who have told him to brazen it out, and +that no severe<span class="pagenum" id="Page_344">[344]</span> penalty can befall him; and he glares defiantly across +to Calvus as the latter begins his argument.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>292. The Water Clocks; Methods of a Prosecutor; Applause in the +Senate.</b>—Just as the chief prosecutor commences, the servitors +reappear and set close beside him a large glass vessel upon a wooden +stand, perforated to empty slowly into a second vessel beneath, and +when thus emptied the upper container is promptly refilled. Calvus +has been informed he can have “only four water clocks” (about two +hours)—an outrageously insufficient number in his opinion, when many +an advocate can get twelve—but time must be given the other orators +and after that the Senate must discuss and vote.</p> + +<p>Speedily Calvus warms to his task, and in long periods of sonorous +Latin his voice resounds through the Curia. He delights to expand upon +the enormity of the crime of putting to death not a mere provincial, +not a simple Roman plebeian, but a Roman eques. His speech abounds with +elegant and apparently impromptu allusions, metaphors and similes—duly +practiced half a month before. He goes out of his way to pay an +extended and fulsome compliment to the benignity and liberality of the +Emperor in condescending to let the Senate settle the issue. Words at +length almost fail him when he calls on the Fathers in the name of +Justice, Virtue, Heavenly Vengeance, and all the other guardian deities +of the state to punish the hideous misdeeds of such a criminal as +Pedius.</p> + +<p>As he proceeds the Senate kindles at his eloquence. First his +personal friends who are sitting directly behind him begin to shout +“<i>Euge!</i>” and “<i>Sophos!</i>” Then the applause re-echoes from +all over the hall. Presently the occupants of the curule chairs on +the platform begin to clap, the consul half rises from his seat as if +transported by the oratory, and even Pedius’s own advocates politely +join in that applause which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_345">[345]</span> Calvus is professionally bound to return +with interest as soon as they begin to speak in turn.</p> + +<p>Soon, all too soon, for the orator, and for those senators who love +“the good old times,” when an advocate could thunder all day long, the +four water clocks are exhausted. Calvus subsides, to be immediately +surrounded by his friends who compare his efforts to those of Cato, +Hortensius, Cicero, and such later masters as Cornelius Tacitus; while +the freedman immediately speeds off to inform Gratia of the “wonderful +triumph” of her husband—a triumph of oratory, whatever be the actual +verdict.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>293. Speech for the Defendant: Methods of a Professional +Advocate.</b>—After order is restored a grave old senator—Quintus +Saturius—arises to answer the prosecutor. He is a professional +advocate of fame, but evil report has it that in his youth under +Domitian he was a <i>delator</i> (professional accuser), and won a +fortune by prosecuting the innocent victims of that bad Emperor’s +disfavor. Since then he has never been squeamish in accepting doubtful +causes. The law only allows him 10,000 sesterces ($400) as the fee +from each legal client, but the latter has plenty of indirect means of +showing his “gratitude,” and Saturius’s wealth now is enormous. This +morning he has carefully smeared eye-salve above his left eye—a token +that he is to speak for the defendant, not over the right as if for the +plaintiff. His toga also floats in billowy folds, his hands flash with +costly rings, and his powerful voice soon booms through the Curia.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_346" style="max-width: 750px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_346.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Cicero denouncing Catiline before the Senate</span>: +painting in modern Senate House in Rome.</p> + </div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_347">[347]</span></p> + +<p>Saturius does not waste time denying that many of Pedius’s misdeeds +have been proved, but he praises at great length his client’s +“glorious ancestry” and distinguished social connections. As for +the accusations,—what if he did abuse his office? Was a member of +the great house of the Annii to be held down to the sordid rules +befitting mere plebeians and freedmen? What if an eques <i>had</i> been +wrongfully done to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_346">[346]</span> death? Was not the fellow by birth a Phrygian who +had gained first citizenship and then the “narrow-stripe” merely by the +use of his wits? How could so great a man as the Proconsul of Asia be +expected to live on a beggarly salary of 1,000,000 sesterces ($40,000)?</p> + +<p>At this point Saturius’s voice begins in fact to tremble with pathos. +How can the Conscript Fathers bring themselves to disgrace all the +defendant’s distinguished relatives who just now are sitting behind +him in the gray togas of public mourning? Think of his distressed wife +whose father and all three uncles were at least prætors! Think of his +brother who had been killed bravely fighting the Parthians! Think of +his two sons whose public careers would be blighted by the disgrace of +their father! Think finally of the Senate itself—what contempt upon +the “Venerable Order” if one of its most prominent members should be +ruined on the testimony of mere provincials and upstarts! etc., etc.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>294. Concluding Speeches; Interrupting Shouts; Personal +Invectives.</b>—Saturius, ere concluding, works himself into a fine +passion. He also gets sallies of applause—mostly from the self-same +men who have just cheered Calvus. But at some of his assertions there +are murmurs of dissent, and even open shouts such as “Drop that +argument!” “Don’t insult our intelligence!” Finally, however, he +sits down, having exhausted his four water clocks. More cheers, more +congratulations, everybody swears to his neighbor the day is proving an +intellectual feast.</p> + +<p>The consul proclaims an interim; and the Conscript Fathers adjourn +to stretch their limbs, snatch a hasty collation provided by their +attendants and discuss the arguments. Then all resume when Marcus +Petreius, Pedius’s junior advocate, continues for the defense. The +hostile attitude of the Senate has impressed the defendant’s counsel, +and Petreius enters into an elaborate appeal for mercy, with many fine<span class="pagenum" id="Page_348">[348]</span> +invocations of the “Divine Clemency,” and reminders of how any senator +might some day find himself in Pedius’s horrid predicament. Petreius +is allowed “less water” than Saturius; he gets considerable applause, +however, when he finishes, but knowing members shake their heads: “They +cheer his oratory and not his cause.”</p> + +<p>In fine mettle therefore Titus Atilius, Calvus’s associate, next sums +up for the prosecution. Atilius is a relatively young man, as yet only +an ex-quæstor; and to-day is his glorious opportunity. Carried away +on a flood of invective, he allows himself, as is permitted by usage, +to cover not merely Pedius but even Pedius’s advocate with a storm of +bitter personalities. When he thunders against Saturius’s sycophantic +career there are wild shouts of applause from all over the Curia; and +more applause follows when he ridicules certain physical infirmities of +the miserable defendant.<a id="FNanchor_183" href="#Footnote_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a> Pedius rises with supplicatory gestures +and appeals loudly to the ten tribunes, “Oh, very noble tribunes +protect me!”—but the ten sit stolid and silent upon their bench and +he subsides with blenching cheeks. His advocates, exchanging knowing +glances, are seen to be gathering up their tablets.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>295. Taking the Opinion of the Senate.</b>—At last Atilius’s +“water” has likewise ended. Amid another whirlwind of applause and +rush of congratulating friends he takes his seat. The consul Varus +rises with extreme dignity, and beckons with his hand. Every senator +instantly is tense and silent.</p> + +<p>“We do now,” proclaims Varus, “take the opinions (<i>sententiæ</i>) +of the Conscript Fathers concerning that which it befits should be +done in the case of Sextus Annius Pedius this day arraigned and tried. +You have heard his accusers and his advocates. I shall call the album +of the Senate.”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_349">[349]</span> He holds up tablets whereon are listed the senators +in order of official rank and precedence; then turns to the members +seated directly before him, the magistrates-elect for the ensuing year, +summoning first the senior consul designate, Appius Lupercus:</p> + +<p>“<i>Dic, Appie Luperce!</i>”</p> + +<p>Appius Lupercus, an elderly aristocrat, the head of an ancient family, +rises amid a portentous hush. The “right to speak first,” possessed by +the Emperor when present, is invaluable. All the orators for either +side have really aimed their best arguments toward Lupercus, knowing +his prerogative, but his “cold looks” toward Pedius have already fallen +as ice upon the friends of the defendant. His voice now carries through +the expectant Curia.</p> + +<p>“Conscript Fathers:—It is true that Sextus Pedius is a man of exalted +birth; the more shame, therefore, that he has disgraced the name of +a <i>clarissimus</i> of the Venerable Senate. It is true his victims +were either provincials or citizens of provincial origin:—the law is +impartial, the Roman Empire has been established upon the inflexible +rule of ‘piety’ giving alike to gods and to men that which is lawfully +their due. If he has outraged provincials the case is clear; long ago +the Emperor Tiberius expressed the ruling policy when he said, ‘A good +shepherd shears his sheep but does not flay them.’ If Pedius has also +outraged citizens, much more equites, wherein lies the boast ‘<i>Civis +Romanus sum!</i>’, if these men, whatever their original birth, cannot +demand lawful vengeance at our hands?</p> + +<p>“My opinion, therefore, is this: let the defendant’s ill-gotten bribes +be confiscated to the treasury, and let Pedius himself be banished from +Rome, and Italy; let his lesser confederates be banished from Rome, +from Italy, and also from the Province of Asia. Since also Publius +Calvus and Titus Atilius have pleaded the cause of the provincials +with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_350">[350]</span> diligence and fearlessness, let them receive the thanks of the +Senate. Such is my opinion!”</p> + +<p>A great murmur rises—applause with some shouts of dissent. “Hangman!” +“Butcher!” rise from the little knot of Pedius’s relatives. Then Varus +calls on the second consul designate, Atticus, who, rising stiffly, +says with clear voice, “I agree with the most noble Lupercus,” and +promptly takes his seat.</p> + +<p>One by one the ex-consuls, each summoned by turn, announce that they +also agree with Lupercus, until one cynical old aristocrat, the +ex-consul Gavius, notorious for his own sensual life and the manner +whereby he enriched himself in Africa, yet powerful through his vast +wealth and influential connections, announces that he is confident +the Senate should show mercy. “Let Pedius disgorge the money and +forfeit the priesthood of Mars which he holds—that will be punishment +enough. A good lesson has been taught and the unfortunate man has been +disgraced enough already.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>296. An Uproar in the Senate: an “Altercation.”</b>—Instantly +the Senate is in an uproar. The shorthand reporters<a id="FNanchor_184" href="#Footnote_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a> can hardly +take down all the interrupting shouts that are tossed back and forth: +“How now, Marcus Æmilius Gavius, will you let such a scoundrel go?” +“What are those provincials but scum anyway!” etc., etc. A violent +“altercation” follows, several senators rising and demanding that +Gavius explain himself. The old reprobate however cleverly stands his +ground, and is vigorously cheered by many who will not actually support +his proposal.</p> + +<p>At last the house cools down. The taking of the opinion now proceeds +among the prætors-designate and the ex-prætors.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_351">[351]</span> No senator can +speak twice, but each man, when on his feet, has great liberty of +action—several of the younger men half ironically support Gavius, and +one senator earns unpopularity by insisting on his right of the floor +and calling attention to the embezzlements reported in the African +municipality of Utica—a matter quite beside the question. Two or three +long and eloquent speeches are delivered in favor of Lupercus’s stern +proposal. It is growing late and nobody wants to call on the ex-ædiles +and other junior senators,<a id="FNanchor_185" href="#Footnote_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a> and cries are rising, “<i>Divide! +Divide!</i>”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>297. Taking a Vote of the Senate. A Sentence of +Banishment.</b>—Varus again rises, “Conscript Fathers: you have heard +the opinions of these very noble men of consular and prætorian rank. +Two propositions are before you. Those who favor the penalties for +Sextus Pedius proposed by Appius Lupercus let them walk to the right! +Those the lesser penalty proposed by Marcus Gavius to the left.”</p> + +<p>The hundreds of togas rise together. Gavius is not without a certain +minority of supporters who start with him to the left, but most of +these, seeing how many ex-consuls of birth and character are following +Lupercus, desert Gavius, who is left with only a trifling band around +him. There is no need for Varus to count the result. Even while the +Senate is dividing the luckless Pedius, with his kinsmen and advocates, +is seen gliding through a side exit. It is the defendant’s right thus +to anticipate sentence and to slip away with as little ignominy as +possible into exile.</p> + +<p>At a word from the consul the senators return to their seats. The long +shadows of evening are stretching through the doors of the Curia, as +Varus announces that Sextus Pedius having been convicted of high crimes +is banished from Rome and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_352">[352]</span> from Italy. He must quit the city to-morrow. +He must quit Italy in twenty days. Should he tarry or return he will +be “cut off from fire and water,” and dealt with “after the ancient +custom”—<i>i.e.</i> he will be scourged with his head in a forked +stake, then sewed in a bag with a cock, a dog, and a viper, and flung +into the sea.</p> + +<p>Everybody is anxious to be gone. In the great mansions six hundred +expensive cooks are fuming over the delay to six hundred expensive +dinners. The terrible fate of Pedius will make talk for all Rome +through ten days. Varus raises his hand and at length pronounces +the sonorous ancient formula, “<i>Nihil vos moramur, patres +conscripti</i>”—“We detain you no longer, Conscript Fathers.”</p> + +<p>Publius Calvus and Titus Atilius are escorted homeward by groups of +fellow senators as if they were triumphant generals. Their skill, +eloquence, pathos, and legal learning are praised to the skies. Each +is assured that “he has rendered himself and his friends immortal!” +Each to-morrow will begin rewriting his speech, introducing many +fine arguments which he has had no time to utter.<a id="FNanchor_186" href="#Footnote_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a> These will be +embalmed in his published works which will be presumably carried some +day, tied to poles, in a conspicuous place in his funeral procession.</p> + +<p>So ends a typical meeting of the Senate under the Empire; noble forms, +much dignity, a perfect river of eloquence, a judicial decision in +this case conforming with justice, but handling no great issues of +diplomacy, high finance, or peace or war. Already Pedius’s friends are +consoling him, as he drearily prepares to retire to Macedonia: “In a +few years at worst we can get your pardon from the Emperor.”</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_353">[353]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER XVIII<br> +<span class="subhed">THE COURTS AND THE ORATORS. THE GREAT BATHS. THE PUBLIC PARKS AND +ENVIRONS OF ROME</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>298. Roman Court Procedure Highly Scientific.</b>—If Publius Calvus +does not have to attend the Senate, two places will assuredly devour +a great part of his normal day—the court-house and the public baths. +Even if he is not plaintiff, defendant, or witness, like every man of +his class he delights in listening to oratory, and etiquette requires +that, whenever one of his numerous friends argues a case, he, with as +many other senators and equites as possible should sit in the front +of the audience, to “lend their distinguished influence,” to lead the +salvos of applause, and even to stand up conspicuously behind the +orator at critical points in his argument.</p> + +<p>Roman courts are not like the Athenian dicasteries, huge juries of +many hundreds,<a id="FNanchor_187" href="#Footnote_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a> with tumultuous appeals from the letter of the +law to the emotions of the members. Personal influence has its part, +but everything is regulated, orderly, scientific. Cases which do not +involve the safety of the state or the fate of distinguished personages +are usually argued coldly, and with a nice attention to technicalities. +Your Roman jurisconsult (expert in the law) is as much superior to +an Athenian in developing the science of formal justice, as another +Athenian might be to a Roman, in breathing life into chiseled marble. +The administration of law is intricate. There are courts behind courts, +with final appeal either to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_354">[354]</span> the Senate (as we have just seen) or to +the Emperor.<a id="FNanchor_188" href="#Footnote_188" class="fnanchor">[188]</a> The “law’s delays” are perfectly well understood by +adroit advocates; and Martial records a case that took twenty years +while dragging through three successive courts—to the ruin of both +sets of litigants.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>299. The Great Tribunals in the Basilicas.</b>—If we visit the +great basilicas, we find two kinds of tribunals steadily functioning. +For much civil business there is the great “Court of the Centumviri,” +a board not of “One Hundred” but actually of one hundred and eighty +distinguished citizens, who sit sometimes all together, sometimes +divided into four groups for conducting trials simultaneously. Their +stronghold is the Basilica Julia. It is a great honor to argue before +the Centumviri, and every advocate exhausts his wiles to induce the +grave judges to pay him the highest compliment (as they did to Pliny +the Younger) by “suddenly leaping to their feet and applauding him as +if they could not help themselves.”</p> + +<p>The most of the higher litigation, however, goes before +<i>judices</i>. A <i>judex</i> may be one of the great panel of 4000 +citizens,—senators, equites, and plebeians of substance who can +be called upon to serve as a kind of jury for ordinary trials of +importance. The size of such a jury depends on the nature of the case +as provided by statute,—you can have from 32 members up to a full +100. There is a high judge over the entire body, either the prætor, +or a professional expert in the law, the <i>judex quæstionis</i>, who +controls the presentation of evidence and the strictly technical parts +of the trial.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_355">[355]</span></p> + +<p>After the evidence has been submitted, orally or in writing, and the +orators have exhausted themselves, the jurors take small wax-covered +tablets and vote, each man marking simply letters: A = <i>absolvo</i>, +“Not guilty,” C = <i>Condemno</i>, “Guilty,” N.L. = <i>Non Liquet</i>, +“No verdict.” A bare majority can either acquit or condemn, but, of +course, no man is condemned on a plurality, and a tie means acquittal. +If “No verdict” is the decision, the case can still go to another +trial. Roman juries, therefore, do not have to be locked up for days to +compel them to agree.</p> + +<p>However, this jury system is often inconvenient and does not adapt +itself to that very technical justice in which the Roman jurisconsults +increasingly delight. More and more cases are being tried by a single +<i>judex</i>, or a small bench of <i>judices</i>, men highly trained +in the law, and especially appointed by the prætor or other high +official, to investigate a given case and report their findings. Under +the later Empire the large juries will disappear altogether, and a +few professional judges will become arbiters alike of the law and +the evidence—an excellent system from the standpoint of scientific +jurisprudence, but not so excellent if these judges become corrupt, +pliable, or subject to class prejudices.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>300. Great Stress on Advocacy.</b>—Whatever the tribunal may be, +great is the stress laid on the arts of the advocate. Calvus has served +a long probation arguing in the basilicas before his day of glory +came in the Senate. All the young Ciceros in the rhetoric schools +dream of the hour when they can stand in flowing togas before the +high raised platform of the judices, wave their arms, throw out their +voices, and plead the cause of some widow, or arraign some embezzler +or extortioner. The mere fact that senatorial speeches have to be +extremely careful, lest they trench upon imperial prerogative, puts +a greater premium upon private argument in the courts where usually +“Cæsar” has no interests.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_356">[356]</span></p> + +<p>The rewards of successful eloquence are great;<a id="FNanchor_189" href="#Footnote_189" class="fnanchor">[189]</a> and if the legal +fees are small, rich clients, at least, never fail with big New Year’s +presents, and with legacies in their wills. Besides there are no +governmental prosecuting attorneys. Criminal actions can be started by +any citizen against any possible offender. To reward such zeal, a good +part of the fines or confiscated property of convicted criminals goes +to the self-appointed prosecutor. It is thus easy to see how, under +Tiberius, Nero, and Domitian, the delators (“professional accusers”) +grew fat prosecuting wealthy senators for “treason.” These good days +for the profession seem over, but the incomes of certain of the +leading advocates are princely, some almost vying with those of the +earlier Vibius Crispus and Epirius Marcellus, who had over 200,000,000 +sesterces ($8,000,000) apiece.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>301. Cheap Pettifogging Lawyers.</b>—On the other hand Rome is +infested with starving pettifoggers, pretentious wretches, sleeping in +dirty tenements, and with hardly a decent toga to wear when they argue +on petty cases in the præfect’s court. Sometimes they get a better +class of client, hire a good robe and ring to wear at the trial, and +win the case in the Basilica. Their client will very likely decorate +the stairs to their tenement with palm leaves, but as the only fee<a id="FNanchor_190" href="#Footnote_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a> +send them a quantity of uncertain edibles—“a dried-up ham, a jar of +sprats, some veteran onions, or five flagons<span class="pagenum" id="Page_357">[357]</span> of [very cheap] wine that +has just sailed down the Tiber!” If any money is actually paid, lucky +the advocate who does not have to split his fee with some agent who has +secured the case for him!</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>302. Character Witnesses; Torture of Slave Witnesses.</b>—One thing +more concerning these trials must be noted: the testimony of Roman +citizens carries much greater weight than that of aliens, and the +unreliability of Græco-Levantines is notorious. Freeborn men, Roman or +provincial, testify under oath. Only accusers have the right to compel +the attendance of unwilling witnesses, but the defense can bring not +merely voluntary witnesses to the facts, but can present as many as ten +<i>laudatores</i>, character witnesses, and if men of high standing are +vigorous in their friends’ praises, their opinions will offset very +many ugly facts in the testimony.</p> + +<p>Frequently enough, however, the statements of slaves have to be taken. +These wretches, having little better status before the law than +animals, can only testify under torture. No master, nevertheless, +except in cases of treason, can ordinarily be compelled to let his +slaves testify <i>against</i> him, but it is assumed that torture is +necessary if a master voluntarily offers his slave as witness,—for +what slave would dare uncompelled to say anything unwelcome to his +master in view of the terrific flogging waiting after he gets home? +The situation in short as to slave testimony is substantially as in +Athens.<a id="FNanchor_191" href="#Footnote_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a> This use of the rack and flogging post is one of the worst +blots upon the highly scientific and usually reasonable and humane +judicial system of Rome.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>303. Written Evidence; High Development of the Advocate’s +Art.</b>—On the other hand much weight is given to reliable written +evidence. Public documents from the record office, and the careful +entries on bankers’ ledgers are continually<span class="pagenum" id="Page_358">[358]</span> being introduced as +testimony. Much of the forensic oratory also is of a high order. The +rhetoric schools have not taught their better pupils in vain; despite +much silly display, “appeals to the emotions,” and artificiality, the +art of advocacy has never completely lost touch with the promotion +of justice; and usually the verdict goes still to him who best meets +Cato the Elder’s pungent definition of the true orator, <i>vir bonus, +dicendi peritus</i> (“the good man versed in the art of speech”), +and who recalls that great republican’s classic injunction for all +advocates—<i>rem tene, verba sequentur</i> (“Grasp the subject and the +words will follow”).<a id="FNanchor_192" href="#Footnote_192" class="fnanchor">[192]</a></p> + +<p>In all matters not touching certain high interests the Roman courts are +perhaps as disinterested and clean as human tribunals can well be, and +the average <i>judex</i> is charged with a passionate desire to do that +which is formally right. In the courts the spirit of Rome is often to +be seen at its best.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>304. Popularity and Necessity of the Baths.</b>—As the afternoon +advances, however, unless the case is extremely urgent, or the +advocates unwontedly skilful, the impassive toga-clad figures upon +the high seats of the tribunals begin to show signs of uneasiness. +The pleaders themselves reach in turn a suitable climax, as the +last filling of the water clocks runs out;—if necessary they can +finish their castigations or their excuses to-morrow. The courts are +adjourned, and judges, litigants, advocates, spectators, all hasten +from the Basilicas possessed with the thought which is common to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_359">[359]</span> nigh +every man in Rome not of the most unfortunate class—“To the Baths!”</p> + +<p>The warm Italian climate makes frequent ablutions not merely +comfortable but necessary, but in the stern old days of the +earlier Republic Seneca specifically assures us that the fathers +of Rome were not wont to wash all over oftener than once a week +(<i>nundinæ</i>).<a id="FNanchor_193" href="#Footnote_193" class="fnanchor">[193]</a> Long before the age of Hadrian, however, a daily +bath became a personal necessity. No dinner can be enjoyed without it. +No respectable man can feel comfortable deprived of it.</p> + +<p>As the bathing habit grows, its luxury and elaboration grow +correspondingly. The daily bath becomes a social ceremony, and the +bathing place becomes almost as indispensable as the forum, or the +triclinium. Other peoples and ages may equal or surpass the Romans in +actual cleanliness; none can develop institutions really corresponding +to the enormous public <i>thermæ</i> scattered over the capital.<a id="FNanchor_194" href="#Footnote_194" class="fnanchor">[194]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>305. Luxurious Private Baths.</b>—Probably every senator and all +the more pretentious equites have sumptuous private baths in their +own mansions. Here they can go when visits to the public thermæ are +inconvenient, or to refresh themselves between the long courses of +their great dinner parties.</p> + +<p>The luxury of these private baths can be so prodigious as to afford +constant texts for the Stoical philosophers. Seneca has waxed almost +frantic telling how an aristocrat feels somewhat poverty-stricken +unless “the walls [of his bath] shine with great costly slabs, and +marbles of Alexandria<span class="pagenum" id="Page_360">[360]</span> tricked out with reliefs in stone from Numidia, +and with the whole ceiling elaborately covered with all varieties +of paintings, and unless Thasian marbles inclose the swimming pool, +and the water gushes out of silver taps”; likewise “how many a rich +freedman adorns his baths with fine collections of statues and a +multitude of pillars supporting nothing but serving only as ornaments.” +Essential, too, are such private baths for those so devoted to the +enjoyment that they insist on bathing several times a day.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>306. Government and Privately Owned Public Baths: Both Very +Popular.</b>—Even great nobles, however, enjoy the society and +recreations afforded by the public establishments; and there is often +no better way for a rich senator to display pomp and circumstance than +to enter one of the huge thermæ followed by a long train of slaves, +freedmen, and clients. Men of business, and, of course, mere toilers +must visit the baths when their duties give temporary leisure, but for +everybody who can control his time there is one preferable period—the +eighth or ninth hour, two or three <span class="allsmcap">P.M.</span> It is around this time +that the bath attendants heat all their huge tanks to boiling and make +ready with an endless supply of anointing oils and “strigils” (metal +scrapers) to care for the onrush of the multitudes.</p> + +<p>There are about sixteen enormous public baths in Rome owned by the +government, although often their care is leased to contractors. Small +baths, privately owned, opened to anybody at a tolerable fee and +managed solely for profit, exist in addition all over the city, and +nearly nine hundred stand licensed on the City Præfect’s books. Some of +these privately owned baths are elegant establishments, offering great +luxuries at corresponding prices.</p> + +<p>The keepers of a bath-house (<i>balneatores</i>) rank low in social +estimation, for many of their places are the scenes of gross reveling +and debauchery; but there is excellent money in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_361">[361]</span> the business. Their +baths have names something like inns, and going about the metropolis, +we have noticed the “Baths of Daphne,” “The Æolian,” “The Diana,” “The +Mercury,” or they are simply called from the names of the owners, as +“Faustinian Baths” or “The Crassian.” On a signboard one can read +that the “Thermæ of Marcus Crassus” offer both salt- and fresh-water +baths.<a id="FNanchor_195" href="#Footnote_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>307. The Great Baths of Trajan: Baths, Club-House, and +Café.</b>—However, if one would see and meet the world, a visit to the +great public baths is absolutely necessary. Some of these are located +on the outskirts of the capital; for example, the magnificent Baths +of Agrippa stand near the Pantheon in the Campus Martius; but only a +short distance from Publius Calvus’s mansion on the Esquiline rise what +are, perhaps, the finest public thermæ as yet existing in Rome, those +of Trajan, which were rebuilt on the site of a similar establishment +earlier erected by Titus.<a id="FNanchor_196" href="#Footnote_196" class="fnanchor">[196]</a></p> + +<p>The Baths of Trajan constitute more than a vast establishment where +perhaps a thousand persons can bathe in the various tanks and pools +simultaneously. They supply many of the needs which another age +will meet partly by the club-house and partly by the café. They are +frequented by women as well as men, although the former are expected +to make their visits particularly during the morning hours and certain +special rooms are set aside for their use. These rules, however, are +often violated, and scenes can take place at the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_362">[362]</span> Baths of Trajan which +from the standpoint of a later time are simply indescribable.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>308. Heterogeneous Crowds in the Great Baths.</b>—One of the +glories of the great thermæ is their apparent democracy. Any freedman +is entitled to make use of them, although there are doubtless special +recreation and reposing rooms reserved for the rich elect. In theory +the public baths are free, but except on gala occasions when the +Emperor wishes to win popularity, there is usually a standard charge +for admission of a <i>quadrans</i>, a small copper coin (about ¼ cent). +This simply covers the expense of the attendants who look after one’s +clothes, and provides the oil for anointing—the use of the magnificent +building goes for nothing.</p> + +<p>In such a place persons of every station can be seen mingling +together, social barriers partially break down, and a delightful +informality prevails. It is recorded of Hadrian that when he is in +the city, he proves his “liberal” habits by frequenting the public +baths and bathing in the great pools along with the meanest of his +subjects. Every afternoon, therefore, the thermæ are the scenes of +intensely bustling life. The noise rising from their great halls is +terrific—the shouting, laughing, splashing, running, exercising, going +on continuously.<a id="FNanchor_197" href="#Footnote_197" class="fnanchor">[197]</a></p> + +<p>The Romans are preëminently a sociable people. They delight in the free +and easy contacts of the baths. What place has witnessed more financial +bargains struck, quarrels started or abated, lawsuits arranged, +marriage treaties negotiated, philosophical theories spun, artistic +points discussed, or even matters of imperial policy promoted than the +thermæ of Trajan? At the thermæ are continued all those matters you +talked over in the Forum this morning and which you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_363">[363]</span> will finish on the +supper couches to-night. The place, however, to a stranger is utterly +bewildering in its hugeness, its noise and the hurrying of its crowds +and its complexity, and few scenes in Rome could be more novel to a +visitor from another civilization.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_363" style="max-width: 535px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_363.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Plan of Roman Public Baths</span>: partly conjectural.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>309. Entering the Thermæ.</b>—We can follow Calvus as he approaches +by the great southern portal which looks down from the slopes of the +Esquiline upon the great gray cylinder of the Flavian Amphitheater. +Before us stretches an enormous portico, fronting a high masonry +wall, of course crowned at many points with statues. The entrance +is relatively<span class="pagenum" id="Page_364">[364]</span> narrow in order to control the thousands of persons +streaming inside, each passing his copper to the attendants at the +gate. But once past the barrier, we see before us the vista, apparently +not of a bathing establishment, but of an ample, inclosed park, girded +on every side with handsome porticoes, scattered with trees, bright +shrubbery, and groups of sculpture, but with the domes seemingly of a +magnificent palace rising from the middle of the area.</p> + +<p>This park is teeming with life; young men in the scantiest of costume +are running races on a long sandy track, others are tossing ball, +others engaged in a wrestling contest, Greek fashion, before a crowd +of spectators wedged upon seats along a kind of stadium. In a kind +of kiosk, or small temple, in a remote corner behind the shrubbery a +venerable man with the long beard of a philosopher is expounding the +theory of atoms to a small but select audience. We are told that there +are also <i>aulæ</i> for learned conventicles, likewise excellent +libraries within the central building.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>310. Interior of the Baths: the Cold Room +(<i>Frigidarium</i>).</b>—This building itself is an enormous mass +of brick and concrete, formed into correspondingly enormous vaulted +apartments and domes, their entire surface covered with polished +marbles or at least with brilliantly colored stucco. At every point +there are statues, singly and in groups, historical and mythological, +in the round or in high reliefs, in stone and in bronze. Particularly +to be noted is a marvelous if overrealistic Laocoön group destined to +be celebrated through the coming ages.<a id="FNanchor_198" href="#Footnote_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a></p> + +<p>It boots little to describe all the special chambers and features of +the Baths of Trajan; we can only notice those prime features common +to all public thermæ even in the provincial cities. The great mass of +visitors makes for the hall of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_365">[365]</span> <i>frigidarium</i> (“cold room”), +a vast unheated space, albeit comfortable enough on a warm Italian +afternoon. Here they toss off their garments, to their own personal +slaves if they are visitors of consequence, although there is a great +force of regular attendants (<i>capsarii</i>) whose prime business it +is to take charge of togas and tunics. For all their pains, thefts of +clothes in the baths are very common and give rise to frequent uproars.</p> + +<p>Once stripped, even the gravest and oldest visitors are likely to +indulge in all kinds of gymnastics and horseplay. If they do not go +outside to limber themselves with tossing ball at trigon (see p. <a href="#Page_206">206</a>) +or with amateur races in the stadium, there are plenty of diversions +in the frigidarium itself. One can behold the “Very Noble” Varus, the +presiding consul, forgetful of all official dignity, competing with an +imperial legatus, both with their hands tied behind them and trying +by leaning backward to touch their heads against the tips of their +toes; while a prætor, an hour earlier an austere judge in the Basilica +Æmilia, is leaping up and down “murdering a good song by trying to sing +it.”<a id="FNanchor_199" href="#Footnote_199" class="fnanchor">[199]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>311. The Great Swimming Pool and the <i>Tepidarium</i>.</b>—All +this is usually preliminary to a splashing plunge into the clear cool +<i>natatio</i>, the great swimming pool of unheated water, which is +nearly 200 feet long by 100 broad, and in which scores of Rome’s +noblest dignitaries now are to be seen splashing, swimming, and +cavorting, with perfect self-respect beside a much greater number of +the plebeians. For the many who do not prefer a warm bath, this is +sufficient refreshment on a summer day, and presently they will call +their attendants to bring towels, strigils, and ointments and hasten +home. But your true <i>habitué</i> makes almost as much of his baths +as of his dinners. He delights in hot baths and all the refreshments<span class="pagenum" id="Page_366">[366]</span> +that go with them. “People want to be parboiled,” once declared Seneca +disgustedly.</p> + +<p>A hot bath involves an elaborate process. Often one will omit the +frigidarium with its cold shock, or take it later. In any case one +goes on to a second enormous chamber, perhaps the finest in the whole +building. A majestic dome soars over broad pavement. The pillars and +the fretwork on the ceiling and vaulting groan with heavy gilding. The +groups of statues flanking each of the huge marble-incrusted piers are +themselves of heroic size. The light streams down over the polished +marbles of the walls and pendentives, upon hundreds of persons lolling +about on stone benches, conversing, or lazily meditating. A warm mist +is rising; one feels as if in a plant house of tropical exotics, while +the elaborate mosaic designs are pleasantly warm under one’s bare feet.</p> + +<p>Such luxury of course is enjoyed in the <i>tepidarium</i> where +the bathers are gently warmed before the actual hot bath. It is an +oblong hall, nearly as large as the great cold swimming tank,<a id="FNanchor_200" href="#Footnote_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a> +and, as stated, the decorations are almost overpowering in their +richness. Anybody will explain that the floors are composed largely of +hollow tiles through which warm air of just the right temperature is +being continually forced from the great system of charcoal furnaces +(“hypocausts”) located in the substructures of the thermæ.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>312. The Hot Baths (<i>Caldaria</i>): Their Sensuous Luxury.</b>—At +intervals some person rises from the couches and hastens away to one +of the smaller chambers located at the four corners of the tepidarium. +These are the actual <i>caldaria</i> (hot baths), wherein a perpetual +fine steam is rising. The water here is so hot that only experienced +bathers can find a plunge in the large porphyry tanks enjoyable. If +one can<span class="pagenum" id="Page_367">[367]</span> endure the heat, however, soon it becomes a kind of stupid +bliss to lie back motionless in the heated water, gazing upward to the +vaulted ceiling which is skilfully painted in a deep blue interspersed +with trees, foliage, birds, and gilt stars, as if one were dropping off +to slumber in the forest some summer evening! If the acme of life is +merely sensuous enjoyment, what can existence offer greatly surpassing +this!</p> + +<p>After you have lain quiescent in the caldarium until its pleasure +has begun to pall, the proper thing next is to pass to the +<i>laconicum</i>. Here the hypocausts have heated the floor and walls +with an intense dry heat. The bathers loll again upon marble slabs, and +first are dried off and then burst into a profuse perspiration. The +ceremony of the bath is at last over.</p> + +<p>Your slaves or the regular attendant now will scrape you down with +the thin flexible bronze strigils, rub you thoroughly with towels, +and anoint you with unguents, the more costly and highly perfumed the +better. In the numerous small chambers around the great laconicum, open +for special fees, there is a greater luxury still;—here such elderly +magnates as Varus, or even young noblemen of the more effeminate type, +will be elaborately massaged and finally rubbed down with very soft +woolen blankets, by at least three expert masseurs working together. +After such an experience surely body and mind ought to be prepared for +the pleasures of the dinner party.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>313. Restaurants, Small Shops, and Sports in or around the +Baths.</b>—Very much more might be added about the Great Baths. For +those people who wish to linger until the edge of meal time, there is +no need to go hungry. Close by the entrance are numerous restaurants +(<i>popinæ</i>) of more than ordinary elegance. Here you can send your +slave for sweet cakes, slices of toasted honey bread, sausages, eggs, +and like viands; and in the great frigidarium and tepidarium the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_368">[368]</span> +peddlers from these restaurants are always going about with trays of +such food, crying their wares and making the ordinary bedlam so much +the greater. Directly in the thermæ themselves are small shops for +the sale of fine perfumes and unguents; and often in the corridors +and antechambers you can find crowds gazing at special displays of +paintings, or of new statuary—for the public baths are practically the +art galleries of Rome.</p> + +<p>As for the frequenters of the baths, here even more than in the fora +are the trysting spots for parasites. Let an approachable nobleman be +seen lolling at ease in the tepidarium and he is instantly spotted by +some dinner hunter. Innumerable are the attentions that can then be +paid him. Does he wish to play handball?—The parasite retrieves for +him. Does he lay aside a fine garment?—At once “his remarkable taste” +is praised to the skies. Does he lie perspiring in the laconicum? +His “friend” tries to anticipate the slaves in wiping the sweat from +his brow. No act is too obsequious—all in hopes of hearing those +delightful words, “Come home and dine!” In the halls of the women +similar scenes are enacted, but we cannot pursue them.</p> + +<p>At last the sun dials that stand in every open spot around the thermæ +indicate that the afternoon is well spent. From the laconicum the +refreshed bathers return to the milder tepidarium, to recover from the +shock of the intense heat and to resume their garments. Then the crowds +all hasten out again. Some of the privately owned bathing-places may +remain open all night, but the great thermæ, lately the scene of such +boisterous life, stand vast, dark, and empty.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>314. The Great Porticoes along the Campus Martius. The Park System +towards the Tiber.</b>—The public baths are not the only places for +daily enjoyment which a solicitous government has provided for the +quirites. The fora are limited and the city proper is very closely +built, but around its<span class="pagenum" id="Page_369">[369]</span> outskirts and especially to the north and west +there is a genuinely magnificent park system. The beginnings of this +are reached after you go through the Forum of Trajan and follow along +“Broadway.” Here are the great porticoes and promenades of the Sæpta +Julia. The famous stores (see p. <a href="#Page_228">228</a>) are mostly on the east side of +the avenue verging off towards the slopes of the Quirinal, but the west +side, going clear across the broad Campus Martius to the Tiber, is more +strictly public property.</p> + +<p>This wide level area formed by the great bend in the river has +long since ceased to be a mere parade ground for the army. There +are broad masses of greenery, grateful shade trees, spreading over +neatly graveled walks, as well as literally miles of lofty porticoes +stretching in every direction and giving comfortable places for +strolling in bad weather. The greatest of these porticoes is, of +course, the long Sæpta Julia, but there is a succession of others, so +that you can almost wander from the Column of Trajan across the Campus +clear to the Ælian Bridge completely defiant of any rain.</p> + +<p>In the open pleasure grounds there are always people exercising without +the restraints inevitable at the thermæ, playing ball, wrestling, +exhibiting horses and chariots, as well as very many children chasing +about with hoops. If legionaries are passing through the city, their +leathern tents probably stand here, and here, too, can be held all the +vast open-air pageants which cannot accommodate themselves inside any +building.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>315. Public Buildings upon the Campus Martius.</b>—Out of the lofty +trees, however, there rise still loftier structures. Two of the great +public thermæ, those of Nero and Agrippa, are here upon the Campus +Martius. In this region, also, are three of the principal theaters, +that of Pompeius, accommodating some 25,000 people, and two others +(Theaters of Marcellus and Balbus) only slightly smaller. Here is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_370">[370]</span> the +Flaminian Circus and the Amphitheater of Taurus for those horse races +and gladiator fights which do not demand the huge Circus Maximus or +Flavian. Here again is the golden-roofed Pantheon and a great number +of other temples to such ill-assorted gods as the Egyptian Serapis +and Isis, Neptune, Minerva of the Campus, and the old Latin goddess +Juturna. Notable, too, are the triumphal arches raised across several +of the broad avenues.</p> + +<p>You can in fact wander on across this region from one marvelous +structure to another until the eye and brain become weary trying to +enumerate, much more to comprehend the succession of buildings every +one of which is a triumph of marble and of sculpture. Pressing on to +the marge of the Tiber itself, the river above the commercial bridges +is seen covered with gay pleasure skiffs plying about under bright +flags. The shores are lined with handsome little houses, usually +decorated in the doors with potted shrubs or boughs of foliage. +Innocent they look in the day time but at night when their windows +blaze with lamps they will be veritable traps of iniquity for the +enjoyment and then the ruin of the unwary.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>316. The Tombs of Hadrian and Augustus.</b>—Across the river near +its main bend, can be noticed the green slopes of the hill of the +Vatican uncrowned as yet by any temple of fame, but with the suburban +Circus of Nero stretching along its slopes. Directly across the +current, also, is rising the enormous circular mass of the Mausoleum +of Hadrian, with the derricks and staging still above it swinging to +place the last of that galaxy of statues which will look down upon the +Tiber.<a id="FNanchor_201" href="#Footnote_201" class="fnanchor">[201]</a></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_371" style="max-width: 398px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_371.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Castle of St. Angelo</span>: Tomb of Hadrian in its +present state.</p> + </div> + +<p>We do not cross over to the new structure, but proceeding along the +bank to the point where the Via Flaminia<span class="pagenum" id="Page_372">[372]</span> continuing “Broadway” bears +down beside the river, we see before us the older but very majestic +Mausoleum of Augustus. It lifts itself fully 220 feet in the air, its +base composed of a vast cylinder coated with sculptured marbles, above +which there is heaped a conical mound of earth, planted with evergreen +trees, while on the summit stands a colossal statue of its mighty +builder himself. Within repose the urns not merely of Augustus, but of +nearly all the worthier members of the imperial families.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_372" style="max-width: 679px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_372.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Tomb of Hadrian.</span> <i>Restored after Von +Falke.</i></p> + </div> + +<p>These are only some of the features of the Campus Martius which foreign +visitors such as Strabo acclaim as the most remarkable section of +Rome, if not the one most charged with her past history. Time fails +to visit the other great public pleasure-grounds upon the slopes of +the Pincian—the “Gardens of Lucullus” and the “Gardens of Sallust,” +or that other wide park northeast of the Esquiline, the “Gardens<span class="pagenum" id="Page_373">[373]</span> of +Mæcenas,” presenting yet other vistas of shrubbery, groves, promenades, +and green lawns, interspersed with pleasure pavilions. It behooves us +now to return to Rome and to visit some of the most important centers +of its life—the theater, the amphitheater, and the circus.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_374">[374]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER XIX<br> +<span class="subhed">THE PUBLIC GAMES: THE THEATER, THE CIRCUS, AND THE AMPHITHEATER</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>317. Roman Festivals: Their Great Number.</b>—One thing only, +besides a long session of the Senate, ordinarily will keep men of the +class of Publius Calvus away from the great thermæ—the celebration of +one of the greater Public Games.</p> + +<p>The <i>Ludi Publici</i>, around which so large a part of Roman life +revolves, like the Pan-Hellenic games and similar Greek festivals, +always have religious origin; they are in honor of some god or group of +deities. But the secular has long intruded into their routine. Nobody +worries greatly about the fact that the <i>Ludi Apollinares</i> are +for the glory of Apollo, save perhaps as one adds an extra fervent +invocation of the Delphian god during the placing of wagers. The time +consumed by the Public Games represents a period of recreation and +festival, which other ages will find in Sundays and Saints’ Days.</p> + +<p>Altogether there are some 76 days per year normally set aside for these +great <i>Ludi Sollemnes</i>, including such prolonged periods as those +of the <i>Ludi Romani</i> or <i>Magni</i> which extend from September +4th to 18th, on a stretch, with several others for six days and more. +When to these periods are added various extra or very special holidays, +during which the ordinary life of the city is broken up, the courts are +closed, and only the most necessary labors of commerce and industry +are conducted, it is plain that the plebeians and even the slaves get +pretty ample respite in their year of toil. Without<span class="pagenum" id="Page_375">[375]</span> attempting a +close study of the official lists of holidays it is safe to say that +the average Roman gains many more periods of lawful vacation than the +laboring classes can enjoy in other ages,—another factor which tends +to make the metropolis abound with idlers and parasites.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>318. Passion for Public Spectacles: Mania for Gambling.</b>—Besides +the great public theaters, amphitheaters, and race courses (circuses) +there are many smaller private establishments. Good money can be made +from gladiator fights and chariot races, and they are often given by +speculators, although more frequently in a provincial town than in Rome.</p> + +<p>The passion for such spectacles and contests is incredible;—no +“baseball” or “football” of another era can so monopolize the popular +mind. The wagering on all kinds of contests is incessant in every +insula, shop, or mansion, and, of course, ordinarily it is entirely +lawful. Only the few select spirits cry out vainly against the passion, +although Juvenal’s famous protest will echo across the centuries, “The +Roman people who once gave commands, consulships, legions, and all +else now yearn simply for two things—<i>free bread and the Public +Games</i>!”</p> + +<p>The government doubtless encourages this tendency. If the multitude +is engrossed with the merits of two charioteers, so much less is the +scrutiny upon strange doings at the Palatine; yet even excellent +emperors give very elaborate spectacles as a kind of lawful tribute +to the multitudes of that city which affords them their right to the +purple. After the conquest of Dacia, Trajan celebrated his victory by +giving contests which lasted 123 days, during which 10,000 wild and +domestic animals were said to have been killed and 10,000 gladiators +fought, although probably most of the latter were allowed to survive. +So incessant in fact are the contests of some variety, that rare is the +day when a thunderous roar<span class="pagenum" id="Page_376">[376]</span> does not reverberate over the city telling +that the “Blue” or “Green” jockeys have won, or a favorite gladiator +has plunged home his trident.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_376" style="max-width: 699px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_376.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center"><span class="smcap">At the Theater Entrance.</span> <i>After Von +Falke.</i></p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>319. Expenses of Public Spectacles to Great +Officials.</b>—Naturally the cost of these contests is enormous. +The presidency and supervision of them is distributed around among +the magistrates, with the chief glories and burdens falling usually +upon the consuls and prætors.<a id="FNanchor_202" href="#Footnote_202" class="fnanchor">[202]</a> The State gives each official a +respectable sum to pay for the spectacles, but this falls far short +of the actual cost. The glory of presiding in the central box at the +Flavian Amphitheater or Circus Maximus is so great that a magistrate is +bound to sacrifice a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_377">[377]</span> good share of his entire patrimony in order to +make a fine display, to win the “Ave!” of the populace, and to hold up +his head among his noble rivals. When Hadrian was prætor, his kinsman, +Trajan the Emperor, gave him personally 4,000,000 sesterces ($160,000) +towards the cost of those games which the prætorship demanded.</p> + +<p>Our Publius Calvus, with no imperial connection, deliberately saved +and economized for years prior to his elevation to the prætorship, +and during his term of office he spent almost as much energy in +corresponding with a friend who was legatus of Numidia to get African +leopards, and negotiating with certain racing interests to secure a +very desirable jockey, as he did in settling a certain great lawsuit +before his tribunal. One good set of chariot races can cost 400,000 +sesterces ($16,000), and some of Calvus’s richer colleagues have found +the prætors’ games coming to a dozen times as much. He congratulated +himself, therefore, on getting out of office for about half their +outlay; as it was he had to live very sparingly for the next two years, +and sell off a villa.<a id="FNanchor_203" href="#Footnote_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>320. Indescribable Popularity of the Games.</b>—Everybody in Rome +attends the games. Once slaves were forbidden to be present, but that +law had broken down several generations ago. Few are the masters that +risk the unpopularity of refusing to let their familia frequent at +least the more famous contests. The waiting litter bearers, the idling +foot-boys, all the parasitical menials about the great mansions discuss +every coming event most frantically and wager all the coppers which +their masters give them upon the outcome, and their zeal is matched by +the ragged plebeians who infest the fetid insulæ, or sleep under the +porticoes.</p> + +<p>Seemingly half of Rome exists only from one chariot or gladiator +exhibition to another. Every contest is a display<span class="pagenum" id="Page_378">[378]</span> of social +importance. The front seats are assigned to the magistrates, who occupy +curule chairs in the order of their rank; there are other seats of +honor for the senators, others directly behind them for the equites. If +the Emperor is present, he sits in a special box (<i>cubiculum</i>), +which Trajan with democratic condescension caused to be thrown wide +open that all the spectators might see him.</p> + +<p>These seats of honor are free, but the great multitude of well-to-do +spectators are expected to purchase tickets for all the better ranges +behind the tiers of the equites.<a id="FNanchor_204" href="#Footnote_204" class="fnanchor">[204]</a> The prices ordinarily are low, +but concerning these tickets there is a complaint not unknown in +another age: that the box-officers (<i>locarii</i>) in charge buy up +many reserved seats for the more popular games, then sell them over +again at an outrageous advance. However, behind these reserved seats +there are still a certain number of others thrown open free to the +first comers, and behind these is a wide space where plebeians and +slaves can stand as a gesticulating, shouting, steaming mass, gazing +down on the spectacles below.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>321. The Theater Less Popular than the Circus or +Amphitheater.</b>—The public exhibitions are three general kinds,—the +theatrical performances, the circus races, and the gladiatorial combats.</p> + +<p>For the great masses, the theater can never have the same vulgar appeal +possessed by its two rivals; on the other hand some men of intelligence +and rank do not hesitate to dismiss the latter as “for the mob” and +affect a great contempt for charioteers and “Thracians.” Even the most +sophisticated Romans, however, never are true Athenians. Tragedies +dealing with profound human problems, such as won trophies for Æschylus +and Sophocles, would fall absolutely<span class="pagenum" id="Page_379">[379]</span> flat beside the Tiber.<a id="FNanchor_205" href="#Footnote_205" class="fnanchor">[205]</a> +There is even a growing distaste for the better kind of comedies. +What delights the Roman audience in the theater most is some kind of +elaborate horseplay.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_379" style="max-width: 671px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_379.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Theater at Pompeii.</p> + </div> + +<p>The stage as a rule is long and narrow, some 120 by 24 feet, and is +raised only about three feet above the orchestra where a chorus can +dance and parade.<a id="FNanchor_206" href="#Footnote_206" class="fnanchor">[206]</a> The rear of the stage has a fixed background +painted to represent the front of a palace; it is pierced by three +doors, and is adorned with columns and niches for the inevitable +statues of the Muses, of Apollo, and of like deities. A large curtain, +not dropped from above<span class="pagenum" id="Page_380">[380]</span> but rolled up from the bottom, can uncover the +most amazing spectacles upon this stage. Long ago Horace complained +of how a Roman audience would depart discontented if the play did not +require in its middle “either a bear or a boxing match.” For four hours +and more the curtain is “kept down” while “squadrons of horse and +bodies of foot are seen flying, while luckless kings with hands tied +behind their backs and chariots of all kinds and even ships go hurrying +along, and while spoils of ivory and Corinthian brass are borne by in +state.”</p> + +<p>There are, however, two kinds of performances more certain to crowd the +theater than these very cheap spectacular plays—they are the mimes and +pantomimes.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>322. The Mimes: Character Plays.</b>—The mimes are a native Latin +product, although they have a certain kinship with the Greek “New +Comedy.” They are character plays of everyday life without the actors’ +masks and buskins; and they are always coarse, vulgar, and in the +nature of roaring farces. The language is often exceedingly gross and +the situations frequently match the language. The actors wear a kind +of harlequin costume, extremely grotesque, and along with the chief +<i>mimus</i>, who takes the leading part, there is usually a second +actor who draws thunderous applause from the upper benches. He is the +<i>strepidus</i> or <i>parasitus</i>, a kind of pantaloon, a clown +with puffed cheeks and shaven head, who has to stand a great amount of +boisterous slapping from the chief actor.</p> + +<p>Other parts can be taken by women, who are forbidden to appear on the +stage in “legitimate” tragedy and comedy. Often the dances and postures +of these actresses are indescribably vulgar, and their reputation for +easy conduct is too well established. For all that, their presence +brings unsteady youths to the theaters like flies, and affairs with +actresses are quite normal things with a type of young bloods. Once<span class="pagenum" id="Page_381">[381]</span> +Cicero was defending a free and easy client, a certain Plancus. “He’s +accused of having run off with an actress?” declared the advocate. “Why +<i>that’s</i> just an amusement excellently sanctioned by custom!”</p> + +<p>The stories portrayed by the mimes correspond with their general +character:—a robber chief befooling the clumsy constables sent to +take him, a lover surprised by the return of a jealous husband and +forced to hide in a large box, a beggar who suddenly stumbles into a +fortune, a descent into the world of ghosts, episodes revolving around +the introduction of a very clever trained dog, etc. Some of the acting +is of high order, but there are few mimes which do not abound in lines +and situations extremely gross,—for all that the open-air theaters are +packed from morn until sunset.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>323. The Pantomimes: Their Real Art.</b>—All considered, the +pantomimes represent a higher degree of art. Here we have only one +actor, who, with the aid of a chorus and a great orchestra of lutes +and lyres, undertakes to tell a whole story merely by his dancing and +rhythmic motions. A really great <i>pantomimus</i> wins and deserves +the favor of highly cultivated aristocrats. Pylades and Bathyllus in +Augustus’s day had the fashionable world practically at their feet, and +Paris was one of the prime intimates of Nero.</p> + +<p>The greater the skill the fewer the words that need to be spoken; the +chanting of the chorus while the pantomimus is changing his costumes +giving hint enough of the characters he is portraying. The music, +florid and descriptive, keeps the audience in mood for the dancing. +All sorts of subjects can thus be portrayed, including those of old +Greek tragedies, the actor slipping from one character to another with +consummate art:—now he is Agamemnon, now Clytemnestra, now Orestes. +He can take male or female parts alternately, delineate the deepest +passions, and tell a whole story with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_382">[382]</span> what his admirers call his +“speaking hands,” and his “eloquence of dancing.”</p> + +<p>To see a great pantomimus, clad perhaps in fleshings of soft light +red Canunian wool, setting off perfectly his graceful figure, dance +through the story of how Achilles disguised as a maiden was discovered +by Ulysses and summoned away to the Trojan War, is a joy to the most +sophisticated and intellectual. The dancer can take many parts—the +fair youth concealed in the palace of Lycomedes, the embassy of Ulysses +and Diomedes, the young warrior betraying himself by his interest in +the helmet and cuirass concealed in the mass of gifts intended for +women;—the whole impersonation in short may be wonderful.</p> + +<p>Not all the dances, however, are so innocent. Many of the coarsest +stories in Græco-Roman mythology are acted out on the stage, and the +grosser they are often the louder the applause of the groundlings. +Nevertheless, the leading pantomimi rightly have the entrée to lordly +houses, enjoy great incomes, and are among the most admired personages +in Rome. They are outdistanced, however, by two sets of more vulgar +rivals—the charioteers and the gladiators.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>324. Extreme Popularity of the Circus.</b>—When a series of +superior contests is announced for the Circus all Rome seems to become +racing mad. Words fail to describe the excitement, the tense discussion +of the charioteers and their fours, the wave of betting from the inner +Palatine to the most sordid insula, and then the exuberant joy or +immoderate grief over the results.</p> + +<p>Superior folk try in vain to appear disdainful of these contests. +Thus Pliny the Younger has recorded his deep disgust that “so many +thousands of men should be eager, like a pack of children, to see +horses running time after time with the charioteers bending over their +cars.” “The multitude,” he asserted, “were not interested in the +speed of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_383">[383]</span> teams or the skill of the drivers, but solely in the +‘<i>racing colors</i>.’” “If in the middle of the race (he added) the +colors were changed, the enthusiasm of the spectators would change with +them, and they would suddenly desert the drivers and horses whom they +now recognized afar and whose names they shouted aloud. Such is the +influence and authority vested in one cheap tunic!”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>325. Popular Charioteers (<i>Aurigæ</i>): the Great Racing +Factions.</b>—It is all very well to write this, but neither Pliny +nor anybody else can prevent the greatest charioteers from enjoying +temporary incomes surpassing those of a majority of the senators. +Many of these lucky <i>aurigæ</i> are Moors, dark-skinned, hawk-eyed +rascals, with sharp white teeth and sinews of iron; but a considerable +sprinkling of them are Spaniards, as was that Diocles, whose heirs +proudly recorded on his tombstone that in a professional career of +twenty-four years he drove in 4257 races, and conquered 1462 times, +with total winnings of nearly 36 million sesterces (say $1,440,000). +He, however, was not the most fortunate—there are drivers on record +who boast of at least 3500 victories, though, of course, many of these +were probably won in the provinces.</p> + +<p>No sport will ever be more thoroughly standardized and professionalized +than that of the chariot races in Rome. When a magistrate or other +seeker for applause decides to give a series of contests he appeals to +the great circus syndicates (“factions”). There were originally only +the Red and the White; then the Blue and the Green have been added, and +finally the Purple and the Gold. Each faction maintains huge racing +stables with expert drivers, grooms, trainers, and veterinaries, as +well as many superb “fours” of horses.</p> + +<p>The donor of the games has to arrange with these organizations how +many contests he will require, each “faction” entering a chariot in +each race. Ten races a day is the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_384">[384]</span> minimum; twenty-four the ordinary +maximum. After the contracts have been signed and the programs posted +all over the city, anxious days follow for all concerned to insure an +honest race. The wagering is always so general and so reckless, that +infinite precautions are needful to keep the horses from being drugged, +the drivers from being bribed to throw the contests, or (if they prove +incorruptible) the charioteers from being poisoned enough to make them +lose. The tricks of the race-track will simply endure across the ages.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>326. The Circus Maximus.</b>—After such preparations and excitement +no wonder that people complain that the Circus Maximus is sometimes too +small. This long narrow depression between the Palatine and Aventine +has provided an excellent natural race course since the days of the +Tarquins. At first the slopes of the hills were simply lined with crude +wooden benches. By Julius Cæsar’s time many of these benches were made +of stone, and in all could seat at least 150,000 spectators. After a +great fire in 36 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> Claudius presently rebuilt the whole +structure so there are now seats, partly of marble and partly of wood; +and Trajan added still more tiers and more marble ornaments. At present +the Circus Maximus covers the enormous area of 600 by 2000 feet, and +it is declared that there is at least standing room, if not seats, for +385,000 spectators—a good fraction of the entire adult population of +Rome.<a id="FNanchor_207" href="#Footnote_207" class="fnanchor">[207]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>327. The Race-Track: Procession before the Races.</b>—Inasmuch +as horse races are not peculiar to the Imperial Age let a brief +description of the Great Circus and its contests suffice. The long +reaches of seats are, of course, portioned off to give the senators +and equites the coigns of vantage. There is a lofty imperial box +(<i>pulvinar</i>) on the northern side<span class="pagenum" id="Page_385">[385]</span> leading directly down from the +Palatine. Here the Emperor and his suite can refresh themselves, and +from a wide terrace command a marvelous view over the long area of the +immense hippodrome.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_385" style="max-width: 750px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_385.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Circus Maximus.</span> <i>Restoration by Spandoni.</i></p> + </div> + +<p>Down the center of this area runs its central “backbone” +(<i>spina</i>), forming a long low wall separating the outward and +inward tracks, adorned with an unusually elaborate set of statues, +columns upholding trophies, and even with one or two tapering obelisks +imported from Egypt. In a kind of open pavilion at either end of the +spina can be seen seven huge marble eggs and as many marble dolphins. +One of each of these will be removed as each lap is finished, there +being seven laps normally in every race.</p> + +<p>The great yellow race-track on gala occasions can be sprinkled with +some powerful perfumes, and with glittering particles of mica or with +red lead. When at last the multitudes have gathered, the contestants +enter in solemn procession by the Triumphal Gate at the extreme eastern +end of the Circus, and ahead of the array of chariots first of all +there goes the magistrate giving the games, himself in a magnificent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_386">[386]</span> +car and surrounded by a brilliant hedge of attendants on horse and +foot. Very likely he is then followed by certain priestly colleges in +pontifical vestments, by statues of deities piously borne on gilded +litters, by bands of trumpeters and harpists raising their clangor, and +then last, but not least, come the racing cars themselves.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>328. Beginning a Race in the Circus.</b>—The master of the games +takes his seat in the <i>podium</i>, the center of the reserved +benches near the end of the track. The chariots disappear in the +great line of <i>carceres</i>, “prison houses,” the carefully closed +stalls at the western end of the Circus. After due waiting, fidgeting, +chattering, wagering along the mountainous slopes of the benches, all +the trumpets blow together. Silence for an instant grips the tens of +thousands, while the president rises in his lodge and waves out a broad +<i>mappa</i>, a white cloth visible far up and down the entire circus.</p> + +<p>Instantly the doors of the carceres fly open; the six chariots<a id="FNanchor_208" href="#Footnote_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a> +dash forth at full bound. The aurigæ, in tight-fitting tunics of +the colors of their factions, stand erect in the light cars, the +reins looped around their waists, snapping the loose ends over the +flying horses. Instantly they have dashed to the three tall pillars +of the nearer goal (<i>meta</i>), and only by miraculous chance is +a disastrous collision avoided at the outset. Then the whole circus +rises and shouts together. The familiar figure of Scorpus the Moor, a +brown giant in the tunic of the Greens, shoots ahead. His magnificent +<i>quadriga</i> of bays have taken the wall at one leap. The flying +dust cloud, as the other five cars dash after him, almost dims the +sight of the race. The noise from the benches is deafening. The backers +of the trailing cars are in an agony.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>329. Perils of the Races; Proclaiming the Victors.</b>—Scorpus’s +chariot whirls around the lower goal like lightning<span class="pagenum" id="Page_387">[387]</span> and comes tearing +back on the opposite track, while each one of the balls and dolphins +is removed to indicate the progress of the race. The other cars press +hard; and as the teams gather speed it is a marvel how the drivers keep +their stand with the cars leaping hither and thither under them, their +wheels barely touching the flying track.<a id="FNanchor_209" href="#Footnote_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a></p> + +<p>Five times around they go, with Scorpus gallantly maintaining his lead. +Then at the sixth turn the “Gold” driver reins too sharply. His chariot +crashes over in a complete somersault, but, by a desperate maneuver +just as he is thrown, he whips out the knife held ready in his belt and +cuts the reins about his waist. By a miracle he is flung out sprawling +upon the yielding sands, yet escapes death under the car racing just +behind. The spectators, therefore, escape the brutal and familiar sight +of an auriga trampled or crushed to death by the rushing chariots and +horses. Meantime Scorpus losing not an instant has hurried again past +the upper goal; a frantic attempt by Cresconius, the “Red” driver just +behind, fails to head his steeds, and amid a deafening tumult he sweeps +past the president of the games to victory.</p> + +<p>The official <i>jubilatores</i> immediately stride out into the track +crying with loud voice the name of the winner, and the news is soon +flying all over the city. Nay, some of the outlying towns are speedily +informed of the general results, for a certain sports-loving senator +has come with a cage of homing pigeons, each colored to match one of +the factions. The instant Scorpus is acclaimed, green pigeons are +released to tell all the gamblers in Ostia and Præneste that the +“Green” cars have won the first round.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_388">[388]</span></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_388" style="max-width: 750px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_388.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Race in the Circus Maximus.</p> + </div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_389">[389]</span></p> + +<p>After the noise has subsided, the trumpets blow again, another set of +chariots is ready and the whole excitement is repeated. So the contests +keep up through the day. If there is a long interval between the +races, rope-dancers, acrobats, and trick-riders are ready to amuse the +populace. Probably at the end there will be the crowning and decisive +race between the winners of the preceding contests. If Scorpus can +triumph in this also, he will carouse with his companions, doubtless +more praised and fêted for one glad night than even the Emperor.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>330. Gladiatorial Contests Even More Popular than the +Circus.</b>—Yet Scorpus with all his adulation and ephemeral wealth +turns green with jealousy toward a rival for fame—the victorious +gladiator in the last combats in the Flavian. The sports of the arena +perhaps excite greater favor with the mob, betting more reckless, +passions more frantic than do even the contests of the Circus.</p> + +<p>The gladiatorial games are peculiar to Roman civilization; nothing +exactly like them will follow in later ages.<a id="FNanchor_210" href="#Footnote_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a> They illustrate +completely the pitiless spirit and carelessness of human life lurking +behind the pomp, glitter, and cultural pretensions of the great +imperial age. True it is that persons of intellectual tastes sometimes +affect greater contempt for these contests than they do for the Circus. +“No doubt the gladiators,” such men as Seneca write to one another, +“are criminals deserving their fate, but what have <i>you</i> done to +deserve being compelled to witness their last agonies?” No matter; +nothing will gain “popularity” for a ruler or for a magnate sooner than +announcing a fight in the arena.</p> + +<p>The very best Emperors arrange elaborate series of combats—perhaps +with a sigh in their hearts, as colossal and bloody bribes which must +be thrown constantly to the mob; and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_390">[390]</span> Imperator, great officials, +senators, priests, nay, the Vestal Virgins themselves, will all be +on hand in the reserved front benches. There is even given out a +philosophical justification for the butcheries, namely, that the +spectators become hardened to the sight of death and are, therefore, +the more courageous when their own hour comes. The reigning Hadrian +considers the arena combats to be useful also for keeping up the +military spirit; in short the whole Latin half of the Empire delights +in them, although they never have become very popular in the Greek +portion.<a id="FNanchor_211" href="#Footnote_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>331. Gladiator Fights at Funerals.</b>—Gladiatorial fights claim an +Etruscan origin, and in Rome they were first exhibited at funerals of +the great, possibly with the idea that the spirits of the slain would +serve the dead lord in the underworld. It is still very fashionable +to give a sizable gladiator fight as the aftermath of any pretentious +funeral, but this is perhaps more common in the provincial towns than +in Rome, where the government likes to control such martial spectacles.</p> + +<p>We actually hear of the populace of one small city that would not +let the funeral procession of a distinguished lady proceed through +the gates until her husband had promised them some public combats. +Pliny the Younger’s friend Maximus presented a gladiator fight to the +citizens of Verona “in honor of his most estimable wife,” a native +of the place, but the exhibition was not quite a success because “on +account of bad weather the numerous African panthers he had bought +failed to arrive on the expected day.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>332. Gladiator “Schools” (<i>Ludi</i>): Inmates Usually +Criminals.</b>—There are four great imperial “schools” (<i>ludi</i>) +of gladiators in Rome maintained as public institutions. These<span class="pagenum" id="Page_391">[391]</span> can +be drawn upon for the regular public games; but there are plenty of +private “schools” maintained by speculators who can often supply quite +as good fighters.</p> + +<p>If, as a magistrate, or as a bereaved kinsman or widower, you decide +to give some combats, and if your purse is full, the rest is easy. +You merely contract with the <i>lanista</i> (keeper and trainer of a +school) for so many contests upon specified terms; although, in really +pretentious affairs, gladiators from several rival schools can be +pitted together—this adds to the excitement. When the fight is over +the free gladiators are paid off, the slave fighters are returned to +their owners and indemnification is given the owners of the slain—all +on set business terms. There is great expense in training good +gladiators and slain champions cannot fight again; and this solid fact +often prevents combats from being <i>too</i> destructive, while wounded +survivors may be carefully nursed just as a sick race horse may be +cared for.</p> + +<p>Anybody will tell us that no pity need be wasted on gladiators. Many a +low-born criminal is dragged from the præfect’s court with a relieved +grin on his felonious countenance; the magistrate has not ordered “To +the cross with him!” but merely “Train him for the amphitheater.” Many +an incorrigible slave has been sold to a lanista by his master instead +of being promptly whipped to death.</p> + +<p>Not a few unfortunate prisoners of war and kidnapped persons, however, +if they have stout physiques, find their way also to the lanistæ +instead of to the ordinary slave markets, and brutal masters will +sometimes sell perfectly innocent slaves if the latter appear likely +to make good swordsmen. On the other hand many plebeians of the baser +sort are caught by the glitter and glory of the arena, and submit +voluntarily to the discipline of the “schools,” while under the +tyrannous emperors even men claiming noble rank have fought upon the +sands to truckle to the whims of an evil Cæsar.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_392">[392]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>333. Severe Training of Gladiators; Their Ephemeral Glory.</b>—The +lanistæ’s discipline is terribly severe, as is perhaps needful +considering the wretches placed under it. The gladiators are kept in +prison-like barracks. Nothing is omitted to brutalize them and to make +their whole life center around mere skill with their weapons. They are +fed upon great quantities of meat. Cruel floggings follow the least +breach of discipline, and in every <i>ludus</i> is a lock-up, with a +long line of stocks and shackles, which never wants its many occupants.</p> + +<p>On the other hand many a stupid wretch is made to forget the doom +probably awaiting him in the next combats, by dreaming of the glories +promised a truly successful gladiator. If he can emerge victorious from +a series of combats, he is more talked of than even the most daring +charioteer; great nobles will visit his quarters to watch his training +and feel of his muscles; his owners will do everything to pamper +such a valuable piece of property; innumerable women, even among the +silken-robed <i>clarissimæ</i>, will dote upon him; and perhaps he can +actually elope with a senator’s wife.</p> + +<p>Not merely the youths but all the girls in Rome will sing the +champion’s praises and dream of his valor. He will be named in +countless wall-scribblings as “The Maiden’s Sigh,” “The Glory of the +Girls,” “The Lord of the Lasses,” or “The Doctor (<i>medicus</i>) of +the Little Darlings.”<a id="FNanchor_212" href="#Footnote_212" class="fnanchor">[212]</a> If he has lost an ear, if his face is one +mass of disfiguring scars, the women run after him all the more. “Never +mind <i>that</i>,” scolds Juvenal, “he is a gladiator.”</p> + +<p>The end of this glory ordinarily comes speedily and tragically, but +sometimes the very fortunate and skilful fighter will win such favor +that, at the popular demand, the giver of the games will present him +with a wooden sword—the token<span class="pagenum" id="Page_393">[393]</span> of honorable discharge. If he is not a +slave-criminal, he can now quit the <i>ludus</i> with plenty of money +and a merry life before him, but the taint of his “profession” will +always stick to him. He can never become a Roman citizen, much less can +he be enrolled as an eques whatever the extent of his wealth.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>334. Normal Arrangements for an Arena Contest.</b>—Strictly +speaking the amphitheater is used for two kinds of entertainments—wild +beast hunts (<i>venationes</i>) and direct combats between men. Each +form is extremely popular, although human gore appears a little cheap +and ordinary compared with that of an expensive tiger, panther, or +lion. It always makes a hit with the crowd to turn, for example, a +tigress and a fierce bull-elephant loose on the sands and watch the two +brutes rend one another.</p> + +<p>It is true nevertheless that nothing can really take the place of +a sustained combat between two thoroughly trained pupils of the +“schools.” Ordinarily the management will have the hunts in the morning +at the amphitheater and the human contests in the afternoon. That will +send the myriads away happily satiated after a day spent amid the +perpetual sniff of gore.</p> + +<p>No scene visited in our prolonged “day” in Rome can be more repellent +to non-Roman tastes than that of the amphitheater, but to complete the +picture it must not be omitted, although horrid deeds will be dismissed +with few words and still less of moralizing. Publius Calvus’s friend, +Decimus Cluentius, this year is Prætor. He is a wealthy senator and has +been saving money carefully for “his games.” He has already made a good +public impression by his program of races in the Circus; now he will +“add to the luster of his fame” by a day of contests in the Flavian. +Already the notice writers have distributed the list of the gladiators +that he has engaged, in every eating-house and wine-room in the city.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_394">[394]</span></p> + +<p>The impression thus made has been excellent: “Cluentius is living up +to his riches. Many of his gladiators are freemen—the finest blades, +no running away, the kind of fellows that will stand right up and be +butchered in mid-arena. Besides, he’s been lucky enough to get from the +præfect a farm steward who was caught insulting his master’s wife—a +good dinner for the lions. These fights won’t be as when that miserly +Norbanus exhibited—his gladiators were such a cowardly, feeble lot +they’d have fallen flat if you breathed on ’em.”<a id="FNanchor_213" href="#Footnote_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>335. The Flavian Amphitheater (Later “Colosseum”).</b>—Such an +exhibition can only be held in the Flavian Amphitheater, the vast +structure known to later ages as the “Colosseum.” In Republican days +gladiator fights were held in the open Forum or in the Circus, but +these were ill-adapted for the purpose. To see the fine points of the +combats the audience must be concentrated around the contestants as +closely as possible; hence the “amphitheater”—an immense oval of seats +looking down upon a central arena.</p> + +<p>The building of such a quantity of seats out of permanent materials +is very expensive and wooden structures were largely used until about +70 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, when Vespasian and Titus began their vast “Flavian” +(dedicated in 80 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> by an enormous beast hunt), now among +the chief wonders of Rome. Common report has it that thousands of +Titus’s Jewish captives had to toil first on the masonry and then for +the most part to lose their lives fighting one another in the opening +games.</p> + +<p>To avoid prolixity any description of this vast structure must be very +brief: it stands an oval cylinder, its outer major diameter 620 feet; +and the greatest diameter of its inner arena 287. Its innumerable +blocks of travertine are bound together by metal clamps; the exterior +is faced with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_395">[395]</span> marble and adorned with hundreds more of those statues +which populate Rome. The structure rises 157 feet in four stories. The +lower three of these tiers are composed each of a series of eighty +arches backed by piers. In the first story the flanking columns are +Doric, the second Ionic, the third Corinthian. The fourth story has +no arches but merely windows and pilasters of the “composite” order. +Between these upper pilasters project stone brackets which hold lofty +wooden masts for the great awnings that stretch over the arena. These +masts and awnings (red, blue, and yellow) when spread out under a +brilliant sky, make the Flavian look somewhat like an enormous galley +under a cloud of sail—the effect, of course, being heightened by the +sheen of the marbles of the exterior and the garish paint and gilding +covering the statues.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_395" style="max-width: 655px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_395.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Flavian Amphitheater (Colosseum)</span>: exterior, +present state.</p> + </div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_396">[396]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>336. Exterior and Ticket Entrances to the Flavian +Amphitheater.</b>—Outside of the Amphitheater is a wide circular area +whereon converge many thoroughfares. This open space is scattered +with huckster’s booths and with small ticket stands much like those +around many amusement places in another age.<a id="FNanchor_214" href="#Footnote_214" class="fnanchor">[214]</a> Here one can place +wagers, purchase programs for the day, obtain food to consume between +the events, and very probably buy or hire cushions in case the stone +benches prove too hard.</p> + +<p>Also on the outside and close to the foot of the main structure runs +a high wooden palisade. This is to aid in controlling the crowds. You +go in at one or two entrances, showing your tickets, then circle the +masonry until you reach one of the staircases, located under every +fourth arch, and next you can promptly mount to your reserved seat in +one of the seventy-six sub-sections (<i>cunei</i>).</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>337. Interior Arrangements of the Flavian.</b>—Once inside, the +admirable arrangements of the structure impress the visitor no less +than its enormous mass. Everything converges upon the central arena; +even from the topmost seats one can see all the details of the contests +below. The seats are divided into three great terraces, so easily +accessible by the stairways and corridors that the fifty thousand +spectators can pass in and out with the minimum of confusion. The +lowest tiers, made of marble and comfortably cushioned, are reserved +here as elsewhere for the senators; and for the <i>editor</i> (the +giver of the contests), his fellow magistrates, the chief priests, +and the Vestal Virgins, there are seats of peculiar honor directly +upon the <i>podium</i>, the crest of the twelve-foot wall girding the +arena;—seats which are protected alike from chance missiles and from +the leap of desperate beasts by a heavy trellis-work of gilded metal.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_397">[397]</span></p> + +<p>Above this podium like the billows of a frozen ocean rise the enormous +tiers of masonry seats; first those for the equites, then the great +mass for the paying spectators, then the space crowded with wooden +benches for the slaves and least select plebeians. An open gallery +runs around the entire summit of the benches and here alone, by a +restriction doubtless often lamented, women are allowed to watch the +contests from afar, unless they are Vestal Virgins or ladies of the +Imperial family, with the special privilege of the podium.</p> + +<p>All the arches, stairways, sections, and tiers are numbered. If you +have a ticket, it may read “VIth section (<i>cuneus</i>), lowest row, +seat No. 18,” marked upon a round or flat piece of bone. The attendants +are lynx-eyed for impostors, but legitimate visitors are quickly +seated. A detachment of sailors from the fleet of Misenum shifts the +enormous awnings so that the thousands<a id="FNanchor_215" href="#Footnote_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a> can sit comfortably in the +shade while a full blaze of sunlight falls on the arena.</p> + +<p>By the middle of the morning the multitudes are in place; Cluentius +the Prætor, with full official magnificence, is in the central box of +the podium; and strong detachments of Prætorians have been quietly +distributed in certain half-concealed guard inclosures near the lower +railing—for gladiators <i>have</i> been known to mutiny and desperate +lions can leap very high.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>338. Procession of Gladiators.</b>—Presently now trumpets and +cymbals announce the procession which files through one of the four +gates leading directly into the arena. The gladiators, some forty in +number, march two and two, nearly naked save for their glistening +armor; knitted foreheads, white teeth, wolfish scowls, magnificent +physiques are displayed by all of them. From far up the applauding +benches they can<span class="pagenum" id="Page_398">[398]</span> be recognized, and many favorite <i>retiarii</i> and +<i>Thraces</i> are met with a storm of cheering.</p> + +<p>The company marches solemnly down the arena led by an enormous lanista, +one of their trainers, the scarred hero of all the youth of Rome. +Before Cluentius on the podium they halt and flourish their weapons +defiantly. Everybody knows that they have just taken their fearful oath +“to be bound, to be burned, to be scourged, to be slain, and to endure +all else required of them as proper gladiators, giving up alike their +souls and their bodies.”<a id="FNanchor_216" href="#Footnote_216" class="fnanchor">[216]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>339. Throwing a Criminal to the Beasts. The Animal +Hunt.</b>—However, the contests do not begin immediately; there +is a preliminary spectacle in store. The Prætor’s friend, the City +Præfect, most luckily has handed over to him a vicious freedman +caught maltreating his patron’s lady. The wretch, of course, deserves +death:—how proper, therefore, that he can be made to amuse more +honest folk by his very exit! Into the middle of the arena they lead +him, a pitiful gibbering object, half-dead already with fright. The +guards strike off his fetters, thrust a cheap sword into his hands, +and themselves hastily retire into one of the numerous caged chambers +lining the arena. A tense stillness for an instant holds the Flavian.</p> + +<p>Suddenly the rattle of chains is heard. In the very center of the sands +(part of which are over wooden substructures) the arena opens; a cage +appears lifted by pulleys, and then is opened by some mechanism. Forth +bounds a tawny lion, lashing his tail and growling with hunger and +rage. The unskilled victim has been given a sword with the vain promise +that if he can actually kill the lion his own life will be spared. His +chances are infinitesimal, but a few desperadoes have thus actually +saved themselves.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_399">[399]</span></p> + +<p>Will the prisoner fight? To the infinite disgust of the thousands he +collapses upon the sands in sheer terror before the lion can so much as +strike him. The beast finishes his life almost instantly. The multitude +hoot and curse—they have been cheated of their passionate desire to +see a human victim struggling in desperate combat with the great beast. +Fortunately, they remind themselves, this is only the beginning of the +performance.</p> + +<p>If one need not moralize, one need not linger. After the sacrifice +of the criminal there are more beasts turned loose in the arena. Of +course, no Prætor can be expected to show the hundreds of animals which +an Emperor will exhibit in his greater games, but Cluentius has done +the thing very respectably. He has in all ten bears, eighteen panthers, +five lions, and six tigers.</p> + +<p>First the animals are goaded on to fight one with another. A bear is +torn to death by a lion, but kills the lion in a last mortal hug. +Then the trumpet sounds—some of the gladiators rush into the arena. +The arena is now covered with frightened, snarling, reckless beasts. +Even with keen weapons and skill, it is desperate work to slay them. +One fine young German slips as a tiger bounds on him. His life is +crushed out at the very foot of the editor’s stand. One panther, driven +frantic, with a terrific leap almost clears the trellis directly before +a Vestal Virgin; there is a general scream and recoil from the podium +as the luckless beast drops back upon the spear of a hunter.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>340. Interval in the Contests: Scattering of Lottery +Tickets.</b>—At last the <i>venatio</i> is over. All the beasts have +been killed with reasonable skill, and barring only the German, with no +accidents. It is now noon and a comfortable intermission follows. Food +has been brought by many, or is passed about by hawkers. Cluentius, +with great condescension, remains in the editor’s seat, and dines in +public so that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_400">[400]</span> everybody present can go home boasting merrily, “We +have been to prandium with the Prætor!”<a id="FNanchor_217" href="#Footnote_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a></p> + +<p>After hunger has been appeased the spectators begin to grow restive. +It is the immemorial privilege of the crowds to shout out whatever +they wish in the Circus or Amphitheater. An unpopular Commissioner of +the Grain Supply is seen rising in the podium; instantly the great +awning quakes with the hootings. There is even a volley of date and +olive stones; when, luckily for the Commissioner, the Prætor orders the +attendants to begin scattering lottery tickets along the benches.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_400" style="max-width: 650px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_400.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Boxers.</p> + </div> + +<p>Instantly all else is forgotten; dignified men scramble over one +another. In the free benches there are several genuine fights and many +a torn toga or lacerna. The winning tickets to-morrow will draw jars of +wine, packages of edibles, or even quite a few denarii in cash; but if +the editor had been the Emperor the prizes could well have been fine +jewelry, pictures,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_401">[401]</span> beasts of burden, tidy sums of money, or even—as +the grand prize—a small villa.</p> + +<p>This distribution silences all the discordant howlings; and the people +are further amused by a kind of theatrical pageant, some popular +pantomimes giving the Judgment of Paris in a clever and not inelegant +manner, without scenery in the broad arena. After that two ostriches +are unloosed and the crowd is put in an excellent humor while four +Moorish riders on shining desert steeds chase down the speeding, +doubling birds and finally lasso them. All is at last ready for the +real business of the day—the gladiators.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>341. Beginning the Regular Gladiatorial Combats.</b>—The hunters +of the beasts, duly reënforced by many others, reënter the arena +again in grim procession. Approaching the editor’s seat on the podium +they can be seen passing up their weapons for Cluentius, to let him +satisfy himself that every edge is sharpened beyond the possibility of +shamming. He hands back each spear or sword with a nod, then the long +file straightens and every combatant lifts his right arm: “<i>Ave, +prætor!</i>” sounds the deep chant, “<i>morituri te salutamus!</i>” +“<i>Ave!</i>” answers Cluentius gesturing haughtily. “Low-browed +scoundrels,” mutters Calvus to a fellow senator; “Most of them are +lucky to end up this way and to escape the cross.—Ah! they begin.”</p> + +<p>First, however, to get well limbered, wooden swords are handed about, +and the troop fence with one another skilfully yet harmlessly; but +the people are waxing impatient—“Steel! Steel!” rings the shout from +the whole amphitheater, and the dense array of women in the upper +gallery is calling it as fiercely as the men on the ocean of benches. +A terrific blast of trumpets sounds from mid-arena, and a gigantic +lanista acting as a kind of umpire motions with his spear. Soon every +heart in the myriads is thrilled by the clash of weapons.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_402">[402]</span></p> + +<p>Cluentius (an unoriginal though free-spending magistrate) has arranged +a very conventional series of combats. First two Britons dash about in +chariots pelting each other with javelins. Their armor turns the darts +for long, then one of the horses is wounded and while his driver is +struggling to control him another missile strikes through a joint in +the warrior’s armor. He totters in the car while all the amphitheater +rises and yells together “<i>Habet!</i>” “He’s got it!”—and then as +the poor wight tumbles back into the sands, “<i>Peractum est!</i>” +“He’s done for!”</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_402" style="max-width: 698px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_402.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Gladiators Saluting the Editor before Joining in +Mortal Combat.</p> + </div> + +<p>Immediately there appears a grotesque figure, arrayed as Charon, +the dead man’s ferryman. He bears a hammer wherewith he strikes the +body of the victim to see if he is counterfeiting death. The fallen +chariot warrior stirs not—and “Charon” with a long hook drags away +the corpse into one of the dens under the podium. The benches are now +leaping, gesticulating, and yelling—the noise is indescribable,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_403">[403]</span> and +Cluentius’s friends hasten to tell him that the combats have started +admirably.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>342. Mounted Combats: the Signals for Ruthlessness and +Mercy.</b>—The surviving charioteer disappears amid plaudits. In his +place ride out four horsemen; and two mounted duels can thus take place +at either side of the arena. One pair contend evenly and stoutly, but +the other contest soon ends—the less skilful rider is dashed from his +seat by his opponent’s sword, and is so hurt he can barely lift himself +upon the sands. The victor leaps down and stands over him waving his +reddened blade, while his disarmed victim in sheer helplessness raises +the right hand, the fist clinched except for one upraised finger—the +demand for “Mercy!”</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_403" style="max-width: 710px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_403.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Defeated Gladiator Appealing for Mercy</span>: +spectators, with Vestal Virgins in front seats, turning “thumbs down.”</p> + </div> + +<p>The conqueror obsequiously looks toward his employer Cluentius upon +the podium, and the Prætor, bound to be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_404">[404]</span> gracious to the populace, +motions somewhat inquiringly toward the spectators—let them decide! If +the defeated gladiator had fought more gamely and had striven to rise +and renew the fight, possibly enough white handkerchiefs—the token +of mercy—would have been waved to warrant the editor in flourishing +his own also;—but the fellow had collapsed too easily and the mood +of the crowd demanded blood. “<i>Occide! Occide!</i>” “Kill! Kill!” +is the yell; and thousands of thumbs are ruthlessly pointed downward. +Cluentius’s own thumb is pointed down likewise. The victor raises his +weapon and without scruple plunges it in the breast of the vanquished, +who sustains the honor of his profession by receiving the mortal blow +without flinching.</p> + +<p>Again the Charon enters with his hook and clears the arena. In the +interval the other mounted duelists, cool and experienced warriors, +have partly suspended their combat and now they profit through their +comrade’s death by the umpiring lanista’s declaration of a draw. The +people are sated for an instant and Cluentius nods approval as the two +ride out; he is inwardly glad to spare them, because the owners of dead +gladiators have to be indemnified.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>343. Combats between Netters (<i>Retiarii</i>) and Heavy-Armed +Warriors (Thracians).</b>—So combat follows combat, while the sands +grow red and one warrior falls simply by slipping upon the gore. The +suffocating fumes of blood rise through the bars of sunlight under +the great awning. The people grow more and more excited. There will +be hundreds of beggars to-night in Rome on account of the reckless +wagering.</p> + +<p>At last the trumpets sound for what is always the crowning feature of +the exhibition—the chief thing which the multitudes have really waited +all day to see—ten <i>retiarii</i> are to fight ten “Thracians.” The +retiarii (“netters”) wear not the least armor. They carry nothing but +three-pronged<span class="pagenum" id="Page_405">[405]</span> lances and thick nets, which last they endeavor to +fling over their adversaries, entangle them, and then stab with their +tridents ere they can cut loose. The “Thracians” have heavy suits of +armor and formidable swords.<a id="FNanchor_218" href="#Footnote_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a> If a netter misses his cast, there +is nothing for him to do but to fly for dear life. The sight of a +powerful, armed Thracian toiling after the leaping, dodging retiarius +is a source of universal joy to the amphitheaters. The people rise +on the benches and join in a kind of intoxication and blood orgy. +“<i>Verbera! Verbera! Occide! Occide!</i>” “Lay on! Kill!”—rises as a +thunder to heaven.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>344. End of the Combats: Rewarding the Victors.</b>—It profits not +to dwell on the half hour which follows. Plenty of skill, valor, and +swiftness are shown alike by netters and by heavy-armed warriors. One +by one part of the twenty drop, and for a while the passions of the +people permit no mercy. The Charon appears several times; but there is +a young Spanish netter whose nimbleness and reckless courage win great +favor, and many are muttering, “We want to see him again.” There is +also a very experienced Thracian whose owner will demand from Cluentius +a round indemnity, if the fight is pushed to a finish and his precious +chattel is slain.</p> + +<p>As a result when four wounded men together drop their weapons and +signal for mercy, white handkerchiefs begin waving all over the +amphitheater and Cluentius is glad to shake out his also. The combats +are over. The victorious gladiators, if they are unhurt enough to +stand, are led before the podium and to each are handed palms of +victory.</p> + +<p>There is furthermore a crowning ceremony. One Certus,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_406">[406]</span> a very famous +netter, has by previous understanding taken only a formal part in +the combats. Now, while the whole multitude leaps up to acclaim him, +Cluentius himself rises and gives him the wooden sword—the sign that +he need fight and risk his life no more. Henceforth Certus will become +himself no doubt a <i>lanista</i>, and train hundreds of other brawny +youths to yield up their lives for the amusement of Rome.</p> + +<p>The amphitheater empties from all its numerous <i>vomitoria</i>. The +crowd goes home well contented, praising Cluentius and hoping he will +be assigned a fine province to govern. True it has not been as if the +Emperor were present—then there might have been two hundred or more +gladiators, an enormous slaughter of beasts; fountains could have +played in the arena to refresh the air, and perfumes could have been +scattered from the awnings; or the arena might easily have been flooded +for a sea fight between two squadrons of small galleys.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, Cluentius has done very well for a mere Prætor; and he +will have to pay indemnity for about fourteen of his forty gladiators, +a very fair average to get butchered. “It has been a pleasant enough +holiday (say many) in a toiling and busy world, and the rumor goes that +for the next Ides at the Consul’s games they have rounded up a whole +gang of robbers who will all be fed to the lions!”</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_407">[407]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER XX<br> +<span class="subhed">THE ROMAN RELIGION: THE PRIESTHOODS, THE VESTAL VIRGINS</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>345. Religious Symbols Everywhere in Rome.</b>—The circus races +and the amphitheater butcheries are nominally in honor of some god. It +is perhaps Vulcan in whose name Cluentius has hired the gladiators to +slaughter one another. Everywhere about Rome are imposing temples and +lesser shrines, and there are almost more statues of gods and demigods +than there are people in the swarming streets. The symbolic snakes +for the Lares of the locality or of the household, are painted upon +thousands of walls. All this would indicate that the Romans of the +Empire are extraordinarily religious. How far does this outward seeming +correspond to the actual facts?</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>346. Epicureanism and Agnosticism among the Upper Classes.</b>—If +we penetrate the life of men like Publius Calvus and others of the +upper circle, apparently we are dealing with persons who are almost, if +not complete, agnostics. Some are cheerful Epicureans who formally deny +that there are any deities that concern themselves with mortal affairs, +and who for their own part look upon the world as a chance aggregation +of atoms, and upon life as one physical sensation after another with +nothing later awaiting a man but eternal slumber in the grave. Moral +“laws” merely exist to adjust human relationships, so that you can win +the maximum enjoyment from day to day.</p> + +<p>Theories like this can be justified in sonorous, noble language, +as in the great poems of Lucretius, but the underlying<span class="pagenum" id="Page_408">[408]</span> philosophy +remains the same. Cluentius, the Prætor, whose library is crammed with +Epicurean writings, has, in fact, just been ordering chiseled on his +ostentatious funeral monument, “<i>Eat, drink, enjoy yourself—the rest +is nothing.</i>”<a id="FNanchor_219" href="#Footnote_219" class="fnanchor">[219]</a></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_408" style="max-width: 659px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_408.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Maison Carrée, Nîmes, France</span>: the best +preserved temple of the Roman type in existence.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>347. Stoicism: Revival of Religion under the Empire.</b>—Calvus +himself, a decidedly practical man not too fond of nice speculations, +takes greater pleasure in the theories of the Stoics. The stern +teaching that “duty” is the be-all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_409">[409]</span> and end-all of life, and that +true freedom and happiness come only by a scrupulous discharge of +every obligation, appeals strongly to many hard-headed Romans. It +fits in well with their old native religion, and they accept it +without much abstract philosophizing. But the “God” discussed by Zeno, +Cleanthes, and the later Stoics is only a hard, impersonal, resistless +force,—“Eternal Law” under another name. He is in nowise a merciful +Heavenly Father, any more than he is a youthful, beauteous, and very +human Apollo. Calvus, in short, is hardly more convinced than his +friend Cluentius, the Epicurean, that there really exists any personal +deity.<a id="FNanchor_220" href="#Footnote_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a></p> + +<p>However, religion as an outward institution, has been steadily gaining +under the Roman Empire. Probably never were there ever more unabashed +atheists than such personages as Sulla and Julius Cæsar in the last +decades of the Republic,—men not without pet superstitions perhaps +and a belief in their “stars,” but who were almost cynical in their +expressions of disbelief in any ruling Providence, and to whom temples +and worship were only convenient political engines for befooling the +mob.</p> + +<p>Augustus nevertheless was probably somewhat more of a believing man +himself, and he grasped the enormous value of reinvigorating the old +cults, rebuilding the crumbling shrines, and finally of rekindling +the conviction that there existed a stabilizing and avenging host of +deities as a means for getting moral sanction and support for his new +imperial régime. Since the battle of Actium, temples have multiplied, +priesthoods have been carefully maintained, and solemn religious +ceremonies and sacrifices have been promoted by the government;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_410">[410]</span> in +short, a great and partially successful effort has been put forth to +galvanize into a kind of life that early “Religion of Numa,” which once +molded the ideals of the little city by the Tiber.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>348. Foreign Cults Intruded upon the “Religion of +Numa.”</b>—Religious beliefs and institutions at Rome, however, are +only in part derived from the cults and forms of old Italy, whether +Etruscan or Latin. The Greek mythology has been so taken over by the +poets that often it is hard to sift out the indigenous Italian stories +from the great mass of imported legends in which Jupiter and Juno +manifestly are merely the Latin names for Hellenic Zeus and Hera. +Furthermore, there has come a perfect influx of oriental gods: Egyptian +Isis, Syrian Baal, Phrygian Cybele, Persian Mithras—these are merely +some of the more important.</p> + +<p>The Roman attitude toward foreign deities is tolerant; provided one +keeps up the outward forms of reverence for the old native deities, +it does no serious harm if people feel happier because they burn +incense to the dog-headed Anubis, or to the uncouth gods of Phœnicia. +Of course these alien rites must not be too gross; such as were the +outrageous old Bacchanals who were broken up in 186 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, or +the Gallic Druids who permitted human sacrifice. Otherwise a “foreign +superstition” is a matter merely for a contemptuous shrug or sneer.</p> + +<p>The result is that the cults seen in Rome under the Empire often appear +as a vast jumble of things Greek, Levantine, Oriental, and even Celtic. +The Emperor and Senate seldom bother themselves about matters of inward +belief; Rome has its gladiators but it has no Inquisition.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, the old Italian religion is still the official cultus of +the state. Its forms are carefully cherished; it is insensibly modified +but it is never repudiated. There are almost the same priesthoods, the +same sacred formulas and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_411">[411]</span> machinery of religion as in the days of the +Punic Wars.<a id="FNanchor_221" href="#Footnote_221" class="fnanchor">[221]</a> They are kept up partly out of patriotic pride in all +survivals of the heroic past, partly because they help the government +to control the “mob” and the highly superstitious soldiery, partly (it +must in fairness be added) because very intelligent persons believe +that the ancient Italian religion somehow contributes to the safety +and stability of the Empire,—that when Jupiter Capitolinus falls the +dominion of Rome will actually fall with him.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>349. Superstitious Piety of the City Plebeians.</b>—As for the +multitude, the enormous population in the insulæ, if it has little +intelligent faith, it has abundant ignorant credulity. The outward +service of the gods brings good luck.</p> + +<p>If the public rites fail and if blasphemers (like the execrable +Christians) arise, the corn ships will not get through from Alexandria, +the Tiber will overflow, the pestilence will sweep off thousands +and—almost equal calamity—the favorite aurigæ and gladiators on the +gamblers’ tablets will lose in the games. If a private man neglects the +gods, his shop or business ventures can go bankrupt, his children die, +his wife decamps with a freedman, disease can rack him, premature death +smite him, and his tomb be demolished to the complete obliteration +of his memory. Possibly even his ghost will drift about unhappily in +desert places. Every possible motive, therefore, requires governors and +governed to stand in well with the gods.</p> + +<p>Let us, therefore, examine this “Religion of Numa” which is living yet, +as the official cultus of Rome; then a few words can be said about its +alien competitors.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>350. Roman Religion Originally Developed by Italian +Farmers.</b>—The old Italian farmers who shaped this religion<span class="pagenum" id="Page_412">[412]</span> were +singularly lacking in imagination. Very few are the myths for which +the poets can claim a non-Greek origin. The world is conceived of +as being full of deities which often are so little personified that +one cannot be sure of their actual sex: “Be propitious, O Divine One +(<i>numen</i>), be thou male or be thou female!” is the proper formula +for beginning many ancient prayers.</p> + +<p>Some of these divinities, to be sure, are well-defined and powerful +gods such as Jupiter the Sky-God, Mars the War-God, and Juno the potent +and matronly spouse of Jupiter. Such deities came with the ancestors of +the Italians when they wandered down from the North into that southern +peninsula which they occupied many centuries ago.</p> + +<p>Other divinities are ancient adoptions from the Etruscans or from the +Greeks. Minerva, the protectress of such female arts as weaving and +spinning and later of the more masculine arts, sciences, and learning, +is pretty clearly the Minerva of the Etruscans, and has caught many +attributes from the Pallas Athena of the Greeks. Apollo came, perhaps, +via Etruria, where they called him Aplu, and not directly from Hellas, +but no temple was built to him until after Greek as well as Etruscan +influence in Rome had become very strong. Diana or Luna (“Madame Moon”) +was an old moon goddess, possibly the same as the Etruscan Losna, and +only by a late and very unfortunate identification has she become +confounded with Apollo’s Greek sister Artemis, the virgin huntress on +the Arcadian hills.</p> + +<p>One great goddess, however, Venus, is probably a good old Italian +deity of substantial homely virtues: she is still invoked as Venus +Cloacina (“Venus the Purifier”), when it is necessary to cleanse the +great sewers; a function seldom remembered when giddy youths confound +her with the Greek Aphrodite, and beg her to help their illicit love +affairs!</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_413">[413]</span></p> + + +<p>351. <b>Native Italian Gods: Janus, Saturn, Flora. The Lares and +Penates.</b>—All these gods and certain other familiar deities such +as Mercury patron of trade and gain, Neptune lord of the sea, Vulcan +the clever smith, and finally, but in nowise least, Vesta the hearth +goddess, and Ceres the Mistress of the Corn, make up the official +“Great Gods” in whose honor the public games are held, and to whom +Emperors and Consuls proffer vows and sacrifice.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_413" style="max-width: 308px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_413.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Farmer’s Calendar</span>: showing festivals each +month.</p> + </div> + +<p>Highly important also is the strictly native Italian Janus, the +two-faced lord of beginnings and endings, probably an ancient Sun-God; +whom one should invoke at the opening of every fresh day, and in +whose honor (quite appropriately) the month of January is named with +New Year’s Day especially designated to his festival.<a id="FNanchor_222" href="#Footnote_222" class="fnanchor">[222]</a> There is +furthermore Saturn, a rural deity, who has been identified with the +Greek Cronos (“Father Time”); there is Orchus who rules the underworld; +there is Liber the masculine field god, consort of Ceres and sometimes +confounded with the Greek Bacchus; there is Bona Dea (“Good Goddess”) a +mistress of agriculture, possibly only another aspect of Ceres; there +is Flora,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_414">[414]</span> the kindly patroness not merely of the flowers but of all +the prosaic vegetable gardens; and there also is Robigus, a malevolent +garden deity who must be propitiated with frequent offerings or he will +mildew the crops.</p> + +<p>All these gods (except the evil Robigus) are near and dear to the +average plebeian, and especially to the farmers. In addition there +are the Lares and Penates. We have seen how they are guardian spirits +of the households—never forgotten in any mansion or upon any social +occasion.</p> + +<p>The state has its own “Public Lares and Penates” as well as private +households; the former are the spirits of the gallant patriots of old +like the first Brutus, Cincinnatus, Camillus, and Scipio Major. The +second are the immortal “Twin Brethren”—Castor and Pollux, who have +ridden to rescue Roman armies on many a hard-fought field. No public +sacrifice can avail unless at least formal reference is made to the +public Lares and Penates along with the special god receiving honor.</p> + +<p>Reënforcing these divinities is a whole host of special rural deities, +who, in a country still very dependent on agriculture, receive special +honor in all the profitable villas and farms crowding up to the gates +of Rome; Faunus and Lupercus are herdsmen’s gods well matching the +Hellenic Pan; Silvanus presides over the woodlands and timber-lots, +Pales is a much beloved shepherd’s god, Pomona cares for the orchards, +Vertumnus for the normal change of the seasons; Anna Perena is the +goddess of the circling year; and Terminus takes care that the boundary +stones (so important to farmers) are not disturbed.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>352. Personified Virtues as Gods: Cold and Legalistic Character of +the Roman Religion.</b>—However, these deities are increased by a +great host of personified moral and civic qualities. Nothing is easier +in Rome than to assume that every desirable virtue must have some kind +of a numen<span class="pagenum" id="Page_415">[415]</span> (divine potence) behind it. Around the city one can find +temples, <i>e.g.</i> to Honor, Hope, Good Faith, Modesty, Concord, +Peace, Victory, Liberty, Public Safety, Youth, and Fame. This is only a +minor part of the list.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_415" style="max-width: 480px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_415.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Circular Temple, probably of Old Italian Goddess +Matuta</span>: now Church of Sancta Maria del Sole, Rome.</p> + </div> + +<p>It is assumed in fact that every act or process of human life has its +special numen who can be invoked to make that act successful. Thus +after young Sextus, Calvus’s son, was born, his very pious nurses first +invoked Vaticanus who opened his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_416">[416]</span> mouth for his first cry, then Cucina +who guarded his cradle, then Edulia and Potina who taught him to eat +and drink, Stabilius who aided him first to stand up, and Abeona and +Adeona who watched over his first footsteps “going” and “returning.” +His sophisticated parents doubtless smiled at this scrupulous piety, +but they did nothing to discourage it.</p> + +<p>These cold impersonal divinities stand to man in a legal rather than +a theological relationship. Men and the numina have made a kind of +contract—so much prayer and ceremonial sacrifice must be offered in +return for so much good favor, prosperity, and protection. <i>Do ut +des</i> (“I give that you may give”) sums up the whole spirit of the +Roman religion.</p> + +<p>Numa the alleged founder of so many cults was not a prophet or an +inspired poet but a king and lawgiver. A wise man is always pious; +that is, he always gives to the gods their precise due according to +carefully set forms, otherwise the divinities may evade their part of +the contract, just as a merchant is not bound to execute a bargain in +which the other party has failed to do precisely as was stipulated.</p> + +<p>If prayers and sacrifice fail in their purpose, it is reasonable to +suppose that the fault lies in the formula and the victims employed. +The pig, sheep, or other victim must then be sacrificed over again with +greater scrupulosity. On the other hand, willful neglect of worship is +as surely punished by the gods as willful neglect of paying one’s debts +is punished by the Prætor. The fate of the impious will be somewhat +like that of the absconding debtor, only much more dreadful.</p> + +<p>Needless to say this “Religion of Numa” contains no more spirituality +than the hard stones which pave the Forum. It does, however, put +a genuine premium upon the rigid performance of duty, and thereby +sometimes reacts favorably upon human conduct.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>353. Priestly Offices: Little Sacrosanct about Them.</b>—For +these necessary ceremonies mankind requires priests,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_417">[417]</span> but they are +not revered interpreters of the divine will, nor are they mysterious +mediators between Providence and men; they are rather attorneys +employed by men to represent them competently in their dealings with +the divinities.</p> + +<p>Small religious matters, the minor private sacrifices, etc., can be +attended to without a priest, just as you do not need a jurisconsult to +assist in petty purchases. Greater religious matters, private and still +more if public, however, require experts to see that the right formulæ +are spoken and sacrifices proffered. Any Roman of flawless birth and of +good character is eligible for most of the priesthoods, although there +are a few reserved for the narrow circle of the old patrician families. +Holding these religious offices does not ordinarily imply dropping +one’s secular interests or having the least philosophical belief in +the ceremonies so carefully performed. Julius Cæsar was Pontifex +Maximus while he was Proconsul of the Gauls, and while he was a firm +disbeliever in the existence of any gods at all.</p> + +<p>Of course every small temple has to have its proper custodians whom +we may call “priests,” to attend to the private sacrifices; and there +are besides plenty of unofficial diviners and soothsayers who can +answer your question, “Is this a lucky day for the wedding of my +daughter?” or “Do the omens warn against buying this farm?” The great +public ministers of religion, however, are really officers of state, +appointed by the Emperor,<a id="FNanchor_223" href="#Footnote_223" class="fnanchor">[223]</a> and usually they are grouped in famous +“Sacred Colleges” wherein the members hold office for life. Ordinarily +the persons thus honored are distinguished senators selected after an +honorable civil and military career.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>354. The Pontifices.</b>—On the whole the greatest official glory +comes to the fifteen <i>pontifices</i>. Not merely do they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_418">[418]</span> possess the +general oversight of everything concerning cultus, but they have as +their chief colleague the Emperor himself, who always holds the post of +<i>Pontifex Maximus</i>—head of the Roman religion.</p> + +<p>Before Julius Cæsar reformed the calendar the pontifices had the +important task of settling each year what days were to be <i>dies +fasti</i>, whereon alone legal business could be lawfully conducted, +and they have still the power to interfere in almost any doings +concerning sacrifice, ritual, temple properties, etc. Their head, the +Pontifex Maximus, has particularly to watch over and control the Vestal +Virgins; and the college at large still has the custody of the famous +<i>Libri Pontificales</i>, the “Pontifical Books,” famous and ancient +volumes containing instructions for all kinds of unfamiliar religious +rites and procedure in strange religious emergencies.<a id="FNanchor_224" href="#Footnote_224" class="fnanchor">[224]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>355. The Augurs.</b>—The pontiffs, however, are really +“Commissioners for Religious Affairs” rather than actual priests, and +along with them goes another important group of “sacred” personages +who seem almost equally unpriestly. These are the <i>augurs</i>, the +official interpreters of the will of heaven; and almost every senator +cherishes the hope of being appointed to this college, notwithstanding +the fact that long ago Cicero remarked that “two augurs ought never +to meet without winking!” There are sixteen augurs, who are entitled +to wear the embroidered toga prætexta and to carry the sacred crooked +staff, the lituus. The science of augury, whereof they are supposedly +the supreme custodians, is something whereon the men of old, especially +the Etruscans, expended an enormous amount of energy.</p> + +<p>The Italians in general put relatively little trust in astrology +and not much more in dreams as revealing the divine<span class="pagenum" id="Page_419">[419]</span> intentions. +What greatly matters is the flight of birds, the strange actions of +animals, monstrous births, thunder, meteors, and like prodigies. Even +in Hadrian’s day plenty of intelligent men will shudder with dread if +they behold a crow cawing on their funeral monument; or will give up a +journey if a black viper shoots across the road just as their carriage +is starting.</p> + +<p>Sneezing or stumbling furthermore can mean much, and before many an +atrium the janitor is constantly shouting “<i>Dextro pede!</i>” “Right +foot first!” to every guest entering the vestibule. Certain signs are +very dreadful; <i>e.g.</i> any gathering at which somebody is seized +with epilepsy (a manifest token of divine anger) must be instantly +dissolved.</p> + +<p>If, however, the gods do not speak thus openly, no public act should +be performed without at least asking the formal question, “Is heaven +favorable?” This may be done by watching the consecrated chickens +while they devour the grain as at the opening of the Senate (see p. +<a href="#Page_340">340</a>),<a id="FNanchor_225" href="#Footnote_225" class="fnanchor">[225]</a> but more elaborate and reliable is a careful watching of +the heavens for signs. If an augur sees ravens on the right-hand side +of the sky, the sign is lucky; but a crow in order not to forbode evil +must appear on the left. The actions of eagles, owls, woodpeckers, and +certain other birds are more complicated. Their cries, the manner of +their flight, as well as the direction whence they come all have to be +considered.</p> + +<p>Time fails to describe the careful ritual necessary for the augurs, +when, at the request of some high magistrate, they interrogate the gods +to see if heaven is pleased at some proposed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_420">[420]</span> official action. It is +not necessary, however, to get a positively favorable sign; often it is +enough that during a suitable interval the augur should <i>fail</i> to +observe any unhappy bird, any meteor, thunder claps, or the like. This +propitious interval constitutes a formal “silence” (<i>silentium</i>); +and many an augur has shown himself conveniently deaf or blind to +noises or sights that might prohibit some desired deed. Nevertheless +the solemn farce is always maintained, for when do Romans ever discard +any time-honored custom?</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>356. The Flamines.</b>—The augurs rank with the pontiffs high in +public honors, but the most important actual priests in Rome are the +<i>flamines</i>. There are fifteen flamines distributed among the +services of the various gods, but three rank above all others—the +flamens of Jupiter, Mars, and of Quirinus (deified Romulus), with the +first named, called more particularly the <i>Flamen Dialis</i>, at +their head.</p> + +<p>It is an extraordinary honor to be named Flamen Dialis, and Gratia +reckons it among the chief of her family glories that she has an uncle +now enjoying for life this high priesthood. The Flamen of Jupiter +is entitled to a curule chair as if he were a magistrate, and takes +social precedence above nearly everybody save the Emperor and the +consuls; he also wears the toga prætexta like other exalted personages, +although it must be of thick wool woven by the hands of his wife. In +addition he has to appear always crowned with a special high pointed +cap, not unlike the “fool’s-cap” of other times, and tipped with the +<i>apex</i>, a pointed spike of olive wood wound with a lock of wool.</p> + +<p>Old Papirius is among the most envied men in Rome, yet he complains +bitterly of the price he has to pay for his glory. He cannot mount a +horse, or even look upon an army in battle array. He cannot swear an +oath, or spend a single night away from the city, however comfortable +may be his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_421">[421]</span> family villas in the hot season. The cuttings of his hair +and nails must be carefully preserved and buried beneath an <i>arbor +felix</i> (lucky tree). He must never eat of or even mention a goat, +beans, or several other forbidden objects.</p> + +<p>Above all Papirius’s wife, the <i>flaminica</i>, whom he had to marry +with special ceremonies, is indispensable to him in many acts of +religion and he is forbidden to divorce her, although his life with +the noble Claudia is none too happy. Worse still if she should die, he +must immediately resign his office. The other fourteen flamines enjoy +somewhat lesser glories, offset by slightly lesser taboos. They are, +however, the fifteen most sacred male individuals in all Rome.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>357. The <i>Salii</i> (“Holy Leapers”).</b>—Of less glory than the +flamines, but nevertheless of venerable sanctity are the twelve other +priests of Mars, the college of the <i>Salii</i> (“Holy Leapers”). To +them are committed the twelve holy shields, the <i>Anciliæ</i>, one +whereof is affirmed to have fallen from heaven.</p> + +<p>Calvus has an elderly cousin, Donatus, who lately was appointed by +Hadrian to the Salii. During the last Kalends of March nobody cracked +a smile when these twelve sedate and aristocratic gentlemen, wearing +their apex-crowned caps, long embroidered tunics, and brazen cuirasses, +with spear in one hand and the holy shields on the other, went through +the city stopping in many of the squares and before the larger temples +and executing violent dances, leaping, cavorting, and chanting with +loud voice “Salian Hymns”—verses in such ancient Latin that they +hardly understood their own shrill jargon. When the round of the city +was ended and they had danced and sung for the last time, the holy men +were quite exhausted.</p> + +<p>The consolation for these holy men followed quickly, however. That +evening they held a grand corporation dinner. The augurs are famous +for their elaborate banquets<span class="pagenum" id="Page_422">[422]</span> worthy of an Apicius, but the Salii on +the whole surpass the augurs. A <i>Saliares daps</i>—“Holy Leaper’s +dinner”—has become the synonym for the triumph of good eating.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>358. The <i>Fetiales</i> (“Sacred Heralds”): Ceremony of Declaring +War.</b>—Calvus himself belongs to a religious college of rather +waning consequence, but of great antiquity. He is a fetial.</p> + +<p>Anciently at least no treaty was binding unless it had been ratified +with most solemn religious ceremonies. To deal with the gods in +international affairs Numa is said, therefore, to have established a +college of twenty <i>fetiales</i>—the holy heralds. Their president, +the <i>Pater Patratus</i>, represented the whole Roman people when it +came to swearing the oaths and offering the sacrifices for concluding +a treaty, and even in Hadrian’s day some of the ancient usages are +maintained. A peace has lately been made with the King of Parthia, and +in the presence of his envoy at Rome the venerable ex-consul, the Pater +Patratus, took his sacred flints, laid a special wreath of the holy +“verbena” plant on the altar, and kindled the fire for the sacrifice +that confirmed the peace.<a id="FNanchor_226" href="#Footnote_226" class="fnanchor">[226]</a></p> + +<p>More important once was the chief herald’s duty in declaring a war; +for it seemed useless to hope for victory unless first by legalistic +formula the enemy was put in the wrong before the gods. The Pater +Patratus with at least three of his colleagues was expected to march +solemnly to the hostile frontier, next with due ceremony to recite the +wrongs of Rome and demand redress and to hurl a spear dipped in blood +across the boundary; then and not till then could the legions march +forth in any offensive war.</p> + +<p>It is a great distance now, however, to the frontier of the Empire and +the white-headed Pater Patratus keenly dislikes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_423">[423]</span> to quit for months +his luxurious residence on the Quirinal; but legal ingenuity has long +since enabled him to preserve at once his bodily comfort and the good +old custom. Before the Temple of Bellona in the Campus Martius is a +bit of ground whereon stands a certain column. When recently it seemed +desirable to declare war on an unneighborly German tribe, a captive +from these barbarians was duly hunted up in the slave market at Rome, +and a legal deed was solemnly made out transferring this land to the +prisoner. The spot was now technically “hostile ground,” and the +Pater Patratus and his fellow fetials all ordered their litters and +were peacefully taken out to the Temple of Bellona. The Germans were +carefully summoned to “do the Romans right,” and no answer coming, the +head fetial with all the ancient formulas and curses flung the spear +into the column.</p> + +<p>The war could now proceed with the gods’ full blessing—a thoroughly +Roman proceeding, and very typical of many other survivals, religious +or secular.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>359. The Arval Brethren (<i>Fratres Arvales</i>).</b>—There is +another “ancient and honorable” religious brotherhood—the <i>Fratres +Arvales</i>. There are twelve Arval brethren, always including +the Emperor. In May they hold a three-day festival to the <i>Dea +Dia</i>.<a id="FNanchor_227" href="#Footnote_227" class="fnanchor">[227]</a> Besides regaling themselves then with an extraordinarily +luxurious feast, they assemble in the grove of the Dea Dia and offer to +her two pigs, a white heifer, and a lamb. Next they clear her temple of +all but the necessary priests and attendants, and dividing themselves +into two bodies of six, tuck up their long tunics and execute a solemn +dance around the holy house, singing meantime a kind of hymn for the +blessing of the fields, a hymn preserved in such an uncouth antique +Latin that the meaning of many words is doubtful.<a id="FNanchor_228" href="#Footnote_228" class="fnanchor">[228]</a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_424">[424]</span></p> + +<p>It is a most desirable thing to be one of these “Brothers of the +Fields.” The records of the college are kept with the greatest care and +their dinners compete with those of the Salii.</p> + +<p>These are <i>some</i> only of the holy colleges, membership wherein +carries marked social prestige. The fifteen “Keepers of the Sibylline +Books,” the <i>Epulones</i> who arrange many of the banquets in +honor of the gods, and the <i>Haruspices</i> who assist the augurs +particularly in interpreting the omens from the entrails of slaughtered +victims, are all distinguished personages. How many of them have one +scintilla of belief in the deities they address and the rites they +execute it were most unbecoming to inquire closely!</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>360. Rustic Ceremonies; Soothsaying, Astrologers, and +Witches.</b>—This religion, then, is one purely of outward ritual +coupled with not a little superstition. In the country the farmers at +the festival to the Lemures (malevolent ghosts of the dead) still may +rise at midnight, walk barefoot through the house, fill their mouths +with black beans which they spit forth nine times without looking +around, saying each time, “With these beans I redeem me and mine.” Then +they clank two brazen vessels together and nine times shout out, “Manes +depart!” This is a sample of many similar ceremonies.</p> + +<p>Soothsayers, who are often sheer charlatans, are very naturally in +constant demand among the unlearned to resolve such queries as, “Will +my mother-in-law recover from jaundice?” or “How long will my husband +live and keep me from my lover?” Such rascals usually tell the future +by examining the lungs of a dove. The entrails of a dog, however, are +better although much more expensive.</p> + +<p>Among the rich, however, “Chaldæan astrologers” are somewhat +fashionable, slippery Orientals who know how to wheedle the gold out +of credulous parvenus, even if the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_425">[425]</span> official religion sets no great +store upon star-gazing.<a id="FNanchor_229" href="#Footnote_229" class="fnanchor">[229]</a> The women are inevitably the best patrons +of these pretenders, but their husbands and brothers often refuse to +start on a journey or to begin anything else important until assured +“the horoscope is favorable.” Time fails us to tell of the employment +of Etruscan witches, or of the belief in ghosts and goblins. The latter +are dreaded by many hard-headed epicureans who will argue convincingly +that there can be no such thing as a god or immortality.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_425" style="max-width: 321px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_425.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Roman Altar.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>361. A Private Sacrifice.</b>—Nevertheless, with all its faults +this Roman religion has few truly <i>debasing</i> superstitions. There +are practically no human sacrifices, no constant and outrageous use +of sordid ceremonies, no acts or beliefs which actually degrade one’s +manhood or womanhood.<a id="FNanchor_230" href="#Footnote_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a> All is deliberate, ordered, and, within +certain pagan limitations, tolerably reasonable.</p> + +<p>A typical Roman sacrifice is a dignified and well standardized +procedure. Only recently Publius Calvus enjoyed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_426">[426]</span> a birthday, and custom +required that all his kinsmen should come to congratulate him while he +offered to the gods a snow-white lamb, in gratitude for another year +of life and prosperity. The ceremony took place at a small temple of +Juno near the senator’s mansion on the Esquiline, Juno being accounted +the special patron deity of the Junii Calvi. The victim was carefully +selected by Calvus himself, who paid an extra price for a creature +newly weaned and with horns just sprouting. Ostentatious freedmen +sometimes offered a fat bull on their birthdays, and poorer folk +merely a small pig,<a id="FNanchor_231" href="#Footnote_231" class="fnanchor">[231]</a> but a white lamb was a very fitting private +sacrifice, not too mean, not too pretentious, and fell in perfectly +with the Roman idea of dealing with the gods on honorable business +principles.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>362. Ceremony at the Temple.</b>—On the day of the ceremony Calvus +presented himself at the temple, with his toga girded tightly around +his body in the special “Gabinian Cincture” required in sacrifices. The +groups of kinsmen, friends, freedmen, etc., all followed decorously. +The special Flamen of Juno, a friendly senator, appeared with his +vestments and apex, to direct Calvus in the technical details of the +ceremony, but, be it noticed, the actual priest was Calvus himself.</p> + +<p>After all the company had gathered near the altar and put on chaplets +of ivy, a public crier (<i>præco</i>) commanded in loud voice, “Let +there be silence!” and a tense interval followed, every person holding +his breath lest an unlucky cough or sneeze should vitiate the whole +proceeding. Nothing ill-omened following, the elder of Calvus’s small +sons acting as camillus (acolyte) extended to his father a silver basin +of purifying water wherein the latter carefully washed his hands, dried +them upon a towel borne by his younger<span class="pagenum" id="Page_427">[427]</span> boy, then drew the great folds +of his toga over his head, almost but not quite concealing his face.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_427" style="max-width: 624px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_427.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">A Military Sacrifice; Trajan’s Army on the +Danube</span>: from Trajan’s Column.</p> + </div> + +<p>At this juncture a flute player standing near promptly struck up +with a piercing blast, which he continued much of the time until the +ceremony was nearly over, not to supply music but simply to prevent any +ill-omened sound from being heard. Thereupon other youths led up the +lamb. Its little horns had been gilded and a heavy garland of flowers +twined about its neck. It was needful for the creature to <i>seem</i> +to approach willingly, therefore the halter had to be quite slack, but +a little fodder spread under the altar made the brute only too ready +for its fate.</p> + +<p>Calvus approached the victim, and with the flamen at his elbow to +dictate every detail, took wine, incense, and a mixture<span class="pagenum" id="Page_428">[428]</span> of meal +and salt, and sprinkled a trifle of each upon the hungry creature’s +forehead. A professional attendant cut a few hairs from between the +horns and cast them on the burning altar. Then again prompted by the +flamen, Calvus prayed aloud:</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>363. A Formal Prayer; the Actual Sacrifice.</b>—“O Mother Juno, I +pray and beseech thee that thou mayest be gracious and favorable to me +and my home and my household, for which course I have ordained that +the offering of this lamb should be made in accordance with my vows; +that thou mayest avert, ward off, and keep afar all disease visible +and invisible, all barrenness, waste, misfortune and ill-weather; +that thou mayest cause my family, affairs, and business to come to +prosperity; and that thou grant health and strength to me, my home and +my household!”<a id="FNanchor_232" href="#Footnote_232" class="fnanchor">[232]</a></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_428" style="max-width: 320px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_428.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Roman Altar with Design showing a Sacrifice.</p> + </div> + +<p>It was all very like the formulas used by the lawyers before the +Prætor. No waste of fine words, but very comprehensive and no +contingency unprovided for.</p> + +<p>When Calvus finished, the temple attendant (<i>popa</i>) standing near +by asked in set form, “Shall I strike?” “Strike him!” ordered Calvus. +Instantly the attendant smote the lamb a single merciful blow on the +skull with a heavy mallet. The creature dropped dead, and his slayer +immediately<span class="pagenum" id="Page_429">[429]</span> knelt and stabbed him with a knife. As the blood ran out, +it was caught in a basin and sprinkled upon the altar, along with some +wine, incense, and a consecrated cake.</p> + +<p>The lamb was now promptly cut up, and a crafty-looking haruspex +inspected the color and form of the still palpitating entrails. If +these had been declared “unfavorable” in form, color, or otherwise, a +second lamb must have been procured and the whole ceremony perforce +repeated until the results were fortunate, but the haruspex, certain +of his fee, after a decent studying of the gall, intestines, and +liver, lifted his head and said solemnly, “<i>Exta bona!</i>” “The +entrails are good!” Thereupon the flamen, hitherto passive or muttering +formulas, stepped forward, threw wine, meal, and incense upon the +entrails; then cast the whole mass of them upon the brightly kindled +altar-fire. Meantime the actual flesh of the lamb was being gathered up +by Calvus’s servants to take home for private consumption.</p> + +<p>Calvus himself now drew the toga up over his head the second time, +and then called on Juno with loud voice, “since thou hast accepted +this lamb, duly proffered,” to continue her favor on him and his house +during the coming year, “in which case I vow unto thee another lamb, +white and without blemish even as is this.” He was again, it would +seem, the lawyer reminding the other party to the contract that by the +acceptance of the payment proffered, he or she was strictly obligated +to continue friendly for the next twelve months.</p> + +<p>The ceremony was therewith ended. The flamen raised his hand and spoke +the solemn word of dismissal, “<i>Ilicet</i>,” “It is permitted to go.” +Sacrificer, flamen, spectators, and attendants all now hurried away +with shout and laughter to Calvus’s residence, there to join in a fine +feast wherein everybody received a portion of the slaughtered lamb.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>364. The Vestal Virgins: Their Sanctity and Importance.</b>—Great +are the pontiffs, the augurs, the flamens, and the members<span class="pagenum" id="Page_430">[430]</span> of the +other sacred colleges. But they are all too pragmatic and secular to be +taken quite seriously when they demand religious veneration. There is +one Roman college, however, which is beyond words holy, at whose claims +the most godless never scoff, and whose members will keep alive the +best traditions of the religion of Numa until old Rome is tottering to +its fall—the Sisterhood of the Vestal Virgins.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_430" style="max-width: 278px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_430.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Vestal Virgin.</p> + </div> + +<p>Numa himself, hoary tradition affirms, instituted this body of six +holy maidens, although no doubt similar companies could have been +discovered in many other primitive Italian communities. Their origin +is clear enough. To early man, fire was a thing very mysterious and +very necessary. Before the discovery of flint and steel it was no +trifling matter to kindle a new blaze by rubbing together a hard stick +and a soft; every village, therefore, maintained a central hearth +(<i>focus</i>) where some brands were ever smoldering and whither a boy +could be sent running for a spark to replenish the kitchen fires.</p> + +<p>But beyond all other peoples the old Latins made of this homely need +a sacrosanct institution and a ritual. The Temple of the Fire Goddess +was perhaps at first only the hearth of the king, and her priestesses +were the king’s own daughters. Then the king disappeared: the Pontifex +Maximus took his place; and quite naturally just as the high<span class="pagenum" id="Page_431">[431]</span> pontiff’s +official residence, the Regia, stood on the verge of the Forum, the +Shrine of Vesta and the home of her maiden ministers stood close beside +it.</p> + +<p>All across the ages this fire of Vesta has burned, tended with +inconceivable care; and for this humble shrine of Vesta and the six +Vestal Virgins all Romans from Emperor to lowest plebeian still retain +more genuine reverence than for anything else in the world, not +excluding the gilded Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus crowning the +Capitol and its pompous Flamen Dialis.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>365. The Temple of Vesta and the House of the Vestals.</b>—The +Temple of Vesta, directly on the verge of the roaring Forum and under +the shadow of the Imperial Palatine, is an ostentatiously small, simple +building, with a circular portico of pillars and surmounted with a low +cupola covered with sheets of metal. Often repaired, great pains have +been taken (so Ovid tells us) to preserve the original “style of Numa.” +Directly behind it, as you go east from the Forum, is the <i>Atrium +Vestæ</i>, the House of the Vestals, noticed when we traversed the +Heart of Rome.</p> + +<p>Very simple externally, once inside those privileged to enter the House +discover not merely a fine comfortable dwelling, suitable for ladies of +rank and their numerous female attendants, but a very beautiful garden +some 200 feet long by 65 wide. There are spreading trees, winding +paths, marble seats, fountains and even a tiny grove—all within easy +stone’s throw of the very center of the metropolis.</p> + +<p>The need for this garden, however, is obvious. The Vestals are women +of the very highest rank, yet they cannot leave Rome in the hot +season when nearly all other noble ladies flee to their cool villas. +The garden is their breathing spot and their recompense. Around the +garden runs a line of statues of the <i>Maximæ</i> (Senior Vestals), +an imposing array of dignified elderly women of the grave Roman type. +Here<span class="pagenum" id="Page_432">[432]</span> too in the Atrium Vestæ, in a little room, is a small hand-mill +where the sacred virgins themselves can be seen each day laboriously +grinding the consecrated meal required in the cult of the Hearth +Goddess.</p> + +<p>Within this house also the six Sisters spend their lives in a routine +of holy duties, and although the building is not an officially +consecrated “temple” it is really the most revered and sacrosanct spot +in Rome. In the Atrium Vestæ, therefore, are deposited the wills and +other precious documents of half the nobility, and the gods pity the +wretch who may do the place violence,—his fate at human hands will be +awful!</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>366. Appointment of Vestals.</b>—This little sisterhood is divided +always into three categories—the novices, the active members, the +senior Vestals, of two members each. When there is a vacancy the +Pontifex Maximus makes choice among the girls of between six and ten +years in the patrician families,<a id="FNanchor_233" href="#Footnote_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a> who have both of their parents +living and happily married. A girl has to be physically perfect and +intellectually acute, certain, in short, to do honor to the greatest +position open to women in Rome.</p> + +<p>The present Maxima is Salvia, a distant kinswoman of the late Emperor +Nerva. She was appointed many years ago in the reign of Titus. There +was such competition for the vacancy then that several noble families +offered their daughters, but Salvia was chosen because her parents were +on the best of terms, whereas her nearest rival’s father and mother +were known to have quarreled. The high pontiff (Titus) solemnly took +her by the hand repeating the ritualistic words, “I take you to be +‘Amata,’ that as Vestal Virgin you may perform the sacred rites lawful +for vestal virgins.” The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_433">[433]</span> title of <i>Amata</i> was simply honorary. It +implied the gentle and loving character of the service of Vesta.</p> + +<p>Salvia was immediately led over to the house of Vesta, her hair was cut +off, and hung upon the sacred lotus-tree in the garden; she was clothed +in long white garments with a special white band around her head, the +holy <i>infula</i>; and next she took oath to abide in her office and +to maintain her virginity not less than thirty years. She was now a +lawful vestal, withdrawn from the power of her father, and subject only +to the jurisdiction of the Pontifex Maximus.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>367. Duties of the Vestals: the Maxima.</b>—The six vestals enjoy +no sinecure. From the fountain of Egeria by the Cœlian Hill they must +bear all the water required for kneading their sacred cakes.<a id="FNanchor_234" href="#Footnote_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a> Daily +they must carefully cleanse the actual Temple in front of their mansion +with a mop, and deck it around with laurel. There are various great +festivals in which they have to play an important part, especially in +the very important Vestalia held June 9th, when all Rome unites to +honor the beloved Hearth Mother; and on June 15th when there is the +official cleansing of the Temple, and all the refuse of the year is +collected and removed with scrupulous ceremonies just as a good farmer +should cleanse his barns before the harvest.</p> + +<p>The chief duty is, however, the simple and gracious task of tending +the sacred fire. For the first ten years of her sisterhood Salvia was +learning her responsibilities in this all-important particular; for the +next ten, she, or her associated second-class Vestal, had the actual +watch-care of the holy flame on the maintenance whereof seemed to rest +the prosperity of Rome; after that as one of the two senior Vestals she +could turn over to her juniors the active duties, confining<span class="pagenum" id="Page_434">[434]</span> herself to +the general oversight of the sisterhood. When the older senior Vestal +died she herself became Maxima—the most important woman in Rome, +enjoying a reverence and a certainty of tenure by no means shared by +every Empress.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>368. Punishments of Erring Vestals.</b>—To allow the sacred fire to +go out, by some fearful mischance, is an almost unheard-of calamity. +The ancient books ordain that the responsible Vestal on duty shall +first be stripped and scourged by the Pontifex Maximus, administering +his blows in the dark, then two pieces of wood must be taken from a +“lucky tree” and he must laboriously rekindle the fire with elaborate +ceremonies. After that other prolonged rites are needful to save the +state from the results of such a fearful “prodigy.”</p> + +<p>Such lapses in the service of Vesta almost never occur. Slightly more +frequent have been charges of breaking the vow of chastity. In the few +recorded cases the guilty sister after trial before the college of +pontiffs has been buried alive with a kind of funeral ceremony in the +“Accursed Field” (<i>Campus Sceleratus</i>) just within the Colline +Gate. It is “bad luck” actually to put to death a consecrated Vestal, +but a deep pit is dug and in it are placed a couch, a lamp, and a +table bearing a little food. Then the guilty woman is lowered into the +pit and earth heaped upon it. She has simply been dismissed from the +presence of men:—what occurs out of all human sight is strictly the +affair of gods! Meantime her paramour has been publicly scourged to +death in the Forum with every form of ignominy.</p> + +<p>The vow of virginity, nevertheless, is not perpetual. After thirty +years in the service, at an age still far below old womanhood, a Vestal +can quit the Atrium, and marry; but Salvia and her sisters seldom dream +of such a thing. Public opinion, though not the law, frowns upon the +act, and it means<span class="pagenum" id="Page_435">[435]</span> resigning a position of incomparable importance, +honor, and dignity.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>369. Remarkable Honors Granted the Vestals.</b>—If Salvia, for +twenty years at least, has thus taken her duties very seriously, she +has her great compensation. The Vestal Sisterhood is rich with a great +corporate income. The members alone of all Romans give their testimony +in court without the least oath. They have the seats of honor at all +public games and festivals. A lictor precedes each of them everywhere, +securing for his mistress the same public honors granted a magistrate, +and a magistrate’s lictors lower their fasces in respectful homage when +in a Vestal’s superior presence.</p> + +<p>The slightest molestation of these priestesses’ persons is of course +punished capitally. They have the right to intercede even with the +Emperor in matter of pardons, and they nominate to sundry public +offices—<i>e.g.</i> the librarianship of the Imperial library, and +certain military tribuneships. Finally if they chance accidentally +to meet a criminal bound for execution, upon their demand he must be +spared and released—not out of motives of mercy, but because it is a +bad omen for the State for any holy Vestal to meet a person formally +condemned to die.<a id="FNanchor_235" href="#Footnote_235" class="fnanchor">[235]</a></p> + +<p>One crowning honor also Salvia can anticipate: even Emperors +must ordinarily be buried outside the consecrated city limits +(<i>pomerium</i>), but the law specifically admits Vestals not merely +to the glories of a public funeral, but to burial inside the Heart of +Rome itself. What wonder that Salvia is loath to quit a post of such +glory and power for the uncertain prospects of matrimony!</p> + +<p>Despite all the ceremonies, irrational and vain though they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_436">[436]</span> may seem +to a later standpoint, the worship of Vesta, the goddess of the honest +home, and the corporate life of her six maiden ministers remain among +the fairest things of the Roman Empire. Matters cannot be hopelessly +bad, when thus, in the center of the great, luxurious, sensual Imperial +city, womanly purity and orderly virtue are preëminently honored.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_437">[437]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER XXI<br> +<span class="subhed">THE FOREIGN CULTS: CYBELE, ISIS, MITHRAS. THE CHRISTIANS IN PAGAN EYES</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>370. Saturnalia: the Exchange of Presents on New Year’s +Day.</b>—Could our visit to Rome be prolonged across the year we +should dwell on such so-called religious festivals as the Saturnalia +which lasts seven days, beginning the 17th of December, when the whole +city abandons itself to carnival mirth, when slaves for a brief and +happy interval put on the tall pileus, the liberty cap, are allowed to +be very pert to their masters, and indulge in all kinds of pranks and +liberties; and when people exchange with all their friends semi-comic +gifts of wax tapers and amusing little terra-cotta images, or other +gifts of real value such as napkins, writing tablets, and dishes of +preserved sweetmeats.<a id="FNanchor_236" href="#Footnote_236" class="fnanchor">[236]</a></p> + +<p>More decorous is the ensuing holiday on the Kalends of January (New +Year’s Day) when ceremonious official calls are paid on every magnate +from the Emperor downward, and more gifts are exchanged, often of the +highest value.<a id="FNanchor_237" href="#Footnote_237" class="fnanchor">[237]</a> In these festivities and distributions of presents +can perhaps be found the prototypes for the winter holidays of another +religion and later age.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>371. Multiplication of Oriental Cults.</b>—One dare not quit the +Rome of Hadrian, however, without a cursory inspection of something +extremely evident since we began our<span class="pagenum" id="Page_438">[438]</span> explorations on plebeian Mercury +Street—the foreign religions and their temples.</p> + +<p>Very reluctantly did the grave fathers of the old Republic admit +Anatolian, Syrian, and Egyptian cults into their beloved city. Even +unlicensed Greek ceremonies were frowned upon and the disorderly +orgiastic rites of the Eastern gods for long were extremely repulsive +to the dignified builders of the Commonwealth. But as the Republic +declined the foreign cults thrust themselves in and with the coming of +the Empire all attempts to prohibit them practically disappeared. The +most the authorities can now do is to see that these strange private +worships are conducted with a certain degree of decency. Rome has never +countenanced the vile revelings of the groves of Syrian Astarte, much +less the horrid child-burnings of the Phœnician Moloch.</p> + +<p>The votaries of these Eastern gods are not merely Orientals who +have drifted to Rome. The new religions have a great appeal to many +persons of good old Latin stock and especially to the women. The +reason for this is fairly obvious: the Roman official religion is a +legalistic religion devoid of the slightest spirituality. “Sin” except +in the sense of reckless contract breaking, “communion with God,” +“reconciliation with God,” “The Hereafter,” “Life Eternal,” and like +phrases are utterly unknown to pontiff, augur, or flamen.</p> + +<p>For intelligent persons to whom neither the Stoic nor the Epicurean +guesses at the riddle of existence prove satisfying, who are torn in +conscience, bowed with bereavement, or crushed by disaster, there +must be some outlet better than that of scrupulously offering a black +pig to Mars. Atheism can never satisfy for long,—and the Oriental +religions, appealing at once to the love for the mysterious, and to the +passionate desire for some supernatural explanation of the problems +of humanity, as a result draw in their votaries by thousands. Some +of these worshipers are utterly ignorant<span class="pagenum" id="Page_439">[439]</span> and credulous. Others are +men and women of wealth and deep learning, who can turn the Syrian or +Egyptian jargon into elegant Platonic myths, and see, behind the coarse +Levantine ritual, spiritual allegories which would have astonished old +Memphis or Tyre.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>372. The Cult of the Deified Emperors.</b>—The Imperial Government +itself has added to this tendency to multiply cults—it created a new +and a very important one, that of the “Deified Emperors.” Augustus +Cæsar was far too shrewd and matter-of-fact an Italian to permit +himself to be worshiped as an actual deity within his native land; +but he did not discourage Orientals (accustomed to adore almost any +successful monarch as a “god”) from setting up altars to him, and he +took a great satisfaction in having his adoptive father Julius Cæsar +officially deified at Rome, and then in accepting for himself the +glories coming to the <i>son</i> of the “Divine Julius.”</p> + +<p>Furthermore, even a living Emperor has his <i>genius</i>—his special +guardian spirit, often to be half-confounded with his own personality. +The worship of Augustus’s genius was soon an important part of the +state religion. Oaths were taken by it; an insult to it became the +vilest blasphemy. If Augustus did not become a god in his lifetime, the +aura and effluence of divinity assuredly played all around him.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>373. The “Divine Augustus” and His Successors.</b>—The instant +Augustus died a solemn decree of the Senate forthwith made him “Divus +Augustus,” with temples, priests, and ritual—all the paraphernalia +in short of a prominent member of the Pantheon. Since then in the +provincial towns the priests of Augustus, <i>Augustales</i>, are +ordinarily appointed from among the rich freedmen—men of short lineage +but of great economic influence, who are delighted at the trappings and +pompous honors awarded this holy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_440">[440]</span> office, and who become, therefore, +the ardent supporters of the imperial régime.</p> + +<p>Since 14 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> there have been still other gods thus enrolled +by vote of the Senate—notably the “Divine Claudius” (“dragged to +heaven by a hook,” people sarcastically remark, remembering Agrippina’s +poisoned mushrooms), and the equally “divine” Vespasian, Titus, Nerva, +and Trajan. Their temples and cults are among the most splendid and +prominent in Rome. In the basilicas and in the government houses +(<i>prætoria</i>) and magistrates’ halls all over the Empire stand +the arrays of statues of these Deified Augusti along with that of the +“genius” of the reigning Hadrian himself. Every litigant and every +witness must cast his pinch of incense into the brazier before them and +swear by their godhead.</p> + +<p>Intelligent men, of course, understand that these Imperial “gods” +somehow differ in nature from Jupiter, but the homage offered to them +seems really an affirmation of loyalty to the great principles of law +and order which bind the vast Empire together. Every good Emperor +is entitled to expect this honor, after a worthy reign. “I think +I’m becoming a god!” muttered the pragmatic Vespasian while on his +death-bed. On the other hand the refusal of deification is a form of +branding a tyrant’s memory; and Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and Domitian +receive no incense.<a id="FNanchor_238" href="#Footnote_238" class="fnanchor">[238]</a></p> + +<p>The state thus teaches all its subjects how easily new deities can be +introduced—apparently by very human agencies. Of the host of Oriental +gods that have thrust themselves into Rome there are three or four +which have won peculiar prominence; notably the cults of Cybele, Isis +and Serapis, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_441">[441]</span> Mithras. There is also the extremely despised sect of +the Christians.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>374. The Cult of Cybele, the “Great Mother.”</b>—The cult of Cybele +is the oldest and best recognized of this foreign group. Cybele is an +Asiatic goddess with her most famous temple at Pessinus in Galatia. In +the crisis of the Hannibalic War when public opinion was on edge, the +Romans fetched an image of this “Great Mother of Pessinus” to Rome and +set up a temple to her on the Palatine. The Roman matrons, henceforth, +honored her with the festival of the Megalesia.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_441" style="max-width: 354px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_441.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Archi-Gallus, Priest of Cybele.</p> + </div> + +<p>The worship of Cybele, the Great Mother, despite this naturalization, +retains something about it that is grossly orgiastic and un-Italian. +Everywhere over the city can be met groups of her priestesses, the +Corybantes, and especially of her smooth-cheeked, squeaky-voiced eunuch +priests, the <i>Galli</i>, executing their wild, noisy dances with +drums, cymbals, and trumpets, and leaping about in suits of armor which +they clash violently, while uttering screams alleged to be inspired.</p> + +<p>In the country districts bands of these Galli are reported to drift +frequently from village to village, exciting the rustics by displays +of “mysteries” which are simply a gross hocus-pocus, and which often +wind up in scenes of sheer depravity. Nevertheless, the cult has great +attractions for the superstitious. The processions of these effeminate +figures with redolent locks, painted faces, and soft womanish bearing +are always able to wheedle the sesterces out of the crowd.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_442">[442]</span></p> + +<p>The coarse legends of the Great Mother are furthermore caught up by +the philosophers and given a refined, metaphysical meaning, and among +the priests at her temples about the city are enrolled many senators +and equites, and among the priestesses a good many more of these +noblemen’s wives. To be a chanter, drummer, or cymbal player at her +great spectacular “orgies” has a morbid fascination—all the more +because much of the cult of Cybele worship is so gross that words +may not describe it. The Great Mother is, therefore, one of the most +undesirable of all the gifts offered to Rome by the conquered East.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_442" style="max-width: 426px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_442.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Shrine of Cybele.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>375. Cult of Isis and Associated Egyptian Gods.</b>—Worthier and +more popular with the better classes is the worship of Isis.</p> + +<p>The Egyptian story of Isis and Osiris, of the temporary death of the +latter and the sufferings of the former, a story that connected itself +with the Greek myths about Demeter<span class="pagenum" id="Page_443">[443]</span> and Dionysus, and also those about +Adonis, had become very old a thousand years before the founding of +Rome. The cult was a late invader of Italy; not until the time of Sulla +did it figure even as an important private superstition, and on account +of the marked Oriental tendencies of the Isis worship the Senate for +long discouraged it; nevertheless the stately ritual and the appeal of +the mysterious made the cult extremely popular with the multitude.</p> + +<p>In vain in 50 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> the consul Lucius Æmilius himself (his +superstitious lictors hesitating) struck the first blow with the ax +to demolish a prohibited Isis temple. Augustus had to content himself +merely with forbidding the erection of such buildings within the +official pomerium of Rome, but these could multiply in the suburbs, and +by the time of Vespasian practically all restraints disappeared.</p> + +<p>Everybody now frequents the shrines of Isis, and many of the noblest +citizens and matrons are among her initiates. Her great temple in the +Campus Martius is among the stateliest in Rome and every morning before +its doors are arrayed a perfect host of votaries.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>376. Ceremonies at an Isis Temple.</b>—If we desire, it is easy +to witness a large part of the ritual, although the meaning of +the allegories is refused the unelect.<a id="FNanchor_239" href="#Footnote_239" class="fnanchor">[239]</a> Before day-break the +shaven-skulled priests, clothed in trailing robes of snow-white linen, +enter the temple by a side entrance and throw back the great central +doors, although a long white curtain still hangs across the interior. +The multitude of the devout now stream into the temple. The curtains +whisk aside, and a statue of the goddess, a majestic female sculptured +somewhat in the Egyptian style, with her head crowned<span class="pagenum" id="Page_444">[444]</span> with a lotus +flower and in her right hand a holy rattle (<i>sistrum</i>), is exposed +to view. At her side stands her son Horus, a naked boy, holding his +forefinger in his mouth, a lotus flower also upon his head, and a horn +of plenty in his left hand.</p> + +<p>The worshipers now stand or sit on the stones for a long time in silent +prayer and contemplation; while the new light of the rising sun streams +athwart the silent columns and draperies of the great temple. Presently +a priest appears bearing a golden vessel of holy water from the Nile, +and he pours it over a sacrifice of fruits and flowers upon the altar +standing before the images. The worshipers all prostrate themselves in +awe, then rise. The ceremony is over.</p> + +<p>This is the ordinary side of the Isis worship but at times there +lack not violent dances; processions of all manner of harlequin +participants, men robed as soldiers, hunters, or gladiators, women +leaping in white gauzy garments, and shaven priests bearing holy +vessels—usually wrought with Egyptian hieroglyphics, and carrying +especially as center of all the tumult a sacred snake, lifting its +wrinkled and venomous head upon an ark of burnished gold.</p> + +<p>The Isis worship appeals often to men of high intelligence who grow +weary and disgusted at the failure of secular philosophy to solve the +great problems of existence. An elaborate explanation exists for all +these symbols; one might even add a spiritual meaning. It is even +claimed that Isis is simply “Nature,” and that her cult is merely the +worthiest expression of “the One Sole Divinity whom the whole earth +venerates under a manifold form.”</p> + +<p>To the initiates (into whose esoteric lore we cannot penetrate) is +promised in this world a very fortunate life and that then “having +accomplished the span of this existence, they shall descend to the +realms below, and even there, dwelling<span class="pagenum" id="Page_445">[445]</span> as they shall in the Elysian +fields, they shall frequently adore me—the goddess.”<a id="FNanchor_240" href="#Footnote_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>377. Cult of Serapis and of Other Oriental Gods.</b>—The Isis +worship thus has its nobler side. Not unworthy too is that of her +Græco-Egyptian associate Serapis, the patron deity of Alexandria, +who has a considerable following in Rome, acclaiming him as “lord of +all the elements, dispenser of all good and master of human life.” +Unfortunately, however, along with these deities there goes a whole +swarm of lesser Oriental divinities who do nothing but provide fine +chances for the scoffers and the charlatans.</p> + +<p>The priests of the dog-headed Nile-god Anubis are denounced by Juvenal +as a “linen-clad and cheating crew,” who levy on silly women, and who +will declare any infamy to be morally “pardoned” for the bribe of a fat +goose or some thick slices of cake. Korybus, Sabazius, the bull Apis, +and the Syrian Baal cannot pretend to be better. Many a decent Roman +beholding their worship will reëcho Plutarch’s recent words, “Better +not to believe in a god at all, than to cringe before a god who is +worse than the worst of men.” Nevertheless there is <i>one</i> Oriental +cult now penetrating Rome which seems to lay stress on moral purity and +on noble living—the religion of Mithras.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>378. The Cult of Mithras: Its Relative Nobility.</b>—Mithras is +by origin the Sun God of the Zoroastrian Persians.<a id="FNanchor_241" href="#Footnote_241" class="fnanchor">[241]</a> He is the +“fiend smiter”; the beneficent light which disperses mental as well as +material darkness. <i>Sol Invictus</i>—“The All-Conquering Sun”—his +votaries call him, but in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_446">[446]</span> statues and pictures he is commonly +represented as a handsome youth, wearing the Phrygian cap and mantle, +and kneeling upon a bull which has been thrown upon the ground, and +whose throat the god is cutting. In the Mithras pictures there often +appear also the mysterious figures of a dog, a serpent, and a scorpion, +all somehow connected with the ritual of the god.</p> + +<p>This cultus first passed from the East to the hardy pirates of +Cilicia, whom Pompey the Great subdued in the last years of the old +Republic. Then gradually the Western world began to learn about the +Mithras “chapels,” about the seven grades of initiates, about solemn +purifications from sin, and about an esoteric teaching which laid great +stress on personal righteousness, condemned vicious pretenses and +claimed to reconcile man with god in a manner promising the former a +joyous and noble hereafter.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_446"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_446.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Mithras the Bull-Slayer.</p> + </div> + +<p>The Mithras cult is now making its way very rapidly, especially in the +imperial army. All up and down the great garrison towns and standing +camps along the frontiers “Mithras chapels” are being erected, small +chambers suitable for only a few dozen of initiates. The rites and +teachings are very secret, and it is impossible to penetrate them as we +can part of the worship of Isis.</p> + +<p>Mithras worship furthermore makes no pretense of being a cult for +the masses—it is a blessing reserved strictly for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_447">[447]</span> the proved and +purified. All we know about it, however, convinces us that its ethics +are noble, that it repudiates all coarse sensuality, and that it +leaves its votaries genuinely better men and women, summoning them to +be coadjutors of the “Unconquerable Sun” in his glorious war against +spiritual darkness.</p> + +<p>As yet the Mithras worship in the West is relatively young, but the +time will approach when great Emperors, Aurelian and Diocletian, +will proudly number themselves among its initiates, and in Mithraism +ancient paganism will make its last real proffer for the allegiance of +high-minded men.<a id="FNanchor_242" href="#Footnote_242" class="fnanchor">[242]</a></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_447"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_447.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Mithraic Emblems.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>379. The <i>Taurobolium</i></b> (“<b>Bath in Bull’s +Blood</b>”).—Connected with these Oriental cults, worthy and +unworthy, there has come in a ceremony utterly strange to the religion +of Numa, which, nevertheless, is gaining increasing vogue,—the +<i>Taurobolium</i>. Originally it belonged to the votaries of Cybele, +but the Mithras worshipers have adopted it likewise.</p> + +<p>The rite is supposed to give one a peculiar cleansing from sin, and +being decidedly expensive appeals not a little to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_448">[448]</span> wealthy personages +who do not mind showing how their riches can put them on better terms +with heaven than is possible for the run of mortals. With increasing +frequency can be seen tombstones of magnates inscribed “Reborn to +Eternity through the Taurobolium,” and it is held by many that persons +submitting to this ordeal are assured of a happy immortality—at least, +if they should die within twenty years of the ceremony; after which it +can be repeated.</p> + +<p>Old line Romans ordinarily have not as yet felt a great need for the +Taurobolium,<a id="FNanchor_243" href="#Footnote_243" class="fnanchor">[243]</a> but one of Calvus’s acquaintances, the senator +Faventinus, has followed his initiation into Mithraism by celebrating +the rite. It is indeed something which only deep religious convictions +can induce persons of sensitive and luxurious tastes to undergo, +although the special priests who conduct the proceeding know how to +render it an impressive ceremony.</p> + +<p>Faventinus appeared at the appointed place before a concourse of +Mithraic initiates, wearing a golden crown and with his toga tightly +girded about him; then he descended into a deep pit over which was +placed a platform of stout boards. With mystical words and songs +a consecrated bull was led upon the platform and there directly +slaughtered in a manner causing its blood to flow freely through the +chinks in the timbers upon the worshiper below. As the blood descended +Faventinus extended his arms and uplifted his face that as much might +cover him as possible.</p> + +<p>When the initiate was taken out—his whole person and garments +blood-soaked—other mysterious liturgies were recited over him. He +was now a “Father” in the Mithraic order—of the highest class of +initiates, purged of all human<span class="pagenum" id="Page_449">[449]</span> dross, and entitled to close communion +with the deity. After all, the price of a fine bull and round fees to +the priests seem little enough to pay for such an exalted privilege.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>380. The Christians: Pagan Account of Their Origin.</b>—There is +still another cult in Rome, although cultivated men and women no less +than the run of plebeians speak of it with utter aversion. Since the +reign of Claudius there has existed a sect of degraded creatures, at +first Jews<a id="FNanchor_244" href="#Footnote_244" class="fnanchor">[244]</a> and Levantines, but later comprising also Greeks and +Italians, known as <i>Christians</i>.</p> + +<p>Excluding the vulgar tattle of the mob, as good an authority as Tacitus +writes thus: “Christus from whom the name of the sect is derived was +put to death in the reign of Tiberius, by the procurator Pontius +Pilatus. The deadly superstition having been checked for a while, began +to break out again not only throughout Judea, where this mischief first +arose but also at Rome, where from all sides all things scandalous and +shameful meet and become fashionable.”<a id="FNanchor_245" href="#Footnote_245" class="fnanchor">[245]</a></p> + +<p>By Nero’s time the Christians were in such disfavor with the populace, +being “misanthropes” and “enemies of the human race,” as well as +blasphemers of the gods, that the evil Emperor tried to make them +scapegoats for the burning<span class="pagenum" id="Page_450">[450]</span> of Rome—although the pretense was too +thin. People said the Christians were wicked enough, but that they were +not guilty at least of <i>that</i>!</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>381. The Persecution of Christians: Their “Insane +Obstinacy.”</b>—Nowhere, in those respectable quarters in which our +visit has moved, can we get any detailed information as to what these +Christians really do and believe. Very few important persons have so +far adhered to them, although there is a story that Flavius Clemens, +a consul and a kinsman of Domitian (who put him to death along with +so many other nobles), was actually caught by their supposedly crazy +doctrines.</p> + +<p>The sect has been declared unlawful ever since Nero’s day, and from +time to time its members have been arrested and their conventicles +(usually held in half-concealed burial places or in sand pits in the +suburbs) have been broken up. The magistrates, however, are slack; the +vigiles are busy chasing down ordinary thieves and murderers; and the +Christians most of the time are left alone. Hadrian, in fact, with +his general tolerance, is said somewhat to have discouraged active +persecution. The Christians, nevertheless, are still under the ban of +the law; and being mostly slaves, freedmen, and resident foreigners, +get very short shrift if actually brought before the Præfect.</p> + +<p>It is extremely easy to convict them: there is no need of elaborate +testimony, you merely summon the defendants to burn incense to the +image of the Genius of the Emperor and to curse the name of Christus. +No Christian will ever do this. The trials therefore are usually very +brief, and soon after they occur the crowd at the Flavian is ordinarily +gratified by the sight of one of the Christians’ “overseers” (bishops) +or “assistants” (deacons) instead of an ordinary bandit, awaiting the +spring of the lion.</p> + +<p>These sectaries are said to be very bold, professing not to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_451">[451]</span> fear death +which will only give them a surer and a better immortality than that +secured by the Taurobolium. Beyond a doubt (any cultivated man will +tell us) such defiant persons ought to be executed, if merely for their +“insane obstinacy,” although the edicts are only enforced spasmodically +and the Christians are often allowed several years of peace.<a id="FNanchor_246" href="#Footnote_246" class="fnanchor">[246]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>382. Current Charges against the Christians.</b>—If popular gossip, +however, means anything, these people should deserve the worst possible +fate. At their nocturnal gatherings, where men and women assemble, +it is alleged, for a wild orgy, the central rite is said to consist +of killing a babe and drinking its blood, while celebrants pledge +themselves to commit every kind of wickedness. Finally they tie a dog +to the lamp standards and incite the brute to upset the lights; then in +the ensuing darkness follow deeds of violence indescribable.</p> + +<p>It is also rumored that their Christus (who, of course, died the basest +of possible deaths on the cross) actually had the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_452">[452]</span> head of an ass. You +can see crude wall drawings deriding his votaries, as for example, one +showing a youth kneeling before an ass-headed figure on a cross, with +the scribbled legend, “Alexander is adoring <i>his</i> god.”<a id="FNanchor_247" href="#Footnote_247" class="fnanchor">[247]</a></p> + +<p>How far are these gross charges true? Such aristocrats as Calvus merely +shrug their shoulders; they are not interested. However, about 112 +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> Pliny the Younger, while governor of Bithynia, being +compelled to enforce the Anti-Christian laws, seized two Christian +women known as “deaconesses” and put them to torture in order to find +out what <i>really</i> happened at their gatherings. He reported that +he had discovered that nothing criminal went on but only “a perverse +and excessive superstition.” Probably, senatorial circles will assure +us, there is not much to be dreaded from such a movement which cannot +possibly appeal to educated men well grounded in philosophy. Of +course, Mithraism is very much more respectable, and according to all +fashionable judgment has a far greater future before it!</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_453">[453]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER XXII<br> +<span class="subhed">A ROMAN VILLA. THE LOVE OF THE COUNTRY</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>383. Appreciation of Country Life by the Romans.</b>—No study of +Rome can be complete without recognition of one cardinal fact—the +intense desire of all Romans to get away from their turbulent city +for a large part of the year. The wealthier the citizen the longer is +likely to be his absence, although no doubt many a senator or eques +growing weary of his luxurious retreat begins to sigh again for the +Curia or the counting room long ere the formal “season” has ended.</p> + +<p>During the parching summer months the city is really deserted by a +great part of its inhabitants. Only the most needful business goes on; +the public games are attended merely by the humblest type of plebeians; +the rhetoric schools cease their floods of oratory; the great baths +really seem empty; and the Forum crowd becomes thinned and spiritless. +Every person blessed with a moderate income and leisure has sought the +seashore or the mountains.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>384. Praises of the Country Towns and Villas.</b>—Never in after +ages will the blessings of country as against city life be better +appreciated than under the Roman Empire. The congestion, the noise, the +hurly-burly of the world metropolis probably exceeds that of any future +competitor.</p> + +<p>The poets all sing the praises of existence amid rural charms. Martial +for example waxes enthusiastic over the chance to “get away” from the +porticoes of cold, variegated marbles and from the need of running on +morning greetings, so that he can empty his hunting nets before his own +fire, lift the quivering fish from the line and draw the yellow honey<span class="pagenum" id="Page_454">[454]</span> +from the “red-stained cask,” while his plump stewardess cooks his own +eggs for him. Juvenal extols the cheapness and satisfaction of living +in the country towns where for the rent of a dark garret in Rome you +can afford to buy a small house with a neat little garden and a shallow +well whence you can draw the water for your own plants. Wealthier folk +share the same passion, and Pliny the Younger writes that he longs for +the pleasures of his villas “as ardently as an invalid longs for wine, +the baths, and the fountains.”</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_454"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_454.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Traveling Carriage</span> (<i>Reda</i>).</p> + </div> + +<p>The sentiment, indeed, is so common that no further instances need +be cited, save that of Similis, Trajan’s veteran prætorian præfect, +who, having retired under Hadrian, has just died after seven years of +honorable self-banishment in a quiet country retreat. On his tombstone +he has ordered to be graven: “<i>Here lies Similis, an old man, who has +<span class="allsmcap">LIVED</span> just seven years.</i>”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>385. Comfortable Modes of Travel: Luxurious Litters and +Carriages.</b>—So then at least by the time of the “tyrannous reign +of the Dog Star or the Lion” (mid-summer and September) all the roads +leading from Rome are covered with the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_455">[455]</span> great cortèges, if indeed, the +magnates have not quitted the city much earlier.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_455" style="max-width: 750px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_455.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Roman Bridge</span>: typical of thousands which +covered the Empire.</p> + </div> + +<p>This is no place to speak of the admirable Roman road system which +spreads as a vast network all over the Empire, and which is, of course, +at its best in Italy. Travel for the rich in Hadrian’s day is extremely +luxurious if not correspondingly rapid. If you are in no hurry, you can +ride in a comfortable litter borne by six or eight even-paced bearers +and so outfitted that you can read, write, sleep, and even play at +dice, while your retinue is winding its slow way over the Campagna, or +up into the mountains. If you are in greater haste, there are speedy +if somewhat less steady gigs and other open carriages which energetic +people drive themselves, although great folk, of course, demand plenty +of postilions and “well-girt running footmen.” In any case the journey +from Rome is a matter of great display for anybody with claims to +fortune. Fifty slaves and twenty baggage wagons are hardly enough to +become a senator; and four times as many of each is not an excessive +retinue.</p> + +<p>However, less distinguished people can drive about in their own light, +open two-wheeled carriages (<i>cisia</i>), or can hire<span class="pagenum" id="Page_456">[456]</span> them at the +posting stations just outside the gates, and time would fail to tell +of all the kinds of <i>carpenta</i> (two-wheeled covered vehicles) or +<i>redæ</i> (four-wheeled traveling carriages) which one can meet on +the Via Appia or the Via Latina.</p> + +<p>Since Rome is a city without railroads and without first-class shipping +facilities, necessity has developed this carriage service to a fine +point. Some people indeed still bestride mules, like that of Horace, +“short of tail and heavy of gait,” and government carriers ride +horseback—but the wheeled vehicles are excellent. It will be a long +time before they can be surpassed in comfort.<a id="FNanchor_248" href="#Footnote_248" class="fnanchor">[248]</a></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>386. Multiplication of Villas: Seashore Estates at Baiæ, +etc.</b>—Distant journeys we cannot consider, nor the service of +imperial and private messengers to the provinces. Our concern is with +the fact that over the whole of west-central Italy, well up into the +Apennines, and all along the Etruscan, Latin, and Campanian coasts one +luxurious estate follows upon another.</p> + +<p>Many of these vast establishments indeed combine profit with pleasure. +Landed property is the most genteel form of wealth and close beside the +sumptuous <i>villa urbana</i> which imitates the glories of the city +mansion, there often spreads the humbler and more utilitarian <i>villa +rustica</i> which houses the great gangs of slaves or hireling laborers +who keep the broad acres under cultivation.</p> + +<p>One cannot turn aside to examine Italian agriculture, but the residence +villas are so essential to every Roman of breeding and property that +to ignore them is impossible. Persons of means seem always purchasing +more villa property, indeed there are not a few magnates who can take a +long journey up<span class="pagenum" id="Page_457">[457]</span> and down Italy, spending each night upon one of their +own estates. If Publius Calvus contents himself with only <i>four</i> +country residences, he shows that he is poorer and less pretentious +than many fellow senators of prætorian rank.</p> + +<p>Inevitably certain places are preferred beyond others. Upon the Bay +of Naples people of leisure, who do not mind a hundred and fifty +mile journey from Rome, find a famous and delightful center at Baiæ; +and indeed in the entire region of this bay, recovering now from +the ravages of the outbreak of Mt. Vesuvius. Outward along the more +southerly Bay of Pæstum [Bay of Salerno] the shore is lined with one +lofty marble-crowned villa after another, often erected upon elaborate +jetties thrusting far out into the sapphire sea.</p> + +<p>There is, however, a whole series of handsome seaboard villas all the +way southward from Ostia—and Antium, Circei, Tarracina (where the +Via Appia strikes the coastline), and Formiæ are only a few of those +luxurious colonies to which the wealth and fashion of Rome scatter +during several months of the year. Many is the senator, eques, or great +freedman who can boast also of his magnificent yacht, painted in gay +colors, with purple sails, purple awnings on the poop, with rigging +entwined on gala days with leaves and flowers, and with liveried rowers +who are trained to swing together like automata.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>387. Villas in the Mountains; Small Farms near Rome.</b>—A great +many Romans, however, disperse towards the hills; indeed there are +many rich persons whose business will not permit them to go many miles +from the city, and others who keep a suburban villa for casual visits +from the town, reserving the seashore or the Apennines for the months +when the law courts are closed and the Senate forgets to assemble. +Calvus, we have seen, possesses a remote estate in the North by one of +the Italian lakes which he can visit only<span class="pagenum" id="Page_458">[458]</span> on set occasions, another +at Bauli close to Baiæ, also somewhat rarely visited, a third in the +Etruscan hills which is his regular retreat in hot weather, and a +fourth, a simpler affair, located a few miles up the Anio toward Tibur.</p> + +<p>This last near Rome, so the senator likes to boast, is of real Spartan +simplicity. He affects to take great pleasure there in his hennery +maintained so near to the metropolis, the great flocks of geese, +Numidian (guinea) fowl, and Rhodian cocks and hens and the fields of +vegetables very grateful when sent down by the <i>villicus</i> (farm +steward) to the city mansion. One suspects, however, that there is +greater satisfaction taken in the hot houses where, under the expensive +but well-known luxury of glass, rare fruits are ripened in cold +weather, and whence roses, violets, narcissus, hyacinths, and lilies +are dispatched to Rome for the <i>clarissimus’s</i> banquets.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_458" style="max-width: 415px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_458.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap center smaller">Roman Spades.</p> + </div> + +<p>This establishment near the capital is, in fact, hardly the kind of +retreat Calvus likes best, although a good many literary gentlemen, +like Suetonius the biographer of the Cæsars, retire to modest suburban +estates “large enough to engage their minds but not large enough to +give them worry.” In such retreats they can pursue their learned +labors, “get rid of their headaches and walk lazily around their +boundary paths,” and yet keep in touch with their city friends.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>388. Great Estates in the Hills: Pliny’s Tuscan Villa.</b>—It +is the great villa in the hills which is the normal retreat and joy +of Calvus, his noble Gratia, and their equally noble children. Such +places, be it noticed, the true Roman does not care to locate very near +to grandiose mountain scenery. He is not fond of overpowering sublime +views; what he prefers<span class="pagenum" id="Page_459">[459]</span> is a gentle aspect over smiling plains, lush +meadows, and fertile corn-fields.</p> + +<p>Lucretius rejoiced in the happy intervals when he could “recline by a +brook of running water beneath the leafage of a lofty tree,” and Virgil +desired “that he might always love tilled fields and streams that flow +among the valleys.” Hadrian is somewhat exceptional, among other ways, +in that he enjoys toiling up high mountains like Ætna for the sake of +the magnificent view. The average senator desires to ascend no further +than he can comfortably drive in his cisium, or be swung along in his +litter.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_459" style="max-width: 700px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_459.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Ruins of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli</span> +(<i>Tibur</i>): partial view.</p> + </div> + +<p>The Tuscan villa of Calvus is easily visited. It constitutes, in fact, +an estate which the senator purchased some years ago from the heirs +of the younger Pliny. Few changes beyond needful repairs have been +made since its completion, and no<span class="pagenum" id="Page_460">[460]</span> words of ours can surpass those of +its former owner in explaining why life seems very pleasant to those +whom Jupiter or Destiny have made rich and fortunate in the imperial +age.<a id="FNanchor_249" href="#Footnote_249" class="fnanchor">[249]</a></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_460" style="max-width: 668px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_460.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Ruins of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli</span> +(<i>Tibur</i>): partial view.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>389. Charming Location of Pliny’s Villa.</b>—“This property (wrote +Pliny) lies just under the Apennines, which are the healthiest of +our mountain ranges. In winter the air is cold and frosty; myrtles, +olives, and all other trees which require a constant warmth the climate +spurns, although the laurel usually prospers. But in summer the heat +is marvelously tempered; there is always a breath of air stirring, +and mild breezes are more common than high winds. The contour of the +district is most beautiful.</p> + +<p>“Picture an immense amphitheater, wrought by Nature,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_461">[461]</span> with a +wide-spreading plain ringed with hills and the summits thereof covered +with the tall and ancient forests. Here there is plenty of hunting, +while down the mountain slopes there are stretches of underwoods, and +among these are rich deep-soiled hillocks which bear excellent crops. +Below these hillocks in turn, along the whole hillsides, stretch the +vineyards which present an unbroken line far and wide, bordered with +a fringe of trees. Then you can come down to the meadows and fields +where the soil is so thick that only the most powerful oxen can tug the +plows; but the meadows are jeweled with flowers, and produce trefoil, +and other herbs, always tender and soft.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_461" style="max-width: 750px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_461.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">Villa of Pliny the Younger</span>: restored.</p> + </div> + +<p>“Through the middle of this plain flows the Tiber. Here it is navigable +for boats which carry down grain to the city in winter and spring, +although in summer the channel is only a dried-up bed. Gazing over the +district from the heights you think you are not looking so much upon +earth and fields but at a landscape picture of wonderful loveliness.</p> + +<p>“My villa, though, lies at the foot of the hill enjoying as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_462">[462]</span> fine a +prospect as though it stood on the summit, the ascent is so gentle, +easy and unnoticeable. Behind lie the Apennines, but at a considerable +distance, yet even on a cloudless day the spot gets a gentle breeze +duly tempered from the hills.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>390. Terraces of the Villa: the Porticoes: Summer-Houses and +Bedrooms.</b>—“Most of the house faces southward inviting the sun as +it were into the portico which is broad and long to correspond, and +contains a number of apartments and an old-fashioned hall. In front +there is a terrace bounded with an edging of box, then comes a sloping +ridge of turf with figures of animals on both sides cut out of the box +trees, while on the level ground stands an acanthus tree, with leaves +so soft that I might almost call them liquid. Around about there is a +walk bordered by evergreens pressed and trimmed into various shapes; +then comes an exercise ground, round like a circus, which surrounds +the box trees which are cut into different forms, and the dwarf shrubs +that are kept well clipped.<a id="FNanchor_250" href="#Footnote_250" class="fnanchor">[250]</a> Beyond these there stretches a meadow +delightful for its natural charm as the things just described are for +their artificial beauty.</p> + +<p>“At the head of the portico juts out the triclinium from the doors +whereof can be seen this terrace, meadow, and the expanse of country +beyond. Almost opposite the middle of the portico is a summer-house +with a small open space in the middle shaded by four plane trees. +Among them stands a marble fountain, from which the water plays upon +and sprinkles slightly the roots of the plane trees and the grass plot +around the four.</p> + +<p>“In this pavilion there is located a bed chamber which excludes all +light, noise and sound, and adjoining it is another dining room +especially for my friends, which commands also<span class="pagenum" id="Page_463">[463]</span> a delightful view. +There is still another bed chamber, however, which is embowered and +shaded by the nearest plane tree and built of marble up to the balcony; +above [in the ceiling] is a picture of a tree with birds perched in +the branches, equally as beautiful as the marble. Here, too, there is +a small fountain with a basin around the latter, and into it the water +flows from a number of little pipes which produce a most agreeable +liquid sound.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_463"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_463.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Roman Garden Scene.</p> + </div> + +<p>“In the corner of the portico there is yet a third bed chamber leading +out of the dining-room, some of its windows looking forth upon the +terrace, others upon the meadow, while the windows in front face the +fish-pond which lies just beneath them: right pleasant it is both to +eye and to ear, as the water falls from a considerable height and +glistens like snow as it is caught in the marble basin. This bed room +is agreeably<span class="pagenum" id="Page_464">[464]</span> warm even in winter, for it is flooded with an abundance +of sunshine.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>391. The Baths: the Rear Apartments: the Riding Course.</b>—“To the +last named room adjoins the calidarium of the baths, and on a cloudy +day we can turn in the steam heat to take the place of the warm sun. +Next comes an ample and cheerful undressing room for the bath, from +which you pass into the cool frigidarium containing a large and shady +swimming pool. Adjoining this cold bath is the mild tepidarium, for +the sun shines upon it lavishly, although not so much as upon the hot +bath which is built further out. Above the adjacent dressing room is +a ball court where various kinds of exercise can be taken and several +games can go on at once; and close to this are more bed-chambers all +commanding enchanting views over the gardens, meadows, vineyards and +mountains.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_464" style="max-width: 239px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_464.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Marble Urn or Garden Ornament.</p> + </div> + +<p>“Such is the front part of the villa. In the rear and to the sides are +still other dining rooms and bedrooms; especially there are certain +that are so far underground as to be perfectly cool even in the hottest +weather. There is also an elaborate set of quarters for the servants.</p> + +<p>“However, the most delightful part of the entire establishment is +perhaps the riding course. Around its borders are plane trees covered +with ivy, which creeps along the trunks<span class="pagenum" id="Page_465">[465]</span> and branches and spreading +across to the neighboring trees joins the whole line together. Between +the plane trees are set box-shrubs, and on the further side of the +shrubs is a ring of laurels which mingle their shade with that of the +plane.</p> + +<p>“At the farther end, the straight boundary of the riding course is +curved into a semi-circular form which quite changes its appearance. +It is inclosed with cypress-trees, casting in places a dark and gloomy +shade, though spots are left quite open to the sunshine; in these last +bloom roses, and the warmth of the sun gives a delightful change from +the cool of the shadows. All around these avenues run paths lined with +other box-shrubs; and here and there are more of the box trimmed into a +great variety of patterns, some being cut into letters forming my name, +as being the owner, or that of the gardener.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>392. The Fountains and Luxurious Pavilions in the Gardens.</b>—“At +the upper end of this hippodrome is a couch of white marble covered +with a vine. Jets of water gush from under the couch through small +pipes, and look as if they were forced out by the weight of the +persons reclining on the pillows, while the water rushes down into a +graceful marble basin with an underground outlet so it fills but never +overflows. When I dine at this spot the heavier dishes and plates are +set by the side of the basin, but the lighter ones, made in the shape +of little boats and birds, float on the surface and turn round and +round.</p> + +<p>“Directly opposite this couch is a sleeping pavilion. It is formed of +glistening marble, and through the projecting folding doors you can +pass at once among the foliage, while from the windows you look upon +the same green picture. Within is a bed, and the shade is so dense that +little light can enter, while a wonderfully luxuriant vine has climbed +upon the roof and covers the whole building. You can fancy you are in +a grove as you lie here, only you do not feel the rain as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_466">[466]</span> you do amid +the trees. Here, too, a fountain rises, then immediately loses itself +underground. There are a number of marble chairs placed up and down, +very restful if you do not wish the bed. Near these chairs, yet again, +there are little fountains, and throughout the whole riding course you +can hear the murmur of tiny streams carried through pipes which run +wherever you please to direct them.”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>393. Life of Sensuous Luxury at Such a Villa. Contrast in Human +Conditions under the Roman Régime.</b>—“Besides the beauties herein +described one has perfect comfort, repose, and freedom from anxiety at +such a villa. I need not don the heavy toga; no neighbor ever calls to +drag me out; everything is placid and quiet; and this peace adds to the +healthfulness of the place, giving it, so to speak, a purer sky and a +more limpid air. Here I enjoy better health both in mind and body than +anywhere else, for I exercise the former by study, and the latter by +hunting. May the gods preserve to me this place in all its beauty!”</p> + +<p>If life can consist of nothing more than a series of delightful +sensations, the eye to be pleased by entrancing vistas of marble, +greenery, or wooded hills, the ear by the soft murmur of musical +fountains, and every creature want ministered unto by scores of highly +trained menials, whose sole object in life seems to be to anticipate +their masters’ needs,—what greater fortune, one may ask, can any age +provide than to be possessor of such a villa, with the wealth and rank +such possession must imply? Happy its former, happy its present owner! +Is it forbidden to regret that one’s lot is not cast for a lifetime in +Italy in these prosperous days of the Empire?</p> + +<p>Yet tarry—even while as Calvus’s guests we take our seats upon his +marble benches beside the musical fountain under the whispering +cypresses, and before we can converse amiably with the senator, +perhaps upon the Stoic theory of “The Highest Good” there are sounds +discordant—the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_467">[467]</span> clink of fetters, the snap of whips, the curses of +drivers, the groans of human cattle.</p> + +<p>Along the road concealed by the shrubbery, is passing the slave coffle, +the gang of “speaking tools” on its way from the underground dungeon +(ergastulum) upon the great farm attached to the villa, to the daily +toil in the fields beneath a broiling sun. The refined luxury of the +fortunate few is purchased by the squalor, the ignorance, and often by +the lifelong misery of the brutalized many.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_468">[468]</span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER XXIII<br> +<span class="subhed">THE RETURN OF THE EMPEROR</span></h2></div> + + +<p><b>394. Character of Hadrian: Prosperity and Good Government of His +Reign.</b>—Purposely we had visited Rome in the absence of Hadrian; +our interest had been in the city and its people, not in the versatile, +ever-wandering Cæsar and the administration of the Empire. But before +Publius Calvus could set forth for his Tuscan villa he and all other +Senators had to attend a great state ceremony—the reception of the +Emperor returning from his travels.</p> + +<p>More than any other Roman ruler Hadrian had been an insatiable +traveler. The frontiers of Britain, Syria, and Africa, the garrison +towns on the Rhine, and the Danube—he knew them all. The peaceful +cities of Gaul, Spain, and Egypt reaped the benefits of his intelligent +benevolence when he visited them. Twice he had sojourned in Athens, the +city which perhaps he loved the best in all the world, finishing the +great Temple of Olympian Zeus left uncompleted since the days of the +Peisistratidæ and otherwise beautifying the now sleepy old university +town, so that its grateful dwellers acclaimed him as a second founder +like unto the original Theseus.</p> + +<p>Hadrian’s personal life had been indeed marred with certain acts of +arbitrary caprice and even of cruelty; many senators grumbled at his +long absences from Rome and they somewhat dreaded his sudden judgments, +but the Empire at large had been incalculably happy under his sway. +The legions were under firm discipline, wars there were not save petty +rumblings on the frontiers and the embers of the last<span class="pagenum" id="Page_469">[469]</span> struggle of the +unhappy Jews, while peaceful commerce whitened the Mediterranean, and +merchants’ caravans wound confidently over the great road system with +little fear of bandits.</p> + +<p>Under such an Emperor laws were scientifically administered without +fear or favor. The provincial governors were, despite an occasional +plunderer such as we saw haled before the Senate, men of genuine +intelligence, probity, and zeal. If the Senate was becoming a venerable +debating club, if the other forms of political liberty were either dead +or dying, under Hadrian despotism was showing its fairest face—with +a highly capable monarch earnestly devoting himself to his subjects’ +good. What man, surveying the august fabric and social and governmental +machinery of the Empire, could have failed to echo the current +notion—that the dominion of Rome was divinely ordained and find that +her departed Cæsars were worthily ranked among the gods?<a id="FNanchor_251" href="#Footnote_251" class="fnanchor">[251]</a></p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_469"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_469.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smcap smaller center">Hadrian.</p> + </div> + + +<p class="p2"><b>395. Return of Hadrian to Italy.</b>—But Hadrian had been growing +old and a little weary of his philanthropic wanderings.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_470">[470]</span> And now at +length a peaceful armada had borne him back from Greece to Puteoli. +Hence with an enormous cortège he had traveled by easy stages along +the “Queen of Roads,” the Via Appia, to the outskirts of the capital. +And now to welcome him back to the Palatine the obsequious magistrates +arranged the inevitable public spectacle.</p> + +<p>The Emperor is not returning as a conquering <i>triumphator</i>. No +formal triumph can therefore be ordained in his honor. He cannot wear +laurel as he rides in a gilded chariot, preceded by the long files of +fettered captives and, followed by the cohorts of his acclaiming army, +drive his car through the Porta Triumphalis near the Circus Flaminius, +next take a long circuit through the Circus Maximus and then down the +Via Sacra and across the Forum and finally mount upward to pay his vows +to Jupiter Best and Greatest on the Capitol. A magnificent procession, +nevertheless, is possible. At the third milestone from the city along +the Via Appia all the senators and equites in gala robes meet the +advancing Imperator. His Empress Sabina is greeted with equal ceremony +by the wives of the entire aristocracy.</p> + +<p>In the city all the vast colonnades are hung with garlands of spring +flowers, all business is suspended; all the fora and streets along the +line of march are packed with throngs in brilliant costumes and equally +brilliant chaplets. One grows weary counting the magnificent litters +everywhere passing, followed by the gorgeously liveried retinues of the +wealthy.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>396. Imperial Procession Entering Rome.</b>—At last after duly +impressive delays the imperial procession starts from the spot known +as the Three Fountains.<a id="FNanchor_252" href="#Footnote_252" class="fnanchor">[252]</a> The Prætorians are there in full force, +the City Cohorts, and heavy drafts of the vigiles, all the tribunes, +centurions, and privates parading<span class="pagenum" id="Page_471">[471]</span> in silvered or gilded armor with +scarlet plumes and mantles. The magistrates and ex-magistrates all wear +the colorful toga prætexta.</p> + +<p>The ruler himself, “Holder of the Tribunician and Proconsular Power, +Pontifex Maximus, Cæsar Augustus, Father of his Country, First +Citizen and Imperator”; that is to say Hadrian in person rides in the +glittering chariot wherein Augustus rode in his triumph after the +battle of Actium. Four snow-white horses draw the car, and beside the +slim Greek charioteer stands the object of universal envy, the man +who is all but a god even in Italy, who is the “Son of the Divinity,” +Trajan, and who is actually worshiped as a deity before a thousand +altars throughout the subjected East.</p> + +<p>Hadrian is a handsome bearded man of stature above the average. The +gray of advancing age is streaking his hair, but he retains that +graceful presence and piercing glance which would make him a notable +figure had he never donned the purple. Before him, bound to the end of +staves, are carried placards in large letters reciting the benefits he +has conferred on hundreds of communities; there is also a large roll +of papyrus symbolic of the “Perpetual Edict” which he has inspired +the learned jurist Salvus Julianus to compile preparatory to the +codification of the vast Civil Law.</p> + +<p>Directly before the Emperor there is borne upon an open car a gilded +image of the beautiful youth Antinöos, Hadrian’s favorite companion, +whose mysterious death in Egypt the monarch has never ceased to mourn; +while behind the imperial chariot rides the marveling envoy of Chosröes +the Parthian King who has received peace at the hands of the Cæsar. +The hundreds of senators and thousands of equites marching in the +procession, now and again, perhaps at some signal, raise shouts of +applause to the master and sun of that glorious human universe wherein +they rejoice as the fortunate stars.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_472">[472]</span></p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>397. Hailing the Emperor.</b>—So the procession enters Rome. At +sight of the tall, majestic Imperator, whose purple mantle gleams with +gold, all the streets and plazas burst into tumults of cheering. “<i>Io +Triumphe! Io Triumphe! Ave Cæsar! Ave Hadriane!</i>” while not a few +in ecstatic loyalty make haste even to salute him as “<i>Dominus et +Deus!</i>”</p> + +<p>As the imperial car passes each crossing of the streets, victims are +sacrificed, while loud prayers are raised for the monarch’s safety. The +air grows heavy with the perfumes of the incense burning on hundreds +of improvised altars. From the balconies matrons rain down masses of +roses; and at many a turn great volumes of saffron are sprinkled over +the marchers.</p> + +<p>Onward Hadrian rides, his handsome features curling perchance with +pleasure but looking not to the right hand nor the left. Perhaps he +recalls that were this a formal triumph, a slave would have been +required to stand behind him whispering at intervals, “Remember, you +are but a man!”</p> + + +<p class="p2"><b>398. The Donatives, Fêtes, and Games.</b>—The procession thus +sweeps along the Sacred Way, pauses for a moment that the Emperor +may survey the latest touches upon his new Temple of Venus and Rome, +passes the holy House of Vesta and then turning away from the Forum +and the Capitol ascends into the Palatine. Here the gorgeously +arrayed companies of the official bureaucracy swell again the “<i>Io +Triumphe!</i>” and Hadrian dismounts from the car to offer his own +special thanksgiving for safe return, and to burn his own incense +within the Temple of Apollo of the Palatine.</p> + +<p>All that afternoon the fête continues. The great public baths stand +open, absolutely free, not even the petty quadrans being exacted +from the plebeian visitors. The grain and bread doles are doubled; +the ticket holders receiving to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_473">[473]</span> boot measures of oil and wine. The +Prætorians drink deeply the imperial health—for a special donative of +1000 sesterces ($40) per man has been ordered for the entire corps.</p> + +<p>In the Flavian Amphitheater Hadrian himself presides in the podium +while a lioness contends with an elephant, the most famous and skilful +netters and Thracians slaughter one another, and a desperate robber is +done to death by three panthers. Late into the evening the streets are +illuminated; there is feasting, dancing, reveling all through the wide +parks and the bosky groves stretching across the Campus Martius to the +Tiber. Everybody is praising the greatness and glory alike of Emperor +and Empire; and as for Rome, Imperial Rome, the center of all the +earth, who doubts that her power is ordained to stand forever?</p> + +<p class="p2"><b>399. A Christian Gathering.</b>—Not all Rome this night is given +over to roses, wine, and reveling under the torchlight. In one of those +subterranean burial galleries near the Via Appia, which a later age +will call “Catacombs,” in a spot where a chamber of some dimensions has +been excavated, a group of soberly clad folk have gathered. They have +met stealthily,—posting<span class="pagenum" id="Page_474">[474]</span> sentries to give the alarm, for the vigiles +may not have become too drunk that night to be active.</p> + + <div class="figcenter" id="i_473" style="max-width: 342px"> + <img + class="p1" + src="images/i_473.jpg" + alt=""> + <p class="p0 smaller center"><span class="smcap">View in the Christian Catacombs</span>: present state.</p> + </div> + +<p>The leader of their service is the Bishop Higinius whose name will +stand as the eighth Pope following the Apostle Peter. During their +simple liturgies some strains of boisterous music from the luxurious, +sensual, pitiless metropolis outside interrupt their hymns, and the +good bishop signs to one of the deacons. The latter opens the scroll +of the Book of Apocalypse where under the cryptic name of “Babylon” is +forewarned the fate even of imperial Rome; and thus he reads:</p> + +<p>“For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her +iniquities; therefore shall her plagues come upon her in one day, death +and mourning and famine; and the kings of the earth who have committed +wickedness and lived deliciously with her shall bewail and lament her +when they see the smoke of her burning.</p> + +<p>“And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her, for no +man buyeth their merchandise any more;—the merchandise of gold and +silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen and purple +and silk and scarlet and all rare woods and all manner of vessels +of ivory, and all manner of vessels of most precious wood, and of +brass, and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and odors and ointments, +and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and +beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, <i>and souls +of men</i>.”</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_475">[475]</span></p> + +<h2>INDEX</h2> +</div> + +<p class="center">[References are to pages.]</p> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><i><b>Acta Diurna</b></i>, + <a href="#Page_282">282</a>ff.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Advocates"><b>Advocates</b>, methods of, + <a href="#Page_345">345</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">great importance of, + <a href="#Page_355">355</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">cheap pettifoggers, + <a href="#Page_356">356</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">high abilities of some lawyers, + <a href="#Page_358">358</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Agrippa</b>, Baths of, + <a href="#Page_361">361</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Aliens</b>, vast numbers of, + <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">colonies of, in Rome, + <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Amphitheater"><b>Amphitheater</b>, + <a href="#Page_394">394</a>ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">(<i>see</i> <a href="#Gladiator_contests">Gladiator Contests</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Antiques</b>, often spurious, + <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Apicius</b>, the gourmand, + <a href="#Page_100">100</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Aqueducts</b>, + <a href="#Page_303">303–304</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Arch</b>, use of, + <a href="#Page_13">13</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Architectural Forms</b>, usually Greek, + <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">use of arch and vault in, + <a href="#Page_13">13</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Architecture</b>, very grandiose, + <a href="#Page_258">258</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Arena</b>, arrangement of, + <a href="#Page_392">392</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">(<i>see</i> <a href="#Gladiator_contests">Gladiator Contests</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Armor</b>, of legionaries, + <a href="#Page_318">318</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Army</b>, real master of the Empire, + <a href="#Page_307">307</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">held under stiff discipline, + <a href="#Page_308">308</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">stationed on frontiers, + <a href="#Page_308">308–309</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">legions in, + <a href="#Page_309">309</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">size of, + <a href="#Page_331">331</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">efficiency of, + <a href="#Page_332">332</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">no reserves to, + <a href="#Page_332">332</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">(<i>see</i> <a href="#Legionaries">Legionaries</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Arria</b> (wife of Cæcina Poetus), + <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Atrium</b>, + <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, + <a href="#Page_43">43</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Auctions</b>, + <a href="#Page_226">226</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Audiences</b> with emperors, + <a href="#Page_296">296</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Augurs</b> and augury, + <a href="#Page_418">418–419</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Augustus</b>, tomb of, + <a href="#Page_372">372</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">deified, + <a href="#Page_439">439</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Auspices</b>, taken in Senate, + <a href="#Page_340">340</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Auxiliary cohorts</b>, + <a href="#Page_327">327–328</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b>Ball games</b>, + <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Banks</b> and bankers, + <a href="#Page_227">227</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">a great banker, + <a href="#Page_228">228</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">forms of investment, + <a href="#Page_229">229</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">trust business of, + <a href="#Page_229">229</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">savings banks, + <a href="#Page_230">230</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">safe deposits, + <a href="#Page_230">230</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">deposits in Temple of Vesta, + <a href="#Page_231">231</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Banquets</b> (<i>see</i> <a href="#Dinner">Dinners</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Barber shops</b>, + <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, + <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Basilica Æmilia</b>, + <a href="#Page_271">271</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Basilica Julia</b>, + <a href="#Page_272">272–274</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Baths</b>, popularity of, + <a href="#Page_358">358</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">luxurious private, + <a href="#Page_359">359</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">private-owned, + <a href="#Page_360">360–361</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">large government-owned, + <a href="#Page_360">360</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">great Baths of Trajan, + <a href="#Page_361">361</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">crowds at, + <a href="#Page_362">362</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">often a kind of club house, + <a href="#Page_362">362–363</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">entrance to, + <a href="#Page_363">363</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">interior of, + <a href="#Page_364">364</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">cold room (<i>frigidarium</i>), + <a href="#Page_365">365</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">swimming pool, + <a href="#Page_365">365</a>;</li> + <li class="i2"><i>tepidarium</i>, + <a href="#Page_365">365–366</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">hot baths (<i>caldaria</i>), + <a href="#Page_366">366</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">extreme luxury of, + <a href="#Page_367">367</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">restaurants and shops at, + <a href="#Page_367">367–368</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">parasites at, + <a href="#Page_368">368</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Beards</b>, revival of, + <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Beast fights</b>, + <a href="#Page_399">399</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Beggars</b>, multitude of, + <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Bonuses</b> (<i>donativa</i>), + <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Books</b>, + <a href="#Page_209">209</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">format of, + <a href="#Page_210">210</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">mounting and rolling of, + <a href="#Page_211">211</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">copying of, + <a href="#Page_212">212</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">publication of, + <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, + <a href="#Page_213">213</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Bread</b>, + <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, + <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Breakfast</b> (<i>jentaculum</i>), + <a href="#Page_110">110</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Building materials</b> used in Rome, + <a href="#Page_10">10</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Bulla</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b><i>Caldaria</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_366">366</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Camp</b> of prætorian guard, + <a href="#Page_311">311</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Camps</b>, military, + <a href="#Page_330">330</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Campus Martius</b>, view from, + <a href="#Page_7">7</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">general description of, + <a href="#Page_280">280</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">great porticoes along, + <a href="#Page_368">368</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">public buildings upon, + <a href="#Page_369">369</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Carriages</b>, varieties of, + <a href="#Page_455">455–456</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Catacombs</b>, used by Christians, + <a href="#Page_473">473</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Cemeteries</b>, + <a href="#Page_179">179–180</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Cena</b> (<i>see</i> <a href="#Dinner">Dinner</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Centurions</b>, in legions, + <a href="#Page_323">323–325</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Chairs</b>, forms of, + <a href="#Page_55">55–56</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Charioteers</b>, + <a href="#Page_383">383</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">(<i>see</i> <a href="#Circus">Circus</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Chests</b>, + <a href="#Page_57">57</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Children</b>, legal status of, + <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">exposure of, + <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">very desirable, + <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">ceremonies after birth, + <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">names given, + <a href="#Page_186">186–189</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">care in educating, + <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">toys and pets, + <a href="#Page_190">190</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">taught Greek, + <a href="#Page_191">191</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">schooling and education, + <a href="#Page_192">192</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Christianity</b>, pagan account of, + <a href="#Page_449">449</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">persecution of, + <a href="#Page_450">450–451</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">charges against, + <a href="#Page_451">451</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">attitude of educated men towards, + <a href="#Page_452">452</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Christians</b>, gathering of, in the Catacombs, + <a href="#Page_473">473</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Circus"><b>Circus</b>, popularity of, + <a href="#Page_382">382</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">charioteers in, + <a href="#Page_383">383</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">racing factions in, + <a href="#Page_383">383</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">wagering in, + <a href="#Page_384">384</a>;</li> + <li class="i2"><i>Circus Maximus</i>, + <a href="#Page_384">384</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">race track, + <a href="#Page_384">384</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">procession before races, + <a href="#Page_385">385–386</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">beginning of races, + <a href="#Page_386">386</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">dangers in races, + <a href="#Page_387">387</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">proclaiming victors, + <a href="#Page_387">387–389</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Circus</b>, Flaminian, + <a href="#Page_370">370</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Circus Maximus</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_384">384</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Citizenship</b>, desirability of, + <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">case of St. Paul, + <a href="#Page_147">147</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Claudius Etruscus</b>, powerful freedman, + <a href="#Page_142">142</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Clientage</b>, old type, + <a href="#Page_147">147–148</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">new type, + <a href="#Page_148">148</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Clients</b>, morning salutation by, + <a href="#Page_148">148–149</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">doles given, + <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">attend their patron, + <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">undergo insults, + <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, + <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Clothing</b> (<i>see</i> <a href="#Garments">Garments</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Cohorts</b>, city (<i>cohortes urbanae</i>), + <a href="#Page_313">313</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Collegia</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_249">249</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Color</b>, used upon sculpture, + <a href="#Page_259">259</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Column of Trajan</b>, + <a href="#Page_278">278–280</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Concrete</b>, great use of, + <a href="#Page_11">11</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Congiaria</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Cookery</b>, refinements in, + <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, + <a href="#Page_110">110</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Correspondence</b>, + <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Couches</b>, general use of, + <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Country</b>, around Rome, + <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">view of, + <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, + <a href="#Page_6">6</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Country-life</b>, Roman love of, + <a href="#Page_453">453–454</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">(<i>see</i> <a href="#Villas">Villas</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Court</b>, imperial;</li> + <li class="i2">(<i>see</i> <a href="#Emperor">Emperor</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Courts</b>, law, + <a href="#Page_353">353</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">(<i>see</i> <a href="#Legal">Legal Procedure</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Crowds</b>, typical, upon a Roman street, + <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Curia</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Curia Julia</b>, arrangement of, + <a href="#Page_339">339</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Cybele</b>, worship of, + <a href="#Page_441">441</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b>Daily Gazette</b> (<i>Acta Diurna</i>), + <a href="#Page_282">282</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">entries and gossip in, + <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, + <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Decurions</b>, provincial nobles, + <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Deified Augustus</b> and later emperors, + <a href="#Page_439">439</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Dining room</b> (<i>triclinium</i>), + <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, + <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Dinner"><b>Dinner</b> (<i>cena</i>), + <a href="#Page_111">111</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">time for, + <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">standard number for, + <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">preparing for, + <a href="#Page_114">114</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">arranging couches, + <a href="#Page_115">115</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">serving of, + <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">courses at, + <a href="#Page_117">117</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">drinking bout after, + <a href="#Page_118">118</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">garlands and perfumes at, + <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">very elaborate banquets, + <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">simple home meals, + <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Dinner hunters</b>, + <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">at baths, + <a href="#Page_368">368</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Discomforts</b> of life in Rome, + <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Doles</b>, public, of grain, + <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, + <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">distribution of, + <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Domus"><b><i>Domus</i></b> (mansions), + <a href="#Page_39">39</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">often several owned by one magnate, + <a href="#Page_39">39</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">plan of early, + <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">plan of developed, + <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, + <a href="#Page_41">41</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">price of a handsome, + <a href="#Page_41">41</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">entrance to, + <a href="#Page_42">42</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">atrium of, + <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, + <a href="#Page_43">43</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">decorations of, + <a href="#Page_43">43</a>;</li> + <li class="i2"><i>peristylium</i>, + <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;</li> + <li class="i2"><i>triclinium</i>, + <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, + <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">special rooms in, + <a href="#Page_47">47</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">garden behind, + <a href="#Page_47">47</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">slaves’ quarters, + <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">floors and windows of, + <a href="#Page_49">49</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">frescos in, + <a href="#Page_50">50</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">statues in, + <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, + <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, + <a href="#Page_53">53</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">furniture in, + <a href="#Page_54">54</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Donativa</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Drinking bout</b> (<i>commissatio</i>), + <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b>Eagle</b> of legion, + <a href="#Page_325">325</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Eating"><b>Eating-houses</b>, + <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, + <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Education"><b>Education</b>, selection of school, + <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">extent of literacy, + <a href="#Page_193">193</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">instruction of girls, + <a href="#Page_193">193</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">for lower classes, + <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, + <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">low-grade schools, + <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">cruelty in schools, + <a href="#Page_195">195</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">superior types of schools, + <a href="#Page_196">196</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">methods of teaching, + <a href="#Page_197">197</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">reading and writing, + <a href="#Page_198">198</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">arithmetic, + <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">grammarians’ high schools, + <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">passion for oratory, + <a href="#Page_200">200</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">rhetoric schools, + <a href="#Page_201">201</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">mock debates, + <a href="#Page_202">202</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">popularity of rhetorical studies, + <a href="#Page_203">203</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">philosophy, study of, + <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Egypt</b>, worship of its gods, + <a href="#Page_442">442</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Emperor"><b>Emperor</b>, center of social life, + <a href="#Page_294">294</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">“friends of Cæsar,” + <a href="#Page_295">295</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">audiences with, + <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">ruin through disfavor of, + <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, + <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">favor most valuable, + <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Emperors</b>, cult of the deified, + <a href="#Page_439">439–440</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Emporium</b>, + <a href="#Page_240">240</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Encampments</b>, military, + <a href="#Page_330">330</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Entrance</b> to house, + <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Epicureanism</b>, popular, + <a href="#Page_407">407</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Equites</b>, second class nobles, + <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">qualifications and honors of, + <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, + <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">review of, + <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Escorts</b>, of rich nobles, + <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b>Factions</b>, in circus, + <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Fame</b>, passion for, in letters, + <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, + <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">in poetry, + <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Familia</i></b> of slaves, + <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, + <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">organization of, + <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Festivals</b>, great number of, + <a href="#Page_374">374</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">passion for spectacles, + <a href="#Page_375">375</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">(<i>see</i> <a href="#Games_public">Games, Public</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Fetiales</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_422">422</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Fire department</b>, + <a href="#Page_304">304</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Fish</b>, great demand for, + <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Flamens"><b>Flamens</b>, + <a href="#Page_420">420</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Flavian amphitheater</b>, + <a href="#Page_394">394–397</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Floors</b>, of houses, + <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Flowers</b>, varieties supplied from villa gardens, + <a href="#Page_458">458</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Flute-blowers</b>, guild of, + <a href="#Page_251">251</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Fora"><b>Fora</b>, centers of Roman life, + <a href="#Page_254">254</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">series of, + <a href="#Page_256">256</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">crowds in, + <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, + <a href="#Page_257">257</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">centers for new, + <a href="#Page_257">257</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">grandiose architecture in, + <a href="#Page_258">258</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">use of color on sculptures, + <a href="#Page_259">259</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">entrance upon the series, + <a href="#Page_260">260</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Temple of Venus and Rome, + <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, + <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">colossal statue of Nero, + <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Arch of Titus, + <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Temple of Vesta, + <a href="#Page_265">265</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Temple of the Divine Julius, + <a href="#Page_265">265</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Old Forum, + <a href="#Page_265">265</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">of the Emperors, + <a href="#Page_275">275</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Foreign"><b>Foreign</b> cults, numerous in Rome, + <a href="#Page_437">437</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">why popular, + <a href="#Page_438">438</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">cult of Cybele or “Great Mother,” + <a href="#Page_441">441</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Isis worship, + <a href="#Page_442">442</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">ceremonies at Temple of Isis, + <a href="#Page_443">443</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Serapis worship, + <a href="#Page_445">445</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Mithras worship, + <a href="#Page_445">445</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">nobility of Mithras cult, + <a href="#Page_446">446</a>;</li> + <li class="i2"><i>Taurobolium</i> ceremony, + <a href="#Page_448">448–449</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Christianity, pagan view of, + <a href="#Page_449">449</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Fortresses</b>, frontier, + <a href="#Page_330">330</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Forum</b>, morning visit to, + <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of Julius, + <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of Augustus, + <a href="#Page_277">277</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of Nerva, + <a href="#Page_278">278</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of Trajan, + <a href="#Page_278">278</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">(<i>see</i> <a href="#Old_Forum">Old Forum</a> <i>and</i> <a href="#Fora">Fora</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Forum Romanum</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_265">265</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">(<i>see</i> <a href="#Old_Forum">Old Forum</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Fountains</b>, public, + <a href="#Page_20">20</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Freedmen</b>, how created, + <a href="#Page_140">140</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">status of, + <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, + <a href="#Page_141">141</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">humble types of, + <a href="#Page_141">141</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">wealthy, + <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">importance of, + <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Frescos</b>, in a Roman house, + <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, + <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1">“<b>Friends</b>” of Emperor, + <a href="#Page_295">295</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Frigidarium</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_365">365</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Fruits</b>, + <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, + <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Fullers</b>, + <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Funeral monuments</b>, + <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, + <a href="#Page_182">182</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Funerals</b>, great interest in, + <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">preliminaries to, + <a href="#Page_173">173</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">procession of “ancestors,” + <a href="#Page_174">174</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">exhibits in procession, + <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">orations at, + <a href="#Page_176">176</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">tombs, + <a href="#Page_177">177–180</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">funeral pyre, + <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, + <a href="#Page_181">181</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">for poorer classes, + <a href="#Page_182">182</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b>Gain</b>, passion for, + <a href="#Page_220">220</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Galli</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_441">441</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Gambling</b>, mania for, + <a href="#Page_375">375</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Games</b>, children’s, + <a href="#Page_204">204</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">played on boards, + <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, + <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">out-door, + <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Games_public"><b>Games</b>, public, passion for, + <a href="#Page_375">375</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">mania for gambling at, + <a href="#Page_375">375</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">vast scale of, + <a href="#Page_375">375–376</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">great expense of, + <a href="#Page_376">376</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">popularity of, + <a href="#Page_377">377</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">seating at, + <a href="#Page_378">378</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">(<i>see</i> <a href="#Theater">Theater</a>, <a href="#Circus">Circus</a>, <i>and</i> <a href="#Amphitheater">Amphitheater</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Gardens</b>, public, around Rome, + <a href="#Page_372">372</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Garlands</b>, at dinners, + <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Garments"><b>Garments</b>, types of, + <a href="#Page_80">80</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">toga, + <a href="#Page_81">81</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">tunica, + <a href="#Page_84">84</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">capes, cloaks, and gala garments, + <a href="#Page_85">85</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">women’s stola and palla, + <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, + <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">materials of, + <a href="#Page_88">88</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">use of silk, + <a href="#Page_89">89</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">changing styles of, + <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Gladiators</b>, notice of display of, + <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">popularity of, + <a href="#Page_392">392</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">(<i>see</i> <a href="#Gladiator_contests">Gladiator Contests</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Gladiator_contests"><b>Gladiator contests</b>, enormously popular, + <a href="#Page_389">389</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">at funerals, + <a href="#Page_390">390</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Gladiator schools</b>, + <a href="#Page_390">390</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">inmates usually criminals, + <a href="#Page_391">391</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">severe training in, + <a href="#Page_392">392</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">typical arrangement of, + <a href="#Page_393">393</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Flavian Amphitheater, + <a href="#Page_394">394–395</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">its interior arrangements, + <a href="#Page_395">395–396</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">procession before contests, + <a href="#Page_397">397</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">criminals thrown to beasts, + <a href="#Page_398">398</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">fights with wild beasts, + <a href="#Page_399">399</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">interval in sports, + <a href="#Page_400">400</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">distribution of lottery tickets at, + <a href="#Page_400">400</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">beginning of regular, + <a href="#Page_401">401</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">chariot warfare, + <a href="#Page_402">402</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">cavalry combats, + <a href="#Page_403">403</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">signals for ruthlessness and signals for mercy, + <a href="#Page_403">403</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">“Netters” and “Thracians,” + <a href="#Page_404">404–405</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">reward of victors, + <a href="#Page_405">405–406</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Glass</b>, used in windows, + <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Gluttony</b>, + <a href="#Page_100">100–102</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Golden Milestone</b>, + <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, + <a href="#Page_270">270</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Gourmandizing</b>, delight in, + <a href="#Page_100">100</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Government</b> of Rome, + <a href="#Page_299">299</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">city præfect, + <a href="#Page_300">300</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">curators and commissioners, + <a href="#Page_301">301</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">water supply of, + <a href="#Page_301">301–302</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">great aqueducts, + <a href="#Page_303">303</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">police and fire department, + <a href="#Page_304">304–305</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Grain</b>, trade in, + <a href="#Page_242">242</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">doles of, + <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">distribution of, + <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Grammarians’ schools</b>, + <a href="#Page_199">199</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1">“<b>Great Mother</b>,” + <a href="#Page_441">441</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Greek language</b>, constantly used in Rome, + <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, + <a href="#Page_23">23</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Guests</b> at dinner, proper number nine, + <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">arrangement on couches, + <a href="#Page_115">115</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Guilds</b>, + <a href="#Page_249">249</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">very ancient ones, + <a href="#Page_250">250</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">importance of, + <a href="#Page_251">251</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">festivals of, + <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b>Hadrian</b>, prosperity of his reign, + <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, + <a href="#Page_468">468</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">tomb of, + <a href="#Page_370">370</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">his return to Italy, + <a href="#Page_469">469</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">his procession entering Rome, + <a href="#Page_470">470</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">how saluted, + <a href="#Page_472">472</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">presides over fêtes, + <a href="#Page_472">472–473</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Hairdressing</b>, women’s, + <a href="#Page_93">93</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">ornaments on hair, + <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Heating</b> of houses, + <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Hills</b>, Seven, of Rome, + <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Hospitals</b>, almost nonexistent, + <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Hotels</b>, (<i>see</i> <a href="#Inns">Inns</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>House fronts</b>, on typical Roman streets, + <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Houses</b> (see <a href="#Insulae"><i>Insulæ</i></a> and <a href="#Domus"><i>Domus</i></a>).</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b>Idlers</b>, vast number of, + <a href="#Page_27">27</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Imagines</i></b> (death masks), + <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Impeachment trial</b>, before Senate, + <a href="#Page_343">343</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Industry</b>, quarters for, + <a href="#Page_238">238</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">conditions of labor in, + <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, + <a href="#Page_239">239</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">organization in guilds, + <a href="#Page_249">249</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Inns"><b>Inns</b>, usually sordid, + <a href="#Page_231">231</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">type of, + <a href="#Page_232">232</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">reckonings at, + <a href="#Page_233">233</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">frequenters of, + <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">eating houses, + <a href="#Page_235">235</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Insulae"><b><i>Insulæ</i></b> (tenement houses), + <a href="#Page_34">34</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">typical <i>insula</i>, + <a href="#Page_35">35</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">flats in, + <a href="#Page_36">36</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">cheap attics in, + <a href="#Page_37">37</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">dangers of, + <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, + <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Isis</b>, cult of, + <a href="#Page_442">442</a> ff.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b>Janus</b>, + <a href="#Page_413">413</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Jentaculum</i></b> (breakfast), + <a href="#Page_110">110</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Jesus</b>, legal status of, + <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Jewels</b>, + <a href="#Page_96">96</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Jews</b> in Rome, + <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b>Kissing</b>, habit of, in public, + <a href="#Page_27">27</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Kitchens</b>, + <a href="#Page_109">109</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b><i>Lacerna</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_85">85</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Lacus</b>, Curtius, + <a href="#Page_274">274</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Lares</b> and Penates, + <a href="#Page_414">414</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Latrunculi</i></b> (game), + <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Lawyers</b> (<i>see</i> <a href="#Advocates">Advocates</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Legacies</b>, + <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">hunting for, + <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">public bequests, + <a href="#Page_172">172</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Legal"><b>Legal procedure</b>, highly scientific, + <a href="#Page_353">353</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">great tribunals for, + <a href="#Page_354">354</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">forms of verdicts, + <a href="#Page_355">355</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">importance of advocates, + <a href="#Page_355">355</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">cheap pettifoggers, + <a href="#Page_356">356</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">character and slave witnesses, + <a href="#Page_357">357</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">use of written evidence, + <a href="#Page_357">357–358</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Legate</b> of the legion, + <a href="#Page_329">329</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Legionaries"><b>Legionaries</b>, enlistment of, + <a href="#Page_314">314</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">organization of, + <a href="#Page_315">315</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">training of, + <a href="#Page_316">316</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">weapons of, + <a href="#Page_317">317–318</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">armor of, + <a href="#Page_318">318</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">rewards and punishment of, + <a href="#Page_319">319–320</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">retiring bonuses for, + <a href="#Page_329">329</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">pay and rations of, + <a href="#Page_320">320</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">training of, + <a href="#Page_321">321</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">non-military labors of, + <a href="#Page_322">322</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">petty officers of, + <a href="#Page_322">322–323</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">centurions of, + <a href="#Page_323">323–324</a>;</li> + <li class="i2"><i>primipilus</i> of, + <a href="#Page_325">325</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">eagle of, + <a href="#Page_325">325</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Legions</b>, number of, + <a href="#Page_309">309</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">organization of, + <a href="#Page_315">315</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">location and names of, + <a href="#Page_326">326</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">commanders of, + <a href="#Page_328">328</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">(<i>see also</i> <a href="#Legionaries">Legionaries</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Letters</b>, + <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, + <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Libraries</b>, size of, + <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">private, + <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">public, + <a href="#Page_219">219</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of Trajan, + <a href="#Page_280">280</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Literary fame</b>, passion for, + <a href="#Page_214">214</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Luncheon</b> (<i>prandium</i>), + <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b>Magistrates</b>, public honors paid to, + <a href="#Page_24">24</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Mansions</b> (see <a href="#Domus"><i>Domus</i></a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Manumission</b>, + <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, + <a href="#Page_140">140</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Marble trade</b>, + <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Marriage</b>, men often reluctant to marry, + <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">usually arranged by girls’ parents, + <a href="#Page_63">63</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">marriage treaties, + <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">betrothal before, + <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">dowries, + <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">dressing bride, + <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, + <a href="#Page_67">67</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">actual ceremonies of, + <a href="#Page_67">67</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">contract of, + <a href="#Page_68">68</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">wedding procession, + <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">ceremonies at bridegroom’s house, + <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">often unhappy, + <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">divorce, easy and frequent, + <a href="#Page_74">74</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">happy marriages, + <a href="#Page_75">75</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Masks</b>, death (<i>imagines</i>), + <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Matrons</b>, honors paid to, + <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, + <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">(<i>see</i> <a href="#Women">Women</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Meals</b> and meal times, + <a href="#Page_110">110</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Meat</b> and poultry, + <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Medicine</b> (<i>see</i> <a href="#Physicians">Physicians</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Mimes</b>, + <a href="#Page_380">380</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Mithras</b>, worship of, + <a href="#Page_445">445–446</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Morning</b>, how spent by gentlemen, + <a href="#Page_110">110</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Morra</b>, game of, + <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Mosaics</b>, in Roman mansion, + <a href="#Page_43">43</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b>Names</b>, intricacy of, + <a href="#Page_186">186</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">irregular, + <a href="#Page_187">187</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of slaves, + <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of women, + <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">confusion of, + <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Nero</b>, colossal statue of, + <a href="#Page_262">262</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Notices</b>, public, + <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1" id="Old_Forum"><b>Old Forum</b>, + <a href="#Page_265">265</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">noble traditions of, + <a href="#Page_266">266</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">impression created by, + <a href="#Page_267">267</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">crowds in, + <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, + <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">area of, + <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, + <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">western end of, + <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Rostra, + <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Golden Milestone, + <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, + <a href="#Page_270">270</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Tullianum, + <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, + <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Basilica Æmilia, + <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Temple of Janus, + <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Senate House, + <a href="#Page_272">272</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Basilica Julia, + <a href="#Page_272">272</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Lacus Curtius, + <a href="#Page_274">274</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Olive oil</b>, + <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Omens</b>, belief in, + <a href="#Page_419">419–420</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Oratory</b>, passion for, + <a href="#Page_200">200</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">training in, + <a href="#Page_201">201</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">in Senate, + <a href="#Page_343">343</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Ostia</b>, trade through, + <a href="#Page_239">239</a>.</li> + <li class="i2">shipping at, + <a href="#Page_247">247</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">naval shipping at, + <a href="#Page_248">248</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">harbor town at, + <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b><i>Pænula</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_85">85</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Palace</b>, imperial, + <a href="#Page_288">288</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">magnificent aspect of, + <a href="#Page_289">289</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">famous buildings in, + <a href="#Page_290">290</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">triclinium and throne-room of Domitian, + <a href="#Page_291">291–292</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">enormous luxury of, + <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">swarm of officials present in, + <a href="#Page_293">293</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Palatine</b>, view from, + <a href="#Page_260">260</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">history of, + <a href="#Page_286">286</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">fine residences upon, + <a href="#Page_287">287</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Augustus settles upon, + <a href="#Page_287">287–288</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">commanding view from, + <a href="#Page_288">288</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">imperial palace upon, + <a href="#Page_288">288</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Palla</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Pantheon</b>, + <a href="#Page_280">280–282</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Pantomimes</b>, + <a href="#Page_381">381</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">high art in, + <a href="#Page_382">382</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Papyrus</b>, + <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, + <a href="#Page_210">210</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Parasites</b>, swarm of, in Rome, + <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">at dinners, + <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, + <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">at baths, + <a href="#Page_368">368</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Park system</b> around Rome, + <a href="#Page_280">280</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">toward Tiber, + <a href="#Page_369">369</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Patria Potestas</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Paul</b>, legal status of, + <a href="#Page_147">147</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Pavements</b>, in Roman streets, + <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Pax Romana</i></b>, blessings of, + <a href="#Page_1">1</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Pearls</b>, + <a href="#Page_97">97</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Perfumes</b>, + <a href="#Page_98">98</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">at dinners, + <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Peristylium</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_44">44</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Pet animals</b>, + <a href="#Page_58">58</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of children, + <a href="#Page_190">190</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Philosophy</b>, study of, + <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Physicians"><b>Physicians</b>, no training required, + <a href="#Page_160">160</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">superior class of, + <a href="#Page_161">161</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">fashionable doctors, + <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, + <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">instruments and books of, + <a href="#Page_163">163</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">famous remedies of, + <a href="#Page_164">164</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">absurd medicines, + <a href="#Page_164">164</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">theriac, + <a href="#Page_165">165</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">fear of poisons, + <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, + <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">disciples of, + <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">quack doctors, + <a href="#Page_167">167</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Placards</b>, public, + <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, + <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Plebeians</b>, the “mob,” + <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Pliny the Younger’s Tuscan villa</b>, + <a href="#Page_459">459</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">charming location of, + <a href="#Page_460">460</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">view from, + <a href="#Page_461">461</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">terraces and porticoes of, + <a href="#Page_462">462</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">bed-chambers of, + <a href="#Page_463">463–464</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">gardens of, + <a href="#Page_465">465</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Poetry</b>, passion for, + <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Police department</b>, + <a href="#Page_304">304–305</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Pontiffs</b>, + <a href="#Page_417">417</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Population</b> of Rome, + <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, + <a href="#Page_4">4</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Porticoes</b>, along Campus Martius, + <a href="#Page_368">368–369</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Portrait busts</b>, trade in, + <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Præfect</b>, of city of Rome, + <a href="#Page_300">300</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of the police (<i>vigiles</i>), + <a href="#Page_306">306</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of the camps, + <a href="#Page_328">328</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Prætorian guard</b>, + <a href="#Page_309">309–311</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">præfect of, + <a href="#Page_311">311</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">camp of, + <a href="#Page_311">311–312</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">organization of, + <a href="#Page_313">313</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Prætorian præfect</b>, + <a href="#Page_311">311</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Prayer</b>, formal, at sacrifice, + <a href="#Page_428">428</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Priests</b>, duties of, + <a href="#Page_417">417</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">(<i>see</i> <a href="#Flamens">Flamens</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Primipilus</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_325">325</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Processions</b>, attending great nobles, + <a href="#Page_24">24</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Provincials</b>, status of, + <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Public games</b>, + <a href="#Page_375">375</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Publishers of books</b>, + <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, + <a href="#Page_214">214</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Punishments</b>, of slaves, + <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of soldiers, + <a href="#Page_320">320</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b>Regia</b>, + <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Regions</b> of Rome, + <a href="#Page_15">15</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Religion</b>, signs of, everywhere, + <a href="#Page_407">407</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">upper classes sceptical, + <a href="#Page_407">407–408</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Stoicism popular, + <a href="#Page_408">408</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">revival of, under Empire, + <a href="#Page_409">409</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">many foreign cults, + <a href="#Page_410">410</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">plebeians very superstitious, + <a href="#Page_411">411</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">based on old Italian agriculture, + <a href="#Page_412">412</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">native Italian gods, + <a href="#Page_413">413</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Lares and Penates, + <a href="#Page_414">414</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">personified virtues as gods, + <a href="#Page_415">415</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">legalistic character of, + <a href="#Page_416">416</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">priests not sacrosanct, + <a href="#Page_417">417</a>;</li> + <li class="i2"><i>Pontifices</i>, + <a href="#Page_417">417–418</a>;</li> + <li class="i2"><i>Augurs</i>, + <a href="#Page_418">418</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Flamens, + <a href="#Page_420">420</a>;</li> + <li class="i2"><i>Salii</i>, + <a href="#Page_421">421</a>;</li> + <li class="i2"><i>Fetiales</i>, + <a href="#Page_422">422</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Arval Brethren, + <a href="#Page_423">423</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">rustic, + <a href="#Page_424">424</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">soothsayers and astrologers, + <a href="#Page_424">424–425</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">sacrifices, private, + <a href="#Page_425">425</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">ceremony at temple, + <a href="#Page_426">426</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">slaughtering the victim, + <a href="#Page_427">427</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">formal prayer, + <a href="#Page_428">428</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Vestal Virgins, + <a href="#Page_429">429</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">(<i>see</i> <a href="#Foreign">Foreign Cults</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Restaurants</b> (<i>see</i> <a href="#Eating">Eating-Houses</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Rhetoricians</b>, + <a href="#Page_201">201</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">schools of, + <a href="#Page_202">202</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Rings</b>, + <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Robbers</b>, game of, + <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Roman Empire</b> very prosperous under Hadrian, + <a href="#Page_1">1</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Rome</b>, beautified by Augustus and later Emperors, + <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">reaches architectural perfection about 135 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, + <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">population of, + <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, + <a href="#Page_4">4</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">crowded condition of, + <a href="#Page_4">4</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">country around, + <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">view from Campus Martius, + <a href="#Page_7">7</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Seven Hills of, + <a href="#Page_9">9</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">regions and social quarters of, + <a href="#Page_15">15</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">typical street in, + <a href="#Page_16">16</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">discomforts of life in, + <a href="#Page_33">33</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">vast alien population in, + <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">divisions of society in, + <a href="#Page_123">123</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">great Jewish colony in, + <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">plebeians in, + <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, + <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">life in, extravagant and expensive, + <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">a city of investors and buyers of luxuries, + <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">great shopping quarters in, + <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">industrial quarters in, + <a href="#Page_210">210</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">city government of, + <a href="#Page_299">299</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Rostra</b>, + <a href="#Page_269">269</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b>Sacrifices</b>, private description of, + <a href="#Page_425">425</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Salii</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_421">421</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Salutations</b>, form of, in public, + <a href="#Page_26">26</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Sandals</b>, + <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Saturnalia</b>, + <a href="#Page_437">437</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Schools</b> (<i>see</i> <a href="#Education">Educators</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Scribblings</b>, upon every wall, + <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, + <a href="#Page_31">31</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Sculptures</b>, trade in, + <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">often colored, + <a href="#Page_259">259</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Seat of honor</b>, at festivals, + <a href="#Page_378">378</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Secretaries</b>, + <a href="#Page_209">209</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Senate</b>, outward glory of, + <a href="#Page_334">334</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">actual weakness of, + <a href="#Page_335">335</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">actual authority of, + <a href="#Page_336">336</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">organization and procedure of, + <a href="#Page_337">337–338</a>;</li> + <li class="i2"><i>Curia</i> (Senate House) for, + <a href="#Page_338">338</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">arrangement of seats, + <a href="#Page_339">339</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">precedence in, + <a href="#Page_339">339–340</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">opening of session, + <a href="#Page_340">340</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">auspices in, + <a href="#Page_340">340–341</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">routine business in, + <a href="#Page_341">341</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">taking of vote, + <a href="#Page_342">342</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">impeachment before, + <a href="#Page_342">342–343</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">use of water clocks, + <a href="#Page_344">344</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">oratory in, + <a href="#Page_344">344</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">advocates before, + <a href="#Page_345">345</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">shouts and invectives during debates, + <a href="#Page_347">347</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">taking the opinion of, + <a href="#Page_348">348</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">speeches from floor of, + <a href="#Page_349">349</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">uproar in, + <a href="#Page_350">350</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">formal division in, + <a href="#Page_351">351</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">decree of banishment, + <a href="#Page_352">352</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">end of session, + <a href="#Page_352">352</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Senate House</b>, + <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Senatorial order</b>, + <a href="#Page_156">156</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">includes relatives of senators, + <a href="#Page_158">158</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Senators</b>, social glories of, + <a href="#Page_157">157</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">form a high aristocracy, + <a href="#Page_158">158</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">insignia and titles of, + <a href="#Page_158">158</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">great importance of, + <a href="#Page_159">159</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Serapis</b>, worship of, + <a href="#Page_445">445</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1">“<b>Seven Hills</b>” of Rome, + <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Shipping</b>, merchant, + <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, + <a href="#Page_248">248</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">naval, + <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Shoes</b>, + <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Shop fronts</b>, + <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Shops</b>, vast number of, + <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">shopping districts in Rome, + <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, + <a href="#Page_224">224</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">arrangement of shops, + <a href="#Page_224">224</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of barbers, + <a href="#Page_225">225</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">superior retail stores, + <a href="#Page_226">226</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Shrines</b>, upon streets, + <a href="#Page_20">20</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Siege warfare</b>, + <a href="#Page_331">331</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Siesta</b>, custom of, + <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Silk</b>, use of, + <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Slaves</b>, notice to, + <a href="#Page_42">42</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">vast numbers of, + <a href="#Page_124">124</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">power of master over, + <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">city slaves and country slaves, + <a href="#Page_125">125–126</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">purchase of, + <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, + <a href="#Page_127">127</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">auction of, + <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">sale of superior, + <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">size of household of, + <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, + <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">workmen as, + <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">duties of, + <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">organization of, + <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">discipline of, + <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">frequently idle, + <a href="#Page_133">133</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">degradation of slave system, + <a href="#Page_133">133</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">evil results on masters, + <a href="#Page_134">134</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">punishment of, + <a href="#Page_135">135</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">branding of, + <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">pursuit of runaways, + <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">torture of, + <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">manumission of, + <a href="#Page_139">139</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Society</b>, divisions of, + <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, + <a href="#Page_124">124</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Soldiers</b> (<i>see</i> <a href="#Legionaries">Legionaries</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Soothsayers</b>, + <a href="#Page_424">424</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Statues</b>, vast multiplication of, + <a href="#Page_51">51</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">portrait busts, + <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, + <a href="#Page_53">53</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Status</i></b>, in Roman society, + <a href="#Page_123">123</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Stoicism</b>, popularity of, + <a href="#Page_408">408</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Stola</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_87">87</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Streets</b>, typical in Rome, + <a href="#Page_16">16</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">very narrow, + <a href="#Page_17">17</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">paving of, + <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, + <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">shops upon, + <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">shrines and fountains upon, + <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, + <a href="#Page_21">21</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">crowds in, + <a href="#Page_21">21</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">noise and turmoil of, + <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">dark and dangerous at night, + <a href="#Page_32">32</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">extremely noisy towards dawn, + <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Suicide</b>, not condemned, + <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b>Tables</b>, + <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">costly, of citrus wood, + <a href="#Page_57">57</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Tablets</b>, writing, + <a href="#Page_207">207</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Tactics</b>, in battle, + <a href="#Page_330">330</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Taurobolium</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_447">447</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Taverns</b> (<i>see</i> <a href="#Inns">Inns</a>).</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Temple</b>, of the Divine Julius, + <a href="#Page_265">265</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of Janus, + <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of Mars Ultor, + <a href="#Page_277">277</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of Peace, + <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of Venus and Rome, + <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, + <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of Vesta, + <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Tenement blocks</b> (<i>insulæ</i>), + <a href="#Page_34">34</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Tepidarium</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_365">365</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Theater"><b>Theater</b>, not extremely popular, + <a href="#Page_378">378</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">stage in, + <a href="#Page_379">379</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">spectacles in, + <a href="#Page_380">380</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">mimes, + <a href="#Page_380">380</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">pantomimes, + <a href="#Page_381">381</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">high art in latter, + <a href="#Page_382">382</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Theaters</b> upon Campus Martius, + <a href="#Page_369">369</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Thermopolia</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Tiber</b>, and valley of, + <a href="#Page_6">6</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">barges upon, + <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">trip down to Ostia, + <a href="#Page_247">247</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">shipping upon, + <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Time</b>, measured by water clocks, + <a href="#Page_344">344</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Titus</b>, arch of, + <a href="#Page_262">262</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Toga</b>, + <a href="#Page_81">81–84</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Toilets</b>, very elaborate, + <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Tombs</b>, + <a href="#Page_177">177–180</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of Hadrian, + <a href="#Page_370">370</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">of Augustus, + <a href="#Page_372">372</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Toys</b>, + <a href="#Page_190">190</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Trade</b>, through Ostia and Campania, + <a href="#Page_239">239</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Emporium and wharves, + <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">upon Tiber, + <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, + <a href="#Page_241">241</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">in marble and grain, + <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, + <a href="#Page_242">242</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">in sculptures and portrait statues, + <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Trajan</b>, forum and column of, + <a href="#Page_278">278–280</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">baths of, + <a href="#Page_361">361</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Travel</b>, modes of, + <a href="#Page_454">454–456</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Traveler’s escorts</b>, + <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, + <a href="#Page_26">26</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Triclinium</i></b> (dining room), + <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, + <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Trigon</i></b> (ball game), + <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Triumph</b>, ceremonies of a, + <a href="#Page_470">470</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Tullianum</b>, + <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, + <a href="#Page_271">271</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Tunica</i></b>, + <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Turia</b>, story of, + <a href="#Page_78">78</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b>Vegetables</b>, + <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Veterans</b>, care and rewards of, + <a href="#Page_329">329–330</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Vesta</b>, Temple of, as safe deposit, + <a href="#Page_231">231</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Vestal Virgins</b>, + <a href="#Page_429">429</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">origin and sanctity, + <a href="#Page_430">430</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">temple and residence of, + <a href="#Page_431">431</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">how chosen, + <a href="#Page_432">432</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">duties of, + <a href="#Page_433">433</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">senior vestal (<i>Maxima</i>), + <a href="#Page_433">433</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">punishment of, + <a href="#Page_434">434</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">great honors of, + <a href="#Page_435">435</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Via Sacra</b>, + <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, + <a href="#Page_263">263</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Victory</b>, statue of, in Senate, + <a href="#Page_340">340</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b><i>Vigiles</i></b>, city police, + <a href="#Page_28">28</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">description of, + <a href="#Page_304">304</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Villas"><b>Villas</b>, several owned by one senator, + <a href="#Page_39">39</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">greatly enjoyed, + <a href="#Page_453">453</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">comfortable travel to, + <a href="#Page_454">454–456</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">multiplication of, + <a href="#Page_456">456</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">by the sea shore, + <a href="#Page_457">457</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">in the mountains, + <a href="#Page_457">457–458</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">near Rome, + <a href="#Page_458">458</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">great estates in the hills, + <a href="#Page_459">459</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">Pliny’s Tuscan villa, + <a href="#Page_459">459</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Vitellius</b>, imperial glutton, + <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<ul> + <li class="i1"><b>Wall scribblings</b>, + <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>War</b>, ceremony of declaring, + <a href="#Page_423">423</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Water clocks</b>, + <a href="#Page_57">57</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">in Senate, + <a href="#Page_344">344</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Water supply of Rome</b>, + <a href="#Page_301">301</a> ff.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Wealth</b>, vast premium upon in Rome, + <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, + <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Weapons</b>, of legionaries, + <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, + <a href="#Page_318">318</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Wills</b>, + <a href="#Page_169">169</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Windows</b> of houses, + <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Wines</b>, + <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, + <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, + <a href="#Page_109">109</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1"><b>Writing tablets</b>, + <a href="#Page_207">207</a>.</li> + + <li class="i1" id="Women"><b>Women</b>, honorable status of, + <a href="#Page_60">60</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">rights and privileges when married, + <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, + <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, + <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">have control of property, + <a href="#Page_62">62</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">selection of husbands for girls, + <a href="#Page_63">63</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">marriage treaties, + <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">betrothal ceremonies, + <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">dowries of, + <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">marriage of, + <a href="#Page_66">66</a> ff.;</li> + <li class="i2">frivolous type of, + <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, + <a href="#Page_73">73</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">nobler types of, + <a href="#Page_75">75</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">famous and devoted wives, + <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, + <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;</li> + <li class="i2">case of Turia, + <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, + <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</li> +</ul> + + +<div class="footnotes"><h2>FOOTNOTES:</h2> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> Outside of these limits were, of course, wide and populous +suburbs whose inhabitants might be included in the estimated total of +1,500,000.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> At present, of course, largely a treeless waste, very +sparsely populated and afflicted with malaria.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> These are modern heights; since the days of the Empire +there has been much leveling down. All the hills were then somewhat +higher.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> He wrote his great “Geography” not long after 1 +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span></p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> This and many other terms for Roman building materials are +from the modern Italian.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> Very possibly the Etruscans were the actual inventors, +although the principle of the arch was known in the Old Orient.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> He died about 110 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span></p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a> A well-known avenue in Pompeii was called “Mercury +Street.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a> In describing Roman street life and its scenes let it be +said once and for all that many very obvious things were so disgusting +and revolting to modern notions that any description thereof is +perforce omitted. Ancient life contained a great deal of social dross +and filthy wickedness. There is no need to dwell on such matters, but +their existence should not be forgotten.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a> If a magistrate had met any persons on horseback, they +also would have been bound to dismount on meeting him.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a> If a praetor had been acting as governor, he would +probably have had six lictors instead of merely two while he was a +judge in Rome.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a> The wall placards and inscriptions quoted in this and the +following section are all substantially as found at Pompeii.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">[13]</a> For quotations of election notices at Pompeii see the +author’s “Readings in Ancient History,” Vol. II, “Rome,” pp. 261–262.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="label">[14]</a> These figures seem to come from the fourth century, but +there is no reason to think that housing conditions in Rome had changed +very much since the second century.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="label">[15]</a> Rentals in Rome, for all classes of lodgings, were +unreasonably high, as compared with the relative cost of other +necessities: just as is now complained to be the case in New York, +Paris, and other great cities.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="label">[16]</a> A familiar description of such a place by Juvenal.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="label">[17]</a> In small provincial cities like Pompeii the proportion of +the people who could live in separate houses was much greater than in +Rome; in fact separate residences were somewhat the rule. The Pompeiian +houses were usually of two stories and nearly all were decidedly small. +In Rome itself real estate was far too valuable to permit separate +houses except for the wealthy.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="label">[18]</a> That was the price that Cicero paid for his town house, +at a time when Roman real estate was worth probably much less than in +the days of Hadrian.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="label">[19]</a> Petronius represents his rich upstart Trimalchio as +having four ordinary dining rooms and also a special second story +dining room.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="label">[20]</a> This heating by <i>hypocausts</i> was used much more in +Roman villas in Gaul, the Rhinelands, and Britain, where winters were +severe, than in Italy. In Rome itself people ordinarily managed to +shiver through the relatively short cold spells by means of portable +<i>charcoal braziers</i>, placed in the more important rooms, and by +piling upon themselves extra tunics.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="label">[21]</a> One can make a long list of the marbles constantly used +at Rome: <i>e.g.</i> white marbles from Carrara, Paros, and Pentelicos; +crimson-streaked from Phrygia; orange-golden from Numidia; white and +pale green from Carystos; serpentine from Laconia; porphyry from Egypt, +etc.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="label">[22]</a> At this writing the number of wall paintings rescued from +the excavations of Pompeii runs well up to 4000; and Pompeii was a city +perhaps only a fortieth the size of Rome.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23" class="label">[23]</a> Most of the finer scenes in Roman frescos seem to have +been pretty good copies of famous paintings from Greek mythology +originally produced by the masters of the Hellenistic age.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_24" href="#FNanchor_24" class="label">[24]</a> It may be noted that the Romans seldom had built-in +upholstery upon their couches and chairs. They depended upon removable +cushions and apparently they had no metal springs.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_25" href="#FNanchor_25" class="label">[25]</a> It had been suppressed for all practical purposes soon +after 14 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span></p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_26" href="#FNanchor_26" class="label">[26]</a> Witness, as most famous example, the case of Cornelia, +mother of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. Very many other instances could +be cited.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_27" href="#FNanchor_27" class="label">[27]</a> Readers of Plutarch will recall the story of how Appius +Claudius, then “Princeps Senatus,” proposed to Tiberius Gracchus at +an evening banquet of the College of Augurs that he should marry +Claudius’s daughter. Young Gracchus promptly accepted and the older +nobleman rushed home in delight (Tiberius being a great “catch”). On +entering his house Claudius called out with loud voice to his wife +“Antistia, I’ve got a husband for Claudia!” “What’s all the hurry +about,” answered she, “unless he’s Tiberius Gracchus?” Antistia +evidently had to be informed first; the glad news could be broken to +her daughter later.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_28" href="#FNanchor_28" class="label">[28]</a> This anecdote and the quotations are all from the letter +of Pliny the Younger to his friend Mauricius advising the latter (as +per request for counsel) to seek the hand of Minucius Ancilianus for +his niece.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_29" href="#FNanchor_29" class="label">[29]</a> All silk was imported by extremely long caravan routes +from China. If this veil was actually of pure silk and not mixed with +cotton, it was of enormous value.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_30" href="#FNanchor_30" class="label">[30]</a> Possibly meaning “Hurrah for Talassus, the marriage god!” +but the exact significance of this time-honored shout had probably been +long since lost.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_31" href="#FNanchor_31" class="label">[31]</a> Both of these instances are from Pliny the Younger.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_32" href="#FNanchor_32" class="label">[32]</a> For a complete quotation of this highly interesting +tablet, see Fowler’s “Social Life at Rome,” pp. 159–167.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_33" href="#FNanchor_33" class="label">[33]</a> The use of this garment gave his familiar nickname to +the Emperor Bassianus, “Caracalla,” who reigned 212–217 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> +The Gauls also had kind of trousers. This was counted against them as +a token of sheer barbarism: <i>bracatæ nationes</i> (“trouser-wearing +peoples”) was a term of extreme contempt in Italy.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_34" href="#FNanchor_34" class="label">[34]</a> Probably there were simpler and more complicated forms of +togas. The first were apparently shaped like an irregular semi-circle. +We hear of extremely large togas (in bad taste) whereof the total +length was four yards before draping. Experiments in certain American +universities at making and then draping a toga corresponding in effect +to many well-known statues have amply illustrated the great difficulty +of putting on the garment gracefully, and the real art required of a +Roman nobleman’s valet.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_35" href="#FNanchor_35" class="label">[35]</a> See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 44.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_36" href="#FNanchor_36" class="label">[36]</a> There were various simpler garments, similar to the +stola, permitted to common women and to young girls. The distinctive +feature of the stola, forbidden to all save honorable matrons, seems to +have been the lower flounce, reaching to the feet.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_37" href="#FNanchor_37" class="label">[37]</a> About twenty years after the reign of Hadrian, Chinese +annals record that certain “Roman” (Græco-Levantine?) traders actually +reached China, and gave themselves out as envoys to the “Son of Heaven” +from “Antun” (Antoninus Pius).</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_38" href="#FNanchor_38" class="label">[38]</a> Very like a modern copying press.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_39" href="#FNanchor_39" class="label">[39]</a> Apuleius, writing probably a little later than this time, +asserts that a lady, with no matter how fine clothes or jewels, cannot +be considered really handsome unless an equal amount of attention has +been bestowed upon her hair.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_40" href="#FNanchor_40" class="label">[40]</a> Called the “luna” (crescent); but the origin is really +unknown, although attempts were made to trace it back to some +institution of Romulus.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_41" href="#FNanchor_41" class="label">[41]</a> Diamonds were not unknown, but they were so hard to +cut and so scarce that they figured rather seldom in Roman jewelry. +They do not appear in the list of the twelve precious stones given in +Revelation, XXI: 19–20.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_42" href="#FNanchor_42" class="label">[42]</a> Stories about pearls are easily multiplied: <i>e.g.</i> +how the son of Asopus, a famous actor, on coming into a vast patrimony, +deliberately dissolved a large pearl in vinegar, then drank it down, in +order to boast that he had “tossed off a million sesterces ($40,000) at +one gulp!”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_43" href="#FNanchor_43" class="label">[43]</a> Even less profitable, it would seem, is to try to list +the cosmetics wherewith many Roman ladies, like their sisters of all +times, covered their faces. Rouge was used in great quantities, and +effeminate young men were known to have employed it. Eyebrows were +blackened with antimony; lips were reddened, and of course hair dye +was a familiar article. Propertius suggests that some women went so +far as to trace over the veins in their temples with blue. Other women +indulged in small black patches somewhat as did English ladies in the +days of Queen Anne:—“There is nothing new under the sun.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_44" href="#FNanchor_44" class="label">[44]</a> In Capua there was a whole great square of the city, the +Seplasia, given over to perfumery shops and their wholesale trade.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_45" href="#FNanchor_45" class="label">[45]</a> Vitellius was by no means alone in this disgusting +practice. Seneca denounced the numerous gluttons who “Vomit that they +may eat, and eat that they may vomit.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_46" href="#FNanchor_46" class="label">[46]</a> The difficulty of preserving fresh meat, once butchered, +would militate against its use as compared with poultry easily killed +for each customer.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_47" href="#FNanchor_47" class="label">[47]</a> See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 20.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_48" href="#FNanchor_48" class="label">[48]</a> <i>Posca</i> was probably the drink in which the sponge +was steeped, that was extended to Jesus as He hung on the cross.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_49" href="#FNanchor_49" class="label">[49]</a> A long and curious list of gourmand’s precepts are +enumerated ironically by Horace in a familiar Satire (<i>Sat.</i>, bk. +II. 4).</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_50" href="#FNanchor_50" class="label">[50]</a> The very imperfect means of illumination alone available +with olive-oil lamps, would make many modern evening entertainments out +of the question. The ancient lamps were beautiful in shape but utterly +ineffective for lighting large halls, indoor theaters, etc.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_51" href="#FNanchor_51" class="label">[51]</a> The love of “first-seats” at feasts, denounced in the New +Testament, was anything but a strictly Jewish vice; Greeks and Romans +were every whit as bad as Orientals.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_52" href="#FNanchor_52" class="label">[52]</a> So given because here dispatches, etc., could be most +readily handed to a consul or other great officer if he were among the +guests.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_53" href="#FNanchor_53" class="label">[53]</a> Sometimes a guest’s personal valet brought a special +towel for his own master. Diners of an objectionable variety were +occasionally charged with stealing the towels or napkins if the host +supplied them.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_54" href="#FNanchor_54" class="label">[54]</a> This, of course, was a very simple private dinner. +For the menu of a really extensive banquet, see the citation from +Macrobius, in the writer’s “Readings in Ancient History,” Vol. II +(Rome), p. 253.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_55" href="#FNanchor_55" class="label">[55]</a> Brought, of course, from the summits of the Apennines +with infinite labor.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_56" href="#FNanchor_56" class="label">[56]</a> They could not, of course, wear the toga, or, if female +slaves, the matronly stola.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_57" href="#FNanchor_57" class="label">[57]</a> The ancients had intense fear of epilepsy, supposedly +a visitation of the gods. The questions given were the points on +which slave-venders had to give assurance, or formally to waive all +responsibility.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_58" href="#FNanchor_58" class="label">[58]</a> This is almost precisely the slave auctioneer’s speech +in Horace. (<i>Epodes</i>, bk. II, 1.)—If the dealer had failed to +mention that the boy had once tried to run away, he would have been +legally liable.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_59" href="#FNanchor_59" class="label">[59]</a> Probably, however, it would be counted discreditable to +sell a slave born in one’s house (a <i>verna</i>) unless the fellow was +wholly reprobate, or the master was in great financial straits.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_60" href="#FNanchor_60" class="label">[60]</a> Slave unions had no legal status, but only a harsh and +tactless master would ordinarily break them up.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_61" href="#FNanchor_61" class="label">[61]</a> Of course, in a large slave household frequently there +were unruly elements who often had to be punished privately, when, if +free men, their actions would have landed them in the police courts. +The stripes might be inflicted as a mild correction with the cane, or +leather strap, or more severely with the terrific <i>flagellum</i> +(loaded whip), usually with three chains set with metal. A sound +lashing with this could cause death (see below, p. 137). The prejudice +against brutal whipping and the like was growing steadily, thanks +to the advance of the Stoic philosophy, even before the triumph of +Christianity. Juvenal denounces those who inflict outrageous floggings +for slight faults. “Does a man set his son a good lesson by calling +in the torturer and having a slave branded for stealing a couple of +towels? Does such a man hold that the bodies and souls of slaves are of +the same elements as our own?”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_62" href="#FNanchor_62" class="label">[62]</a> “Three Letter Man” or “Man of Letters” became a common +taunt among slaves.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_63" href="#FNanchor_63" class="label">[63]</a> A slave might be lashed to a <i>furca</i> for some hours, +as a minor penalty without desire to put him to death.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_64" href="#FNanchor_64" class="label">[64]</a> An actual proclamation from Petronius.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_65" href="#FNanchor_65" class="label">[65]</a> There would be just enough of negroes in Rome for them to +cease to be great curiosities.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_66" href="#FNanchor_66" class="label">[66]</a> It is impossible to estimate the proportion of the +population “enfranchised” finally by the oft-discussed edict of +Caracalla in 214 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> It must have been over one half of the +entire total.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_67" href="#FNanchor_67" class="label">[67]</a> Apparently it was quite possible for impecunious persons +to sleep much of the year under the public arches and porticoes, and +thus even dispense with the need of paying rent!</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_68" href="#FNanchor_68" class="label">[68]</a> These hopes had practically died out by Hadrian’s day.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_69" href="#FNanchor_69" class="label">[69]</a> That St. Paul was presently released after trial at Rome +is the consensus among very many competent scholars.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_70" href="#FNanchor_70" class="label">[70]</a> Women as well as men could sometimes be enrolled as +clients. Comical stories abounded; how a husband appeared with a litter +claiming that his “sick wife” was inside—“and would the steward please +hurry with the fee”—when, on brushing aside the curtains, the litter +was found to be empty.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_71" href="#FNanchor_71" class="label">[71]</a> Especially in Gaul, Spain, and North Africa; in the +Eastern provinces the city governments were not run so strictly in the +Roman mold and often kept their native characteristics.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_72" href="#FNanchor_72" class="label">[72]</a> Hence they were often called <i>Curiales</i> from their +seat in the local Senate House (<i>Curia</i>).</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_73" href="#FNanchor_73" class="label">[73]</a> This name is not wisely translated as “Knights,” unless +there is complete disassociation from the idea of the mediæval baron in +armor.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_74" href="#FNanchor_74" class="label">[74]</a> Apparently at this time two thirds of the jurors were +equites and one third senators, but the point is not quite certain.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_75" href="#FNanchor_75" class="label">[75]</a> The Republican censors could also give the order, “Sell +your horse” without stigma to equites who appeared in the review when +too old or too fat!</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_76" href="#FNanchor_76" class="label">[76]</a> By the age of Hadrian we see signs of that rigid +separation between upper-class citizens (<i>majores</i>) and +lower-class (<i>minores</i>) which marked the Later Empire. The equites +tended to be mingled with the senators in the <i>majores</i>.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_77" href="#FNanchor_77" class="label">[77]</a> Marcus Aurelius confirmed this legally about 170 +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span></p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_78" href="#FNanchor_78" class="label">[78]</a> See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 77.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_79" href="#FNanchor_79" class="label">[79]</a> Antoninus Pius, the ruler succeeding Hadrian, formally +enjoined the remission of civic burdens for “community physicians” in +the Province of Asia; five in small cities, seven in larger ones, and +ten in the largest.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_80" href="#FNanchor_80" class="label">[80]</a> Establishments selling ready prepared salves, plasters, +and other standard remedies were not unknown, and must have supplied +many doctors.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_81" href="#FNanchor_81" class="label">[81]</a> Chemical analysis was, of course, unknown.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_82" href="#FNanchor_82" class="label">[82]</a> These titles and much more of the data here given +are from the writings of the great Galen—the master physician of +the imperial age; who wrote his books under Commodus about 185 +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span></p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_83" href="#FNanchor_83" class="label">[83]</a> As in the case of the death of Cæsar Germanicus (19 +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>) whose death at Antioch was probably natural, but which +all his friends attributed to poison given by his personal enemy, the +Proconsul Piso.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_84" href="#FNanchor_84" class="label">[84]</a> Probably there were such in the eastern provinces.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_85" href="#FNanchor_85" class="label">[85]</a> Without clinical thermometers or second-watches, the +taking of temperature, timing of pulse, etc., must have been a very +tedious and disagreeable as well as uncertain process.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_86" href="#FNanchor_86" class="label">[86]</a> Apparently the organization of <i>public hospitals</i> +in the fourth century of our era, was among the earliest and worthiest +of the distinctly Christian charities, after the toleration of +Christianity by the Roman government.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_87" href="#FNanchor_87" class="label">[87]</a> Two similar cases are recorded in Pliny the Younger; in +one of them the person contemplating suicide, on being assured by the +physicians that his case was not quite desperate, “agreed to fight on a +little longer.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_88" href="#FNanchor_88" class="label">[88]</a> The legal status of women made it needful to resort to +various legal fictions when they drew wills, but they could execute +effective testaments also.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_89" href="#FNanchor_89" class="label">[89]</a> Still greater revenge could be taken by making insulting +references in wills to old enemies, making them bequests of no value, +or burdened with unwelcome conditions, or even explaining at length, +without fear of a slander suit, why no bequest was left to them at all!</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_90" href="#FNanchor_90" class="label">[90]</a> An actual tomb inscription.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_91" href="#FNanchor_91" class="label">[91]</a> A hundred imagines of curule ancestors would be a very +respectable but not an extraordinary showing. When young Marcellus +(Augustus’s nephew) died, <i>six hundred</i> imagines of noble +ancestors were borne in his procession.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_92" href="#FNanchor_92" class="label">[92]</a> Under the Empire only the Emperor could actually ride in +a triumph; but his lieutenants could enjoy the “triumphal ornaments.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_93" href="#FNanchor_93" class="label">[93]</a> The granting of an actual funeral pyre inside of Rome was +an extraordinary honor—reserved only for emperors and other unusually +favored personages.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_94" href="#FNanchor_94" class="label">[94]</a> This, of course, was the monument which Trimalchio, +Petronius’s famous character, arranged for himself.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_95" href="#FNanchor_95" class="label">[95]</a> Compare “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 57.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_96" href="#FNanchor_96" class="label">[96]</a> The father might have “taken up” the child earlier to +indicate his intentions not to expose it, but some later act of legal +acknowledgment before witnesses was necessary.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_97" href="#FNanchor_97" class="label">[97]</a> And hardly anybody outside the Claudian gens was ever +named Appius.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_98" href="#FNanchor_98" class="label">[98]</a> Literally “Number Ten”; but that meaning had disappeared.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_99" href="#FNanchor_99" class="label">[99]</a> Very many such lengthy names are found under Hadrian.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_100" href="#FNanchor_100" class="label">[100]</a> See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 63.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_101" href="#FNanchor_101" class="label">[101]</a> These verses have been preserved to the present age by +being inscribed upon the foot of the colossal statue of the “Speaking +Memnon” in Egypt, during the visit there of Hadrian and Sabina.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_102" href="#FNanchor_102" class="label">[102]</a> Of course, there would be many lower class Italians who, +although fairly at ease with Latin, would be entirely unfamiliar with +Greek.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_103" href="#FNanchor_103" class="label">[103]</a> The writing end of the stylus (bone or metal) was sharp. +The opposite end was blunt and flattened for erasing on the soft wax.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_104" href="#FNanchor_104" class="label">[104]</a> See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 64.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_105" href="#FNanchor_105" class="label">[105]</a> These are the words of Eumenius, a teacher of about 300 +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, but they would have been equally proper in the age of +Hadrian.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_106" href="#FNanchor_106" class="label">[106]</a> Persons who could recite the whole of the Iliad and +Odyssey from memory were not unknown, although they were usually +learned slaves, not Romans of the higher class.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_107" href="#FNanchor_107" class="label">[107]</a> A tombstone for a boy who died at the age of ten boasts +that its subject “knew the dogmas of Pythagoras and the teaching of the +books of the learned.” He was also alleged to have read all of Homer +and to have studied Euclid “tablets in hand.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_108" href="#FNanchor_108" class="label">[108]</a> Senators, degraded and banished for reasons good or bad, +could earn a living in the provinces by opening rhetoric schools. Thus +Lucinianus did so in Sicily in Trajan’s time. Pliny the Younger records +that he began his first set oration by declaring: “O Fortune, what +sport you make to amuse yourself! You make professors into senators, +and senators into professors.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_109" href="#FNanchor_109" class="label">[109]</a> An actual case for young orators as explained by the +Elder Seneca. Less advanced pupils could be pitted in arguments as +to “Whether country life is better than city life,” or “married life +better than celibacy.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_110" href="#FNanchor_110" class="label">[110]</a> The zeal for philosophy and rhetoric, or at least for +the patronage thereof, is shown by the story of how Trajan, a very +simple-minded soldier, used to invite the great rhetorician Dion +Chrysostom to visit him and take long journeys with him. The Emperor, +greatly impressed by the other’s learning, openly declared to him, “I +don’t in the least understand what you keep talking about, but for all +that I love you like my own soul!”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_111" href="#FNanchor_111" class="label">[111]</a> It is impossible to recover the exact details of these +two games. We know of “solitaire” forms of these games, with the board +made of terebinth wood, and with crystal pieces, or with gold and +silver coins in place of the common black and white counters.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_112" href="#FNanchor_112" class="label">[112]</a> In very early Roman days public records seem to have +been kept on books of <i>linen</i>; but these soon disappeared.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_113" href="#FNanchor_113" class="label">[113]</a> We hear, however, of a single copy of Thucydides +that required 578 pages, making a roll about 100 yards long—a most +cumbersome volume.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_114" href="#FNanchor_114" class="label">[114]</a> The use of flat opening books of the style later so +familiar came in before the fall of the Roman Empire, but they were +apparently used only for merchants’ ledgers, etc., in the time of +Hadrian.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_115" href="#FNanchor_115" class="label">[115]</a> This was the probable method of multiplying popular +books, but we lack very precise knowledge.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_116" href="#FNanchor_116" class="label">[116]</a> Pliny the Younger had a favorite reader Eucolpus. When +he fell ill his master was sadly tormented: “Who will read my books +and take such an interest in them? Where can I find another with so +pleasant a reading voice?”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_117" href="#FNanchor_117" class="label">[117]</a> Hadrian’s famous and pathetic poem “To his own soul” +was not, of course, composed until he lay on his death bed (138 +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>).</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_118" href="#FNanchor_118" class="label">[118]</a> These men were well-known poets according again to Pliny +the Younger. The world undoubtedly gained when their verses perished.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_119" href="#FNanchor_119" class="label">[119]</a> The record for a private collection—62,000 rolls, owned +by the senator Serenus, dates about 235 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, but there is no +reason to suppose that there were not libraries equally large under +Hadrian.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_120" href="#FNanchor_120" class="label">[120]</a> Concerning the actual arrangement of these public +libraries we know very little.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_121" href="#FNanchor_121" class="label">[121]</a> Of course, by Hadrian’s time an increasingly large +proportion of the privates of the army was being recruited in the +provinces.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_122" href="#FNanchor_122" class="label">[122]</a> All these hucksters’ stalls as well as the beggars and +the playing children are depicted in certain very informing frescos in +a house at Pompeii, showing life in the forum of that little city.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_123" href="#FNanchor_123" class="label">[123]</a> See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 24.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_124" href="#FNanchor_124" class="label">[124]</a> This form of advertisement is given in Petronius.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_125" href="#FNanchor_125" class="label">[125]</a> 12 per cent (one per cent per month) was the lawful and +normal rate of interest. Greater interest could be demanded on risky +ventures, especially those by sea. Rates of 36 and 48 per cent, heard +of under the Later Republic, were excessive, and usually unlawful.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_126" href="#FNanchor_126" class="label">[126]</a> These verses are from the wall of an inn in Pompeii, and +the foregoing description is that of an actual Pompeiian inn.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_127" href="#FNanchor_127" class="label">[127]</a> This scene is a familiar one from Juvenal.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_128" href="#FNanchor_128" class="label">[128]</a> Another scene taken from an actual bas-relief and +inscription.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_129" href="#FNanchor_129" class="label">[129]</a> Marcus Aurelius belonged to this rich family on his +mother’s side.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_130" href="#FNanchor_130" class="label">[130]</a> The real name of such a vessel.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_131" href="#FNanchor_131" class="label">[131]</a> The expression “Sharer in the Public Grain Doles” +appears on many tombstones of worthy burghers, to indicate that they +enjoyed the full rights of citizenship.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_132" href="#FNanchor_132" class="label">[132]</a> It became so under the Later Empire.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_133" href="#FNanchor_133" class="label">[133]</a> When Commodus became Emperor in 180 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, the +congiarium came to the ruinous sum of 725 denarii per citizen. This +was $96.00 each, if the coins were of full weight and fineness, which +probably at that period they were not.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_134" href="#FNanchor_134" class="label">[134]</a> Figures given by Lucian for a craft of this type.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_135" href="#FNanchor_135" class="label">[135]</a> See “A Day in Old Athens,” pp. 125–134.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_136" href="#FNanchor_136" class="label">[136]</a> There was practically no naval warfare worth mentioning +in the whole course of Roman history from the battle of Actium (31 +<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>) to 323 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, when considerable naval fighting +took place at the time Constantine captured Byzantium from his rival +Licinius.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_137" href="#FNanchor_137" class="label">[137]</a> As at Ephesus where Demetrius used the guild of the +silversmiths to start his riot against St. Paul. (Acts, 19:25.)</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_138" href="#FNanchor_138" class="label">[138]</a> Such improvised gaming-boards have been discovered by +the archæologists.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_139" href="#FNanchor_139" class="label">[139]</a> See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 216.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_140" href="#FNanchor_140" class="label">[140]</a> Later than the age of Hadrian this area was occupied by +such famous structures as the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, the +Basilica of Constantine, etc.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_141" href="#FNanchor_141" class="label">[141]</a> A difficult archæological question is connected with the +exact site of the Rostra <i>before</i> Julius Cæsar’s time. Probably +its original position was nearer the other end of the Forum.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_142" href="#FNanchor_142" class="label">[142]</a> Janus was about the only Latin deity for whom there +could not be assigned a Greek counterpart.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_143" href="#FNanchor_143" class="label">[143]</a> Later visitors to the Forum would, of course, be +impressed with the fine, if ornate, <i>Arch of Septimius Severus</i>, +erected about 211 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> at the northwest corner of the plaza.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_144" href="#FNanchor_144" class="label">[144]</a> The column of Marcus Aurelius, erected about 180 +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> in much the same style as that of Trajan, although a +magnificent monument, is not equal in execution to the older column.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_145" href="#FNanchor_145" class="label">[145]</a> He magnanimously allowed Agrippa’s name still to +appear as the builder of the temple. The Pantheon apparently owed +its preservation through the Middle Ages to the fact that it was +early consecrated as a Christian church, and hence was exempt from +profanation.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_146" href="#FNanchor_146" class="label">[146]</a> At the end of his reign the Senate so disliked him that +(although he had been in the main an excellent ruler) his successor +Antoninus had much trouble in getting him voted a “<i>divus</i>,” as +were all good Emperors.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_147" href="#FNanchor_147" class="label">[147]</a> We have no copy of the Acta Diurna. We possess, however, +what seems a pretty literal parody of its style and contents in +Petronius, and can reconstruct part of an issue with some confidence.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_148" href="#FNanchor_148" class="label">[148]</a> Both of these are actual cases from the reign of +Augustus.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_149" href="#FNanchor_149" class="label">[149]</a> Old Latin goddesses.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_150" href="#FNanchor_150" class="label">[150]</a> The only important addition after Domitian was made by +Septimius Severus, who, about 200 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, built the very lofty +<i>Septizonium</i>, a new palace at the south-east corner of the hill.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_151" href="#FNanchor_151" class="label">[151]</a> As is, of course, well known, such emperors as Tiberius, +Nero, and Domitian were popular with the provinces, which were usually +well governed under them. Their cruelties smote mainly upon the +senatorial nobility.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_152" href="#FNanchor_152" class="label">[152]</a> About 230 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> Alexander Severus caught a +palace menial selling gossip, and had him executed by being burned in a +fire of damp wood. “He is punished by smoke,” said the irate monarch, +“who sold ‘smoke.’”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_153" href="#FNanchor_153" class="label">[153]</a> The ceremony was not unlike that of the <i>levée</i> of +French kings like Louis XIV, under the Old Régime before 1789.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_154" href="#FNanchor_154" class="label">[154]</a> The Empresses would give a similar reception, however, +to the wives of their husbands’ “Friends.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_155" href="#FNanchor_155" class="label">[155]</a> Sometimes, with an affectation of democracy, almost +any decently clad person would be admitted to present petitions or +merely to pay respects. Servile prostrations before the Emperor were +not encouraged under the Early Principate; once when a petitioner +went through great bowings and scrapings while presenting a scroll to +Augustus, the latter cried testily, “You act as if you were presenting +some money to an elephant.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_156" href="#FNanchor_156" class="label">[156]</a> This was the form used by Augustus in announcing to +Fabius Maximus the withdrawal of imperial favor.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_157" href="#FNanchor_157" class="label">[157]</a> Polite chatter, as reported by Horace, such as was +vouchsafed by Augustus and his great associate Mæcenas, to their social +favorites.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_158" href="#FNanchor_158" class="label">[158]</a> Hadrian, although not a bloody man, was so averse to +being opposed in argument that the philosopher Favorinus, with whom he +took issue on a point in etymology, promptly announced that “Caesar was +correct,” and so ended the discussion amiably. “But <i>you</i> were +really correct,” protested Favorinus’s friends afterward. “Ah!” replied +he with a laugh, “the master of thirty legions must be allowed to know +better.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_159" href="#FNanchor_159" class="label">[159]</a> These old “Republican” officers, now six in number, +retained a certain control of the public markets, baths, taverns, etc.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_160" href="#FNanchor_160" class="label">[160]</a> As discovered by modern archæologists.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_161" href="#FNanchor_161" class="label">[161]</a> For the attitude of provincials under Roman rule the +student can with interest read the speech put in the mouth of King +Agrippa, the descendant of Herod, by Josephus (“Jewish War”: book II, +ch. 16) in which he tells the Jews of Nero’s day, (1) that on the whole +the Roman rule is so reasonable and tolerable they have no real cause +to revolt against it; (2) that all nations, including the most warlike +such as Sparta, Macedonia, the turbulent Gauls and Spain, have long +since submitted; (3) that these have not merely submitted but keep +obedient with only a trifling local display of armed force; (4) that +resistance to Rome is so hopeless in any case that a revolt would be +impious suicide.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_162" href="#FNanchor_162" class="label">[162]</a> About 200 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> they were raised to 33.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_163" href="#FNanchor_163" class="label">[163]</a> Its site to-day is occupied by the chief railroad +station of Rome, by which most foreign visitors enter the city and +depart.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_164" href="#FNanchor_164" class="label">[164]</a> An ever larger proportion of legionary troops had to be +enlisted in the provinces, although preferably in the parts somewhat +Romanized.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_165" href="#FNanchor_165" class="label">[165]</a> In Hadrian’s time a change was taking place whereby +the first cohort in a legion contained about twice as many men as +there were in any of the other nine; but this alteration became only +gradually effective.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_166" href="#FNanchor_166" class="label">[166]</a> In the earlier Empire it was only 900 sesterces ($36).</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_167" href="#FNanchor_167" class="label">[167]</a> It might be added that Roman legions appear to have +had a medical department under a <i>medicus legionis</i>, which cared +efficiently for the health of the troops. Camp sanitation was well +understood, and epidemics in the army were rare.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_168" href="#FNanchor_168" class="label">[168]</a> The only materials for a crown assumed to be available +in a rescued fortress.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_169" href="#FNanchor_169" class="label">[169]</a> The distribution of the legions varied somewhat from +one period to another according to the probable dangers on the exposed +frontiers, but the largest armies were always stationed along the +Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates. In Hadrian’s time apparently the +main forces lay thus:</p> + +<p>Britain, 3 legions.</p> + +<p>Germany (Rhinelands), 4 legions.</p> + +<p>Danubian lands and Dacia, 10 legions.</p> + +<p>Syria and Palestine, 5 legions.</p> + +<p>Cappadocia, 2 legions.</p> + +<p>In all the other provinces requiring legionary troops at all +(<i>e.g.</i> Egypt, Spain, Numidia, etc.), only one legion.</p> + +<p>Apparently in the second Christian century the greatest danger point +seemed near the Danube, and the second greatest along the Euphrates, +with the Rhinelands relatively more secure than earlier, when more +legions had been stationed near them.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_170" href="#FNanchor_170" class="label">[170]</a> Some legions were named for their organizers: Augustus, +Claudius, etc.; some for real or alleged martial qualities, “Ferrata,” +“Fulminata,” “Victrix,” and the like; one, the “Alauda,” from the +lark’s wings worn on the helmets; several which were made by dividing +existing legions were known as “Gemina,” and some from their place of +original recruiting, “Gallica,” “Italica,” etc.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_171" href="#FNanchor_171" class="label">[171]</a> The centurion to whom St. Paul’s custody was intrusted +(Acts XXVII, 1) was of the “Augustan band,” <i>i.e.</i> one of the +somewhat numerous cohorts named for Augustus—the special number not +being given.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_172" href="#FNanchor_172" class="label">[172]</a> Also we know from the by-laws of these soldiers’ benefit +clubs that every member was entitled to a fine funeral, to an allowance +for travel money if obliged to go on a long journey, and finally to a +fixed sum as consolation money in case he was demoted!</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_173" href="#FNanchor_173" class="label">[173]</a> The process of demilitarizing the population went so +far that Trajan even discouraged the organization of regular bands +of firemen in cities of Bithynia “lest they become the prey of +factions”—<i>i.e.</i> somehow start a movement against the government.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_174" href="#FNanchor_174" class="label">[174]</a> The Roman Empire has been rightly called a “military +monarchy,” but was such only because the disarming of the civilian +population and the extreme efficiency of the professional army put the +former at the mercy of the latter. The imperial army and navy hardly +exceeded 350,000 men, and <i>may</i> have been as small as 300,000. At +the time this book was written the United States, with a population +not greatly exceeding that of the Roman Empire, had a total of some +250,000 men in its standing forces (army, navy, and marine corps) not +counting any organized militia. Almost nobody would have pretended that +the addition of some 100,000 men to this force could have rendered +a “military monarchy” possible in America except as very peculiar +conditions favored it—as they did in the Roman Empire.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_175" href="#FNanchor_175" class="label">[175]</a> Bad Emperors, <i>e.g.</i> Domitian, made it a practice +to <i>speak first</i> in the Curia; any senator who later opposed their +opinions was liable to charges of disloyalty. If, however, an Emperor +spoke last he also left the groundlings miserable because they might +unwittingly have opposed him.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_176" href="#FNanchor_176" class="label">[176]</a> The last avowedly constitutional “Princeps” was +Alexander Severus (murdered 235 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>); then followed the +military monarchy. Aurelian (270–275 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>) took on practically +all the trappings of a despot, and with Diocletian (284 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>) +the absolute monarchy existed without concealment.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_177" href="#FNanchor_177" class="label">[177]</a> The law required, however, a minimum of certain +specified numbers for the passing of various important kinds of +decrees.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_178" href="#FNanchor_178" class="label">[178]</a> He did this because as holder of the military power +it was unlawful for him to come inside the consecrated city limits +(<i>pomerium</i>); so he built a suburban Senate House outside of these +confines.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_179" href="#FNanchor_179" class="label">[179]</a> So called because, being last on the Senate list, and +seldom called upon to speak, they could express themselves with their +“feet” only—<i>i.e.</i> by voting when they walked out in divisions of +the house.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_180" href="#FNanchor_180" class="label">[180]</a> Under the later Empire this statue (originally set up +by Augustus) came to be looked upon as the “Palladium” of Rome and its +removal from the Senate House in 384 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> by Valentinian the +Second, despite vigorous protests by the pagan party, was looked upon +as an official announcement of the triumph of Christianity.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_181" href="#FNanchor_181" class="label">[181]</a> The other consul in 134 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> was Gaius Julius +Servianius. The consuls would settle as to their presidency from day to +day either by mutual agreement, by taking turns in rotation, or by the +casting of lots.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_182" href="#FNanchor_182" class="label">[182]</a> This trial follows closely the account of the +prosecution of Marius Priscus, proconsul of Africa, before the Senate +by Pliny the Younger and Tacitus the historian; but in Priscus’s +trial the mere oratory actually took three whole days! (See Pliny the +Younger: Book II, 11.)</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_183" href="#FNanchor_183" class="label">[183]</a> Any student interested in the coarse and violent +personalities permissible in speeches before the Senate, should read +Cicero’s speech “Against Piso.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_184" href="#FNanchor_184" class="label">[184]</a> Short-hand reports of the Senate meetings were taken, +and seemingly embodied everything said, including even the applause and +the unfriendly interruptions. We do not know, however, whether they +were taken by senators, or by reporters brought in for the purpose.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_185" href="#FNanchor_185" class="label">[185]</a> Apparently men not of prætorian rank rather seldom got +the floor, although in highly important cases the presiding officer had +to call for <i>sententiæ</i> down through the ex-quæstors.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_186" href="#FNanchor_186" class="label">[186]</a> As did, of course, Cicero in his “Orations against +Verres,” and in other orations.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_187" href="#FNanchor_187" class="label">[187]</a> See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 135.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_188" href="#FNanchor_188" class="label">[188]</a> Very few civil cases involving merely private rights +would be heard by the Emperor, although they might by his deputy, +the Prætorian Præfect. Claudius sometimes seems to have sat on the +tribunal, out of a pedantic sense of duty, but often falling asleep +until the advocates bawled “O Cæsar!” loudly enough to wake him.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_189" href="#FNanchor_189" class="label">[189]</a> “Eloquence” was looked upon as indispensable for +everybody expecting any kind of a public career. Even in the army there +was much speech-making prior to a pitched battle. Tacitus speaks of +how an army was so utterly surprised that its general “could neither +harangue his men nor draw them up in battle array”—two operations +apparently equally necessary. (Tacitus, “History,” iv, 33.)</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_190" href="#FNanchor_190" class="label">[190]</a> Litigants were required by law to take oath that before +the trial they had not promised any sum to their advocates or entered +into any bargain with them. After the trial they were “allowed” to +“offer” their lawyers not over 10,000 sesterces if they wished.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_191" href="#FNanchor_191" class="label">[191]</a> See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 138.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_192" href="#FNanchor_192" class="label">[192]</a> Space lacks for a discussion of the formal training of +the Roman lawyer-orators, or concerning those public recitations which +sometimes were the means of winning even greater reputation than any +ordinary successes in the courts.</p> + +<p>Some of these recitations in hired halls, with the audience carefully +sprinkled with a paid claque, were worse than pedantic and artificial. +Pliny the Younger, although he denounced the use of a claque, repeated +with pleasure how he gave a reading from his own works and plays which +lasted two days, “necessitated by the applause of my audience”; and +boasted how he “had not allowed himself to skip one word.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_193" href="#FNanchor_193" class="label">[193]</a> The Roman week, <i>nundinæ</i>, had eight days—seven +working days, then a market day. The Jewish week of seven days +(<i>hebdomas</i>) became known to the Romans by the time of Pompeius +Magnus, but it was not generally adopted until Christianity became the +state religion.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_194" href="#FNanchor_194" class="label">[194]</a> Undoubtedly along with this incessant bathing there +often went the presence of much squalor, dirt, obnoxious insects, +etc. which seem inescapable in Mediterranean countries. Probably many +persons injured their health by excessive and debilitating bathing.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_195" href="#FNanchor_195" class="label">[195]</a> An actual inscription. From the small provincial towns +we have other inscriptions, advertising bath-houses “in city style +(<i>more urbico</i>) and fitted with every convenience.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_196" href="#FNanchor_196" class="label">[196]</a> The great Baths of Caracalla (built <i>circ.</i> 215 +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>) and those of Diocletian (<i>circ.</i> 300 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>) +were not in existence, of course, in the days of Hadrian. Their ruins +are at present among the most imposing in Rome, and they were probably +somewhat larger than the Baths of Trajan, which are to-day nearly +demolished, but their aspect and general arrangement were hardly +different.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_197" href="#FNanchor_197" class="label">[197]</a> Houses near private baths were counted undesirable for +residence or investment purposes on account of the noise, which, in +private baths, often kept up late into the night.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_198" href="#FNanchor_198" class="label">[198]</a> The famous group of Laocoön and his sons, now in the +Vatican, was found in the ruins of these Baths of Titus and Trajan.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_199" href="#FNanchor_199" class="label">[199]</a> Petronius’s “Satyricon” gives a vivid and informing +picture of the amusements and horseplay in the thermæ.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_200" href="#FNanchor_200" class="label">[200]</a> The tepidarium in the later Baths of Diocletian was +about 300 feet long by 92 feet wide, but probably that in the Baths of +Trajan was somewhat smaller.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_201" href="#FNanchor_201" class="label">[201]</a> The Tomb of Hadrian was not actually completed until 139 +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>—after his death.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_202" href="#FNanchor_202" class="label">[202]</a> Under the Republic the ædiles had to preside over very +expensive games. Augustus, however, turned the <i>Cura Ludorum</i> +(“supervision of the games”) over to the prætors, and the ædiles only +gave spectacles voluntarily.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_203" href="#FNanchor_203" class="label">[203]</a> In the later Empire we hear of the case of Symmachus, an +office-holder whose games cost him 2000 pounds of gold, about $400,000.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_204" href="#FNanchor_204" class="label">[204]</a> Italian audiences stowed very close. According to the +marking upon the stone seats in the theater at Pompeii, only 16 inches +were allowed for each spectator.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_205" href="#FNanchor_205" class="label">[205]</a> High-flying tragedies were indeed ground out by Seneca +and by many inferior literary dabblers, but these “dramas” were hardly +intended to be genuine acting plays, but only to be read aloud.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_206" href="#FNanchor_206" class="label">[206]</a> The ancient orchestra was of course for the dances of +the chorus never for seating the spectators.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_207" href="#FNanchor_207" class="label">[207]</a> This figure seems decidedly too high; but the present +ruinous state of the Circus Maximus makes it very difficult to +determine the number more exactly.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_208" href="#FNanchor_208" class="label">[208]</a> As many as ten cars could contend at once in the +greatest games.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_209" href="#FNanchor_209" class="label">[209]</a> The description of the Roman-style chariot race in Lew +Wallace’s famous novel “Ben Hur” is technically as well as rhetorically +admirable and accurate. However, no high-rank Roman, such as Messala is +represented to have been, would have driven a quadriga in the public +circus. The drivers were nearly always low-born men of provincial if +not of servile origin.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_210" href="#FNanchor_210" class="label">[210]</a> The Spanish bull fights at their very worst were a +relatively harmless imitation.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_211" href="#FNanchor_211" class="label">[211]</a> The gladiatorial games were never introduced in Athens. +Once when, in the local council, it was proposed to imitate Rome and +build an amphitheater, a prominent philosopher quashed the whole +project by moving “first to abolish the altar of Pity.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_212" href="#FNanchor_212" class="label">[212]</a> Actual epithets bestowed on gladiators in the Pompeiian +wall inscriptions.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_213" href="#FNanchor_213" class="label">[213]</a> Taken from the “Gladiator Gossip” at Trimalchio’s Dinner +in Petronius’s “Satyricon.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_214" href="#FNanchor_214" class="label">[214]</a> As we know from paintings showing the surroundings of +the Amphitheater at Pompeii.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_215" href="#FNanchor_215" class="label">[215]</a> Ordinarily it is stated that there was room for about +87,000 persons in the Flavian Amphitheater. There were seats, however, +for only some 50,000, although possibly 20,000 more could find standing +room in the great upper sections.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_216" href="#FNanchor_216" class="label">[216]</a> The regular gladiatorial oath.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_217" href="#FNanchor_217" class="label">[217]</a> Augustus once protested against the custom of eating +in the amphitheater as being undignified and said he would prefer to +go away and return. “That is all right for <i>you</i>,” answered his +hearer, “but <i>your</i> seat is sure to be kept for you!”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_218" href="#FNanchor_218" class="label">[218]</a> There were at least two other types of heavy-armed +gladiators who are often mentioned—the “Samnites” and the +“Myrmillones”; but it hardly seems profitable to examine the small +particulars in which their arms differed from those of the “Thracians.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_219" href="#FNanchor_219" class="label">[219]</a> An actual Roman epitaph. The Epicurean theory was +capable of statement in much more pleasing language than is given +above, but the effect of such a philosophy upon the ordinary human +viewpoint and conduct was inevitable.</p> + +<p>At the Roman colony of Thamugade in Africa, a checkerboard was found +scratched in the pavement of the Forum, and beside it this plebeian +version of the Prætor’s inscription: “<i>To hunt, to bathe, to gamble, +to laugh—that’s living!</i>”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_220" href="#FNanchor_220" class="label">[220]</a> In all the extensive correspondence of Pliny the Younger +there is hardly a single reference indicating that he had any religious +beliefs, or took the least interest in religious matters save as they +involved outward ceremonies or official policies.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_221" href="#FNanchor_221" class="label">[221]</a> This apparently continued true until well into the +fourth century, when the whole pagan system was swept away by +Christianity.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_222" href="#FNanchor_222" class="label">[222]</a> Janus had no Greek counterpart. It was one of the +absurdities of the late Græco-Latin mythology that his wife Diana +(<i>Dia Jana</i> = “Madame Goddess Jana”) should have been confounded +with Artemis.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_223" href="#FNanchor_223" class="label">[223]</a> Under the later Republic these sacred colleges were +filled according to the majority vote of 17 tribes of the people, +selected by lot from the entire 35 tribes into which the Comitia +Tributa was divided.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_224" href="#FNanchor_224" class="label">[224]</a> In early times the Pontifex Maximus also kept a kind +of dry annals of sacred and profane events (<i>Annales Maximi</i>), +valuable for the preservation of many facts in early Roman history.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_225" href="#FNanchor_225" class="label">[225]</a> A general in the field had to “take the auspices” to +get good omens for his army, but of course he could not always have +an augur present. Once in the first Punic War, Publius Claudius, a +consul about to engage in a naval battle, was disgusted to be told, +“The chickens will not eat.” “Very well then,” he retorted, “let +them drink!” and flung them into the sea. To his own ruin and to the +vindication of the official religion he was thereupon completely +defeated by the Carthaginians!</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_226" href="#FNanchor_226" class="label">[226]</a> These plants (<i>verbenæ</i>) seem to have been grown +within one special inclosure on the Capitol hill. They were carried by +one of the fetiales known as the <i>verbenarius</i>.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_227" href="#FNanchor_227" class="label">[227]</a> A rustic goddess sometimes also called Ops.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_228" href="#FNanchor_228" class="label">[228]</a> For a translation of this “Song of the Arval Brethren,” +see the author’s “Readings in Ancient History,” vol. II, p. 6.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_229" href="#FNanchor_229" class="label">[229]</a> As is well known Tiberius in his ignoble retirement on +the Isle of Capri surrounded himself with “Chaldæans” and other types +of stargazers and magicians.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_230" href="#FNanchor_230" class="label">[230]</a> There were a few isolated survivals in Italy of the +practices of ancient savagery. For example at Aricia, in Latium about +16 miles from Rome, there was a holy grove of Diana wherein the priest +was always a runaway slave who obtained his position by killing his +predecessor. He was then safe from pursuit as long as he remained in +the grove, until another fugitive slave in turn killed him—and so on +through a succession of tragedies!</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_231" href="#FNanchor_231" class="label">[231]</a> Pigs were very common Roman offerings and were the +regular victims in most of the rustic sacrifices.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_232" href="#FNanchor_232" class="label">[232]</a> Slightly adapted from the form of prayer given in Cato +the Elder’s “Handbook on Agriculture.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_233" href="#FNanchor_233" class="label">[233]</a> This qualification of patrician birth was sometimes +waived under the Empire, when genuine old-line patricians had become +extremely few, but great pains were taken as to all the other +requirements.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_234" href="#FNanchor_234" class="label">[234]</a> Alone of all the important buildings in Rome, the Atrium +Vestæ had no piped water-supply; everything had to be borne in by the +vestals or (for non-religious purposes) by their numerous attendants.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_235" href="#FNanchor_235" class="label">[235]</a> This did not prevent Vestals from attending the arena +spectacles. The gladiators and persons thrown to the beasts had in +theory a chance for life.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_236" href="#FNanchor_236" class="label">[236]</a> It was quite proper to play “April Fool” jokes at the +Saturnalia: <i>e.g.</i> to present what seemed a platter of delicious +food when all the viands were actually of clay.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_237" href="#FNanchor_237" class="label">[237]</a> Substantially on the scale of “Christmas presents.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_238" href="#FNanchor_238" class="label">[238]</a> Owing to rough dealings with the Senate, Hadrian himself +came near missing deification, but Antoninus won his title of “Pius” +by his zeal for vindicating his adoptive father’s memory. Antoninus +Pius himself and Marcus Aurelius after him were, of course, promptly +deified.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_239" href="#FNanchor_239" class="label">[239]</a> Much of what we know of these cults of the pagan Orient +comes from early Christian writers who have no hesitation in betraying +the “Mysteries,” but whose statements naturally are often biased and +very incomplete.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_240" href="#FNanchor_240" class="label">[240]</a> The quotations are from Apuleius, “The Golden Ass” (book +XI, <i>passim</i>), and are given at greater length in the author’s +“Readings from Ancient History,” vol. II (Rome), pp. 282–284.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_241" href="#FNanchor_241" class="label">[241]</a> Technically he was the highest archangel under the one +actual god Ahura-Mazda, but the Persian “magi” soon attributed to him +practical divinity.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_242" href="#FNanchor_242" class="label">[242]</a> Nearly all our evidence for Mithraism is archæological; +we know little of either its doctrines or its ritual. Apparently it +had a system of priests not unlike the Christian clergy and a ceremony +resembling the Christian sacrament. It owed its success largely to +the real nobility of its doctrines, but could not in the end maintain +itself by appealing simply to a remote myth, while Christianity was +able to appeal to a personal Founder.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_243" href="#FNanchor_243" class="label">[243]</a> Mithras worship was only beginning to be important in +the Age of Hadrian, and the Taurobolium was then still comparatively +rare; by 200 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> it had become decidedly common; by 300 +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> it was very frequent indeed.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_244" href="#FNanchor_244" class="label">[244]</a> From the age of Augustus to that of Nero Judaism had a +considerable popularity in Rome. Its austere monotheism coupled with +the mysterious Mosaic law and ceremonies made a considerable appeal +to public opinion, and many fashionable persons—including apparently +Nero’s Empress, the notorious Poppæa Sabina—gave “Jewish doctrines” +a superficial patronage. It was also somewhat the fad to treat the +Hebrew Sabbath as a kind of “holy day.” All this favor collapsed after +the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. The Jews became a scattered +and persecuted sect, without influence. As for Christianity, after 70 +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> it lost nearly all its Jewish element and became pretty +strictly a Gentile religion.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_245" href="#FNanchor_245" class="label">[245]</a> Tacitus undoubtedly obtained his statement about Christ +and Pilate from the official government reports in the Roman Record +Office. There is no reason to suppose that he, any more than his friend +Pliny, investigated Christian sources.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_246" href="#FNanchor_246" class="label">[246]</a> The following are <i>some</i> only of the reasons why +the Roman government insisted on persecuting the Christians, despite +its usual policy of religious tolerance:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>1. The Christians persistently refused to sacrifice to the +deified Emperors and to the Genius of the reigning Emperor, +an act practically amounting in common opinion to a denial +of loyalty to the government, or at least capable of that +construction.</p> + +<p>2. The Christians demanded the repudiation of the old gods, +including, of course, the official gods of Rome; they were not +content with simply worshiping “Christus” along with Jupiter, +Apollo, etc. as were for example the devotees of Isis.</p> + +<p>3. The Christians maintained a tight interior organization, +separate socially from the pagans, under the control of its +bishops, presbyters, and deacons, and so far as possible judging +the disputes of its members. This seemed meddling with political +matters, a ticklish business with any Emperor.</p> + +<p>4. The private meetings of the Christians, and the +misconstructions laid upon their ceremonies, gave rise to the +vilest possible stories.</p> + +<p>5. The great proportion of slaves and of the lowest grade of +plebeians in the early Church seemed to justify the belief that +here was a subversive, degraded, and illicit movement.</p> +</div> + + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_247" href="#FNanchor_247" class="label">[247]</a> An actual wall-picture. For the charges here given +against Christian assemblies and for many gross details, see Minucius +Felix (“Octavius” VIII, 9.), who quotes the stories in order to refute +them.</p> + +<p>It seems needless in a book concerned strictly with pagan Rome, to +discuss the actual tenets and liturgies of the Early Christians. The +only point to be understood here is the vile character of the charges +brought against them by the ignorant heathen.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_248" href="#FNanchor_248" class="label">[248]</a> Probably the Roman carriages were more convenient than +anything known later in Europe prior to 1800; and travel facilities in +general were as good, the inns possibly averaging worse but the roads +decidedly better, than at the dawn of the Nineteenth Century.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_249" href="#FNanchor_249" class="label">[249]</a> The following is an abridgment of Pliny the Younger’s +well-known description of his Tuscan villa.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_250" href="#FNanchor_250" class="label">[250]</a> The Romans delighted in formal and highly artificial +gardens such as were in vogue in the Italian Renaissance and the France +of Louis XIV.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_251" href="#FNanchor_251" class="label">[251]</a> Well known, of course, is the famous dictum of Gibbon +(“Decline and Fall of Roman Empire”: vol. i, chap. 2. Bury edition, +p. 78): “If a man were called to fix the period during which the +condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous he would, +without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian +to the accession of Commodus.” From the standpoint of a believer in +aristocracy or monarchy this opinion is largely justifiable.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_252" href="#FNanchor_252" class="label">[252]</a> Where according to firm Christian tradition St. Paul was +beheaded in the days of Nero, having been rearrested after having once +been set at liberty.</p> + +</div> + +</div> + + +<p class="transnote">Transcriber’s Notes:<br> +<br> +1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been +corrected silently.<br> +<br> +2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the +original.<br> +<br> +3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have +been retained as in the original.</p> + + + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76087 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/76087-h/images/cover.jpg b/76087-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0a461d3 --- /dev/null +++ b/76087-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/76087-h/images/i_006.jpg b/76087-h/images/i_006.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2cbaf7e --- /dev/null +++ b/76087-h/images/i_006.jpg diff --git a/76087-h/images/i_008.jpg b/76087-h/images/i_008.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..cd5ca5b --- /dev/null +++ b/76087-h/images/i_008.jpg diff --git a/76087-h/images/i_012.jpg b/76087-h/images/i_012.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..67f9c9a --- /dev/null +++ b/76087-h/images/i_012.jpg diff --git a/76087-h/images/i_013.jpg b/76087-h/images/i_013.jpg Binary files differnew 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