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+
+*** 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 ***
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