This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project
to make the world's books discoverable online.
It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject
to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books
are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.
Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the
publisher to a library and finally to you.
Usage guidelines
Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing tliis resource, we liave taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. We also ask that you:
+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes.
+ Refrain fivm automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.
+ Maintain attributionTht GoogXt "watermark" you see on each file is essential for in forming people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.
+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe.
About Google Book Search
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web
at|http: //books .google .com/I
ROMAN SOCIETY
FBOM
NEED TO MARCUS AURELIUS
BY
SAMUEL DILL, M.A.
nosr. Lirr.D. di'blik, boit. ll.i>. Edinburgh, ron. nellow and latk tutor, ccc, oxromn; rRorcsHOB or obebr in quvkn'b collboe, BELrxsT ; author of ' rom an society
IN THE LAST CBMTURT OF THE WX8TSRN BMPllUE '
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NSV TOBK: TBK MACUILLAK COHFAKT
1905
if n rigM» Tttervtd
^ OCT 24. m?
^*rHE4Hhm 1904. Seemtl Ediii^ 190,
PREFACE
Thbre must always be something arbitrary in the choice and isolation of a period of social history for special study. No period can, firom one point of view, be broken ofif and isolated from the immemorial influences which have moulded it, from the succession of coming ages winch it will help to fashion* And this is specially true of the history of a race at once so aggressive, yet so tenacious of the past, as the Soman. The national fibre was so tough, and its tone and sentiment so conservative under all external changes, that when a man knows any considerable period of Boman social history, he may almost, without paradox, be said to know a great deal of it from Bomulus to Honorius.
Tet, as in the artistic drama there must be a beginning and an end, although the action can only be ideally severed frt)m what has preceded and what is to follow in actual life, so a limited space in the collective history of a people may be Intimately set apart for concentrated study. But as in the case of the drama, such a period should possess a certain unity and intensity of moral interest It should be a crisis and turning-point in the life of humanity, a period pregnant with momentous issues, a period in which the old order and the new are contending for mastery, or in which the old is melting into the new. Above all, it should be one in which the great social and spiritual movements are incarnate in some striking personalities, who may give a human interest to dim forces of spiritual evolution.
Such a period, it seems to the writer of this book, is that
V
vi ROMAN SOCIETY
which he now presents to the reader. It oi)en8 with the self-destruction of lawless and intoxicated power; it closes with the realisation of Plato's dream of a reign of the philosophers. The revolution in the ideal of the principate, which gave the world a Trajan, a Hadrian, and a Marcus Aurelius in place of a Caligula and a Nero, may not have been accompanied by any change of corresponding depth in the moral condition of the masses. But the world enjoyed for nearly a century an almost unexampled peace and prosperity, under skilful and humane government The civic splendour and social charities of the Antonine age can be revived by the imagination from the abundant remains and records of the period. Its materialism and social vices will also sadden the thoughtful student of its literature and inscriptions. But if that age had the faults of a luxurious and highly organised civilisation, it was also dignified and elevated by a great effort for reform of conduct, and a passion, often, it is true, sadly misguided, to rise to a higher spiritual life and to win the succour of unseen Powera To the writer of this book, this seems to give the Antonine age its great distinction and its deepest interest for the student of the life of humanity. The influence of philosophy on the legislation of the Antonines is a commonplace of history. But its practical effort to give support and guidance to moral life, and to refashion the old paganism, so as to make it a real spiritual force, has perhaps hardly yet attracted the notice which it deserves. It is one great object of this book to show how the later Stoicism and the new Platonism, working in eclectic harmony, strove to supply a rule of conduct and a higher vision of the Divine world.
But philosophy failed, as it will probably fail till some far-off age, to find an anodyne for the spiritual distresses of the mass of men. It might hold up the loftiest ideal of conduct ; it might revive the ancient gods in new spiritual power ; it might strive to fill the interval between the remote Infinite
PREFACE vii
Spirit and the life of man with a host of mediating and Buocooring powers. But the effort was doomed to failure. It was an esoteric creed, and the masses remained untouched by it They longed for a Divine light, a clear, authoritative voice from the unseen world. They sought it in ever more blind and passionate devotion to their ancient deities, and in all the curiosity of superstition. But the voice came to them at last from the r^ons of the East It came through the worships of Isis and Mithra, which promised a hope of immortality, and provided a sacramental system to soothe the sense of guilt and prepare the trembling soul for the great ordeal on the verge of another world. How far these eastern systems succeeded, and where they failed, it is one great purpose of this book to explain.
The writer, so £Eur as he knows himself, has had no arrUre pens^ in describing this great moral and spiritual movement As M. Boissier has pointed out, the historian of the Antonine age is free to treat paganism apart from the growth of the Christian Church. The pagan world of that age seems to have had little communication with the loftier faith which, within a century and a half from the death of M. Aurelius, was destined to seize the sceptre. To Juvenal, Tacitus, and Pliny, to Plutarch, Dion Chrysostom, Lucian, and M. Aurelius, the Church is hardly known, or known as an obscure off-shoot of Judaism, a little sect, worshipping a " crucified Sophist " in somewhat suspicious retirement, or more favourably distin- guished by simple-minded charity. The modern theologian can hardly be content to know as little of the great move- ment in the heathen world which prepared or deferred the victory of the Church.
It will be evident to any critical reader that the scope of this book is strictly limited. As in a former work on the Society of the later Empire, attention has been concentrated on the inner moral life of the time, and comparatively little space has been given to its external history and the machinery
M
viu ROMAN SOCIETY
of govemment The relation of the Senate to the Emperor in the first century, and the organisation of the municipal towns have been dwelt on at some length, because they affected profoundly the moral character of the age. On the particular field which the writer has surveyed, Dean Merivale, Dr. Mahafiy, Professor Bury, and Mr. Capes have thrown much light by their learning and sympathy. But these dis- tinguished writers have approached the period from a different point of view from that of the present author, and he believes that he has not incurred the serious peril of appearing to compete with them. He has, as a first duty, devoted himself to a com- plete survey of the literature and inscriptions of the period. Beferences to the secondary authorities and monographs which he has used will be found in the notes. But he owes a special obligation to FriedlSnder, Zeller, B^ville, Schiller, Boissier, Martha, Peter, and Marquardt, for guidance and suggestion. He must also particularly acknowledge his debt to M. Cumont's exhaustive work on the monuments of Mithra. Once more he has to offer his warmest gratitude to his learned friend, the Bev. Charles Plummer, Fellow of C.C.C., Oxford, for the patience and judgment with which he has revised the proof sheets. His thanks are also due to the Messrs. B. and B. Clark's reader, for the scrupulous accuracy which has saved the author much time and labour.
a^pUmJbtT 19, 1904.
CONTENTS
BOOK 1
CHAPTER I
THl ABISTOGRACT UNDBB THB TBBBOR
How tkt the Antonine age is marked by a moral and spiritual reTolution — Light whieh Seneca throws on the moral condition of his class in Nero's reign — ^Yalne of his testimony — His pessimism — ^Homan degeneracy the resnlt of selfish greed and luxury — Picture of contemporary society— <)ruel selfishness and the taedium tikie — ^The Ardelio — ^The terror under which Seneca lired — Seneca's ideal of the prinoipate expounded to Nero in the D9 ClnpitffUia— The character of Nero— Taint in the blood of the Domitii— Nero at first showed gUmpses of some better qualities — How he was iigured by the ambition to be an artist — ^Fabe aestheticism and insane profusion — Feeling of Tacitus as to his time— His career — ^Yiews as to his impartiality as a historian — He was under complex influences — His chief motive as a historian — He is not a political doctrinaire — He is avenging a moral, not a political ideal — ^His pessimism — His prejudices and limitations— -His ideal of education and character — His hesitating religious faith — His credulity and his scepticism — His view of the corrupting influence of despotic power — ^The influence of imperial example — Predion of the early Caesars, leading to murder and confiscation in order to replenish their treasury — Dangers of life about the court from espionage — Causes of delation — Its temptations and its great rewards — ^The secret of the imperial terror — Varions theories of it — Was the Senate a real danger f — Its impotence in spite of its prestige and daims — ^The philoeophic oppositiim — Was it really revolutionary t — "Soelera sceleribus tuenda" — ^The undefined position of the prindpate— Its working depended greatly on the character of the Emperor for the time — ^Pliny's ideal of the principate— The danger from pretender»— Bvil effects of astrology — ^The degradation of the aristocracy under Nero and Domitian illustrated from the Pisonian conspiracy — and the Year of the Four Bmperors — The reign of Domitian — Its puzzling ebaracter — Its strange contrasts— The terrors of its close— Confiscation and msasscrrs — ^The funereal banquet .... Pages 1-57
ix h
X ROMAN SOCIETY
CHAPTER II
THIS WORLD OF THB 6ATIRIBT
Juvenal and Taoitns compared — Sooial position and ezperienoe of Juvenal — Juvenal and Martial deal with the same features of society — ^Their motives compared — Character of Martial — The moral standard of Juvenal — His humanity and his old Roman prejudices — He unites the spirit of two different ages — His rhetorical pessimism — EQs sweeping generalisations — Abnormal specimens become types — Boman luxury at its height — Yet similar extravagance is denounced for five centuries — Such judgments need qualification — The great social changes depicted by Juvenal, some of which he misunderstands — Roman respect for birth — The decay of the aristocracy and its causes — Aristocratic poverty and servility — How the early Emperors lowered senatorial dignity — Aristocratic gladiators and actors — Nero made bohemianism the fashion — ''The Legend of B..d Women *' — Its untrustworthiness and defects of treatment — High ideals of womanhood among contemporaries of Juvenal — He is influenced by old Roman prejudice — Jnvenal hates the "new woman" as much as the vicious woman — ^The emancipation of women began in the second cen- tury B.C. — Higher culture of women and their growing influence on public affairs — Juvenal's dislike of the oriental worships and their female devotees — This is another old movement — ^The influence of Judaism at Rome, even in the Imperial household — Women in Juvenal's day were exposed to serious dangers — The corruptions of the theatre and the circus — Intrigues with actors and slaves — ^The invasion of Hellenism — Its history — The Hellenism of the Bmperors — ^The lower Hellenism which Juvenal attacks — Social and economic causes of the movement — Greek tutors and professors — The medical profession chiefly recruited from foreigners — The character of the profession in those days — The astrologer and the parasite — ^The client of the early Empire — His degradation and his hardships — General poverty — ^The contempt for trade and industry — ^The growth of captation— The worship of wealth — ^The cry of the poor Pages 58-99
CHAPTER III
THB 80CIETT OF THE FRBEDHBN
The rise of the ireedmen a great movement — Roman pr^ndioe against them expressed in the literature of the age — Economic and sooial causes of the movement — ^Trade and industry despised — The fraedmen occupied a vacant plaee — Causes of the contempt for them — ^Their many vioes and vulgar taste — Yet their rise was a hopeful sign — ^The fineedmen in imperial office — ^The policy of the early Emperors to employ freedmen in their bureaux — ^YitelUus the first Emperor to employ Bquites as imperial secretaries — Hadrian confined the three great ministries to men of equestrian rank — The great imperial freedmen — Polybinii Claudius Etmscus, and Abasoantus — Their career and their immense power described by Statins — ^The
CONTENTS xi
intrigues and crimes of the freedmen of GlandinB — The insolence of Pallas — The wealth of the freedmen and its sources — Their luxurious display — The baths of CL Etruscus and the gardens of Entellus — ^Yet the freedmen were seldom admitted to equal rank with the aristooraoy — The Senate flattered and despised them — The doubtful position of freed women — Plebeian Aspasias — ^The influence of Acte, Gaenis, and Panthea — Manu- mission— It was often not a very abrupt change — ^The better side of slave life — ^Trusted and fiiTouxite slares — How they could obtain their freedom — Slaves employed in offices of trust— The growing peculium — ^The close tie between patron and freedman — The freedman gets a start in trade — His rapid rise in wealth — ^His vulgar ostentation — ^The SaUrieon of Petronius — ^Theories as to its motive, date, and authorship— Its author probably the C Petronius of Nero*s reign — His character in Tacitus — His probable motive— The literary character and scene of the SaUriam — The character of the Greek adventurers — ^Trimalchio's dinner, to which they are invited — Sketch of Trimalchio's career— The dinner — Carving to music- Dishes descend from the ceiling — ^Wine 100 years old— Confused recollec- tions of Homer — ^Hannibal at the Trojan war — Rope-dancers and tales of witchcraft— The manners of Fortunata— The conversation of some of the guests — ^Tme bourgeois vulgarity — Grumbling about the management of tiie aedilea — "Bverything is going back — It all arises from neglect of religion " — ^The ooming gladiatorial show, when there will be plenty of blood — ^The education of a freedman's son—" You learn for proflt " — Fast and ftirious — ^The ladies get drunk, and Trimalchio gives an unflattering account of his wife's history — He gives directions to his fHend, the stone- cutter, for the erection of his monument — ^He has himself laid out for dead, and the horn-blowers sound his lament . . Pages 100-187
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
THX OIBCLB OV THK TOUNQIB FLINT
The contrast between the pictures of society in Juvenal and in Pliny — ^They belonged to different worlds — ^They were also of very different tempera- ments— ^Moral contrasts side by side in every age — ^There were puritan homes in Italy, even in the worst days — Influence of old Roman tradition and country life — ^The oirde at Como— Pliny's youth and early training — Character of the Blder Pliny — His immense industry — Retreats of old Roman virtue— The character and reforms of Vespasian — ^His endowment of education — The moral influence of Quintilian on Roman youth — Pliny's student friends — ^His relations with the Stoic circle — His reverence for Fannia — ^His career at the Bar — ^He idealises the practice in the Centum- viral court — Career of IL Aquilius Regnlus, the great delator and advocate — Pliny's passion for £une— The crowd of literary amateurs in his day — Pliny and Martial — ^Pliny's relation to the literary movement of his time — His
xii ROMAN SOCIETY
admiration for Cicero — His reverence for Greece — He once wrote a Greek tragedy — His apology for his loose verses — His ambition as an orator, and canons of oratorical style — Pliny's Letters compared with Cicero's — The merits and tame of the Letters — ^Their arrangement — ^They are a memorial of the social life and literary tone of the time — ^The character of Silius Italictis — Literary coteries — Pliny*s friendship with Suetonius — The devotion of literary amateurs to poetic composition and its causes — The influence of the great Augustan models read at school — Signs of decay in literature — ^The growing love of the archaic style — Immense literary ambition of the time — ^Attempts of Nero and Domitian to satisfy it by public literary competitions — ^The plague of recitations — Pliny believes in the duty of attending them — ^The weariness and emptiness of life in the capital — ^The ohann of the country — Roman country seats on the Anio or the Laurentine and Campanian shores — ^The sites of these villas — Their furniture and decorations — Doubtful appreciation of works of art — The gardens of the villa — ^The routine of a country gentleman's day — ^The financial management of an estate — Difficulties with tenants — Pliny's kindness to freedmen and slaves — ^The darker side of slavery — Murder of a master — Pliny's views on suicide — ^Tragedies in his circle — Pliny's charity and optimism — ^The solidarity of the aristocratic class — Pliny thinks it a duty to assist the career of promising youth — ^The women of his circle — His love for Calpumia and his love-letters — ^The charity and humanitarian sentiment of the age — Bene fac^ ?ioc tecum fires — ^The wealthy recognise the duties of wealth — Charitable foundations of the emperors — Pliny's lavish generosity, both private and public — ^Yet he is only a shining example among a crowd of similar benefactors in the Antonine age
Pages 14M95
CHAPTER II
MUNICIPAL LIFE
Little known of country town life from Roman literature — Yet the love of the country was strong — A relief from the strain of the capital, which, how- ever, always maintained its attraction — ^The Empire a realm of cities — Immense development of urban life in the first t^'o centuries — The rise of Thamugadi in Numidia — Great tolerance of municipal freedom under the early Empire — ^Yet there was a general drift to uniformity of organisation — Influence of the capital — ^The rage for travel — Travelling became easy and luxurious — Posting facilities on the great roads — ^The speed of travelling by land and sea — Growth of towns — Many sprang from the canabae legianis — History of Lambesi — Aristocratic or timocratic character of municipal organisation — Illustrated by the album Canutii — ^The sharp demarcation of social grades — ^Yet, in the first century, the Commons had still consider- able power — Examples from Pompeii — The magistracies and popular election — ^The honorarium payable on admission to office — ^The power of the duumvirs — Position of the Curia— The mode of filling its ranks — Local Equites — ^The origin and position of the Augustales — Their organisation and their importance in the Roman world — Municipal finance — Direct taxation in Uie first century almost unknown — Sources of municipal
CONTENTS xiii
reyenne — The objects of expenditure — Municipal mismanagement, as io Bithynia — Signs of decay in Tngan's reign — First appointment of Cwu- tares — Immense private munificence — Examples from Pompeii, which was only a third-rate town — Other instances — Pliny — ^The Stertinii — Herodes Atticus, the prince of benefactors — ^Testimony of the Inscriptions — Example of imperial liberality — The public works of the Flavian and Antonine Emperors — Feasts to the populace — Distributions of money, graduated according to social rank — The motives of this munificence were mixed — Yet a high ideal of the duties of wealth — The better side of municipal life — Local patriotism and general kindly feeling — But there is another side to the picture — Immense passion for amusement, which was often debasing — Games and spectacles on 185 days in the year — Description of a scene in the amphitheatre in the Antonine age — Passion for gladiatorial shows especially in Campania — ^Remains of gladiatorial barracks at Pompeii — Advertisements of games — Pictures on tombs and on the walls — The shows in small country towns — Shows at Cremona a few days after the battle of Bedriaoum — Greece was little infected with the taste — ^The feeling of the philosophers — Statistics as to the cost of a gladiatorial show — How the ranks of the profession were recruited — Its attiactions — Organisation of the gladiatorial schools — ^The gladiator in retirement — How municipal bene- factors were honoured — Municipal life begins to lose its attractions — ^The causes of this — Plutarch on municipal duty— The growth of centralisation —The beginning of the end .... Pages 196-250
CHAPTER III
THB COLLSOES AND PLEBEIAN LIFE
The pUbs of the municipal town chiefly known from the Inscriptions — Great development of a free proletariat — ^The effects of manumission — The artisan class in the Inscriptions — ^Their pride in their callings — Emblems on their tombs — Early history of the Collegia — Rigorous restraint of their formation by Julius and Augustus — The evidence of Gains — Dangers from the colleges not imaginary — Troubles in the reign of Aurelian — Yet the great movement could not be checked — The means of evading the law — Extended liberty in reigns of M. Aurelius and Alexander Severus — ^The social forces behind the movement of combination — The wish for funeral rites and lasting remembrance— Evidence of the Inscriptions — ^The horror of loneli- ness in death — ^The funerary colleges — That of Lanuvium shows how the privilege granted to them might be extended — ^Any college might claim it — Description of the college at Lanuvium — Its foundation deed — The fees — ^The grants for burial — The college of Aesculapius and Hygia — Its organisation for other objects than burial — Any college might assume a quasi-reUgious character — The influence of religion on all ancient social organisation — The coU^es of traders — Wandering merchants organise themselves all over the world — And old soldiers — Colleges of youth for sporting purposes — Every branch of industry was organised in these societies — ^Evidence from Ostia, Lyons, and Rome, in the Inscriptions — Clnbe of slaves in great houses, and in that of the Emperor — They were
»v ROMAN SOCIETY
enootiraged by the masters — ^The organisation of the college was modelled on the city — Its officers bear the names of republican magistrates — The nnmber of members limited — Periodical revision of the Album — Even in the plebeian colleges the gradation of rank was observed — Patrons carefully sought for — Meeting-place of the college — Description of the Schola — Sacred associations gathered round it — Even the poorest made presents to decorate it — The poor college of Silvanus at Philippi — But the colleges relied on the generosity of patrons — ^Their varying social rank — Election of a patron — A man might be a patron of many colleges — The college often received bequests to guard a tomb, and perform funerary rites for ever — The common feasts of the colleges — The division of the sporlula by ranks — Regulations as to decorum at college meetings — The college modelled on the family — Mommsen's opinion — Fraternal feeling — The slave in the college, for the time, treated as an equal — Yet the difference of rank, even in the colleges, was probably never forgotten — Were the colleges really charitable foundations I — The military colleges — Their object, not only to provide due burial, but to assist an officer throughout his career — The extinction of a college — ^The college at Alburnus in Dacia vanishes prob- ably in the Maroomanmc invasion .... Pages 251-286
BOOK III
CHAPTER I
THE PHIL06OPHI0 DIRECTOR
The great change in the motive and character of philosophy— The schools for- sook metaphysical speculation, and devoted themselves to the cultivation of character — Why faith in abstract thought declined, and the conduct of life became all-important — The effect of the loss of free civic life and the estab- lishment of world - empires — ^The commonwealth of man — ^The great ars Vivendi — Spiritual directors before the imperial times — ^They are found in every great family — The power of Seneca as a private director of souls — How his career and experience prepared him for the office — He had seen the inner life of the time, its sensuality, degradation, and remorse — He was himself an ascetic, living in a palace which excited Nero's envy — His experi- ence excited an evangelistic passion — "Hjb conception of philosophy as the art of saving souls — His contempt for unpractical speculation — Yet he values Physics for its moral effect in elevating the mind to the region of eternal truth — Curious examples of physical study for moral ends — The pessimism of Seneca — Its causes in the inner secrets of his class — It is a lost world which must be saved by every effort— Stoicism becomes trans- figured by moral enthusiasm — Yet can philosophic religion dispense with dogma ? — Empirical rules of conduct are not enough — There must be true theory of conduct — Seneca not a rigorous dogmatist — His varying con- ceptions of God — Often mingles Platonic conceptions with old Stoic
CONTENTS XV
doctrine— Bat all old Stoic doctrine c«ii be found in him — " The kingdom of Heayen is within " — Freedom is foond in renunciation, submission to the Unirersal Reason — ^Whenoe comes the force of self-reform f — The problem of freedom and necessity — How man may attain to moral freedom — The struggle to reoorer a primeral yirtue— Modifications of old Stoic theory — ^The ideal tapUns — Instantaneous conyersion — Ideas fatal to practical moral reform — For practical purposes, Stoic theory must be modified — ^The Bapiem a mythical figure — ^There may be yarious stages of moral progress — ^Aristotelian ideas — Seneca himself far from the ideal of the Stoic sage— The men for whom Seneca is proyiding counsel — How their weaknesses haye to be dealt with — The "ars yitae" deyelops into casuistry in the hands of the director — Obstacles in the way to the higher life — Seneca's skill in dealing with different oases — His precepts for reform — Necessity of confession, self-ezaminatiou, steadiness of purpose, self- denial — Fivere nUlitam est — The real victor — The mind can create its own world, and triumph even over death — Seneca's not the Cynic ideal of moral isolation — CSompeting tendencies in Stoicism — Isolated renunciation and social sympathy — ^A citisen of two cities — The great commonwealth of humanity — ^The problem of serving Gk>d and man variously solved by the Stoics — Seneca's ideas of social duty — Social instinct innate— Duty of help, forgiveness, and kindness to others — ^The example of the Infinite Goodness — ^The brotherhood of man includes the slave — Seneca's attitude to slavery — His ideal of womanhood — ^Women may be the equals of men in culture and yirtue — ^The greatness of Seneca as a moral teacher — He belongs to the modem world, and was claimed by the Church — ^A pagan Thomas k Kempis ..... • Pages 289-883
CHAPTER II
THX PHILOeOPHlO HIB8I0NABT
Seneca the director of^an aristocratic class — The masses needed a gospel — Their moral condition — ^The Antonine age produced a great movement for their moral elevation — Lucian's attitude to the Cynics — His kindred with them — Detached view of human life and its vanity — Gloomy view of the moral state of the masses — ^Tbe call for popular evangelism — Can philo- sophy furnish the gospel? — Lucian's Hermotimus — ^The quarrels of the schools — Yet they show real agreement on the rule of life — ^The fashionable sophist — Rhetorical philosophy despised by more earnest minds — Serious preaching — ^The sermons of ApoUonius of Tyana — Sudden conversions — ^The preaching of Musonius, Plutarch, and Maximus of Tyre — The mystic fervour of Maximus — Dion's view of the Cynic preacher — ^The " mendicant monks of paganism" — Lucian's caricature of their vices — Many vulgar impostors adopt the profession — It offered a tempting field — Why the charges against the Cynics must be taken with reserve — S. Augustine's testimony — Causes of the prejudice against Cynicism — Lucian's treatment of Peregrinns — ^The history of Peregrinus — The credibility of the charges which Lucian makes against him — He is about to immolate himself at Oljrmpia when Lndan arrives — Lucian treats the self-martyrdom as a piece
xvi ROMAN SOCIETY
of theatrical display — Yet Peregiinus may have honestly desired to teach contempt for death — Stoio snicide— The scene at the pyre — ^The last words of Peregrinus — Lucian creates a myth and sees it grow — ^Testimony of A. GellioB as to Peregrinus — ^The power of the later Cynicism — The ideal Cynics in SpiotetuB — ^An ambassador of God — Kindred of Cynicism and Monas- ticism — Cultivated Cynics — The character of Demetrius, a leader of the philosophic opposition — Cynic attitude to popular religion — Oenomaus a pronouneed rationalist — Disbelief in oracles — The character of Demonax — His great popular influence — ^ProsAouted for neglect of religious observances — His sharp sayings — ^Demonstrations of reverence for him at his death — The career of Dion Chrysostom — His conversion during his exile — Becomes a preacher with a mission to the Roman world — ^The character of his eighty orations — He is the rhetorical apostle of a few great truths — His idea of philosophy — His pessimism about the moral state of the world — ^A materialised civilisation — Warning to the people of Tarsus — Rebukes the feuds of the Bithynian cities — ^A sermon at Olbia on the Black Sea — The jealousies of the Aisiatic towns — Prusa and Apamea — Sermon on civic harmony — He assails the vices and friyolity of the Alexandrians — His prose idyll — Simple pastoral life in Euboea — ^The problems and vices of city life exposed — Dion on true kingship — The vision of the Two Peaks — The ideal king — The sermon at Olympia inspired by the Zeus of Pheidias — Its majesty and benignity — Sources of the idea of God— The place of art in religion — Relative power of poetry and sculpture to express religious truth — Pheidias defends his anthropomorphism — ^His Zeus a God of mercy and peace ....... Pages 834-383
CHAPTER III
THB PHILOSOPHIO THBOLOOIAN
The pagan revival and the growth of superstition called for a theodicy — Old Roman religion was still powerful — But there was an immense accretion of worships from the conquered countries — And an immense growth in the belief in genii, dreams, omens, and oracles — Yet amid the apparent chaos, there was a tendency, in the higher minds, to monotheism — The craving for a moral God in sympathy with man — ^The ideas of Apuleius, Epictetus, M. AureliuB— The change in the conception of God among the later Stoics — God no longer mere Force or Fate or impersonal Reason — He is a Father and Providence, giving moral support and comfort — The attitude of the later Stoics to external worship and anthropomorphic imagery — How was the ancient worship to be reconciled with purer oonceptions of the Divine ? — Gk>d being so remote, philosophy may discover spiritual help in all the religions of the past — The history of Neo-Pythagoreanism — Apollonius of Tyana — His attitude to mythology — His mysticism and ritualism — Plutarch's associations and early history — His devotion to Greek tradition — His social life — His Lives of the great Greeks and Romans — He is a moralist rather than a pure philosopher — The tendency of philosophy in his day was towards the formation of character — The eclecticism of the time — Plutarch's attitude to Platonism and Stoicism — His own moral system was drawn from various schools — Precepts for the formation of character—
CONTENTS xvii
Plutarch on freedom and neoeseity — His oontempt for rhetorioal philoeophy — Plntarch on Tranquillity — How to grow daily— The pathos of life — ^The need for a higher vision — How to reconcile the God of philosophy with the ancient mythology was the great problem — Plutarch's conception of God — His cosmology mainly that of the Tima«%t» — ^The opposition between tho philosophic idea of God and the belief of the crowd was an old one— Yet great political and spiritual changes had made it a more urgent question^ The theology of Maximns of Tyre — ^His pure oonoeption of God, combined with tolerance of legend and symbolism — Myth not to be discarded, bat interpreted by philosophy, to discover the kernel of truth which is reverently veiled — The effort illustrated by the treatise of Plutarch on Isis and Osiris — Its theory of Svil and daemonic powers — ^The Platonist daemonology — ^The history of daemons traced from Hesiod — ^The conception of daemons justified by Hazimus — The daemonology of the early Greek philosophers — The nature of daemons as conceived by Maximus and Plutarch — ^The ministering spirits of Maximns — ^The theory of bad daemons enabled Plutarch to explain the grossness of myth and ritual — The bad daemons a damnoia herMtaa — The triumphant use made of the theory by the Christian Apologists — ^The daemonology of Plutarch was also used to explain the inspiration or the silence of the ancient oracles —"The oracles are dumb" — Yet in the second century, to some extent, Delphi revived— Questions as to its inspiration debated— The quality of Delphic verse — The theory of inspiration — Ck>nourrent causes of it — The daemon of the shrine may depart— The problem of inspiration illustrated by a discussion on the daemon of Socrates — What was it f — The result of the inquiry ia that the human spirit, at its best, is open to influences from another world ...... Pages 884-410
BOOK IV
CHAPTEE I
8UPSB8TITION ^
Superstition a term of shifting meaning — Plutarch's treatise on Superstition — Why it is worse than atheism — Immense growth of superstition in tho first century, following on a decay of old religion — Forgotten rites and fallen temples — ^The revival of Augustus— The power of astrology — ^The Xmperors believed in it and dreaded it — Tiberius and Thrasyllus at Oapreae — The attitude of Kero, Otho, and Yitellius to astrology — Tho superstition of the Flavian Emperors — And of Hadrian and M. Aurelius — The superstition of the literary class — The Elder PHny — Suetonius — Tacitus — EUs wavering treatment of the supernatural — How it may be explained by tho character of the age — Epiotetus on divination — The superstition of Aelian of Praoneste — His credulity and his anathemas on the sceptics — P. Aelius Aristides — His history and character — His illness of thirteen years — Was he a simple devotee f—l%e influence of
xviii ROMAN SOCIETY
rhetorical traiiiiiig on him— The temples of healing in his time — Theit organisation and rontine — Recipes by dreams in the temples of Asclepius, Isis, and Serapis — Medical skill' combined with superstition — ^The amuse- ments and cheerful social life of these temple -hospitals were powerful healers — ^The ailments of Aristides and his journeys in quest of health — Strange divine prescriptions astonish the medical attendants — ^Their own heroic remedies — Epiphanies of the Gkxis — The return of his rhetorical power — ^The debt is repaid in the Sacred Orations — ^The treatise on dreams by Artemidorus — His idea of founding a science of dreams — His enormous industry in collecting materials — His contempt for less scientific inter- preters— His classification of dreams and methods of interpretation — The new oracles — ^The failure of the old was not so complete as it is sometimes represented — ^The revival of Delphi — ^The history of the oracle of Alex- ander of Abonoteichos — His life and character — How he played on the superstition of the Paphlagonians — The business-like management of the oraele— Its fees and revenue — Its secret methods — Its fame spreads every- where— Oracles in many tongues — Rutilianus, a great noble, espouses Alexander's daughter — The Epicureans resist the impostor, but in vain — The mysteries of Qlycon — ^Alexander, a second Endymion — Immense superstition of the time— Apotheosis in the air — ^The cult of Antinous — And of M. Aurelius — In Croton there were more gods than men ! — The growing faith in daemons and genii — ^The evidence of inscriptions as to the adoption of local deities all over the world — Revived honours of classic heroes — ^The belief in' recurring miracle — Christian and pagan were equally credulous — The legend of the " Thundering Legion " — Sorcery in Thessaly — The lawless romance of Apuleius . Pages 443-483
CHAPTER II
BSLISF IN IMMORTALTTT
Tlie conception of immortality determined by the idea of God— Religion supplies the assurance denied by philosophy — Vagueness of the conception natural and universal — " It doth not yet appear what we shall be " — Confused and various beliefs on the subject in the Early Empire — ^The cult of the Manes in old Italian piety — ^The guardianship of the tomb, and call for perpetual remembrance — ^The eternal sleep — The link between the living and the dead — ^The craving for continued human sympathy with the shade in its eternal home — ^The Lemures and the Lemuria — ^Visitations from the other world — The Mundus in every Latin town — ^Tbe general belief in apparitions illus- trated from the PhUopseudes of Lucian, from the Younger Pliny, Suetonius, Dion Cassius, and Maximus of Tyre— The eschatology of Virgil a mixture of different fkiths— Scenes from the Inferno of the Aevieid — Its Pythagorean elements — How Virgil influenced later conceptions of the future state- Scepticism and credulity in the first century — Perpetuity of heathen belieCa— The inscriptions, as to the future state, must be interpreted with care and discrimination — The phrases often conventional, and springing from different orders of belief— Inscriptions frankly atheistic or sensualist — Ideas of immortality among the cultivated class— The influence of
CONTENTS xix
Lncretliis — The Stoic idea of coming life, and the Peripatetic — The inflaence of Platonism — ^In the last age of the Bepnblic, and the first of the Empire, educated opinion was often soeptical or negative — J. Caesar, the Elder Pliny, Tscitos— The feeling of Hadrian— Epiotetns on immortality— Qalen — ^His probable influence on M. Aurelios— The wayering attitude of M. Anrelius on immortality — ^How he could reconcile himself by a saintly ideal to the resignation of the hope of a fhture life — His sadness and pessimism fully justified by the circumstances of the time— "Thou hast oome to shore ; quit the ship " — Change in the religious character long before M. Aurelius — Seneca's theology as it moulded his conception of immortality — A new note in Seneca — The influence of Pythagorean and Platonic conceptions in modifying Stoicism — The reyival of Pythagoreanism in the first century — Its tenets and the secret of its power — Apollonius of Tyana on immortality — His meeting with the shade of Achilles — Plutarch and Mazimus of Tyre on immortality — Plutarch's arguments for the faith in it— The Delays of Diyine Vengeance— But, like Plato, Plutarch feels that argument on such a subject must be reinforced by poetic imagination —The myths of Thespesius of Soli and Timarchus in Plutarch— Mythic scenery of the eternal world .... Pages 484-528
CHAPTEE m
THE OLD BOMAH BBLIOION
Tbe decay of old religion in the last age of the Republic — Its causes — Influence of Qreek philosophy and rationalism — Distinction drawn between the religion of philosophy and that of the State — The moral and religious results — Sceptical conformity or desuetude of ancient rites — ^The religious reriral of Augustus — How far a matter of policy — Ancient temples and worships restored — The position of Pontifex Maximus — How the Emperors utilised the dignity and kept a firm hold on the old religion — The religious character of the early Emperors — ^The force of antiquarian sentiment in the second century — ^The Inscriptions plainly show that the popular faith in old Latin religion was still strong — ^The revival of the Arval brotherhood — Its history and ritual described — A stronghold of imperial power — How the Arval College supported and flattered the Emperors — How the cultivated class reconciled themselves to the rudest forms of the ancient religion — ^The philosophic reconciliation — The influence of patriotism in compelling men to support a religion which was intertwined with all social and political life — The sentiment powerful down to the end of paganism — But other religious ideas were in the air, preparing the triumph of the cults of the East ..... 529-546
CHAPTER IV
MAGVA MATBB
The faaoination of the worship of the Great Mother— Jt was still powerftil in the days of S. Augustine — Its arrival from Psssinus in 204 b.c. — ^The
ROMAN SOCIETY
history of its growing influence — ^The taurobolium in the second century — The legend and its interpretations — The Megalesia in spring — ^The priest- hood— The saored colleges of the worship — Evidence of the Inscriptions — The worship in country places — Vagabond priests in Thessaly described by Apuleius — Picture of their wild orgies — The problem of these eastern cults — From a gross origin, they became transmuted into a real spiritual power — ^The eleyation of Magna Mater — The rite of the taurobolium — Its history in Asia Minor — Its immense influence in the last age of the Empire — ^A challenge to the Church — The history of the taurobolium in the West firom the Inscriptions — Description of the scene from Prudentius — The connection of Magna Mater with Mithra and other deities
Pages 547-559
CHAPTEE V
IBIS Aim SSRAPIB
Their long reign in Europe — Established at Peiraeus in the fourth century b.o. — And in Asia Minor — How the Egyptian cults had been transformed under Qreek influences — Greek settlers, soldiers, and travellers in Egypt from the seventh century B.O. — Greek and E^gyptian gods identified — The new propaganda of the Ptolemies — Theories of the origin of Serapis — The new Egyptian Trinity — The influence of Greek mysticism — ^The worship probably established in Gampanian towns before 150 B.O. — ^The religious excitement in Italy in the early part of the second century b.c. — The Bacchanalian scandal — The apocryphal books of Numa — Efforts of the Government in the first century b.c. to repress the worship — A violent struggle with varying fortunes — ^The triumvirs in 42 b.o. erect a temple of Isis — Persecution of eastern worships in the reign of Tiberius — ^Thence- forth there was little opposition — Attitude of the Flavian Emperors — Domitian builds a temple of Isis, 92 a.d. — The Egyptian worship propagated from Alexandria by slaves, officials, philosophers, and savants — Votaries in the imperial household — Spread of Isiac worship through Europe — It reaches York — The secret of its fascination — The cult appealed to many kinds of mind — Its mysticism — Its charm for women — Its pomp and ceremonial — How a religion originally gross may be trans- formed— The soolatry of Egypt justified as symbolism by Greek philo- sophers— But there is little trace of it in the Isiac worship of the West — Isis becomes an all-embracing spiritual power — And Serapis is regarded by Aristides as soTereign lord of life — Yet the worship never broke away from the traditions of idolatry — It fostered an immense superstition — The Petosiris — But there was undoubted spiritual power in the worship— The initiation of Lucius — ^The faith in immortality — ed^t^ec on tombs — Im- pressive ritual — Separation of the priesthood from the world — ^Description of the daily offices — Matins and Vespers — Silent meditation — The great festivals of the Isiac calendar — ^Ascetic preparation — ^The blessing of tlie sacred ship — Description of the procession in Apuleius — ^The grades of priests — ^The sacred guilds — The place of women — The priesthood an aggressive power — ^The Isiac presbytery — Priestly rule of life — ^Tertullian holds it up as an example — ^The popular charm of the Divine Mother
560-584
CONTENTS xxi
CHAPTEE VI
THI BBLIQION OF MITHRA
The causes which in the second century a.d. prepared the triumph of Mithra — Heliolatrj the natural goal of heathenism — Early history of Mithra in the Ycdas and Avestas — He Is a moral power from the beginning — His place in the Zoroastrian hierarchy — Hia relation to Ormuzd — The influence of Babylon on the Persian worship — Mithra identified with the Sun — The astral lore of Babylonia inseparable from Mithraism — Yet Mithra and the Sun are distinct in the later Inscriptions — How Mithra worship was modified in Asia Minor — ^The influence of Greek mythology, philoeophy, and art — The group of the Tauroctonus probably first fiuhioned by a Pergamene artist — Mithra in literature — Herodotus — Xenophon— The TlubaAd of Statins — Plutarch — Lucian may have heard the Mazdean litany — Mithra's first coming to the West probably in the reign of Tiberius — ^The earliest inscriptions of Mithraism belong to the Flavian age — ^At the same time, the worship is established in Pannonia — The earliest temples at Ostia and Borne — The power of Mithra in the capital — The secret of the propaganda — Soldiers were the most effectire missionaries of Mithra — Slaves and imperial officials of every degree propagate the Persian faith — Its progress traced around Rome and through various regions of Italy, especially to the north — Mithra's chapels in the valleys of the Alps and on the roads to the Danube from Aquileia — ^Along the line of the Danube — His remains abundant in Dacia and Pannonia — Chapels at Aquinoum and Camuntum — The enthusiasm of certain legions — ^The splendid remains of Mithra worship in Upper Germany in the early part of the second century a.d. — Mithra passes on, through Cologne and Boulogne, to London, Chester, York, and the wall of Hadrian — Mithra made least impression on W. Gaul, Spain, and N. Africa — ^In spite of tolerance and syncretism, Mithraism never ceased to be a Persian cult — ^The influence of astrology — ^The share of Babylonia in moulding the worship— Yet Greek mystic influences had a large part in it — ^The descent and ascent of the soul — Yet, although Mithraism came to be a moral creed, it never ceased to be a cosmic symbolism — The great elemental powers— The daemonology of Mithraism — Its affinity with the later Neo-Platonism — The evil efl'ect of belief in planetary influences — ^The struggle between formal and spiritual ideals of religion — ^The craving for mediatorial sympathy in the moral life was urgent — Mithra was a mediator both in a cosmic and a moral sense — He stands between Cautes and Cautopates, and between Ormuzd and Ahriman — The legend of Mithra as faintly recovered from the monuments — ^The yeira genetrix — The adoration of the shepherds — The fountain gushing at the arrow-stroke — The legend of the mystic bull — Its chase and slaughter — Its death as the source of resurgent life — ^Tbe mysterious reconciliation of Mithra and the Sun — Their solemn agape — Yarious interpretations of the legend — Yet there was a real spiritual meaning under it all — A religion of strenuous combat — How it touched the Roman soldier on the Danube — Its eschatology — Its promise of immortality and final triumph over evil — The sacramental mystery of Mithraism — The daily offices, and the annual festivals — The
xxii ROMAN SOCIETY
mysteries of Mithra and the seyen grades of initiatioii — Symbolic ceremonies — The colleges of Mithra — Their inflaence in levelling social distinctions— The sospicions of the Apologists — Description of a chapel of Mithra — The form of the ca?e always preserved — The scene of full initiation — Mithraism as an imperial cult and a support of imperial power — Sketch of the history of imperial apotheosis — ^The historic causes which aided it — The influence of Egypt and Persia on the movement — The Persian attitude to kings— The Fortune of the monarch — How these ideas blended with old Roman conceptions — The influence of Sun-worship in the third century, in stimulating theocratic ideas — The Emperors appropriate the titles and insignia of the Sun — ^The imperial house consecrate a temple to Mithra at Gamuntum, twenty years before the conversion of Constantine — Gould Mithra ever have become the god of western Europe? — His chances of success in the chaos of belief seemed promising — His syncretism * and tolerance, yet his exclusive daims — His moral charm — The fears of the Fathers — Parallels between bis legend and the Bible— His sacramental system a txavesty of the mysteries of the medieval church — Yet there was a great gulf between the two religions — The weaknesses of Mithraism — It did not appeal to women — It had no Mater Dolorosa — It offered little , human sympathy — ^And in its tolerance of other heathen systems lay its great weakness — A Mithraist might be a votary of all the ancient gods — Mithraism was rooted in nature- worship, and remained the iwitron of the worst superstitions — Mithra belonged to the order which was passing away ..... . Pagei> 585-6S6
BOOK I.
JNFB8TA riBTUTIBUS TBMPOBA
CHAPTER I
THE ABI8T0CRACT UNDER THE TEBROB
The period of social history which we are about to study is profoundly interesting in many ways, but not least in the many contrasts between its opening and its close. It opens with the tyranny of one of the worst men who ever occupied a throne; it ends with the mild rule of a Stoic saint It b^ins in massacre and the carnage of civil strife; it closes in the apparent triumph of the philosophic ideal, although before the end of the reign of the philosophers the shadows have begun to falL The contrast of character between the two princes is generally supposed to find a correspondence in the moral character and ideals of the men over whom they ruled. The accession of Vespasian which, after a deadly struggle, seemed to bring the orgies of a brutal despotism to a close, is r^arded as marking not only a political, but a naoral, revolution. It was the dawn of an age of repentance and amendment, of beneficent administration, of a great moral revival We are bound to accept the express testimony of a contemporary like Tacitus,^ who was not prone to optimist views of human progress, that along with the exhaustion of the higher class from massacre and reckless extravagance, the sober example of the new emperor, and the introduction of fresh blood and purer manners from the provinces, had produced a great moral improvement Even among the old noblesse, whose youth had fallen on the age of wild licence, it is probable that a better tone asserted itself at the beginning of what was recognised by all to be a new order. The crushed and servile, who had easily learnt to
^ Ann, iiL 56 ; xtI. 6 ; cf. Snet. Fe^. ix. xiL 2 ^ B
2 SOCIAL LIFE book i
imitate the wasteful vices of their oppressors, would probably, with equal facility, at least affect to conform to the simpler fashions of life which Vespasian inherited from his Sabine an- cestors and the old farm-house at Keate.^ The better sort, repre- sented by the circles of Persius, of Pliny and Tacitus, who had nursed the ideal of Stoic or old Boman virtue in some retreat on the northern lakes or in the folds of the Apennines, emerged from seclusion and came to the front in the reign of Trajan.
Tet neither the language of Tacitus nor the testimony from other sources justify the belief in any sudden moral revolution. The Antonine age was imdoubtedly an age of conscientious and humane government in the interest of the subject ; it was even more an age of religious revival But whether these were accompanied by a corresponding elevation of conduct and moral tone among the masses may well be doubted. On the other hand the pessimism of satirist and historian who had lived through the darkness of the Terror has probably exaggerated the corruption of the evil days. If society at laige had been half as corrupt as it is represented by Juvenal, it would have speedily perished from mere rottenness. The Inscriptions, the Letters of the younger Pliny, even the pages of Tacitus himself, reveal to us another world from that of the satirist. On countless tombs we have the record or the ideal of a family life of sober, honest industry, and pure affection. In the calm of rural retreats in Lombardy or Tuscany, while the capital was frenzied with vicious indulgence, or seething with conspiracy and desolated by massacre, there were many families living in almost puritan quietude, where the moral standard was in many respects as high as among ourselves. The worst period of the Boman Empire was the most glorious age of practical Stoicism. The men of that circle were ready, at the cost of liberty or b'fe, to brave an immoral tyranny ; their wives were eager to follow them into exile, or to die by their side.^ And even in the palace of Nero there was a spotless Octavia, and slave-girls who were ready to defend her honour at the cost of torture and deatL* In the darkest days, the violence of the bad princes spent itself on
^ Saet Vesp. ii. qomre prmoei)s ' Tac^nn.xT.28;xvi.21, 84;^^r»(:.
anoque et locum incnnabalorum assi- 2, 45; PlixL Ep. iii 16, § 10; vii 19,
aue frequentavit, manente yilla, qualis § 8 ; iii. 11, § S ; ix. 18, § 8.
faerat olim, etc. ' Tac. Awi^ xiv. 60.
CHAP. I THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 3
their nobles, on those whom they feared, or whom they wished to plunder. The provinces, even under a Tiberius, a Nero, or a Domitian, enjoyed a freedom fix)m oppression which they seldom enjoyed under the Bepublic.^ Just and upright gover- nors were the rule and not the exception, and even an Otho or a Vitellius, tainted with every private vice, returned from their provincial governments with a reputation for integrity.* Municipal freedom and self^venunent were probably at their height at the very time when life and liberty in the capital were in hourly peril. The great Stoic doctrine of the brother- hood and equality of men, as members of a world-wide commonwealth, which was destined to inspire l^islation in the Antonine age, was openly preached in the reigns of Caligula and Nero. A softer tone — a modem note of pity for the miserable and succour for the helpless — ^makes itself heard in the literature of the first century.' The moral and mental equality of the sexes was being more and more recognised in theory, as the capacity of women for heroic action and self- sacrifice was displayed so often in the age of the tyranny and of the Stoic martyrs. The old cruelty and contempt for the slave will not give way for many a generation ; but the slave is now treated by all the great leaders of moral reform as a being of the same mould as his master, his equal, if not his superior, in capacity for virtue.
The peculiar distinction of the Antonine age is not to be sought in any great difference from the age preceding it in con- duct or moral ideals among the great mass of men. Nor can it claim any literary distinction of decided originality, except in the possession of the aiiy grace and half-serious mockery of Lucian. Juvenal, Tacitus, and the younger Pliny, Suetonius and Quintilian, Plutarch and Dion Ghrysostom, were probably all dead before Antoninus Pius came to the throne. After Hadrian's reign pure Eoman literature, in any worthy sense, is extinct ; it dies away in that Sahara of the liigher intellect which stretches forward to the Fall of the Empire. There is no great
> Tie -4n«. iv. 6 ; i. 80 ; xiu. 50, 61; « Sen. Ep, 47; Delra.l 6; Hi. 24;
xL 24; Suet. Nero, x. ; Dom, viiL ; cf. De Bene/, iv. 11, § 3 ; De Brev, ViL
Merivale, jdi. 885 ; Renan,^^^rM, p. xiii § 7 ; Plio. Ep, iv. 22 ; Juv. xiy. 16
sqq. ; XV. 131 ; D. ' Saet. ViUU, y. ; Otho, iiL proviD- Hem, Inacr, Lai, 7244, Bene fac, hoe
SOSsqq; QriaxA, Morale de Pint. p. 200. aqq. ; xv. 131 ; D. Cass. Ixvi. 15 ; Or.
eiam adminiBtrayit moderatdone atque tecum feres ; Denis, Hist, des Idiea nngolari. Morales, IL 166, 172, 181.
4 SOCIAL LIFE book i
histx)riaQ after Tacitus; there is no considerable poet aftei Statins and Juvenal, till the meteor-like apparition of Glaudian in the ominous reign of Honorius.
The material splendour and municipal life of the Antonine age are externally its greatest glory. It was pre-eminently a sociable age, an age of cities. From the wall of Hadrian to the edge of the Sahara towns sprang up everywhere with as yet a £ree civic life. It was an age of engineers and architects, who turned villages into cities and built cities in the desert, adorned with temples and stately arches and basilicas, and feeding their fountains from the springs of distant hills. The rich were powerful and popular ; and never had they to pay 80 heavily for popularity and power. The cost of civic feasts and games, of forums and temples and theatres, was won by flattery, or extorted by an inexorable force of public opinion from their coffers. The poor were feasted and amused by their social superiors who received a deference and adulation ex- pressed on hundreds of inscriptions. And it must be confessed that these records of ambitious munificence and expectant gratitude do not raise our conception of either the economic or the moral condition of the age.
The glory of classic art had almost vanished; and yet, without being able to produce any works of creative genius, the inexhaustible vitality of the Hellenic spirit once more asserted itself. After a long eclipse, the rhetorical culture of Greece vigorously addressed itself in the reign of Hadrian to the conquest of the West Her teachers and spiritual directors indeed had long been in every family of note. Her sophists were now seen haranguing crowds in every town from the Don to the Atlantic. The influence of the sophistic discipline in education will be felt in the schools of Gaul, when Visigoth and Burgundian will be preparing to assume the heritage of the falling Empire.^ From the early years of the second century can be traced that great combined movement of the Neo-Pythagorean and Platonist philosophies and the renovated paganism which made a last stand against the conquering Church in the reigns of Julian and Theodosius. Philosophy became a religion, and devoted itself not only to the private direction of character and the preaching of a higher life, but
^ Sid. ApolL Ep. viii. 6, § 5.
CHAP. I THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 6
to the justification and unification of pagan faith. In spite of its rather bourgeois ideal of material enjoyment and splen- dour, the Antonine age, at least in its higher minds, was an age of a purified moral sense and religious intuition. It was, indeed, an age of spiritual contradictions. On the one hand, not only was the old ritual of classical polytheism scrupulously observed even by men like Plutarch and M. Aurelius, but religious imagination was appropriating the deities of every province, almost of every canton, embraced by the Boman power. At the same time the fecundity of super- stition created hosts of new divinities and genii who peopled every scene of human life.^ On the other hand syncretism was in the air. Amid all the confused ferment of devotion a certain principle of unity and comprehension was asserting itself, even in popular religion. The old gods were losing their sharp-cut individuality ; the provinces and attributes of kindred deities tended to fade into one another, and melt into the conception of a single central Power. The religions of Egypt and the remoter East, with their inner monotheism, supported by the promise of sacramental grace and the hope of immor- tality, came in to give impetus to the great spiritual movement The simple peasant might cling to his favourite god, as his Neapolitan descendant has his favourite saint. But an Apuleius, an ApoUonius, or an Alexander Severus ' sought a converging spiritual support in the gods and mysteries of every clime.
Platonist philosophy strove to give rational expression to this movement, to reconcile cultivated moral sense with the worships of the past, to find a bond between the vagrant reli- gious fancies of the crowd and the remote esoteric faith of the philosophic few. On the higher minds, from whatever quarter, a spiritual vision had opened, which was strange to the ancient world, the vision of One who is no longer a mere Force, but an infinite Father, Creator, Providence and Guardian, from whom we come, to whom we go at death. Prayer to Him is a communion, not the means of winning mere temporal blessings; He is not gratified by bloody sacrifice ; He is dishonoured by immoral l^end.' He cannot be imaged in gold or ivory graven
^ Or, HmuL iiL Ind. p. 27 aq. plurimos ritns . . . didici ; Lamprid.
Alex, Sev. c 29, 48. ' Apul. Apal, 0. 56, aaoronim plera- ' Max. Tyr. Diss, viii. ; xi. § 8 ;
que mitia in Graecu participavi, et xvii ; D. Chrys. Or. xlL § 88.
6 SOCIAL LIFE book i
by the most cunning hand, although the idealised human form may be used as a secondary aid to devotion. These were some of the religious ideas curi-ent among the best men, Dion Chry- sostom, Plutarch, Maximus of Tyre, which the Neo-Platonic school strove to harmonise with the rites and legends of the past. The means by which they tried to do so, and the measure of their success, it is one purpose of this book to explain.
The Antonine age saw for a brief space the dream of Plato realised, when kings should be philosophers, and philosophers should be kings. Philosophy had given up its detached and haughty reserve, or outspoken opposition to imperial power. In the second century it lent all its forces to an authority which in the hands of the Antonine princes seemed to answer to its ideals.^ The votaries of the higher life, after their persecution under the last cruel despot, rose to an influence such as they had never wielded save in the Pythagorean aris- tocracies of southern Italy. Philosophy now began to inspire legislation and statesmanship.^ Its professors were raised to the consulship and great prefectures. Above all, it was incarnate, as it were, in the ruler who, whatever we may think of his practical success, brought to the duties of government a loftiness of spiritual detachment which has never been equalled by any ruler of men. Whether there was any corresponding elevation of conduct or moral tone in the mass of men may well be doubted by any one who has studied the melancholy thoughts of the saintly emperor. Lucian and M. Aurelius seem to be as hopeless about the moral condition of humanity as Seneca and Petronius were in the darkest days of Nero's tyranny.' Such opinions, indeed, have little scientific value. They are often the result of temperament and ideals, not of trustworthy observation. But it would be rash to assume that heightened religious feeling and the efforts of philosophy had within a hundred years worked any wide-spread trans- formation of character. It was, however, a great step in advance that the idea of the priucipate, expounded by Seneca, and the younger Pliny, as a clement, watchful, infinitely
^ Renan, Lea ^wmgiUs^ p. 882. * Luc. S<im, 82 ; Traj, 15 ; Chanm^
16, 20 ; Tim, 14, 86 ; M. Aurel. ▼. 10,
* Friedl. SiUenffeseh, iv, 420 ; Denis, 83 ; ix. 29 ; 84 ; x. 19 : cf. Sen. De IdSe9 Morales, ii. 200 sqq. ; Renan, M. Ira, ii. 8 ; Ad Marc ii 17, 20, 22 ; AurOe, p. 24 sqq. Petron. Sai, 88.
CHAP. 1 THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 7
laborious earthlj providence had been realised since the ac- cession of Trajan. It was easier to be virtuous in the reign of M. Aurelius than in the reign of Nero, and it was espe- cially easier for a man of the highest social grade. The example of the prince for good or evil must always powerfully influence the dass who are by birth or office nearest to the throne. And bad example will be infinitely more corrupting when it is reinforced by terror. A fierce, capricious tyranny generates a class of vices which are perhaps more degrading to human dignity, and socially more dangerous, than the vices of the flesh. And the reign of such men as Caligula, Nero, and Domitian not only stimulated the grossness of self- indulgence, but superadded the treachery and servility of cowardice. In order to appreciate fully what the world had gained by the mild and temperate rule of the princes of the second century, it is necessary to revive for a moment the terrors of the Claudian Caesars.
The power of Seneca as a moral teacher has, with some reservations, been recognised by all the ages since his tima But equal recognition has hardly been given to the lurid light which he throws, in random flashes, on the moral con- ditions of his class under the tyranny of Caligula and Nero. This may be due, perhaps, to a distrust of his artificial declamation, and that falsetto note which he too often strikes even in his most serious moments. Tet he must be an un- sympathetic reader who does not perceive that, behind the moral teaching of Seneca, there lies an awful experience, a life- long torture, which turns all the fair -seeming blessings of life, state and luxury and lofty rank, into dust and ashes. There is a haunting shadow over Seneca which never draws away, which sometimes deepens into a horror of dark- ness. In whatever else Seneca may have been insincere, his veiled references to the terrors of the imperial despotism come from the heart
Seneca's life almost coincides with the Julio -Claudian tyranny. He had witnessed in his early manhood the gloomy, suspicious rule of Tiberius, when no day passed without an execution,^ when every accusation was deadly, when it might be fatal for a poet to assail Agamemnon in tragic verse, or for a
^ Bp. lOS, § 22 ; cf. Saet Tib, bd. nnlliiB a poena hominom oenavit dies.
8 SOCIAL LIFE book i
histx>rian to praise Brutus and Gassius/ when the victims of delation in crowds anticipated the mockery of justice bj self- inflicted death, or drank the poison even in the face of the judges. Seneca incurred the jealous hatred of Caligula by a too brilliant piece of rhetoric in the Senate,' and he has taken his revenge by damning the monster to eternal infamy.^ Not even in Suetonius is there any tale more ghastly than that told by Seneca of the Eoman knight whose son had paid with his life for a foppish elegance which imtated the tyrant^ On the evening of the cruel day, the father received an imperial com- mand to dine. With a face betraying no sign of emotion, he was compelled to drink to the Emperor, while spies were eagerly watching every expression of his face. He bore the ordeal without flinching. '' Do you ask why ? He had another son." Exiled to Corsica in the reign of Claudius,^ Seneca bore the sentence with less dignity than he afterwards met death. He witnessed the reign of the freedmen, the infamies of Messalina, the intrigues of Agrippina, and the treacherous murder of Britannicus ; he knew all the secrets of that ghastly court Installed as the tutor of the young Nero, he doubtless, if we niay judge by the treatise on Clemency, strove to inspire him with a high ideal of monarchy as an earthly providence. He probably at the same time discovered in the son of On. Domitius Ahenobarbus and Agrippina the fatal heritage of a vicious blood and the omens of a ghastly reign. The young tiger was held on leash for the famous quinquennium by Burrus and Seneca. It seemed only the device of a divine tragic artist, by a brief space of calm and innocence, to deepen the horror of the catastrophe. And, for Seneca, life darkened terribly towards its closa With high purposes for the common- weal, he had probably lent himself to doubtful means of humouring his wayward pupil, perhaps even to crime.* His enormous wealth, whether won from imperial favour, or gained by usury and extortion,^ his power, his literary brilliance, aroused
^ Snet Tih, 61 ; Tac. Ann, iy. 84. ' Tac. Ann, xii. 8 ; D. Cass. 60. 8 ;
» D. Cass. lix. 19 ; Suet Calig, 68. ^- ^^ ? ^°- ^^ ^^V*' ^^' 2 ; Ad
' ^ Hdv, 15. 2.
» Nee. Inj. xviii ; cf. Suet CaXig, • For the worst chai^;ee v. D. Cass.
60 ; Sen. i>0 /ni, L 20 ; iii. 18 ; Dt ixii 2 ; Ixi. 10 ; Tac. Ann. 18. 18.
Trmnq, xiv, ; Ad Polyb. xiu. xvn. ; Ad i j), Ctaa. Le, ; Tac. Ann, 18. 42.
ffdv. x.i;De Ben^. iy. 81. But cf. Seneca's reply, Tac. Ann, 14.
* Sen. De Ira, it 88. 58, and 15. 62.
CHAF. 1 THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 9
a host of enemies, who blackened his character and excited the fears or the jealousy of Nero. He had to bear the unenviable distinction of a possible pretender to the principate.^ He with- drew into almost monastic seclusion, and even offered to resign his wealtL' He strove to escape the evil eyes of calumny and imperial distrust by the most abject renunciation. But he could not descend from the precipice on which he hung ; his eleva- tion was a crucifixion.' Withdrawn to a remote comer of his palace, which was crowded witfatiie most costly products of the East, and surroimded by gardens which moved the envy of Nero,^ the fallen statesman sought calm in penning his counsels to Lueilius, and bracing himself to meet the stealthy stroke which might be dealt at any moment^ In reading many passages of Seneca, you feel that you are sitting in some palace on the Esquiline, reading the Phtudo or listening to the consolations of a Stoic director, while the centurion from the palace may at any moment appear with the last fate- ful order.
Seneca, like Tacitus, has a remarkable power of moral diagnosis. He had acquired a profoimd, sad knowledge of the pathology of the souL It was a power which was almost of necessity acquired in that time of terror and suspicion, when men lived in daily peril from seeming friends. There never was a period when men more needed the art of reading the secrets of character. Nor was there ever a time when there were greater facilities for the study. Life was sociable almost to excess. The Soman noble, unless he made himself deliberately a recluse, spent much of his time in those social meeting-places of which we hear so often,^ where gossip and criticism dealt mercilessly with character, where keen wits were pitted against one another, sometimes in a deadly game, and where it might be a matter of life or death to pierce the armour of dissimulation.^ Seneca had long shone in such circlea In his later years, if he became a recluse, he was also a spiritual director. And his Letters leave little doubt that many a restless or weary spirit laid bare its secret misery to him, for advice or
1 Tac Ann. 15. 65. De Ira, ilL 15 ; Ad ffelv. 5, § 4.
* Sen. Frag. 108. > Mart. yiL 27, 11 ; Jny. xL 4 ; Sen. s Sen. Dc Tranq. x. 6. Diai. 1, 5, 4 ; De Bene/. viL 22, 2 ; « Sen. Jl^. L 18; Tac Ann. 14. 52. Friedl. SiUeJigeaek. i. 281.
* J^ 70, § 14 ; 88, § 17 ; i^. 77 ; ^ Sen. Deira, iL83; i>0 Tranq. ziL7.
10 SOCIAL UFE BOOK i
consolation. Knowing well the wildest excesses of fantastic luxoiy, all the secrets of the philosophic confessional, the miseries of a position oscillating between almost princely state and monastic renunciation, the minister of Nero, with a self- imposed core of soak, had unrivalled opportunities of ascer- taining the moral condition of his class.
Seneca is too often a rhetorician, in search of striking effects and vivid phrase. And, like all rhetoricians, he is often inconsistent At times he appears to regard his own age as having reached the very climax of insane self-indulgence. And yet, in a calmer mood, he declares his belief that the contem- poraries of Nero were not worse than the contemporaries of Clodius or LucuUus, that one age difiTers from another rather in the greater prominence of different vices.^ His pessimism extends to all ages which have been allured by the charm of ingenious luxury from the simplicity of nature. In the fatal progress of society, the artificial multiplication of human wants has corrupted the idyllic innocence of the far-off Eden, where the cope of heaven or the cave was the only shelter, and the skin-clad savage made his meal on berries and slaked his thirst from the stream.^ It is the revolutionary dream of Bousseau, revolting from the oppression and artificial luxury of the Anden Bjiqime. Seneca's state of nature is the antithesis of the selfish and materialised society in which he lived. Our early ancestors were not indeed virtuous in the strict sense.' For virtue is the result of struggle and philosophic guidance. But their instincts were good, because they were not tempted. They enjoyed in common the natural bounties of mother earth.^ Their fierceness of energy spent itself on the beasts of the chase. They lived peaceably in willing obedience to the gentle paternal rule of their vrisest and best, with no lust of gold or power, no jealousy and hatred, to break a contented and unenvious harmony. The great disturbers of this primeval peace were avarice and luxury.^ The moment when the first nugget flashed its baleful temptations on the eyes of the roaming hunter was the beginning of all human guilt and misery.^ Selfish greed, developing into insatiable appetite, is
1 Sen. Ep, 97, § 2 ; Sen. De Bene/. * J^. 90, § 40. ^ lb. 90, % 88.
i. 10, I 1. Cr. De Ira, ii. 8 ; J^. 96, ^ lb. 90, % 6, % 36, avaritui atquo
§ 20 ; Ep. 115, 1 10. Inxuria dissodavere mortalea.
> Sen. Bp. 90, § 42. • lb. 90, § 12.
CHAP. I THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 11
the original sin which turned the garden into wilderness. In individualist cravings men lost hold on the common wealth of nature. Luxury entered on its downward course, in the search for fresh food and stimulus for appetite, till merely super- fluous pleasures led on to those from which untainted nature recoila^ Man's boasted conquests over nature, the triumphs of his perverted ingenuity, have bred an illimitable lust, ending in wearied appetite ; they have turned those who were brothers into cunning or savage beasts.
Such a theory of society has, of course, no value or interest in itself. Its interest, like that of similar H 'priori dreams, lies in the light which it sheds on the social conditions which gave it birth. Like the Germany of Tacitus, and the Social Contract of Bousseau, Seneca's theory of the evolution of humanity is an oblique satire on the vices of his own age. And not even in Tacitus or Suetonius are to be found more ghastly revelations of a putrescent society, and the ennui and self-loathing which capricious sensualism generates in spirits bom for something higher. It may be worth noting that the vices which Seneca treats as most prevalent and deadly are not so much those of sexual impurity, although they were rife enough in his day, as those of greed, gross luxury, treacherous and envious cruelty, the weariness of jaded nerves and exhausted capacities of indulgence.' It is not the coarse vices of the Suburra, but the more deadly and lingering maladies of the Quirinal and the Esquiline which he is describing. There is a universal lust of gold : ' riches are the one ornament and stay of life. And yet in those days a great fortune was only a splendid servitude.^ It had to be guarded amid perpetual peril and envy. The universal greed and venality are worthily matched by the endless anxiety of those who have won the prize. Human life has become a scene of cruel and selfish ^otism, a ferocious struggle of beasts of prey, eager for rapine, and heedless of those who go down in the obscene struggle.^ It is an age when men glorify the fortunate and trample on the fallen. The cunning and cruelty of the wild beast on the throne have taught a lesson of dissimulation to the subject
1 S«n. Ep, 90, § 19. 60 ; Ep. 74.
' De Brtv, ViL xyi. tarde ire horas ^ Ad Polyh, vi. 6, magna senrituB est
qnenratar ; Ep, 77 ; Ep, 104, § 15. magna fortuna.
> J^ 116, § 10 ; Z>0 Ira, iil 88 ; ^. ^ Deira, ii. 8.
12 SOCIAL LIFE book i
At such a court it is a miracle to reach old age, and the feat can only be accomplished by accepting insult and injury with a smiling face.^ For him who goes undefended by such armour of hypocrisy there is always ready the rack, the poisoned cup, the order for self-murder. It is characteristic of the detachment of Seneca that he sees the origin of this hateful tyranny. No modem has more clearly discerned the far-reaching curse of slavery.^ Every great house is a miniature of the Empire under a Caligula or Nero, a nursery of pretenders capable of the same enormities. The unchecked power of the master, which could, for the slightest faults, an ill- swept pavement, an unpolished dish, or a sullen look, inflict the most brutal torture,* produced those cold hearts which gloated over the agony of gallant men in the arena, and applauded in the Senate the tyrant's latest deed of blood. And the system of household slavery enervated character while it made it heartless and cruel The Inscriptions confirm Seneca's picture of the minute division of functions among the household, to anticipate every possible need or caprice of the master.^ Under such a system the master became a helpless dependent There is real truth, under some ludicrous exaggeration, in the tale of a Eoman noble, taking his seat in his sedan after the bath, and requiring the assurance of his slave that he was really seated.*
It is little wonder that on such lives an utter weariness should settle, the disgust of oversated appetite, which even the most far-fetched luxuries of the orient, the most devilish ingenuity of morbid vice, could hardly arouse. Yet these jaded souls are tortured by an aimless restlessness, which frets and chafes at the slow passing of the hours,^ or vainly hopes to find relief in change of scene.^ The more energetic spirits, with no wholesome field for energy, developed into a class which obtained the name of " Ardeliones." Seneca,* Martial,^ and the younger Pliny*® have left us pictures of these idle
^ Delra^u. 88. VAnL ii. 146.
' lb, iiL 85, deinde idem de re- ^ Sen. De Brev. V, xiiL
pnblica libertatem sublaUm qnereris ' lb, xvL transilire dies yoltmt.
qaam domi Buatolisti. ^ Id. Ep, 104, § 15 ; 89, § 20 ; J^. 28.
» lb, iiL 24, 82 ; Petron. Sat, 49, • Id. l)e Tranq, xiL § 7.
53 ; Sen. Ep, 47, § 10 ; Juv. vL 490 ; ' Mart ii. 7, 8 (v, note on the word
Sen. De dm, L 18. in Friedlander's ed.) ; vr. 78.
« Boiesier, Bel. Bom. ii. 853 ; Marq. ^^ Sen. ^. L 9 ; of. Friedl. SiUen,-
Frio. L 142 ; WaUon, VEmI. dam geich. i. 271.
CHAP. I THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 13
busjbodieSy hurrying round the forums, theatres, and great houses, in an idle quest of some trivial object of interest, waiting on patrons who ignore their existence, following some stranger to the grave, rushing pell-mell to the wedding of a much-married lady, or to a scene in the law courts, returning at nightfall, worn out with these silly labours, to tread the same weary round next day. Less innocent were they who daily gathered in the drcvii} to hear and spread the wildest rumours about the army on the frontier, to kill a woman's reputation with a hint, to find a sinister meaning in some imperial order, or to gloat in whispers over the last highly-coloured tale of folly or dark guilt from the palace. It was a perilous enjoy- ment, for, with a smiling face, some seeming friend was prob- ably noting every hint which might be tortured into an accusation before the secret tribunal on the Palatine, or angling for a sneer which might cost its author a fortune, or send him to the rocks of Gyarus.
In reading Seneca's writings, especially those of his last years, you are conscious of a horror which hardly ever takes definite shape, a thick stifling air, as it were, charged with lightning. Again and again, you feel a dim terror closing in silently and stealthily, with sudden glimpses of unutterable torture, of cord and rack and flaming tunic.' You seem to see the sage tossing on his couch of purple under richly pannelled ceilings of gold, starting at every sound in the wainscot,' as he awaits the messenger of death. It is not so much that Seneca fears death itself, although we may suspect that his nerves sometimes gave the lie to his principles. He often hails death as welcome at any age, as the deliverer who strikes off the chain and opens the prison door, the one harbour on a tempestuous and treacherous sea.^ He is grateful for having always open this escape from life's long torture, and boldly claims the right to anticipate the executioner. The gloom of Seneca seems rather to spring from a sense of the terrible cou-
^ Jot. zi. 4 ; Mart viL 97 ; Quintll. tectoram pavetis sonum et inter
▼L 8, 105 ; Seo. De Tranq, xu. § 7 ; pioturas vestras, si quid increpuit,
JD$ Ben, yii. 22,2; De Prav, i 6, 4 ; fuffitis attoniti.
Boinier, rOpp. p. 201 sqq. * Ep. 70, § 14 ; Ep, 88, § 17, malia
« Ad Marc xx. ; De Tranq, x. ; Bp. partus sum ; Ep. 24, § 11 ; Ad Folyh.
94 adM. ;Ep.1(^. «• "'^^^ PO'^^8 ^}?y ^2^^^ K -4rf
^ Marc zx. mors quae emcit ut nasoi non
* i^ 90, § 48, at V06 ad omnem supplioium sit
14 SOCIAL UFE book i
trast between wealth and state and an ignominious doom which was ever ready to fall. And to his fevered eye all stately rank seems at last but a precipice overhanging the abjrss, a mark for treacherous envy or the spitefulness of Foitune.^ ''A great fortime is a great servitude/' ^ which, if it has been hard to win, is harder still to guard. And all life is full of these pathetic contrasts. Pleasure is nearest neighbour to pain ; the summer sea in a moment is boiling in the tempest ; the labour of long years is scattered in a day; there is always terror lurking under our deepest peace. And so we reach the sad gospel of a universal pessimism ; '' nothing is so deceitful and treacherous as the life of man." ' No one would knowingly accept such a fatal gift, of which the best that can be said is that the torture is short, that our first moment of existence is the first stage to the grave.^ Thus to Seneca, with all his theoretical indifference to things external to the virtuous will, with all his admiration for the invulnerable wisdom, withdrawn in the inner citadel of the soul, and defying the worst that tyrants or fortune could inflict, the taedium vUae became almost unendurable. The interest of all this lies, not in Seneca's inconsistency, but in the nightmare which brooded on such minds in the reign of Nero. Something of the gloom of Seneca was part of the evil heritage of a class, commanding inexhaustible wealth and assailed by boundless temptations to self-indulgence, which had been ofiTered by the conquest of East and West. The weary senses failed to respond to the infinite sensual seductions which surrounded the Koman noble from his earliest years. If he did not succeed in squandering his fortune, he often exhausted too early his capacity for healthy joy in life, and the nemesis of sated appetite and disillusionment too surely cast its shadow over his later years. Prurient slander was rife in those days, and we are not boimd to accept all its tales about Seneca. Yet there are passages in his writings which leave the impression that, although he may have cultivated a Pythagorean aceticism in his youth,^ he did not
' Ad Afore, x. Pythagorean discipline under the in-
' Ad Polyb, yL flueuce of Sotion, a pupil of Sextius,
' Ad Marc xxii. § 8. but gave it up on the proscription of
* Ad Polyb. ix. ; Ep, 77 ; Ad Mare. suspected rites in the reign of Ulberius,
xxi. § 7. of. Suet Tib, 36 ; cf. Zeller, Du PhiL
s Ep, 108, § 17. He adopted the dmrOr.m. 1, 605.
CHAP. I THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 15
altogether escape the tamt of his time.^ His enormous fortune did not all come by happy chance or the bounty of the emperor.' His gardens and palace, with all its priceless furniture, must have been acquired because at one time he felt pleasure in such luxuries. A soul so passionate in its renunciation may, according to laws of human nature, have been once as passionate in indulgence. In his case, as so often in the liistory of the Church, the saint may have had a terrible repentance.
It is probable, however, that this pessimism is more the . result of the contrast between Seneca's ideal of the principate, and the d^radation of its power in the hands of his pupil Nero. Seneca may have been regarded once as a possible candidate for the throne, but he was no conspirator or re- volutionary.' He would have condemned the visionaries whose rudeness provoked even the tolerant Vespasian.^ In a letter, which must have been written during the Neronian terror, he emphatically repudiates the idea that the votaries of philosophy are refractory subjects. Their great need is quiet and security. They should surely reverence him who, by his sleepless watch, guards what they most value, just as, on a merchantman, the owner of the most precious part of the cargo will be most grateful for the protection of the god of the sea.^ Seneca would have his philosophic brethren give no offence by loud self-assertion or a parade of superior wisdom.* In that deceitful dawn of his pupil's reign, Seneca had written a treatise in which he had striven to charm him by the ideal of a paternal monarchy, in the consciousness of its god-like power ever delighting in mercy and pity, tender to the afBlicted, gentle even to the criminal. It is very much the ideal of Pliny and Dion Ghrysostom under the strong and temperate rule of Trajan.^ Addressed to one of the worst emperors, it seems, to one looking back, almost a satire. Yet we should remember that, strange as it may seem, Nero, with all his wild depravity, appears to have had a strange charm for many, even to the end. The men who trembled
> D. Cua. 62. 2 ; 61. 10. Zeller, iii. ^ Sen. Ep. 78, § 8.
1, 641. D. 1. • /6. 103, § 4.
» D. Gasa. Lc ' De Clem, i. 19 ; Plin. Paneg, i. 72 ;
» Tac Ann. xt. W. D. Chiys. Or, iL § 77 ; iu. § 89 ; 70
^ Saet. Fetp, 15. sqq.
d
16 SOCIAL UFE book i
under the sombre and hypocritical Domitiaii, regretted the wild gaiety and bonhomie of Nero, and each spring, for years after his death, flowers were laid by unknown hands upon his grava^ The charm of boyhood, with glimpses of some generous instincts, may for a time have deceived even the experienced man of the world and the brooding analyst of character. But it is more probable that the piece is rather a warning than a prophecy. Seneca had watched all the caprices of an imperial tyrant, drunk with a sense of omnipotence, having in his veins the maddening taint of ancestral vice,^ with nerves unstrung by maniacal excesses, brooding in the vast solitudes of the Palatine till he became frenzied with terror, striking down possible rivals, at first from fear or greed,' in the end from the wild beast's lust for blood, and the voluptuary's delight in suCTering. The prophecy of the father as to the future of Agrippina*s son ^ found probably an echo in the fears of his tutor. But, in spite of his forebodings, Seneca thought the attempt to save him worth making. He first appeals to his imagination. Nero has succeeded to a vic^erency of God on earth.^ He is the arbiter of life and death, on whose word the fortunes of citizens, the happiness or misery of whole peoples depend. His innocence raises the highest hopes.^ But the imperial task is heavy, and its perils are appalling. The emperor is the one bond by which the world-empire is held together ; ^ he is its vital breath. Man, the hardest of all animals to govern,' can only be governed long by love, and love can only be won by beneficence and gentleness to the froward- ness of men. In his god-like place, the prince should imitate the mercy of the gods.* Wielding illimitable power, he is yet the servant of all, and cannot usurp the licence of the private subject He is like one of the heavenly orbs, bound by in- evitable law to move onward in a fixed orbit, unswerving and unresting. If he relies on cruel force, rather than on clemency, he will sink to the level of the tyrant and meet
1 Suet Dfm. 23, Nvro, 57 ; cf. Tac * Saet Calig. 88.
HiML. i. 7, ipsa aetas Galbae irrUui ao ^ Id. NtrOy 6.
fastidio erat adauetia juventae Neronia ^ De Clem, i. 1, § 2, electusqae sum
et imperatorea forma ac decora corporia qui in terria deorum vice fimgerer. • . . oomparantiboa. * ii. L § 5.
* Snet Calig. 50 ; cf. Sen. Nee. Jf^\ ^ lb, i. 4, 1, Ule Tinculum per quod
18 ; De Ira, L 20 ; iL 88 ; ilL 18 ; De reapublica cohaeret» ille spiritua vitalis. Ben. iL 12, 21. "^ lb. I 17, 1. ^ lb. I 7, 2.
CHAP. 1 THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 17
his proper fate.^ Cruelty in a king only multiplies his enemies and envenoms hatred. In that fatal path there is no turning back. The king, once dreaded by his people, loses his nerve and strikes out blindly in self-defence.' The atmosphere of treachery and suspicion thickens around him, and, in the end, what, to his maddened mind, seemed at first a stem necessity becomes a mere lust for blood.
It has been suggested that Seneca was really^ to some extent, the cause of the grotesque or tragic failure of Nero.' The rhetorical spirit, which breathes through all Seneca's writings, may certainly be an evil influence in the education of a ruler of men. The habit of playing with words, of aiming at momentary effect, with slight regard to truth, may inspire the excitable vanity of the artist, but is hardly the temper for dealing with the hard problems of government And the dazzling picture of the boundless power of a Boman emperor, which Seneca put before his pupil, in order to heighten his sense of responsibility, might intoxicate a mind naturally prone to grandiose visions, while the sober lesson would be easily foigotten. The spectacle of " the kingdoms of the world and all the glory of them " at his feet was a dangerous temptation to a temperament Uke Nero's.^ Arrogance and cruelty were in the blood of the Domitii. Nero's grandfather, when only aedile, had compelled the censor to give place to him; he had produced Boman matrons in pantomime, and given gladia- torial shows with such profusion of cruelty, as to shock that not very tender-hearted age.^ The father of the emperor, in addition to crimes of fraud, perjury, and incest, had, in the open forum, torn out the eye of a Boman knight, and deliber- ately trampled a child under his horse's feet on the Appian Way.* Yet such is the strange complexity of human nature, that Nero seems by nature not to have been destitute of some generous and amiable qualities. We need not lay too much stress on the innocence ascribed to him by Seneca.^ Nor need we attribute to Nero's initiative the sound or benevolent measures which characterised the beginning of his reign. But he showed
^ JH Clem, L 18. bus mortalibos placui electnaqae sum
* 76. i 13, 2; soelera enim soeleiibns qui in terris deorum vice fnngerer ! toendft rant * Suet. Nero^ o. i,
> Renfto, VAnUchr. p. 126. * 76. o. 6.
* De Clem, i 1, § 2, egone ex omni- * Sen. De Clem. L 1, § 6.
C
18 SOCIAL LIFE book i
at one time some industry and care in performing his judicial work.^ He saw the necessity, in the interests of public health and safety, of remodelling the narrow streets and mean in- sanitary dwellings of Koma^ His conception of the Isthmian canal, if the engineering problem could have been conquered, would have been an immense boon to traders with the Aegean. Even his quinquennial festival, inspired by the Greek contests in music and gymnastic,' represented a finer ideal of such gather- ings, which was much needed by a race devoted to the coarse realism of pantomime and the butchery of the arena. Fierce and incalculably capricious as he could be, Nero, at his best, had also a softer sida He had a craving for love and appreciation^; some of his cruelty was probably the revenge for the denial of it He was singularly patient of lampoons and invective against himself.^ Although he could be brutal in his treatment of women, he also knew how to inspire real affection, and perhaps in a few cases return it He seems to have had something of real love for Acte, his mistress. His old nurses consoled him in his last hour of agony, and, along with the faithful Acte, laid the last of his race in the vault of the DomitiL* Nero must have had something of that charm which leads women in every age to forget fftults, and even crimes in the men whom they have once loved. And the strange, lingering superstition, which disturbed the early Church, and which looked for his reappearance down to the eleventh century, could hardly have gathered around an utterly mean and mediocre character.^
When Nero uttered the words " QuaUs artifex pereo," * he gave not only his own interpretation of his life, he also revealed one great secret of its ghastly failura It may be admitted that Nero had a certain artistic enthusiasm, a real ambition to exceL^ He painted with some skill, he composed verses not without a certain grace. In spite of serious natural defects, he took endless pains to acquire the technique of a singer. Far into the night he would sit in rapt enthusiasm listening to
^ Suet. Nero^ c. 15 ; of. Dom, c viiL * Ih, o. 50.
\ ^' ^k ^?' *:^ .* * . I ' Kcn»n» VAnUchr, p. 318.
• io. c. 12, instituit et qainqaennale a o at d
oertunan primoB onmiam nomae more Suet. Nero, o, 49 ; Renan, L'Anr
Giaeco triplex, etc. <^cAr. 180. sqq.
« lb. c. 20 ; 58 ; Renan, rAnMir. ' Suet. Nero, c. 24, 49, 52, 55 ; Tko.
p. 182. Ann. xir. 16 ; of. Mac^, SiUUnu, p.
" Suet Nero, c 89. '^179 ; Boissier, L'Opp. p. 265.
CHAP. 1 THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 19
the effects of Terpnos, and trying to copy them.^ His aiiistic tour in Greece, which lowered him so much in the eyes of the West, was really inspired by the passion to find a sympathetic audience which he could not find at Some. And, in spite of his arrogance and vanity, he had a wholesome deference for the artistic judgment of Greece. Yet it is very striking that in the records of his reign, the most damning accusation is that he disgraced the purple by exhibitions on the staga His songs to the lyre, his impersonation of the parturient Ganace or the mad Hercules, did as much to cause his overthrow as his murders of Britaunicus and Agrippina.' The stout Soman soldier and the Pythagorean apostle have the same scorn for the imperial charioteer and actor. A false literary ambition, bom of a false system of education, was the bane of Soman culture for many ages. The dilettante artist on the throne in the first century had many a successor in the Uterary arts among the grand seigneurs of the fifth. They could play with their ingenious tricks of verse in sight of the Grothic camp-fire& He could contend for the wreath at Olympia when his fiEtithful freedman was summoning him back by the news that the West was seething with revolt^
Nero's mother had dissuaded him from the study of philo- sophy ; his tutor debarred him from the study of the manly oratory of the great days.^ The world was now to learn the meaning of a £Bdse artistic ambition, divorced from a sense of reality and duty. Aestheticism may be only a love of sensational efiTects, with no glimpse of the ideal It may be a hypocritical materialism, screening itself under divine names. In this taste Nero was the true representative of his age. It was deeply tainted with that mere passion for the grandiose and startling, and for feverish intellectual effects, which a true culture spurns as a desecration of art^ Mere magnitude and portentousness, the realistic expression of physical agony, the coarse flush of a half-sensual pleasure, captivated a vulgar taste, to which crapulous excitement and a fever of the sp^nses took the place of the purer ardours and visions of the
' Soet. AVrv, c. 53, c 20, ot o. 24. extitisti ; Suet. Ntr% a 21 ; D. Cass.
* PhilMtr. ApoU, Tyan, iv. 86, 89 ; 68. 9, 10. Tao. Afm, xir. 16, 16 ; xt. 67, odisse > Suet. Nero, c. 28. ^ lb, c. 82.
coe]n poetqnam jpanicid* matris et * Meriyale, yiiL p. 70 sq. ; Schiller,
nxona, inriga et histrio et inceDdiarioa Otteh, der Mm, Kaiaerzeit, i. p. 467.
80 SOCIAL LIFE book i
spirit.^ Nero paid the penalty of outraging the conventional prejudices of the Soman. And yet he was in some respects in thorough sjrmpathy with the masses. His lavish games and spectacles atoned to some extent for his aberrations of Hellenism. He was generous and wasteful, and he encouraged waste in others,^ and waste is always popular till the bill has to be paid. He was a " cupitor incredibilium." ' The province of Africa was ransacked to find the fabled treasure of Dido.^ Explorers were sent to pierce the mysterious barrier of the Caucasus, and discover the secret sources of the Nile. He had great engineering schemes which might seem baffling even to modern skill, and which almost rivalled the wildest dreams of the lunatic brain of Caligula.^ His Golden House, in a park stretching from the Palatine to the heights of the Esquiline, was on a scale of more than oriental magnificence. At last the master of the world was properly lodged. With colonnades three miles long, with its lakes and pastures and sylvan glades, it needed only a second Nero in Otho to dream of adding to its splendour.^ To such a prince the astrologers might well predict another monarchy enthroned on Mount Zion, with the dominion of the £ast^ The materialist dreamer was, like Napoleon I., without a rudimentary moral sense. Stained with the foulest enormities himself, he had a rooted conviction that virtue was a pretence, and that all men were equally depraved.^ His surroundings gave him some excuse for thinking so. He was bom into a circle which believed chiefly in '' the lust of the eye and the pride of life." He formed a circle many of whom perished in the carnage of Bedriacum. With a treasury drained by insane profusion, Nero resorted to rapine and judicial murder to replenish it* The spendthrift seldom has scruples in repairing his extravagance. The temples were naturally plundered by the man who, having no religion, was at least honest enough to deride all religions.^* The artistic treasures of Greece were carried off by the votary of Greek art; the gold and silver images of her shrines were
^ Petron. Sal, 8, where the decay ^ lb. 16. 1 ; Saet Ntro^ 81.
of artistic sense is traced to the gross- ^ Ih. IS, Sl
ness of evil living ; at nos vino scortis* * lb. c 31 ; cf. Oiho^ 7.
que domersi ne paratas quidem artes ^ Saet. Nero^ c. 40.
andemus oognoscere. ^ tb. u. 29 ad Jin.
« Suet. Nerot c. 11, 12. » Tb. c. 32 ; D. Cass. 63. 17.
• Tac. Jinn, 16. 42. " Suet Nero, c. 66.
aiAP. I THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 21
sent to the melting-pot^ Ungratefiil testators paid their due penalty after death; and delation, watching every word or gesture, skilfully supplied the needed tale of victims for plunder. It is all a hadmeyed story. Yet it is perhaps necessary to revive it once more to explain the suppressed terror and lingering agony of the last days of Seneca.
The impressions of the Terror which we receive from Seneca are powerful and almost oppressive. A thick atmo- sphere of gloom and foreboding seems to stifle us as we turn his pages. But Seneca deals rather in shadowy hint and veiled suggestion than in definite statement. For the minute picture of that awful scene of degradation we must turn to Tacitus. He wrote in the fresh dawn of an age of fancied freedom, when the gloom of the tyranny seemed to have suddenly vanished like an evil dream. Yet he cannot shake off the sense of horror and disgust which fifteen years of ignoble compliance or silent suffering have burnt into his souL Even under the manly, tolerant rule of Trajan, he hardly seems to have r^ained his breatL' He can scarcely believe that the light has come at last. His attitude to the tyranny is essentially different from that of Seneca. The son of the provincial from Cordova views the scene rather as the cosmo- politan moralist^ imperilled by his huge foilune and the neighbourhood of the terrible palace. Tacitus looks at it as the Boman Senator, steeped in all old Soman tradition, caring little for philosophy, but caring intensely for old Soman dignity and the prestige of that great order, which he had seen humbled and decimated.* The feeling of Seneca is that of a Stoic monk, isolated in a comer of his vast palace, now trembling before the imperial jealousy, which his wealth and celebrity may draw down upon him, and again seeking consolation in thoughts of God and eternity which might often seem to belong to Thomas k Kempis. The tone of Tacitus is some- times that of a man who should have lived in the age of the Samnite or the Carthaginian wars, before luxury and factious ambition had sapped the moral strength of the great aristocratic caste, while his feelings are divided between grim anger at
' Saet. Aero, c82; D. Cass. 68. 11. studiaqne oppresseris facilins quam
revocayeris. ' Tae. Agric o. 8, sic ingenia ' Peter, Qtath, LiU, ii. 68 sqq.
J
2S SOCIAL LIFE book i
a cruel destiny, and scornful regret for the weakness and the self-abandonment of a class which had been once so great The feelings of Seneca express themselves rather in rhetorical self-pity. The feelings of Tacitus find vent in words which sometimes veil a pathos too proud for effusive utterance, some- times cut like lancet points, and which, in their concentrated moral scorn, have left an eternal brand of infamy on names of historic renown.
More than forty years had passed between the date of Seneca's last letters to Lucilius and the entry of Tacitus on his career as a historian.^ He was a child when Seneca died.' His life is known to us only from a few stray glimpses in the Letters of Pliny,' eked out by the inferences of modem erudition. As a young boy, he must have often heard the tales of the artistic follies and the orgies of Nero, and the ghastly cruelties of the end of his reign. As a lad of fifteen, he may have witnessed something of the carnival of blood and lust which appropriately closed the regime of the Julio- Glaudian line. He entered on his cursus honorum in the reign of Vespasian, and attained the praetorship under Domitian.^ A military command probably withdrew him from Bome for three years during the tyranny of the last Flavian.'^ He was consul suffectus in 97, and then held the proconsulship of Asia. It cannot be doubted from his own words that, as a senator, he had to witness tamely the Curia beset with soldiery, the noblest women driven into exile, and men of the highest rank and virtue condemned to death on venal testimony in the secret tribunal of the Alban Palace. His hand helped to drag Helvidius to the dungeon, and was stained with the blood of Senecio. He lived long enough under a better prince to leave an unfading picture of the tragedy of solitary and remorseless power, but not long enough to forget the horrors and degradation through which he had passed.
The claim of Tacitus to have been uninfluenced by passion
^ Seneca died in 65 a.d. The > Plin. Ep, L 6, 20 ; iv. 18 ; vi. 9,
HistorUs of Tacitus were published 16, 20 ; vii. 20, 88 ; viii. 7 ; ix. 10,
circ 106-107; cf. Plin. Ep, vu. 20; 14.
Peter. G^ Xia.iL 42. ^ ^^^ i j. ^„,^ ^j, ^^ This
,d\ ..^?o ^S? A^ V. or^o?' letter important passage fixes the date
(Peter, u. 43 ; MajJ, SvMoru^, p. 85, 81 ; ^^ ^is praetorship. 88?. D. ; cf. Teuffel,
Momms. P/tu. p. 51). He was. perhaps y {^^ „ g f ^^ y ^^ nfteen years older than Snetonins, and '^
seven years older than Pliny. ' Aqric c. 45.
CHAP. I THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 23
or partiality ^ has been disputed by a modem school of critics.' Sometimes, from a love of Caesarism and strong government, sometimes from the scholarly weakness for finding a new interpretation of history, the great historic painter of the Julio -Glaudian despotism has been represented as an acrid rhetorician of the Senatorial reaction, a dreamer who looks back wistfally to the old Bepublic, belonging to one of those haughty circles of the old regime which were always in chronic revolt^ which lived in an atmosphere of suspicion and poison- ous gossip, and nourished its dreams and hatreds till fiction and £EU2t melted into one another in gloomy retrospect* He is the great literary avenger of the Senate after its long sanguinary conflict with the principate, using the freedom of the new order to blacken the character of princes who had been forced, in the interests of the world-wide empire, to fight and to crush a selfish and narrow-minded caste.^
The weakness of all such estimates of Tacitus lies in their fedlure to recognise the complex nature of the man, the mingled and crossing influences of training, official experience, social environment, and lofty moral ideals ^ ; it lies even more in a misconception of his aims as a historian. Tacitus was a great orator, and the spirit of the rhetorical school, combined with the force and dexterity of style which it could com- municate, left the greatest Soman historians with a less rigorous sense of truth than their weakest modem successors often poBsesa^ No Soman ever rose to the Thucydidean conception of history. Moreover Tacitus, although originally not of the highest social rank,*^ belonged to the aristocratic class by sympathy and associations. like Suetonius, be necessarily drew much of his information from the memories of great houses and the tales of the elders who bad lived through the evil days.® He acquired thus many of the
' HitA. L 1, ledinoomiptamfidempro- on the work of Saetonins of the Sena-
fe«ls,neqae amoreqoisquam et sineodio torial tradition, v, Mac^ Suitom, p. 84 ;
dyicendos est ; Nipperdey, Binl, xzvi Peter, Oesch, LiU, ii. 69.
s Merivale, yii£ 84 ; Schnier, Ge9ch. * Peter, Geach, LiU. n. 66.
ier Rdm, KaiserzeU, i. 140, 586. Ac- * Merivale, viiL 95 8q(^.
conling to Schiller, Tacitus has no re- '^ Peter, ii. 46 sqq.
search, no exactness of military or ^ lb, \L 188, 200.
geographical knowledge, no true con- ^ His father was probably a Roman
oeptloDofthetime. He is an embittered Eqnes, procurator in Belgium; Plin.
aratocratand rhetwician. Forasounder JS, N, vu. 16, 76. estimate v. Peter, iL 48, 60, 63 ; Nip- ^ Mace, JSuUone, p. 88, Peter, ii 69
perdey, JBM, xxv. For the influence sqq.
U SOCIAL LIFE book i
prejudices of a class which, from its history, and still more from its education, sought its ideals in the past rather than in the future. He mingled in those circles, which in every age disguise the meanness and bitterness of gossip by the airy artistic touch of audacious wit, polished in many social encounters. He had himself witnessed the triumph of dela- tion and the cold cruelty of Domitian. He had shared in the humiliation of the Senate which had been cowed into acquiescence in his worst excesses. And the spectacle had inspired him with a horror of unchecked power in the hands of a bad man, and a gloomy distrust of that human nature which could sink to such ignoble servility.^ Yet on the other hand Tacitus had gained practical experience in high office, both as soldier and administrator, which has always a sobering effect on the judgment. He realised the difficulties of government and the unreasonableness of ordinary men. Hence he has no sympathy with a doctrinaire and chimerical opposition even under the worst government* However much he might respect the high character of the philosophic enthusiasts of the day, he distrusted their theatrical defiance of power, and he threw his shield over a discreet reserve, which could forget that it was serving a tjrrant in serving the commonwealth.* Tacitus may at times express himself with a stem melancholy bitterness, which might at first seem to mark him as a revolutionary dreamer, avenging an outraged political ideal Such an interpretation would be a grave mistake, which he would himself have been the first to correct. The ideal which he is avenging is not a political, but a moral ideal.^ The bitter sadness is that of the profound analyst of character, with a temperament of almost feverish intensity and nervous forca The interest of history to Thucydides and Polybius Ues in the political lessons which it may teach posterity. Its interest to Tacitus lies in the discovery of hidden motives and the secret of character, in watching the stages of an inevitable degeneracy, the moral preparation for a dark, inglorious end. And the analyst
^ Tao. Ann, L 7 ; xt. 71 ; Agr, 45 ; * Ann, iii 65, praeoipaam munas
Peter, iL 62. aunalium reor, ne yirtutes sileantiir,
' Ann, ziy. 12, 57 ; Hist. iv. 6 ; ntqae prayis dictia factisaue ex poateri-
Agr, 42 ; Peter, ii 47. tate et infauoia metus sit ; cf. Peter,
* Agr. 42. ii. 46 ; Nipperdey, Einl. xxvi.
CHAP. 1 THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 26
was a curiously vivid painter of character, the character of individuals, of periods, and of peoples. His portraits bum themselves into the imaginative memory, so that the impres- sion, once seized, can never be lost Tiberius and Claudius and Nero, Messalina and Agrippina, in spite of the most mordant criticism, will live for ever as they have been portrayed by the fervid imagination of Tacitus. Nor is he less searching and vivid in depicting the collective feeling and character of masses of men. We watch the alternating fury and repentance of the mutinous legions of Germanicus,^ or the mingled fierceness and sorrow with which they wandered among the bleaching bones on the lost battlefield of Varus,' or the passion of grief and admiration with which the praetorian cohorts kissed the self-inflicted wounds of Otho.' Or, again, we follow the changing moods of the Soman populace, passing bam anger and grief to short-lived joy, and then to deep silent sorrow, at the varying rumours from the East about the health of Germanicus.^ In Tacitus events are nearly always seen in their moral setting. The miseiy and shame of the burning of the Capitol by the Yitellians are heightened by the thought that the catastrophe is caused by the madness of civil strifa^ In the awful conflict which raged from street to street, the horror con- Bists in the mixture of cruelty and licence. The baths and brothels and taverns are crowded at the very hour when the neighbouring ways are piled with corpses and running with blood ; the rush of indulgence paused not for a moment ; men seemed to revel in the public disasters. There was blood- shed enough in the days of Cinna and Sulla, but the world was at least spared such a carnival of lust.^ Even in reporting or imagining the speech of Galgacus to his warriors on the Grampians,^ even in the pictures of the German tribes,' the ethical interest is always foremost. The cruel terror of the prince, the effeminacy and abandoned adulation of the nobles, the grossness and fierceness of the masses, contrasted with the loyalty, chastity, and hardihood of the German clans, seem to have dimly foreshadowed to Tacitus
1 Tig. Ami, L 89, 41. ^ Bid, iii 72.
• i>. c. 61, S2. • B. iiL 88.
> Hid. ii 49. ^ Agr, 82.
« Aim. iL 82. " Oerm, 17, 19, 20, 28, 25.
26 SOCIAL LIFE book i
a danger from which all true Soinans averted their eyes till the end.^
^ The key to the interpretation of Tacitus is to regard him as a moralist rather than a politician. And he is a moralist with a sad, clinging pessimism.^ He is doomed to be the chronicler of an evil time, although he will save from oblivion the traces and relics of ancient virtue.* He has Seneca's pessimist theory of evolution. The early equality and peace and temperance have been lost through a steady growth of greed and egotistic ambition.^ It is in the past we must seek our ideals ; it is from the past we derive our strength. With the same gloomy view of his contemporaries as M. Aurelius had,^ he holds vaguely a similar view of cycles in himian affairs.^ And probably the fairest hope which ever visited the mind of Tacitus was that of a return to the simplicity of a long gone age. He hailed the accession of Vespasian and of Trajan as a happy change to purer manners and to freedom of speecL^ But the reign of Vespasian had been followed by the gloomy suspicious despotism of Domitiaa Who could be sure about the successors of Trajan ? Tacitus hardly shared the enthusiasm and exuberant hopes expressed by his friend Pliny in his Fanegyric. It was a natural outbreak of joy at escaping from the dungeon, and the personal character of Trajan succeeded in partially veiling the overwhelming force of the emperor under the figment of the freely accepted rule of the first citizen. Tacitus no doubt felt as great satisfaction as his friend at the suppression of the informers, the restored freedom of speech, the recovered dignity of the Senate, the prince's respect for old republican forms and etiquette.® He felt probably even keener pleasure that virtue and talent had no longer to hide them- selves from a jealous eye, and that the whole tone of society was being raised by the temperate example of the emperor. But he did not share Pliny's illusions as to the prince's altered position under the new regime. The old Bepublic was gone for ever.* It was still the rule of one man, on whose character
1 Germ. 88, ad fin, ^ M. AureL ix. 29, 84 ; z. 19.
» Sist. i. 8 ; it 88 ; ui. 72 ; Peter, « Tao. Ann. iu. 66 ; M. Aurel. ?iL
u. 62. Yet this should be qualifiod by 1 ; ix. 4 ; x. 28 ; ix. 28.
each passages as Ann. iii. 65 ; Agr. i. ; ^ Agpr. 8.
of. Nipperdey, Binl. xxviL * Piin. Paneg. 86, 53, 64, 66 ; of.
» Ann. iiL 66. Tao. HiaL I 1.
^ lb. iii. 26. ' Sist. i. 1, omnem potendam ad
CHAF. I THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 27
everything depended. He would never have joined Plutarch and Dion in exalting the emperor to the rank of vicegerent of GkxL With his experience and psychologic skill, he was bound to regard aU solitary power as a terrible danger / both to its holder and his subjects.^ "Capax imperii, nisi imperasaet" condenses a whole disquisition on imperialism. In truth, Tacitus, like many thoughtful students of politics, had little faith in mere political forms and names.' They are often the merest imposture : they depend greatly on the spirit and social tone which lie behind them. In the abstract, perhaps, Tacitus would have given a preference to aristocracy. But he saw how easily it might pass into a selfish despotism.* He had no faith in the people or in popular government, with its unstable excitability. He admitted that the conquests of Borne, ^otistic ambition, and the long anarchy of the Civil Wars had made the rule of one inevitabla But monarchy easily glides into tyranny, and he accepts the Empire only as a perilous necessity which may be justified by the advent of a good prince. The hereditary succession, which had been grafted on the principate of Augustus, had inflicted on the world a sucoession of fools or monsters. The only hope lay in elevating the standard of virtue, and in the choice of a worthy successor by the forms of adoption.^ The one had in his own time given the world a Domitian, and was destined within three generations to give it a Gommodus. The other secured to it the peace and order of the age of which Tacitus saw the dawn.^
The motive of Tacitus was essentially ethical, and his moral ' standard was in many respects lofty. Yet his standard was sometimes limited by the prejudices of his class. He cherished the old Soman ideal of " virtus " rather than the Stoic gospel of a cosmopolitan brotherhood of man.^ like Pliny, he felt Uttle horror at gladiatorial combats/ although he may have had a certain contempt for the rage for them. He had probably far less humane feelings than Pliny on the subject of slavery.®
UDitm oonferri paois interfuit; of. Hist, ^ Hist, i 16 ; Peter, ii. 61.
i 16 ; ii 8S. » Tac Agr. i.
* Ann. xiv. 47 ; ffiat, iv. 8, bonos 6 p^jj^j. jj 43
!!^^'[SL,ir "^'"'' '*'^'"' ' Tm. Ann. I 76 ; quanquam vUi
^3t« W^ -vi *<8 . iv <iS . iii sanguine nimta gaudens. CJ: Duil. de
27 ; E^ lit ' <^- ^* ' P""- 4- ^ ". I-
»' P«t«r, ii 68 ; Ann. vi. 42. ' Ann. xir. 43 ; Oerm. 20.
28 SOCIAL UFE book i
While he admired many of the rude virtues of the Grermans, he prayed Heaven that their tribal blood-feuds might last for ever.^ He has aU the faith of Theognis in the moral value of blood and breeding. He feels a proud satisfaction in recording the virtues of the scion of a noble race, and degeneracy from great traditions moves his indignant pity.' He sometimes throws a veil over the degenerates.' The great economic revolution which was raising the freedman, the petty trader, the obscure provincial, to the top, he probably regarded with something of Juvenal's suspicion and dislike. The new man would have needed a fine character, or a great record of service, to commend him to Tacitus.^ But, with all these defects of hard and narrow prejudice, Tacitus maintains a lofty ideal of / character, a severe enthusiasm for the great virtues which are the salt of every society.
Of the early nurture of Tacitus nothing is directly known. But we may be permitted to imagine him tenderly yet strictly guarded from the taint of slave nurses ^ by a mother who was as unspotted as Julia Procilla, the mother of his hero Agricola.^ What importance he attached to this jealous care of a good woman, what a horror he had of the incitements to cruelty and lust which surrounded the young Soman from his cradle, are to be traced in many a passage coming from the heart His ideal of youthful chastity and of the pure harmony of a single wedded union, reveals to us another world from the scene of heartless, vagrant intrigue, on which Ovid wasted his brilliant gifts. His taste, if not his principles, revolted against the coarse seductions of the spectacles and the wasteful grossness of the banquets of his time.^ He envies the Germans their freedom from these great corrupters of Soman character, from the lust for gold, and the calculating sterility which cut itself from nature's purest pleasure, to be surrounded on the deathbed by a crowd of hungry, shameless sycophants. While Tacitus had a burning contempt for the nerveless cowardice and sluggishness which degraded so many of his order,® he may have valued
^ Qtrm, 88. Of. his oontempt for ^ Ann, ii. 21 ; yl 27 ; iy. 8.
the Christians and devotees of Eastern ^ De Or, 29.
colts, Ann, ii. 85 ; zv. 44. * Agr, 4.
' Ann, i. 68 ; iy. 8 ; iii. 89 ; vi. 29 ; ^ Qtrm. 19, saepta nudicitia agunt,
xii. 12 ; iii. 24 ; xvi. 16. Cf. Peter, nullis spectacolomm imeoebris . . . cor-
iL 61. ruptae ; De Or, 29.
» Ann, xiy. 14. " Hist, iii. 87; Ann, i. 7; xy. 67, 71.
CHAP. I THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 29
even to excess, although it is hardly possible to do so, the virtues of the strenuous soldier. Proud submission to authority, proud, cold endurance in the face of cruel hardship and enormous odds, readiness to sacrifice even life at the call of the State, must always tower over the safe aspirations of an untried virtue. The soldier, though he never knows it, is the noblest of idealists. The ideal of Tacitus, although he sees his faults of temper,^ was probably the character of his father-in-law, Agricola, grave, earnest and severe, yet with a mingled clemency, free from all vulgar avarice or ostentation of rank, from all poisonous jealousy, an eager ambitious warrior, yet one knowing well how to temper audacious energy with prudence.' Tacitus would probably have sought his ideal among those grey war-worn soldiers on a dangerous frontier, half warrior and half statesman, just and clement, stern in discipline, yet possessing the secret of the Boman soldier's love, the men who were guarding the Solway, the Rhine, and the Danube, while their brethren in the Senate were purchasing their lives or their ease by adulation and treachery. Yet, after all, Tacitus was too great for such a limited idedL He could admire faith and courage and constancy in any rank.* With profound admiration and subdued pathos, he tells how the freedwoman Epicharis, racked and fainting in every limb with the extremity of torture, refused to tell the secret of the Pisonian conspiracy, and by a voluntary death shamed the knights and nobles who were ready to betray their nearest kin.^ The slave girls of the empress, who defiantly upheld her fair fame, under the last cruel ordeal, are honoured by a like memorial^
The deepest feeling of Tacitus about the early Empire seems to have been that it was fatal to character both in prince and subject This conviction he has expressed with the burning intensity of the artist He could never have penned one of those laborious paragraphs of Suetonius which seem transcribed from a carefully kept note-book, with a lifeless catalogue of the vices, the virtues, and the eccentricities of the subject For Tacitus, history is a living and real thing, not a matter of mere antiquarian interest. He has seen a single
» Agr, 22. « Ih. 40.
» Aim. XT. 60. * Ih. XV. 57. » Ih, xiv. 60.
30 SOCIAL LIFE book i
lawless will, unchecked by constitutional restraints or ordinary human feeling, making sport of the lives and fortunes of men. He has seen the sons of the proudest houses selling their ancestral honour for their lives, betraying their nearest and dearest, and kissing the hand which was reeking with innocent blood.^ When he looked back, he saw that, for more than fifteen years, with brief intervals, virtue had been exiled or compelled to hide itself in impotent seclusion, and that power and wealth had been the reward of perfidy and grovelling self- abasement.^ The brooding silence of those years of humiliating servitude did not extinguish the faith of Tacitus in human virtue, but it almost extinguished his faith in a righteous God. Tacitus is no philosopher, with either a reasoned th^odic^ or a consistent repudiation of faitL' He uses popular language about religion, and often speaks like an old Boman in all things touching the gods.^ He is, moreover, often as credulous as he is sceptical in his treatment of omens and orades.^ But, with all his intense faith in goodness, the spectacle of the world of the Caesars has profoundly shaken his trust in the Divine justica Again and again, he attributes the long agony of the Boman world to mere chance or fate,^ or the anger of Heaven, as weU as to the madness of men.^ Sometimes he almost denies a ruling power which could permit the continuance of the crimes of a Nero.^ Sometimes he grimly notes its impartial treatment of the good and the evil.^ And again, he speaks of the Powers who visit not to protect, but only to avenge. And so, by a curse like that which haunted the Pelopidae in tragic legend, the monarchy, cradled in ambition and civil strife, has gone on corrupting and corrupted. The lust of despotic power which Tacitus regards as the fiercest and most insatiable of human passions, has been intensified by the spectacle of a monarchy commanding, with practically unlimited sway, the resources and the fortunes of a world.
» Amu XV. 71. • UiiL i. 22 ; il 78 ; i. 86. But ot
3 HUL i. 2. Ann, xu. 48, 64 ; xiy. 82 ; zv. 8 ;
' Aqr, 4, memoria teneo soli turn Hi»L i. 8 ; ii 50 ; and Fabian, pp. 17
ipsum narrare se studiom philoaophiae 19.
acrioB, ultra quam conceasum Romano * Awn^ iv. 20 ; of. yi. 22.
ac Senatori, exhauBisae. Cf. Fabian, ^ Hui, ii. 88.
Quid Toe de num. Div. judicaveritf ^ Ann. xiv. 12 ; Fabian, p. 28.
p. 1. ' Ann, xyL 88, aequitate deam erga
^ BiH, V, 5 ; Nipperdey, Einl. xiv. bona nialaque documenta.
CHAP. I THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 31
It was a dazzling prize, offering frightful temptations both to the holder and to possible rivals and pretenders. The day on which a Nero or a Caligula awoke to all the possibilities of power was a fateful one. And Tacitus, with the instinct of the tragic artist, has painted the steady, fatal corruption of a prince's character by the corroding influence of absolute and solitary sway. Of all the Caesars down to his time, the only one who changed for the better was the homely Vespasian. In Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero, some of this deterioration of character must be set down to the morbid strain in the Julio- Claudian line, with its hard and cruel pride, and its heritage of a tainted blood, of which Nero's father knew the secret so welL Much was also due to the financial exhaustion which, in successive reigns, followed the most reckless waste. It would be difficult to say whether the emperors or their nobles were the most to blame for the example of spendthrift extrava- gance and insane luxury. Two generations before the founda- tion of the Empire, the passion for profusion had set in, which, according to Tacitus, raged unchecked till the accession of Vespasian.^ Certainly, the man who would spend £3000 on a myrrhine vase, £4000 on a table of citrus-wood, or £40,000 on a richly wrought carpet from Babylon, had little to learn even from Nero.^ Yet tJie example of an emperor must always be potent for good or evlL We have the testimony of Pliny and Claudian,* separated by an interval of three hundred years, that the world readily conforms its life to that of one man, if that man is head of the State. Nero's youthful enthusiasm for declamation gave an immense impulse to the passion for rhetoria^ His enthusiasm for acting and music spread through all ranks, and the emperor's catches were sung at wayside inna* M. Aurelius made philosophy the mode, and the Stoic Emperor is responsible for some of the philosophic imposture which moved the withering scorn of Ludan. The Emperor's favourite drug grew so popular that the price of it became almost prohibitoiy /^ If the model of Vespasian's homely habits had such an effect in reforming society, we may be sure that
1 Ann, ill 55 ; cf. zyL 5. ^ Suet. Dt Clar, Bhet, c. 1.
* FriedL StUengeath, SiL pp. 80, 81. . . , .. „. „. ., . ...
» Plin. /W^; Cliudiai In ' I^, Nero, 21 ; Philoetr. ApolL
Com, Han. 2»9, oomponitar orbi« Regis ^^^^' *^- ^*-
ad exemplam. * Friedl. SiUengeseh. i. 54.
32 SOCIAL UFE book i
the evil example of his spendthrift predecessors did at least as much to deprave it
And what an example it was! The extravagance of the Claudian Caesars and the last Flavian has become a piece of historic commonplaca Every one has heard of the unguent baths of Caligula, his draughts of melted pearls, his galleys with jewel-studded sterns and gardens and orchards on their decks, his viaduct connecting the Palatine with the Capitoline, his bridge from Bauli to Puteoli, and many another scheme of that wild brain, which had in the end to be paid for in blood.^ In a single year Caligula scattered in reckless waste more than £20,000,000.^ Nero proclaimed that the only use of money was to squander it, and treated any prudent calcula- tion as meanness.' In a brief space he flung away nearly £18,000,000. The Egyptian roses for a single bcmquet cost £35,000.^ He is said never to have made a progress with less than a thousand carriages ; his mules were shod with silver.^ He would stake HS.400,000 on a single throw of the dice. The description of his Golden House is like a vision of law- less romanca^ The successors of Galba were equally lavish during their brief term. Otho, another Nero, probably regarded death in battle as a relief from bankruptcy.^ Within a very few months, Yitellius had flung away more than £7,000,000 in vulgar luxury.® Vespasian found the exhaustion of the public treasury so portentous^ that he had to resort to un- popular economies and taxation on a great scale. Under Domitian, the spectacles and largesses lavished on the mob undid all the scrupulous finance of his father,^^ and Nerva had to liquidate the ruinous heritage by wholesale retrenchment, and the sale even of the imperial furniture and plate,^^ as M. AureUus brought to the hammer his household treasures, and even the wardrobe and jewels of the empress, in the stress of the Marcomannic war.^^
But the great imperial spendthrifts resorted to more
1 Suet Calig, 87 ; Sen. ^(i miv, z. ^ Id. Viidl, c. 18.
* Suet. Calig, 87. * Id. Vesp. 16 ; D. Cass. 66. 2, 8, 10.
* Suet NtTo^ c. 80. ^^ D. Cass. 67. 5 ; Suet Dim, 12.
* />. c 27. " D. Cass. 68. 2, ^w^AXwr <if ol6r t»
* /&. 0. 80. r& ^airam^fu&ra.
* I\>, 0. 81 ; Tac. Ann. xv. 42. ^* Capitol. M, Aurd. c. 17, in foro ^ Suet Othot 6, nihilquG referre, ab dm Trajani auctionem omamentorum
hoste in acie, an in foro sub creditoribus imperiahum fedt yendiditqne aurea otderet pocula et cristallina, etc.
CHAP. 1 THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 33
simple and primitive methods of replenishing their coffers. Self-indulgent waste is often seen linked with meanness and hard cruelty. The epigram of Suetonius on Domitian, inofpia rapaXf metu saevus} sums up the sordid history of the tyranny. The cool biographer of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian, when in his methodical fashion, he has recorded their financial difficulties, immediately proceeds to describe the unblushing rapine or ingenious chicanery by which the needy tyrants annexed a coveted estate. The emperors now generally protected the provinces from plunder,^ but they applied all the Yerrine methods to their own nobles. It was not hard with the help of the sleuth hounds who always gather round the despot, to find plausible grounds of accusa- tion. The vague law of majesty, originally intended to guard the security of the commonwealth, was now used to throw its protection around the sacrosanct prince in whom all the highest powers of government were concentrated.* The slightest sus- picion of disloyalty or discontent, the most insignificant act or word, which a depraved ingenuity could misinterpret, was worked up into a formidable indictment by men eager for their share of the plunder. To have written the memoir of a Stoic saint or kept the birthday of a dead emperor, to possess an imperial horoscope or a map of the world, to call a slave by the name of Hannibal or a dish by that of Lucullus, might become a fatal charge.^ "Ungrateful testators" who had failed to remember the emperor in their wills had to pay heavily for the indiscreet omission.* The materials for such accusations were easily obtained in the Some of the early Oaesars. life was eminently sociable. A great part of the day was spent at morning receptions, in the Forum, the Campus Martins, the barber's or bookseller's shops, or in the colonnades where crowds of fieushionable idlers gathered to relieve the tedium of life by gossip and repartee. It was a city, says Tacitus, which knew everything and talked of everything.^ Never was curiosity more eager or gossip more reckless. Men were almost ready to risk their lives for a hon mot And in the
^ Saet. Ikm. in. * Suet. Dom, x. ; cf. ziL satis erat obid
' Suet. OthOf uL ; VUdl. v. ; Dcm, qnaleounque factum dictuniye adversus
▼m. ; Bonier, VOjpp. p. 170. nu^estatem principis. * Ih, zii.
' Tac Ann, i. 72 ; it 60 ; xiy. 48. * Tac Ann, xi. 27 ; xiiL 6, in urbe
For a dear aocoant of this v, B<H8Bier, aermonum avida ; Hiat, ii. 91 ; Mart.
VOfp. p. 165. v. 20 ; FriedL SiUenffeseh, L p. 280.
D
34 SOCIAL UPE book i
reign of Nero or DomitiaQ, the risk was a very real one. The imperial espionage, of which Maecenas in Dion Cassias recognised at once the danger and the necessity,^ was an organised system even under the most blameless emperors. It can be traced in the reigns of Nerva, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius.^ But under the tyrants, voluntary in- formers sprang up in every class. Among the hundreds of slaves attached to a great household, there were in such times sure to be spies, attracted by the lure of freedom and a fortune, who might report and distort what they had observed in their master^s unguarded hours. Men came to dread pos- sible traitors even among their nearest of kin, among their closest friends of the highest rank.^ Who can forget the ignominy of those three Senators, one of them bearing the historic name of Cato, who, to win the consulship from Sejanus, hid themselves between the ceiling and the roof, and caught, through chinks and crannies, the words artfully drawn from the victim by another member of the noble gang ? The seventh book of the Life of Apollonius by Philostratus ia a revelation of the mingled caution and truculence of the methods of Domitian. Here at least we have left the world of romance behind and are on solid ground. We feel around us, as we read, the hundred eyes of an omnipresent tyranny. We meet in the prison the magistrate of Tarentum who had been guilty of a dangerous omission in the public prayers, and an Acamanian who had been guilty of settling in one of the Echinades.^ A spy glides into the cells, to listen to the prisoners' talk, and is merely regaled by ApoUonius with a description of the wonders he has seen in his wanderings. When we are admitted to the secret tribunal on the Palatine, after Domitian has paid his devotion to Athene, we have before us a cruel, stealthy despot, as timid as he is brutally trucu- lent. In spite of all scepticism about Philostratus, we are there at the heart of the Terror.
Compared with this base espionage, even the trade of the delator becomes almost respectable. Like everything in Soman social organisation, delation had a long history, too
^ D. Cass. 52. 37. SiUengesch. I p. 285 ; Epiot. Diss, iv.
18, 21, 5 ; Anstid. Or. ix. 62. 3 Mart X. 48, 21 ; cf. Friedl. Chnmo- > Tac Ann. iy. 69. logic der Epigr. MarL p. 62 ; Friedl. * Philostr. ApoU, Tgan, vii. 24.
CHAF. I THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 36
long to be developed within the space of this work. The work of impeachment, wliich might be wholesome and necessary under the Bepublic, in exposing the enormities of provincial government, became the curse of the Empire. The laws of Augustus for the restoration of social morality gave the first chance to the professional delator. The jealous, secretive rule of Tiberius welcomed such sinister support,^ and although the dark, tortuous policy of the recluse of Capreae might punish the excess of zeal in the informers, it was also ready to reward them for opportune displays of energy.' The open and daring tyranny of Caligula and Nero often dispensed with the hypocrisy of judicial forms of assassination. It was reserved for the last Flavian to revive the methods of Tiberius.* Domitian was at once timid and croeL He was also a pedant who concealed fi*om himself his own baseness by a scrupulous devotion to ancient forms even in religion. The obscene libertine, who chose the Virgin Goddess as his patroness,^ could easily make the forms of old Roman justice a cloak for confiscation and massacre. In theory the voluntary accuser, without a commission from authority, was a discredited person. And successive emperors punished or frowned upon the delators of a previous reign.^ Yet the profession grew in reputation and emolument It is a melancholy proof of the degradation of that society that the delator could be proud of his craft and even envied and admired. Men of every degree, fireedmen, schoolmasters, petty traders, descendants of houses as old as the Republic, men from tiie rank of the shoemaker Vatinius ^ to a Scaurus, a Oato, or a R^ulus, flocked to a trade which might earn a &bulou8 fortune and the favour of the prince. There must have been many a career like that of Palfurius Sura, who had fought in the arena in the reign of Nero, who had been disgraced and stripped of his consular rank under Vespasian, who then turned Stoic and preached the gospel of popular
^ Tac A-nn, L 72, 74, CriBpinoB for- Plin. Paiug, 42, 48.
mam riUe iniit quam postea celebrem ^ Snet. Dcm. zv.
Buaeme temponun et andaoiae homi- " Tac. Hist, ii 10 ; Plin. l^aneg. 86 ;
anm feoenint, etc ; ef. iii 26 ; Sen. D. Oaas. 68. 1 ; JuL CapitoL Aid, P.
Ik Sen, iii 26 ; Saet. Tib, Izi c. 7 ; id. M, Aurel, o. 11 ; Meriv. vii.
s Tac Arm, iv. 20. 870.
' Saet. Dom. zz. praeter oominen- ' Tac Ann, xv. 34 ; iiL 66 ; HisL
tarioa et acta Tiberii nihil lectitobat ; iv. 42.
M
38 SOCIAL LIFE book i
goverament, and, in the reign of Domitian, crowned his career by becoming a delator, and attempting to found a juristic theory of absolute monarchy.^
The system of Roman education, which was profoundly rhetorical, became a hot-bed of this venal oratory. It nourished its pupils on the masterpieces of free speech ; it inflamed their imaginations with dreams of rhetorical triumph. When they went forth into the world of the Empire, they found the only arena for displaying their powers to be the dull court of the Centumviri, or the hired lecture hall, where they might dilate on some frigid or silly theme before a weary audience. It was a tempting excitement to exert the arts learnt in the school of Quintilian in a real onslaught, where the life or liberty of the accused was at stake. And the greatest orators of the past had never offered to them such a splendid material reward. One fourth of the estate of the condemned man had been the old legal fee of the accuser.^ But this limit was left &r behind in the judicial plunder of the early Caesars. Probably in no other way could a man then so easily make himself a millionaire. The leading accusers of Thrasea and Soranus in the reign of Nero received each £42,000 as their reward.' These notorious delators, Eprius Marcellus and Yibius Crispus, accumulated gsdns reaching, in the end, the enormous amount of £2,400,000. The famous, or infamous, Begulus, after the most prodigal expenditure, left a fortune of hcdf a million.* His career is a striking example of the arts by which, in a debased society, men may rise to fortune, and the readiness with which such a society will always forgive anything to daring and success. Sprung from an illustrious but ruined race,^ Begulus possessed shameless audacity and ruthless ambition,^ which were more valuable than birth and fortuna He had every physical defect for a speaker, yet he made himself an orator, with a weird power of strangling his victims.^ He was poor, but he resolved to be wealthy, and he reached the fortune which he proposed to himself as his goal. He was vain, cruel, and insolent, a slave of superstition,^
1 Schol. ad Jnv. \i, 68 ; Dnraj, iv. ' Boiasier, LOpp, p. 193.
• Ih. XVI. 88; Boissier, LOpp. p. 186. ^ '
* Plin. Ep, il 20, 18 ; iv. 2 ; cf. Tac. ' ^*- iv. 7 ; L 20, 15. Hist. iv. 42 ; Mart. viL 81. ^ Ih, ii. 11, 22 ; IL 20.
CHAP. 1 THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 37
stained with many a perfidious crime. He was a peculiarly skilful and perfectly shameless adept in the arts of captation.^ Tet this cynical agent of judicial murder, who began his career in the reign of Nero, lived on in peace and wealth into the reign of Trajan. He even enjoyed a certain consideration in society.^ The humane and refined Pliny at once detested and tolerated him. The morning receptions of Eegulus, in his distant gardens on the Tiber, were thronged by a fashionable crowd.
The inner secret of the imperial Terror will probably always perplex the historian. The solution of the question depends, not only on the value which is to be attached to our authorities, but on the prepossessions and prejudices which are brought to their interpretation. To one critic Tacitus, although liable to the faults which spring from rhetorical training and fervid temperament, seems fairly impartial and trustworthy.^ Another treats the great historian as essentially a partisan who derived his materials from the memoirs and traditions of a class inflamed with reactionary dreams and saturated with a hatred of monarchy.* Some regard the tragedy of the early Empire as the result of a real peril from a senatorial conspiracy which perpetually surrounded the emperor. Others trace it to the diseased brains of princes, giddy with the sense of omnipotence, and often unstrung by vicious excesses, natures at once timor- ous and arrogant, anticipating danger by a maniacal cruelty which ended in creating the peril that they feared. Is it not possible that there may be truth in both theories? It may be admitted that there probably was never a powerful opposition, with a definitely conceived purpose of overthrowing the imperial system, as it had been organised by Augustus, and of restoring the republican rule of the Senate. It may be admitted that, while so many of the first twelve Caesars died a violent death, the violence was used to rid the world of a monster, and not to remodel a constitution; it was the emperor, not the Empire, that was bated. Yet these admis- sions need to be qualified by some reservations. The efiect of the rhetorical character of Soman education in moulding the temper and ideals of the upper classes, down to the very end
1 Plin. Ep. ii 20, 2. Qesch. LiU. iL p. 65 : Teuffel, § 328,
a A IV 7 ^^ * Mackail, LaL Lit p. 215.
^'^' ^^' '' * SchiUer, i. pp. 140. 586 ; Meriv.
' JB^. Boifloer, L'Opp. p. 296 ; Peter, viii. 89 sqq.
3B SOCIAL LIFE book i
of the Western Empire, has hardly yet been fully recognised. It petrified literature by the slavish imitation of unapproach- able models. It also glorified the great ages of freedom and republican government; it exsdted Harmodius and Aristo- geiton, Brutus and Cassius, to a moral height which might suggest to generous youth the duty or the glory of imitating them. When a rhetor's class, in the reign of Caligula or of Nero, applauded the fall of a historic despot, is it not possible that some may have applied the lesson to the reigning emperor? Although it is evident that philosophic debates on the three forms of government were not unknown, yet probably few ever seriously thought of a restoration of the republic None but a maniac would have entrusted the nerveless, sensual mob of Borne with the destinies of the world. As a matter of Setct, the mob themselves very much preferred the rule of a lavish despot, who would cater for their pleasures.^ But the Senate was still a name of power. In the three or four generations which had passed since the death of the first Caesar, men had forgotten the weakness and perfidy which had made senatorial government impossible. They thought of the Senate as the stubborn, haughty caste which had foiled the strategy of Han- nibal, which had achieved the conquest of the world. The old families might have been more than decimated ; new men of doubtful origin might have filled their places.^ But ancient institutions possess a prestige and power which is often inde- pendent of the men who work them. Men are governed largely through imagination and mere names. Thus the Senate re- mained an imaginative symbol of the glory of Roman power, down to the last years of the Western Empire. The accom- plished Symmachus cherishes the phantasm of its power under Honorius. And although a Caligula or Nero might conceive a feverish hatred of the assembly which they feared,* while they affected to despise it, the better emperors generally made almost a parade of their respect for the Senate.* The wisest princes had
^ Snet. Claud, x. ; CcUig, 1z. ; D. ' Suet. Calig, xzz. ; xxvi. ; Nero,
0a88. 60. 1. On the assaaBination of xxxvii. eumqne ordinem sablatarutn
Caligula, the Senate debated the Qnes- quandoque e republica . . . ; cf. xliiL
tion of abolishing the memory of the oreditur destinasse aenatum universum
Oaesara, and restoring the Republic ; veneno per convivia neoarc. . . .
bat the mob ontside the temple of the D. Cass. 68. 15, 17. Capitoliue Jupiter demanded "one
rufer" of the world. * Flin. Paneg. 64, 62, 64; Spart
2 Tac Ann. xi. 26 ; xiii. 97 Hadrian, 6, 7, § 4 ; 8, § 6.
CHAP. I THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 39
a feeling that, although they might have at their back the devo- tion of the l^ons, and an immense material force, still it was wiser to conciliate old Eoman feeling by a politic deference to a body which was surrounded by the aureole of antiquity, which had such splendid traditions of conquest and administration.
The Senate was thus the only possible rivsd of the Emperor. The question is, was the Senate ever a dangerous rival? The true answer seems to be that the Senate was dangerous in theory, but not in fact There can be little doubt that, in the reigns of Caligula and Nero, there were men who dreamed of a restored senatorial power.^ It is equsdly certain that the Senate was incapable of asserting it. Luxury, self-indulgence, and conscription had done their work effectually. There were many pretenders to the principate in the reign of Nero, and even some in the reign of Vespasian.^ But they bad not a solid and determined Senate at their back. The world, and even the Senate, were convinced that the Soman Empire needed the administration of one man. How to get the one man was the problem. Hereditary succession had placed only fools or monsters on the throne. There remained the old prin- ciple of adoption. An emperor, feeling that his end was approaching, might, with sdl his vast experience of the govern- ment of a world, with all his knowledge of the senatorial class, with no fear of offence in the presence of death,' designate one worthy of the enormous charge. If such an one came to the principate, with a generous desire to give the Senate a share of his burdens and his glory, that was the highest ideal of the Empire, and that was the ideal which perhaps was approached in the Antonine aga Yet, outside the circle of practical statesmen, there remained a class which was long irreconcilable. It has been recently maintained with great force that the Stoic opposi- tion was only the opposition of a moral ideal, not the deliberate propaganda of a political creed.^ This may be true of some of the philosophers: it is certednly not true of all. Thrasea was a genial man of the world, whose severest censure expressed itself in silence and absence from the Seuate,^ who could even, on occasion, speak with deference of Nero. But his son-in-law,
1 Soet. Claud, z. * Boissier, L'Opp. 102.
• D. Caas. 66. 16 ; Suet Vesp, xxv. » Tac. Ann, xvi. 21 ; xv. 28 ; adv. 48,
* See the speech of the djing Ha- id egregio snb principe . . . senatni drian to the Sienaton, D. Oaaa. 69. 20. statuendam diaaeinit.
40 SOCIAL LIFE book i
Helvidius Priscus, seemed to exult in flouting and insulting a great and worthy emperor such as Vespasian.^ And the life of ApoUonius by Fhilostratus leaves the distinct impression that philosophy, in the reign of Nero and Domitiau, was a revolutionary force. Apollonius, it is true, is represented by Fhilostratus as supporting the cause of monarchy in a debate in the presence of Vespasian.^ But he boasted of having been privy to conspiracies against Nero,' and he was deeply involved with Nerva and Orfitus in a plot against Domitian.^ He was summoned before the secret tribunal to answer for speeches against the emperor delivered to crowds at Ephesus.^ It may be admitted that the invective or soom of philosophy was aimed at unworthy princes, rather than at the foundations of their power. Yet Dion Gassius evidently regards Helvidius Prisons as a turbulent agitator with dangerous democratic ideals,^ and he contrasts his violence with the studied moderation, combined with dignified reserve, displayed by Thrasea in the reign of Nero. The tolerant Vespasian, who bore so long the wanton insults of the philosophers, must have come at length to think them not only an offence but a real danger when he banished them. In the first century there can be little doubt that there were members of the philosophic class who condemned monarchy, not only as a moral danger, but as a lamentable aberration from the traditions of republican freedom. There were probably some, who, if the chance had offered itself, might even have ventured on a republican reaction.
With a gloomy recognition of the realities of life, Domitian used to say that conspiracy against an emperor was never believed till the emperor was killed.^ Of the first twelve Caesars seven died a violent death. Every emperor from Tiberius to M. Aurelius was the mark of conspiracy. This was often provoked by the detestable character of the prince. But it sometimes sprang from other causes than moral disgust. The mild rule of Vespasian was generally popular ; yet even he had to repel the conspiracy of Aelianus and Marcellus.' The
^ Saet. Vttp, zv. ; of. ziii., where * Philottr. A^U T\fan. vii. 9.
Demetrius is guilty of similar rude- « d. Cms. 66. 12, /SwrtXetaj re dei
ness ; D. Cass. 66. 12. Kanry^pei jccU ^nuoKparlop ix^wtu
; PWlo.tr Apoll Tyan. v. 86. T^t 2ta«. xxT
* lb. vii. 8. 88 ; ot D. Cass. 67. 18. < D. Cass. 66. 16.
CHAP. 1 THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 41
blameless Nerva, the emperor after the Senate's own heart, was twice assailed by risings organised by great nobles of historic nama^ The conspiracy of Nigrinus against Hadrian received formidable support, and had to be sternly crushed.^ M. Aurelins had to endure with sad resignation the open rebellion of Avidius Cassius." The better emperors, strong in their character and the general justice of their administration, might afford to treat such opposition with comparative calmness. £ut it was different in the case of a Nero or a Domitian. The conspiracy of Piso and the conspiracy of Satuminus formed, in each case, a climax and a turning-point. Springing from real and justified impatience, they were ruthlessly crushed and followed up with a cruel and suspicious repression which only increased the danger of the despot ''Scelera sceleribus toenda " sums up the awful tale, in the words of Tacitus, '' of the wrath of Gk)d and the madness of men."
There were many causes which rendered the tragedy of the early Empire inevitable. Probably the most potent was the undefined position of the prince and the dreams of republican power and freedom which for ages were cherished by the Senate. Carefully disguised under ancient forms, the principate of Augustus was really omnipotent, through the possession of the proconsular imperium in the provinces, and the tribunician pre- rogative at home.^ In the last resort there was no legal means of challenging the man who controlled the legions, nominated the magistrates, and manipulated a vast treasury at his pleasura The fiction of Augustus, that he had restored the Bepublic to the hands of the Senate and people, is unUkely to have de- ceived his own astute intellect^ The hand which, of its grace could restore the simtUacra libertatis, might as easily withdraw them. The Gomitia lost even the shadow of constitutional power in the following reign.^ Henceforth the people is the army.^ The holders of the great republican magistracies are mere creatures of the prince and obedient ministers of his power. The Senate alone retained some vestiges of its old
^ D. Omb. 6S. 8. ' Saet Odav, zxriii.
« Spart ITodr. 7, 8 16. . -, . . _-
' JqL CapitoL M. AnL 24, 26. T*^- ^^^ ^ ^^'
« Monuiis. Siaatir. ii 787-821 ; ' Saet Claud, z.; D. Cass. 60. 1 ;
Professor Pelhun has given a luminons where the soldiers plainly close the
aoooont of the Prinapate in BncycL impotent debates in tne Senate, and by
BriL ToL xz. p. 769. hailing Claudius as emperor.
42 SOCIAL LIFE book i
power, and still larger pretensions and antiquarian claims. In theory, during a vacancy in the principate, the Senate was the ultimate seat of authority, and the new emperor received his prerogatives by a decree of the Senate. In the work of legis- lation, its decisions divided the field with the edicts of the prince,^ and it claimed a parallel judicial power. But all this was really illusory. The working of such a system manifestly depends on the character and ideas of the man who for the time wields the material force of the Empire. And "the share of the Senate in the government was in fact determined by the amount of administrative activity which each emperor saw fit to aUow it to exercise." *
The half-insane Caligula had really a clearer vision of the emperor's position than the reactionary dreamers, when he told his grandmother Antonia,''3/e77t«n^o omnia mihi i/n omrus licere'** He did not need the lessons of Agrippa and Antiochus to teach him the secret of tyranny.* Yet institutions can never be separated from the moral and social forces which lie behind and around them. The emperor had to depend on agents and advisers, many of them of social rank and family traditions equal to his own. He had by his side a Senate with a history of immemorial antiquity and glory, which cast a spell on the conservative imagination of a race which recoiled from any impiety to the past. Above all, he was surrounded by a populace which took its revenge for the loss of its free Comitia by a surprising licence of lampoon and epigram and mordant gossip and clamorous appeal in the circus and theatre.^ And even the soldiers, who were the sworn supporters of the prince, and who often represented better than any other class the tone of old Soman gravity and manly virtue, could sometimes make their Imperator feel that there was in reserve a power which he could not safely defy. Hence it was that, with the changing character of the prince, the imperial power might pass into a lawless tyranny, only to be checked by assassination, while again it might veil its forces under constitutional forms, adopt the watchwords of the Bepublic, exalt the Senate to a place beside the throne, and make even accomplished statesmen fancy for the time that the days of ancient liberty had returned.
^ Momms. R&m, StacUsr, il 839. * D. Cass. 59. 24.
• V. Pelham, Eruyel Brit. xx. p. 779. • lb, 66. 1 ; Tac Ann. vi. 13 ; Suet
' Suet. OcUig. xxiz. Dtnn. ziil ; Plut Gfalba, 17.
CHAP. 1 THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 43
Such a dream, not altogether visionary, floated before Pliny's mind when he delivered his Pimegyric in the presence of Trajan. That speech is at once an act of thanksgiving and a manifesto of the Senate. The tone of fulsome extravagance is excused by the joy at escaping from a treacherous tyranny, which drove virtue into remote retreat, which made friendship impossible, which poisoned the security of household life by a continual fear of espionage.^ The confidence which Pliny expresses in the majestic strength, mingled with modesty and self-restraint, which Trajan brought to the task of the principate, was amply justified. The overwhelming force of the emperor seemed, in the new age, to pass into the freely accepted rule of the great citizen.^ Pliny indeed does not conceal from himself the immense actual power of the emperor. He is the vice- gerent of God, an earthly Providence." His power is not less than Nero's or Domitian's, but it is a power no longer wielded wildly by selfish or cruel self-will ; it is a power inspired by benevolence, voluntarily submitting itself to the restraints of law and ancient sentiment^ Founded on service and virtue, it can fearlessly claim the loving support of the citizens, while it recalls the freedom of the old Sepublic. A prince who is hedged by the devotion of his people may dispense with the horde of spies and informers, who have driven virtue into banishment and made a crowd of sneaks and cowards. Free speech has been restored. The Senate, wbich has so long been expected to applaud with grovelling flattery the most trivial or the most flagitious acts of the emperor, is summoned to a share in the serious work of government.^ A community of interest and feeling secures to it a free voice in his counsels, without derogating from his dignity.^ All this is expressed by a scrupulous observance of old republican forms. The commander of conquering legions, the Caesar, Augustus, Pontifex Maximus, has actually condescended to take the oath of office, standing before the consul seated in his chair !^ Here we seem to have the key to the senatorial position. They were ready to recognise the overwhelming power of the prince, if he, for his part, would only respect in form, if not in sub- stance, the ancient dignity of the Senate. Tolerance, aifability,
1 Plin. Pemeg, 48, 44, 86. •• /ft. 62, 68, 64. • Ih, 72.
« Ih. 24, 62, 68, 66. » lb, 80. » Ih. 66. ' Ih. 64.
44 SOCIAL LIFE book i
politic deference to a great name, seemed to Pliny and his kind a restoration of the ancient freedom, almost a revival of the old Bepublic. Fortunately for the world a succession of wise princes perceived that, by deference to the pride of the Senate, they could secure the peace of their administration, without diminishing its effective power.
Yet, even firom Pliny's Panegyric, we can see that the recognition of the prerogatives, or rather of the dignity, of the Senate, the coexistence of old republican forms side by side with imperial power, depended entirely on the grace and tolerance of the master of the legions. Nothing could be more curious than Pliny's assertion of the senatorial claims, combined with the most efifusive gratitude to Trajan for conceding them. The emperor is only primus irUer pares, and yet Pliny, by the whole tone of his speech, admits that he is the master who may equally indulge the constitutional claims or superstitions of his subjects or trample on them. In the first century a power, the extent of which depended only on the will of the prince, and yet seemed limited by shadowy claims of ancient tradition, was liable to be distrustful of itself and to be challenged by pretenders. In actual fact, the prince was so powerful that he might easily pass into a despot ; in theory he was only the first of Soman nobles, who might easily have rivals among his own class. Pliny congratulates Trajan on having, by his mildness and justice, escaped the terror of pre- tenders which haunted the earlier emperors, and was often justified and cruelly avenged.^ In spite of the lavish splendour of Nero or Caligula, the imperial household, till Hadrian's reorganisation, was still modelled on the lines of other great aristocratic houses. Nero's suspicions were more than once excited by the scale of establishments like that of the Silani, by wealth and display like Seneca's, by the lustre of great historic traditions in a gens like the Galpumian.' The loyalty of Corbulo could not save him from the jealousy aroused by his exploits in eastern war.^ And the power of great provincial governors, in command of great armies, and administering realms such as Gaul or Spain or Syria, was not an altogether imaginary danger. If Domitian seemed distrustful of Agricola
* Plin. Pawg. 69. ' D. Casa. 68. 17, iroo-i yiip wap ah^
^ Tac. Ann. xiii 1; xiv. 62; xv. Srjfidaioi^fyKXfi/ialjvdpeT'^re Kcdx^XoOrot 48. Kol yh<n : Tao. Hist. ii. 76.
CHAP. I THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 45
in Britain, we must remember that he had in his youth seen Galba and Yindex marching on Borne, and his father con- centrating the forces of the East for the overthrow of Vitellius in the great straggle on the Po.
The emperor's fears and suspicions were immensely aggravated by the adepts in the dark arts of the East The astrologers were a great and baneful power in the early Empire. They inspired illicit ambitions, or they stimulated them, and they often suggested to a timorous prince the danger of conspiracy. These venal impostors, in the words of Tacitus, were always being banished, but they always returned. For the men who drove them into temporary exile had the firmest faith in their skill. The prince would have liked to keep a monopoly of it, while he withdrew from his nobles the temptation which might be offered to their ambition by the mercenary adept.^ Dion Gassius and Suetonius, who were them- selves eager believers in this superstition, never fail to record the influence of the diviners. The reign of Tiberius is full of dark tales about them.^ Claudius drove Scribonianus into exile for consulting an astrologer about the term of his reign.^ On Hie appearance of a flaming comet, Nero was warned by his diviner, Bilbilus, that a portent, which always boded ill U) kings, might be expiated by the blood of their nobles.^ Otho's astrologer, Seleucus, who had promised that he should survive Nero,^ stimulated his ambition to be the successor of Gralba. Vitellius, as superstitious as Nero or Otho, cruelly persecuted the soothsayers and ordered their expulsion from Italy.* He was defied by a mocking edict of the tribe, ordaining his own departure from earth by a certain day.^ Vespasian once more banished the diviners from Bome, but, obedient to the superstition which cradled the power of his dynasty, he retained the most skilful for his own guidance.^ The terror of Domitian's last days was heightened by a horoscope, which long before had foretold the time and manner of bis end.' Holding such a faith as this, it is little wonder that the emperors should dread its effect on rivals who were equally
1 Tac. Ann, ii. 82 ; xii 62 ; D. Cass. ^ Id. Otho, iv.
49. 43 ; D. Caaa. 66. 10, 9 ; Suet Tib. ^ Id. ViteU, xiv.
IxiiL ^ Ih. ne Vitellius Germanicus intra.
* Suet. Tib, zIt. Iziz. eundemkalendarumdiemusquamesset..
' Tac. Arm. ziL 52. > D. Cass. 66. 10, 9.
^ Suet. NtrOt zzzri. ' Suet. Dom. zv.
46 SOCIAL LIFE book i
credulous, or that superstition, working on ambitious hopes, should have been the nurse of treason. Thus the emperor's uncertain position made him ready to suspect and anticipate a treachery which may often have had no existenca The objects of his fears in their turn were driven into conspiracy, some- times in self-defence, sometimes from the wish to seize a prize which seemed not beyond their grasp. Gossip, lampoon, and epigram redoubled suspicion, while they retaliated ofifences. And cruel repression either increased the danger of revolt in the more daring, or the degradation of the more timorous.
In the eyes of Tacitus, the most terrible result of the tyranny of the bad emperors was the fawning servility of a once proud order, and their craven treachery in the hour of danger. He has painted it with all the concentrated power of loathing and pity. It is this almost personal degradation which inspires the ruthless, yet haughtily restrained, force with which he blasts for ever the memory of the Julio-Glaudian despotism. It was in this spirit that he penned the opening chapters of his chronicle of the physical and moral horrors of the year in which that tyranny closed. The voice of history has been silenced or perverted, partly by the ignorance of public afiEJEdrs, partly by the eagerness of adulation, or the bitterness of hatred. It was an age darkened by external disasters, save on the eastern frontier, by seditions and civil war, and the bloody death of four princes. The forces of nature seemed to unite with the rage of men to deepen the universal tragedy. Italy was overwhelmed with calamities which had been unknown for many ages ; Campania's fairest cities were swallowed up; Home itself had been wasted by fire; the ancient Capitol was given to the flames by the hands of citizens. Polluted altars, adultery in high places, the islands of the sea crowded with exiles, rank and wealth and virtue made the mark for a cruel jealousy, all this forms an awful picture.^ But even more repulsive is the spectacle of treachery rewarded with the highest place, slaves and clients betraying their master for gain, and men without an enemy ruined by their friends. When the spotless Octavia, overwhelmed by the foulest calumnies, had been tortured to death, to satisfy the jealousy of an adulteress, offerings were voted to the
1 Tac. EiA. i. 2.
CHAF. I THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 47
temples.^ And Tacitus grimly requests his readers to presume that, as often as a banishment or execution was ordei*ed by Nero, so often were thanksgivings offered to the gods. The horrors of Nero's remorse for the murder of Agrippina were soothed by the flatteries and congratulations of his staff, and the grateful sacrifices which were offered for his deliverance by the Campanian towns.^ Still, the notes of a funereal trumpet and ghostly wailings from his mother's grave were ever in his ears,^ and he long doubted the reception which he might meet with on his return to the capital. He need not have had any anxiety. Senate and people vied with one another in self-abasement He was welcomed by all ranks and ages with fawning enthusiasm as he passed along in triumphal progress to return thanks on the Capitol for the success of an unnatural crime.
The Pisonian conspiracy against Nero was undoubtedly an important and serious event Some of the greatest names of the Soman aristocracy were involved in it, and the man whom it would have placed on the throne, if not altogether untainted by the excesses of his time, had some imposing qualities which might make him seem a worthy competitor for the principate.^ But, to Tacitus, the conspiracy seems to be chiefly interesting as a damning proof of the degradation of the aristocracy under the reign of terror. Epicharis, the poor freedwoman of light character, who bore the accumulating torture of scourge and rack and fire, and the dislocation of every limb, is brought into pathetic contrast with the high- bom senators and knights, who, without any compulsion of torture, betrayed their relatives and friends.^ Scaevinus, a man of the highest rank, knowing himself betrayed by his freedman and a Soman knight, revealed the whole plot.^ The poet Lucan tried in vain to purchase safety by involving his own mother. But Nero was inexorable, and the poet died worthily, reciting some verses from the Pharsaiia, which describe a similar end.^ The scenes which followed the massacre are an awful revelation of cowardly sycophancy. While the streets were thronged with the funerals of the victims,
' Twc, Ami, xiv. 64. » lb, xv. 67.
* lb. xir. 10, 12. • lb, xv. 64.
' lb, xiv. 10 ; Suet Nero^ xxxiv. ^ lb, xv. 70 ; probably Luoan, Phars,
*' Tac Ann. xy. 48. iii. 688.
48 SOCIAL LIFE book i
the altars on the Capitol were smoking with sacrifices of grati- tude. One craven after another, when he heard of the murder of a brother or a dear friend, would deck his house with laurels, and, falling at the emperor's feet, cover his hand with kisses.^ The Senate prostrated themselves before Nero when, stung by the popular indignation, he appeared to justify his deed. The august body voted him thanksgivings and honours.^ The consul elect, one of the Anician house, proposed that a temple should be built with all speed to the divine Nero ! Tacitus relieves this ghastly spectacle of effemi- nate cowardice by a scene which is probably intended, by way of contrast, to save the tradition of Eoman dignity. Yestinus, the consul of that fatal year, had been a boon companion of the emperor, and had shown contempt for his cowardice in dangerous banter. Nero was eager to find him implicated in the plot, but no evidence of bis guilt could be obtained. All legal forms at length were flung aside, and a cohort was ordered to surround his bousa Yestinus was at dinner in his palace which towered over the Forum, surrounded by guests, with a train of handsome slaves in waiting, when he received the mandate. He rose at once from table, and shut himself in his chamber with his physician, lancet in hand, by his side. His veins were opened, and, without a word of self-pity, Yestinus allowed his life to ebb away in the bath.'
Yestinus, after all, only asserted, in the fashion of the time, his right to choose the manner of a death which could not be evaded. But Tacitus, here and there, gives glimpses of self- sacrifice, courageous loyalty and humanity, which save his picture of society from utter gloom. The love and devotion of women shine out more brightly than ever against the background of baseness. Tender women follow their husbands or brothers into exile, or are found ready to share their death.* Even the slave girls of Octavia brave torture and death in their hardy defence of her fair fame.^ There is no more pathetic story of female heroism than that of Politta, the daughter of L. Yetus. He had been colleague of the emperor in the consulship, but he had the misfortune to be father-in-law
J Taa Ann. xv. 71. * Plin. Ep. iii. 16 ; Tac Ann.
^ lb. XV. 73. X7. 68.
» lb. XV. 68, 69. » Tac. Ann. xiv. 60.
CHAP. 1 THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 49
of Bubellius Plautus, whose lofty descent and popularity drew down the sentence of death, even in distant exile.^ Politta had clasped the bleeding neck of Plautus in her arms, and nursed her sorrow in an austere widowhood.' She now besieged the doors of Nero with prayers, and even menaces, for her father's acquittal Yetus himself was of the nobler sort of Soman men, who even then were not extinct. When he was advised, in order to save the remnant of his property for his grandchildren, to make the emperor chief heir, he spumed the servile proposal, divided his ready money among his slaves, and prepared for the end.' When all hope was abandoned, father, grandmother, and daughter opened their veins and died together in the bath. Plautius Lateranus met his end with the same stem dignity. Forbidden even to give a last embrace to his children, and dragged to the scene of servile executions, he died in silence by the hand of a man who was an undiscovered partner in the plot.^ Even the mob of Some, for whose fickle baseness Tacitus has a profound scorn, now and then reveal a wholesome moral feel- ing. When Octavia, on a trumped-up charge of adultery, was divorced and banished by Nero, the clamour of the populsu^e forced him to recall her for a time, and the mob went so far in their virtuous enthusiasm as to overthrow the statues of the adulteress Poppaea, and crown the images of Octavia with flowers.* Perhaps even more striking is the humane feeling displayed towards the slaves of the urban prefect, Pedanius Secundus. He had been murdered by a slave, and the ancient law required, in such a case, the execution of the whole house- hold. The proposal to carry out the cruel custom drove the populace almost to revolt. And it is a relief to find that a strong minority of the Senate were on the side of humanity.^ fiut the army, above all other classes, still bred a rough, honest virtua It was left, amid the general efifeminate cowardice, for a tribune of a pretorian cohort to tell Nero to his face that he loathed him as a murderer and an incendiary.^ Again and again, in that terrible year, when great nobles were flattering the Emperor, whom in a few days or hours they meant to desert, the common soldiers remained true to the death of
^ Tuc. Ann, xir. 22, 57. * lb, xiv. 42, senatusqiie obsessus in
' Jh. ZYJ. 10. qno ipso erant stadia nimiam seyeri-
' Ih, xri. 11. tatem aspemantimn.
* Ih, XV. SO. » Ih, xiy. 61. ' Ih, xy. 67.
E
60 SOCIAL LIFE book i
their unworthy chiefis. When Otho redeemed a tainted life by a not ignoble end, the pretoriaus kissed his wounds, bore him with tears to burial, and many killed themselves over his corpse.^ In the storming of the pretorian camp by the troops of Vespasian, the soldiers of Yitellius, outnumbered and doomed to certain defeat, fell to a man with all their wounds in front' To these faithful, though often bloodthirsty, warriors the senators and knights of those days offered a contemptible contrast. Often the inheritors of great names and great traditions, the mass of them knew nothing of arms or the military virtue of their ancestors' Sunk in sloth and enervated by excess, they followed Otho to the battlefield on the Fo with their cooks and minions and all the apparatus of luxury/ In the rapid changes of fortune, from Glalba to Otho, from Otho to Vitellius, from Vitellius to Vespasian, the great nobles had one guiding principle, the determination to be on the winning side. It was indeed a puzzling and anxious time for a calculating selfishness, when a reign might not last for a month, and when the adulation of Otho or Vitellius in the Senate-house was disturbed by the sound of the legions advancing from £a£t and West But the supple cowards of the Senate proved equal to the strain. They had the skill to flatter their momentary master without any compronusing word against his probable successor. They soothed the anxieties of Vitellius with unstinted adulation, yet carefully refrained from anything reflecting on the Flavianist leaders.^ Within a few months, full of joy and hope, which were now at last well founded, they were voting all the customary honours of a new principate to Vespasian.* The terror of Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero had done its work effectually. And its worst result was the hopeless self- abandonment and sluggish cowardice of a class, whose chief Taisxm d^itrt in every age is to maintain a tradition of gallant dignity. It is true that many of the scions of great houses were mere mendicants, ruined by confiscation or prodigality, and compelled to live on the pension by which the emperor kept them in shameful dependence,^ or on the meaner dole of some
1 Tac. HitL it 49. * /(. iu. 84. cf. i. 90 ; of the Acta of the Arval Col-
> 75. i 88, segnis et oblita boUorum lege, CJ,L, vL 2051 sq.
DobUitas. etc « iJ. i 88. ^ Ih, iv. 8.
' lb» iii 87, nulla in oratione ciijofl- ^ Suet Nero, x. ; Vegp, zvii. ; Sjiart
quam erga Flavianos dnoea obtrectatio ; Hadr, 7, § 9.
CHAP. 1 THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR
51
?realthy patron.^ A YalerioB Messala, grandson of the great Corvinns, bad to accept a pension fifom Nero.' A grandson of Hortensius bad to endure tbe contempt of Tiberius in obtaining a grant for bis sons.' Otbers were unmanned by tbe volaptaoos excesses of an age wbicb bad carried tbe ingenuity of sensual allurement to its utmost limits. Tbe bopelessness of any struggle witb a power so vast as tbat of tbe emperor, 80 ruthless and wildly capricious as tbat of tbe Claudian Caesars, reduced many to despairing apatby.^ And wbile, from a safe historic distance, we pour our contempt on tbe cringing Senate of tbe first century, it migbt be well to remind ourselves of tbeir perils and tbeir tortures. There was many a senatorial house, like tbat of tbe Pisos, whose leading members were never allowed to reach middle age.^ Much should be forgiven to a class wbicb was daily and hourly exposed to sucli danger, so sudden in its onsets, so secret and stealthy, so all-pervading. It migbt come in an open circum- stantial indictment, witb all tbe forms of law and tbe weight of suborned testimony; it migbt appear in a quiet order for suicide; tbe stroke might descend at tbe farthest limits of tbe Empire,^ ia some retreat in Spain or Asia. The haunting fear of death had an unnerving effect But not less d^rading were tbe outrages to Soman, or ordinary human dignity to which tbe noble order had to submit for more than a generation. They had seen their wives defiled or compelled to expose themselves as harlots in a foul spectacle, to gratify tbe diseased prurience of the emperor.^ They bad been forced to fight in the arena or to exhibit themselves on the tragic staga^ Men who bad borne the ancient honours of the consulship had been ordered to run for miles beside the chariot of Caligula, or to wait at his feet at dinner.^ Fatliers bad bad to witness without flinching tbe execution of tbeir sons, and drink smilingly to the emperor on tbe evening of tbe fatal day.^^ Tbe only safety at such a court lay in calmly accepting insults witb affected gratitude. Tbe example of Nero's debauchery, and the seductive charm wbicb he undoubtedly possessed, were
» Jut. i 100.
* Tm. Ann, xiu. 34. » lb. it 37, 88.
« Tae. HitL i 85.
* Sen. De Ira, ii. 83 ; cf. iii 19. ' Tto. Awn, ziv. 68.
' Suet Nero, xzxtU.
' Tac. Ann, xiv. 14 ; Juv. viiL 193 ; Suet. Oodig, xviii. zzx. ; D. Cass. liz. 10.
' Saet. Calig, zzyIL
^^ Sen. De Ira, ii. 33.
Ji
62
SOCIAL UFE
BOOK I
probably as enfeebling and demoralising as the Terror. He formed a school, which laughed at all virtue and made self- indulgence a fine art. Men who had shared in these obscene revels were the leaders in the awful scenes of perfidy, lust, and cruelty which appropriately followed the death of their patron.^ Some of them, Petronius, Otho, Vitellius, closed their career appropriately by a tragic death. But others lived on into the age of reformation, to defame the stout Sabine soldier who saved the £oman world.^
In spite of the manly virtue and public spirit of Vespasian, the Boman world had to endure a fierce ordeal before it entered on the peace of the Antonine age. Even Vespasian's reign was troubled by conspiracy.* His obscure origin moved the contempt of the great senatorial houses who still survived. His republican moderation gave the philosophic doctrinaires a chance of airing their impossible dream of restoring a municipal Bepublic to govern a world. His conscientious frugality, which was absolutely needed to retrieve the bankruptcy of the Neronian regime, was despised and execrated both by the nobles and the mob. Another lesson was needed both by the Senate and the philosophers. Society had yet to be purged as by fire, and the purging came with the accession of Domitian.
The inner secret of that sombre reign will probably remain for ever a mystery. There is the same question about Domitian as there is about Tiberius. Was he bad from the beginning, or was he gradually corrupted by the consciousness of immense power,^ and the fear of the great order who might challenge it ? Our authorities do not furnish a satis- fying answer. We know Domitian only fix)m the narrative of men steeped in senatorial traditions and prejudices,^ and, some of them, intoxicated by the vision of a reconciliation of the principate with the republican ideals. The dream was a noble one, and it was about to be partially realised
^ Tao. Ann. xiii. 12 ; xvi. 18 ; Suet. ViUXl. iv.
* Renau, Lcs J^v, p. 140. Some of their anonymous sneers may be traced in Suet Vesp. xvi. xziii. xiv. ; cf. Duruy, iv. 658.
* D. Cass. 66. 16, /re/SovXei^i; fikw {nr6 re rod 'XKiriPoO xal inrb toO Map- KiWov, Cf. Suet. Fesp. xiv. ; Mac^, SuAane, p. 86.
* Cf. Boissier, L'Opp. p. 169 aqq.; Bury, Rom. Evip, p. 395.
' On the sources of the history of the Flavians, v. Krause, De C. Sudan. Tranq. Fontibus ; Mac^ SuiUme, p. 364, 876 ; Peter, Oesch. LiU, d. Kaiser- zeit, ii. 69, 70. For the senatorial attitude to Domitian, v. Plin. Paneg. 48 ; Tac Agr. 8, 41, 42, 45 ; ffisl. iv. 51 ; iv. 2 ; Suet. Ihm, xxiii.
CHAP. I THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 63
for three generations, under a succession of good emperora But the men inspired with such an ideal were not likely to be impartial judges of an emperor like Domitian. And even from their narrative of his reign, we can see that he was not, at least in the early years of his reign,^ the utter monster he has been painted. Even severe judges in modern days admit that he was an able and strenuous man, with a clear, cold, cynical intellect,' which recognised some of the great problems of the time, and strove to solve them. He was indefatigable in judicial work.' In spite of the sneers at his mock triumphs,^ his military and provincial administration was probably guided by a sound conception of the resources and the dangers of the Empira His recall of Agricola, after a seven years' command in Britain, was attributed to jealousy and fear.^ It is more probable that it was dictated by a wish to stop a campaign which was diverting large sums to the conquest of barren mountains. Domitian was an orator and verse writer of some merit, and he gave his patronage, altliough not in a very liberal way, to men like Quintilian, Statins, and Martial.^ like Nero, he felt the force of the new Hellenist movement^ and, under forms sanctioned by Boman antiquarians, he estab- lished a quinquennial festival in which literary genius was pompously rewarded.^ He had the public libraries, which had been devastated by fires in the previous reigns, liberally re- stocked with fresh stores of MSS. from Alexandria.' He gave dose attention, whatever we may think of his science, to the economic problems of the Empire. And his discouragement of the vine, in favour of a greater acreage of com, would find 8ym{)athy in our own time, as it was applauded by ApoUonius of Tyana,* The man who decimated the Boman aristocracy towards the end of his reign, advanced to high positions some of those who were destined to be his bitterest defamers. Pliny and Tacitus and Trajan's father rose to high office in the
* Kagel, Imp. T, Flav, Domitianus • Quiutil. iv., proem. 2 ; StatiuB, iniquiua dijudicalus, SUvae^ iv. 2, 13 ; iii, 1, 1 ; Mart iL
« Mcriv. vii. 866. 91 ; iv. 27 ; iiL 96. For the flattery
• Suet Ikm. viiL of Martial, v. eap. v. 19, 6 ; ix. 4 ; ^ Tac Agr. 89 ; cf. 41, tot exercitus Speciae. 88.
in Moesia . . . amissL D. Cass. 67. 4, ? g^gt Dom. iv.
7 ; cf. Stat SUv. iv. 8, 163 ; Mart . ..
ix. 102 ; vii 80, 91, 96 ; Meriv. vii. ^^' ^^'
847. • Ih, vii. ; Philostr. Apdl. Tyan, vi.
» Tac. Affr, 39. 42 ; VU, Soph. i. 12.
54 SOCIAL LIFE book i
earlier part of Domitian's reign.^ He designated to the consulship such men as Nerva, Trajan, Veiginius Bufus, AgricoK Ai^d the grandfather of Antoninus Pius.' This strange character was also a moral reformer of the antiquarian typa He punished erring Vestals, mort majorum. He revived the Scantinian law against those enormities of the East, of which Statins shows that the emperor was not guiltless himself.' Yet a voluptuary, with a calm outlook on his time, may have a wish to restrain vices with which he is himself tainted. A statesman may be a puritan reformer, both in religion and morals, with- out being personally severe and devout. Domitian may have had a genuine, if a pedantic, desire to restore the old Boman tone in morals and religion. He was, after all, sprung from a sober Sabine stock,^ although he may have sadly d^nerated from it in his own conduct. And his attempt to reform Boman society may perhaps have been as sincere as that of Augustus. But there can be little doubt that Domitian, although he was astute and able, was also a bad man, with the peculiar traits which always make a man unpopular. He was disloyal as a son and as a brother. He was morose, and he cultivated a suspicious solitude,^ around which evil rumour is sure to gather. The rumour in his case may have been well-founded, although we are not bound to believe all the tales of prurient gossip which Suetonius has handed down. It is the penalty of high place that peccadilloes are magnified into sins, and sins are multiplied and exaggerated. It was a recognised and effective mode of flattering a new emperor to blacken the character of his predecessors; Domitian himself allowed his court poets to vilify Caligula and Nero.® And Pliny in his fidsome adulation of Trajan, finds his most effective resource in a perpetual contrast with Domitian. Tacitus could never forgive the recall and humiliation of his father-in-law. The Senate as a whole bore an implacable hatred to the man who carried to its furthest point the assertion of imperial prerogative.^
^ Pliny was probably Quaestor in 90 ' Duruy, iv. 697 n.
A.D.; Tnb. Pleb. 92 ; Praetor 98. Cf. 8 sUv. iii 4 37.
Momma. (Morel), p. 61. Tacitus «iys, 4 Meriv. viL 354.
Hxst, 1. 1, dignitatem a Domitiano - -. ^^_ a*? m q *. t,
(81-96) longiua provectem non ab- \ ^' ^^»^ ^^' ^^ > S«et Donu xi7.
nuerim. From Ann, xi. 11 it appears ' Mart. iv. 63 ; vi. 21, cmdelis that he was Praetor in 88. Cf. Peter, nuUaque invisior umbra.
Ot$ch, LiU, iL 43. ^ Suet. Dom. xxiii.
CHAP. I THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 65
Still the authorities are so unanimous that we are bound to believe that Domitian, with some strength and ability, had many execrable qualities. He shows the contradictions of a nature in which the force of a sturdy rural ancestry has not been altogether sapped by the temptations of luxury and power. He had a passionate desire to rival the military glory of his &ther and brother, yet he was too cautious and self- indulgent to attain it. He had some taste for literature, but he kept literature in leading-strings, and put one man to death for his delight in certain speeches in Livy, and another for a too warm eulogy of Thrasea and Helvidius Priscus.^ He threw his whole strength into a moral and religious reaction, while he was the bitterest enemy of the republican pretensions and dreams of the Senate. Great historical critics have called him a hypocrite.' It may be doubted whether any single phrase or formula could express the truth about such a twisted and perverse character Probably his dominant passion was vanity and love of grandiose display. He assumed the consulship seventeen times, a number quite unexampled.' His pompous triumphs for unreal victories were a subject of common jest. He filled the Capitol with images of himself, and a colossal statue towered for a time over the temple roofs.^ The son and brother of emperors, already exalted to divine honours, he went farther than any of his predecessors in claiming divinity for himself, and he allowed his ministers and court poets to address him as ''our Lord God."^ His lavish splendour in architecture was to some extent justified by the ravages of fii'e in previous reigns. But the £2,400,000 expended on the gQding of a temple on the Capitol,^ was only one item in an extravagance which drained the treasury. Its radiance, which dazzled the eyes of Butilius in the reign of Honorius,^ was paid for in blood and tears. The emperor, who was the ruth- less enemy of the nobles, like all his kind, was profusely indulgent to the army and the mob. The legions had their pay increased by a fourth. The populace of Bome were pampered
^ Suet. Dcm. x. ' Snet. Dcm, ziii. ; Mart. t. 8, 1 (r.
» Ranan, La Afong. p. 291 , Domitien, FriedUnder's note), yii 2 and 84 ; yiii.
eomme tons les sonyerauu hypocrites, 2, 6 ; Stat Silv. v. 1, 87 ; Meriv. vii.
■e montrait wArhn oonserratenr. ^7^* ^
, o . yv ... • Suet. Doin. v ; GregoroY. Oetch, SL
* oaeb i/om. xui. R&m i 41.
* Mart. viii. 66. ' Rutil. Namat. i. 93.
66 SOCIAL LIFE book i
with costly and vulgar spectacles,^ as they were to the end of the Western Empire. Domitian's indulgence of that fierce and obscene proletariat was only a little more criminal than that of other emperors, because it ended in a bankruptcy which was followed by robbery and massacre. While the rich and noble were assailed on any trivial accusation, in order to fill an empty treasury, the beasts of Numidia were tearing their victims, gladiators were prostituting a noble courage in deal- ing inglorious wounds in the arena, and fleets of armed galleys charged and crashed in mimic, yet often deadly, battle in the flooded Flavian amphitheatre.*
To repair this waste the only resource was plunder. But Domitian was a pettifogger as well as a plunderer ; he would fleece or assassinate his victims under forms of law. The law of majesty, and the many laws for restoring old Roman morality, needed only a little ingenuity and effrontery to furnish lucrative grounds for impeachment.* The tribe of delators were ready to his hand. He had punished them for serving Nero ; they were now to reap a richer harvest under Domitian. Every fortune which rose above mediocrity, every villa with rich pastures and woodlands in the Apennines, or on the northern lakes, was marked for plunder.^ Domitian was the first and only emperor who assumed the censorship for life.^ The office made him absolute master of the lives and fortunes of his nobles. A casual word, a thoughtless gesture, might be construed into an act of treason; and the slave households furnished an army of spies. Nay, even kindred and near friends were drawn into this vast conspiracy against domestic peace and security. It may be admitted that Domitian had to face a real peril The rebellion of Antonius Satuminus was an attempt which no piince could treat lightly, and the destruction of the correspondence in which so many men of rank were involved, may well have heightened Domitian's alarm." He struck out blindly and savagely. He compelled the Senate to bear a part in the massacre, and Tacitus has confessed, with pathetic humiliation, his silent share in the murder of the upright and innocent^ Tet the imperial
^ Suet. Dom, y. ad fin, ; iv. /3ioi/ vpwros Sii koI iJubvot koX IBiorriaw koI
^ D. Caaa. 67. 8. oL^oKparbpuiv ix^ipcrrotr/idrj : MomniB.
» Suet Dom, xii. * Pliny, Paneg. 60. Ji&nu SL it 1012.
* Dion Cass. 67. 4, nfinr^ 6i Btii « D. Cass. 67. 11. ' Affr, 45.
CHAP. I THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR 67
inquisitor was himself racked with terror in his last hours. He walked in a corridor where the walls were lined with mirrors/ 80 that no unseen hand might strike him from behind. On his last morning he started in terror from his bed and called for the diviner whom he had summoned from Germany.* But,' amid all his terror, Domitian had a deep natural love of cruelty. He was never more dangerous than when he chose to be agreeable ; * he loved to play with his victims. What a grim delight in exquisite torture, what a cynical contempt for the Boman nobles, are revealed in the tale of his funereal banquet ! * The select company were ushered into a chamber draped from floor to ceiling in black. At the head of each couch stood a pillar like a tombstone, with the guest's name engraved upon it, while overhead swung a cresset such as men hang in vaults of the dead. A troop of naked boys, black as all around, danced an awfiil measure, and then set on the dismal meal which was offered, by old £oman use, to the spirits of the departed. The guests were palsied with terror, expect- ing every moment to be their last. And the death -like silence was only broken by the voice of the Emperor as he told a gruesome tale of bloody deaths. In such cynicism of lawless power, in such meek degradation of a once proud order, did the tyranny of the first century reach its closa
^ Snet Dom. xiv. parietes phengite lapide distinxit. ' lb, xvi. » D. Cass. 67. 9. * 76. 67. 4.
i
CHAPTER II
THE WORLD OF THE SATIRIST
Juvenal and Tacitus, although they moved in different circles and probably never met, have much in common. Both were released from an ignominious silence by the death of Domitian. Both were then at the age which combines the ripeness of experience and reflection with a fire and energy still unflagging.^ They were, from different causes, both filled with hatred and disgust for the vices* of their time, and their ex- perience had engendered in both a pessimism which darkened their faith. Tacitus belonged to the senatorial order who had held high office, and had seen its ranks decimated and its dignity outraged under the tjrranny. Juvenal sprang from the lower middle class, which hated alike the degenerate noble and the insolent parvenu far more than it hated even a Domitian. Tet both Juvenal and Tacitus are united in a passionate admiration for the old Boman character. Their standards and ideals are drawn from the half-mythical ages of the simple warriors and farmer-statesmen of the old Republic And their estimate of their time needs to be scrutinised in the light both of their hatreds and of their ideals.
The life of Juvenal is wrapt in obscurity, although nine lives of him are extant.^ Scholars are still at variance as to the date of his birth, the date of many of his satires, and especially as to the time and circumstances of his banishment, about which there is so uniform a tradition. But, for our purpose, some facts are clear enough. Juvenal was the son of
^ Tacitus b. probably 55 a.d. Dial. Juvenal K cire. 55 a.d. (Peter, ii. 77) ;
de Or, If juvenis admodum in 75 decessit longo senio confectus exul Ant.
or 76 ; cf. Agr, 9. He was betrothed Pio imp. Vit iv. ; Teuffel, § 826, 1.
in 77 A. D. ; cf. Meriv. viii. 92 ; Peter, * Nettleship, Lectures and Essays,
Oesch. Liu, ii. 48 ; Nipperdey, Evni. iv. pp. 118 sqq.
58
CHAP. II THE WORLD OF THE SA TIRIST 59
a well-to-do freedman of Aquinum, and rose to the highest magisterial office in his native town at some time of his career.^ He carefully hides his personal history from us ; but we might gather from his Satires that he belonged to the lower middle class,' that he was in temper and tone an old plebeian of the times of the Bepublic, although vividly touched by the ideas of a new morality which had been afloat for more than two generations. But, like Tacitus, he has little sympathy with the great philosophic movement which was working a silent revolu- tion. He had the rhetorical training of the time, with all its advantages and its defects. And he is more a rhetorician Uian a poet We can well believe the report that his early literary enthusiasm found vent in declamation on those mythical or frivolous themes which exercised the youth in the Soman schools for many centuriea Although he was hardly a poor man' in the sense in which Martial, his friend, was poor, yet he had stooped to bear the ignominy and hardships of client dependence. He had hurried in rain and storm in the early morning to receptions at great houses on the Esquiline, through the squalor and noises and congested traffic of the Suburra.^ He had doubtless often been a guest at thoae " unequal dinners," where the host, who was himself r^aled with ftir- fetched dainties and old crusted Alban or Setine wine, insulted his poorer friends by ofifering them the cheapest vintage and the meanest faie.^ He had been com- pelled, as a matter of social duty, to sit through the recitation of those ambitious and empty Theseids and Thebaids, with which the rich amateur in literature in those days afflicted his long- sofiTering Mends.^ He may have been often elbowed aside by SOToe supple, clever Greek, with versatile accomplishments and infinite audacity. He may have been patronised or insulted by a millionaire farvtftiu^ like the Trimalchio of Petronius, tainted with the memories of a shameful servitude. He saw new vulgar wealth everywhere triumphant, while the stiff, yet, in many ways, wholesome conventionality of old Boman life was defied and trampled upon by an aggressive vulgarity. In such a world there was little room for the man whose wealth is
^ Or. Emz. 5599, IlVir. Qninq. « Mart. xii. 18.
FlftiiMD Diri Vetpasiani * Jay. v. 30 sqq. ; cf. Mart. iii. 49 ;
' Boiader, L'Opp. p. 810. iii. 60.
» Jnv. xi. 74, 160 ; cf. «▼. 822. • Jnv. i. 52 ; Mart. x. 4 ; iv. 49.
60
SOCIAL LIFE
BOOK I
in his genius, and who clings to the traditions of ages which believed that men had a soul as well as a body. A man like Juvenal, living in such a society, almost necessarily becomes embittered. Like Johnson, in his Grub Street days, he will have his hours when bitterness passes into self-abandonment, and he will sound the depths of that world of corruption which in his better moods he loathes. Some of the associates of Juvenal were of very doubtful position, and more than doubtful morals ; ^ and the warmth of some of his realistic painting of dark sides of Boman life arouses the suspicion that he may have at times forgotten his moral ideal. He certainly knows the shameful secrets of £oman life almost as well as his friend Martial does. But his knowledge, however gained, was turned to a very difierent purpose from that which inspired Meutial's brilliant prurience.^
The Satires of Juvenal were probably not given to the world till after the death of Domitian.' The date of the earliest is about 100 A.D., that of the latest probably 127. Juvenal cautiously disguises his attacks on lus own time. He whets his sword against the sinners whose ashes have long reposed beside the Flaminian and the Latin ways.* Very few of his con- temporaries appear in his pages,^ and the scenery is often that of the reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, or Nero. But his deepest and most vivid impressions must have come to Juvenal in that period which has been photographed with such minute exactness by Martial. And there Sa a striking correspondence between the two writers, not only in many of the characters whom they introduce, but in their pictures of the whole state of morals and letters.* They both detested that frigid epic which laboriously ploughed the sands of conventional legend, and they turned with weariness from the old-world tales of Thebes or Argos to the real tragedy or comedy of Boman life around them. Although they were friends and companions, it is needless to
' Juv. vi. 43 : v. 80 sqq.; ix, 10 sqq. ; ri 186.
^ It has beon remarked that Martial's Epigrams on Juvenal all contain some obscenity, vii 24 ; vii. 91 ; xiL 18.
» Teuffel, § 826, 4 ; Peter, Qt9ck, LiU, ii. 77 ; Nettleship, Lectures and Essays, p. 122, brings together the in- dications of date from 96-127 A. D. He
thinks that perhaps some of the earlier Satires belong to the last years of Domitian, and that the A?oras, spee et ratio stndiomm in Oaesare tantum, in Sat. vii., may refer to that Emperor (p. 182).
* Juv. 1. 170.
' Morius Prisons, Isaeus, Archigenea.
' See a comparison of passages in Nettleship, pp. 125 sqq.
CHAP. II THE WORLD OF THE SATIRIST 61
assume any close partnership in their studies. Starting with the same literary impulse, they deal to a lai*ge extent with the same vices and follies, some of them peculiar to their own age, others common to all ages of Borne, or even of the world of civilisation. A long list might easily be compiled of their common stock of subjects, and their common antipathies. In both writers we meet the same grumbling of the needy client against insolent or niggardly patrons, the complaints of the struggling man of letters about the extravagant rewards of low vulgar impostors. Both are bored to death, like the patient Pliny, by the readings of wealthy scribblers, or by tiresome pleadings in the courts, measured by many a turn of the clepsydra. They feel an equal disgust for the noise and squalor of the narrow streets, an equal love for the peace and freshness and rough plenty of the coimtry farnu In both may be seen the scions of great houses reduced to mendicancy, ambitious poverty betaking itself to every mean or disreputable device, the legacy -hunter courting the childless rich with flattery or vicious compliance. You will often encoimter the sham philosopher, as you meet him sixty years afterwards in the pages of Lucian, with his loud talk of virtue and illustrious names, while his cloak covers cJl the vices of dog and ape. Both deal rather ungently with the character of women, — their intrigues with actors, gladiators, and slaves, their frequent divorcee and rapid succession of husbands, their general abandonment of antique matronly reserve. Both have, in fact, with different motives, uncovered the secret shame of the ancient world ; and, more even than by that shame, was their indignation moved by the great social revolution which was confusing all ranks, and raising old slaves, cobblers, and auctioneers to the benches of the knights.
Yet with thi3 resemblance in the subjects of their choice, tliere is the widest difference between the two writers in their motive and mode of treatment Martial, of course, is not a moralist at all ; the mere suggestion excites a smile. He is a keen and joyous observer of the faults and follies, the lights and shades, of a highly complex and artificial society which is "getting over-ripe." In the power of mere objective descrip- tion and minute portraiture of social life, Martial is almost uniqua Through lus verses, we know the society of Domitiaa
62 SOCIAL LIFE book i
as we know hardly any other period of ancient society. But this very vividness and truthfulness is chiefly due to the fiact that Martial was almost without a conscience. He was indeed personally, perhaps, not so bad as he is often painted.^ He knows and can appreciate a good woman ; * he can love, with the simplest, unsophisticated love, an innocent slave-child, the poor little Erotion,' whom he has immortalised. He can honour a simple manly character, free from guile and pre- tence.^ He has a genuine, exuberant love of the fresh joys of country life, sharpened, no doubt, by the experience of the client's sordid slavery, amid the mingled poverty and lavish splendour of the capital.^ Where could one find a fresher, prettier idyll than his picture of the farm of Faustinus, with its packed granaries, and its cellars fragrant with the juice of many an old autumn vintage, the peacock spreading his jewelled plumage, and the ring-dove cooiug overhead from the towers ? The elegant slaves of the great house in the city are having a holiday, and busy, under the bailiffs care, with rural toils, or fishing in the stream. The tall daughters of the neigh- bouriug cottages bring in their well -stocked baskets to the villa, and all gather joyously at evening to a plenteous meaL* Martial has, moreover, one great virtue, which is a powerful anti- dote for many moral faults, the love of the £Gur-ofir home of his childhood, the rugged Bilbilis, with its iron foundries near the sources of the Tagus, to which he retreated from the crush and din of plebeian life at Bome, and where he rests.^ But when charity or justice has done its best for Martial, and no scholar will repudiate the debt, it still remains true that he represents, perhaps better than any other, that pagan world, naked and unabashed, and feels no breath of inspiration from the great spiritual movement which, in paganism itself, was setting towards an ideal of purity and self-conquest
Juvenal, at least in his later work, reveals a moral standard and motive apparently unknown to Martial^ It may
' He says of himself, i. 5, 8, lascira * i. 14 ; It. 18, 75.
est nobis pegina, yita proba est; of. iii. ' v. 3^ 87 ; x. 61.
68 ; ▼. 2 ; Aasonins urcres the same ^ L 79 * viL 52.
plea, cf. IdyU. nil. Pliny finds a • iii. 58 ; L 56 ; il 88 ; of. UL 88.
long senes of examples to warrant hia % "\ ml
indulgence in loose verses, JSjp. iv. m. M.
14 ; of. T. 8. It was a bad tradition ' i. 50 ; it. 55 ; xu. 18.
of literature ; cf. Nettleship, Ledurt$ * Especially SaL xL xiii. xiv. zr. ;
aind Esaays^ p. 89. cf. Munding, &Ur die SaL Juv, p^ 12.
CHAP. II THE WORLD OF THE SATIRIST 63
be admitted, indeed, that Juveual did not always write under the same high impulse. He had the rhetorician's love of fine, telling phrases, and startling effects. He had a rare gift of realistic painting, and he exults in using it He has also burning within him an old plebeian pride which looked down at once on the degenerate son of an aucient house, and on the nowoeavx riches, whose rise seemed to him the triumph of vulgar opulence without the restraint of traditions or ideals. Conscious of great talents, with a character almost fierce in its energy, he felt a burning hatred of a society which seemed to value only material success, or those supple and doubtful arts which could invent some fresh stimulus for exhausted appetite. In Juvenal a great silent, sunken class, whom we hardly know otherwise than from the inscriptions on their tombs,^ finds for once a powerful voice and a terrible avenger. But, along with this note of personal or class feeling, there is in Juvenal a higher moral intuition, a vision of a higher life, which had floated before some Boman minds long before his time,' and which was destined to broaden into an accepted ideal Juvenal, indeed, was no philosopher, and he had, like Tacitus, all the old Soman distrust of the theories of the schools.' He had probably little respect for such teaching as Seneca's.^ Yet in important points he and Seneca belong to the same order of the elect Although, perhaps, a less spotless character than Tadtos, he is far more advanced and modem in his breadth of sympathy and moral feeling. He feels acutely for the conquered provinces which have been fleeced and despoiled of their wealth and artistic treasures, and which are still exposed to the peculation and cruelty of governors and their train.^ He denounces, like Seneca, the contempt and cruelty often shown to slaves. The man whose ideal seems often to be drawn from the hard, stem warriors who cmshed the Samnites and ba£Bed the genius of Hannibal, in his old age has come to glorify pity and tendemess for suffering as the best gift of Crod, the gift that separates him most widely from the bmte
' V. Bk. ii 0. 3 of this work. if. * ziii. 120 ; iL 1 sqq. ; cf. Mart
Boianflr hai thrown a Tivid light on ix. 48.
tldi clan in hia £eL Bom, UL 8. * He refers, however, with retpect
to Seneca, viiL 212.
r, £d. Bom. iL 198 ; Nettle- * vUi. 90 sqq. ; cf. Boiasier, rOpp.
tMp^ Leetum and Euay p. 186. p. 882.
64 SOCIAL LIFE book i
creation.^ He preaches sympathy and mutual help, in an age torn by selfish individualist passions. He denounces the lust for revenge almost in the tones of a Christian preacher.' What heathen moralist has painted more vividly the horrors of the guilty conscience, that unseen inquisitor, with sterner ' more searching eyes than Bhadamanthus ? Who has taught with greater power that the root of sin is in the evil thought?* Juvenal realises, like Tacitus and Quintilian, the curse of a tainted ancestry, and the incalculable importance of pure example in the education of youth.^ He, who knew so well the awful secrets of Boman households, sets an immense value on the treasure of an untainted boyhood, like that of the plough- man's son, who waits at Juvenal's simple meal ^and sighs for his mother, and the little cottage, and his playmates the kids." ' Observation of character had also taught him the fatal law that the downward path in conduct, once entered on, is seldom re- traced. And this moral insight seems to come to Juvenal not from any consciously held philosophic doctrine, nor from a settled religious faith. His faith, like that of many of his time, was probably of the vaguest He scorns and detests the Eastern worships which were pouring in like a flood, and carrying away even loose women of the world.^ He pillories the venal star- reader &om the East and the Jewish hag who interprets dreams. But he has also scant respect for classic mythologies, and regrets the simple, long -gone age, before heaven became crowded with divinities, before Saturn had exchanged the diadem for the sickle, when Juno was still a little maid,^ when the terrors of Tartarus, the wheel, the vulture, and the lash of the Furies had not taken the place of a simple natural conscience.*
Juvenal's moral tone then appears to unite the spirit of two difierent a^es. In some of his later Satires you catch the accent of the age which was just opening when Juvenal began to write, its growing sense of the equality and brotherhood of man, its cosmopolitan morality, its ideals of spiritual culture. But there are other elements in Juvenal, derived from old Boman
^ Jqv. XV. 181 ; of. Sen. De Ira, L 5 ; turn qui cogitat nllum Faoti crimen
ii. 10, 25 ; ill. 24. habet
, , ... ,«rt * *i^« 30 ; Tac De Or. 28, 29.
« Juv. xiiL 190. 5 ^ 158. • Ti. 610.
> xiii. 208, nam scelus intra se taci- "^ ziiL 89. * xiii. 208.
CHAP. II THE WORLD OF THE SATIRIST 05
prejudice and conventionality, or the result of personal tempera- ment and experience, which are quite as prominent Juvenal is an utter pessimist about his time, more extreme even than Tacitus. His age, if we believe him, has attained the climax of corruption, and posterity will never improve upon its finished depravity.^ His long practice as a declaimer had given him a habit of exaggeration, and of aiming rather at rhetorical brilliancy than truth. Whole passages in his poems read like declamatory exercises turned into verse.* A mere hanger-on of great society, one of the obscure crowd who flocked to the rich man's lev^, and knowing the life of the aristocracy only by remote observation or the voice of scandalous gossip, he hardly deserves the implicit trust which has been often accorded to his indictments of the society of his day. His generalisations are of the most sweeping kind ; the colours are all dark. He thinks that the number of decent people in his day is infinitesimally small. And yet we may reasonably suspect, from his own evidence, that he often generalised from single cases, that he treated abnormal specimens as types. His moral ideals cannot have been a monopoly of his own. In the palace of Nero in the worst days, there was a pure Octavia as well as a voluptuous Poppaea. The wife and mother of the gross Yitellius were women of spot- less fama* And in reading the fierce, unmeasured declamation of Juvenal, we should never forget that he knew nothing per- sonally of Pliny or Tacitus, or of the circle which surrounded Yerginius Bufus and Spurinna. He has the same pessimist theory of human declension which was held by Seneca and by Tacitus. Every form of crime and sensuality has been rampant since Some lost the treasure of poverty, since the days when silver shone only on the Eoman's arms.^ Juvenars ideal lies in that mythical past when a Curius, thrice consul, strode homeward frx)m the hills, mattock on shoulder, to a meal of home-grown herbs and bacon served on earthenware.^ It is the luxury of the conquered lands which has relaxed the Boman fibre, which has introduced a false standard of
' Jar. L 87, 147 ; x. 172 ; of. Sen. » Tac. Hiai, ii. 64 ; cf. Plin. Ep, iv.
^at Q.^m.%\\J)t Ira, ii 8 sq. 19 ; ill. 16 ; D. Cass. 6S. 5 ; Sen. ad
' •.g, the picture of Otho, ii 99 ; Hdv, xiy. of Meesalina, Ti 114; Lateranos, yiii . ^ . ._ ... ..„ .^o
146; ^annB, x. 66 ; aoero, eto.) yiu. * J^^' "• ^^^ ' "^ 1^2, 188.
281. • xi 78.
F
66 SOCIAL LIFE book i
life, degraded great bouses, and flooded the city with an alien crew of astrologers and grammarians, parasites and pimps.
Modem criticism has laboured hard to correct some of the harsher judgments on the luxury and self-indulgence of the period of the early Empira Perhaps the scholarly reaction against an indictment which had degenerated sometimes into ignorant commonplace, may have been carried here and there too far. The testimony of Tacitus is explicit that the luxury of the table reached its height in the hundred years extending from the battle of Actium to the accession of Vespasian.^ It was a period of enormous fortunes spent in enormous waste. Seneca or PaUas or Narcissus had accumulated wealth probably three or four times greater than even the fortune of a Crassus or a Lucullus. The long peace, the safety of the seas, and the freedom of trade, had made Bome the entrepot for the peculiar products and the delicacies of every land from the British Channel to the (ranges. The costly variety of these foreign dainties was vulgarly paraded at every great dinner- party. Palaces, extending almost over the area of a town, were adorned with marbles from the quarries of Paros, Laconia, Phrygia, or Numidia,^ with gilded ceilings and curious panels changing with the courses of the banquet,' with hundreds of tables of citrus- wood, resting on pillars of ivory, each costing a moderate fortune, with priceless bronzes and masterpieces of ancient plate. Nearly a million each year was drained away to the remoter East, to purchase aromatics and jewels for the elaborate toilette of the Boman lady.^ Hundreds of household slaves, each with his minute special function, anticipated every want, or ministered to every passion of their masters. Every picturesque or sheltered site on the great lakes, on the Anio, or the Alban hills, in the Laurentine pine forests, or on the bays of Campania, was occupied by far-spreading country seats. Lavish expenditure and luxurious state was an imperious duty of rank, even without the precept of an emperor.* The senator who paid too low a rent, or rode along the Appian or Flaminian Way with too scanty a train,
1 Tac Ann, iii. 65 ; Sen. Ad Helv, « Plin. JI.N. vi. 26 ; is. 58 ; zii.
T.S ; Ep. 89, § 22. 41. Cf. FiiedL iii p. 80 ; Maiq. BSm.
« SUtiufl, Silv, V. 86; iL 86. ^.\^^: ^r ^v.. ^.^
' Suet Nero, zxz. patabat aordidot
' PetroD. a 60 ; Sen. Ep. 96, § 9 ; ac parcoa ease quibus ratio impensamm
FriedL SiUengesch. iii p. 67. oonstaret, etc.
CHAP. II THE WORLD OF THE SATIRIST 67
became a marked man, and immediately lost caste.^ These things are the merest commonplace of the social history of the time.
Yet, in spite of the admitted facts of profusion and self- indulgence, we may decline to accept Juvenal's view of the luxury of the age without some reserve. It is indeed no apology for the sensuality of a section of the Boman aristocracy in that day, to point out that the very same excesses made their appearance two centuries before him, and that they will be lamented both by Pagan and Christian moralists three centuries after his death. But these facts suggest a doubt whether the cancer of luxury had struck so deep as satirists thought into the vitals of a society which remained for so many centuries erect and strong. Before the end of the third century B.a, began the long series of sumptuary laws which Tiberius treated as so futile.* The elder Pliny and Livy date the introduction of luxurious furniture from the return of the army in 1 88 B.C., after the campaign in Asia.^ Crassus, who left, after the most prodigal expenditure, a fortune of £1,700,000, had a town house which cost over £60,000.* The lavish banquets of LucuUus were proverbial, and his villa at Misenum was valued at £24,000. It was an age when more than £1000 was given for a slave-cook or a pair of silver cups.* Macrobius has preserved the menu of a pontifical banquet, at which Julius Caesar and the Vestals were present, and which in its costly variety surpassed, as he says, any epicurism of the reign of Honorius.^ And yet Ammianus and S. Jerome level very much the same charges against the nobles of the fourth century,^ which satire makes against the nobles of the first. When we hear the same anathemas of luxury in the days of Lucullus and in the reign of Honorius, separated by an interval of more than five centuries, in which the Boman race stamped itself on the page of history and on the face of nature by the most splendid achievements of military virtue and of civilising energy, we are inclined to question either the report of our authorities, or the satirist's interpretation of the social facts.
1 Sen. Ep. 87, § 4 ; Suet. Tih, xxxy. ; > lb, 418 ; cf. Plin. H,N, ix. 80, 81 ;
FriadL i 196. x. 23 ; Plut. LueM, c. 40 ; Macrob.
3 lir. xzxiT. 1 ; Tac Awti. iiL 68, 54. Sal, iii. 13, § 1.
» liv. xxxix. 6, 7 ; Marq. ?Hv, i. 62, • Macrob. Sai, iii. 18, § 11.
162 ; MomiDB. R. Hiat, iL 409. ? Hieron. Ep. 117, § 8 ; Amm. Maro.
* Momma. R, Hiti, iii. 417. xiv. 6, 7 ; xxviii. 4.
es SOCIAL LIFE book i
The good faith of the elder Pliny, of Seneca and Juvenal, need not, indeed, be called in question. But the first two were men who led by preference an almost ascetic life. The satirist was a man whose culinary tastes were satisfied by the kid and eggs and asparagus of his little farm at libur.^ And the simple abstemious habits of the south, which are largely the result of climate, tended to throw into more startling contrast any indulgence of superfluous appetite. It is true that the conquests which unlocked the hoarded treasures of eastern monarchies, gave a great shock to the hardy frugality and self-restraint of the old Soman character, just as the stem simplicity of Spartan breeding was imperilled by contact with the laxer life of the Hellespontine towns and the wealth of the Persian court* The Boman aristocracy were for two centuries exposed to the same temptations as the treasures of the Incas offered to Pizarro,' or the treasures of the Moguls 10 Clive. In the wild licence, which prevailed in certain circles for mora than a century, many a fortune and many a character were wrecked. Yet the residt may easily be exaggerated. Extravagant luxury and self-indulgence is at all times only possible to a comparatively small number. And luxury, after all, is a relative term. The luxuries of one age often become the necessities of the next. There are many articles of food or dress, which free-trade and science have brought to the doors of our cottagers, which would have incurred the censure of the elder Pliuy or of Seneca. There are aldermanic banquets in New York or the city of London in our own day, which far surpass, in costliness and variety, the banquets of Lucullus or the pontiff's feast described by Macrobiu& The wealth of Pallas, Narcissus, or Seneca, was only a fraction of many a fortune accumulated in the last thirty years in the United States.^ The exaggerated idea of Boman riches and waste has been further heightened by the colossal extravagance of the worst emperors and a few of their boon companions and imitators. But we are apt to forget that these were the outbreaks of morbid and eccentric character, in which the last feeble restraints were sapped and swept away by the sense of
1 Juv. xi. 69. « Tao. Awn, zii. 68 (Pallas); D.Casa.
* Thucyd. i. 95. 60. 84 (NaroiBsus) ; Tao. Awn, xiii. 42 ;
* Prescott, Chnqued of Pwu, I 804. D. Oass. 61. 10 ; oil Duray, v. p. 598.
CHAP. II THE WORLD OF THE SATIRIST 69
having at command the resources of a world. Nero is expressly described by the historian as a lover of the impos- sible;^ and both he and Caligula had floating before their disordered imaginations the dieam of astounding triumphs, even over the most deiiant forces and barriers of natura There was much in the extravagance of their courtiers and imitators, springing from the same love of sensation and display. Bome was a city of gossip, and the ambition to he talked about, as the inventor of some new freak of prodigality, was probably the only ambition of the blas^ spendthrift of the time.
Tet, after all the deductions of scrupulous criticism, the profound moral sense of Juvenal has laid bare and painted with a realistic power, hardly equalled even by Tacitus, an unhealthy temper in the upper classes, which was full of periL He has also revealed, alongside of this decline, a great social change, we may even call it a crisis, which the historian, generally more occupied with the great figures on the stage, is apt to ignore. The decay in the morale and wealth of the senatorial order, together with the growing power of a new moneyed class, the rise to opulence of the freedman and the petty trader, the invasion of Greek and Oriental influences, and the perilous or hopeful emancipation, especially of women, from old Boman conventionality, these are the great facts in the social history of the first century which, under all his rhetoric, stand out clearly to the eye of the careful student of the satirist
The famous piece, in which Juvenal describes an effeminate Fabius or Lepidus, before the mutilated statues and smoke- stained ped:^;Jee of his house, rattling the dice-box till the dawn, or sunk in the stupor of debauch at the hour when his ancestors were sounding their trumpets for the march,' has, for eighteen centuries, inspired many a homily on the vanity of mere birth. Its moral is now a hackneyed ona But, when the piece was written, it must have been a powerful indictment For the respect for long descent was still deep in the true Boman, and was gratified by fabulous genealogies to the end. Pliny extols Trajan for reserving for youths of illnstrions birth the honours due to their race.' Suetonius recounts the twenty-eight consulships, five dictatorships, seven
» TW. Ann, XT. 42. • Jut. Tiii. 10. ■ Plin. Pameg. 6».
70 SOCIAL LIFE book i
censorships, and many triumphs which were the glory of the great Claudian house/ and the similar honours which had been borne by the paternal ancestors of Nero.' Tacitus, although not himself a man of old family, has a profound belief in noble tradition, and sometimes speaks with an undisguised scorn of a low alliance.' As the number of the " Trojugenae " dwindled, the pride of the vanishing remnant probably grew in proportion, and a clan like the Calpumian reluctantly yielded precedence even to Tiberius or Nero.* It is a sign of the social tone that the manufacture of genealogies for the new men, who came into prominence from the reign of Vespasian, went on apace. A Trojan citizen in the days of Apollonius traced himself to Friam.^ Herodes Atticus claimed descent from the heroes of Aegina,^ just as some of the Christian friends of S. Jerome confidently carried their pedigree back to Aeneas or Agamemnon/ Juvenal would certainly not have accepted such fables, but he was no leveller. He had a firm belief in moral heredity and the value of tradi- tion. Plebeian as he was, he had, like Martial, his own old Eoman pride, which poured contempt on the upstarts who, with the stains of servile birth or base trade upon them, were crowding the benches of the knights. He would, indeed, have applauded the mot of Tiberius, that a distinguished man was his own ancestor ; ' he recalls with pride that one humble son of Arpinum had annihilated the hordes of the Gimbri, and another had crushed the rising of Catiline.^ But he had the true Boman reverence for the Curii, Fabii, and Scipios, and would gladly salute any of their descendants who reproduced their virtues.
It is a melancholy certainty that a great many of the sena- torial class in Juvenal's day had fallen very low in all things essential to the strength of a great caste. Their numbers had long been dwindling,^^ owing to vicious celibacy or the cruel proscriptions of the triumvirate and the four Claudian Caesars, or from the unwiUingness or inabiUty of many to support the
1 Suet Tib, L Of. the faneral • Philostr. ViL Soph. iL 1.
oration of Julius Caesar oyer his aunt, i Hieron. Ep. 108, § 4.
quoted by Suet JuL Goes, 6. e Tac Ann, xL 21, Curtius Rufos
• ir* -™^» ^ . „- videtur mihi ex se natas.
» Tac Ann, ti. 38. ...
4 /5^ j^Y. 48. ^^^' ^"' ^^ ^^*
» Phhoftr. Apofl. Tyan, It. 12. '* Tac Awn, xi 25.
CHAP. II THE WORLD OF THE SATIRIST 71
burdens of their rank. It was a rare thing in many great houses to reach middle age.^ Three hundred senators and two thousand knights had fallen in the proscription of the second triumvirate.* The massacre of old and young of both sexes, which followed the fall of Sejanus, must have extinguished many an ancient line ; not a day passed without an execution.' Three hundred kn^hts and thirty-five senators perished in the reign of Claudius.* Very few of the most ancient patrician houses were left when Claudius revised the lists of the Senate, and introduced a fresh element from GauL^ Who can tell the numbers of those who fell victims to the rage or greed or suspicion of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian ? The list must have been enormously swelled by the awful year of the four emperora Vespasian found it necessary to recruit the ranks of the aristocracy from Italy and the provinces.^
At the same time, prodigality or confiscation had rendered many of those who survived unable to maintain their rank, and to bear the social and official burdens which, down to the end of the Western Empire were rigorously imposed on the great order. The games of the praetorship in the first century, as in the fifth/ constituted a tax which only a great fortune could easQy bear. Aristocratic poverty became common. As early as the reign of Augustus, the emperor had found it politic to subsidise many great familie&' The same policy had been continued by Tiberius, Nero, and Vespasian.^ Tiberius, in- deed, had scrutinised and discouraged some of these claims on grounds which the treasury officials of every age would applaud.^^ A grandson of the great orator Hortensius once made an appeal in the Senate for the means of support- ing ihe dignity of his name He had received a grant from Augustus to enable him to rear a family, and four sons were now waiting at the doors of the Curia to second his prayer. Hortensius, who was the great rival of Cicero, had possessed immense wealth. He had many splendid villas, he used to give dinners in his park, around which the deer would troop
1 Sen. Dt Ira, iL 88, § 2 ; Juv. iy. 96. ' Suet Vetp, ix. ; of. Tac Arvn, iii. 65.
\ f P?*^A?' *^'i?* 1. • ' Sym- J^ it 78 ; Soeck, Prd, xlvi.
* Soet 2V& 61, nmluB a poena homi- ■ o * /%1, v
non oewavit die^ S"^®^ ^^^^' "^^
« Id. Clatyd. xxix. • W. Nero, x. ; Vesp. xvii.
* Tao. AmL xL 25. ^^ Tac. Ann. ii. 87. 88.
1^1
72 SOCIAL LIFE book i
tx) the lute of a slave-Orpheus; he left 10,000 casks of old Chian in his cellars. His mendicant and spiritless descendant had to go away with a cold withering refusal from Tiberius, softened by a contemptuous dole to his sona The revision of the senatorial roll by Claudius in 48 A.D., revealed a por- tentous disappearance of old houses of the fiepublic, and the gaps had to be filled up from the provinces in the teeth of aristocratic exclusiveness.^ Among the boon companions of Nero there must have been many loaded with debt, like Otho and Yitellius. The Corvinus in Juvenal who is keeping sheep on a Laurentine farm, and his probable kinsman who obtained a subsidy from Nero, the Fabii and Mamerd who were dancing and playing the harlequin on the comic stage, or selling their blood in the arena, must represent many a wreck of the great houses of the Bepublia' Among the motley crowd who swarm in the hall of the great patron to receive the morning dole, the descendants of houses coeval with the Boman State are pushed aside by the freedmen from the Euphrates.' But aristocratic poverty knew no lower depth of degradation than in the hungry adulation which it offered to the heirless rich. Captation became a regular profession in a society where trade, industry, and even professional skill, were treated as degrading to the men of gentle blood.^ It is characteristic of Juvenal that he places on the same level the legacy-hunter, who would stoop to any menial service or vicious compliance, with the honest tradesfolk, in whose ranks, if we may judge by their funerary inscriptions, was to be found, perhaps, the wholesomest moral tone in the society of the early Empire.
In a satire written after Domitian's death,^ Juvenal has described a scene of fatuous adulation which, if not true in fact, is only too true to the character of the time. A huge mullet, too large for any private table, had been caught in a bay of the Adriatic. Its captor hastens through winter storms to lay his spoil at the emperor's feet The kitchen of the Alban palace had no dish large enough for such a monster, and
1 Tac Ann, zL 25 ; D. Cass. Ix. 29. ' Jay. i. 108.
The last revuiion of the Senate was in 4 petron. Sat. c. 116, 124 ; Plin. Bp.
the reign of Angnstus ; D. Cass. Iv. ^j gO : Juv. i 37 ; iii 81. 18
« Tac. Ann, xiii. 84 ; Juv. i. 107. • Jnv. iv. ; i. 27.
CHAP. II THE WORLD OF THE SA TIRIST 73
a ooimcil of trembling senators is hastily summoned to con- Bult on the emergency. Thither came the gentle Crispus, that Acilios, whose son was to be the victim of the despot's jealousy, Bubrius tainted with a nameless crime, the bloated Montanns, and Crispinus, once an Egyptian slave, now a vulgar exquisite, reeking with unguents. There, too, was the informer whose whisper stabbed like a stiletto, the lustful, blind Catullus, and the arch flatterer Yeiento, who had revelled at the Gargantuan feasts of Nero from noon till midnight These are worthy brethren of the assembly who stabbed Proculus to death with their stiles at the nod of the freedman of Caligula,^ and led Nero home in triumphal pro- oeaaion after his mother's murder.*
Many things had contributed to the degradation of the senatorial character. The dark and tortuous policy of Tiberius tended, indeed, to absolutism ; yet he still maintained a tone of deference to the Senate, and sometimes, with cold good sense, repelled a too eager adulation.' But, in the reigns of Caligula and Nero, the great order had to submit to the deepest personal d^radation, and were tempted, or compelled by their masters to violate every instinct of Boman dignity. llie wild epileptic frenzy of Caligula, who spared not the virtue of his sisters,^ as he boasted of his own incestuous birth,* who claimed divine honours,^ temples, and costly sacrifices, who, as another Endymion, called the Moon to his embraces, who dreamt of obliterating the memory of Homer and Virgil and Livy, was not likely to spare the remnant of self-respect still left in his nobles.^ He gave an immense impetus to the rage for singing, dancing, and acting,* for chariot-driving and fighting in the arena, not unknown before, which Juvenal and Tacitus brand as the most flagrant sign of d^enerate morals. There was indeed a great conflict of sentiment under the early Empire as to some of these arts. Julius Caesar had encouraged or permitted Boman senators and knights to fight in the gladiatorial combats, and a Laberius
1 D. ObsB. lis. 2d. " lb, xxiii.
' Tic. ulftn. xir. 12. ' ^' ^"^ ! cf. Sen. Dt Ira, L 20.
» *i <L TA 1 'L ' ^'^^^ CkUig. xxxiy. xxxr. veten
sfnet. 2w. IZYU. familiarum inBignia nobUisaimo ooiqne
* Calig. zziiL zxir. ; of. L. oomitiali ademit ; xxii. morbo rexatat, which explains mnch ' lb. liv. ly. qnornm vero stndio
to a medical man. teneretor, omnibns ad inaaniaro (kvit.
74 SOCIAL LIFE book i
to act in his own play.^ But a decree of the Senate, not long afterwards, had placed a ban on these exhibitions by men of noble rank.' Tiberius, who was, beyond anything, a haughty aristocrat, at a later date intervened to save the dignity of the order.^ But the rage of the rabble for these spectacles had undoubtedly caught many in the ranks of the upper class. And Caligula and Nero ^ found, only too easily, youths of birth and breeding, but ruined fortune, who were ready to exhibit themselves for a welcome dcmceur, or to gain the favour of the prince, or even to bring down the applause of the crowded benches of the amphitheatre or the circus. Yet the old Eoman feeling must have been very persistent, when a man like Domitian, who posed as a puritan, found it politic to remove from the Senate one who had dis- graced his order by dancing in the pantomime, and even laid his interdict on all public theatrical performances.^ The revels and massacres and wild debauchery of Nero did not so much to hasten his destruction as his singing his catches to the lute, or appearing in the parts of the incestuous Canace and the matricide Orestes.^ From every part of the world, in all the literature of the time, there is a chorus of astounded indignation against the prince who could stoop to pit himself against Greek players and singers at Delphi or Olympia. Juvenal has been reproached for putting the chariot- driving of Damasippus in the same category with the Yerrine plunder of provinces.^ He is really the exponent of old Boman sentiment. And it may be doubted whether, from the Boman point of view, Juvenal might not justify himself to his critics. Even in our own emancipated age, we might be pardoned for feeling a shock if an English prime minister rode his own horse at the Derby, or appeared in a risky part on the boards of the Gaiety. And the collective sense of senatorial self-respect was too precious to a Boman patriot and moralist, to be flung away for mere love of sport, or in a fit of spurious artistic enthusiasm. Nero, and in an even lower fashion Caligula, were rebels against old Boman conventional restraints,
' Snet. JuL Oaes, zzxiz. seuatorio ordine aniigantibiis ; D.
« D. Caas. xlviiL 48. ^J^'rH^ ^^i. ^''?> ^^' "^
• Id. Dam, viil. vu.
» Suet Tiberius, xxxv. • id. JV«ro, xx. xxi
* Id. Cb/^ zyiii. hoc ollia nlai ex ^ Jot. yiii. 89, 147.
CHAP. II THE WORLD OF THE SA TIRIST 75
and it is possible that some of the hideous tales about them, which were spread in the " circuli," may have been the venge- ance of Boman pride on shameless social revolutionaries, who paraded their contempt for old-fashioned dignity and for social tradition. Nero was never so happy as when he was deafened with applause, and smothered with roses at the Greek festivals. He had once predicted for him a monarchy in those regions of the East,^ where he would have escaped from the tradition of old Boman puritanism, and combined all the ingenious sensu- ality of Syria with the doubtful artistic taste of a decadent Hellenism. The cold haughty refinement of senatorial circles of the old regime, and the rude honest virtue of the plebeian soldiery/ rightly nustrusted this false sensational artist on the throne of the world.
Art, divorced from moral ideals, may become a danger- ous thing. The emperor might spend the morning with his favourites in patching up lilting verses which would run well to the lute.' But the scene soon changed to a revel, where the roses and music hardly veiled the grossness of excess. The " noctes Neronis " made many a debauchee and scattered many a senatorial fortune.^ And amid all this elaborate luxury and splendour of indulgence, there was a strange return to the naturalism of vice and mere blackguardism. A Messalina or a Nero or a Petronius developed a curious taste for the low life that reeks and festers in the taverns and in the stews. Bohemiamsm for a time became the fashion.^ Its very gross- ness was a stimulant to appetites jaded with every diabolical refinement of vicious ingenuity. The distinguished dinner party, with the emperor at their head, sallied forth to see how the people were living in the sluma Many a scene from these midnight rambles has probably been preserved in the tainted, yet brilliant, pages of the ScUiricon. Petronius had probably often plunged with Nero after night-fall into those low dens, where slave minions and sailors and the obscene priests of the Great Mother were roistering together, or sunk in the slumber
^ Snet. Nen, zL ; v. KrauBe, De Been, bore all the marks of originality.
aw£ion. FontibuB, pp. 67, 80 ; Peter, Philostr. Apoll. Ti/an. iy. 89 ; Maoe, OttdL LUL ii. 69. SuOone, p. 127 ; Boiesier, VOpp. p.
• Tae. Anai. xr. 67. 248.
» Ih. xiT. 16 ; at Snet N^ro, hi., 4 g^^t Nero xxvii
where Snetonina distinctly lays that '
•ome of Nero*8 Teraea, wmch he had * Ih, xxvi. ; ct Jar. yi 116.
76 SOCIAL UFE book i
of debauch.^ These elegant aristociats found their sport in rudely assaulting quiet citizens returning from dinner, or plundering some poor huckster's stall in the Suburra, or insult- ing a ladj in her chair. In the fierce faction fights of the theatre, where stones and benches were flying, the Emperor had once the distinction of breaking a praetor's head.* It was nobles trained in this school, experts in vice, but with no nerve for arms, who encumbered the train of Otho on his march to the sanguinary conflict on the Po.'
The demoralisation of a section of the upper class under the bad emperors must have certainly involved the degradation of many women. And one of the most brilliant and feunous of Juvenal's Satires is devoted to this unsavoury subject The " Legend of Bad Women " is a graphic picture, and yet it suffers from a defect which spoils much of Juvenal's work. Full of realistic power, with an undoubted foundation of truth, it is too vehement and sweeping in its censures to gain full credenca It is also strangely wanting in balance and due order of idea.^ The problem of marriage is illustrated by a series of sketches of female manners, which are very disconnected, and, indeed, sometimes inconsistent. Thorough depravity, superstition, and ignorant devotion, interest in literature and public affairs, love of gymnastic and decided opinions on Virgil — in fact, vices, innocent hobbies, and laudable tastes are all thrown together in a confused indictment. The bohemian man of letters had heard many a iscandal about great ladies, some of them true, others distorted and exaggerated by prurient gossip, after passing through a hundred tainted imaginations. In his own modest class, fenude morality, as we may infer from the Inscriptions and other sources, was probably as high as it ever was, as high as the average morality of any age.^ There were aristocratic families, too, where the women were as pure as Lucretia or Cornelia, or any matron of the olden days.^ The ideal of purity, both in men and women, in some circles was actually rising. In the families of Seneca, of Tacitus, of Pliny and Plutarch, there were, not
^ Jny. yiii. 17Z SaL des Juv, p. 7.
* Snet Nero, xxvL ' Dnray, y. 678 ; Boissier, Jtel, Rom,
* Tac ffist. i. 88. iL 283 sqq.
^ See some admirable ciitiaiBm in * Plin. Bp. iv. 19 ; iii. 16 ; iii 8 ; Nettieship'fl Lectures and ^SSmojm, 2nd Sen. Ad Helv, xiv. zix. ; D. Cass, fleriee, p. 141 ; cf. Monding, Uber die Ixviii. 6 ad fin.
CHAP. II THE WORLD OF THE SA TIRIST 77
only the most spotless and high-minded women, there were also men with a rare conception of temperance and mutual love, of reverence for a pure wedlock, to which S. Jerome and S. Augustine would have given their benediction. Even Ovid, that " debauchee of the imagination/' writes to his wife, from his exile in the Scythian wilds, in the accents of the purest affection.^ And, amid all the lubricity of his pictures of gallantry, he has not lost the ideal of a virgin heart, which repels and disarms the libertine by the spell of an im- pr^nable purity.' Plutarch's ideal of marriage, at once severe and tender, would have satisfied S. Paul' Favorinus, the friend and contemporary of Plutarch, thought it not beneatli the dignity of philosophic eloquence to urge on mothers the duty of suckling and personally caring for their infants.^ Seneca and Musonius, who lived through the reign of Nero, are equally peremptory in demanding a like continence from men and from women. And Musonius severely con- demns concubinage tuid vagrant amours of every kind; the man guilty of seduction sins not only against another, but against his own souL^ Dion Chrysostom was probably the first of the ancients to raise a clear voice against the traffic in frail beauty which has gone on pitilessly from age to age. Nothing could exceed the vehemence with which he assails an evil which he regards as not only dishonouring to human nature, but charged with the poison of far spreading corruption.^ Juvenal's ideal of purity, therefore, is not peculiar to himself. The great world was bad enough; but there was another world beside that whose infamy Juvenal has inmiortalised.
It is also to be observed that Juvenal seems to be quite as much under the influence of old Eoman conventionality as of permanent moral ideals. He condemns eccentricities, or mere harmless aberrations fit)m old-fashioned rules of propriety, as ruthlessly as he punishes lust and crime. The blue-stocking who is a purist in style, and who balances, with deafening
1 Or. TtUL iii 8, 16— ii. 599 ; iiL 440, 618 ; Denis, IdAes
^ . , 4 «i ^ 4 _ , Morales, iL 124.
OndjM»m «>b.H>t: rtocto Um«> amni., , p^ ^^^ ad Uxor, x.; Coni.
Bt ptDB in noatro peetore parte tenaa. Praec ir. xliv. xlvii.
lb loqoor ftbtentem; t« vox tarn nominat 4 ^, Qgjl. xii. 1.
KulT^ -n. U nox mlM, null. dlM. ' ^}?! 'j- ^8* = Z*"*"-' ^ P*«- "^
Qn€ch. ui. 1, p. 660.
> IcL AfMT. iiL 4, 8 ; at An Am, • D. Chrys. Or. viL 133.
78 SOCIAL LIFE book i
volubility, the merits of Homer and Virgil,^ the eager gossip who has the very freshest news from Thrace or Parthia, or the latest secret of a tainted family,^ the virago who, with an intolerable pride of virtue, plays the household tyrant and delivers curtain lectures to her lord,' seem to be almost as detestable in Juvenal's eyes as the doubtful person who has had eight husbands in five years, or one who elopes with an ugly gladiator,* or tosses off two pints before dinner.* We may share his disgust for the great ladies who fought in the arena and wrestled in the ring,* or who order their poor tire- women to be flogged for deranging a curl in the towering architecture of their hair.^ But we cannot feel all his contempt for the poor penitent devotee of Isis who broke the ice to plunge thrice in the Tiber on a winter morning, and crawled on bleeding knees over the Campus Martins, or brought a phial of water from the Nile to sprinkle in the fane of the goddess.* Even lust, grossness, and cruelty, even poisoning and abortion, seem to lose some of their blackness when they are compared with an innocent literary vanity, or a pathetic eagerness to read the future or to soothe the pangs of a guilty conscience.
The truth is that Juvenal is as much shocked by the " new woman " as he is by the vicious woman. He did not under- stand, or he could not acquiesce in the great movement for the emancipation of women, which had set in long before his time, and which, like all such movements, brought evil with it as well as good. There is perhaps nothing more striking in the social history of Borne than the inveterate conservatism of Soman sentiment in the face of accomplished change. Such moral rigidity is almost necessarily prone to pessimism. The Gk)lden Age lies in the past ; the onward sweep of society seems to be always moving towards the abyss. The ideal past of the Soman woman lay more than two centuries and a half behind the time when Juvenal was bom. The old Soman matron was, by legal theory, in the power of her husband, yet assured by religion and sentiment a dignified position in the family, and treated with profound, if somewhat cold, respect ; she was busied with household cares,
^ Juv. vL 436 — ' Juv. vi. 400 sqq.
Oommittit vateB et comparat ; inde Mftroncm, s /^^ 268 ' Ih 252.
^^ «««!;; ^"^ *" *"'^*'" stiBpendlt no. 4 z^; job! 60. ' li 498.
Oedunt grammatici, viuountur rfaetores— iv* 427. " /6. 52S.
CHAP. II THE WORLD OF THE SATIRIST 79
ind wanting in the lighter graces and charms, austere, self- contained, and self- controlled. But this severe ideal had begun to fade even in the days of the elder Cato.^ And there is hardly a fiEialt or vice attributed by Juvenal to the women of Domitian's reign, which may not find parallel in the nine or ten generations before Juvenal penned his great indictment against the womanhood of his age. The Soman lady's irritable pride of birth is at least as old as the rivalry of the two Fabiae in the fourth century.* The elder Cato dreaded a rich wife as much as Juvenal,' and satirised as bitterly the pride and gossip and luxury of the women of his time. Their love of gems and gold ornaments and many-coloured robes and richly adorned carriages, is attested by Plautus and the impotent legis- lation of G. Oppius.^ Divorce and ghastly crime in the noblest familiftfl were becoming common in the days of the Second Punic War. About the same time began that emancipation of women firom the jealous restraints of Eoman law, which was to be carried further in the Antonine age.^ The strict forms of marriage, which placed the wife in the power of her husband, fell more and more into desuetude. Women attained more absolute control over their property, and so much capital became concentrated in their hands that, about the middle of; the second century B.C., the Voconian law was passed to pro-.; hibit bequests to them, with the usual futile result of such legislation.' Yet the old ideal of the industrious housewife never died out, and Boman epitaphs for ages record that the model matron was a wool-worker and a keeper at home. A't senator of the reign of Honorius praises his daughter for the same homely virtues.^ But from the second century B.c. the educa- tion of the Boman girl of the higher classes underwent a great change.' Dancing, music, and the higher accomplishments were no longer under a ban, although they were still suspected by people of the old-fashioned school. Boys and girls received the same training from the grammarian, and read their Homer and Ennius together.* There were women in the time of
» Momms. R, EUL iL 408 (Tr.). • Cic. in Verr, I 42. 107.
« Ur. vi 84. ' Sym. £p. vi. 67 ; cf. Suet Odav,
> Plut Cato Mey. c xz. ; Jut. vi Ixiv. ; Or. Rem. 2677, 4629, 4629,
165, 460. lanifica, pia, pudica, casta, domiseda.
* VaL Max. iL 1, 5 ; Liy. xxxiv. 1, 8 ; ^ Macrob. Sat, iiL 14, 11.
Mara. L p. 62. * Friedl. L 812 ; Boiasier, ReL Ram.
* Momnifl. R Hiit, iL 408. iL 240.
80 SOCIAL UFE book i
Lucretius, as in the time of Juvenal, who interlarded their conversation with Greek phrasea^ Cornelia, the wife of Pompey, was trained in literature and mathematics, and even had some tincture of philosophy.^ The daughter of Atticus, who became the wife of Agrippa, was placed under the tuition of a freedman, who, as too often happened, seems to have abused his trust.' Even in the gay circle of Ovid, there were learned ladies, or ladies who wished to be thought so/ Even Martial reckons culture among the charms of a woman. Seneca maintained that women have an equal capacity for culti- vation with men.^ Thus the blue-stocking of Juvenal, for whom he has so much contempt, had many an ancestress for three centuries, as she will have many a daughter till the end of the Western Empire.^ Even in philosophy, usually the last study to attract the female mind, Boman ladies were asserting an equal interest Great ladies of the Augustan court, even the empress herself, had their philosophic directors,^ and the fashion perhaps became still more general under M. Aureliu& Epictetus had met ladies who were enthusiastic admirers of the Platonic Utopia, but the philosopher rather slyly attributes their enthusiasm to the absence of rigorous conjugal relations in the Ideal Society.^ Even in the field of authorship, women were claiming equal rights. The Memoirs of Agrippina was one of the authorities of Tacitus.^ The poems of Sulpicia, mentioned by Martial/^ were read in Gaul in the days of Sidonius.^^ Greek verses, of some merit in spite of a pedantic affectation, by Balbilla, a friend of the wife of Hadrian, can still be read on the Colossus of Memnon." Calpurnia, the wife of Pliny, may not have been an author ; but she shared all Pliny's literary tastes ; she set his poems to music, and gave him the admiration of a good wife, if not of an impartial critia Juvenal feels as much scorn for the woman who is inter- ested in public affairs and the events on the frontier,^' as he feels for the woman who presumes to balance the merits of Virgil and Homer. And here he is once more at war with a
^ Luor. iv. 1160 ; Jut. yL 192. ^ Sen. Ad Mare. 4.
» Plut Pomp. Iv. ■ Epict Fr. liii
* Suet Oram, HL 16. » Tac Ann, iv. 68 ; of. Plin. H. N.
* Ov. Ar9 Am. u. 282. vii. 8, 46. " Mart x. 85 ; rii. 69.
* Mart xii. 98, 8 ; of. Sen. Ad Uelv. " Sid. ApoU. Caniu ix. 261. xvil ; Ad Marc. xvL " C.LQ. 4726-81.
* Olaad. Lam S&renae, 146. ^ Juv. yL 408 ; cf. 484.
CHAP. 11 THE WORLD OF THE SA TIRIST 81
great movement towards the equality of the sexes. From the days of Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, to the days of Flacidia, the sister of Honorins, Boman women exercised, from time to time, a powerful, and not always wholesome, influence on public afTairs. The politic Augustus discussed high matters of state with livia.^ The reign of Claudius was a reign of women and freedmen. Tacitus records, with a certain distaste for the innovation, that Agrippina sat enthroned beside Claudius on a lofty tribunal, to receive the homage of the captive Carac- tacua' Nero emancipated himself from the grasping ambition of his mother only by a ghastly crime. The influence of Gaenis on Vespasian in his later days tarnished his fame.' The influence of women in provincial administration was also becoming a serious force In the reign of Tiberius, Caecina Severos, with the weight of forty years' experience of camps, in a speech before the Senate, denounced the new-fangled custom of the wives of generals and governors accompanying them. abroad, attending reviews of troops, mingling freely with the soldiers, and taking an active part in business, which was not always favourable to pure administration.^ In the inscriptions of the first and second centuries, women appear in a more wholesome character as '' mothers of the camp," or patronesses of municipal towns and corporations.' They have statues dedi- cated to them for liberality in erecting porticoes or adorning theatres or providing civic games or feasts.^ And on one of Uiese tablets we read of a Ov/rid mtUierum at Lanuvium.^ We are reminded of the "chapter of matrons" who visited Agrippina with their censure,' and another female senate, under Elagabalns, which dealt with minute questions of precedence and graded etiquette.^ On the walls of Pompeii female ad- mirers posted up their election placards in support of their hvoorite candidatea^^ Thus Juvenal was fighting a lost battle, lost long before he wrote. For good or evil, women in the first and second centuries were making themselves a power.
1 Saet. Oclam, Izzziv. • Or. JTem, 6000, 4036, 5158, 4643,
' Ta4:. Ann. xii. 37, noYum sane et 5134, 3774, 2417, 4055, 4056, 7207,
ooribufl yetenxm insolitom, feminam 3815.
agpis Romania praeaidere. * lb. 3738, 3773, 6992.
* D. GaM. Ixvi. 14 ; cf. Saet. Fesp. ^ lb. 8740.
xri. ; Kranse, Be SueL Foniibut, p. 75. ^ Saet. Oalba, v.
* Tae. Ann. iii. 88 ; cf. i. 64 ; l 69, > Lamprid. Heliogab. !▼. ; of. Lam- aed femina [i. e. Agrippina] ingens animi prid. Aureiian. xlix.
Brania dads per eos aies indait, etc ^* Man, Pompeii (Eelaey Tr.), p. 479.
G
82 SOCIAL UFE book i
Although he was probably a very light believer in the old mythology,^ and treated its greatest figures with scant respect, Juvenal had all the old Soman prejudice against those eastern worships which captivated so many women of his day. And, here again, the satirist is assailing a movement which had set in long before he wrote, and which was destined to gain immense impetus and popularity in the two following centuries. The eunuch priests of the Great Mother, with their cymbals and Phrygian tiaras, had appeared in Italy in the last years of the Hannibalic War.* The early years of the second century B.a were con- vulsed by the scandals and horrors of the Dionysiac orgies, which fell on Bome like a pestilence.' The purity of women and the peace of fiEunilies were in serious danger, till the mischief was stamped out in blood. The worship of Isis found its way into the capital at least as early as Sulla, and defied the hesitating exclusion of Augustus.^ At this distance, we can see the raisxm dOtrt of what the satirist regarded as rel^ous aberrations, the full treatment of which must be reserved for another chapter. The world was in the throes of a religious revolution, and eagerly in quest of some fresh vision of the Divine, from whatever quarter it might dawn. The cults of the East seemed to satisfy cravings and emotions, which found no resting-place in the national religion. Their ritual appealed to the senses and imagination, while their mysteries seemed to promise a revelation of God and immor- tality. Their strange mixture of the sensuous and the ascetic was specially adapted to fascinate weak women who had deeply sinned, and yet occasionally longed to repent The repentance indeed was often shallow enough ; the festing and mortification were compatible with very light morals.* There were the gravest moral abuses connected with such worships as that of Magna Mater. It is well known that the temples of Isis often became places of assignation and guilty intrigue.^ An in- fatuated Boman lady in the reign of Tiberius had been seduced by her lover in the pretended guise of the god Anubis.^ The Ghaldaean seer or the Jewish hag might often
» Juv. ii. 81 ; iv. 34 ; xiii 38 ; vi. * Apul. MeL xL 817 ; Suet OcUn>.
394 ; viL 194. xciiL ; D. Ous. liiL 2.
2 Liv. xxix. 14. » CatulL x. 26 ; IMbull. i 8, 28 ; of.
* Ih, xxxix. 8 ; cf. Lafaye, CSdU de$ Juv, xiiL 98. * Or. An Am, i. 77.
JHv. (TAUaoandne, o. iiL ' FriedL StUengesch, I 847.
CHAP. II THE WORLD OF THE SA TIRIST 83
arouse dangerous hopes, or fan a guilty passion by casting a horoscope or reading a dream.^ But Juvenal's scorn seems to fall quite as heavily on the innocent votary who was striving to appease a burdened conscience, as on one who made her superstition a screen for vice.
In spite of the political extinction of the Jewish race, its numbers and influence grew in Italy. The very destruction of the Holy Place and the external symbols of Jewish worship threw a more impressive air of mystery around the dogmas of the Jewish fiuth, of which even the most cultivated Bomaus had only vague conceptions.' The Jews, from the time of the first Caesar, had worked their way into every class of society.' A Jewish prince had inspired Caligula with an oriental ideal of monarchy.^ There were adherents of Judaism in the household of the great freedmen of Claudius, and their growing influence and turbulence compelled that emperor to expel the race from the capital' The worldly, pleasure-loving Poppaea had, perhaps, yielded to the mysterious charm of the religion of Moses.^ But it was under the Flavians, who had such close associations with Judaea, that Jewish influences made themselves most felt And in the reign of Domitian, two members of the imperial house, along with many others, suffered for following the Jewish mode of life.^ Their crime is also described as "atheism," and Clemens is, in the old Boman spirit^ said to have been a man of the most ''con- temptible inactivity." In truth, the ''Jewish life" was a desoription which might cover many shades of belief and practice in religion, including Christianity it8el£ The seci^t worship of a dim, mysterious Power, Who was honoured \sj no imposing rites, a spirit of detachment and quietism, which shrank from games and spectacles and the scenes of fashion, and nursed the dream of a coming kingdom which was not of this world, excited the suspicion and contempt of the coarse, strenuous Boman nature. Yet^ in the gloom and deep corruption of that sombre time, such a life of retreat and renunciation had a strange charm for naturally
' Jnv. vi. 547. ^ Suet. Claude zzv.
• SeiL ^. 42 (in Aig. Dt Civ, Dei, ' ^ac. HuL i. 22 ; Dnmy. iv. 606. fi 11), TictiTictoribnsMgeadederant. ^ Suet Dom, xv. ; D. Caa& Ixvii.
* Cf. MeriT. vi. 6. 14 ; Ren. Les £r, p. 228.
84 SOCIAL LIFE booki
pious souls, especially among womea There were indeed many degrees of conformity to the religion of Palestine. While some were attracted by its more spiritual ride, othen confined themselves to an observance of the Sabbath, which became very common in some quarters of Bome under the Empire. The children, as Juvenal tells us, were sometimeB trained to a complete conformity to the law of Moses.' But Juvenal is chiefly thinking of the mendicant population from Palestine who swarmed in the neighbourhood of the Porta Capena and the grove of the Muses, practising all the arts which have appealed in all ages to superstitious womeo. Thus the Judaism of the times of Nero or Domitian might cover anything from the cunning of the gipsy fortune-teUer to the S€ul, dreaming quietism of Pomponia Graecina.*
Tet it must be admitted that, idthough Juvenal, in his attacks on women, has mixed up very real vice with 8upe^ stition and mere innocent eccentricity, or the explosive eneig7 of a new freedom, the real vices of many women of his time are a melancholy fact. The Messalinas and Poppaeas had many imitators and companions in their own class. It is true that even the licentious fancy of Ovid and Martial generally spares the character of the unmarried girL She was, in the darkest times, as a rule, carefully guarded from the worst corruptions of the spectacles,' or from the reckless advances of the hardened libertine, although an intrigue with a tutor was not unknown.^ Her marriage was arranged often in mere childhood, seldom later than her seventeenth year. A girl was rarely betrothed after nineteen.'^ Her temptations and danger often began on her wedding-day. That there was a high ideal of pure and happy marriage, even in the times of the greatest licence, we know from Pliny and Plutarch, and from Martial himself.^ But there were serious perils before the child-bride, when she was launched upon the great world of Boman society. A marriage of convenience with some member of a tainted race, VLaU with precocious and
1 Juv. xiv. 96 ; vL 644 ; iu. 16 ; • Mart iv. 18—
Ren. Ln £v. p. 284. ^,, ^ ,„ ^ _^ ^ .
« Tac. Ann: xiii, 82. iSSltol^ *•"*" quondam: aed et ip«
» Friedl. SiUtfMeack, i p. 882; cf. Plin. Tunc qnoqne cum fti«rlt» non vMeator anus.
Ep. vii. 24. * Suet lU, Oram, xvL _ . ^
• FriedL L 814 ; In»Gr. Or. 2666. Plat Conj. Prase xIit. xxxit. ; Phu.
2668, 4808. ^- i^- 19 ; vL 4 ; vii 6.
11 THE WORLD OF THE SATIRIST 80
toral indulgence, and ready to concede the conjugal .7 which he claimed, was a perilous trial to virtua The I of old Boman marriage had, for ages, been greatly dd, and the Boman lady of independent fortune and 3118, highly trained intellect, could easily find consolation larital neglect From Seneca to S. Jerome, the foppish lator of the great lady was a dangerous and suspected D,^ and not always without good causa Surrounded by an of slaveB and the other obsequious dependents of a great I, treated with profound deference, and saluted with the <m8 titles of domiiui and r«^9ia, the great lady's lightest 38 became law.^ Costly jewels and the rarest luxuries of the
poured in upon her from regions which were only visited le captains of Bed Sea merchantmen, or by some Pytha- n ascetic seeking the fountains of the wisdom of the East.' be political life of Bome had been extinguished by a 18 despotism, but social life in the higher ranks was never tense and so seductive, and women had their full share in Ladies dined out regularly with their husbands, even at mperor's table ; ^ and they were liable to be assailed by kitistic wiles of which Ovid taught the secret, or by the 1 advances of the lawless Caligula.' It was a time when 8 loved to meet anywhere, under the trees of the Cani- ICartius, in the colonnades of the theatre, or round the
of the public squares. Everywhere were to be seen
groups which spared no reputation, not even the em- ^8. And behind the chair of the young matron often "ad the dangerous exquisite, who could hum in a whisper atest suggestive song from Alexandria or Oades,^ who
the pedigree of every racehorse and the secret of every ;ae It is at such scenes that Tacitus is probably ing when he says that in Germany no one makes a jest )8» or calls the art of corruption the fashion of the world ;^ ity is not sapped by the seductions of the spectacles.
D. Ft, ziii de Mfttrimonio, ' Philoatr. AjpolL Tyan. iiL 86 ; Luo.
00 usecla et procurator calami- AUx, 44.
^ete.,aab quibiu nominibus adiU- ^ Tac. HiA, L 81, erat Otboni celebre
Uteacimt ; of. S. Hieron. Bp. 54, oonyivinm primoribus feminis virisque.
8. Jerome is eyidently imitat- D. Cass. Iz. 7. * Snet. CaXig, xxxvi.
Boeca; et Or. 689; Mart v. ' Ov. An Am. L 67; Fried]. L 281.
' Tac. Omm. 19, neo oorrumpere et
▼• tL 460 ; Sen. Fr. 51. oorrampi saeculnm Tocator.
86 SOCIAL LIFE book i
Augustus had, indeed, set apart the upper seats for women in the theatre and amphitheatre,^ but on the benches of the circus the sexes freely mingled. It was there, while the fiEUstions of the red and blue were shouting themselves hoarse, Ovid pointed out to his pupil in gallantry, that he had his fairest chance ot making a dangerous impression.^ Tet even Ovid is half in- clined to be shocked at the scenes on the stage which were witnessed by women and young boys.^ The foulest tales o{ the old mythology, the loves of Pasiphae or the loves of Leda, were enacted to the life, or told with a nakedness of language, compared with which even Martial might seem chaste.^ Not less degrading were the gladiatorial shows, so lavishly provided by Augustus and Trajan, as well a<) by Caligula and Domitian, at which the Vestals had a place of honour.^ It is little wonder that women accustomed to take pleasure in the suffer- ings and death of brave men, should be capable of condemning their poor slave women to torture or the lash for a sullen look, or a half-heard murmur. The grossness with which Juvenal describes the effect of the stage on the morals of women savours of the Suburra.^ But of the poisonous character of these per- formances there can be no doubt And actors, musicians, and gladiators became a danger to the peace of households, as well as to the peace of the streets. The artistes of the pantomime were sternly suppressed both by Tiberius and Domitian, and not without good cause.^ One famous dancer had the fatal honour of captivating Messalina.^ The empress of Domitian was divorced for her love of Paris.^ And the scandals which darkened the fame of the younger Faustina, and impeached the legitimacy of Commodus, even if they were false, must have rested on a certain ground of probability.^^ It is melancholy to hear that M. Aurelius had to restrain the excesses of Boman matrons even under the reign of the philosophers.^^ To all these perils must be added the allure- ments of household slavery. While a Musonius or a Seneca
^ Suet. Octov. xliv. * Saet Octov. xliv.
« Ov. An Am, L 180— • Jny. yt 62.
Nm ntii inoaitU temcnii toeibaa aims : ^' ^a^s. Iz. 22, 2S.
Adraetoaiit ooali multa pudoDda patL * Saet Dis/m, iii ; D. Cass. Izvii. 3.
Of. 616. " Capitol. M, ArU<m. xix.
* Mart iiL 86 aays of his poems— " ^^- zziii. mores matronamm coi^
Nod sunt baac mlnua tmptobiora ^ lege. posnit diffluentes, etc.
CHAP. II THE WORLD OF THE SATIRIST 87
was demanding equal chastity in man and woman, the new woman of Juvenal boldly claims a vicious freedom equal to her husband's.^ The testimony of Petronius is tainted by a suspicion of prurient imaginatioa But the student of other sources can hardly doubt that, in the first century, as in the fourth, the Boman lady of rank sometimes degraded herself by a senile Ivmon, A decree of Vespasian's reign, which his biographer tells us was called for by the general licence, punished the erring matron with the loss of her rank.^
These illustrations from other authorities may serve towards a judicial estimate of Juvenal's famous satire on women. That it is not a prurient invention is proved by the pages of Tacitus and Suetonius and the records of Boman morals for more than two centuries. On the other hand, it must be read with some reservations. Juvenal is a rhetorician with a fiery temperament, who will colour and exaggerate, if he will not invent He is. intensely prejudiced and conven- tionaly a man to whom desertion of ancient usage is almost as bad as a breach of the moral law, a man incapable of seeing that the evils of a new social movement may be more than com- pensated by the good which it brings. Moreover, the graver vices which he depicts with so much realistic power were certainly not so general as he implies. It is to be suspected that single instances of abnormal depravity have swelled in his heated imagination till they have become types of whole dasses of sinners. At the worst, these vices infected only a comparatively small class, idle, luxurious, enervated by the alave system, depraved by the example of a vicious court. Hie very scorn and indignation with which Juvenal pillories the aristocratic debauchee reveal the existence of a higher standard of virtue. Both the literature and the inscriptions of that age make us acquainted with a very different kind of woman. Over against the Hippia or Saufeia or Messalina of Juyenal we must set the pure and cultivated women whom we meet in the pi^^ of Pliny or Tacitus, or the poor soldier's ooncubine in the Inscriptions, who has all the self-denying love and Yirtne of our own cottagers' wives.'
^ Jav. Ti 281. janziaaet ancilla haberetnr ; cf. Mart.
* Suet. Vtgp, xL aactor senatai fuit vi 89 ; G. TK iv. 9, 1. decernendi ut qaa« ae alieno aervo * Or. Henz, 2669, 4658, 7888.
88 SOCIAL UFE book i
Just as Juvenal misunderstood the movement of female emancipation, which was to cuhninate in the legislation of the Antonine age, so has he misconceived some other great social movements of his time. Two in particular, the invasion of the new Hellenism and the rise of the Freedmen, he anathematises with the scorn and old Soman prejudice of the elder Cato.
There was nothing new in the invasion of Hellenism in the time of JuvenaL Nearly three hundred years before his day, the narrow conservatism of ancient Home was assailed by the cosmopolitan culture of Hellas, which it alternately hated and admired. The knowledge of Greek was widely diffused in Italy in the time of the Hannibalic war.^ Almost the last Soman of the ancient breed stooped in bis old age to learn Greek, in order to train his son in the culture of the world.' But there were two different aspects of Hellenism. There was the Hellenism represented by Homer and Plato and Chrysippus; and there was the Hellenism of the low comic stage, of the pimp and parasite. And there were reactions against the lower Greek influences long before the days of Juvenal. Cicero, who did more than any man of his race to translate Greek thought into Soman idiom, yet expressed as bitter a contempt as Juvenal's for the fickle, supple, histrionic Greek adventurer.' Juvenal is not waging war with that nobler Hellenism which had furnished models and inspiration to the great writers of the Augustan age, and which was destined to refashion Italian culture in the genera- tion following his death. The emperors, from Julius Caesar to M. Aurelius, were, with few exceptions, trained in the literature of Greece, and some of them gave a great impetus to Greek culture in the West. Augustus delighted in the Old Comedy, entertained Greek philosophers in his house, and sprinkled his private letters to Tiberius with Greek quotations.^ Tiberius, although he had lived at Shodes in his youth, seems to show less sympathy for the genius of Greece.^ Caligula also can hardly be claimed as a Hellenist Although he had once a wild dream of restoring the palaoe of Polycrates, and one, more sane, of a canal through the Corinthian Isthmus, he also
1 Momins. R. H. ii. 414 sqq. ^ Saet Oda/o. 89 ; Tib. 21.
' Ih, 469 ; of. Pint. CkUOf xxiii. ' Id. TiJb, 71, sermone Graeoo, qn&n-
3 Mahaffy, Greek World tmtUr qnara alioquin promptiis et faoilU, non
Boman Swafff p. 127. tamen uaqaeqaaqtio qsub est.
CHAF. 11 THE WORLD OF THE SA TIRIST 89
thought of wiping out the memory of the poems of Homer/ Dr. MahafTy is probably right in treating Claudius as the first really Hellenist emperor.^ like our own James I., Claudius was a learned and very ludicrous person. Tet he was perhaps not 80 contemptible a character as he is painted by Suetonius. He had, at any rate, the merit of being a lover of Greek litera- ture,' and he heaped honour on the country which gave it birth.^ He nised to quote Homer in his speeches in the Senate, and he composed histories in the Greek language, which, by an imperial ordinance, were to be read aloud r^ularly in the Museum of Alexandria.^ In spite of the vices and pompous follies of Nero, his phil-Hellenism seems to have been a genuine and creditable impulse. His visits to the Greek festivals, and his share in the competitions, were not all mere vanity. He had a futile passion for fame as an artist, and he sought the applause of the race which had a real artistic tradition.^ When we reach the plebeian Flavian race, Hellenism is still &voiired The bluff soldier, Vespasian, had an adequate com- mand of the Greek language, and was the first emperor who gave liberal endowments to Greek rhetoric.^ His son Domitian, that puzzling enigma, the libertine who tried to revive the morality of the age of Cato, the man who was said, but most improbably, to confine his reading to the memoirs of Tiberius, founded a quinquennial festival, with competi- tions, on the Greek model, in music, gymnastic, and horseman- ship. By drawing on the inexhaustible stores of Alexandria, he ftlso repaired the havoc which had been wrought in the Boman Ubraries by fire.' Already in Juvenal's life the brilliant sophistic movement had set in which was destined to carry the literary charm of Hellenism throughout the West From the dose of the first century there appeared in its full bloom that ingenious technique of style, that power of conquering all the difBculties of a worn-out or trifling subject, that deUcate command of all varieties of rhythm, which carried the tiavelling sophist through a series of triumphs wherever he wandered Classical Latin literature about the same time came
^ Soet. Oalig, zxL xxxiv. * lb, xliL
« Maha^, Tht Greek World, p. 256. • W. Nero, Iv. ent UU aeternitatia
• Sut CtouA XliL ^^d^'/^t '"^''^''* ^'""^^^
^ Tb. zxY. ^ Id. Dom, zz.
90 SOCIAL LIFE book i
to a mysterious end. The only authors of any merit in the seoond century wrote in both languages indifferently.^ And the great Emperor, who closes our period, preferred to leave his inner thoughts to posterity in Greek.
Juvenal, however, was not thinking of this great literary movement like so many cf his literary predecessors, who had been formed by the loftier genius of the Greek past, like Plautus and Cicero, he vented his rage on a degenerate Hellenism. His shafts were levelled at the suttlers and camp- followers of the invading army from the East The phenomena of Boman social history are constantly repeating themselves for centurie& And one of the most curious examples of perpetuity of social sentiment is the hatred and scorn for the Greek or Levantine character, from the days of Plautus and the elder Cato to the days of the poet Claudian.^ For more than 600 years, the Boman who had borrowed his best culture, his polish and ideas from the Greek, was ready to sneer at the "Greekling." The conquerors of Macedon could never forgive their own conquest by Greek knowledge and versatility, by which old Boman victories in the field had been avenged. And, as the pride of the imperial race grew with the con- sciousness of great achievements, the political d^radation and economic decay of Greece and Greek-speaking lands produced a type of character which combined the old cleverness and keenness of intellect with the moral defects of an impoverished and subject race. Something of Boman contempt for the Greek must be set down to that national prejudice and difference of temperament, which made our ancestors treat the great French nation, with all its brilliant gifts and immense contributions to European culture, as a race of posturing dancing-masters.' Such prejudices are generally more intense in the lower than in the upper and the cultivated classes. Juvenal, indeed, was a cultivated man, who knew Greek literature, and had been formed by Greek rhetors in the schools. But he was also a Boman plebeian, with that pride of race which is often as deep in the plebeian as in the aristocrat He gives voice to the
1 And many in the first century, Mackail, R, Lit, 2S2.
Plin.J^.iv.3;viii4,l;FriedLiiL860; "Pint Cato, c. xxii. ; Claud, /n
Martha, Ln MoralitUs mma V Empire EtUrop, U. 137, 839.
Rcnn. p. 267 ; Teaffel, R, LiL^Z^2\ * Juv. iii. 85.
CHAF. II THE WORLD OF THE SATIRIST 91
feeling of his class when he indignantly laments that the true- born Soman, whose infancy has drank in the air of the Aventine, should have to yield place to the supple, fawning stranger, who has come with the same wind as the figs and prunes. The Orontes is pouring its pollutions into the Tiber.^ Every trade and profession, from the master of the highest studies down to the rope-dancer and the pander, is crowded with hungry, keen-witted adventurers from the East Every island of the Aegean, every city of Asia, is flooding Some with its vices and its venal arts.' Quickness of intellect and depravity of morals, the brazen front and the ready tongue are driving into the shade the simple, unsophisticated honesty of the old Boman breed. At the morning receptions of the great patron, the poor Boman client, who has years of honest, quiet service to show, even the impoverished scion of an ancient oonsolar line, are pushed aside by some sycophant from the Euphrates,' who can hardly conceal the brand of recent servitude upon him. These men, by their smooth speech, their effrontery and ready wit, their infinite capacity for assuming every mood and humouiing every caprice of the patron, are creeping into the recesses of great houses, worming out their secrets, and mastering their virtue.^ Borne is becoming a Greek town,^ in which there will soon be no place for Bomans.
Much of this indictment, as we have said, is the offspring of prejudice and temperament But there was a foundation of truth under the declamation of Juvenal. The higher education of Boman youth had for generations been chiefly in the hands of men of Greek culture, from the days of Ennius and Crates of Mallus, before the third Punic War.^ The tutor's old title litercUtts had early given place to that of grammaHcu87 And, of the long line of famous grammcUid commemorated by Suetonius, there are few who were not by origin or culture connected with the Greek east Most of them had been freedmen of savants or great noblea' Some had
> JnT. iu. 6S tqq. ^ Suet III. Oram, i. u. antiquissimi
' /ft. iii 69-77. doctorum qui iidem et poetae et lemi*
' /&. i. 104. graeci erant (Livinm et Ennium dico),
* Ih, iii 72, Tisoora magnarum etc; Strab. vi 8, 5 ; A. GelL xrii. 17, i- domauin dominique fatnri. "^ Suet. lU, Oram, iv.
• Ih, iii. 60. * lb, XX. xix. xvi. xv.
92 SOCIAL LIFE book i
actually been bought in the slave market^ The profeBsion was generally ill-paid and enjoyed little con8ideration» and it was often the last resort of those who had failed in otiier and not more distinguished callings. Orbilius, the master of Horace, had been an attendant in a public office.^ Others had been pugilists or low actors in pantomima' Q. Benmiius Palaemon, whose vices made him infamous in the reign of Tiberius and Claudius, had been a house- slave, and was originally a weaver/ He educated himself while attending his young master at school, and by readiness, versatility, and arrogant self-assertion, rose to an income of more than £4000 a year. Sometimes they attained to rank and fortune by being entinisted with the tuition of the imperial children.^ But the grammarian, to the very end, as a rule never escaped the double stigma of doubtful origin and of poverty.
The medical profession, according to the elder Pliny, was a Greek art which was seldom practised by Bomans.^ Julius Caesar, by giving civic rights to physicians from Egypt and Hellenic lands,^ while he raised the status of the medical calling, also stimulated the immigration of foreign practitioners. The rank and fortxme attained by the court physicians of the early Caesars, Antonius Musa, the Stertinii,^ and others, which almost rivalled the medical successes of our own day, seemed to offer a splendid priza Tet the profession was generally in low repute.^ It was long recruited from the ranks of old slaves, and men of the meanest callings. Carpenters and smiths and undertakers flocked into it, often with only a training of six months.^® Gkden found most of his medical brethren utterly illiterate, and recommends them to pay a little attention to grammar in dealing with their patients.^^ They compounded in their own shops, and touted for practice.^^ They called in the aid of spells and witchcraft to reinforce their drugs. We need not believe all the coarse insinuations of Martial against their morality, any more than the sneers of Petronius against
^ Saet IlL Oram. ziiL Staberius ... ^ Saet Jul, Oae$, xliL
emptns de cataata. * D. Gaas. liii 80 ; Plln. HJf. xxiju
« lb. xiii. 4 ; OT' Heiu. 2988.
» 76. xviii. xxiii , 1^?;- ,^.221 ; Petron. 42 ;D. Cass.
4 Th ^^\\ ^^ 3' J !»«• 22 ; Mart iL 16 ; ▼. 9 ;
, „ '^'^' . ^. .... . ,,_ vi 81 ; VL 63 ; Tac. Ann. xL 81, 86.
• Ih. XYU- ; cf. Qumtiluui, it. Prooem. m Mart, i 81 * L 48 * viii 74 2 ; cf. Juv. viiL 186-97. u prfedl. SUtinffesch! I 281. '
• PUn. ff.N. xxix. 17. " Epiot iii. 28, 80, 27.
CHAP. II THE WORLD OF THE SATIRIST 93
their skilL Bat we are bound to conclude Ihat the profession held a verj different place in public esteem from that which it enjoys and deserves in our own time.
Astrology, which was the aristocratic form of divination, and involved in many a dark intrigue of the early Empire, was a Greek as well as a Chaldaean art The name of the practitioner often reveals his nationality. The Seleucus ^ and Ptolemaeus who affected to guide the fate of Otho, and the Ascletarion of Domitian's reign,^ are only representatives of a nameless crowd. And their strange power is seen in that tale of a Greek diviner, Pammenes, in the last years of Nero, whose horoscopes led to the tragic end of P. Anteius and Ostorius Scapula.' In other countless arts of doubtful repute, which ministered to the pleasure or amusement of the crowd, the Greek was always an adept But it was his success as a courtier and accom- plished flatterer of the great, which chiefly roused the scornful hatred of Juvenal and his fellows. The " adulandi gens pru- dentissima," would hardly have been guilty of the simple and obvious grossness of flattery which the rhetoric of Juvenal attributes to them.^ They knew their trade better than the Boman plebeian. It was an old and highly rewarded profes- sion in Greece, and had often been the theme of Greek moralists. Plutarch wrote an elaborate treatise on the difference between the sycophant and the true friend, in which he seems almost to exhaust the wily resources of the pretender. Lucian, with his delicate irony, seems almost to raise the Greek skill in adulation to the level of a fine art.'^ And the polished and versatile Greek, with his lively wit, his delicate command of expression, his cool audacity, and his unscrupulousness, was a fiirmidable rival of the coarser Boman parasite celebrated in Latin comedy. We can well imagine that the young Greek, firesh from the schools of Ionia, was a livelier companion at dinner than the proud Boman man of letters who snatched the dole and disdained himself for receiving it
There is perhaps no phase of Boman society in Domitian's day which we know more intimately than the life of the client It is photographed, in all its sordid slavery, by both Juvenal and MartiaL And Martial himself is perhaps the best example
^ Sost Otho, iv. yi. ' Tac. Ann, xvi. 14.
* Id. Z>9fik xiT. XT. ; cf. Tib, ziv. ; ^ Jav. iiL 100.
Hero, xxzri * Luc De Merc Cond, c. 16« 19.
»4 SOCIAL LIFE BOOK i
of a man of genius submitting, with occasional intervals of proud rebellion,^ to a d^radation which in our eyes no poverty could excuse. The client of the early Empire was a totally different person from the client of Bepublican times. In the dajrs of freedom, the tie of patron and client was rather that of clansman and chief; it was justified by political and social necessity, and ennobled by feelings of loytdty and mutual obligation. Under the Empire, the relation was tainted by the selfish materialism of the age; it had seldom any trace of sentiment The rich man was expected to have a humble train of dependents to maintain his rank and con- sequence. There was a host of needy people ready to do him such service. The hungry client rushed to his patron's morning reception, submitted to all his coldness and caprice, or to the insolence of his menials, followed his chair through the streets, and ran on his errands, for the sake of a miserable alms in money or in kind.^ The payment was sometimes supplemented by a cast-off doak, or an invitation at the last moment to fill a place at dinner, when perhaps it could not be accepted.' In the train which the great man gathered about him, to swell his importance, were to be seen, not only the starving man of letters, the loafer and mere mendicant, but the sons of ruined houses '' sprung from Troy," and even senators and men of consular rank who had a clientele of their own.^
Nothing throws a more lurid light on the economic condition of Italy in the time of the early Empire than this form of pensioned dependence. The impression which we derive from Juvenal and Martial is that of a society divided between a small class of immensely wealthy people, and an almost starving proletariat.^ Poverty seems almost universal, except in the freedman class, who by an industrial energy and speculative daring, which were despised by the true -bom Boman, were now rapidly rising to opulence. The causes of this plebeian indigence can only be glanced at here. The agricultural revolution, which ruined the small freeholders and created the plantation system,^ had driven great numbers of
» Mart L 104, ii. 68. * Juv. L 100—
^ Juv. i. 100 ; V. 17 ; Mart xiL 18 — Jubet a praeoone vocaxl
Dum per limlna te potentlorum ^P** Trqjugenaa.
Sudataiz toga ventilat, etc ; » Mart. ii. 48; iii. 88, 12, pallet oetera
iii. 7, 86 ; Saet. AVo, xyi ; Dom, vii turba fame ; Juv. iii. 153, 161 ; xL 40.
» Mart iL 79 ; Jut. v. 17. • Momma. J2. H, ii. 874 (Ti-.).
CHAP. II THE WORLD OF THE SA TIRIST 95
once prosperous farmers to the capital, to depend on the granaries of the State, or on the charity of a wealthy patron. Such men were kept in poverty and dependence by that general contempt for trade and industrial pursuits which always pre- vails in a slave-owning society. Many of the greatest families bad been reduced to poverty by proscription and confiscation. A great noble might be keeping sheep on a Laurentine farm, if he could not ¥dn a pension from the grace of the Emperor. At the same time, from various causes, what we should call the liberal professions, with the doubtful exception of medicine, tortured those engaged in them by the contrast between ambitious hopee and the misery of squalid poverty. " Make your son an auctioneer or an undertaker rather than an advocate or a man of letters " is the advice of Martial and Juvenal, and of the shrewd vulgar guests of Trimalcbio.^ Any mean and malodorous trade will be more lucrative than the greatest knowledge and ctdture. The rich literary amateur, who should have been a Maecenas, in that age became an author himself, composed his own Thebaid or Codrid, and would only help the poor man of genius by the loan of an unfurnished hall for a reading.^ The unabashed mendicancy of Martial shows the mean straits to which the genuine literary man was reduced.' The historian will not earn as much as the reader of the Acta Diurnal It is the same with education. What costs the father least is the train- ing of his son. The man who will expend a fortune on his baths and colonnades, can spare a Quintilian only a fraction of what he will give for a pastry cook.^ The grammarian, who is expected to be master of all literature, will be lucky if he receives as much for the year as a charioteer gains by a single victory.* If the rhetor, weary of mock battles, descends into the real arena of the courts, he fares no better.'^ The bar is overcrowded by men to whom no other career of ambition is open, by old informers who find their occupation gone, by the sons of noble houses who parade the glory of their ancestors in order to attract vulgar clients. They are carried in a litter, surroimded by
' Mart. iv. 6 ; v. 66— ^ Juv. vii 88 aqq.
ArtwdlfloenvnltpeciinicMM? » MarL ii. 48; U, 40; v. 42, quas
S?Si}?^'!SM;S.V''°""'"- d«de|i8. «.!« semper habebb ope..
Fncoonem fkctes, vel architectum ; * Jav. vii. 104.
Jut. viL 104 ; x. 226 ; Pctron. 46, * lb. vii. 180.
dertioATi illiioi artificii dooere, ant " Ih. vii ad fin.
toDctmnnm ant praeoonem etc. ^ Tb. vii. 121 sqq.
96 SOCIAL LIFE book i
slaves and dependents, down to the courts of the Centum- virL The poor pleader must hire or borrow purple robes and jewelled rings, if he is to compete with them. And in the end, he may find his honorarium for a day's hard pleading to be a leg of pork, a jar of tunnies, or a few flasks of cheap wine. In this materialised society all the prizes go to the coarser qualities ; there is nothing but n^lect and starvation before taste and intellect. And poverty is punished by being forced to put on the show of wealtL^ That stately person in violet robes who stalks through the forum, or reclines in a freshly decorated chair, followed by a throng of slaves, has just pawned his ring to buy a dinner.* That matron, who has sold the last pieces of her ancestral plate, will hire splendid dress, a sedan chair, and a troop of attendants, to go in proper state to the games.^ Thus you have the spectacle of a society divided between the idle, luxurious rich and the lazy, hungry poor, who imitate all the vices of the rich, and although too proud to work, are not ashamed to borrow or to beg.
In such a society, where the paths of honest industry seemed closed to the poor, or as yet undiscovered, the great problem was how to secure without labour a share of the wealth which was monopolised by the few. The problem was solved by the obsequiousness of the client, or by the arts of the will-hunter. Owing to celibacy and vice, childlessness in that age was extra- ordinarily common in the upper class. In a society of *' ambi- tious poverty," a society where poverty was unable, or where it disdained, to find the path to competence through honest toil, the wealthy, without natural heirs, offered a tempting prey to the needy adventurer. Captation by every kind of mean flattery, or vicious service, became a recognised profession. In the Croton of Petronius there are only two classes, the rich and the sycophant, the hunters and the hunted.^ Even men of high position, with no temptation from want, would stoop to this detestable trade.^ And the social tone which tolerated the captator, made it almost an honour to be beset on a sick bed by these rapacious sycophants. One of the darkest and most repulsive features in that putrescent society was the
1 Jnr. iSL 182; Martha, MorcUuia ^ Petron. lid, in hao nrbe nemo
90HS VBmp. p. 400. liberos tollit . . . aut captantar aut
* Mart ii. 67. captant
» Jut. vL 868. • e,g, Regnlua, Plin. Ep. ii 20.
CHAP. II THE WORLD OF THE SATIRIST 97
social value which attached to a vicious and shameful child- Ies8ne8& A morose and unlovely old age could thus gather around it a little court of dependents and pretended friends, such as a career of great achievement would hardly attract. There have been few more loathsome characters than the polished hyi>ocrite by the sick-bed of his prey, shedding tears of feigned sympathy, while with eager eyes he is noting every symptom of the approaching end.^
Juvenal and Petronius, the embittered plebeian, and the cjrnical, fastidious epicure of Nero's court, alike treat their age as utterly corrupted and vulgarised by the passion for money ; '' inter nos sanctissima divitiarum Majestas." * No virtue, no gifts, no eminence of service, will be noticed in the poor.' A great fortune will conceal the want of talent, sense, or common decency. Everything is forgiven to the master of money bags, even the brand of the slave prison.^ In Juvenal and Martial probably the most resonant note is the cry of the poor — " How long." Yet, after all, it is not a fierce cry of revolt ; against that highly organised and centralised society the dis- inherited never dreamed of rebellion, even when the Gk)ths were under the walls. It is rather an appeal, though often a bitter and angry appeal, for pity and a modest share in a wasted abundance. In the poems of Juvenal and Martial, as in the sentiment of the colleges and municipalities for generations, the one hope for the mass of helpless indigence lay in awaking the generosity and charity of the rich. The rich, as we shall see in another chapter, admitted the obligation, and responded to the claim, often in the most lavish fashion. A long line of emperors not only fed the mob of the capital, but squandered the resources of the State in providing gross and demoralising amusements for them.^ Under the influence of the Stoic teaching of the brotherhood of man and the duty of mutual help, both private citizens and benevolent princes, from Nero to M. Aurelius, created charitable foundations for the orphan and the
» Jut. xiL 100 ; L 86 ; Mart v. 89 ; " Suet OcUm. xliiL-v. ; Calig, xviii j
PliD. Ep, ii. 20 ; Fetron. 140. Claud, zxi.; Nero^ xi. xiL; TUvs, viL;
« Jnv. L 112 ; Petron. 88, pecuniae ^ ^^'A ^'^ ^\^^ U®^^
' JuY. iiL 164.
Capitol. M, Anion, vi. ; but cp. Suet m xlvil ; Tac. ffisi. it 62 ; D. Cass.
* lb. 181, 108 ; i. 26 ; iv. 98 ; Mart. 66. 15 ; Suet Odav. zli^. ; D. Cass, ii 29 ; iiL 29 ; 7. 18, 86. 54. 2 ; 68. 2 ; Capitol. AnUm. P. xii.
H
98 SOCIAL LIFE book i
needy.^ Public calamities were relieved again and again by imperial aid and private charity.^ The love of wealth was strong, but a spirit of benevolence was in the air, even in the days of Juvenal ; and the constant invectives of poet or philo- sopher against wealth and luxury are not so much the sign of a growing selfishness, as of a spreading sense of the duty of the fortunate to the miserable. Although the literary men seem never to have thought of any economic solution of the social problem, through the tappmg of j&esh sources of wealth from which all might draw, yet there can be no doubt that there was, at least in provincial cities, a great industrial movement in the Antonine age, which gave wealth to some, and a respectable competence to many. The opulent freedman and the contented artisan have left many a memorial in the inscriptions. Yet the movement had not solved the social problem in the days of Lucian, as it has not solved it after seventeen centuriea The cry of the poor against the selfish rich, which rings in the ears of the detached man of letters at the end of the Antonine age, will still ring in the ears of the ascetic Salvianus, when the Germans have passed the Bhine.^
The scorn and hatred of Juvenal for wealth and its vices is natural to a class which was too proud to struggle out of poverty, by engaging in the industries which it despised. And the freed- man, who occupied the vacant field, and rose to opulence, is even more an object of hatred to Juvenal and Martial than the recreant noble or the stingy patron. He was an alien of servile birth, and he had made himself wealthy by the usual method of thinking of nothing but gold. These men, who were not even free Romans, had mastered the power which commands the allegiance of the world. The rise of this new class to wealth and importance probably irritated men of Juvenal's type more than any other sign of social injustice in their time. And the Trimalchio of Petronius, a man of low, tainted origin, the creature of economic accident, whose one faith is in the power of money, who boasts of his fortime as if it had been won by real talent or honourable
1 Victor. EpU, 12 ; Spart Hadr, viL lUl Itatn. u. 208 ; cf. Plin. Ep, ix. 80.
i ^^.l.^t^}:^' ir^ ^r'/"^' ' Tac Ann, xiv. 62 ; ii. 47, 48.
P. viu. ; D. Oaas. 68. & ; Orellt Hem. *
4365, 7244 ; Friedlander, Fetron. Mn- > Salv. De Oub. Dei, v. 30 ; Ad
lea, 49 ; Duruy, y. 429 ; iv. 787 ; Boissier, EeeUs, iv, 22.
CHAP. II THE WORLD OF THE SA TIRIST 99
service, who expends it ¥rith coarse ostentation and a ludicrous affectation of cultivated taste, may be tolerated in literature, if not in actual life, for the charm of a certain kindly bon- homie and honest vulgarity, which the art of Petronius has thrown around him. Tet, after all, we must concede to Juvenal and Martial, that such a person is always a some- what unpleaaing social product But the subject is so im- portant that it claims a chapter to itself. And, fortunately for us and oui* readers, the new freedmen were not all of the type of Trimalchio.
CHAPTER III
THE S0GIBT7 OF THE FBEEDMSN
The historian, who is occupied with war and politics, and the fate of princes and nobles, is apt to lose sight of great silent movements in the dim masses of society. And, in the history of the early Empire, the deadly conflict between the Emperor and the Senate, the carnival of luxury, and the tragic close of so many reigns, have diverted attention from social changes of immense moment Not the least important of these was the rise of the freedmen, in the face of the most violent prejudice, both popular and aristocratic. And literature has thrown its whole weight on the side of prejudice, and given full vent alike to the scorn of the noble, and to the hate and envy of the plebeian. The movement, indeed, was so swift and far spread- ing that old conservative instincts might well be alarmed. Everywhere in the inscriptions freedmen are seen rising to wealth and consequence throughout the provinces, as well as in Italy, and winning popularity and influence by profuse benefactions to colleges and municipalities. In almost every district of the Boman Empire the order of the Augustales, which was composed to a great extent of wealthy freedmen,^ has left its memorials. " Freedman's wealth " in Marticd's day had become a proverb.^ Not only are they crowding all the meaner trades, from which Boman pride shrank contemptu- ously, but, by industry, shrewdness, and speculative daring, chey are becoming great capitalists and landowners on a senatorial scale. The Trimalchio of Petronius, who has not
^ On the Angnstales v, OreU, Hem, Swirii AvgustalUma,
ii. p. 197 ; iii. p. 427 ; Friedlander, * y. 18, 6, et libertinas area flagel-
Cena Trim, Eifit, p. 89 ; Mar^. R&m. lat opes ; cf. Sen. Ep, 27, | 6, patri-
Staatswrw, i. 618 sqq. ; Nessling, De monium libertmL
100
CHAP. Ill THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN 101
even seen some of his estates,^ if we allow for some artistic exaggeration, is undoubtedly the representative of a great class. In the reign of Nero, a debate arose in the Senate on the insolence and misconduct of freedmen.' And it was aigued by those opposed to any violent measures of repression, that the class was widely diffused ; they were found in over- whelming numbers in the city tribes, in the lower offices of the civil service, in the establishments of the magistrates and priests ; a considerable number even of the knights and Senate drew their origin from this source. If freedmen were marked off sharply as a separate grade, the scanty numbers of the fireeborn would be revealed. In the reigns of Claudius and Nero especially, freedmen rose to the highest places in the imperial service, sometimes by unquestionable knowledge, tact, and ability, sometimes by less creditable art& The promotion of a Narcissus or a Pallas was also a stroke of policy, the assertion of the prince's independence of a jealous nobility. The rule of the freedmen was a bitter memory to the Senate.^ The scorn of Pliny for Pallas expresses the long pent-up feelings of his order; it is a belated vengeance for the humiliation they endured in the evil days when they heaped ridiculous flattery on the favourite, and voted him a fortune and a statue.^ Some part of the joy with which the accession of Trajan was hailed by the aristo- cracy was due to the hope that the despised interlopers would be relegated to their proper obscurity. Tacitus is undoubtedly glancing at the Claudian regime when he grimly congratulates the Germans on the fact that their freedmen are little above the level of slaves, that they have seldom any power in the family, and never in the State.'^
It shows the immense force of old Boman conservatism and of social prejudice which is the same from age to age, when men so cultivated, yet of such widely different tempera- ment and associations as Pliny and Tacitus, Juvenal and Martial^ and Petronius, denoimce or ridicule an irresistible social movement. We can now see that the rise of the
^ Petron. SaL 48. * Tac. Otrm, 26, liberti non multiua
* Ta43. Ann, xiii 27, ri Bepararentor supra servos sunt, raro aliqnod momen- Ubertini manifestam fore penoriam turn in domo, ntmquam in civitate. inf^naomm. > Plin. Famag. 88. « Mart. iL 29 ; iii 29 ; zi. 87 ; itt^
* Id. ^. viL 29 ; vui. 6. 82 ; v. 14.
102 SOCIAL LIFE book i
emancipated slave was not only inevitable, but that it was, on the whole, salutary and rich in promise for the future. The slave class of antiquity really corresponded to our free labouring class. But, unlike the mass of our artisans, it contained many who, from accident of birth and education, had a skill and knowledge which their masters often did not possesa^ The slaves who came frt)m the ancient seats of civilisation in the East are not to be compared with the dark gross races who seem to be stamped by nature as of an inferior breed. This frequent mental and moral equality of the Soman slave with his master had forced itself upon men of the detached philosophic class, like Seneca, and on kindly aristocrats, like Pliny.' It must have been hard to sit long hours in the library beside a cultivated slave-amanuensis, or to discuss the management of lands and mines and quarries with a shrewd, well-informed slave-agent, or to be charmed by the grace and wit of some fair, frail daughter of Ionia, without having some doubts raised as to the eternal justice of such an institution. Nay, it is certain that slaves were often treated as friends,' and received freedom and a liberal bequest at their master's death. Many educated slaves, as we have seen, rose to distinction and fortune .as teachers and physicians/ But the field of trade and industry was the most open and the most tempting. The Senator was forbidden, down to the last age of the Empire, both by law and sentiment, to increase his fortune by commerce.* . The plebeian, saturated with Soman prejudice, looking for support to the granaries of the state or the dole of the wealthy patron, turned with disdain from occupations which are in our days thought innocent, if not honourable. Juvenal feels almost as much scorn for the auctioneer and undertaker as he has for the pander, and treats almost as a criminal the merchant who braves the wintry Aegean with a cargo of wine from Crete.® His friend Umbricius, worsted in the social struggle, and preparing to quit Some for a retreat in Campania, among the other objects of his plebeian scorn, is
^ Snet 7/^ 0'rtzm.ziii.,ZTiL, xz.; of. hnmiles amioi. Ct Macrob. SaL i.
Marq. Friv, i. 168. 11, 12 ; Eurip. /em, 864 ; Edm, 730 ;
* den. Ep, 47, f 1 ; 2>0 CZm. L 18, Wallon, VEtclav. iil 22.
8 ; DeBen. iii. 21 ; Ep. 77,§81 ; Plin. * v. supra, p. 92.
ja>. viii. 16, 1 ; iu. 19, 7 ; ii. 17, 9 ; » D. CJass. 69. 16; C. Th, xiii. 1, 21 ;
cf. Juv. xiv. 16. Friedl. SiUengeseh, i. 197.
' Sen. JSp, 47, aervi snnt, immo ' Jay. xiv, 270.
CHAP. Ill THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN 103
specially disgusted with the low tribe who contract for the building of a house, or who farm the dues of a port or under- take to cleanse a river-bed.^ There is no room left in Some for men who will not soil themselves with such sordid trades. Manifestly, if the satirist is not burlesquing the feeling of his class, there was plenty of room left for the vigorous freedman who could accept Vespasian's motto that no gain is unsavoury.^ But those men had not only commercial tact and ability, the wit to see where money was to be made by seizing new open- ings and unoccupied fields for enterprise ; they had also among them men of great ambitions, men capable of great afiairs. It required no common deftness, suppleness, and vigilant energy for an old slave to work his way upwards through the grades of the imperial chancery, to thread the maze of deadly intrigue, in the reigns of Claudius or Nero, and to emerge at last as master of the palace. Yet one of these freedmen ministers, when he died, had served ten emperors, six of whom had come to a violent end.' That a class so despised and depressed should rise to control the trade, and even the administration of the Empire, furnishes a presumption that they were needed, and that they were not unworthy of their destiny.
Yet however inevitable, or even desirable, this great revolu- tion may seem to the cool critic of the twentieth century, it is poesible that, had he lived in the first, he might have denounced it as vigorously as JuvenaL The literary and artistic spirit, often living in a past golden age, and remotely detached from the movements going on around it, is prone to regard them with uneasy suspicion. It is moved by sacred sentiment, by memories and distant ideals, by fastidious taste, which expresses itself often with passionate hatred for what seems to it revolutionary sacril^e. It is also apt to fasten on the more grotesque and vulgar traits of any great popular movement, and to use a finished skill in making it ridiculous. It was in this way that literature treated the freedmen. They had many gross and palpable faults ; they were old slaves and Orientals ; as they rose in the world they were eager for money, and they got it ; they were, many of them, naturally vulgar, and they paraded their new wealth with execrable taste, and
^ Jdt. iiL 82. ' Suet. Vesp. zxiii. matats dnonm jnga rite tolisti In- ' SUt. Silv. iiL 8, 83, Ta toties teger, etc.
104 SOCIAL LIFE book i
trampled on better, though poorer, men than themselves. Juvenal and Martial, by birth and associations, have little in common with that accomplished exquisite of the Neronian circle who has painted with the power of careless genius the household of the parvenu Trimalchio. Yet they have an equal scorn or detestation for the new man who was forcing his way from the lowest debasement of servile life to fortune and power. But the embittered man of letters, humiliated by poverty, yet brimful of Boman pride, avenges his ideals with a rougher, heavier hand than the Epicurean noble, who had joined in the "Noctes Neronis" with a delicate, scornful cynicism, who was too disillusioned, and too fastidiously con- temptuous, to waste anger on what he despised. Juvenal would blast and wither the objects of his hatred. Petronius takes the surer method of making these people supremely ridiculous. The feeling of men like Juvenal and Martial is a mixture of contempt and envy and outraged taste. The Grub Street man of letters in those days despised plodding industry because he dearly loved fits of idleness; he hated wealth because he was poor. The polished man of the world was alternately amused and disgusted by the spectacle of sudden fortune accumulated by happy chance or unscrupulous arts, with no tradition of dignity to gild its grossness, yet affecting and burlesquing the tastes of a world from which it was separated by an impassable gul£ There is more moral sentiment, more old Boman feeling, in the declamation of Juvenal than in the cold artistic scorn of the Satiricon ; there is also more personal and class feeling. The triumph of mere money is to Juvenal a personal at&ont as well as a moral catastrophe. Poverty now makes a man ridiculous.^ It blocks the path of the finest merit. The rich freedmau who claims the foremost place at a levde is equally objectionable because he was bom on the Euphrates, and because he is the owner of five taverns which yield HS.400,000 a year.^ The im- poverished knight must quit his old place on the benches to make way for some auctioneer or pimp, some old slave from the Nile who stalks in with purple robes and bejewelled fingers, and hair reeking with unguent&' The only refuge
1 Jut. UL 153, Nil habet infelix * U. i. 104.
panpertas durins in se, Quam quod ' Id. L 26 ; iv. 108.
ridioulos homioeB fadt ; 164.
CHAP. Ill THE SOCIETY OF THE FREED MEN 106
will soon be some half-deserted village on old-fashioned Sabine groand, where the country folk sit side by side in the same white tunics with their aediles in the grassy theatre.^ It is evident from Juvenal, Martial, and Petronius that the popular hostility to the new men was partly the result of envy at their success, partly of disgust at their parade of it. Juvenal and Martial are often probably dressing up the rough epigrams of the crowd. We can almost hear the contemptu- ous growl as one of these people, suspected of a dark crime, sweeps by in his downy sedan. That other noble knight used to hawk the cheap fish of his native Egypt^ and now possesses a palace towering over the Forum, with far-spreading colonnades and acres of shady groves.' A eunuch minister has reared a pile which out-tops the CapitoL' Fellows who used to blow the horn in the circus of country towns now give gladiatorial shows themselves.* Prejudice or envy may not improbably have invented some of the tales of crime and turpitude by which these fortunes had been won. Eome was a city of poisonous rumour. Yet slavery was not a nursery of virtue, and the. iSo^irtcon leaves the impression that the emancipated slave too often imitated the vices of his master. The poisoner, the perjurer, the minion, were probably to be found in the rising class. After their kind in cdl ages, they looked down with vulgar insolence on those less fortunate or more scrupulous. When they rose to the highest place, the imperial freedmen were often involved in peculation and criminal intrigue.^ Yet, after all reservations, the ascent of the freedmen remains a great and beneficent revolution. The very reasons which made Juvenal hate it most are its best justification to a modem mind. It gave hope of a future to the slave ; by creating a free industrial class, it helped to break down the cramped •odal ideal of the slave-owner and the soldier ; it planted in every municipality a vigorous mercantile class, who were often excellent and generous citizens. Above all, it asserted the dignity of man. The vehement iteration of Juvenal is the best testimony to the sweep and force of the movement And
* Juv. iii. 178. * Juv. iii. 84 sqq.
• Id. iT. 6, 28 ; vii 180. » Tac Ann, n. 87 ; xii 25, 66 ; ' Id. ziv. 91, Ut spado vincobat xL 29 ; Suet Odav, Ixvii. ; D. Cass.
Ckpitolia nostra Posides ; cf. Suet. liz. 29. daiuL zzviiL ; Plin. H,N, zzxL 2.
106 SOCIAL LIFE book i
the later student of Roman society cannot afiford to n^lect a great social upheaval which, in an aristocratic society, domin- ated by pride of class and race, made an Oriental slave first minister of the greatest monarchy in history, while it placed men of servile origin in command of nearly all the industrial arts and commerce of the time.
The reign of the freedman in public affairs began with the foundation of the Empire, when Julius Caesar installed some of his household as officers of the mint.^ The emperor in the first century was, theoretically at least, only the first citizen, and his household was modelled on the fashion of other great houses. In the management of those vast senatorial estates, which were often scattered over three continents, there was need of an elaborate organisation, and freedmen of educa- tion and business capacity were employed to administer such private realms. And in the organisation of a great house- hold, there was a hierarchy of office which offered a career to the shrewd and trustworthy slave. Many such careers can be traced in the inscriptions, from the post of valet or groom of the bedchamber, through the offices of master of the jewels and the wardrobe, superintendent of the carriages or the vine- yards, up to the highest financial control.^
During the first century the same system was transferred to the imperial administration. It suited the cautious policy of Augustus to disguise his vast powers under the quiet exterior of an ordinary noble; and the freedmen of his household carried on the business of the State. He sternly punished any excesses or treachery among his servants.* Tiberius gave them little power, until his character began to deteriorate.^ Under Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, the imperial freedmen attained their greatest ascendency. Callistus, Narcissus, and Pallas rose to the rank of great ministers, and, in the reign of Claudius, were practically masters of the world. They accumulated enormous wealth by abusing their power, and making a traffic in civic rights, in places or pardons. Polyclitus, who was sent to compose the troubles in Britain in 61 A.D., travelled with an enormous train, and gave the provinces an exhibition of the arrogance of their servile masters.^
^ Suet. Jvl, Ciies, IxxvL ; cfl Friedl. ' Suet Octav, Ixvii.
SiUengesck. i 56 sqq. ^ Tac. Ann, iv. 6.
* For such a career cf. Or, ffenx. 6844. ' lb, xiv. 39.
CHAP, III THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN 107
Helius was left to carry on the government during Nero's Uieatrical travels, and the exhibitions of his artistic skill in Greece.^ Galba put to death two of the great freedmen of Neio's reign, but himself fell under the influence of others as oorrupt and arrogant, and he showered the honours of rank on the infamous Icelus.^
It is curious that it was left for Yitellius to break the reign of the freedmen by assigning offices in the imperial bareanx to the knights, the policy which was said to have been recommended by Maecenas,' and which was destined to prevail in the second century. But the change was very incomplete, and the brief tragic reign of Yitellius was dis- graced by the ascendency for a time of his minion Asiaticus, whom the Emperor raised to the highest honours, then sold into a troop of wandering gladiators, and finally received back again into freedom and favour.* The policy of the Flavian dynasty in the employment of freedmen is rather ambiguous. Vespasian is charged with having elevated Hormus, a dis- reputable member of the class, and with having appointed to places of trust the most rapacious agents.^ But this is probably a calumny of the Neronian and Othonian circle who defamed their conqueror. Under Domitian, the freedmen, Entellns and Abascantus, held two of the great secretaryships. But it is distinctly recorded that Domitian distributed offices impartially between the freedmen and the knights.® On the accession of Trajan, Pliny, in his Panegyric, exults in the fall of the freedmen from the highest placa^ Yet Hadrian is said to have procured his selection as emperor by carefully cultivating the favour of Trajan's freedmen. Hadrian, in reorganising the imperial administration, and foimding the bureaucratic system, which was fiually elaborated by Diocletian and Con- stantine, practically confined the tenure of the three great secretaryships to men of equestrian rank. Among his sec- retaries was the historian Suetonius.® Antoninus Pius severely repressed men of servile origin in the interest of pure
> Saet Nero^^ xxiiL * Suet. ViUlh xiL * Id. Vesp. xvi.
* D. Gaas. Ixir. 8 ; Snet QoXbOy xiv. ; ' Id. Dtmt. vii c[usedam ex roaximis
Pint Oalbtij c 17. offioiis inter libertmos eqoitesqae com-
' D. Cass. liL 26 ; Tao. Hist, L 58, municavit
VitelliiM ministeria principatus per ^ Plin. Pane^, 88.
libertos agi solita in eqnites Romanos " Spart. Hadr, iv., xxi. ; Mace,
dtsponit SiUUme, p. 91.
^
108 SOCIAL UFE book i
administration ; ^ but they regained some influence for a time under M. Aurelius, and rose still higher under his infamous son. The position of freedmen in the imperial administration was partly, as we have seen, a tradition of aristocratic house- holds. The emperor employed his freedmen to write his despatches and administer the finances of the Empire, as he would have used them to write his private letters or to manage his private estates. But, in the long conflict between the prince and the Senate, the employment of trusted freedmen in imperial affairs was also a measure of policy. It was meant to teach the nobles that the Empire could be administered without their aid.' Nor was the confidence of the Emperor in his humble subordinates unjustified. The eulogies of the great freedmen in Seneca and Statins, even if they be ex- aggerated, leave the impression that a Polybius, a Claudius Etruscus, or an Abascantus were, in many respects, worthy of their high place. The provinces were, on the whole, well governed and happy in the very years when the capital was seething with conspiracy, and racked with the horrors of con- fiscation and massacre. This must have been chiefly due to the knowledge, tact, and ability of the great officials of the palace. Although of servile origin, they must have belonged to that considerable class of educated slaves who, along with the versatility and tact of the Hellenic East, brought to their task also a knowledge and a literary and linguistic skill which were not common among Boman knights. The three imperial secretaryships, a ratiomhvA^ a libellis, and ai epistvlis, covered a vast field of administration, and the duties of these great ministries could only have been performed by men of great industry, talent, and diplomatic adroitness.' The Polybius to whom Seneca, from his exile in Sardinia, wrote a con- solatory letter on the death of his brother, was the successor of CaUistus, as secretary of petitions, in the reign of Claudius, and also the emperor's adviser of studies. Seneca magnifies the dignity, and also the burden, of his great rank, which demands an abnegation of all the ordinary pleasures of lifa^ A man has no time to indulge a private grief who has to study and arrange for the Emperor's decision thousands of appeals,
» Capitol. AnL P. vi., xi. » /ft. L p. 83.
s FnedL SittengeKh. L 56. * Bnu Ad Polyh. vL tu.
CHAP. Ill THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN 109
coming from every quarter of the world. Yet this busy man conld find time for literary work, and his translations from the Greek are lauded by the philosopher with an enthusiasm of which the cruelty of time does not allow us to estimate the value.^ The panegyric on Claudius Etruscus, composed by StatiuB, records an even more remarkable career.^ Claudius Etruscus died at the age of eighty, in the reign of Domitiau, having served in various capacities under ten emperors,' six of whom had died by a violent death. It was a strangely romantic life, to which we could hardly find a parallel in the most democratic community in modem times. Claudius, a Smymiote slave,^ in the household of Tiberius, was eman- dpatei and promoted by that Emperor. He followed the train of Caligula to Gaul,^ rose to higher rank under Claudius, and, probably in Nero's reign, on the retirement of Pallas, was appointed to that financial office of which the world-wide cares are pompously described by the poet biographer.* The gold of Iberian mines, the harvests of Egypt, the fleeces of Tarentine flocks, pearls from the depths of Eastern seas, the ivory tribute of the Indies, all the wealth wafted to Eome by every wind, are committed to his keeping. He had also the task of disbursing a vast revenue for the support of the populace, for roads and bulwarks against the sea, for the splendour of temples and palaces.^ Such cares left space only for brief slumber and hasty meals ; there was none for pleasura Yet Claudius had the supreme satisfaction of wielding enormous power, and he occasionally shared in its splendour. The poor slave from the Hermus had a place in the ''Idumaean triumph " of Vesptisian, which his quiet labours had prepared, and he was raised by that emperor to the benches of the knights.' The only check in that prosperous course seems to have been a brief exile to the shores of Campania in the reign of Domitian.^
Abascantus,^^ the secretary ah epistulis of Domitian's reign, has also been commemorated by Statius. That great office which controlled the imperial correspondence with all parts of
» Sen. Ad Pdyb. xL • lb, 70. • Ih, 86.
« SUtins, SUv. iii 8. ' /j. loo. 8 /j. 145.
> lb. 66, Tibereia primiun Aula tibi > Mart vi. 88 ; SUt Silv. iii. 160.
— Panditor. ^® As to the form of hia name v,
^ lb. 60. Markland'8 Statvus, p. 288.
s
110 SOCIAL LIFE book i
the world, was generally held bj freedmen in the first century. Narcissus, in the reign of Claudius, first made it a great ministry.^ Down to the reign of Hadrian the despatches both in Greek and Latin were under a single superintendence. But. in the reorganisation of the service in the second century, it was found necessary, &om the growing complication of business, to create two departments of imperial correspondenca' Men of rank held the secretaryship from the end of the first cen- tury. Titinius Capito, one of Plin/s curcle, filled the office under Domitian ; Suetonius was appointed by Hadrian.' And during the Antonine age, the secretaries were often men of literary distinction.^ Abascantus, the freedman secretary in the Silvae, had upon his shoulders, according to the poet, the whole weight of the correspondence with both East and West^ He received the laurelled despatches from the Euphrates, the Danube, and the Bhine ; he had to watch the distribution of military grades and commands. He must keep himself in- formed of a thousand things affecting the fortunes of the subject peoples. Yet this powerful minister retained his native modesty with his growing fortune. His household was distinguished by all the sobriety and frugality of an Apulian or Sabine home.^ He could be lavish, however, at the call of love or loyalty. He gave his wife PrisciUa an almost royal burial^ Embalmed with all the spices and fragrant odours of the East, and canopied with purple, her body was borne to her last stately home of marble on the Appian Way.'
Some of the great imperial freedmen were of less un- exceptionable character than Claudius Etruscus and Abascantus, and had a more troubled career. Cstllistus, Narcissus, and PaUas, were deeply involved in the intrigues and crimes connected with the history of Messalina and Agrippina. Callistus had a part in the murder of Caligula, and prolonged his power in the following reign. Narcissus revealed the shameless marriage of Messalina with Silius, and, forestalling the vacillation of Claudius, had the imperial harlot ruthlessly struck down as she lay grovelling in the gardens of LucuUus,^
^ Mac6, Suitone, p. 91 ; of. Tac. Ann, * Mao^, pp. 90, 116.
xi. 88. * SUt Silv, v. 1, 80.
> Mao^ 92, 98 ; Friedl. Sittengeach, * lb. v. 118 sqq.
i. 88, 87. * Ih. V. 210.
« Plin. Ep. viii. 12 ; C.LL, vi. 798 ; * FriodL SiUengtach, i. 88.
>Iac4, pp. 89, 116. " Tac. Ann, xi. 80, 87, 88.
CHAP. Ill
THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN
111
Bat he incarred the enmity of a more formidable woman even than Messalina, and his long career of plunder was ended by 8iiicid&^ Pallas had an even longer and more successful, but a not less in&mous and tragic career.' Of all the great freed- men, probably none approached him in magnificent insolence. When he was impeached along with Burrus, on a groundless charge of treason, and when some of his freedmen were called in evidence as his supposed accomplices, the old slave answered that he had never d^raded his voice by speaking in such company.' Never, even in those days of sdf-abasement, did the Senate sink so low as in its grovelling homage to the servile minister. At a meeting of the august body in the year 52, the consul designate made a proposal, which was seconded by a Scipio, that the praetorian insignia, and a sum of H&15,000,000, should be offered to Pallas, together with the thanks of the state that the descendant of the ancient kings of Arcadia had thought less of his illustrious race than of the common weal, and had deigned to be enrolled in the service of the prince!^ When Claudius reported that his minister was satisfied with the compliment, and prayed to be allowed to remain in his former poverty, a senatorial decree, engraved on bronze, was set up to commemorate the old- fashioned frugality of the owner of HS.300,000,000 ! His wealth was gained during a career of enormous power in the wont days of the Empire. He was one of the lovers of Agrippina,^ and, when he made her empress on the death of Messalina, two kindred spirits for a time ruled the Boman wodd. He gratified his patroness by securing the adoption of Nero by Claudius, and he was probably an accomplice in that emperor's murder. But his fate was involved with that of Agrippina. When Nero resolved to shake off the tyranny of that awful woman, his first step was to remove the haughty freedman from his offices.^ Pallas left the palace in the Beccmd year of Nero's reign. For seven years he lived on un- disturbed. But at last his vast wealth, which had become a jnoverb^ became too tempting to the spendthrift prince, and Pallas was quietly removed by poison.^
^ Tac Awn. ziL 57 ; xiii 1.
« id. xiL 26, 65.
« 75. xiiL 28.
* /J. xu. 53 ; Plin. Ep, viii. 6.
^ Tac Ann, zii 25, 65. « Ih. xiii. 14.
^ Ih, xiv. 65 ; Suet Neroy xxzy. ; D. Cass. 62. 14.
J
112 SOCIAL LIFE book i
Thd wealth of freedmen became proverbial, and the fortunes of Pallas and Narcissus reached a figure hardly ever surpassed even by the most colossal senatorial estates.^ The means by which this wealth was gained might easily be inferred by any one acquainted with the inner history of the times. The manner of it may be read in the life of Elagabalus, whose freedman Zoticus, the son of a cook at Smyrna, piled up vast riches by levying a payment, each time he quitted the presence, for his report of the emperor's threats or promises or intentions.* In the administration of great provinces, in the distribution of countless places of trust, in the chaos of years of delation, confiscation, and massacre, there must have been endless oppor- tunities for self- enrichment, without incurring the dangers of open malversation. Statins extols the simple tastes and frugality of his heroes Abascantus and Claudius Etruscus, and yet he describes them as lavishing money on baths and tombs and funeral pomp. The truth is that, as a mere matter of policy, these wealthy aliens, who were never loved by a jealous aristocracy, had to justify their huge fortunes by a sumptuous splendour. The elder Pliny has commemorated the vapour oaths of Posides, a Glaudian freedman, and the thirty pillars of priceless onyx which adorned the dining saloon of Callistua* A bijou bath of the younger Claudius Etruscus seems to have been a miracle of costly beauty. The dome, through which a brilliant light streamed upon the floor, was covered with scenes in rich mosaic. The water gushed from pipes of silver into silver basins, and the quarries of Numidia and Synnada contributed the various colours of their marbles.* The gardens of Entellus, with their purple clusters which defied the rigours of winter, seemed to Martial to outrival the legendary gardens of Phaeacia.^ In the suburbs, hard by the Tiburtine way, rose that defiant monument of Pallas, bearing the decree of the Senate, which aroused the angry scorn of the younger Pliny.*
The life of one of these imperial slave ministers was a strangely romantic career which has surely been seldom matched in the history of human fortunes. Exposed and sold
1 Marq. BXfm, St. ii p. 66 ; Daruy, » Plin. ff.N. xxxl 2 ; xxxvL 12.
""; P^f ^® * -L""^ ^^^tJTfh ^iJ^n* * Statiu., Siiv. L 6, 86 ; Mart f L
Frag. Hxst. Or. iv.). * ,
« Aol.IiainpridJ5Wu>8f«»6.x.; cf.Capi- ' Mart viii. 68.
tol. AfUan, P. xL ; Suet Claui. xxviii. " Plin. Ep. viL 29.
CHAP. Ill THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN 113
in early youth in the slave markets of Smyrna, Delos, oi Puteoli, after an interval of ignominious servitude, installed as groom of the chambers, thence promoted, according to his aptitudes, to be keeper of the jewels, or tutor of the imperial heir, still further advanced to be director of the post, or to a place in the financial service, the freedman might end by receiving the honour of knighthood, the procuratorship of a province, or one of those great ministries which placed him in command of the Eoman world. Yet we must not deceive our- selves as to his real position.^ To the very end of the Empire, the fictions on which aristocratic power is largely based, retained their fascination. In the fifth century a Senate, whose ancestors were often originally of servile race, could pour their acorn on the eunuch ministers of the East.^ And the decaying or ^rvtnu Senate of the Flavians had, when they were free to express it, nothing but loathing for the reign of the freed- men.' These powerful but low -bom officials are a curious example of what has been often seen in later times, the point-blank refusal, or the grudging concession, of social status to men wielding vast and substantial power. The younger Pliny, in his Panegyric on Trajan, glories in the preference shown under the new regime for young men of birth, and in his letters he vents all the long -suppressed aoom of his order for the Glaudian freedmen. Even the emperors who fireely employed their services, were chary of laising them to high social rank. Freedmen ministers were hardly ever admitted to the ranks of the Senate ^ ; they were rarely present at its sittings, even at the very time when they were governing the world. Sacerdotal and military distinc- tions were seldom conferred upon any of them. They were sometimes invested with the insignia of praetorian or quaestorian rank.^ A few were promoted to the dignity of knighthood, Icelus, Asiaticus, Hormus, and Claudius Etruscus ^ ; but many a passage in Martial or Juvenal seems to show that ordinary equestrian rank was in those days a very doubtful dis- tinction.^ The emperors, as raised above all ranks, might not
^ Friedl. SiUengexh. 175; Or, H&nz, ' Tac. Ann, xi. 88 ; ziL 58.
« dsttd. In IMrap. ii 137. . * SuetOalba, xiv. ; Tac. Hist. ii.
• Plin. Ptnug. 88. ^' » *^- '**'•
* Soet. Nero, xv. in curiam liberti- I Mart iii. 29 ; v. 8, 14, 85, 23 ; cf. Domm filio6 diu non admint. Friedl. SiUengeach, i. 212.
/
114 SOCIAL LIFE book i
have been personally unwilling to elevate their creatures to the highest social grade.^ But even the emperors, in matters of social prejudice, were not omnipotent
Still, the men who could win the favours of an Agrippina and a Messalina, could not be extinguished by the most jealous social prejudice. The Soman Senate were ready, on occasion, to fawn on a Pallas or a Narcissus, to vote them money and insignia of rank, nor did they always refuse them their daughters in marriage. In the conflict which is so often seen between caste pride and the effective power of new wealth, the wealth and power not unfrequently prevail. The lex Julia prohibited the union of fireedmen with daughters of a senatorial housa' Yet we know of several such marriages in the first century. The wife of the freedman Claudius EtruscuB, was the sister of a consul who had held high command against the Dacians.* Priscilla, the wife of Abascantus, another minister of servile origin, belonged to the great consular family of the Antistii. Felix, the brother of Pallas, had married in succession three ladies of royal blood, one of them the granddaughter of Cleopatra.^
The women of this class, for generations, wielded, in their own way, a power which sometimes rivalled that of the men. These plebeian Aspasias are a puzzling class. With no recognised social position, with the double taint of servile origin and more than doubtful morals, they were often endowed with many charms and accomplishments, possessing a special attraction for bohemian men of letters. Their morals were the result of an uncertain social position, com- bined with personal attractions and education. To be excluded from good society by ignoble birth, yet to be more than its equal in culture, is a dangerous position, especially for women. Often of oriental extraction, these women were the most prominent votaries of the cults or superstitions which poured into Some from the prolific East Loose character and religious fervour were easily combined in antiquity. And the demi-monde of those days were ready to mourn passionately for Adonis and keep all the feasts of Isis or Jehovah, without
* Suet Claud, c. xxviii. * Id. v. 1, 58 ; Tac. Hist. v. 9 ; Suet
' Dig. xxiii. 2, 44. Claud, xxviii. Folicem . . . Judaeao
' StatiuB, iii. 8, 115. proposuit — trium reginaruoi maritum.
CHAP. Ill THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN 115
scrupling to make a temple a place of assignation.^ The history of the early Empire, it has been rather inaccurately said, shows no reign of mistresses. Yet some of the freed- women have left their mark on that dark page of history. Claudius was the slave of women, and two of lus mistresses lent their aid to Narcissus to compass the niin of Messalina.' The one woman whom Nero really loved, and who loved him in return, was Acte, who had been bought in a slave market in Asia. She captured the heart of the Emperor in his early youth, and incuired the fierce jealousy of Agrippina, as she did, at a later date, that of the fiedr, ambitious Poppaea.* Acte was faithful to his memory even after the last awful scene in Phaon's gardens.^ And, along with his two nurses, the despised freedwoman guarded lus remains and laid the last of his line beside his ancestors. Caenis, the mistress who consoled' Vespasian after his wife's death, without any attractions of youth or beauty, suited well the taste of the bourgeois Emperor. It was a rather sordid and prosaic onion. And Caenis is said to have accumulated a fortune, and besmirched the honest Emperor's name, by a wholesale trafiBc in State secrets and appointments.^ In the last years of our period a very different figure has been glorified by the art of Lucian. Panthea, the mistress of L. Yerus, com- pletely fascinated the imagination of Lucian when he saw her at Smyrna, during the visit of her lover to the East^ Lucian pictures her delicately chiselled beauty and grace of Conn by recalling the finest traits in the great masterpieces of Pheidias and Praxiteles and Calamis, of Euphranor and Polygnotus and Apelles; Panthea combines them all. She has a voice of a marvellous and mellow sweetness, which lingers in the ear with a haunting memory. And the soul was worthy of such a fair dwelling-place. In her love of music and poetry, combined with a masculine strength of intellect capable of handling the highest problems in politics or dialectic, she was a worthy successor of those elder daughters of Ionia whose
^ OfttoU. X. 26 ; TibuU. i. 8, 83 ; Ov. quin justo matrimonio sibi oo^jnngeret
Art Am. iii. 685 ; cf. Amor, i. 8, 78 ; * Suet Nero, 1.
lii 9, 88. « D. Cass. Ixvi. 14.
* Tac Ann, xi. 29. * Luo. Imag. 10. See Crouet's Xitam,
* lb, xiii 12, 46 ; xiv. 2 ; Suet Nero, p. 273, on the Imaginea as illustrating zzriiL Acten libertam paullum abfuit Lucian's power as a critic of art
116 SOCIAL LIFE book i
charm and strength drew a Socrates or a Pericles to their feet^ Surrounded by luxury and the pomp of imperial rank, and linked to a very unworthy lover, Panthea never lost her natural modesty and simple sweetness.
The great freedmen, who held the highest offices in the imperial service till the time of Hadrian with almost undis- puted sway, are interesting by reason of the strangely romantic career of some of them. But these are very exceptional cases. In the bureaux of finance, it has been discovered from the inscriptions that the officials were all of equestrian rank. On the other hand, a great number of the provincial pro- curators were freedmen. And the agents of the Emperor's private fisc seem to have been nearly always drawn from this class. The lower grades of the civil service were full of them.^ But to the student of society, the official freedmen are, as a class, not so interesting as their brethren who in these same years were making themselves masters of the trade and commercial capital of the Soman world. And the interest is heightened by the vivid art with which Petronius has ushered us into the very heart of this rather vulgar society. The ScUiricon is to some extent a caricature. There were hosts of modest, estimable freedmen whose only record is in two or three lines on a funeral slab. Yet a caricature must have a foundation of truth, and a careful reader may discover the truth under the humorous exaggeration of Petronius.
The transition from the status of slave to that of freedman was perhaps not so abrupt and marked as we. might at first sight supposa It is probable that many a slave of the better and more intelligent class found little practical change in the tenor of his life when he received the touch of the wand before the praetor. Some, like Melissus, the free-bom slave of Maecenas, actually rejected the proflFered boon.* There was, of course, much cruelty to slaves in many Roman house- holds, and the absolute power of a master, unrestrained by principle or kindly feeling, was an unmitigated curse till it was limited by the humane legislation of the second century.^ But there must have been many houses, like that of the younger Pliny, where the slaves were treated, in Seneca's
^ Xen. Mem. UL 11 ; Pkt. Menex. ' Suet De III, Oram. xxi.
0. i7. * Marq. Priv. i. 189 ; Denis, Id4es
* Cf. FriedL SUUnge9ch, i. 82. Morale$, li 208 ; Spart. Hadr, xtu.
CHAP. Ill THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN 117
phrase, as humble friends and real members of the family, where their marriages were fSted with general gaiety/ where their sicknesses were tenderly watched, and where they were truly mourned in death. The inscriptions reveal to us a better side of slave life, which is not so prominent in our literary authorities. There is many an inscription recording the love and faithfulness of the slave husband and wife, although not under those honoured names. And it is significant that on many of these tablets the honourable title of conjunx is taking the place of the old servile con- ivbemalis. The inscriptions which testify to the mutual love of master and servant are hardly less numerous. In one a master speaks of a slave-child of four years as being dear to him as a son.' Another contains the memorial of a learned lady erected by her slave librarian.* Another records the love of a young noble for his nurse,* while another is the pathetic tribute of the nurse to her yoimg charge, who died at five years of age. The whole city household of another great family subscribe from their humble savings for an afifectionate memorial of their young mistress.^ Seneca, in his humanitarian tone about slavery, represents a great moral movement, which was destined to express itself in legislation under the Antonines. And the energy with which Seneca denounced harsh or contemptuous conduct to these humble dependents had evidently behind it the force of a steadily growing sentiment The master who abused his power was already beginning to be a marked man.^
Frequent manumissions were swelling the freedman class to enormous dimensions. The emancipation of slaves by dying bequest was not then, indeed, inspired by the same religious motive as in the Middle Ages. But it was often dictated by the natural, human wish to make some return to fiEUthfnl servants, and to leave a memory of kindness behind. But without the voluntary generosity of the master, the slave could easily purchase his own freedom. The price of slaves varied enormously, according to their special aptitude and grade of service. It might range from £1700, in rare cases, to £10, or even less, in our money.^ But taking the average price of
» Sen. De Ben, iii. 21 ; j^. 47 ; "^ Or, 2808. » Ih, 2874. * lb, 2816. Plin. Ep. ii. 17, 9 ; viiL 16 ; cf. Marq. « Ih. 2862. • Sen. De Clem. i. 18.
PrvB, i. 176. ' Marq. PHv, i. 174.
d
118 SOCIAL UFE book x
ordinary slaves, one careM and frugal might sometimes save the cost of his freedom in a few years. The slave, especially if he liad any special gift, or if he occupied a prominent position in the household, had many chances of adding to his pecidium. But the commonest drudge might spare something from the daily allowance of food.^ Others, like the cooks in Apuleius, might sell their perquisites from the remains of a hanquet' The door-keepers, a class notorious for their insolence in Martial's day,* often levied heavy tolls for admission to their master's presence. And good-natured visitors would not depart without leaving a gift to those who had done them servica It must also be remembered that the slave sjrstem of antiquity covered much of the ground of our modern industrial organisation. A great household, or a great estate, was a society almost complete in itself. And intelligent slaves were often entrusted with the entire manage- ment of certain departments.^ The great rural properties had their quarries, brickworks, and mines ; and manufactures of all kinds were carried on by servile industry, with slaves or freedmen as managers. The merchant, the banker, the contractor, the publisher, had to use, not only slave labour, but slave skill and superintendence.^ The great household needed to be organised under chiefs. And on rural estates, down to the end of the Western Empire, the villicus or procurator was nearly always a man of servile origin.® In these various capacities, the trusted slave was often practi- cally a partner, with a share of the profits, or he had a commission on the returns. Such a fortunate servant, by hoarding his pectUium, might soon become a capitalist on his own account, and well able, if he chose, to purchase his freedouL His pecrdivm, like that of the son in manu pcUris, was of course by law the property of his master. But the security of the pectUium was the security for good service.^ Thus a useful and favourite slave often easily became a freedman, sometimes by purchase, or, as often happened in the case of servants of the imperial house, by the free gift of
^ Sen. J^. 80, § 4, peoalinm snnm domi ; Sen. Nee Inj. xiv. onbioolarii
quod oomparavenint ventre fraadato supercilium. pro capite nnmerant. * Momms, R, H. ii. 880 (Tr.)
* ApnL Met, x. 14 ; cf. Boiasier, Rel. ' Marq. Priv. i. 162 sq.
Rom, u. 897. « C, Tk, ix. 80, 2 ; iL 80, 2.
' V. 22, 10, negat lasso janitor esse ^ Marq. Friv. L p. 168.
CHAP. Ill THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN 119
the lord. There are even cases on record where a slave was left heir of his roaster's property. Trimalchio boasted that he had been made by his master joint heir with the Emperor.^
The tie between patron and freedman was very close. The emancipated slave had often been a trusted favourite, and even a Mend of the family, and his lord was under an obligation to provide for his futura The freedman frequently remained in the household, with probably little real change in his position. BUs patron owed him at least support and shelter. But he often gave him, besides, the means of an independent life, a fftrm, a shop, or capital to start in some trade.' In the time of Ovid, a freedman of M. Aurelius Gotta had more than once received from his patron the fortune of a knight, besides ample provision for his children.* A similar act of generosity, which was recklessly abused, is recorded by MartiaL^ By ancient law, as well as by sentiment, senators were forbidden to soil themselves by trade or usury .^ But so inconvenient a prohibition was sure to be evaded. And probably the most frequent means of evasion was by entrusting senatorial capital to fireedmen or clients, or even to the higher class of slaves.* When Trimalchio began to rise in the social scale, he gave up trade, and employed his capital in financing men of the freedman dasa^ These people, generally of Levantine origin, had the aptitude for commerce which has at all times been a character- istic of their race. And, in the time of the Empire, almost all trade and industry was in their hands. The tale of Petronius reveals the secret of their success. They value money beyond anything else ; it is the one object of their lives. They frankly estimate a man's worth and character in terms of cash.* Keen, energetic, and unscrupulous, they will " pick a farthing out of a dung-heap with their teeth"; "lead turns to gold in their hands."' They are entirely of Vespasian's opinion that gold from any quarter, however unsavoury, " never smells." Taking the world as it was, in many respects they deserved to succeed. They were not, indeed, encumbered with dignity or self-respect. They
> Petron. Sat, 76. ' Pint CaL Maj, 21.
' Mat^ Ftiv. L 165. ' Petron. 77, lustali me de negotia-
' 75. p. 178, n. tione et coepi libertos foenerare.
' Mart. ▼. 70 ; of. vii. 64. " Id. 77, assem habeas, asaem valeas.
* Lit. zxL 68, qnaestua omnia patri- * Id. 43, paratus fuit quadrantem de
boa indeooma risna; D. Casa. 69. 16 ; stercore mordicos tollere: — in mana
et (7. Th. xiii. 1. 4 ; v. Godefroy'a note. illiua plumbum aumm fiebat.
UD SOCIAL UFE
hyi <me goal, and tfaej workad towds it vitfa infinile indnsUy and nnfnlnig eocmige and adf-^aifidaieeL Xodiiiig daimts or dismajB them. If a fleet of mgrhmtrnm, wtirth a kige fortope, is loet in a stonn, the futfafiam speeulalor will at onee adl his wife's clothes an-l jewels, and start cheerfnIlT oo a fresh TentmeL* When his great ambitioa has been acfaiered, he enjoys its fruits after his kind in all agesL Exrlnded from the great worid of hereditary coltore, theae people caricature its tastes^and imitate an its rices, without catrhing eren a leflecticm of its charm and refinement. The selfish egotism of the dissipated noUe mi^t be bad enough, bat it was sometimes Teiled by a careless grace, or an occasional defierence to lofty tradition. The selfish- ness and grossness of the upstart is naked and not ashamed, or we mi^t almost say, it glories in its shame. Its loxnry is a tasteless attempt to vie with the splendoor ot aristocratic banquets. The career and the waiter perform their tasks to the beat of a deafening musia Art and Literature are prosti- tuted to the service of this vulgar parade of new wealth, and the divine Homer is profiEuied by a man who thinks that Hannibal fought in the Trojan War.' The conversation is of the true bourgeois tone, with all its emphasis on the obvious, its unctuous moralising, its platitudes consecrated by their antiquity.
It is this society which is drawn for us with such a sure, masterly hand, and with such graceful ease, by Fetroniua. The Satifiean is well known to be one of the great puzzles and mysteries iu Soman literature. Scholars have held the most widely different opinions as to its date, its author, and its pur- pose. The scene has been laid in the reign of Augustus or of Tiberius, and, on the strength of a misinterpreted inscription, even as late as the reign of Alexander Sevenis.' Those who have attributed it to the friend and victim of Nero have been confronted with the silence of Qointilian, Juvenal, and Martial, with the silence of Tacitus as to any literary work by Petronius, whose character and end he has described with a curious sympathy and care.^ It is only late critics of the lower empire, such as Macrobius,' and a dilettante aristocrat like Sidonius ApoUinarls,^ who pay any attention to this re-
> Petron. 7«. * Tac Ann. xvL 18. 19.
• Or! 1176 ; ot Teuffel. Ham. LU. U. * ^'^'^^' ^^ ^P' *• ^ ^' 1 800, n. 4. ' Sidon. ApolL Carm, ix. 268.
CHAP, ui THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN 121
markable work of genius. And Sidonius seems to make its aatbor a citizen of Marseilles.^ Yet silence in such cases may be very deceptiva Martial and Statius never mention one another, and both might seem unknown to Tacitus. And Tacitus, after the fashion of the Soman aristocrat, in painting the character of Petronius, may not have thought it relevant or important to notice a light work such as the Satiricon, even if he had ever seen it. He does not think it worth while to mention the histories of the Emperor Claudius, the tragedies of Seneca, or the Punica of Silius Italicus.' Tacitus, like Thucy- didee, is too much absorbed in the social tragedy of his time to have any thought to spare for its artistic efforts. The rather shallow, easy-going Pliny has told us far more of social life in the reigns of Domitian and Trajan, its rural pleasures and its fdtile literary ambitions, than the great, gloomy historian who was absorbed in the vicissitudes of the deadly duel between the Senate and the Emperors. One thing is certain about the author of this famous piece — ^he was not a plebeian man about town, although it may be doubted whether M. Boissier is safe in maintaining that such a writer would not have chosen his own environment of the Suburra as the field for his imagination.^ It is safer to seek for light on the social status of the author in the tone of his work. The Satiricon is emphatically the production of a cultivated aristocrat, who looks down with serene and amused scorn on the vulgar bourgeois world which he is painting. He is interested in it, but it is the interest of the detached, artistic observer, whose own world is very far off. Encolpins and Trimalchio and his coarse freedman friends are people with whom the author would never have dined, but whom, at a safe social distance, he found infinitely amusing as well as disgusting. He saw that a great social revolution was going on before his eyes, that the old slave minion, with estates in three continents, was becoming the rival of the great noble in wealth, that the new-sprung class were presenting to the world a vulgar caricature of the luxury in the palaces on the Esquiline. Probably he thought it all bad,^ but the bad
' Sidon. Apoll. (^rfiuzxiii. 156, ette ' Boissier, L*Opp, p. 257, ce n'est
Ifimlienaiiim per hortos sacri stipitis, pas la coutame qa'on mette son id^l
Aibtter, oolonum Hellespontiaco parem pr^ de soi.
hiapo, etc. * Petron. 88, at nos yino scortiBque
' Tac. Ann, ziL 8 ; ziiL 2 ; xy. 45, demersi ne paratas quidem artes ande-
to, 05 ; Tac RisL ilL 65. mos oognoocere, sed accnsatores anti-
its SOCIAL UFE BOOK i
became worse when it was coarse and vulgar. The ignorant assumption of literary and artistic taste in Trimalchio must have been contrasted in the author's mind with many an evening at the palace, when Nero, in his better moods, would recite his far firom contemptible verses, or his favourite passages from Euripides, and when the new style of Lucan would be balanced against that of the great old masters.^ And the man who had been charmed with the sprightly grace of the stately and charming Poppaea may be forgiven for showing hii hard contempt for Fortunata, who, in the middle of dinner, runs off to count the silver and deal out the slaves' share of the leavings, and returns to get dnmk and fight with one of her guests.^
The motive of the work has been much debated. It has been thought a satire on the Neronian circle, and again an effort to gratify it, by a revelation of the corruptions of the plebeian world, the same impulse which drove Messalina to the brothel, and Nero to range the taverns at midnight' It has been thought a satire on the insolence and grossness of Pallas and the freedmen of the Claudian regime which Nero detested, to amuse him with all their vulgar absurdities. Is it not possible that the writer was merely pleasing himself — that he was simply following the impulse of genius? Since the seventh century the work has only existed in fragments.* Who can tell how much the lost portions, if we possessed them, might affect our judgment of the object of the work? One thing is certain, its author was a very complex character, and would probably have smiled at some of the lumbering efforts to read his secret. Even though he may have had no lofty purpose, a weary man of pleasure may have wished to display, in its grossest, vulgarest form, the life of which he had tasted the pleasures, and which he had seen turning into Dead Sea fruit He was probably a bad man in Ms conduct, worse perhaps in his imagination ; and yet, by a strange contradiction, which is not unexampled in the history of character, he may have had dreams of a refined purity and temperance which tortured and embittered him by their contrast with actual life.
qnitatis vitia tantum doccmus et (lis- ^ PetroD. 118 ; cC BoiBsier, VOpp.
oimiis. Thia rather applies to the 218. ^ Petron. 70, 67.
higher cultivated class. ' Juv. vi. 115 ; Saet AVro, zxn.
* Teuffel. n(m. LU, § 800, n. 1.
CHAP. Ill THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN 123
Out of the smoke of controversy, the conclusion seems to have emerged that the Satiricon is a work of Nero's reign, and that its author was in all probability that Gains Petronius who was Nero's close companion, and who fell a victim to the jealousy of Tigellinus. Not the least cogent proof of this is the literary criticism of the work. It is well known that Lucan, belonging to the Spanish family of the Senecas, had thrown ofiT many of the conventions of Soman literature, and discarded the machinery of epic mythology in his Pharsaliou He had also incurred the literary jealousy of Nero. The attack in the Satiricon on Lucan's literary aberrations can hardly be mistaken. The old poet Eumolpus is introduced to defend the traditions of the past. And he gives a not very successful demonstration, in 285 verses, of the manner in which the subject should have been treated, with all the scenery and machinery of orthodox epia^ This specimen of conservative taste is the least happy part of the work.
Such evidence is reinforced by the harmony of the whole tone of the Satiricon with the clear-cut character of Petronius in Tacitus. There was evidently a singular fascination about this man, which, in spite of his wasted, self-indulgent life, was keenly felt by the severe historian. Petronius was capable of great things, but in an age of wild licence he deliberately devoted his brilliant talent to making sensuality a fine art. like Otho, who belonged to the same circle, be showed, as consul and in the government of Bithynia, that a man of pleasure could be equal to great affairs.^ After this single digression from the scheme of the voluptuary, he returned to his pleasures, and became an arbiter in all ques- tions of sensual taste, from whose decision there was no appeal. His ascendency over the Emperor drew upon him the fatal omiity of Tigellinus. Petronius was doomed. It was a time when not even the form of justice was used to veil the caprices of tyranny, and Petronius determined not to endure a long suspense when the issue was certain. He had gone as far as
» Petron. 118, 119 ; cf. Boissier, 1 ; cf. Tac Dial. Or. c 86 ; the
*VOfp. p. 289. Other proofs of tbe invention of a peculiar glass, which
date of the Satiricon are the occurrence belongs to the reign of Tiberias, cf.
•f aames like Apelles and Menecrates, Plin. H. N. xxxyi 66 ; D. Oass. 67.
Ik 61, 73 ; cf. Suet Calig. 88 ; Nero, 21 ad fin.
10; FriedL Cena Trim. EifU. 9 ; the > Tac Ann. xvL 18, rigentem w
nfleettona on decline of oratory, Sat. ac parem negotiis ostendit.
184 SOCIAL LIFE
Cumae to attend the Emperor. There he was stopped. He retired to his chamber and had his veins alternately opened and rebound, meanwhile conversing with his friends or listening to light verses, not, as the fashion then was, seeking consolation from a Stoic director on the issues of life and death. He rewarded some of his slaves; others he had flogged before his eyes. After a banquet he fell calmly into his last sleep. In his will there was none of the craven adulation by which the victim often strove to save his heirs from imperial rapacity. He broke his most precious myrrhine vase, to prevent its being added to Nero's treasures.^ His only bequest to the Emperor was a stinging catalogue of his secret and nameless sins.^
The Satiricon, as we have it, is only a fragment, containing parts of two books, out of a total of sixteen. It is full of humorous exaggeration and wild Aristophanic fun, along with, here and there, very subtle and refined delineation of character. But, except in the famous dinner of Trimalchio, there are few signs of regular construction or closeness of texture in plot and incident. Even if we had the whole, it might have been difficult to decipher its motive or to unlock the secret of the author's character. We can only be sure that he was a man of genius, and that he was interested in the intellectual pur- suits and tendencies of his time, as well as in its vices and follies. We may perhaps surmise that he was at once per- verted and disillusioned, alternately fascinated and disgusted by the worship of the flesh and its lusts in that evil time. He is not, as has been sometimes said, utterly devoid of a moral sense. Occasionally he shows a gleam of nobler feeling, a sense of the lacrimae rerum, as in that passage where the corpse of the shipwrecked lichas is washed ashore. " Somewhere a wife is quietly awaiting him, or a father or a son, with no thought of storm; some one whom he kissed on leaving. . . . He had examined the accounts of his estates, he had pictured to himself the day of his return to his home. And now he lies, 0 ye gods, how far from the goal of his hopes. But the sea is not the only mocker of the hopes of men. If you reckon well, there is
» Plin. H. N. XXX vii. 7 (20), T. Po- « Tac. Ann. xvL 19, sed flagitiaprin.
tronius consularis mori turns invidia cipis ot novitatem caj usque stupri per- Neronis, . . . trallam myrrhinam scripsit atque obsignata mint NeronL
HS.CCC cmptam fregit
CHAF. Ill THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN IS6
everywhere." ^ There is also a curious note of con- tempt for his own age in a passage on the decay of the fine arts. The tone is, for the moment, ahuost that of Buskin. The glories of the golden age of art were the result of simple virtue. An age like the Neronian, an age abandoned to wine -and harlotry, which dreams only of making money by any sordid means, cannot even appreciate what the great masters have left behind, much less itself produce anything worthy. Even the gods of the Capitol are now honoured by an offering of crude bullion, not by the masterpieces of a Fheidias or an Apelles. And the race which created them are now for us, forsooth, silly Greeklings ! ^
Yet side by side mth a passage like this, there are descrip- tions of abnormal depravity so coarsely realistic that it has often been assumed, and not unnaturally, that the writer rioted in mere filth. It should be remembered, however, that there was a tradition of immorality about the ancient romance,' and Petronius, had he cared to do so, might have made the same apology as Martial, that he provided what his readers demanded.^ That Petronius was deeply tainted is only too probable from his associations, although Tacitus implies that he was rather a fastidious voluptuary than a gross debauchee. Yet a sensualist of the intellectual range of Petronius may have occasionally visions of a better world than that to which be has sunk. Is it not possible that the gay elegant trifier may sometimes have scorned himself as he scorned his time ? Ib it not possible that, along with other illusions, he had parted with the illusions of vice, and that in the "noctes Neronis " he had seen the adder among the roses ? He has written one of the keenest satires ever penned on the vulgarity of mere wealth, its absurd affectations, its vanity, its grossness. May he not also have wished, without moralising in a fashion which so cultivated a trifier would have scorned, to reveal the abyss towards which a society lost to all the finer passions of the spirit was hurrying ? In the half comic, half ghastly scene in which TrimalcMo, in a fit of maudlin sentiment,
> Petnm. 115, li bene calcolum ' See Boissier's remarks, VOpp. p. poott, nbique nanfragiiim est. 228.
> Id. S8. For a fayounble esti- ^ Mart v. 2 ; iii. 68 ; of. Mahaffy, mate of the SaHrieon, cf. Schiller's Oreek World under Jloman Sway, p. Gemh, Hhn. KaimrttU, i. 469, 470. 298.
126 SOCIAL LIFE
has himself laid out for dead, while the horns blare out his funeral lament, we seem to hear the knell of a society which was the slave of gold and gross pleasure, and seemed to be rotting before its death.
But it need hardly be said that the prevailing note of the Satirieon is anything but melancholy. The author \r -intensely amused with his subject, and the piece is full of the most riotous fun and humour. It belongs formally to the medley of prose and verse which Varro introduced into Boman literature on the model of Menippus of Gadara.^ It contains disquisitions on literary tendencies of the day in poetry and oratory, anecdotes and desultory talk. But Petronius has given a new character to the old '^Satura," more in the manner of the Greek romance. There probably was no r^ular plot in the complete work, no central motive, such as the wrath of Priapus,' to bind it together. Yet there is a certain bond of union in the narrative of lively, and often question- able, adventures through which Petronius carries his very dis- reputable characters. In this life and movement, this human interest, the Satirieon is the distant ancestor of OH Bias, Roderick Random, and Tom Jones.
The scene of the earlier part, long since lost, may have been laid at Massilia.* In the two books partially preserved to us, it lies in southern Italy, at Cumae or Croton, in those Greek towns which had plenty of Greek vice, without much Greek refine- ment.^ The three strangers, whose adventures are related, Encolpius, Ascyltus, and Giton, if we may judge by their names, are also Greek, with the literary culture of their time, and deeply tainted with its worst vices. At the opening of our fragm6nt, Encolpius, a beggarly, wandering sophist, is declaiming in a portico on the decay of oratory.^ He is expressing what was probably Petronixis's own judgment, as it was that of Tacitus,^ as to the evil effects of school declamation on musty or frivolous subjects. He is met by a
^ Teuffel, Rom. Lit, i. p. 280 ; FriedL by the complaints of municipal deoay
Oena Trim, EirU, 5. in c 44 : Naples, by the fact that
' Ih, p. 6. ^^® town is a Roman colony (44, 57) ;
. «.^ 1 „ « « ... Cumae was the only town in this region
« Sidon. ApolL CamL \x. 268 ; xxm. which had Praetors. Cf. Or, Hmu.
15^- 1498, 2263 ; Petron. 66.
* Petron. 81, cf. Friedl. Cena » Petrou. Sat, 1, 2. TnnL EM, 6. Puteoli is excluded * Tao. Dt Or, c 81, 85.
CHAP. Ill THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN li7
rival lectoier, Agamemnon, who urges, on behalf of the unfortunate teachers of this conventional rhetoric, that the fiuilt lies not with them, but with the parents and the public, the same excuse, in fEu^t, which Plato had long before made for the maligned sophist of the fifth century B.c.^ But Encolpius and his companions, in spite of these literary interests, are the most disreputable adventurers, educated yet hopelessly depraved. They are even more at home in the reeking slums than in the lecture halL Encolpius has been guilty of murder, theft, seduction. The party are alternately plunderers and plundered. They riot for the moment in foul excesses, and are tortured by jealousy and the miseries of squalid vice. Only those who have a taste for pornography will care to follow them in these dark paths. Beduced U> the last pinch of poverty, they are invited to dine at the all-welcoming table of Trimalchio, and this is for us the moflt interesting passage in their adventures. But, on leaving the rich freedman's halls they once more pass into scenes where a modem pen cannot venture to follow them. Yet soon afterwards, Encolpius is found in a picture gallery discussing the fate of literature and art with Eumolpus,^ an inveterate poet, as vicious as himself Presently the party are on shipboard off the south Italian coast. They are shipwrecked and cast ashore in a storm near the town of Croton.^ A fiieiidly peasant informs them that, if they are honest merchants, that is no place for their craft. But if they bdong to the more distinguished world of intrigue, they may Biake their fortune. It is a society which has no care for letters or virtue, which thinks only of unearned gain. There aie only two classes, the deceivers and their victims. Children ire an expensive luxury, for only the childless ever receive an invitation or any social attention. It is like a city ravaged by the plague ; there are only left the corpses and the vultures.^ The adventurers resolve to seize the rare opportunity; they will turn the tables on the social birds of prey. The pauper poet is easily translated into a miUionaire with enormous estates in Africa.^ A portion of his wealth has been engulfed
> Rip. yL p. 492 A. « /6. 116, nihil aliud est nisi
• n ^ a A on cadavcra quae laoerantar aut corvi
« Petron. Sat. 83. i i^g„„^
• n. 114. • ih. 117.
128 SOCIAL LIFE book i
in the storm, but a solid HS. 3 00,0 00,0 00, with much besides, still remains. He has a cough, moreover, with other signs of debility. There is no more idiotic person^ as our Stock Exchange records show, than a man eager for an unearned fortune. The poor fools flocked around Eumolpus, drinking in every fresh rumour about his will. He was loaded with gifts ;^ great ladies made an easy offer of their virtue and even that of their children.* Meanwhile he, or Petronius, plays with their follies or tortures their avidity. In one of his many wills, the heirs of the pretended Croesus are required not to touch their booty till they have devoured his remains before the people ! * The tales of barbarian tribes in Herodotus, the memories of the siege of Saguntum and Numantia, are invoked in brutal irony to justify the reasonableness of the demand. *' Close your eyes," the cynic enjoins, "and fancy that instead of devouring human flesh, you are swallowing a million of money." Petronius could be very brutal as well as very refined in his raillery. The combined stupidity and greed of the fortune-hunter of all ages are perhaps best met by such brutality of contempt.
The really interesting part of their adventure is the dinner at the house of Trimalchio, a rich freedman, to which these rascals were invited. Trimalchio is probably in many traits drawn from life, but the picture of himself, of his wife and his associates, is a work of genius worthy of Fielding or Smollett or Le Sage. Petronius, it is clear, enjoyed his work, and, in spite of his contempt for the vulgar ambition and the coarseness and conmionness of Trimalchio's class, he has a liking for a certain simplicity and honest good nature in Trimalchio. The freedman tells the story of his own career * without reserve, and with a certain pride in the virtue and frugality, according to his standards, which have made him what he is. He also exults in his shrewdness and business capacity. His motto has always been, " You are worth just what you hava" " Buy cheap and sell dear." Coming as a little slave boy from Asia, probably in the reign of Augustus,^
^ Petron. Sai, 124. who died 8 B.C. Trimalchio would
« Ih. 140. " 76. 141. therefore be bom arc 18 B.C. {SaL 71,
* lb. 75, 76. 29, 75). He was perhaps over seventy
• «. FriedL Cena Trim, Einl, p. 7. at the time of the dinner (Sat, 27, 77), His cognomen Maecenatiaiius marks which may therefore bo placed abont him as a slave of the friend of Aagustns 57 a.d.
CHAP, ui TBE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN 1»
lie became the iaToimte dL his maeter, and more than the favourite of his mialieaa. He found himself in the end the real master of the household, and, on his patron's death, he was left joint-heir to his property with the emperor. Bat he had ambitions bejond even such a fortune. He became a ship- owner on a great scale. He lost a quarter of a million in a single storm, and at once proceeded to build more and larger ships. Money poured in; all his ventures prospered. He bought estates in Italy, Sicily, and Africa. Scune of his purchases he had never aeen.^ He built himself a stately house, with marble porticoeS: four great banqueting-halls, and twenty sleeping-rooms.^ Every- thing to satisfy human wants was produced upon his lands. He was a man of infinite enterprise. He had improved the breed of his flocks by importing rams from Tarentum. He had bees from Hymettus in his hives. He sent to India for mushroom spawn.' A gazette was r^ularly brought out, full of statistics, and all the daily incidents on his estates : ^ the number of slave births and deaths ; a slave crucified for blaspheming the genius of the master ; a fire in the bailifiTs house ; the divorce of a watch- man's wife, who had been caught in adultery with the bathman; a sum of HS.100,000 paid into the chest, and waiting for invest- ment— these are some of the items of news. Trimalchio, who bears now, after the fashion of his class, the good Boman name of Caius Pompeius, has risen to the dignity of Sevir Aiigustalis in his municipality ; ^ he is one of the foremost persons in it, with an overwhelming sense of the dignity of wealth, and with a ridiculoas affectation of artistic and literary culture, which he parades with a delightful unconsciousness of his blunders.
When the wandering adventurers arrive for dinner,^ they find a bald old man in a red tunic playing at ball, with eunuchs in attendance. While he is afterwards being rubbed down with unguents in the bath, his servants refresh themselves with old Falemian. Then, with four richly dressed runners preceding him, and wrapped in a scarlet mantle, he is borne to the house in his sedan along with his ugly minion. On the wall of the vestibule, as you entered, there were frescoes, one of whic^ represented the young Trimalchio, under the leadership
> Petron. SaL 48. « 76. 53.
» Ih. 77. * Ih. 71 ; cf. Friedl. Cma. IWm. p.
' Ih. 88, scripeit nt iUi ex India 808. Koicii boletonim mitteretar. ' PetroD. Sal. 27.
130 SOCIAL LIFE book i
of Minerva, making his entry into Borne, with other striking incidents of his illustrious career, while Fortune empties her flowing horn, and the Fates spin the golden thread of his destiny.^ The banquet begins; Alexandrian boys bring iced water and delicately attend to the guests' feet, singing all the whila* Indeed, the whole service is accompanied by singing, and the blare of instruments. To a great, deafening burst of music, the host is at last borne in buried in cushions, his bare shaven head protruding from a scarlet cloak, with a stole around his neck, and lappets falling on each side ; his hands and arms loaded with rings.' Not being just then quite ready for dinner, he, with a kindly apology, has a game of draughts, until he feels inclined to eat, the pieces on the tei*ebinthine board being, appropriately to such a player, gold and silver coins.^ The dinner is a long series of surprises, on the artistic ingenuity of which Trimalchio plumes himself vastly. One course represents the twelve signs of the Zodiac, of which the host expounds at length the fateful significance.^ Another dish was a large boar, with baskets of sweetmeats hanging from its tusks. A huge bearded hunter pierced its sides with a hunting knife, and forthwith from the wound there issued a flight of thrushes which were dexterously cap- tured in nets as they flew about the room.^ Towards the end of the meal the guests were startled by strange sounds in the ceiling, and a quaking of the whole apartment As they raised their eyes, the ceiling suddenly opened, and a great circular tray descended, with a figure of Priapus, bearing all sorts of fruit and bon-bons.^ It may be readily assumed that in such a scene the wine was not stinted. Huge flagons, coated with g3rpsum, were brought in shoulder high, each with a label attesting that it was the great Falemian vintage of Opimius, one hundred years old.' As the wine appeared, the genial host remarked with admirable frankness, "" I did not give as good wine yesterday, although I had a more distinguished company I "
The amusements of the banquet were as various, and some of them as coarse or fantastic, as the dishes. They are gross
^ Petron. SaL 29. ^ 76. 81. laquearia ita ooagmentat . . . ut totieos
' Ih. 82. ^ Ih. 88. tecta quotiens fercula mutentur.
» Ih. 86. • n, 40. • 5at 84 ; Cic BruL IxxxiiL The
'76. 60; cf. Sen. Ep. 90, 115, ConsulBhip of Opim. was B.O. ISl.
CHAP. Ill THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN 131
and tasteless exaggerations of the prevailing fashion. In a literary age, a man of Trimalchio's position must affect some knowledge of letters and art. He is a ludicrous example of the dogmatism of pretentious ignorance in all ages. He has a Greek and Latin library,^ and pretends to have once read Homer, although his recollections are rather confused. He makes, for instance, Daedalus shut Niobe into the Trojan horse; Iphigenia becomes the wife of Achilles ; Helen is the sister of Diomede and Ganymede.' One of the more refined entertain- ments which are provided is the performance of scenes from the Homeric poems, which Trimalchio accompanied by reading in a sonorous voice from a Latin version.* He is him- self an author, and has his poems recited by a boy personating the Bacchic god^ As a connoisseur of plate he will yield to no one,^ although he slyly confesses that his '' real Corinthian '' got their name from the dealer Gorinthus. The metal came from the fused bronze and gold and silver which Hannibal flung into the flames of captured Troy. But Trimalchio's most genuine taste, as he naively confesses, is for acrobatic feats and loud horn- blowing. And so, a company of rope-dancers bore the guests with their monotonous performances.^ Blood-curdling tales of the wer-wolf, and corpses carried off by witches, are provided for another kind of taste.^ A base product of Alexandria imitates the notes of the nightingale, and another, apparently of Jewish race, equally base, in torturing dissonant tones spouted passages &om the Aeneid, profaned to scholarly ears by a mixture of Atellan verses.* Trimalchio, who was anxious that his wife should display her old powers of dancing a cancan, is also going to give an exhibition of his own gifts in the pantomimic line,* when the shrewd lady in a whisper warned him to maintain his dignity. How far she preserved her own we shall see presently.
* Petron. 48 ; on private and pnblio * Id. 41 ; cf. Epiot iii 28 ; Plin. £p. libraries, cf. Sen. De Tranq. c. ix. ; Plin. i. 13 ; iii. 18, 4 ; vi. 15 ; Mart, iii 44, ^ L 8, § 2 ; il 17, § 8 ; iii. 7, § 7 ; 45 ; 50.
IT. 28, § 1 ; Suet FU, Pen. ; Luc. Adv. 6 gen. Breo, Fit xii. 2 ; Or. Henz.
ImdocL 1, 16 ; Mart yii 17, 1 ; Suet 3838 ; Mart iv. 89 ; Marq. PHv, ii.
J. QuM, xUt. ; Octev. xxix. ; Marq. 688 ; Friedl. SiUengesch. iii. 84,
iW«. L 114 ; OregoroY. Hadr. (Tr.) p. e Petron 58
JO 1^ Mac*. Su4ten^ p. 220; Sid. 7 w. 62, '68 ;' cf. ApuL if^ i. 8.
^Petron*. 52, " Petron. 68.
• Id. 59. • Id. 52.
182 SOCIAL LIFE book i
The company at this strange party were worthy of their host. And Petronius has outdone himself in the description of these brother freedmen, looking up to Trimalchio as the glory of their order, and giving vent to their ill-humour, theu- optimism, or their inane moralities, in conversation with the sly observer who reports their talk. They are all old slaves like their host, men who have " made their pile," or lost it. They rate themselves and their neighbours simply in terms of cash.^ The only ability they can understand is that which can "pick money out of the dung-heap," and "turn lead to gold."' These gross and infinitely stupid fellows have not even the few saving traits in the character of Trimalchio. He has, after all, an honourable, though futile, ambition to be a wit, a connoisseur, a patron of learning. His luxury is coarse enough, but he wishes, however vainly, to redeem it by some ingenmty, by interspersing the mere animal feeding with some broken gleams, or, as we may think, faint and distorted reflections, of that great world of which he had heard, but the portals of which he could never enter. But his company are of mere clay. Trimalchio is gross enough at times, but, compared with his guests, he seems almost tolerable. And their dull baseness is the more torturing to a modern reader because it is an enduring typa The neighbour of the Greek observer warns him not to despise his company;* they are " warm " men. That one at the end of the couch, who began as a porter, has his HS. 8 00,0 00. Another, an undertaker, has had his glorious days, when the wine flowed in rivers ; * but he has been compelled to compound with his creditors, and he has played them a clever trick. A certain Seleucus, whose name reveals his origin, explains his objections to the bath, especially on this particular morning, when he has been at a funeral.^ The fate of the departed friend unfortunately leads him to moralise on the weakness of mortal men, mere insects, or bubbles on the stream. As for medical 6dd, it is an imaginary comfort; it oftener kills than cures.® The
» Petron. 38, 48. » Id. 42.
' Id. 48, in manu illios plombom ' Id. 42, medious nihU aliud est
aurum fiebat. quam ADimi oonsolatio. For similar
* Id. 88, GoUibertos ejus oave con* opinions of the medical profession, cf. temnas, vslde saccosi sunt. v. Friedl. Petron. 56 ; D. Cass. Ixiz. 22 ; bczi. Cena Trim, p. 228. 83 ; Mart vi. 81 ; vi. 53 ; ii. 16; Epict.
* Petron. 88. ill. 23, § 27 ; Juv. iii. 77 ; Luc. FhUops.
CHAP. Ill THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN 133
great consolation was that the funeral was respectably done, although the wife was not effusive in her grief.^ Another guest will have none of this affected mourning for one who Uyed the life of his choice and left his solid hundred thousand.' He was after all a harsh quarrelsome person, very different from his brother, a stout, kindly fellow with an open hand, and a sumptuous tabla He had his reverses at first, but he was set up again by a good vintage and a lucky bequest, which he knew, by a sly stroke, how to increase ; a true son of fortune, who lived his seventy years and more, as black as a crow, a man who lustily enjoyed all the delights of the flesh to the very end.^
But the most interesting person for the modern student is the grumbler about the management of town affairs; and here a page or two of the Satiricon is worth a dissertation. The price of bread has gone up, and the bakers must be in league with the aediles. In the good old times, when the critic first came firom Asia, things were very different* " There were giants in those days. Think of Safinius, who lived by the old arch, a man with a sharp, biting tongue, but a true friend, a man who, in the town council, went straight to his point, whose voice in the forum rang out like a trumpet Yet he was just like one of us, knew everybody's name, and returned every salute. Why, in those days com was as cheap as dirt You could buy for an as a loaf big enough for two. But the town has since gone sadly back.^ Our aediles now think only how to pocket in a day what would be to some of us a fortune. I know how a certain person made his thousand gold pieces. If this goes on, I shall have to sell my cottages. Neither men nor the gods have any mercy. It all comes from our n^lect of religion. No one now keeps a fast, no one cares a fig for Jove. In old days when there was a drought, the long-robed matrons with bare feet, dishevelled hair, and pure hearts, would ascend the hill to entreat Jupiter for rain, and then it would pour down in
e. 2I9 26 ; Adv. Tndoct. c. 29 ; Marq. oliorum, et adhuc salaz est On the
Jhriv. ii. 779. Sen. gives a higher idea phrase olim oliomm v. FriedL Cena
of the oraft, De Ben. vi. 16 ; of. Apul. Trim. p. 287.
MtL z. S, where the doctor rejects the * Petron. 44.
I proposals made to him. ^ Id. 44, haeo colonia retroversus
^ Petron. 42, planctus est optime, crescit tauquam coda vitnli. This ^ si Tnaligne ilium ploravit uxor. passage is used to prove that Puteoli
* Id. 43. cannot be Trimalchio's town. Kriedl.
' Id. 48, noveram hominem olim Cena Trim. ]\ 289.
A
134 SOCIAL LIFE book i
bucketB." ^ At this point the maundering, pious pessimist is interrupted by a rag dealer ^ of a more cheerful temper. " Now this, now that, as the rustic said, when he lost his speckled pig. What we have not to-day will come to-morrow ; so life rubs along. Why, we are to have a three days' show of gladiators on the next holiday, not of the common sort, but many freed- men among them. And our Titus has a high spirit ; he will not do things by halves. He will give us cold steel without any shirking, a good bit of butchery in full view of the amphi- theatre. And he can well afford it. His father died and left him HS.30,000,000. What is a paltry HS.400,000 to such a fortune ? ' and it will give him a name for ever. He has some tit-bits, too, in reserve, the lady chariot-driver, and the steward of Glyco, who was caught with his master's wife ; poor wretch, he was only obeying ordei*8. And the worthless Glyco has given him to the beasts ; the lady deserved to suffer. And I have an inkling that Mammaea is going to give us a feast, where we shall get two denarii apiece. If she does the part expected of her, Norbanus will be nowhere. His gladiators were a wretched, weedy, twopenny-halfpenny lot, who would go down at a mere breath. They were all cut to pieces, as the cowards deserved, at the call of the crowd, ' give it them.' A pretty show indeed ! When I applauded, I gave far more than I got But friend Agamemnon, you are thinking ' what is all this long-winded chatter.' * Well, you, who dote on eloquence, why won't you talk yourself, instead of laughing at us feeble folk. Some day I may persuade you to look in at my farm ; I daresay, though the times are bad, we shall find a pullet to eat And I have a young scholar ripening for your trada He has good wits and never raises his head from his task. He paints with a will He has begun Greek, and has a real taste for Latin. But one of his tutors is conceited and idle. The other is very painstaking, but, in his excess of zeal, he teaches more than he knows. So I have bought the boy some red-letter volumes, that he may get a tincture of law for domestic purposes. That
^ Petron. 44 ad fin, itaque statim ^ For tho cost of such shows, v. Or.
iirceatim plovebat 81 ; C.LL, ii. Suppl. p. 1034 ; Friedl.
' Id. 45. On the meaning of Gen- Cena Trim, Einl. p. 58 ; Friedl. Sii'
tonarins v, Marq. Ptiv, ii. 585. They tengtscK, ii. p. 186. had a great number of Ck)llegia, often
leagued \vith the Fabri ; v. Hem, Ind. ^ Petron. 46, quid iste argutat moles-
pp. 171-72 ; C. Th, xiv. 8. tual
CHAF. Ill THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN 186
18 what gives bread and butter. He has now bad enough of literature. If he gives it up, I think I shall teach him a trade, (he barber's or auctioneer's or pleader's/ something that only death can take from him. Every day I din into his ears, Primigenius. my boy. what you leaS you learn for profit. Look at the lawyer Philera If he had not learnt his business, he could not keep the wolf from the door. Why, only a little ago, he was a hawker with a bundle on his back, and now he can hold his own with Norbanus. Learning is a treasure, and a trade can never be lost"
To all this stimulating talk there are lively interludes. A guest thinks one of the strangers, in a superior way, is making game of the company, and assails him with a shower of the choicest abuse, in malodorous I^tin of the slums, interlarded with proud references to his own rise from the slave ranks.* TrimiJchio orders the house-dog, Scylax, to be brought in, but the brute falls foul of a pet spaniel, and, in the uproar, a lamp is overthrown ; the vases on the table are all smashed, and some of the guests are scalded with the hot oil' In the middle of this lively scene, a lictor announces the approach of Habinnas, a stone-cutter, who is also a great dignitary of the town. He arrives rather elevated from another feast of which he has pleasant recollections. He courteously asks for Fortunata,^ who happens to be just then looking after the plate and dividing the remains of the feast among the slaves. That lady, after many calls, appears in a cherry coloured tunic with a yellow girdle, wiping her hands mth her necker- chief. She has splendid rings on her arms, legs, and fingers, which she puUs off to show them to the stone-cutter's lady. Trimalchio is proud of their weight, and orders a balance to be brought in to confirm his assertions. It is melancholy to relate that, in the end, the two ladies get hopelessly drunk, and fall to embracing one another in a rather hysterical fashion. Fortunata even attempts to dance.* In the growing confusion the slaves take their places at table, and the cook begins to give imitations of a favourite actor,® and lays a wager with his master on the chances of the green at the next races. Trimal-
» Petron. 46 ad fin- : cf. Mart y. 66 ; * Id. 67. ' Id. 70.
Jut. yii 5, 176. " Id. Kpheeum tragoedum coepit
' Petron. 67. imitere — Son8tunbekannt,Friedl.Cen«
» Id. 64. Trim, 806.
r
186
SOCIAL UFE
chio, who by this time was becoming very mellow and senti mental, determines to make hiB wiU, and to manumit all hii slaves, with a &nn to one, a house to another. He even givei liis friend the stone-cutter full directions about the monumeni which is to record so brilliant a career. There is to be ampl< provision for its due keeping, in the fEushion so well knowx from the inscriptions, with a £Bdr space of prescribed measure* ments, planted with vines and other fruit trees. Trimalchic wishes to be comfortable in his last home.^ On the face oj the monument ships under full sail are to figure the sourcef of his wealth.' He himself is to be sculptured, seated oo a tribunal, clothed with the praetexta of the Augustalis, with five rings on his fingers, ladling money from a bag as in the great banquet with which he had once regaled the people.' On his right hand there is to be the figure of tm wife holding a dove and a spaniel on a leash. A boy is to be graved weeping over a broken urn. And, finally, in the centre of the scene, there is to be a horologe, that the passer-by, as he looks for the hour, may have his eyes always drawn to the epitaph which recited the dignities and virtues of the illustrious freedman. It told posterity that " C. Pompeius Trimalchio Maecenatianus was pious, stout, and trusty, that he rose from nothing, left HS.30,000,000, and never heard a philosopher.'* The whole company, along with Trimalchio himself, of course wept copiously at the mere thought of the close of so illustrious a career. After renewing their gastric energy in the bath, the company fell to another banquet. Presently a cock crows, and Trimalchio, in a fit of superstition, spills his wine under the table,^ passes his rings to the right hand, and offers a reward to any one who will bring the ominous bird. The disturber was soon caught and handed over to the cook for execution. Then Trimalchio excites his wife's natural anger by a piece of amatory grossness, and, in
> Ct Or, ffenz, 4070, 7821 ; Petron. 71, valde enim falsum est vivo qaidem domos cultas esse, non ourari eas nbi diatina nobis habitandnm est
' V. the moDTiment of C. Munatina Faaatiia at Pompeii, CLL, z. 1080. But Man, p. 415 (Tr.), interprets it ditferently from Friedl. Cena Trim. p. 807.
' See the monument of the snrgeon
oculist of Assisi, Or, 2988, who records the amount he gave for his freedom, his benefactions, and his fortune, v. CJ.L. v. 4482, the monumout of Valeriiis Anteroe Asiaticus, a Bevir Aug. of Brescia.
* Plin. ff,N. xxvi. 2 (26) ; xxviil 6 (57), pleriquo (suadent) anulum e sini- stra m longissimum dextrae digitnm transferre.
CHAP. Ill THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN 137
retaUatdon for her very vigorous abuse, flings a cup at her head. In the scene which follows he gives, with the foulest references to his wife's early history, a sketch of his own career and the eulogy of the virtues that have made him what he is.^ Growing more and more sentimental, he at last has himself laid out for dead ; ' the horn-blowers sound his last lament, one of them, the undertaker's man, with such a good will, that the town watch arrived in breathless haste with water and axes to extinguish a fire. The strangers seized the opportunity to escape from the nauseous scene. Their taste raised them above Trimalchio's circle, but they were quite on the level of its morals. Encolpius and his companions are soon involved in other adventures, in which it is better not to follow thenL
The lesson of all this purse-proud ostentetion and vulgarity, the moral which Petronius may have intended to point, is one which will be taught from age to age by descend- ants of Trimalchio, and which will be never learnt till a far off future. Bub we need not moralise, any more than Petronius. We have merely given some snatehes of a work, which is now seldom read, because it throws a searching light on a class which was rising to power in Boman society. We have now seen the worst of that society, whether crushed by the tyranny of the Caesars, or corrupted and vulgarised by sudden elevation from ignominious poverty to wealth and luxury. But there were great numbers, both among the nobles and the masses, who, in that evil time, maintained the traditions of old Boman soberness and virtue. The three following chapters will reveal a different life from that which we have hitherto been describing.
* Ffttron. 76, ad banc me fortonam 3, where a similar scene is desoribed. friigalitaa mea perdaxit Turannius — componi se in leoto et velnt
exanimem a oironmstante familia plangi
* Id. 78 ; of. Sen. Dt Brev, ViL zz. jnssit.
BOOK n
RARA TEMPORUM FELICITA8
i
CHAPTER I
THE CmCLE OF THE TOUKGER FLINT
It is a great relief to turn from the picture of base and vulgar luxury in the novel of Fetronius to the sobriety and refinement of a class which has been elaborately painted by a less skilful artist, but a better man. The contrast between the pictures of Petronius and those of Pliny, of course, raises no difficulty. The writers belonged indeed to the same order, but they were describing two different worlds. The difficulty arises when we compare the high tone of the world which Pliny has immor- talised, with the hideous revelations of contemporary licence in the same class which meet us in Juvenal, Martial, and Tacitus. Aud historical charity or optimism has often turned the contrast to account But there is no need to pit the quiet testimony of Pliny against the fierce invective of Juvenal. Indeed to do so would indicate an imperfect insight into the character of the men and the associations which moulded their views of the society which surrounded them. The friends of Pliny were for the most part contemporaries of the objects of Juvenal's wrath and loathing.^ But although the two men lived side by side during the same years, and probably began to write for the public about the same date,^ there is no hint that they ever met They were socially at opposite poles ; they were also as widely separated by temperament Pliny was a charitable, good- natured man, an aristocrat, living among the dUe, with an
^ Some of P]iny*8 older friends, the of Martial shows that they were dealing
elder Pliny, Quiutilian, Spnrinna, Yer- with the same social facts. Cf. Teuffet,
einias Rofiis, go back to the age which JK, Lit u. § S2S, n. 6 ; Nettleahip,
JuTenal professes to attack (i. 170). But, Lectwru and EssaySy p. 124 sqq.
although Juyenal mentions few names
of hif own generation, such as Isaeus, ^ Moroms. Plin, (Morel), ^ 7 ; Peter,
Aichigenes, and Marius Priscus, a com- Oeach, LiU. ii. 77 ; Nettleahip^ LedurtB
parison between his subjects and those and Euays^ 181.
141
143 SOCIAL LIFE book n
assured position and easy fortune — a man who, as he admits himself, was inclined to idealise his friends.^ He probably shut his eyes to their moral faults, just as he felt bound in honour to extol their third-rate literary efforts. Juvenal was, as in a former chapter we have seen reason to believe, a soured and embittered man, who viewed the society of the great world only from a distance, and caught up the gossip of the servants' halL With the heat of an excitable tempera- ment, he probably magnified what he heard, and he made whole classes responsible for the folly and intemperance of a few. Martial, the friend of Juvenal, lived in the same atmo- sphere, but, while Juvenal was inspired by a moral purpose. Martial caters, unabashed, for a pnirient taste.* Both the charitable optimist and the gloomy, determined pessimist, by limiting their view, can find ample materials for their respective estimates of pagan society towcutUi the end of the first century. A judicial criticism will combine or balance the opposing evidence rather than select the witnesses.
The truth is that society in every age presents the most startling moral contrasts, and no single comprehensive de- scription of its moral condition can ever be true. This has been too often forgotten by those who have passed judgment on the moral state of Boman society, both in the first age of the Empire and in the last That there was stupendous corruption and abnormal depravity under princes like Caligula, Nero, and Domitian, we hardly need the testimony of the satirists to induce us to believe. That there were large classes among whom virtuous instinct, and all the sober strength and gravity of the old Roman character, were still vigorous and untainted, is equally attested and equally certain. Ingenious immorality and the extravagance of luxury were no doubt rampant in the last century of the Republic and in the first century of the Empire, and their enormity has been heightened by the per- verted and often prurient literary skill with which the orgies of voluptuous caprice have been painted to the last loathsome details. Yet even Ovid has a lingering ideal of womanly dignity which may repel, by refined reserve, the audacity of libertinism.* He was forced, by old-fashioned scruple or imperial displeasure, to make an elaborate apology for the
^ Pliu. ^. yii. 28 * Mart iii. 68, 86 ; y. 2. * Ov. Amor. iiL 4, 2.
V
CHAP. I PLINY'S SOCIETY 143
lubricities of the Ars Amandi} The most wanton writer of the evil days shrinks firom justifying adultery, and hardly ever CeoIs to respect the unconscious innocence of girlhood. In the days when, according to Juvenal, Soman matrons were eloping with gladiators, and visiting the slums of Some, Tacitus and Favorinus were preaching the duties of a pure motherhood' In the days when crowds were gloating over the obscenities of pantomime, and aristocratic dinner-parties were applauding the ribaldry of Alexandrian songs, Quintilian was denouncing the corruption of youth by the sight of their fathers toying with mistresses and minions.* In an age when matrons of noble rank were exposing themselves at the pleasure of an emperor, the philosopher Musonius was teaching that all indulgence, outside the sober limits of wedlock, was a gross, animal degradation of human dignity.^ And it is thus we may balance Juvenal and Martial on the one side and Pliny on the other. The gloomy or prurient satirist gives us a picture of ideal baseness ; the gentle and charitable aristocrat opens before us a society in which people are charmingly refined, and perhaps a little too good. Yet it is said with truth that an age should be judged by its ideals of goodness rather than by its moral aberrations. And certain it is that the age of Pliny and Tacitus and Quintilian had a high moral ideal, even though it was also the age of Domitian. The old Soman character, whatever pessimists, ancient or modem, may say, was a stubborn type, which propagated itself over all the West, and survived the Western Empire. It is safe to believe that there was in Italy and Gaul and Spain many a grand seigneur of honest, regular life, virtuous according to his lights, like Pliny's uncle, or his Spurinna, or Verginius Sufus, or Corellius. There were certainly many wedded lives as pure and self-sacrificing as those of the elder Arria and Caecina Paetus, or of Calpumia and Pliny.* There were homes like those at Fr^jus,* or Como, or Brescia,^ in which boys and girls were reared in a refined and severe simplicity, which even improved upon the
» Ov. TrisL ii 212, 846, 853. Vita * Stob. Flar. vi. 61 ; Suet Nero,
Tereconda est, Mnsa jocosa niilii ; 497. xxvii. ; cf. Denis, JtUes Morales, etc,,
* Tac. De Or. 23, non in oella emptae iL p. 184.
nntricis sed gremio ac sinu matris ^ Plin. Ep. iii. 16 ; iiL 5 ; iy. 19 ; vi.
edueabatar ; A. Gell. xiL 1. 4 ; yii. 5.
' Quintil. i 2, 4, 8 ; nostras amioas, ' Tac. Agric. 4.
not^oa concnbinos yident. "^ Plin. J^. i. 14.
144 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
tradition of the golden age of Borne. And, as will be seen in a later chapter, many a brief stone record remains which shows that, even in the world of slaves and freedmen, there were always in the darkest days crowds of humble people, with honest, homely ideals, and virtuous family affection, proud of their industries, and sustaining one another by help and kindness.
In this sounder class of Roman society, it will be found that the saving or renovating power was, not so much any religious or philosophic impulse, as the wholesome influence, which never fails firom age to age, of family duty and affection, reinforced, especially in the higher ranks, by a long tradition of Eoman dignity and self-respect, and by the simple cleanness and the pieties of country life. The life of the blameless circle of aristocrats which Pliny determined to preserve for the eyes of posterity, seems to be sometimes regarded as the result of a sudden transformation, a rebound from the frantic excesses of the time of the Glaudian Caesars to the simpler and severer mode of life of which Vespasian set a powerful example. That there was such a change of moral tone, especially in the class surrounding the court, partly caused by financial ex- haustion, partly by the introduction of new men from the provinces into the ranks of the Senate, is certified by the supreme authority of Tacitus.^ Yet we should remember that men like Agricola, the feither-in-law of Tacitus, or Yerginius Bufiis, or Fabatus, the grandfather of Pliny's wife, or the elder Pliny, and many another, were not converted prodigals. They knew how to reconcile, by quietude or politic deference, the dignity of Soman virtue with a discreet acquiescence even in the excesses of despotism. The fortunes of many of them remained unimpaired. The daily life of men like the elder Pliny and Spurinna, is distinguished by a virtuous calm, an almost painful monotony of habit, in which there seems to have been nothing to reform except, perhaps, a certain moral rigidity.^ Above all, and surely it is the most certain proof and source of the moral soundness of any age, the ideal of
' Taa Ann, iiL 56, sed praecipauA ' Pliny is pleased with the virtuous
adstricti moris auctorVespasianns erat ; monotony, Ep, iii. L § 2, me autem at
Suet. Vaep, ix. ; of. Schiller, Qtttii, Udm, certus siderum cnrsus ita vita hominnm
JToiftfTx. IL 506 ; Duruy, iv. 646; Benan, disposita delectat, sennm praesertim ;
Lei J6v. 140, 881 ; L'AnUehr. 494. cf. lii 5.
k.
CHAF. I PUNY'S SOCIETY 145
fromanhood was still hi^ and it was even then not seldom realised. There may have been many who justified the complaint of moralists that mothers did not guard with vigilant care the purity of their children. But there were women of the circle of Tacitus and Pliny as spotless as the half-l^endary Lucretia, as they were far more accomplished, and probably far more charming. It is often said that women sink or rise according to the level of the men with whom they are linked. U that be true, there must have been many good men in the days of the Flavian dynasty.
The younger Pliny, whose name, before his adoption, was Publiua Caecilius Secundus,^ was descended from families which had been settled at Como since the time of the first Caesar.* They belonged to the local aristocracy, and possessed estates and villas around the laka Pliny's father, who had held high municipal office, died early, but the boy had the great ad- vantage of the guardianship of Verginius Bufus, for whose character and achievements his ward felt the profoundest reverence.* That great soldier had been governor of Upper Germany at the close of Nero's reign, and, with a deference to old constitutional principles, which Pliny must have admired, had tvrice, at die peril of his life, refused to receive the imperial place at the hands of his clamorous l^ions.^ Pliny was bom in 61 or 62 aj)., the time which saw the death of Burrus, the retirement of Seneca from public life, and the marriage of Nero with Poppaea.^ His infancy therefore coincided vnth the last and wildest excesses of the Nerouiau tyranny. But country places like Como felt but little of the diock of these moral earthquakes. There was no school in Como till one was founded by Pliny's own generosity.^ But the boy had probably, in his early years, the care of his uncle, the author of the Natural History, who, during the worst years of the Terror, was living, like many others, in studious retirement on his estates.^ The uncle and nephew were men
' Momma. Plin. (Morel), n. 82. * Plin. Ep, vi. 20, 5. He was in hia
' The Caacilii were probaDly estab- eighteen Ui year when the famous erop-
at Como from 69 b.o. ; of, CatoU. lion of Vesnvios took place 79 a.d., D.
15 ; Plin. Ep. ir, 80, 1 ; vii. 32, 1 ; vi Cass. Izvi. 21 sq. 7A^ 5 ; ix. 7 ; Momins. Plin. p. 88 • pjj^ j^ i^ 18 g
(Morel). ^
• Plin. ^. ii. 1 ; vi. 10. 7 Rendall, xiiL in Mayor's ed. Plin.
* m HiMi, i 8, 62 ; iL 49. Ep. ui; Plin. H. N. ii. 86 (199).
L
146 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
of very difTerent temperament, but there can be little doubt that the character and habits of the older man profoundly influ- enced the ideals of the younger. The elder Pliny would have been an extraordinary character even in a puritan age; he seems almost a miracle in the age of the Claudian Caesars. He was born in 23 A.D., in the reign of Tiberius ; and his early youth and manhood cover the reigns of Caligula and Claudius. He was only 32 when Nero came to the throne. He re> turned to Bome in 71 to hold a high place in the councils of Vespasian.^ That more than monastic asceticism, that jealous hoarding of every moment,^ that complete indifference to ordinary pleasures, in comparison with the duty, or the ambition, of transmitting to future ages the accumulations of learned toil, is a curious contrast to the Gargantuan feasts or histrionic aestheticism which were the fashion in the circle of the Claudian Emperors. The younger Pliny has left us a minute account of his uncle's routine of life, and justly adds that the most intense literary toil might seem mere idleness in comparison.* His studies often began soon after midnight, broken by an official visit to the emperor before dawn. After administrative work was over, the re^ mainder of the day was spent in reading or writing. Even in the bath or on a journey, this literary industry was never interrupted. A reader or amanuensis was always at hand to save the moments that generally are allowed to slip away to waste. He tells Titus in his preface that he had consulted 2000 volumes for his Natural History} The 160 volumes of closely written notes, which the austere enthusiast could have sold once for £3500, might have challenged the industry of a Casaubon or a Mommsen.
The laborious intensity of the elder Pliny was probably unrivalled in his day. But the moral tone, the severe self- restraint, the contempt for the sensual, or even the comfortable, side of life, the plain unspeculative stoicism, was a tone which, from many indications in the younger Pliny and in the other
1 Plin. Ep, iii. 6 ; Hitt, NaL Pratf. same type, cf. Pere. Sat. ii. 71-74 ; iiL 3 ; Suet ViL Plin. He wm 56 at his 66 sqa. ; of. Martha, Les Morcdistet death in a.d. 79 ; cf. Peter, OescK. LiU, 90ub fEmp. p. 131 sqq.
i 119, 420. s Plin jgr, iii 5
« Plin. Ep. iii. 6, § 18 ; Pereiiis, who "°' ^' "^ ^'
was eleven years yonnp^r than the ^ Praef. If, N.% 17 ; of. %lSfygofecUi
elder Pliny, shows a character of the enim vita yigilia est.
CHAF. 1 PLINY'S SOCIETY 147
Uteratoie of the time, i^pears to have been not so rare as the reader of Juvenal or Martial might suspect A book like the GaesaiB of Suetonius, concentrating attention on the life of the emperor and his immediate circle, is apt to suggest misleading oonduaions as to the condition of society at large. The old Soman character, perhaps the strongest and toughest national character ever developed, was an enduring type, and its true home was in the atmosphere of quiet country places in northern or central Italy, where the round of rural labour and simple jdeasores reproduced the environment in which it first took form. We have glimpses of many of these nurseries or retzeats of old-&shioned virtue in Pliny's Lettera Brescia and Padua, in the valley of the Po, were especiaUy noted for frugality and severity.^ And it was from among the youth of Breecia that Pliny suggested a husband for the daughter of the stoic champion, Arulenus Busticus. There must have been many a home, like those of Spurinna, or Corellius Bufus, or Fabatus,* or the poet Persius, where, far from the weary con- ventionality of the capital, the rage for wealth, the rush of vulgar self-assertion, there reigned the tranquil and austere ideal of a life dedicated to higher ends than the lusts of the liesh, or the ghoul -like avarice that haunted death -beds. There are youths and maidens in the portrait-gallery of Pliny whoee innocence was guarded by good women as pure and stzong as those matrons who nursed the stem, unbending soldiers of the Samnite and Punic wars.*
The great struggle in which the legions of the East and West met again, and yet again, in the valley of the Po, prob- ably did not much disturb the quiet homes on lake Como. The close of that awful conflict gave the world ten years of quiet and reformation, which were a genial atmosphere for the fonnation of many characters like Pliny'a The reign of the Flavians was ushered in by the mystery and glamour of Eastern superstition, by oracles on Mount Carmel and miracles at Alexandria.^ But the plain Sabine soldier, who was the saviour of the Boman State, brought to his momentous task a clear unsophisticated good sense, with no trace of that
^ Plin. Ep, L 14 ; cf. Tac Agr, iv. ; aunt, Ep, iv. 19, quae nihil iu con-
JsT. Hi. 165. tubernio tuo yiderit nisi sanctum Iio-
* Flin. Ep, iii i ; ii. 7 ; i. 12 ; v. 11. nestumque ; cf. viii 5 ; v. 16.
s Ot Pliny's letter to Calpumia's « Tao. HisU ii. 78 ; iv. 81.
148 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
crapulous excitement which had alternated between the heroics of spurious art and the lowest bohemianism. Vespasian, although he was not a figure to strike the imagination, was yet, if we think of the abyss from which, by his single strength, he rescued the Eome world,^ imdoubtedly one of the greatest of the emperors. And his biographer, with an unusual tact, suggests what was probably one secret of his strength. Vespasian regularly visited the old farmhouse at Seate which was the cradle of his race. Nothing m the old place was ever changed. And, on holidays and anniversaries, the emperor never failed to drink from the old silver goblet which his grandmother had used.^ The strength and virtue of the Latin race lay, not in religion or philosophy, but in the family pieties and devotion to the Stata Vespasian found it urgent to bring order into the national finances, which had been reduced to chaos by the wild extravagance of his predecessors, and to recruit the Senate, which had been more than decimated by proscription, confiscation, and vicious self-abandonment.^ In performing his task, he did not shrink from the charge of cheese-paring, just as he did not dread the unpopularity of fresh taxation.^ But he could be liberal as well as par- simonioua He restored many of the ancient temples, even in country places.^ He made grants to senators whose fortunes had decayed or had been wasted.^ He spent great sums on colossal buildings and on amusements for the people.^ But the most singular and interesting trait in this remarkable man is that, with no pretensions to literary or artistic culture, he was the first Caesar who gave a fixed endowment to professors of the liberal arts, and that he was the founder of that public system of education® which, for good or evil, produced profound effects on Boman character and intellect down to the end of the Western Empire. His motive was not, as some have sug- gested, to bring literature into thraldom to the State. He was really making himself the organ of a great intellectual
1 Cf. Or. 746, 2864. aedium restitatori, 1460, 1868, 2864 ;
^ Suet. Vesp, ii looum incunabu- D. Cass. Ixvi 10.
lorum assidue freauentavit, manente * Suet. Vup, xvii
-villa qualis fnerat olim, etc ' lb. xiz.
* 76. viii. iz. ^ /d. xviii. ; continued by Hadrian, ^ D. Cass. Ixri. 8 ; Suet Vetip, xvi. ; Spart. zvi. ; by Ant. Pius, Capitol.
cf. Meriv. vii. 274 ; cf. Schiller, O'ewA. zi. ; by Alez. Sevems, Lamprid. zliy ; f^^m, KaiterzeU, p. 515. of. C. Th. ziii. 3, 1, 2, 8 ; Earn. Or.
* Suet Vesp. iz. ; Or, 746, eacr. pro SeMia, c. 11.
CHAF. I PUNVS SOCIETY 149
movement For, whOe the vast field of administration ab- sorbed much of the energy of the coltiyated class, the decay of finee institntions had left a great number with only a shadow of political interest, and the mass of nnoccupied talent had to find some other scope for its energies. It found it for ages, till the end of the Western Empire, in fugitive and ephemeral composition, or in the more ephemeral displays of the rhetorical class-room.^ Vespasian perhaps did a greater service in renovating the upper class of Bome by the intro- duction of many new men from the provincee, to fiU the yawning gaps in senatorial and equestrian ranks. Spain con- tributed more than its fair share to the literature and states- manship of this period.' And one of the best and most distinguished sons of that province who found a career at Bome, was the rhetor Quintilian.
The young Pliny, under his uncle's care, probably came to Bome not long after Quintilian entered on his career of twenty years, as a teacher of rhetoria* While the elder Pliny was one of Vespasian's trusted advisers, and regularly visited the emperor on official business before dawn, his nephew was forming his taste and character under the greatest and best of Boman teachera Quintilian left a deep impression on the younger Pliny.^ He made him a Ciceronian, and he fortified his oharacter. The master was one who believed that, in education, moral influence and environment ai'e even more important than intellectual stimulus He deplores the moral risks to which the careless, self-indulgent parent, or the corrupt tutor, may expose a boy in the years when the destiny of a life is decided for better or worse. Intellectual ambition is good. But no brilliancy of intellect will compensate for the loss of the pure ingenuous peace of boyhood. This is the fieuth of Quintilian, and it was also the faith of his pupil.' And it may be that the teaching of Quintilian had a larger share in forming the moral ideals of the Antonine age in the
1 «L Bern, Soe, in the Last CetUury > Qiuntil./n«^Or.i.2,6; ctPlin.^.
^tke Weatem Empire (let ed.), p. 355. iii 8, 4, cni in hoc labrioo aetatis non
* liommsen. Bom, Prov. (Tr. ) i. p. 76. praeoeptormodo sed oustos etiamreotor- ' Pliny probably came to Bome que quaerendns est ; of. Bp. iy. 18, 4,
tlKmt72A.D. Kendall, ziy. ; inMayor^s nbi enim padioiua contineantor quam
Pliny, J^, iii ; of. QuintiL Frooem, i. sub ocnlis parentum ; of. Tac JHoL d$
* Plin. Bp. ii. 14, 10 ; yL 6, 8 ; Or. 28. ▼L82.
IfiO SOCIAL LIFE book ii
higher ranks than many more definitely philosophic guides, whose practice did not idways conform to their doctrine.
Quintilian's first principle is that the orator mast be a good man in the highest and widest sense, and, although he will not refuse to borrow from the philosophical schools, he yet boldly asserts the independence of the oratorical art in moulding the character of the man who, as statesman or advocate, will have constantly to appeal to moral principles.^ This tone, combined with his own high example of seriousness, honour, and the purest domestic attachment,^ must have had a powerful efiect on the flower of the Boman youth, who were his pupils for nearly a generation. There are none of his circle whose virtues Pliny extols more highly than the men who had sat with him on the same benches, and who accompanied or followed one another in the career of public office. One of the dearest of these youthful friends was Yoconius Bomanus, who, besides being a learned pleader, with a keen and subtle intellect, was gifted with a singular social charm and sweetness of manner.' Another was Comutus TertuUus, who was bound to Pliny by closer ties of sympathy than any of his friends, and for whose purity of character he had a boundless admiration. They were also united in the love and friendship of the best people of the time.^ They were official colleagues in the consulship, and in the prefecture of the treasury of Saturn. For another academic friend, Julius Naso, who had been his loyal supporter in all his work and literary ambitions, he earnestly begs the aid of Fundanus, to secure him official advancement.^ Calestrius Tiro, who rose to be proconsul of the province of Baetica, must be included in this select company. He had served with Pliny in the army of Syria, and had been his colleague in the quaestorship ; they constantly visited one another at their country seats.^ Such men, linked to one another by memories of boyhood and by the cares of the same official career, must have been a powerful and salutary element in social and political life at the opening of the Antonine age.
^ Qninti]. IiuL Prooem, i 9-11 ; ii dilexi, etc.
9; 16 ; xiL 1, 1 ; ziL 7, 7, non oon- ^ lb. v. 14 ; Paneg, 91, 92 ; ot
Tenit ei, qaem oratxnrem ease yolnmiis, Momma. Plin, p. 64.
fa^uata tueri acieutem. ' Plin. Ep. tl 6.
' /&. yi. Prooem, 4. * lb, vii. 16, 2 ; i. 10, 8 ; cf. Momma, p.
* Plin. JBp. iL 18, hnnc ego, cnm 52. Pliny's service with the iiL Gallica
•imal ataderemos, arte familiariterqae waa later than September, a.d. 81.
CHAP. I PLINY'S SOCIETY 161
It is a carious thing that, while Pliny lived in the closest friendship with the Stoic opposition of Domitian's reign, and has unbounded reverence for its canonised saints, as we may call them, he shows few traces of any real interest in speculative philosophy. Indeed, in one passage he confesses that on such subjects he speaks as an amateur.^ He probably thought, like his firiend Tacitus, that philosophy was a thing to be taken in moderation by the true Boman. It was when he was serving on the staff in Asia that he formed a close friendship with Artemidorus, whom Musonius chose for his daughter's band.* Pliny has not a word to say of his opinions, but he extols his simplicity and genuineness — qualities, he adds, which you rarely find in the other philosophers of the day. It was at the same time that he formed a friendship with the Stoic Euphrates. That philosopher, who is so studiously maligned by Philostratus, was a heroic figure in Pliny's eyes.* But what Pliny admires in him is not so much his philosophy, as his grave ornate style, his pure character, which showed none of that harsh and ostentatious severity which was then so common in his class. Euphrates is a polished gentleman after Pliny's own heart, tall and stately, with flowing hair and beard, a man who excites reverence but not fear, stem to vice, but gentle to the sinner. Pliny seems to have set little store by the formal preaching of philosophy. In a letter on the uses of sickness, he maintains that the moral lessons of the sick-bed are worth many formal disquisitions on virtue.*
Tet this man, apparently without the slightest taste for philosophic inquiry, or even for the homilies which, in his day, had taken the place of real speculation, had a profound veneration for the Stoic martyrs, and, true gentleman as he was, he risked his life in the times of the last Terror to befriend them. It needed both nerve and dexterity to be the friend of philosophers in those daya In that perilous year, 93 a.d., when Pliny was praetor,^ the philosophers were banished from the city. Yet the praetor visited Artemidorus in his suburban retreat, and, with his wonted generosity, he helped the philo-
" Plin. Ep, i 10, 4 ; ct Taa Agr. iv. * Plin. Ep. yii 26, 4.
^ ' CasB. IxYU. 10 ; of. Momma, p. 59,
* lb. i. 10 ; cL Philostr. Apoll. where the date of Pliny's praetorship Tyan, r. 87, 40 ; vL 8. is fixed.
162 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
sopher to wipe out a heavy debt which he had contracted One of Pliny's dearest friends was Junius Mauricus, the brother of Arulenus Busticus, who had been put to death by Domitian for writing a eulogy on Thrasea the Stoic saint, the champion of the higher life in Nero's reign.^ Junius Mauricus afterwards suffered exile himself in the same cause. He had charged himself with the care of his martyred brother's children, and Pliny helped him to find a worthy husband for the daughter of Busticus.' With Fannia the widow of Helvidius, and the daughter of Thrasea, Pliny's intimacy seems to have been of the closest kind. From her he heard the tales, now too well worn, of the fierce firmness of the elder Arria in nerving her husband Paetus for death, and of her own determined self-immolation.* The mother of Fannia, the younger Arria, when Thrasea her husband was condemned to die in the reign of Nero, was only prevented from sharing his fate by the most earnest entreaties of her friends.* Fannia had followed Helvidius into exile in Nero's reign,* and again under Yespasicm, when the philosopher, vsdth a petulance very unlike the reserve of Thrasea, brought his &te upon himself by an insulting disregard of the emperor's dignity as first magistrate of the State, if not by revolutionaiy tendencies.^ Fannia seems to have inherited many of the great qualities of her father Thrasea, the noblest and the wisest member of the Stoic opposition. He sprang from a district in Lombardy which was noted for its soundness and gravity of character. Unlike Paetus ^ and Helvidius, he never defied or intrigued against the emperor, even when the emperor was a Nero. And, though he belonged to the austere circle of Persius, he did not disdain to sing in tragic costume, at a festival of immemorial antiquity, in his native Patavium.^ He performed his duties as senator vnth firm dignity, and yet with cautious tact His worst political crime, and that which proved Us ruin, was a severe reserve and a refusal to join in the shameful adulation of the matricide prince. He would not stoop to vote divine honours to the
^ Snet. Dom. x. of Helvidius Priscus, of.Tac Hiti. iv. 5.
* Plin. ^. L 14 ; cf. iE 11, 8. * Saet Vevp, zy. ; D. Cass. Ixvi 12 ;
* lb. iil 16 ; cf. viL 19 ; ix. 18. cf. Peter, Qekh, LUt, ii. 98.
* Tac Afioi. xvi. 84. ' Plin. Sp. iil 16, 7.
* Plin. Ep. TiL 19, 4; for the character " Tac Ann, z?i 21 ; D. Cass. Ixii. 26.
CHAP. I PLINY'S SOCIETY 163
adulteress Foppaea, and for three years he absented himself from the Senate-house.^ Yet, when the end came, he would not allow the fiery Arulenus Busticus to imperil his future, by interposing his veto as tribuna* His daughter Fannia was worthy of her illustrious descent She showed all the fearless defiance of the elder Arria, when she boldly admitted that she had asked Senecio to write her husband's life, and she uttered no word to deprecate her doom. When all her property was confiscated, she carried the dangerous volume with her to her place of exile.' Yet this stem heroine had also the tenderer virtues. She nursed her kinswoman Junia, one of the Vestals, through a dangerous fever, and caught the seeds of her own death from her charge. With all her masculine firmness and courage, she had a sweetness and charm whidi made her not less loved than venerated. With her may be said to have expired the peculiar tradition of a circle which, for three generations, and during the reigns of eight emperors, guarded, sometimes with dangerous defiance, the old ideal of uncompromising virtue in the face of a brutal and vulgar materialism. It was the tradition which inspired the austere detachment of the poetry of Persius, with its dim solemnity and obscure depths, as of a sacred grove. These people were hard and stem to vicious power,^ Uke our own Puritans of the seventeenth century. like them too, they were exclusive and defiant, with the cold hauteur of a moral aristocracy, a company of the elect, who would not even parley with evil, for whom the issues of life and death were the only realities in a world hypnotised by the cult of the senses and the spell of tyranny. Their intense seriousness was a religion, although ihey had only the vaguest and most arid conception of God, and the dimmest and least comforting conception of any future life. They seemed to perish as a little sect of troublesome visionaries; and yet their spirit lived on, softened and sweetened, and passed into the great rulers of the Antonine age
Before his formal period of military service as tribune of the 3rd Gallic l^on in Syria, Pliny had, in his nineteenth year, entered on that forensic career which was perhaps the greatest
^ Tac. Aftn, xiv. 12 ; zvi. 21, 22 ; cf. the philosophic opposition m a mere
D. Cms. 61. 16. ' Tac. Ann, xvL 26. aristocratic reaction ; cf. pp. 287, 882.
• Plin. Ep. viL 19. Boissier, L'Opp. p. 108 ; SchiUer,
^ Benan, La AnngUes, p. 142, treats Oesch, d, rdm, Kaiterz. pp. 509, 586.
164 SOCIAL LIFE book n
pride of his life.^ He practised in the Centumviral court, which was chiefly occupied with questions of property and succession. Occasionally he speaks with a certain weariness of the trivial character of the cases in which he was engaged. But his general estimate is very different The court is to him an arena worthy of the greatest talent and industry,* and the successful pleader may win a fame which may entitle him to take rank with the great orators of the past. Pliny, inspired by memories of Quintilian's lectures, has always floating before him the glory of Cicero.* He will prepare for publication a speech delivered in an obscure case about a disputed wilL^ He is immensely proud of its subtlety and point, and the sweep of its indignant or pathetic declamation, and he is not unwilling to believe his legal Mends who compared it with the De Corona! The suppression of free political life, the absence of public interests, and the extinction of the trade of the delator, left young men with a passion for distinction few chances of gratifying it. The law courts at any rate provided an audience, and the chance of momentary prominence. In the Letters of Pliny, we can see the young advocate pushing his way through the dense masses of the crowded court, arriving at his place with torn timic, holding the attention of his audience for seven long hours, and sitting down amid the applause even of the judges themselves.^ Calpumia often arranged relays of messengers to bring her news of the success, from point to point, of one of her husband's speeches.* Youths of the highest social rank — a Salinator, or a Ummidius Quadratus — threw themselves eagerly into the drudgery which might make an ephemeral name.^ Ambitious pretenders, with no talent or learning, and arrayed perhaps in hired purple and jewels, like Juvenal's needy lawyer, forced themselves on to the benches of the advocates, and engaged a body of claqueurs whose applause was purchased for a few denarii* Pliny has such a pride in this profession, he so idealises what must have been often rather humdrum work, that he feels a personal pain at anything which seems to detract from the
^ Plin. Ep. ▼. 8, 8 ; Momma, p. 52. ^ Ih, \y, 19, 3, disponit qui nnntient
' Plio. jl^. vL 1 ; i7. 16 ; vi. 23, 2. sibi ^uem assensom, qno8 clamores ex-
' Ih, i. 20, 7. oitanra, qirem eventara judicii tnlerim.
* Ih, Ti. 88, 8-11. ' Ih, vL 11.
• Ih. iv. le. « Ih, \L 14, 4.
CHAP. I PUNY'S SOCIETY 166
old-fiashionedy leisurely dignity of the court In his day the judges seem to have been becoming more rapid and business- like in their procedure, and less inclined to allow the many depsydras which men of Pliny's school demanded for the gradual development of all their rhetorical artifices. He r^rete the good old times, when adjournments were freely granted,^ and days would be spent on a case which was now despatched in as many hours. It is for this reason that he cannot conceal a certain admiration for Begulus, in other respects, ** the most detestable of bipeds " but who redeemed his in£Euny by an enthusiasm and energy as an advocate which rivalled even that of Pliny.
M. Aquilius Segulus, the prince of delators, and one of the great glories of the Boman bar in Domitian's reign, is a singular figura His career and character are a curious illus- tration of the social histoiy of the times. Begulus was the son of a man who, in Nero's reign, had been driven into exile and ruined.^ Bold, able, recklessly eager for wealth and notoriety at any cost, as a mere youth he resolved to raise himself from obscure indigence, and soon became one of the most capable and dreaded agents of the tyranny. He gained an evil fetme by the ruin of the great houses of the Crassi and OrfitL Lust of blood and greed of gain drove him on to the wholesale destruction of innocent boys, noble matrons, and men of the most illustrious race. The cruelty of Nero was not swift enough to satisfy him, and he called for the annihilation of the Senate at a stroke. He rose rapidly to great wealth, honours were showered upon him, and, after a prudent retirement in the reigns of Vespasian and Titus, he reached the pinnacle of his depraved ambition under Vespasian's cruel son. He figures more than once in the poems of Martial, and always in the most favourable light His talent and eloquence, according to the poet, were only equalled by his piety, and the special care of the gods had saved him from being buried under the ruins of a cloister which had suddenly fiBdlen in.' He had estates at Tusculum, in Umbria and
1 Flin. j^ TL 2, 6. 20 ; iv. 2 ; vi. 2 ; and Boissier, VOpp,
p. 193.
* For the career and character of M. * Mart i. 18, 88, 112, Com tibi
A^mlina Begnlna, v. Tac. Hist, iv. 42 ; sit aophiae par fama et oura deorum, Pliii. Sp, i. 6 ; i. 20, 15 ; iL 11 ; ii. etc
166 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
Etruria.^ The courts were packed when he rose to plead.* Unfortunately, the needy poet furnishes a certain key to all this flattery, when he thanks B^ulus for his presents, and then begs him to buy them back.' It is after Domitian's death that we meet Begulus in Pliny's pagea The times are changed, the delator's day is over, and Begulus is a humbler man. But he is still rich, courted, and feared ; he is still a great power in the law courts. With a weak voice, a bad memory, and hesitating utterance,^ by sheer industry and determination he had made himself a powerful speaker, with a style of his own, sharp, pimgent, brutally incisive, ruthlessly sacrificing elegance to point'^ He belonged to the new school, and sometimes sneered at Pliny's afifectation of the grand Ciceronian manner.* Yet to Pliny's eyes, his earnest strenuousness in his profession redeems some of his vices. He insists on having ample time to develop his case.^ He appears in the morning pale with study, wearing a white patch on his forehead. He has consulted the diviners as to the success of his pleadings.' It is a curious sign of the times that this great advocate, who already possessed an enormous fortune, was a legacy-hunter of the meanest sort He actually visited, on her death-bed, Verania, the widow of that Piso, the adopted son of Galba, over whose murder Begulus had savagely gloated, and by telling her that the stars promised a hope of recovery, he obtained a place in her will. His mourning for his son dis- played all the feverish extravagance and grandiose eccentricity of a true child of the Neronian age.* The boy's ponies and dogs and pet birds were slaughtered over his pyre. Countless pictures and statues of him were ordered. His memoir was read by the father to a crowded audience, and a thousand copies of it were sent broadcast over the provinces.^® In Begulus we seem to see the type of character which, had fortune raised him to the throne, would have made perhaps a saner Caligula, and an even more eccentric Nero.
1 Mart TiL 81. « Plin. Ep, v. 12.
» /J. vi 88 ; vi. 64, 11. ' {?• y> 2, 6.
lb, vu. 16. J j^ .^ 2.
* Plin. Ep. iv. 7, § 4. lo Yot the light which this throws on
* Ih. i, 20, 15 ; cC references to the the production of books in that age, «. archmic literary taste of the day in Haenny, SchrifUteller u. BuefthamUert Mart T. 10. pp. 89-41.
CHAP. I PLINY'S SOCIETY 167
The struggles of the law courts were idealised by Pliny, and their transient triumphs seemed to him to match the glory of the Philippics or the Venines. Yet, to do him justice, Pliny had sometimes a truer idea of the foundations of lasting fame. The secret of immortality, the one chance of escaping oblivion, 18 to leave your thought embalmed in choice and distinguished literary form, which coming ages will not willingly let die.^ This, probably the only form of immortality in which Pliny believed, is the great motive for literary labour. The longing to be remembered was the most ardent passion of the Soman mind in all ages and in all ranks, from the author of the Agricola to the petty artisan, who commemorated the homely virtues of his wife for the eyes of a distant age, and made pro- vision for the annual feast and the tribute of roses to the tomb. Of that immense literary ambition which Pliny represented, and which he considered it a duty to foster, only a small part has reached its goaL The great mass of these eager litterateurs have altogether vanished, or remain as mere shadowy names in Martial or Statins or Pliny.
The poems of Martial and Statins leave the impression that, in the reign of Domitian, the interest in poetical literature was keen and widely diffused, and that, besides the poets by profession, there were crowds of amateurs who dabbled in verse. The SUvae transport us into a charming, if rather luxurious world, where men like Atedius Melior or Pollius amuse themselves with dilettante composition among their gardens and marbles on the bays of Campania.' Martial has a host of friends similarly engaged, and the versatility of some of them is suspiciously wide. An old Ardelio is twitted by Martial with his showy and super- ficial displays in declamation and history, in plays and epigrams, in grammar and astronomy.' Canius Bufus, his countryman from Gkulee, Varro, Bassus, Brutianus, Cirinius, have all an extraordinary dexterity in almost every branch of poetical composition. Martial is too keen a critic not to see the fugitive character of much of this amateur literature. Like
» PliD. Bp, iL 10, 4; iii. 7, 14, quatenus » Mart ii. 7 ; t. 80 ; iii. 20 ; iv. 28 ;
nobis denegatur dia vivere, relin- v. 28. For the same breadth of
qnamus aliquid quo nos vixisse teste- accomplishment in the fifth oentnry,
mnr ; t. 5, 4 ; t. 8, 2, me autem nihil of. Sidon. ApolL Carm, ▼. 97 ; ii. 156 ;
aeqae ae dlntomitatis amor soUioitat ; xxiii. 101 ; Rom, Soc. in ike Last
ed TiL 20. Cent, of the Western Empire (Ist ed.)i
* Stot SUv. iL 2. p. 875.
168 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
Juvenal, he scofiTs at the thin talent which concealed its feeble- ness behind the pomp and feded splendour of epic or tragic tradition.^ He roughly tells the whole versifying crowd that genius alone will live in coming ages. The purchased applause of the recitation hall merely gratifies for an hour the vanity of the literary trifler. It is a pity for his fame that Martial did not always maintain this tone of sincerity. He can at times sell his flattery to the basest and most stupid. He is capable of implying a comparison of the frigid pedantry of Silius ItaUcus to the majesty of VirgiL*
Pliny was a friend and admirer of Martial, and, with his usual generous hand, he made the poet a present when he left Eome for ever to pass his last years at Bilbilis.' The needy epigrammatist was only a distant observer, or hanger-on of that world of wealth and refinement in which Pliny was a conspicuous figure. But from both Pliny and Martial we get very much the same impression of the Uterary movement in the reign of Domitian. PUny himself is perhaps its best representative. He is a true son of the Boman schools, as they had been revived and strengthened by Vespasian, for a life of many generations. Pliny does not think slightly of the literary efforts of his own day : some of them he even overratea But already the Roman mind had bent its neck to that thral- dom to the past, to that routine of rhetorical discipline, which, along with other causes, produced the combination of ambitious effort and mediocre performance that, for the last three centuries of the Empire, is the characteristic of all literary culture. From his great teacher Quintilian Pliny had imbibed a pro- found reverence for Cicero.* Alike in his career of honours and his literary pursuits, he loves to think that he is treading in the great orator's footsteps. In answer to a taunt of Begulus, he once boldly avowed his preference for the Ciceronian oratory to that of his own day. Demosthenes is also some- times his model, though he feels keenly the difference that separates them.'^ Indeed his reverence for Greece as the mother of letters, art, and civic life was one of Pliny's sincerest
^ ^lart vi. 60. lander's Martial, ''Chronologie der
« lb. iv. 14. Epigr. Mart." p. 66.
» Plin. Ep, iU. 21. This book is < Plin. Ep. iv. 8, 4 ; v. 12, est milii
dated by Mommaen 101 a.d. (Plin, p. cum Cicerone aemulatio.
14, Morel ; v. App. C, p. 96) ; cf. Fried- » Ih, vii. 80.
CHAP. I PLINY'S SOCIETY 169
and most honourable feelings. To a man who had been appointed to high office in Greece he preaches, in earnest tones, the dutj of reverence for that gifted race whose age was con- secrated by the memories of its glorious prime.^ Pliny's Greek Btndies must have begun very early. At the age of fourteen he had written a Greek tragedy, for which, however, he modestly does not claim much merit' He had always a certain taste for poetry, but it seems to have been merely the taste created or enforced by the constant study of the poets under the grammarian. Once, while detained by bad weather on his way back from military service in Asia, he amused himself with composing in elegiac and heroic verse.' Later in his career, he published a volume of poems in hendecasyllabic metre, written on various occasions. But there was no inspiration behind diese conventional exercises. He was chiefly moved to write in verse, as he naively confesses, by the example of the great orators who beguiled their leisure in this way. Among his published poems there were some with a flavour of Catullan lubricity, which offended or astonished some of his severer friends, who thought such doubtful lightness unworthy of a grave character and a great position.^ No better illustration could be found of Pliny's incorrigible conventionality in such things than the defence which he makes of his suspected verses to Titius Aiiston.'^ It is to Pliny not a question of morals or propriety. The ancient models are to be followed, not only in their elevated, but in their looser moods. The case seems to be closed when Pliny can point to similar literary aberrations in a long line of great men from Yarro and Virgil and Cicero to Yerginius Bufus and the divine Nerva.^
Pliny, however, though vain of his dexterity in these trifles, probably did not rate them very highly. It was to oratorical &me that his ambition was directed He was dissatisfied with the eloquence of his own day, which, to use the words of B^ulus, sprang at the throat of its subject, and he avowed himself an imitator of Cicero. His speeches, even for the centumviral court, were worked up with infinite care, although
* Plin. Ep, viiL 24, reverere gloriam * lb, iv. 14 ; cf. Ov. TrisL iL 365, ▼eterem et nanc ipsam senectutem quae who makes pretty mudi Uie same io homine venerabilis, in urbibus sacra. excuse to Augustas.
' Ih, viL 4, 2, Qualem I inquis. * Plin. Ep, v. 3.
Keado ; tragoedia vocabatur. ' Cf. Nettieship, Lectures and Esaaya^
* /&. viL 4, 3. 2n(l Series, p. 39.
100 SOCIAL LIFE wook^ ii
with txx) Belf-conscions an aim to impress an audience. We can hardly imagine Cicero or Demosthenes coldly balancing their tropes and figures after the fashion of Pliny. When the great oratorical effort was over, the labour ¥ras renewed, in order to make the speech worthy of the eyes of posterity. It was revised and polished, and submitted to the scrutiny of critical readers for suggestions of emendation.^ Pliny was probably the first to give readings of speeches to long-suffering friends. We hear with a shudder that the recital of the Panegyric was spread over three days ! * The other speeches on which Pliny lavished so much labour and thought, have perished, as they probably deserved to perish. The Panegyric was preserved, and became the parent and model of the prostituted rhetoric of the Gallic renaissance in the fourth century.' Pliny was by no means a despicable literary critic, when he was not paying the tribute of firiendly flattery which social tyranny then exacted. He could sometimes be honestly reserved in his appreciation of a firiend's dull literaiy efforta^ But in his ideals of oratory, he seems to be hopelessly wrong. There are some terse and epigrammatic sentences in the Pamgyric, which redeem it by their strong sincerity. But Pliny's canons of oratorical style would have excited the ridicule of his great models, who were thinking of their goal, and not measuring every pace as they strained towards it Pliny's theory that the mere length of a speech is a great element in its excellence, that swift directness is inartistic, that lingering diffuseness is an oratorical charm, that laboured manufacture of turgid phrases may produce the effect of the impetuous rush of Demosthenes and Cicero in their moments of inspiration, makes us rather glad, who love him, that we have not more of Pliny's oratory.^ It is by his letters that Pliny has lived, and will live on, so long as men care to know the inner life of the great ages that have gone before. The criticism, which is so quick to seize the obvious weaknesses of the author of a priceless picture of ancient society, seems to be a little ungrateful We could for- give almost any failing or affectation in one who had left us a
> J^. iii. 18, 6 ; viL 17. * Plin. Ep, iii 16.
s i^. iiL 18 ; cf. ii. 19. <^ Ih. 1, 20. It is curious that this
* Teoffel, R, Lit, § 887 ; Mackail, praise of amplitude should be addressed
LaL LU. f. 2^ ; Bom, Soe. in the Last to Tacitus; cf. Nipperdey, EinUO,
Cent. qfiheW» Empire (let ed.), p. 857. xxxiv.
CHAP. I PLINY'S SOCIETY 161
similar revelation of society when M. Aurellas was holding back the Germans on the Danube, or when Frobus was shatter- ing the invaders of the third century. The letters of Cicero oCfor an apparently obvious comparison, which may be used to the detriment of Pliny. Yet the comparison is rather inept Cicero was a man of affairs in the thick of a great revolution, and his letters are invaluable to the student of politics at a great crisis in history. But in the calm of Trajan's reign, a letter -writer had to seek other subjects of interest than the fortunes of the state. Literature, criticism, the beauties of nature, the simple charm of country life, the thousand trivial incidents and eccentricities of an over- ripe society in the capital of the world, furnished a ready pen and a genial imagination, which could idealise its surround- ings, with ample materials. Pliny is by some treated as a medioerity ; but, like our ovm Horace Walpole, he had the keei> sense to see that social routine could be made interesting, and that the man who had the skill to do so might make himself famous. He was genuinely interested in his social environ- ment. And intense interest in one's subject is one great secret of literary success. Pliny had also the instinct that, if a work is to live, it must have a select distinction of style, which may be criticised, but which cannot be ignored. He had the laudable ambition to put his thoughts in a form of artistic grace which may make even commonplace attractive. So good a judge as the late Mr. Paley did not hesitate to put the Latinity of Pliny on the level of that of Cicero. Pliny's Letters, perhaps even more than the masterpieces of the Augustine age, fascinated the taste of the fourth and fifth centuries. They were the models of Symmachus and Sidonius, who tried, but in very different fashion, to do for their age what Pliny did for his.^
Like his imitators, Sidonius and Symmachus, Pliny intended bis Letters to go down to the future as a masterpiece of style, and as a picture of his age. We know that the letters of Sym- machus were carefully preserved in duplicate by his scribes, probably by his own instructions, although they were edited and published by his son only after his death.^ Pliny, like
' MftCTob. SioJL y. 1, 7 ; Sidon. Apoll. discipulos assurgo. i. 1, 1 ; IT. 22, 2, ego Plinio ut » Sym. E]p, t. 85. Seeck, Prol, xlv.
J
162 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
Sidonins, gave his Letters to the public in successive i)ortions during his life.^ like Sidonius too, he felt that he had not the sustained power to write a consecutive history of his time, and the Letters of both are probably far more valuable. Pliny's first book opens with a kind of dedication to Septicius Clarus, who was the patron of Suetonius, and who rose to be prae* torian prefect under Hadrian.^ Pliny appears to disclaim any order or principle of arrangement in these books, but this is the device of an artistic n^ligence. Yet it has been proved by the prince of European scholars in our day that both as to date and subject matter, Pliny's Letters reveal signs of the most careful arrangement. The books were published separately, a common practice down to the end of Roman literary history. The same subject reappears in the same book or the next.' Groups of letters dealing with the same matter are found in their natural order in successive books. The proof is made even clearer by the silence or the express references to Pliny's feunily relations. Finally, the older men, who fill the stage in the earlier Letters, disappear towards the end ; while a younger generation, a Salinator or a Ummidius Quadratus, are only heard of in the later. Men of Pliny's own age, like Tacitus or Comutus Tertullus, meet us from first to last The dates at which the various books were published have been fixed with tolerable certainty. It is enough for our present purpose to say that the earliest letter belongs to the reign of Nerva, and the ninth book was probably given to the world a year or two before the writer was ap- pointed by Trajan to the office of imperial legate of Bithynia.^ It is easy, as we have said, and apparently congenial to some writers, to dwell on the vanity and self-complacency of the writer of these letters. By some he seems to be regarded chiefly as a poseur. To discover the weaknesses of Pliny is no great feat of criticism: they are on the surface. But "securus judicat orbis terrarum," and Pliny has borne the scrutiny of the great judge. Men of his own race and age, who spoke and wrote the most finished Latin, awarded him the palm of exquisite styla But Pliny has many qualities of
1 MommB. Plin. (Tr.) p. 2; of. 1; Utuoi, SuiUme, ^ S7,
" "" • Momma. PZtfi. p. 4.
* lb, pp. 7, 24 ; Teuffel, f S86, 1.
Haenny, SehriftsidUr, etc. p. 19. ' Momma. Plin.^p, 4.
« PluL jgp. L 1 ; viL 28 ; 1 16 ; viii.
CHAP. I PLINY'S SOCIETY leS
the heart, which should cover a multitade of cdns, even more serious than any with which he is charged. He had the great gift of loyal friendship, and he had its usual reward in a multitude of friends. It has been regretted that Pliny does not deal with serious questions of politics and philosophy, that his Letters rather skim the surface of social life, and leave its deeper problems untouched. Pliny himself would probably have accepted this criticism as a compliment The mass of men are little occupied with insoluble questions. And Pliny has probably deserved better of posterity by leaving us a vivid picture of the ordinary life of his time or of his class, rather than an analysis of its spiritual distresses and maladies. We have enough of that in Seneca, in M. Aurelius, and in Lucian. Of the variety and vividness of Pliny's sketches of social life there can never be any question. But our gratitude will be increased if we compare his Letters with the collections of his imitators, Symmachus and Sidonius, whose arid pages are seldom turned by any but a few curious and weary students. Martial, in his way, is perhaps even more clear-cut and minute in his portraiture. But Martial is essen- tially a wit of the town, viewing its vices, follies, and fashions with the eye of a keen, but rather detached observer. In reading Plin/s Letters, we feel ourselves introduced into the heart of that society in its better hours ; and, above all, we seem to be transported to those quiet provincial towns and secluded country seats where, if life was duller and tamer than it was in the capital, the days passed in a qiuet content, unsolicited by the stormier passions, in orderly refinement, in kindly relations with country neighbours, and amid the unfading charm of old-world pieties and the witchery of nature.
Pliny has also done a great service in preserving a memorial of the literary tone and habits of his time. Even in that age of fertile production and too enthusiastic appreciation, Pliny, like Seneca and Statins, has a feeling that the love for things of the mind was waning.^ And he deemed it an almost religious duty, as Symmachus and Sidonius did more than three centuries after him, to arouse the flagging interest in letters, and to reward even third-rate literary
^ PliiL Ep. iii. 18, 5 ; viiL 12, litera- i. Prooem. ; Perron. 88 ; cf. Sidon. ApoU. rum senescentium redactor; Stat. SUv. Ep, viiL 8 ; ii 14 ; viL 15 ; iL 10, 1.
164 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
effort with exuberant praise. He avows that it is a matter of duty to admire and venerate any performance in a field so diflBcult as that of letters.^ Yet Pliny was not by any means devoid of critical honesty and acumen. He could be a severe judge of his own style. He expects candid criticism from his friends, and receives it with gratitude and good temper.^ This is to him, indeed, the practical purpose of readings before final publication. He made emendations and excisions in the Histories of Tacitus, which the great author had submitted for his revision.' In his correspondence with Tacitus, there is a curious mixture of vanity along with a clear recognition of his friend's immense superiority of genius, and a sure prescience of his immortal fame. He is proud to hear their names coupled as chiefs of contemporary literature,^ and he cherishes the hope that, united by loyal friendship in life, they will go down together to a remote future. When, in the year 106, Tacitus had asked him for an account of the elder Pliny's death, in the great eruption of Vesuvius, Pliny expressed a firm belief that the book on which Tacitus was then engaged was destined to an enduring fame.^ He was not quite so confident as to the immortality of Martial's work,^ although he appreciates to the full Martial's brilliant and pungent wit. On the other hand, writing to a friend about the death of Silius Italicus, he frankly recognises that the Epic of the Punic War is a work of industry rather than of genius.^ Yet he cannot allow the author of this dull mechanical poem to pass away without some record of his career.^ The death at seventy -five of the last surviving consular of the Neronian age, of the consul in whose year of office the tyranny of Nero closed, inspired a feeling of pathos which was probably genuine, in spite of the rather pompous and pedantic expression of it. And although he wrote the Punica, a work which was almost buried till the fifteenth century,® Silius was probably a not uninteresting person. He had Ijeen a delator under Nero, and
^ Plin. Ep. vi. 17, § 5. tamen scripsit tiinquam essent futura. ^ ^V; 17 ; V. 12. 7 /j^ iij, 7^ Bcribebat oarmina mi^ore
lb. vii. 20 ; viiL 7. cura quam ingenio. * i&. yiL 20 ; Iz. 28, ad hoc ilium • x# -* - ao m rr. . ••• or
" Tacitus 68 an Plinius t" ^^^- ^- ^ * ^^^' ^^' ^ ^^•
» A vi 16, 2. » V, Teuffel, IL LU, § 816, u. 5, and
^Ib.m, 21, 6, at nou erunt aeterna the opinions coUected by Mayor, Plin,
quae seripdt ; non erunt fortaase ; iUe iiL p. 120.
CHAP. I PLINY'S SOCIETY 166
had enjoyed the friendship of Yitellius, but he knew how to redeem his character under the Flavian dynasty, and he had fiDed the proconsulate of Asia with some credit.^ Henceforth he enjoyed the lettered ease and social deference which were the privilege of his class for centuries. He retired finally to the shores of Campania, where, moving from one villa to another, and surrounding himself with books and gems of art^ hia life flowed away undisturbed by the agony of Bome in the last terror of the Caesara Among his many estates he was the proud ovmer of one of Cicero's villas, and of the ground where Yiigil sleeps. He used to keep the great poet's birthday with a scrupulous piety, and he always approached Ids tomb as a holy place. This apparently placid and fortunate life was, like so many in those days, ended by a voluntary death.' Silius Italicus, in his life and in his end, is a true type of a generation which could bend before the storm of despotism, and save itself often by ignominious arts, which could recover its dignity and self-respect in the pursuit of literary ideals, md, at the last, assert the right to shake off the burden of aodstence when it became too heavy.
Pliny's theory of life is clearly stated in the Letters, and it was evidently acted on by a great number of the class to which he belonged.' The years of vigorous youth should be given to the service of the state, in pursuing the well-marked and care- folly-graduated career of honours, or in the strenuous oratorical teife of the law courts. The leisure of later years might be portioned out between social duty, the pleasures or the cares of a rural estate, and the cultivation of literary taste by reading md imitation of the great masters. The last was the most imperious duty of all, for those with any literary gifts, because diann of style gives the one hope of surviving the wreck of time;^ for mere cultivated facility, as the most refined and ereditable way of filling up the vacant spaces of Ufa Even if lasting fiEune was beyond one's reach, it was something to be able to give pleasure to an audience of cultivated friends at a reading, and to enjoy the triumph of an hour. There must
> PHn. 4). iiL 7, & > Pliny, Ep, iv. 28, 8. For a similar
ideal in the fifth centnry, v. Soman
' «. Mayor, fUi^ ilL y, 114, for a Soeuiy in the Last Century qf th4 Iwnad note on snidde in the early IVestem Binpire^ p. 165 (Isted.). £■!««. * riin. J^. T. 8, § ].
lee SOCIAL UFE BOOK 11
have been many a literary coterie who, if they fed one another's vanity, also encouraged literary ideals, and hinted gentle criti- cism,^ in that polite delicacy of phrase in which the Soman was always an adept One of these literary circles stands out in Pliny's pages. At least two of its members had held great office. Arrius Antoninus, the maternal grandfather of the Emperor Antoninus Pius,^ had twice borne the consulship with antique dignity, and shown himself a model governor as proconsul of Asia.' He was devoted to Greek literatui^, and seems to have preferred to compose in that language. We need not accept literally Pliny's praises of his Atticism, and of the grace and sweetness of his Greek epigrams. But he seems to have had a facility which Pliny tortured his ingenuity in vain to imitate with the poorer resources of the Latin tongue.^ Among the friends of Antoninus was Yestricius Spurinna, who had defended Placentia for Otho, who was twice consul under Domitian, and was selected by Trajan to command the troops in a campaign in G^rmany.^ This digni- fied veteran, who had passed apparently untainted through the reigns of the worst emperors, varied and lightened the ordinary routine of his old age by the composition of lyrics, both in Greek and Latin, which seemed to his admirers to have a singular sweetness. Sentius Augurinus, a familiar friend of the two consulars, was also a brilliant verse writer,^ who could enthral Pliny by a recitation lasting for three days, although the fact that Pliny was the subject of one of the poems may account for the patience or the pleasure. One of Pliny's dearest friends was Passennus Paullus, who claimed kindred with the poet Propertius, and, at any rate, came from the same town in XJmbria. Passennus has been cruelly treated by Time, if his lyric efforts recalled, as we are asked to believe, the literary graces of his ancestor, and even those of Horaca^ Yergilius Bomanus devoted himself to comedy, and was thought to have reproduced not unworthily the delicate charms of Menander and Terence, as well as the scathing invective of older
^ For a good example cf. PUd. Bp, Ep, L 5 ; ii. 7 ; iiL 1, scribit et
iiL 15. qoidem utraqua lingua, lyra dootis-
' CapitoL AnL P. 1. sima. Spurinna was 77, at the date of
* Plin. Ep, iv. 8. this letter, a. d. 101-102; Momms. p. 11.
< Ih. iv. 18 ; cf. riu. 4. • Plin. Ep, iv. 27 ; cf. ix. 8.
» Tac HisL ii 11 ; ii 18. 86 ; Plin. ' Ih. vi. 15 ; ix. 22.
CHAF. I
PLINY'S SOCIETY
167
Greek masters of the art^ But there were others of Pliny's ciicle who essayed a loftier and weightier style. Probably the fioieniOBt of these was Titinios Capito, who, as an inscription records,^ had held high civil office under Domitian, Nerva, and Tngan. He was an enthusiastic patron of letters, and readily o£fered his haUs to literary friends for their recitations, which he attended with punctilious politene8& Cherishing the memory of the great men of the Bepublic, the Cassii, the Bmti, and the Catos, he composed a work on the death of the Bohle victims of the Terror." He tried in vain to draw Pliny into the field of historical composition.^ But the man who thought more of style and graceful charity than of truth, was not tiie man to write the history of such a tima He has done a much greater service in providing priceless materials for the leconstruction of its social history. Caninius Bufus was a neighbour of Pliny at Como.^ He was one of those for whom the charms of country life had a dangerous seduction. His villa, with its colonnades, '' where it was always spring," the shining levels of the lake beneath his verandah, the water course with its emerald banks, the baths and spacious halls, all these delights seem to have relaxed the literary energy and ambition of their master. Caninius meditated the composition of a Greek epic on the Dacian wars of Trajan.^ But he was probably one of those lingering, dilatory writers who meet us in Martial,^ waiting for the fii'e from heaven which never comes. The intractable roughness of barbarian names, which, as Pliny suggests, might have been eluded by a Homeric licence in quantity, was probably not the only difficulty of Caninius.
Among the literary friends of PUny, a much more import- ant person than Caninius was Suetonius, but Suetonius was apparently long paralysed by the same cautious hesitation to challenge the verdict of the public A younger man than Pliny,® Suetonius was one of his most intimate friends. They
» Plin. Sp. VL 21.
« C.LL. vi 798 ; Or. 801. He was Secretary (ab Epistnlis) under Domi- tiaii, Nerra, and Trajan ; cf. Mac^, SuOons, pp. 91, 93, 115.
• PUn. JSp. i. 17 ; viii. 12. Of. C. Pannios, who wrote a history of the Tictiros of Nero, Plin. Ep, v. 5. He died cire, 106, Mac<S, p. 82.
* Plin. Xp. V. 8. For similar un-
willingness, cf. Sidon. ApolL £p, iv. 22.
» Plin. Ep, i. 8.
« lb, viii. 4 ; ix. 83.
' Mart iv. 83 ; vL 14.
^ Momros. Plin,f, 18, puts his birth in 77 A.D. ; but cf. Mace, p. 85, who places it in the year 69 ; see too Peter, Geseh. Lift, ii. 67. The indications in Suet are Domit, xii. ; lU. Oramm, iv. % Neroy Ivii.
168 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
both belonged to that circle which nursed the senatorial tradi- tion and the hatred of the imperial tyrants.^ The life of Suetonius was not very effectual or brilliant, from a worldly point of view. Although bom within the rank to which every distinction was open,^ he was a man of modest and retiring tastes, devoted to quiet research, and destitute of the eager ambition and vigorous self-assertion which are necessary for splendid success. He was probably for some years a professor of grammar.' He made a half-hearted attempt to gain a foot- ing at the bar. In 101 a.d. he obtained a ndlitary tribunate, through Pliny's influence, but speedily renounced his com- mand.^ Henceforth he devoted himself entirely to that his- torical research, which, if it has not won for him any dazzling fame, has made historical students, in spite of some reserva- tions as to his sources, his debtors for all time. Pliny had the greatest esteem for Suetonius, and was always ready to be- friend him, whether it were in the purchase of a quiet little retreat near Bome,^ or in obtaining for the childless antiquary the Jus trium liberorum from Trajan.^ The two men were bound to one another by many tastes and sympathies, not the least strong being a curious superstition, which infected, as we shall see in a later chapter, even the most vigorous minds of that age. Suetonius had once a dream which seemed to portend failure in some legal cause in which he was engaged. He sought the aid of Pliny to obtain an adjournment. Pliny does not question the reality of such warnings, but merely suggests a more cheering interpretation of the vision.^ Although devoted to research, and a most laborious student, the biographer of the Caesars was strangely tardy in letting his productions see the light In 106, he had been long engaged on a work, which was probably the De Viris Illustribua} Pliny assailed him with bantering reproaches on his endless use of the file, and begs him to publish without delay. From several indications, it appears that the lingering volume did not appear till 113.^ It was not till the year 118, when Hadrian arrived
^ Mac^ p. 88 ; Peter, iL 69 ; cf. being 28, and Pliny 85 yean of age, v.
Kranae, De Sueton. FofUiinu, Maoe, p. 50.
' For the authorities, u Mac4, p. 29. ^ Plin. Ad Trey'. 94 ; cf. Mac^ p. 50.
» From 97 to 101 a.d., t6. pp. 58-67. ' Plin. Ep, I 18.
* Plin. ^. iii. 8. • Mac^, p. 68 ; Plin. Jjp. v. 10 ;
^ lb, I 24; of the year 97. On the Momms. PUn, p. 18.
meaning of eontuUrnalit^ Suetonioa " Mac^ p. 69.
k
CHAP. I PLINY'S SOCIETY 169
from the East after his accession, that Suetonius attained the rank of one of the imperial secretaryships.^ Pliny in all prob- ability had died some years before the elevation of his friend.
But although the dawn of a new age of milder and less suspicious government had, for the first time since Augustus, left men firee to compose a true record of the past, and even to vilify the early Caesars,^ the great mass of cultivated men in Pliny's time, as in the days of Ausonius and Sidonius, were devoted to poetry. The chief cause in giving this direction to the Boman mind was undoubtedly the system pursued in the schools. In the first century, as in the fifth, the formative years of boyhood were devoted almost entirely to the study of the poet& The subject-matter of their masterpieces was not neglected by the accomplished grammarian, who was often a man of learning, and sometimes a man of taste ; and the reading of poetr}' was made the text for disquisitions on geography and astronomy, on mythology or the antiqidties of religious ritual and constitutional lore.' But style and expression were always of foremost interest in these studies. The ear of the South has always felt the charm of rhythmical or melodious speech, with a keenness of pleasure generally denied to our colder temperament. And the Augustan age had, in a single generation, performed miracles, under Greek inspiration, in moulding the Latin tongue to be the apt vehicle of every mood of poetic feeling. That inspired band of writers, whose call it was to glorify the dawn of a world-wide empire and the ancient achievements of the Latin race,^ rose to the full height of their vocation. They were conscious that they were writing for distant provinces won from barbarism, and for a remote posterity.^ They discovered and revealed resources in the language, hitherto undreamt of. They wedded to its native dignity and strength a brilliancy, an easy grace and sprightliness, which positively ravished the ear of the street boys in Pompeii, or of the rude dweller on the Tanais or the Baetis.^ In his own lifetime Virgil became a popular hero. His Eclogues were chanted on the stage;
1 Mftc^, p. 90. For the disgnoe of ^ Vi]*g. Ami, vi 848 aq. SiwtopiuB, V. Spart Hadr, xL 2. * q^ ^y^ i^ 128 ; Hor. OMirm, iL
Flin. /'an<^. 68. _ . ^^ _ ^ 20 ; FriedL ^ttttm^MC^ iii p. 299.
' See JUmam, Society in the Last ^ '^
CMury ^ the Western Empire, juZiB * Mau, Pompeii (Tr.), 486, 488;
aq. (1ft ed.). CLL. ii. 4967.
170 SOCIAL UFE book ii
verses of the Aeneid can still be seen, along with verses of Fropertins, scrawled on the walls of Gampanian towns. Virgil, when he visited Borne, was mobbed by admiring crowds. When his poetry was recited in the theatre, the whole audience rose to their feet as if to salute the emperor.^ He had the doubtful but significant honour of being recited by Alexandrian boys at the coarse orgies of a Trimalchio.^ Kever was a worthy fame so rapidly and splendidly won : seldom has literary fame and influence been so lasting.
The Flavian age succeeded to this great heritage. Already there were ominous signs of a decay of originality and force, of decadence in the language itself.' The controversy between the lovers of the new and the lovers of the archaic style was raging in the reign of Vespasian, and can be still followed in the De Oratoribvs of Tacitus, or even in the verses of Martial.* Already the taste for Ennius and the prae-Ciceronian oratory had set in, for the dialect of the heroes of the Punic Wars, even for " the Latin of the Twelve Tables," * a taste which was destined to produce its Dead Sea fruit in the age of the Antonines. But whoever might cavil at Cicero,® no one ever questioned the pre-eminence of Virgil, and he and his contemporaries were still the models of a host of imitators. The mass of facile talent, thrown back on itself by the loss of free republican life and public interests, fascinated from earliest infancy by the haunting cadences of the grand style, rushed into verse- writing, to beguile long hours of idleness, or to woo a shadowy fjEune at an afternoon recital, with a more shadowy hope of future fame. The grand style was a charmer and deceiver. It was such a perfect instrument, it was so protean in its various power, it was so abundant in its resources, that a man of third- rate powers and thin commonplace imagination, who had been trained in skilful manipulation of consecrated phrase, might for the moment delude himself and his friends by faint echoes of the music of the golden age.
^ Tao. De Or, 18, anditis In theafcro fastidio sprevit ; Pers. i. 69 aq. ; Sen.
Virgilii versibiis surrexit universiu Fp. 114. For Hadrian's preference of
popnlua, etc * Petron. SaL 68. Ennhia to Yirgi], etc., v, Spart Hadr.
« Plin. Ep, iil 18, 4 ; viiL 12, 1 ; c. 16 ; A. Gell xii. 2 ; Macd, p. 96 ;
of. Seneca's complaints of his time, Martha, Les Aloralistes bous V Empire
Ep, 95, § 28 ; 100 ; Petron. 83-4. Kom, p. 184.
< Tac Dial, de Or, 20; Mart v. 10 ; • Sen. Ep. 114, § 13, duodecim tabn-
ef. Suet Odav, 86, Cacozelos ct anti- las loquuntiir.
quarios, at diverso gencre vitiosos, pari > Tac. Dial, de Or. 20.
CHAP. I PUNY'S SOCIETY 171
The brilliancy of inherited phrase concealed the poverty of the literary amateur's fancy from himself. And, even if he were not deluded about his own powers, the practice in skilful handling of literary symbols, which was acquired in the schools, furnished a refined amusement for a too ample leisure. It is clear fix)m the dialogue De OratorSmSy and from Pliny's Letters, that the meditative life, surrounded by the quiet charm of stream and woodland, far from the din and strife and social routine of the great city,^ attracted many people much more than the greatest oratorical triumphs in the centumviral court, which, after all, were so pale and bourgeois beside the glories of the great ages of oratory. And although Aper, in the Dialogue of Tacitus, sneers at the solitary and unsocial toil of the poet, rewarded by a short-lived sv/xis cCestime,^ there can be no doubt that the ambition to cut a figure, even for a day, was a powerful inspiration at a time when the ancient avenues to fame had been closed.
It was to satisfy such ambitions that Domitian founded the quinquennial competition on the Capitol, in the year 86 A.D.,^ as well as the annual festival in honour of Minerva on the Alban Mount. A similar festival, for the cultivation of Greek poetry, had been established at Naples in honour of Augustus, at which Statins had won the crown of corn-ears.* And Nero had founded another, apparently only for his own glorification.^ The festival established by Domitian was more important and enduring. The judges were taken from the priestly colleges, and, amid a concourse of the highest functionaries of the state, the successful poet received his crown at the hands of the emperor. The prospect of such a distinction drew competitors from distant provincicd parts. It is a curious illustration of the power and the skill of the literary discipline of the schools that, twice within a few years, the crown of oak leaves was won by boys under fourteen years of age. The verses of one of them may still be read upon his tomb.*
But these infrequent chances of distinction could not suffice
^ Tag. De Or, 12. was the first of the kind. It was
» lb. 9, 10. called **Neronia."
» 8aet Dam, iv. • Or, 2603, to L. Val. Pudens,
* Stat. y. 3, 225 ; cf. Suet Claud. erected by his fellow-citizens in A.D.
xi. A Greek comedy in honour of 110. He was only 13. v. TeufTel,
Germanicus was perfonned. § 814, n. 4 ; Fiiedl. StUengesch. iii. p.
' Suet. Ner. xiL Suetonius says it 824.
i
172 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
for the crowd of eager composers. In those days, although the bookselling trade was extensive and vigorous, there was no organised publishing system by which a new work could be brought to the notice of the public.^ The author had to advertise himself by giving readings, to which he invited his friends, and by distributing copies of his book. The mania for recitation was the theme of satirists from the days of Horace to the days of Epictetus.* Martial comically describes the frenzied poet torturing his friends day and night, pursuing them from the bath to the dining-room, and spreading a solitude around him.^ Juvenal congratulates his friend on escaping to the country from the hoarse reciter of a frigid Theseid.^ In the bohemian scenes of Petronius, the inveterate versifier, who will calmly finish a passage, after being cast ashore from a shipwreck, makes himself a nuisance by his recitations in the baths and porticoes of Croton, and is very properly stoned by a crowd of street boya* No aspect of social life is more prominent in the Letters of Pliny than the reading of new works, epics, or lyrics, histories, or speeches, before fashionable assemblies. A liberal patron like Titinius Oapito would sometimes lend a hall for the purpose. But the reciter had many expenses, from the hire of chedrs to the fees to freedmen and slaves, who acted as claqueurs. In the circle of a man like Pliny, to attend these gatherings was a sacred duty both to letters and to friendship. In a year when there was a more than usually abundant crop of poets, the eager advocate could boast that he had failed no one, even in the month when the courts were busiest.^ Doubtless, many of the fashionable idlers, who dawdled away their time in the many resorts devoted to gossip and scandal, were glad to show themselves in the crowd. Old friends would consider it a duty to support and encourage the budding literary ambition of a young aspirant of their set. Some sincere lovers of literary art would be drawn by a genuine interest and a wish to maintain the liteiury tradition, which was already betraying signs of weakness and decay. But, to a great many, this duty,
1 PUn. Ja?. vL 2; it. 11, 2; Mart. * Jnv. i. 2; iiL 9.
jii 8. Of. Haenny. SckHfUL u. Buchh. , p^^^^ g^ g^ 91 115
iLp.24aqq. '
*^Epict ui. 28, § 11. • Plin. Ep. i. 18 ; ii 19 ; iv. 6 ;
» >Urt, iii. 44, 45 ; iv. 81. 27 ; ▼. 12 ; vL 17, 21 ; viu. 21.
CHAP. I PLINY'S SOCIETY 178
added to the endless round of other social obligations, was evidently becoming repulsive and wearisome.^ Pliny could listen with delight and admiration to Sentius Augurinus reciting his poems for three long days.^ He would calmly expect his own firiends to listen for as many days to a whole volume of his poems, or to his Panegyric on Trajan.' Such was his high breeding, his kindliness, and such was his passion for literature in any form or of any quality, that he could hardly understand how what to him seemed at once a pleasure and duty should be r^arded by others as an intolerable nuisanoa The conduct of such people is treated with some disdain in one or two of the rare passages in which he writes of his circle with any severity. Some of these fashionable folk, after lingering in some place of gossip until the reading was well advanced, would enter the hall with ostentatious reluct- ance, and then leave before the end. Others, with an air of superiority, would sit in stolid silence and disguise the slightest expression of interest. This seemed to Pliny, not only grossly bad manners, but also n^lect of a literary duty.^ The audience should not only encourage honest effort ; they should contribute their judgment to the improvement of style. Pliny, like Aristotle, has an immense faith in the collective opinion of numbers, even in matters of artistic taste.^ He used to read his own pieces to successively wider circles, each time receiving suggestions for amendment Many of Pliny's Letters, like the dialogue De Oratoribvs, reveal the keenness with which in those days questions of style were debated. But, as in the circle of Sidonius, this very energy of criticism was perhaps due to a dim consciousness of waning force.* Pliny, with all his kindly optimism, lets fall a phrase here and there which betrays an uneasiness about the future of lettera" Enthusiasm is failing. Nay, there is a hardly veiled contempt for that eager mediocrity which Pliny and Titinius Capito made it a point of honour to encourage. We feel that we are on the edge of that arid desert of cultivated
* Plin. JSp, vi. 17. di6 xal KpLvovciv d/MUfoy ol iro\K<A koI ' lb. iv. 27. tA Trjt fJLovffiKijs ipya koX rd r&v Totiyniif, ' lb. iii. 18 ; iv. 6. • Sidon. Apoll. Ep, ii. 14 ; vii. 15 ;
* lb. L 13, 2 ; vi. 17 ; viii. 12, 1. L 6.
° 75. vif . 17, 7, quia in numero "^ Plin. Ep. viiL 12. Seneca was even
ipso est quoddam magnum coulatamqne more pessimist, of. Ep. 95, § 28 ; 100 ; consilium. Of. Anst Pol. iii. 11, De Brev. V. xiii. 1.
174 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
impotence in which the freshness and vigour of Boman literature was soon mysteriously to disappear.
Great as were the attractions of the capital, its gay social circles with their multifarious engagements, its games and spectacles, and literary novelties, yet the most devoted " Ardelio," in the end, felt the strain and the monotony to be oppressive.^ Seneca and Pliny, MartijJ and Juvenal,* from various points of view, lament or ridicule the inanity and the slavery of city life. Eoman etiquette was perhaps the most imperious and exacting that ever existed. Morning receptions, punctilious attendance at the assumption of the toga, at betrothals, or the sealing of wills, or the reading of some tedious epic, advice or support in the law courts, congratulations to friends on every official success, these duties, and many others, left men, who had a large circle of acquaintance, hardly a moment of repose. Hence the rapture with which Pliny escapes to the stillness of the Laurentine pine woods, or the pure cold breezes that blew from the Apennines over his Tuscan seat^ In these calm solitudes the weary advocate and man of letters became for a little while his own master, and forgot the din and crush of the streets, the paltry ambitions, the malevolent gossip and silly rumours of the great world, in some long- suspended literary task. There can be no doubt that an in- tense enjoyment was becoming more and more felt in country life. Its unbought, home-grown luxuries, its common sights and sounds, its antique simplicity, have a strange charm even for a hardened bohemian like Martial* But Pliny, besides this commoner form of enjoyment, has a keen and exquisite feeling for beauty of scenery. He loves the amphitheatre of hills, crowned with immemorial forest that looks down on rich pastoral slope, or vineyard or meadow, bright with the flowers of spring, and watered by the winding Tiber ; he loves the scenery of Como, where you watch the fishermen at his toils from some retreat on the terraced banks.* Where in ancient literature can you find a more sharp and clear-cut picture of a romantic scene than
1 Plin. Ep, L 9 ; <)aot dies qnam ^ Sen. Dt Tranq. xiL ; Juv. iii zL
frigidis rebiiB absampsi ! cf. the Bocial Mart jii. 18. life of Symmaohos, Jtoman Society in ' Plin. Bp, i. 9 ; iv. 1. theLastCeTUuryo/the Western Empire^ ^ Mart iii. 58.
p. 128 aq. (lat ed.). > Plin. 2>. v. 6, § 7, 8 ; i 8 ; iz. 7
§4.
CHAP. I PLINY'S SOCIETY 176
in his description of the Clitumuus ? ^ The famous stream rises under a low hill, shaded bj ancient cypresses, and broadens into a basin in whose glassy ice-cold waters you may count the pebbles. Soon the current grows broader and swifter, and the barges are swept along under groves of ash and poplar, which, so vivid is their reflection, seem to be growing in the river-bed. Hard by, is a temple of the river-god, with many other chapels, and a seat of ancient augury ; the magic charm of antique re- ligious awe blends with the witchery of nature, and many a villa is planted on fair spots along the banks. There was plenty of sport to be had in the Apennines or the Laurentine woods. But Pliny was plainly not a real sportsman. He once tells his firiend Tacitus, who seems to have rallied him on this failing, that although he has killed three boars, he much prefers to sit, tablets in hand beside the nets, meditating in the silent glade.' The country is charming to Pliny, but its greatest charm lies in the long tranquil hours which can be given to literary musing. Part of the well-regulated day of Spurinna, a man who had com- manded armies and governed provinces, and who had reached his seventy-seventh year, is devoted to lyric composition both in Greek and Latin.' Pliny once or twice laments the mass of literary talent which, from difBdence or love of ease, was biiried in these rural retreats.^ There must have been many a country squire, like that Terentius, who, apparently lost in bucolic pursuits, surprised his guest by the purity of his taste and his breadth of culture. We often meet the same buried talent after nearly four centuries in the pages of Sidonius.^
The literature of the Flavian age has preserved for us many pictures of Roman villas. They occupied every variety of site. They were planted on rocks where the sea-foam flecked their walls,^ or on inland lakes and rivers, embowered in woods, or on the spurs of the Apennines, between the ancient forest and the wealthy plain.^ Some of these mansions were remote and secluded. But on the Bay of Naples, on the Laurentine shore or the banks of Lake Gomo,' they clustered thickly.
^ Bp, viii 8 ; cfl Virg, Otorg. iL 146 ; * /6. viL 26.
once risited by Caligula, Suet Calig, * Sidon. Apoll. Eip, L 6 ; ii. 14 ; ^ii
48. 15.
' Plin. Ep, L 6, Bolitudo ipsumqne * Stat SUia, li 2, 22, spumant
illod silentinm (juod venationi dator tem^ salo.
magna oogitationis inoitamenta sunt ' Plin. Bp, v. 6.
» i>. iii. 1, S 7. • /6. ii 17, § 27.
176 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
Building in the days of Domitian was as much the rage as it was in the days of Horace, and, just as then, all natural obstacles were defied in preparing a site to the builder's taste. In the grounds of Pollius Felix in the SUvae, whole hills had been levelled, and rocks had been cleared away to make a space for the house with its gardens and woodlands.^ Manlius Yopiscus had built two luxurious seats on opposite banks of the Anio, where the stream glides silently under overarching boughs.* The villas pressed so close to the water that you could converse, and almost touch hands, across the interval between them. The love of variety, or the obligation imposed on senators to invest a third of their fortune in Italian land,' may account for the number of country seats possessed even by men who were not of the wealthiest class/ Pliny had villas at Laurentimi, at Tifemum Tiberinum, at Beneventum, and more than two on Lake Como.^ The orator Regulus had at least five country seats.^ Silius Italicus had several stately abodes in the same district of Campania, and, with capricious facility, transferred his affections to each new acquisition.^
It is by no means an easy task, and perhaps not a ver}' profitable one, to trace minutely the arrangement of one of these great houses. Indeed there seems to have been a good deal of caprice and little care for symmetry in their architecture. The builder appears to have given no thought to external efiect. To catch a romantic view from the windows, to escape the sultry heat of midsummer, or woo the brief sunshine of December, above all to obtain perfect stillness, were the objects which seem to have dictated the plans of the Boman architect® The Laurentine villa of Pliny and the Surrentine of Pollius Felix from their windows or colonnades gave glimpses of forest or mountain, or sea, or fat herds browsing on the meadow grass, or a view seaward to the islands ofT the Cam-
^ Stat SUv. iL 2, 58 ; cf. iii. 1, 124. rising ; JEp, vi. 19 ; but cf. iu. 19 (a.d.
a lb. i. 3, 20-87. 101) ; see Fricai. L p. 197.
• Imposed by Tnyan on candidates 4 gen, />g ^<^y. vii. lO, 6 ; Bp, 89,
for office, Plin. Ep. vi. 19. This was § 20 ; Mart. v. 13, 7 ; Petron. Sat,
a repetition of former enactments, e.g. 75^ 77 j stat SUv. ii. 6, 62.
Suet Tib. 48. It was revived again by 5 py^ ^ U 17 • v 6 • ix 7 • iv
M. Aurelius, Capitol xi Exclusion 1 • iv. 13 ' * '
fromoommeroe necessitated investments U \m ^ •• 01
in land. Plin. Ep. iii 19, sum prope ^*^ V^ .?^
totus in praediis, aiiquid tamen foenero. Fojl Ep. ul 7.
In A.D. 106 the price of land was ^ Friedl. SiUengesch. iii. 64.
CHAP. I PLINY'S SOCIETY 177
panian shore.^ One room admits the morning sun, another is brightened by the glow of evening. Here is a colonnade where in winter you can pace up and down with shutters closed on the weather side, or in spring-time enjoy the scent of violets and the temperate sunshine.^ In the mansions on the Anio, there is, according to Statins, an air of everlasting quietness, never broken even by wandering wind, or ripple of the stream.' Pliny has a distant room at Laurentum, to which even the licensed din of the Saturnalia never penetrates.^ Thus these villas threw out their chambers far and wide, meandering in all directions, according to the fancy of the master, or the charms of the neighbouring scenery.
The luxury of the Roman villa consisted rather in the spaciousness and variety of building, to suit the changing seasons, than in furniture for comfort or splendour. There were, indeed, in many houses some costly articles, tables of citrus and ivory, and antique vases, of priceless worth.* But the chambers of the most stately houses would probably, to modem taste, seem scantily furnished. It was on the walls and ceiling and columns that the Roman of taste lavished his wealth. The houses of Pliny, indeed, seem to have been little adorned by this sort of costly display.* But the villa of PoUius Felix, like the baths of Claudius Etruscus, shone with all the glory of variegated marbles on plaque and pillar, drawn from the quarries of Phrygia, Laconia, and Syene, Carystus and Numidia.^ Pliny confesses that he is not a connoisseur in art He speaks with hesitation of the merit of a Corinthian bronze which he has acquired.* But he was surrounded in his own class by artistic enthusiasm, much of it, it is to be feared, pretentious and ignorant. The dispersion of the artistic wealth of Greek lands had flooded Italy with the works of the great masters. Collectors of them, like Silius Italicus, abounded. The fashion became so general and so imperious, that it penetrated even into the vulgar circle of people like Trimalchio, who, in interpreting the subject of the chasing on a cup, could con- fuse the Punic and the Trojan wars. In the villas described
» PUn. -filp. it 17 ; Stat SiXv, ii 2, • Plin. Ep, v. 6.
76. ' Stat. Silv, ii 2, 86 ; i. 6, 86 ;
* Plin. ii 17, § 16. Friedl. SUterigesch, iii. 65.
s Stat SUv, L 8, 29. * PliD.^;7.iii.6; cf. the taste of Si] ins
* Plin. Ep, ii. 17, § 24. Itolicus, iu. 7. 8 ; Petron. Sat, 60, 88 ;
* Friedl. SiUengtKk, iii 87. Mahaffjr, QrUk World, etc., p. 189 aq.
N
178 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
by Statins, it would seem that the art of Apelles, Pheidias, Myron, and Polycletus adorned the saloons and colonnades.^ It may be doubted, however, whether many of these works oould claim such illustrious parentage. There was plenty of facile technique in those days which might easily deceive the vulgar collector by more or less successful reproduction.* The confident claim to artistic discrimination was not less common in the Flavian age than in later days, and it was probably as fallible. It is rather suspicious that, in the attempts at artistic appreciation in this period, attention seems to be concentrated on the supposed antiquity, rarity, or costliness of material There is little in the glowing descriptions in the Sfdvat to indicate a genuine appreciation of real art
It is possible that the great Roman country seat, in its vast extent, although not in the stateliness of its exterior, may have surpassed the corresponding mansions of our time. It was the expression in stone of the dominant passion of an enormously wealthy class, intoxicated with the splendour of imperial power, and ambitious to create monuments worthy of an im- perial raca Moreover, the Roman's energy always exulted in triumphing over natural difficulties. Just as he drove his roads unswerving over mountain and swamp, so he took a pride in rearing his piles of masonry on the most obstinate and defiant sites, or even in the middle of the waves. But, in the extent of their parks, and the variety of floral display, the Romans of the most luxurious age seldom reached the modem English standard. The grounds of the villas which, in thick succession, lined the Laurentine or Gampanian shore, cannot have been very extensive. Pliny has splendid views from his windows of forest, mountain, and meadow, but the scene lies plainly beyond the bounds of his demesne.' The gardens and shrubberies are very artificial, arranged in terraces or labyrinths close to the house, or with hedges of box clipped into shapes of animals along an open colonnade. The hippodrome at his Tuscan seat, for riding exercise, is formed by lines of box and laurel and cypress and plane tree. The fig and mulberry form a garden at the Laurentine villa.^ The cultivated
* Stat. SiXv. L 8, 50 ; il 2, 63 sq. ; c. ix. jp. 266 ; Marq. PHv, ii 611. Mart. iv. 89. » Plm. Ep, v. 6, 7 ; cf. ii. 17, § a
■ Friedl. iii. 196 ; cf. Croiset, lAuitn, * lb, ii 17, § 16 ; v. 6, § 38.
CHAP. I PUNY'S SOCIETY 179
flowers are few, only roses and violets. But the Romans made up for variety by lavish profusion. In the Neronian orgies a fortune was sometimes spent on E^ptian roses for a single banquet^
We might almost conjecture how the days passed amid such scenes, even without any formal diary. But Pliny has left us two descriptions of a gentleman's day in the country.' Pliny himself, as we might expect, awoke early, about six o'clock, and in one of those sleeping-rooms, so carefully shut off from the voices of nature or from household noise, with shutters still closed, he meditated some literary pieca Then, calling for his amanuensis, he dictated what he had composed. About ten or eleven, he passed into a shady cloister, opening on a bed of violets, or a grove of plane trees, where he continued his literary work. Then followed a drive, during which, according to his uncle's precept and example, his studies were still continued.^ A short siesta, a walk, declama- tion in Greek and Latin, after the habit of Cicero, gymnastic exercise, and the bath, filled the space till dinner time arrived. During this meal, a book was read aloud, and the evening hours were enlivened by acting or music and the society of friends. Occasional hunting and the cares of a rural estate came in to vary this routine. The round of Spurinna's day, which excited Pliny's admiration by its rigid regularity, is pretty much the same as his own, except that Spurinna seems to have talked more and read less.^
To the ordinary EngUsh squire Pliny's studious life in the country would not seem very attractive. And his pretence of sport was probably ridiculed even in his own day.* But his Letters give glimpses of a rural society which, both in its pleasures and its cares, has probably been always much the same from one age to another in Europe. On his way to Gomo, Pliny once turned aside for a couple of days to his Tuscan estate, to join in the dedication of a temple which he bad built for the people of Tifemum Tiberinum. The consecra- tion was to be followed by a dinner to his good neighbours, who had elected him patron of their township, who were very proud of his career, and gi-eeted him warmly whenever
^ 8uetiV(WV,xx?iL;Friedl.iil778qq. ' i6. iii. 5, § 15.
« Plin. Eip, ix. 86 ; iii. 1. < i&. iii 1. » Ih. ix. Z^, i d.
180 SOCIAL UFE book ii
he came among them.^ There is also the record of the restora- tion, in obedience to the warning of a diviner, of an ancient temple of Geres on his lands, with colonnades to shelter the worshippers who frequented the shrine. And the venerable wooden statue of the goddess, which was much decayed, had to be replaced by a more artistic image. But the life of a Boman proprietor, of course, had its prosaic and troublesome side which Pliny does not conceaL There is an interesting letter in which he consults a friend on the question of the purchase of an estate.' It adjoined, or rather cut into his own lands. It could be managed by the same bailiff, and the same staff of labourers and artisans would serve for both estate& On the other hand, Pliny thinks, it is better not to put too many eggs into one basket. It is more prudent to have estates widely dispersed, and thus less exposed to a single stroke of calamity. Moreover this estate, however tempting, with its fertile, well-watered meadows, its vineyards and woods, is burdened by an insolvent tenantry, who, through faulty management, have been allowed to fall into arrear. Pliny, however, is tempted to buy at a greatly reduced price,' and, in order to meet the payment, although his wealth is nearly all in land, he can call in some loans at interest, and the balance can be borrowed from his father-in-law, whose purse is always at his disposal. Pliny was sometimes worried by the complaints of the people on his estates, and finds it very difficult to secure solvent tenants on a five years lease. He made liberal remissions of rent, but tirrears went on accumulating, until the tenant in despair gave up any attempt to repay his debt. In this extremity, Pliny resolved to adopt a different system of letting. He substituted for a fixed rent a certain proportion of the produce,* in fact the metayer system, and employed some of his people to see that the returns were not fraudulently diminished. At another time he is embarrassed by finding that, owing to a bad vintage,
^ Plin. Ep, iv. 1. the price of land was risiug, owing to
' Ih, iiL 19. oompetition, and Pliny advises Nepos
' Ih, § 7. This estate was once to sell liis Italian estates and buy
worth HS. 5,000, 000; it was now offered others in the prorinces ; cf. vi. 8, 1.
for HS.8,000,000, i.t. £26,000; of. Ep. ^ Ep, iz. 87, medeDdi una ratio, si
vr, 6 ; it 4, 8. The letter iii. 19 non nnmmo sed partibiis locem ; cf.
belongs to the year 101 a.d. ; but in J. S. Mill, P6l» Boon, bk. ii c. 8, 1 ;
Bp, n. 19 (106 A.D.) it appears that A. Young, Travels in France^ p. 18.
CHAP. I PLINY'S SOCIETY 181
the men who have bought his grapes in advance are going to be heavy losers. He makes a uniform remission to all of about twelve per cent But he gives an additional advantage to the large buyers, and to those who had been prompt in their payments.^ It is characteristic of the man that he says, quite naturally, that the landlord should share with his tenant such risks from the fickleness of nature.
So good a man was sure to be far more afSicted by the troubles of his dependents than by any pecuniary losses of his own. One year, there were many deaths among his slaves. Pliny feels tMs acutely, but he consoles himself by the reflection that he has been liberal in manumission, and still more liberal in allowing his slaves to make their wills, the validity of which he maintains as if they were legal instruments.^ If Pliny shows a little too much self-complacency in tliis human sympathy, there can be no doubt that, like Seneca, he felt that slaves were humble firiends, men of the same flesh and blood as the master, and that the master has a moral duty towards them, quite apart from the legal conventions of Home.' When his wife's grandfather proposed to make numerous manumissions, Pliny rejoiced gi'eatly at the accession of so many new citizens to the municipality.* When his favourite reader, Encolpius, was seized with hemorrhage, Pliny displayed a genuine and most affectionate concern for the humble partner of his studies.* Another member of his household, a freedman named Zosimus, suffered from the same malady. Zosimus seems to have been a most excellent, loyal, and accomplished man. He was very versatile, a comedian, a musician, a tasteful reader of every kind of literature.^ His patron sent him to Egypt to recruit his health. But, from putting too great a strain upon his voice, he had a return of his dangerous illness, and once more needed change of air. Pliny determined to send him to the Siviera, and begs a friend, Paulinus, to let Zosimus have the use of his villa and all necessary attention, for which Pliny will
> PUn. Ep, yUi. 2 ; ix. 87, 8. Boissier, JUl. Horn. ii. 858 ; Denis, de$
* lb, viii. 16 ; cf. the Lex Coll. ItUes Morales, etc., ii. 208 sq. ; Wallon,
Oultorain Dianae et Antinoi, Or, Henz. VEsclav, i c. 11 ; Marq. L 189.
6086u The slave member is permitted ^ £p. vii. 82. Fabatus seems to have
to dispose of his funeraticium by will. been a model country squire ; cf. JEp.
Marq. Priv, i. 189. iv. 1 ; v. 11 ; vL 12 ; vii. 11 ; viii 10.
» Sen. Ep, Zl ; A7; 77 ; De Clem, i. • lb, viii. 1.
l^S; De Ben. iii. 21 ; Juv. xiv. 16 ; « lb, v. 19 ; cf. Son. JEp. 27, § 6 ;
D. Chr. Or, x. ; Spart. Hadr. 18, § 7 ; FriedL SG, iii 89 ; Marq. Priv. i 158.
188 SOCIAL UFE book ii
bear the coet^ In his social relations with his freedmen Plin7 always shows himself the perfect, kindly gentleman. Juvenal and Martial poured their scorn on those unequal dinners, where the guests were graduated, and where poorer wine and coarser viands were served out to those of humble degree.^ Pliny was present at one of these entertainments, and he expresses his contempt for the vulgar host in terms of unwonted energy.' His own freedmen, as he tells a fellow-guest, are entertained as equals at his table. If a man fears the expense, he can find a remedy by restraining his own luxury, and sharing the plain £Eire which he imposes on his company. Pliny's relations with his slaves and freedmen were very like those which the kindly English squire cultivates towards his household and dependents. The affectionate regret for a good master or mistress, recorded on many an inscription of that age,^ shows that Pliny's household was by no means a rare exception.
Yet the Letters of Pliny, with all their charity and tranquil optimism, reveal now and then a darker side of household slavery. A man of praetorian rank named Largius Macedo, who foigot, or perhaps too vividly remembered, his own servile origin, was known as a cruel and haughty master. While he was enjoying the bath in his Formian villa, he was suddenly surrounded by a throng of angry slaves who, with every expression of hatred and loathing, inflicted on him such injuries that he was left for dead on the glowing pavement. He seemed, or pretended for a while, to be dead. A few who remained faithful took up the apparently lifeless corpse, amid the shrieks of his concubines, and bore him into the Frigi- darium. The coolness and the clamour recalled him from his swoon. The would-be murderers meanwhile had fled, but many of them were caught in the end, and the outrage was sternly avenged.^ In another letter, Pliny tells the tale of the mysterious disappearance of one Metilius Crispus, a citizen of Como, for whom Pliny had obtained equestrian rank, and made him a gift of the required HS.400,000. Metilius set out on a journey and was never heard of again.^ It is
» Plln. Ep, V. 19. » Plin. Ep, SjL 14.
' Mart L 44 ; iii 49 ; Juv. y, 25 sqq. ; * 76. yi. 25 ; cf. the similar fate of
of. Sen. Dt Ben, vi. 83, § 4. Lampridins, at the close of the Western
' Plin. Ep. ii. 6u Empire in Oanl, Sid. Apoll. Ep. viii.
« Or. Henz. 2862, 2374, 6889. 11. § 10.
CHAP. I
PLINY'S SOCIETY
183
aignificant that of the slaves who attended him no one ever reappeared. Amid such perils, says Pliny, do we masters live, and no kindness can relieve us from alarm. Seneca remarks that the master's life is continually at the mercy of his slaves.^ And the cruel stringency of l^islation shows how real was the peril
Pliny was only an infant in the evil days when suicide was the one refuge from tyranny, when the lancet so often opened the way to " eternal freedom." Yet, even in his later years^ men not unfrequently escaped from intolerable calamity or incurable disease by a voluntary death.^ The morality of suicide was long a debated question. There were strict moralists who maintained that it was never lawful to quit one's post before the final signal to retreat Men like Seneca regarded it as a question to be determined by circumstances and motives.' He would not palliate wild, impetuous self- murder, without a justifying cause. On the other hand, there might be, especially under a monster like Kero, cases in which it were mere folly not to choose an easy emancipation rather than a certain death of torture and ignominy. Eternal law, which has assigned a single entrance to this life, has mercifully allowed us many exits. Any death is preferable to servitude.^ So, in the case of disease and old age, it is merely a question whether the remainder of life is worth living. If the mental powers are falling into irreparable decay, if the malady is tormenting and incurable, Seneca would permit the rational soul to quit abruptly its crumbling tenement, not to escape pain or weakness, but to shake off the slavery of a worthless life.*
Pliny was not a philosopher, and had no elaborate theory of suicide or of anything else. But his opinion on the question may be gathered from his remarks on the case of Titius Aristo, the learned jurist. To rush on death, he says, is a vulgar.
1 Sen. Ep. 4, §8; 107, 5.
* See a great mass of instances and aothorities collected, with his unique learning, by Mayor, Plin, iiL pp. 114, 115 ; ct Boissier, VOpp. p. 212.
* Sen. Ep, 24, § 11 ; &8, § 36 ; 70, § 8 ; 117, %22\ De Prov, iL 10 ; vi. 7 ; De Ira, iiL 16 ; Epict i. 24 ; cf. ii 15 ; nL 24 ; M. AureL x. 8 ; z. 82 ; cf. Mommsen, De ColL p. 100.
* Sen. Ep. 70, § 21, dnm hoc constat praeferendam esse spurcissimam mortem servituti mnndissimae.
' lb, 58, § 86, non adferam mihi manus propter dolorem : hunc tamen si sciero perpetuo mihi esse patiendum, exibo ; non propter ipsum, sed quia impedimento mini futurus est ad omne propter quod vivitur . . . prosiliamex aedificio putri ao ruenti.
184 SOCIAL LIFE took ri
commonplace act But to balance the various motives, and make a deliberate and rational choice may, in certain circumstances, be the proof of a lofty mind.^ The cases of suicide described in the Letters are nearly always cases of incurable or prolonged disease. The best known is that of the luxurious Silius Italicus, who starved himself to death in his seventy-fifth year.^ He was afflicted with an incurable tumour, almost the only trouble in his long and happy life. Corellius Bufus, who had watched over Pliny's career with almost parental care,' chose to end his life in a similar manner. Pliny was immensely saddened by the dose of a life which seemed to eujoy so mauy blessings, high character, great reputation and influence, family love and friendship. Tet he does not question the last resolve of Corellius. In his thirty-third year he had been seized with hereditary gout During the period of vigorous manhood, he had warded off its onsets by an extreme abstinence. But as old age crept on, its tortures, wracking every liuib, became unendurable, and Corellius determined to put an end to the hopeless straggle. His obstinacy was proof against all the entreaties of his wife and friends, and Pliny, who was called in as a last resource, came only to hear the physician repelled for the last time with a single energetic word.^ Sailing once on Lake Como, Pliny heard from an old friend the tragic tale of a double suicide from a verandah overhanging the lake. The husband had long suffered from a loathsome and hopeless malady. His wife insisted on knowing the truth, and, when it was revealed to her, she nerved him to end the cruel ordeal, and promised to bear him company. Bound together, the pair took the fatal leap.*
In spite of his charity and optimism,^ it would not be alto- gether true to say that Pliny was blind to the faults and vices of his time. He speaks, with almost Tacitean scorn, of the rewards which awaited a calculating childlessness, and of the
^ Plin. Ep,i. 22, 10 ; Aristo was a ^ 7& L 12, 10. It ia characteristic
fine type of the paritan pagan, an of the time that his last word was
*' iniago priscae frugalitatis. " KixpiKa.
' lb, iii. 7, 1. For similar instances, ^ lb. vl 24.
V. Sen. il^ 70, § 6 ; Tac Ann, zi 8 ; * Pliny boasts of idealising his
Saet Tift. 58 ; Petron. Ill ; Epict ii. friends ; vil 28, agnosoo crimen. . . .
15. Ut enim non sint tales quales a me
' Plin. ^. ix. 18, 6 ; cf. i^. 17, 4 ; praedicantiir, ego tamen beatns qnod
vii mihi videntur.
CHAP. I PUNY'S SOCIETY 186
eager servility of the will-hunter.^ Id recommending a tutor lor the son of Corellia Hispulla, he regards the teacher's stainless character as of paramount importance in an age of dangerous licence, when youth was beset with manifold seductions.* He blushes for the degradation of senatorial character displayed in the scurrilous or obscene entries which were sometimes found on the voting tablets of the august body.' The decline of modesty and courteous deference in the young towards their elders greatly afiOicted so courteous a gentleman. There seemed to be no respect left for age or authority. With their fancied omni- science and intuitive wisdom, young men disdain to learn from any one or to imitate any example ; they are their own models.^ Among the many spotless and charming women of Pliny's circle, there is one curious exception, one, we may venture to surmise, who had been formed in the Neronian age. Ummidia Quadratilla was a lady of the highest rank, who died at the age of eighty in the middle of the reign of Trajan.* She preserved to the end an extraordinary health and vigour, and evidently enjoyed the external side of life with all the zest of the old days of licence in her youth. Her grandson, who lived under her roof, was one of Pliny's dearest friends, a spotless and almost puritanical character. Ummidia, even in her old age, kept a troop of pantomimic artistes, and continued to enjoy their doubtful exhibitiona But her grandson would never witness them, and, it must be said, Ummidia respected and even encouraged a virtue superior to her own.
It has been remarked that, in nearly all these cases, where Pliny has any fault to find with his generation, the evil seems to be only a foil for the virtue of some of his friends. Even in his own day, there were those who criticised him for his extrava- gant pmise of the people he loved. He takes the censure as a compliment, prefeixing the kind-heartedness which is occasionally deceived, to the cold critical habit which has lost all illusions.^ Pliny belonged to a caste who were linked
^ Plin. Ep. viii. 18; iv. 21; viiL 10, atque etiam foeda dicta . . . inventa
11, neque eniDi ardentius ta pronepotes sunt.
quam ego liberos cupio ; cf. iv. 15, 8, ^ 7&. viii. 23,3, ipsi sibiexempla sunt.
Mciinditate uxoris frui voluit eo saeculo ^ lb. vii. 24, she was born about
qno plerisque etiam singulos filios orbi- a.d. 27, in the reign of Tiberius. Urn-
tatis praemia graves faciunt midia had the virtue of liberality ; she
' A. iii. 3, in hac licentia temporum. built an ampbitb^atre and temple for
' lb, iv. 25, proximis comitiis in Casiiium, Or. Henz. 781.
quibusdam tabellis multa jocularia * Plin. Ep. vii. 28, 2.
186
SOCIAL UFE
BOOK II
to one another by the strongest ties of loyalty and tradition.^ The members of it were bound to support one another by counsel, encouragement, and influence, they were expected to help a comrade's advancement in the career of honours, to applaud and stimulate his literary ambition, to be prodigal of sympathy or congratulation or pecuniary lielp in all the vicissi- tudes of public or private life.^ The older men, who had borne the weight of great affairs, recognised the duty of forming the character of their juniors by precept and criticism. In this fashion the old soldier Spurinna, on his morning drive, would pour forth to some young companion the wealth of his long ex- perience. In this spirit Yerginius Sufus and Corellius stood by Pliny throughout his official career, to guide and support him.' Pliny, in his turn, was always lavish of this kind of help, and deemed it a matter of pride and duty to afiford it. Sometimes he solicits office for a friend's son, or commends a man to the emperor for the Jus trium liberorv/m,} Sometimes he applauds the early efforts of a young pleader at the bar, or gives him counsel as to the causes which he should undertake, or the discipline necessary for oratorical success.^ He was often con- sulted about the choice of a tutor for boys, and he responded with all the earnestness of a man who believed in the infinite importance of sound influence in the early years of life.^ To his older friends he would address disquisitions on style, con- solations in bereavement, congratulations on official preferment, descriptions of some fair scene or picturesque incident in rural life. He often wrote, like Symmachus, merely to maintain the connection of friendly sympathy by a chat on paper. His vanity is only too evident in some of these letters. But it is, after all, an innocent vanity and the consuming anxiety to cherish the warmth and solidarity of friendship, and a high tone in the great class to wldch he belonged, might well cover even graver faults. If there was too much self-indulgence in
Chrys. Or, yiL § 82 ; Denis, Idie$ Morales f iL 175 sqq.
» Plin. Ep. viil 28, 2 ; vi. 11, 8 ; L 12, 12 ; ii. 1, 8 (of Yerginius Rufus), sic caiididatura me suffragio omavit, etc, ill 1, 6 (of Sparinna), qnibns prae- oeptis imbuaro I
^ Plin. Ad Traj. 87, 94.
^ Id, Ep.Yl 29.
• 7J. ilL 8.
^ Of. Bp. Y, 14, on bis relations with Comutus Tertnllus : quae societas ami- dtiarum artissima nos familiaritate ooiganiit
' Plin. Ep, tL 6 ; vi 82 ; in which he offers a dowry to Qnintilian's daoffhter in the most delicate wuy ; ot Jav. lii. 215 ; xv. 150 ; Sen. Ih Bene/, iL 21, 5 ; iv. 11, 8 ; Tao. Ann. iv. 62 ; yet of. the jndgment of D.
CHAP. I PLINY'S SOCIETY 187
that class, if they often abandoned themselves to the seductions of ease and literary trifling in luxurious retreats, it is also to be remembered that a man of rank paid heavily for his place in Boman society, both in money and in the observance of a very exacting social code. And no one recognised the obliga- tion with more cheerful alacrity than Pliny.
Pliny felt a genuine anxiety that young men of birth should aim at personal distinction. Any gleam of generous ambition, any sign of strenuous energy, which might save a young aristocrat from the temptations of ease and wealth, were hailed by him with unaffected delight. He was evidently very sus- ceptible to the charm of manner which youths of this class often possess. When to that was added strength of character, his satisfaction was complete. Hence his delight when Fuscus Salinator and Ummidius Quadratus, of the very cream of the Boman nobility, entered on the conflicts of the Centum- viral Ck)urt.^ And indeed these young men appear to have had many graces and virtues. Salinator, in particular, with exquisite literary culture, had a mingled charm of boyish simplicity, gravity, and sweetness.^ Asinius Bassus, the son of Asinius Bufus, was another of this promising band of youth, blameless, learned, and diligent, whom Pliny commends for the quaestorship to Fundanus, then apparently designated as consul.' There is no more genuine feeling in the Letters than the grief of Pliny for the early death of Junius Avitus, another youth of high promise. Pliny had formed his character, and sup- ported him in his candidature for oflica He had helped him with advice in his studies, or in his administrative duties. Avitus repaid all this paternal care by a docility and deference which were becoming rare among the young men of the day. Winning the afiection and confidence of his elders in the service, Avitus was surely destined to develop into one of those just and strenuous imperial officers, like Corbulo or Verginius Bufus, many of whom have left only a name on a brief in- scription, but who were the glory and strength of the Empire in the times of its deepest degradation. But all such hopes for Avitus were extinguished in a day.
* PUn. Ep, VL 11. 1588, 2471. There is a difficulty about
' lb, vi. 26. the dates which is discussed in Momms.
' lb. iv. 15. Fnndanos's consulship Plin, p. 17, n. 8. Fundanus does not
is mentioned in two inscriptions, Or. appear in the Fa^i.
188 SOCIAL UFE book ii
The upright and virtuous men of Pliny's circle, Corellius Bufus, Titiniiis Capito the historian, Pegasus the learned jurist, Trebonius Bufus the magistrate who suppressed the games at Yienne, Junius Mauricus, who would have denied them to the capital, and many others of the like stamp, have often been used to refute the pessimism of JuveuaL We have in a former chapter seen reason to believe that the satirist's view of female character needs to be similarly rectified. Even in the worst reigns the pages of Tcicitus reveal to us strong and pure women, both in the palace and in great senatorial houses. In the wide philosophic class there was probably many an Arria and Plotina. In the Agricola, and in Seneca's letters to Marcia and Helvia, we can see that, even at the darkest hour, there were homes with an atmosphere of old Boman self-restraint and sobriety, where good women wielded a powerful influence over their husbands and their sons, and where the examples of the old Bepublic were used, as Biblical characters with us, to fortify virtue.^ Seneca, in his views about women, as in many other things, is essenti- ally modem. He admires indeed the antique ideal of self- contained strength and homely virtue. But he also believes in the equal capacity of women for culture, even in the field of philosophy, and he half regrets that an old-fashioned prejudice had debarred Helvia from receiving a philosophic disciplina* Tacitus and Pliny, who had no great faith in philosophy as a study for men, would hardly have recommended it for women. But they lived among women who were cultivated in the best sense. Pliny's third wife, Calpurnia, was able to give him the fullest sympathy in his literary efforts.' But her fame, of which she probably little dreamt, is founded on her purity and sweetness of character. Her ancestors, like Pliny's, belonged to the aristocracy of Como. Her aunt, Calpurnia Hispulla, who was a dear friend of Pliny's mother, had watched over her during the years of girlhood with a sedulous care which made her an ideal wife. What Calpurnia was like as a girl, we may probably picture to ourselves from the prose elegy
^ Sen. Ad Mare, xiii. xiv. ; Ad Helv, od irpoadi^erai {if yvwij) roU llXdrwot
xvi irgidofjJpfj \6yoiif kt\. ; cf. Juv. vi 460 ;
* Ad Marc, xvi par illis, mihi erode, Mart vii. 69. vigor, etc. Ad ffetv, xvii. 4 , of. Plat C^'. Praec, xlviii. 4>apfidKw iw^^Sht • Plin. Ep. iv. 19, § 4.
CHAP. I PLINY'S SOCIETY 189
of Pliny on the death of the young daughter of Minutius Fundanus.^ It is the picture of a beautiful character, and a &ir young life cut off too soon. The girl had not yet reached her fourteenth year. She was already betrothed when she was seized with a fatal sickness. Her sweet girlish modesty, which was combined with a matronly gravity, charmed all her father's friends. She had love for all the household, her tutors and slaves, nurses and maids. A vigorous mind triumphed over bodily weakness, and she passed through her last illness with a sweet patience, encouraging her father and sister to bear up, and showing no shrinking from death.
Although we know of a good many happy wedded lives in that age,^ there is no picture so full of pure devotion and tender- ness as that which we have in Pliny's letters to Calpurnia. They are love-letters in the best sense and the most perfect style.' Pliny's youth was long past when he won the hand of Calpurnia, yet their love for one another is that of boy and girL When she has to go into Campania for her health, he is racked with all sorts of anxiety about her, and entreats her to write once, or even twice, a day. Pliny reads her letters over and over again, as if they had just come. He has her image before him by night, and at the wonted hour by day his feet carry him to her vacant room. His only respite from these pains of a lover is while he is engaged in court. Pliny had frequent care about Calpurnia's health. They did not belong to the hideous class who preferred " the rewards of childlessness," but their hopes of offspring were dashed again and again. These griefs were imparted to Calpurnia's aunt, and to her grandfather, Calpumius Fabatus, a generous old squire of Como, who was as anxious as Pliny to have descendants of his race. At the time of the old man's death, Calpurnia was with her husband in Bilhynia, and she wished to hasten home at once to console her aunt. Pliny, not having time to secure the emperor's sanction, gave her the official order for the use of the public post on her journey back to Italy. In answer to his letter of explanation and excuse, Trajan sent his approval in his usual kind and courteous style. This is the last glimpse we have of Pliny and Calpurnia.*
» Plin. Ep, V. 16. « Plin. Ep, vi. 4, 6, 7.
' Seneca and Paulina, Tac. Ann, XV. 64 ; Plutarch, Ad Dxoreni, iv. v. * Id. Ad Traj, 121, 122.
190 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
Pliny's character, as displayed in his Letters, is the embodi- ment of the finest moral tone of the great age which had opened when he died, in kindlier or juster treatment of the slave, in high respect for women, in conscientious care for the education of the young, in beneficent provision for the helpless and distressed. But it would be a mistaken view to regard these ideas as an altogether new departure. It is dangerous to assert that anything is altogether new in Soman social history. The truth is that the moral sentiment in which these movements took their rise had been for generations in the air. It was diffused by the Stoic preaching of the brotherhood and equality of men as fellow-citizens of one great commonwealth. The duty of redeeming the captive and succouring the poor had been preached by Cicero a century and a half before Pliny's Letters appeared.^ Horace had, a few years later, asked the searching question, " Why should the worthy be in want while you have wealth ? " * Seneca preaches, with the unction of an evangelist, all the doctrines on which the humane legis- lation of the Antonine age was founded, all the principles of humanity and charity of every age. He asserts the natural equality of bond and free, and the claim of the slave to kindness and consideration.' He brands in many a passage the cruelty and contempt of the slaveholder. He preaches tolerance of the froward, forgiveness of insult and injury.* He enforces the duty of universal kindness and help- fulness by the example of God, who is bounteous and merciful even to the evildoer.* Juvenal was little of a philosopher, but he had unconsciously drunk deep of the gospel of philosophy. Behind all his bitter pessimism there is a pure and lofty moral tone which sometimes almost approaches the ideal of charity in S. Paul The slave whom we torture or insult for some slight negligence is of the same elements as we are.^ The purity of childhood is not to be defiled by the ribaldry of the banquet and the example of a mother's intrigues or a father's brutal excesses.^ Revenge is the pleasure of a puny souL'
» ac. Dt Off. il 18 m\ atque haec 21 ; Dt Clem. i. IS, S ; De Ira, uL 24.
benignitaa etiam reipnblicae est ntilU, ^ Sen. JBp. 95, § 52.
redimi e servitute captos, locupletari ^ Sen. Bene/, iv. 5 ; iv. 26 ; iv. 28,
tenniores. Di malta ingratis tribuant.
• Hor. Sat. ii. 2, 103— • Juv. xiv. 16 ; vl 219, 476.
Cor eget indignus quisquam, te divite t ^ Id. xiv. 31.
> Sen. JSp. 47, %l,3l; De Bm^. ill > Id. xui. 190.
\
CHAP. 1 PUNY'S SOCIETY 191
The gnilty may be left to the scourge of the unseen inquisitor. Juvenal r^ards the power of sympathy for any human grief or pain as the priceless gift of Nature, "who has given us tears." ^ It is by her command that we mourn the calamity of a friend cnr the death of the babe " too small for the funeral pyre." The Icenee of suffering and pity which the satirist has sketched in some tender lines were assuredly not imaginary pictures. We are apt to foiget, in our modem self-complacency, that, at least among dvilised races, human nature in its broad features remains pretty much the same from age to aga On an obscure epitaph of this period you may read the woi-ds — Bene fac, hoe tecum feres} Any one who knows the inscriptions may be incUned to doubt whether private benefactions under the Antonines were less frequent and generous than in our own day.
The duties of wealth, both in Greece and Bome, were at all times rigorously enforced by public opinion. The rich had to pay heavily for their honours and social consideration in the days of Cicero, and in the days of Symmachus, as they had in the days of Pericles.* They had to contribute to the amusement of the people, and to support a crowd of clients and freedmen. In the remotest municipality, the same ambitions and the same social demands, as we shall show in the next chapter, put an enormous strain on the resources of the upper class. Men must have often ruined themselves by this profuse liberality. In the reign of Augustus a great patron had several times given a favourite freedman sums of £3000 or £4000. The patron's descendant in the reign of Nero had to become a pensioner of the emperor. Juvenal and Martial reveal the clamorous demands by which the great patron was assailed.^ The motives for this generosity of the wealthy class were at all times mixed and various. But in iour period, the growth of a pure humane charity is un- wustakable, of a feeling of duty to the helpless, whether young or old. The State had from the time of the Gracchi taken upon itself the immense burden of providing food for a quarter of a million of the proletariat of Home. But in the
> Jav. XT. 183. Fvhlic Ec of Athena (Tr&ns. Lewis),
» Or. Hem, 6042. pp. 458, 520, 678.
• Cic. De Off. i. 14 ; Sym. Ep. it * Marq. PHv. i. 178 n. 10 ; cf. Jur.
78 ; ix. 126 ; Olympiod. § 44 (Miiller, iL 117 ; Mart viL 64, dominae munore
IV. H. Gr. iv. p. 68) ; cf. Boeckh, factus eques ; Tac Ann. xiii. 84.
192 SOCIAL UFE book n
days of Pliny it recognised fresh obligations. The importance of education and the growth of poverty appealed powerfully to a ruling class, which, under the influence of philosophy, was coming to believe more and more in the duty of benevolence and of devotion to things of the mind All the emperors from Vespasian to M. Aurelius made liberal provision for the higher studie&^ But this endowment of culture, which in the end did harm as well as good, is not so interesting to us as the charitable foundations for the children of the poor. It was apparently the emperor Nerva, the rigid economist who sold the imperial furniture and jewels to replenish the treasury,^ who first made provision for the children of needy parents throughout Italy. But epigraphy tells us more than literary history of the charity of the emperors. The tablet of Yeleia is a priceless record of the charitable measures adopted by Trajan. The motive of the great emperor was probably, as his panegyrist suggests, political as much as benevolent* He may have wished to encourage the rearing of children who should serve in the armies of the State, as well as to relieve distress. The provision was even more evidently intended to stimulate agriculture. The landed proprietors of the place, to the number of forty-six, received on mortgage a loan from the State of about £10,000 in our money, at an interest of five per cent, which was less than half the usual rate of that time.^ The interest was appropriated to the maintenance of 300 poor children, at the rate of about £l:lls. a year for each male child, and £1 for each girL The ill^itimate children, who, it may be noted, were only two or three out of 80 many, received a smaller allowance. The boys were sup- ported till their eighteenth year, the girls till fourteen. It was a bold and sagacious attempt to encourage Italian agricul- ture, to check the ominous depopulation of Italy,^ and to answer the cry of the poor. Hadrian continued and even added to the benefaction of Trajan.® Antoninus Pius, in
^ Snet Tesp. 18 ; Spart Hadr, 16, « Plin. Ep. x. 62. The letter reyeals
§ 8 ; Capitol. Ani, P. 11, § 8. an tmwillingness amone the people of
* D. Caas. 68. 2; Yiotor, EpiL 12. Bithpia to become debtors to the
* Or. Zr«iu. 6664 ; Plin. Fanag, 28, hi public treasury.
•nbeidiam bellorum, omamentum pacia ^ Cf. T^ Awn. iv. 27, minore in dies
pabUcis somptibns aluntur. Duruy, plebe ingenaa ; iiL 25 ; ot Meriy. viii.
ir. 784 ; Boiitier, Ed, Horn, ii 211 ; 858.
Krat^ D$ Bm^,, a Tn^. eoHaHi, p. 11. * Spart ffadr. 7.
CHAP. I
PLINY'S SOCIETY
193
honour of his wife Faustina, established a foundation for young girls who were to be called by her not altogether un- spotted name.^ A similar charity was founded in honour of her daughter by M. Aurelius.^
But, while the emperors were responding to the call of charity by using the resources of the State, it is clear, from the Letters of Pliny and from the inscriptions, that private benevolence was even more active. Pliny has a conception of the uses and responsibilities of wealth which, in spite of the teaching of Galilee, is not yet very common. Although he was not a very wealthy man, he acted up to his principles on a scale and proportion which only a few of our millionaires have yet reached. The lavish generosity of Pliny is a commonplace of social history. We have not the slightest wish to detract from the merited fame of that kindliest of Boman gentlemen. But a survey of the inscriptions may incline the inquirer to believe that, according to their means, there were many men and women in obscure municipalities all over the world, who were as generous and public-spirited as Pliny.' With Pliny, as with those more obscure bene- factors, the impelling motive was love for the parent city or the village which was the home of their race, and where the years of youth had been passed. Pliny, the distinguished advocate, the famous man of letters, the darling of Boman society, stiU remained the loyal son of Como, from which his love never strays.^ He followed and improved upon the example of his father in munificence to his native place.^ He had little liking for games and gladiatorial shows, which were the most popular objects of liberality in those days. But he gave a sum of nearly £9000 for the foundation of a town Ubraxy, with an annual endowment of more than £800 to maintain it.^ Finding that promising youths of Como had to resort to Milan for their higher education, he offered to
1 CapitoL AiU. P. 8.
* Id. M. AwreL 26 ; of. Capitol. Futin, 9. He found the intorest on Trnjan'sfooiidation nine years in arrear. Lampiid. Ahx. Sev. 57, 7 ; bis charity dbilorenwerecalled Mammaeani ; Kratz, pi 11.
* Or. Jlena, 6694 to a man who left Tlbar his sole heir ; 8783 ob muni- fiosntUm; 8766, 8766, 8882, 7190,
6998, 7001. 781; cf. Philostr. Vit, Soph, iL 1 sqq. (kourra 8i dMOpdnrtaif v\o&r(p ixp^oLTO. Plin. H. N. xxiz. 4 (8); Friedlander, Cena Trim, EviU, 46 sq.
* Plin. Ep, i 8, § 1, Oomum meae deliciae ; v. 11, 2; iv. 18, respublioa nostra pro Alia vel parente.
^ V. the inscr. in Momma. Plin, p. 31.
• Plin. -^. L 8 ; V. 7 ; Or. 1172.
O
IW SOCIAL LIFE book ii
contribute one-third of the expense of a high school at Como» if the parents would raise the remainder. The letter which records the offer shows Pliny at his best, wise and thoughtful as well as generous.^ He wishes to keep boys under die protection of home influence, to make them lovers of their mother city; and he limits his bene&ction in order to stimulate the interest of the parents in the cause of education, and in the appointment of the teachers. Another sum of between £4000 and £5000 he gave to Como for the support of boys and girls of the poorer class.^ He also left more than £4000 for public baths, and a sum of nearly £16,000 to his freedmen, and for communal feasts. On two of his estates he built or repaired temples at his own expense.^ His private benefactions were on a similar scale. It is not necessary to adopt the cynical conclusion that Pliny has told us all his liberality. The kindly delicacy with which Pliny claims the right of a second father to make up the dowry of the daughter of his friend Quintilian, might surely save him from such an imputation.^ In the same spirit he offers to Eomatius Firmus the £2500 which was needed to raise his fortune to the level of equestrian rank.^ When the philosophers were banished by Domitian, Pliny, who was then praetor, at the most imminent risk visited his friend Artemidorus, and lent him, free of interest, a considerable sum of money.^ The daughter of one of Ins friends was left with an embarrassed estate ; Pliny took up all the debts and left Calvina with an inheritance free from all burdens.^ He gave his old nurse a little estate which cost him about £800.^ But the amount of this good man's gifts, which might shame a modern testator with ten times his fortune, is not so striking as the kindness which prompted them, and the modest delicacy with which they were made.
Yet Pliny, as we have said, is only a shining example of a numerous class of more obscure benefactors. For a thousand who know his Letters, there are few who have read the stone records of similar generosity. Yet these memorials abound for those who care to read them. And any one who will spend a few days, or even a few well-directed hours, in examining the
^ Plin. Ep, iv. 18. • Ih, L 19.
a /6. vii. 18 ; Or. 1172. « Ih, iii 11.
» Plin. J?p. iv. 1 ; cf. ix. 12. ^ Ih, ii. 4.
« Ih. vi 82. 8 /&. vi 3.
CHAP. I PLINY'S SOCIETY 196
inscriptions of the early Empire, will find many a common, self- complacent prejudice melting away. He will discover a pro- fusion of generosity to add to the beauty, dignity, or convenience of the parent city, to lighten the dulness of ordinary life, to bring all ranks together in common scenes of enjoyment, to relieve want and suffering among the indigent. The motives of this extra- ordinary liberality were indeed often mixed, and it was, from our point of view, often misdirected. The gifts were some- times made merely to win popularity, or to repay civic honours which had been conferred by the populace. They were too often devoted to gladiatorial shows and other exhibitions which only debased the spectators. Yet the greatest part of them were expended on objects of public utility — baths, theatres, markets, or new roads and aqueducts, or on those public banquets which knitted all ranks together. There was in those days an immense '' civic ardour," an almost passionate rivalry, to make the mother city a more pleasant and a more splendid home. The endless foundations for civic feasts to all orders, in which even children and slaves were not for- gotten, with a distribution of money at the close, softened the sharp distinctions of rank, and gave an appreciable relief to poverty. Other foimdations were more definitely inspired by charity and pity. In remote country towns, there were pious founders who, like Pliny and Trajan, and the Antonines, pro- vided for the nurture of the children of the poor. Bequests were left to cheapen the main necessaries of life.^ Nor were the aged and the sick forgotten. In Lorium, near the old home of the Antonines, a humble spice dealer provided in his will for a free distribution of medicines to the poor people of the town.^ The countless gifts and l^acies to the colleges, which were the refuge of the poor in that age, in every region of the Boman world, are an irresistible proof of an overflowing charity. Pliny's love of the quiet town where his infancy was passed, and the record of a like patriotism or benevolence in so many others, draw us on to the study of that free and generous municipal life which was the great glory of the Antonine age.
1 Friedl. Cena Trim, EinUU. p. 48. > Or. Ilenz. 114.
CHAPTEE II
MUNICIPAL LIFE
Neably all the intimate friends of Pliny were, like himself, bred in the country, and, as we have seen, he has left us a priceless picture of that rural aristocracy in the calm refinement of their country seats. But of the ordinary life of the provincial town we learn very little from Pliny. Indeed, the silence of Soman literature generally as to social life outside the capital is very remarkable.^ In the long line of great Latin authors from Ennius to Juvenal, there is hardly one whose native place was Rome. The men who are the glory of Roman letters in epic and lyric poetry, in oratory and history, in comedy and satire, were bom in quiet country towns in Italy or the remoter provinces. But the reminiscences of the scenes of their infancy will generally be found to be faint and rare. Horace, indeed, displays a tender piety for that borderland of Apulia, where, in the glades of Moimt Vultur as a child, he drank inspiration from the witchery of haunted groves.^ And Martial, the hardened man about town, never forgot the oak groves and iron foundries of Bilbilis.* But for the municipal system and life, the relations of its various social grades, the humdrum routine of the shops and forums, the rustic rites and deities/ the lingering echoes of that dim common life with its vices and honest tenderness, its petty ambitions or hopeless griefia, we must generally go to the records in stone, and the remains of buried cities which the spade has given back to the light.
^ Boiasier, Promenades ArchoBolo- ' Mart. iv. 55, 11 ; ziL 18, 9 ; i. 50.
ffiques, p. 880, ce qui nons 6chappe c'est ^ It must, however, be said that
la vie de province. Virgil has preserved much of local
religious sentiment Cf. Sellar, Virgil,
' Hor. Carm, iii. 4, 9. p. 365 sq.
196
CHAP. II MUNICIPAL UFE W
This silenoe of the liteiaij class is not due to any want of love in the Boman for the calm and freshness and haunting charm of country scenes, still less to callousness towards old assoGiationa Certainly Virgil cannot be charged with any such lack of sensibility. In the Ecl(^es and the Greorgics, the memory of the old farm at Andes breaks through the more conventional sentiment of Alexandrian tradition. In the scenery of these poems, there are " mossy fountains and grass softer than sleep," the hues of violet, poppy, and hyacinth, the shade of ancient ilex, and the yellow wealth of cornfield. We hear the murmur of bees, " the moan of doves in im- memorial elms,'' the rush of the river, the whispering of the wind. The pastoral charm of the midsummer prime is there, from the freshness of fields under the morning star, through the hours alive with the song of the cicala and the lowing of the herds around the pool, through the still, hot, vacant noontide, till the moonbeams are glinting on the dewy grasses of the glades.^ Nor can any lover of Virgil ever forget the fire of old sentiment in the muster of Italian chivalry in the seventh book of the Aeneid.' Tibur and Praeneste, Anagnia, Nomentum, and Amitemum, and many another old Sabine town, which send forth their young warriors to the fray, are each stamped on the imagination by some grace of natural beauty, or some glory of ancient legend. In the Flavian period, as we have seen, the great nobles had their villas on every pleasant site, wherever sea or bill or woodland ofTered a fair prospect and genial air. To these scenes they hastened, like emancipated schoolboys, when the dog-days set in. They had a genuine love of the unspoilt countiyside, with its simple natural pleasures, its husbandry of the olden time, its joyous plenty, above all its careless freedom and repose.' The great charm of a rural retreat was its distance from the " noise and smoke and wealth " of Bome. The escape from the penalties of fame, from the boredom of interminable dinners, the intrusive im- portunity of curious busybodies, the malice of jealous rivals, gives a fresh zest to the long tranquil days under the ilex
1 Yirg. jEbl. ii 48 ; Owrg, u. 466 ^ Aefn. vii. 680 sqq. ; Sellar, p. 80.
■qq.; in. 824-888, et saltus reficit * Pliii. ^j;. i. 8 ; i. 6 ; i. 9 ; yii. 80 ;
JMD roeoida luna ; cf. Sellar, VirgUy pp. iz. 86. Mart iii. 58 ; i. 66 ; iv. 66 ;
16^167. iv. 90 ; vi. 43.
198
SOCIAL UFE
BOOK If
shade among the Sabine hills.^ Horace probably felt more keenly than Juvenal the charm of hill and stream and the scenes of rustic toils and gaiety. Yet the exquisite good sense of Horace would have recoiled from the declamatory extravagance with which Juvenal justifies his friend's retirement from the capital, by a realistic picture of all its sordid troubles and vices and absurdities.^ "To love Rome at Tibur and Tibur at Kome" was the expression of the educated Roman's feelings in a form which he would have recognised to be as just as it was happy. In spite of the charm of the country, to any real man of letters or affairs, the fascination of Rome was irresistible. Pliny, and no doubt hundreds of his class, from Augustus to Theodosius, grumbled at the wasteful fashion in which their lives were frittered away by monotonous social duties, as imperious as they were generally vain.* Yet to Pliny, as to Symmachus, the prospect of never again seeing the city, so seductive and so wearying, would have been absolutely intoler- able. Martial, when he retired to Bilbilis, seems to pity his friend Juvenal, wandering restlessly through the noisy Suburra, or climbing the Caelian in hot haste, to hang on the outskirts of a levee.^ Yet in the preface to this last book, Martial seems to feel his banishment as keenly as Ovid felt his among the frozen rivers of Scythia.^ He misses in the "provincial solitude" the sympathetic public which was eager for his latest epigram, the fine critical judgment to appreciate, the concourse of elegant idlers to supply the matter for his verses.* And worst of all, the most famous wit of Rome is now the mark for the ignorant spite and envy of a provincial clique. Martial evidently feels very much as Dr. Johnson would have felt if he had been compelled to live out his days in Skye. Juvenal may affect to regret the simple ways of those rustic places, where on festal days in the grass-grown theatre the infant in his mother's arms shudders at the awful masks of
^ Hor. Q<vrm. L 17. * Juv. iii.
* v. Bxim, SocUty in th$ Last Ceniury of the Western Empire, p. 128 sq. (let ed.) ; Sym. i 101 ; it 26 ; v. 78. Cf. AuBon. Idyl. x. 20, 155, 189.
« Mart, xii 18—
Dam per liminft te potdntionun
Sadktriz toga yentilat, vagainque lUfor OMlioa et minor iktigat
» Ov. TrisL U. 196 ; iu. 2, 21, Roma domuBqne subit, desideriumqne lo- coram ; ct Hor. Sat. u. 7, 28.
* Mart zii. Praef, illam judidoram sabtilitatem, illud matenanim in- genium, bibliotheoas, theatra, conven- tas, quasi destituti desideramua.
CHAP. II MUNICIPAL UFE 199
the acton, and the aedilee take their places in white tonics like the humble crowd^ But, in spite of this sentiment, the true Soman had a certain contempt for municipal life,' for tiie narrow range of its interests, the ludicrous assumption of dignity by its petty magistrates, and its provincialisms.' It was indeed only natural that the splendour and the vivid energy of life in the capital of the world should throw provincial life into the shada Yet we can realise now, as a Soman wit or man of feishion could hardly do, that the municipal system, which had overspread the world from the Solway to the edge of the Sahara, was not the least glory of the Antonine age. And in any attempt to estimate the moral condition of the masses in that age, the influence of municipal life should occupy a large place.
It is beyond the scope of this work to trace provincial towns through all their various grades, and their evolution in the hands of Soman statesmanship from the time of Augustus. What we are chiefly concerned with is the spirit and the rapid development of that brilliant civic life, which not only covered the worlds both of East and West with material monuments of Roman energy, but profoundly influenced for good, or sometimes for evil, the popular character. The magical transformation wrought by Soman rule in a century and a half seized the imagination of contemporaries such as the rhetor Aristides. And the mere wreck of that brilliant civilisation which now meets the traveller's eye, in r^ons that have long returned to waste, will not permit us to treat his eulogy of Some as only a piece of rhetoric Segions, once desert solitudes, are thickly dotted with flourishing cities ; the Empire is a realm of cities. The world has laid the sword aside, and keeps universal festival, with all pomp and gladness. All other feuds and rivalries are gone, and cities now vie with one another only in their splen- dour and their pleasures. Every space is crowded with porticoes, gymnasia, temple fronts, with studios and schoola^
^ Juv. iii 178 sqq. ' Jnv. z. 100 ; of. Cio. yoti Bed, in
' IllufitratioiiB may be found in Plant Sen. 17; Hor. jS^. i 6, 84, Insani
Mil. Olor. 653 ; Capivv, 879 ; Triwum. ridentes praemia scribae, eto. 609 ; Baech. 24 ; Cio. Phil iii 6, 15, * Or. xiv. (228), 891, (Jebb. i. p.
ndete qnara despiciamnr omnes qni 228), fda 8i aOrri icar^ei fpcr, Ihrui irt
ganras e mnnicipiis, id est, omnes KoXKlarri koI ifiUmi iKdarri ^eireirau*
plane; Tac. Ann. iv. 8, seque ac irdvTa8ifuffTiLyvfUfa^lvp,KfniyCjWtWpon'V'
majores et posteros munioipali aaultero Xaitap^ P€w, 8rifuovpyUnf, diiafftcdXtaP. foedabat
SOO SOCIAL UFE book ii
Sandy wastes, trackless moimtaiiis, and broad riverB present no barriers to the traveller, who finds his home and country everywhere. The earth has become a vast pleasure garden.^
This glowing description of the Boman world of the Antonine a^ is not perhaps strengthened by the appeal to the doubtful statistics of other contemporaries, such as Aelian and Joeephus. We may hesitate to accept the statement that Italy had once 1197 cities, or that Graul possessed 1200.' In these estimates, if they have any solid foundation, the term " city " must be taken in a very elastic sense. But there are other more trustworthy reckonings which sufficiently support the glowing description of Aristides. When the Romans con- quered Spain and Gaul, they found a system o{ poffi or cantons, with very few considerable towna The 800 towns which are said to have been taken by Julius Caesar can have been little more than villages. But the Bomanisation of both countries meant centralisation. Where the Bomans did not find towns they created them.' Gradually, but rapidly, the isolated rural life became more social and urban. In the north-eastern province of Spain, out of 293 communities in the time of the elder PUny, 179 were in some sense urban, 114 were still purely rustic ; ^ and we may be sure that this is an immense advance on the condition of the country at the time of the conquest. In the reign of Antoninus Pius, only 27 of these rural districts remained without an organised civic centre.^ In Graul, Julius Caesar impressed the stamp of Bome on the province of Narbo, by founding cities of the Boman type, and his policy was continued by Augustus. The loose cantonal system almost disappeared from the province in the south, although it Lingered long in the northern regions of GauL Yet even in the north, on the borders of Germany, Cologne, firom the reign of Claudius, became the envy of the barbarians across the BMne,^ and Treves, from the days of Augustus, already anticipated its glory as a seat of empire &om Diocletian to Gratian and Valentinian.^ In the Agri Decumates, between
1 AriBtid. Or. xiv. (226), 898-4, ^ 7^ <^ P* 208.
reUra o7or waf>d8€tffot ^KeK6<rfir]Tai. * a. N, iii. 4.
' Aelian, V, Hist, ix. 16, tficriaap K(d ' Momms. Earn. Prov, i. 78.
ir6Xetf Hiif 'IraX(ay irdXou iirrd Kal ^ lb. p. 168 ; Tac. Ann. L 86 ; Marq.
ivorfiKoma koX ixaroif rpos raU x^Xiats ; JUhn. StacUsvcrw. i. 121 ; Bury, Ham.
Job. £. J. iL 16. £hnp. p. 83.
• Arnold, Mofn. Prov. Adminislra- ' C. 'ITucd. xiii. 3, 11.
CHAP. II
MUNICIPAL UFE
fiOl
Uie Khine and Neckar, the remains of baths and aqueducts, the mosaics and bronzes and pottery, which antiquarian industry has collected and explored, attest the existence of at least 160 flourishing and civilised communities.^ Baden was already a crowded resort for its healing waters when, in a.d. 69, it was given up to fire and sword by Caecina in his advance to meet the army of Otho in the valley of the Fo.' The Danube was lined with flourishing communities of Boman origin. In the 170 years during which Dacia was included in the Empire, more than 120 towns were organised by the conquering raca' Greek cities, like Tomi on the Euxine, record their gratitude to their patrons in the same formal terms as Pompeii or Venusia.^ If we may believe Fhilostratus, there were 500 flourishing cities in the province of Asia which more than rivalled the splendour of Ionia before the Lydian and Persian conquesta^ Many of these were of ancient origin, but many had been founded by Bome.^ Laodicea was regarded as an unimportant place in the reign of Tiberius ; yet the wealth of its private citizens was celebrated.^ One of them had attained a fortune which enabled him to bequeath it a sum of nearly half a million. The elder Pliny could reckon 40 cities of im- portance in Egypt, which had in his time a population of over seven millions ; ^ and Alexandria, next after Home herself, was regarded as the most dazzling ornament of the Empire.*
Perhaps nowhere, however, had the '' Boman peace " worked greater miracles of civic prosperity than in North Africa. That the population of Boman Africa was in the period of the Empire extraordinarily dense, appears from the number of its episcopal sees, which in the fifth century had reached a total of 297.^^ The remains of more than 20 amphitheatres can still be traced. There is indeed no more startling proof of the range and sweep of Boman civilisation than the wreck of
1 M«-q. B»m^ St, L 125.
* Tac. Hist. i. 67 ; v, the dedication of a temple to Isia by a maffistrate of Baden and his wife and daughter ; Or.
457.
* Mara. i. 156, in keiner andern PiroYinz laaBt rich die Entwickelang der romiaohen Stadteanlagen so genau forfolgen als in Dacien. Arnold, R. Prov. Admin, p. 205.
* Or. ffenz. 5287.
» FU. Soph, ii 8. * Arnold, p. 205 ; Marq. i. 199. ^ Tac. Awn, iv. 55 ; Strab. xii. 578. « ff. N, V. 60 ; Fried!. SO, iiL 110. » Aristid. Or, xiv. 223 (892), iriXii
iiytfjLOpias,
w Cf. Victor, FU, i. 7 ; v. 9 ; FriedL SO, iiL 110 ; v, Migne, Pairol. LaL t. IviiL 270, notitia Africae.
a02 SOCIAL UFE book ii
those Capitols, forums, aqueducts, and temples in what are now sandy solitudes, not even occupied by a native villaga In the province of Numidia, within a few leagues of the Sahara, the Boman colony of Thamugadi (Timgad) was founded, as an inscription tells, by Trajan in the year 100.^ There, in what is now a scene of utter loneliness and desolation, the remains of a busy and well-organised community have been brought ta light by French explorers. The town was built by the third l^on, which for generations, almost as a hereditary caste» protected Boman civilisation against the restless tribes of the desert The chief buildings were probably completed in 117. The preservation of so much, after eighteen centuries, is a proof that the work was well and thoroughly done. The rata of carriage wheels can still be seen in the main street, which ia spanned by a triumphal arch, adorned with marble columns. Porticoes and colonnades gave shelter from the heat to the passers-by, and two fountains played at the further end. Water, which is now invisible on the spot, was then brought in channels from the hills, and distributed at a fixed rate among private houses.^ The forum was in the usual style, with raised side walks and porticoes, a basilica, a senate-house and rostrum,, a shrine of Fortuna Augusta, and a crowd of statues to the emperors from M. Aurelius to Julian.' This petty place had its theatre, where the seats can still be seen rising in their due gradation of rank. An imposing capitol, in which, as at home, the Soman Trinity, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, were duly worshipped, was restored in the reign of Valentinian I., and dedicated by that Fublius Caeionius Albinus who was one of the last of the pagan aristocracy, and who figures in the Letters of Symmachus and the Saturnalia of Macrobius.^ The inscriptions on the site reveal the r^ular municipal constitu- tion, with the names of seventy decurions, each of whom prob- ably paid his honorarium of £13 or more when he entered on his office.^ The honours of the duumvirate and the aedileship cost respectively £32 and £24.^ And here, as elsewhere, the
1 CLL. viu. 2866 ; Cagnat, VArmU » G,LL. viiL 2403 ; Suppl, it 17908 ;
Bmn, ^Afriqxit^ p. 682 ; Boissier, Swpjpl, i. 12068. This inscription, from
VAfr, Rom. p. 180. an obscure place, shows how an original
* Or. Hem. 6826. honorarium of HS.1600 was finally ' Boissier, L^Jfi'* ^^^om. p. 187. increased by voluntary generosity to
* O.I.L. viii. 2888 ; Hieron. Bp. 107, HS.12,000.
1 1 ; liacrob. SaL L 2, 16. < lb. 2841, 17888.
CHAP, n MUNICIPAL UFE 803
public monuments and buildings were generally erected by private ambition or munificence. A statue and little shrine of Fortuna Augusta were given by two ladies, at a cost of over £200, in the days of Hadrian.^
The greatest glory of the imperial administration for nearly two centuries was the skilful and politic tolerance with which it reconciled a central despotism with a remarkable range of local liberty. It did not attempt to impose a miiform organisation or a bureaucratic control on the vast mass of races and peoples whom the fortune of Bome had brought under her sway. Bather, for ages its guiding principle was, as far as possible, to leave ancient landmarks undisturbed, and to give as much free play to local liberties as was compatible with the safety and efficiency of the imperial guardian of order and peace. Hence those many diversities in the relation between provincial towns and Rome, represented by the names of free, federate, or stipendiary cities, municipium and colonia. Many retained their old laws, constitution, and judicial system.^ They retained in some cases the names of magistracies, which recalled the days of independence: there were still archons at Athens, suffetes in African towns, demarchs at Naples. The title of medixtuticus still lingered here and there in old Oscan communitiea' When she had crushed the national spirit, and averted the danger of armed revolt, Bome tolerated, and even fostered, municipal freedom, for more than a hundred years after the last shadowy pretence of popular government had disappeared from her own forum.^ Central control and uniformity were established in those departments which affected the peace and welfare of the whole vast common- wealth. Although the interference of the provincial governor in local administration was theoretically possible in varying d^rees, yet it may well be doubted whether a citizen of Lyons or Marseilles, of Antioch or Alexandria, was often made conscious of any limitation of his freedom by imperial
» C.LL, Tiii ; Suppl, ii. 17881. * Tac Awn, i. 16 ; Momma. Mnu
• w D^ CM ..r T> T> iSSf. ii 1002; Duray, v. pp. 886-846; » Marq. B^ SL l 46 ; Bury, -Bwi. QT^rd, Plut. 221, 287 ; Plut. Reip, Ger,
^' ^ oL' '^™®^^' ^^^ ^^' /v. c. 17, 19. The first curatorea
AOmw. p. 210. clvitRtum are heard of in the reigns
* Or, Henz, 8720, 8800, 8801, 8066, of Nerva and Trajan ; cf. Marq. i. 610, 8067, 8804. n. 10
904
SOCIAL LIFE
BOOK U
power. While delation and confiscation and massacre were working havoc on the banks of the Tiber, the provinces were generally tranquil and prosperous. The people elected their magistrates, who administered municipal affairs with little interference £rom government. The provincial administration of a Nero, an Otho, a Yitellius, or a Domitian was often no less prudent and considerate than that of a Vespasian or a Trajan.^ And the worst of the emperors share with the best in the universal gratitude of the provinces for the blessings of the " Roman peace." *
But although for generations there was a settled abstinence from centralisation on the part of the imperial government, the many varieties of civic constitution in the provinces tended by an irresistible drift to a uniform type of organisation. Free and federate communities voluntarily sought the position of a colony or a municipium.' Just as the provincial town must have its capitol, with the cult of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, or imported the street names Velabrum or Vicus Tuscus, so the little community called itself re^mi^tca, its commons the popiUus, its curia the senate or the amplissimus et spUndidissimus ordo ; its magistrates sometimes bore the majestic names of praetor, dictator, or censor, in a few cases even of consul^ This almost ludicrous imitation of the great city is an example of the magical power which Some always exercised on her most distant subjects, and even on the outer world of barbarism, down to the last days when her forces were ebbing away. The ease and rapidity of communication along the great routes, the frequent visits of proconsuls and procurators and generals, with the numerous train which attended them, the presence of the ubiquitous Soman merchant and traveller, kept even remote places in touch with the
1 Saet Tib, 82 ; Tac Ann, iv. 6 ; Suet Nero, x. ; Otho, iii provinciam administravit xnoderatione singulari ; ViUll. V. Vespasian had to increase burdens, Suet. xvL ; Taa HitL ii. 84 ; as to Trfl^'an, cf. Plin. Paneg, 20 ; Suet. Dom, 8. Nero, it is true, is said to have enconiaged plunder (Suet. NerOy 32; Plin. M, N. 18, 6). Yet the general prosperity was undisturbed, Boissier, VOpp. 170 ; Arnold, Rom, Prov. Admin, 185; Qr^ard, PltU, 199.
* See a crowd of inscriptions to Domitian and Commodus in remote places in Africa ; cf. C,I,L, viiL 1016, 1019; 10570, 8702, in which Com- modus is described as indulgentissimus princepe, etc.
* Marq. Ii»m. St, I 617 sq. ; Arnold, p. 212.
* HenM, iii. Ind, p. 156 ; Inscr. 2322, 6980, 4983; Marq. R»m, St L 477. There were consuls at Tusculum and Beneventum. But the grand style was ridiouled by Cicero, In Pis, zL 24.
CHAP. II MUNICIPAL LIFE 205
capital The ada diuma, with official news and bits of scandal and gossip, regularly arrived in distant provincial towns and frontier camps.^ The last speech of Pliny, or the freshest epigrams of Martial, were within a short time selling on the bookstalls of Lyons or Vienne.* Until the appearance of railways and steamboats, it may be doubted whether there was any age in history in which travelling was easier or more general. Apart from the immense stimulus which was given to trade and commerce by the pacification of the world, liberal curiosity, or restless ennui, or the passion to preach and propagate ideas, carried immense numbers to the most distant lands.' The travelling sophist found his way to towns on the edge of the Scythian steppes, to the home of the Brahmans, or to the depths of the Soudan.^ The tour up the Nile was part of a liberal culture in the days of Lucian as it was in the days of Herodotua The romantic charm of travel in Greece was probably heightened for many by the tales of Thessalian brigands and sorceresses which meet us in the novel of Apuleius. The Emperor Hadrian, who visited almost every interesting scene in his dominions, from the Solway to the Euphrates, often trudging for days at the head of his soldiers,
; is a true representative of the migratory tastes of his time.
. Seneca, indeed, finds in this rage for change of scene only a symptom of the universal unrest. Epictetus, on the other hand, and Aristides expatiate with rapture on the universal security and wellbeing, due to the disappearance of brigan- dage, piracy, and war. The seas are alive with merchant- men ; deserts have become populous scenes of industry ; the great roads are carried over the broadest rivers and the most defiant mountain barriers. The earth has become the common possession of all. Nor is this mere rhetoric. Travelling to all parts of the known world had become expeditious, and even luxurious. From the Second Punic War, traders, couriers, and travellers had moved freely along the great roads.^ The
1 Tac Ann, xiii 81 ; xvL 22, diarna ' Sen. JSp. 28, 104 ; Lac Tmu 27 ;
per provincias, per exercitus curatius De Dips, 6 ; Pkilops, 88 ; Alex. 44 ;
I^^utur. Peter, Otsch. LiU. I 212 ; Epict Dia, iii 18.
Mao^ Suitone, p. 191 ; MarcK Priv, i. * Philoetr. ApoU, Tyan. iii. 60, tl ;
88 ; of. O.I.L. viii. 11818 ; Lamprid. D. Chrys. Or. 86.
Com. 16. ' Hudemann, Oeseh, dea rdm. Post-
' riin. Ep. ix. 11, 2 ; Mart viL 88. weaena^ p. 8 aq. Marq. BiSm. St, i.
417 ; FriedL SO. ii 8.
fl06 SOCIAL UFE book u
govemmeut post, which was first oiganised by Augustus on the model of the Persian, provided at regular intervals the means of conveyance for officials, or for those furnished with the requisite diploma. Private enterprise had also organised facilities of travel, and at the gates of country towns such as Pompeii, Praeneste, or Tibur, there were stations of the posting corporations (the c^jsUvrii or jwmentarii) where carriages could be hired, with change of horses at each stage.^ The speed with which great distances were traversed in those days is at first sight rather startling. Caesar once travelled 100 miles a day in a journey from £ome to the Rhone.^ The freedman Icelus in seven days carried the news of Nero's death to Gulba in Spain,' the journey of 332 miles from Tarraco to Clunia having been made at the rate of nearly ten miles an hour. This of course was express speed. The ordinary rate of travelling is probably better represented by the leisurely journey of Horace and Maecenas to Brundisium, or that of Martial's book from Tarraco to Bilbilis.^ About 130 miles a day was the average distance accomplished by sea. Vessels put out from Ostia or Puteoli for every port in the Mediterranean. From Puteoli to Corinth was a voyage of five days. About the same time was needed to reach Tarraco from Ostia. A ship might arrive at Alexandria from the Palus Maeotis in a fortnight.^ Many a wandering sophist, like Dion Ghrysostom or ApoUonius of Tyana, traversed great distances on foot, or with a modest wallet on a mule. The rhetor Aristides once spent a hundred days in a journey at mid-winter from Mysia to Eome.^ But there was hardly any limit to the luxury and ostentatious splendour with which the great and opulent made their progresses, attended or preceded by troops of footmen and runners, and carrying with them costly plate and myrrhine vases.^ The thousand carriages which Nero took with him on a progress, the silver-shod mules of Poppaea, the paraphernalia of luxury described by Seneca, if they are not mythical, were probably the exceptional displays of a self-indulgence bordering on lunacy.® But practical and sensible comfort in travelling
> Or, Hem. 4093, 2418, 6168, 6988. « Aristid. Or, xxiv. 637 ; cf. Hor. &
* Suet Jul. Caes. 67. i. 6, 106.
» Pint Oalba, 7. ' Sen. £p. 123, § 7.
* Mart X. 104 ; cf. Hor. S. I 6, 104. • Cf. Suet Nero, xliv. xxx. ; Sen.
* Friodl. SO. ii. 12 »qq. Ep. 87, § 9 ; 123.
CHAP, n MUNICIPAL UFE B07
was perhaps tlien oommoner than it was, until quite recently, among ourselves. The carriages in which the two indefatigable Plinies used to ride, enabled them to read at their ease, or dictate to an amanuensis.^ The inns, from the time of Horace to the time of Sidonius, were as a rule bad, and frequently disreput- able, and even dangerous, places of resort.^ And vehicles were often arranged for sleeping on a journey. We may be sure that many an imperial officer after the time of Julius Caesar passed nights in his carriage, while hurrying to join the forces on the Rhine or the Danube. With all this rapid circulation of officials and travellers, the far -stretching limits of the Soman world must, to the general eye, have contracted, the remotest places were drawn more and more towards the centre, and the inexhaustible vitality of the imperial city diffused itself with a magical power of silent transformation.
The modes in which the fully developed municipalities of the Antonine age had originated and were organised were very various. Wherever, as in the Greek East or Carthaginian Africa, towns already existed, the Romans, of course, used them in their organisation of a province, although they added liberally to the number, as in Syria, Fontus, and Cappadocia.^ Where a country was still in the cantonal state, the villages or markets were grouped around a civic centre, and a municipal town, such as Nimes or Lyons, woidd thus become the metropolis of a considerable tract of territory. The colony of Vienne was the civic centre of the Allobroges.^ In the settlement of the Alps many of the remote mountain cantons were attached to towns such as Tridentum, Verona, or Brixia.^ Sometimes, as in Dada, the civic organisation was created at a stroke.^ But it is well known that, especially towards the frontiers of the Empire, iu Britain, on the Rhine, and in North Africa, the towns of the second century had often grown out of the castra stativa of the legions.
The great reorganisation of Augustus had made each legion a permanent corps, with a history and identity of its own. To ensure the tranquillity of the Empire the legions were
* Plin. J^ UL 5, 15 ; cf. Suet. Claud. * Marq. Blhn, SL i. 17, 199, 214, 817 ; zzxiii. ; FriedL SO, IL 19. Arnold, Frov, Adm, 203.
* ApuL MU. L 7 ; i. 17 ; Sidoii. 4 ^^^ 2O6, 208 ; Marq. i. 114, 118. ApoU. Ep. TUL 11. Cf. Rom, Soe, in 1 t ^ t
the Loii Century qf the Western Empire, * Marq. i. 14.
p. 172 (Ist ed.) ; Friedl. ii. 20. « Id. i. 155.
208 SOCIAL UFE book ii
distributed in permanent camps along the frontier, the only inland cities with a regular military garrison being Lyons and Carthage.^ Many legions never changed their quarters for generations. The Tertia Augusta, which has left so many memorials of itself in the inscriptions of Lambaesis, remained, with only a single break, ii the same district from the time of Augustus to that of Diocletian.^ There, for two genera- tions, it kept sleepless watch against the robber tribes of the Sahara. The legion was also peacefully employed in erecting fortifications and making roads and bridges, when the camp was visited by Hadrian in the year 130.' Gradually soldiers were allowed to form family relations, more or less regular, until, under Septimius Severus, the legionary was permitted to live in his household like any other citizen.^ From the remains at Lambaesis, it is now considered certain that, in the third century, the camp had ceased to be the soldier's home. The suttlers and camp-followers had long gathered in the neighbour- hood of the camp, in huts which were called CaTiabae Uffianis. There, for a long time, the soldier, when ofiF duty, sought his pleasures and amusements, and there, after the changes of Septimius Severus, he took up his abode. At first the Canabae of Lambaesis was only a mcus] it became, under Marcus Aurelius, a munidpium — the Bespvhlica LambaesUan- orum, with the civic constitution which is rendered familiar to us by so many inscriptions.^ The Legionaries seem to have been happy and contented at Lambaesis ; their sons were trained to arms and followed their fathers in the ranks ; ^ the legion became to some extent a hereditary casta Old veterans remained on the scene of their service, after receiving their discharge with a pension from the chest/ The town de- veloped in the regular fashion, and dignified itself by a capitol, an amphitheatre, two forums, a triumphal arch ; and the many monuments of public and private life found on the site reveal a highly organised society, moulded out of barbarous and alien
^ Boissior, L*J/r, Bom, p. 104. date of thia visit, v, Cagnat, p. 164.
' See the history of this legion in VU, ffadr, 12, 18. Cagnat, L'Arrn^ Emn, d'Jfriqu^ p. 4 Herodian, iii. 8 ; cf. Oagnat. p. 461.
xix. ^: The legion was first stationed ^'^'^' ^"- 2611 ; Or. ffenz, 7408.
at Tlievesta. • Cagnat, 866, 463 ; ct C.LL, viiL
> Or. Henz. 6319 ; C.I.L. viu. 2682, 8016.
10048 ; V. Mommsen, p. 21. For the ^ Caguat, 481-^7 ; Marq. ii. 544.
CHAP. II MUNICIPAL UFE 809
eleiuentd, and stiimped with the iuimitable and enduring impress of Some. Out of such casual and unpromising materials sprang numbers of urban communities, which repro- duced, vn their outline and in their social tone, the forms and spirit of the free Bepublic of Some. The capitol and the forum are merely the external symbols of a closer bond of parentage. The Soman military discipline did not more completely master and transform the Numidian or Celtic recruit, than the inspiration of her civil polity diffused among races imbruted by servitude, or instinct with the love of a lawless, nomadic freedom, the sober attachment to an ordered civic life which was obedient to a long tradition, yet vividly interested in its own affairs.
On hardly any side of ancient life is the information furnished by the inscriptions so rich as on the spirit and organisation of municipalities. Here one may learn details of communal life which are never alluded to in Soman literature. From this source, also, we must seek the only authentic materials for the reconstruction of a municipality of the first century. The Album Canusii and the tablets containing the laws of Malaga and Salpensa have not only settled more than one question as to the municipal organisation of the early Empire, but have enabled us to form almost as clear-cut a conception of it as we have of the corporate organisation of our own great towns.
But, unlike our civic republics, the Soman municipal town was distinctly aristocratic, or rather timocratic, in its constitution. A man's place in the community, as a rule, was fixed by his ancestry, his official grade, or his capacity to spend. The dictum of Trimalchio was too literally true in the municipal life of that age — *' a man is what he is worth." Provincial society was already parted and graduated, though less decidedly, by those rigid lines of materialistic demarcation which became gaping fissures in the society of the Theodosian code. The Curia or Senate was open only to the possessor of a certain fortune ; at Como, for instance, HS. 10 0,0 00, elsewhere perhaps even more. On the other hand, the richest freedman could not become a member of the Curia or hold any civic magistracy,^
^ Marq. Rom. St, i. 499 ; Fricdl. (Una Trim. EvrI. 29 ; Plin. J^. i. 19 ; Boinier, VAfr. Horn. p. 195.
V
810 SOCIAL LIFE »0OK ii
although he might be decorated with their insignia. His ambition had to be satisfied with admission to the order of the Augustales, which ranked socially after the members of the Curifiu In the list of the Curia, which was revised every five years, the order of official and social precedence was most scrupulously observed. In the Album Canusii of the year A.D. 223/ the first rank is assigned to thirty-nine patrons, who have held imperial office, or who are senators or knights. Next come the local magnates who have been dignified by election to any of the four great municipal magistracies. Last in order are the pedaniy that is, the citizens possessing the requisite qualification, who have not yet held any muni- cipal office. At the bottom of the list stand twenty-five prae- textcUi, who were probably the sons of the more distinguished citizens, and who, like the sons of senators of the Bepublic, were silent witnesses of the proceedings in the Curia. From this body, and from all the magistracies, all persons engaged in certain mean or disgraceful occupations were expressly excluded, along with the great mass of the poorer citizens, the tenuiores. The taint of servile birth, the possession of libertinae opes, was an indelible blot In countless inscriptions this gradation of rank is sharply accentuated. If a man leaves a bequest fox an annual feast, with a distribution of money, the rich patron or the decurio will receive perhaps five times the amount which is doled out to the simple plebeian.^ The dis- tinction of rank, even in punishment for crime, which meets us everywhere in the Theodosian Code, has already appeared. The honestior is not to be degraded by the punishment of crucifixion or by the stroke of the rod.^ But it is on their tombs that the passion of the Bomans for some sort of distinction, however shadowy, shows itself most strikingly. On these slabs every grade of dignity in a long career is enumerated with minute care. The exact value of a man's public benefactions or his official salary will be recorded with pride.^ Even the dealer in aromatics or in rags will make a boast of some petty office in the coUege of his trade.^ But, although rank and office
^ Or. Htm, 8721 ; FriedL Cmia Trim. ' Hartmanii, Dt EzUio, pp. 58 aq. ; 30. Daray, SisL Bam. vi. 643.
« Or, ffenz. 6989, 7001, 7199, ob ^ ^ ^ . «
8708. • Jb. 7192.
CHAP. II MUNICIPAL UFE 211
were extravagantly valued in these societies, wealth was after all the great distinction. The cities were in the hands of the rich, and, in return for social deference and official power, the rich were expected to give lavishly to all public objects. The worship of wealth, the monumental flattery of rich patrons and benefactors, was very interested and servile. On the other hand, there probably never was a time when the duties of wealth were so powerfully enforced by opinion, or so cheerfully, and even recklessly, performed.
Yet, although these communities were essentially aristocratic in tone and constitution, the commonalty still retained some power in the Antonine aga On many inscriptions they appear side by side with the Curial " ordo " and the Augustales.^ They had still in the reign of Domitian the right to elect their magistrates. It was long believed that, with the suppression of popular elections at Rome in the reign of Tiberius, the popular choice of their great magistrates must also have been withdrawn from municipal towns.^ This has now been dis- proved by the discovery of the laws of Malaga and Salpensa, in which the most elaborate provisions are made for a fi'oe and uncontaminated election by the whole people.' And we can still almost hear the noise of election days among the ruins of PompeiL^ Many of the inscriptions of Pompeii are election placards, recommending particular candidates. There, in red letters painted on the walls, we can read that "the barbers wish to have Trebius as aedile/' or that '' the fruit-sellers, with one accord, support the candidature of Holconius Priscus for the duumvirate." The porters, muleteers, and garlic dealers have each their favourite. The master fuller, Vesonius Primus, backs On. Helvius as a worthy man. Even ladies took part in the contest and made their separate appeals. '' His little sweetheart" records that she is working for Claudius.^ Personal popularity no doubt then, as always, attracted such electoral support But the student of the inscriptions may be inclined to think that the &ee and independent electors had also a keen eye for the man who was likely to build a new colonnade for the forum, or a new 9ichA)Ui for the guild, or, best
1 Or, Henz, 8703, 3706, 4009, 8937, > Or, Hem, 7421 ; LexMaL 8§ 58,(^.
8704, 3725, 4020 ; Plin. Ep. x. Ill ; cf. « 3lau, 375, 88S-S9 (Tr.).
Ohoesseit, De Jure Municip, 41. * Claudium iivir. animula faoit,
3 Marq. lU^. St. L 472. CLL. iv. 425, 677, 644.
218 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
of all, to send down thirty pairs of gladiators into the arena " with plenty of blood." ^ r^~ The laws of Malaga and Salpensa prescribe, in the liilleet
detail, all the forms to be observed in the election of magistrates. These were generally six in number — two duumvirs,^ who were the highest officers, two aediles, and two quaestors, for each year. Every fiftli year, instead of the duumvirs, two qmnqMfWMin were elected, with the extraordinary duty of conductiug the municipal census.^ The candidates for all these offices were required to be free bom, of the age of twenty-five at least, of irreproachable character, and the possessors of a certain fortune. The qualifications were the same as those prescribed by the Ux Jvlia for admission to the municipal Senate, which expressly excluded persons engaged in certain disreputable callings — gladiators, actors, pimps, auctioneers, and undertakers.^ In the best days the competition for office was undoubtedly keen, and the candidates were numerous. In the year A.D. 4, the year of the death of C. Gsesar, the grandson of Augustus, so hot waa the rivalry that the town of Pisa was left without magistrates^ owing to serious disturbances at the elections.^ But it is an ominous fact that the law of Malaga, in the reign of Domitian, makes provision for the contingency of a failure of candidates. In such a case the presiding duumvir was to nominate the re- quired number, they in turn an equal number, and the combined nominees had to designate a third set equal in number to them- selves. The choice of the people was then restricted to these involuntary candidates. The city has evidently advanced a stage towards the times of the Lower Empire, when the magistrates were appointed by the Curia from among themselves, with no reference to the people.^ A man might, indeed, well hesitate before offering himself for an office which imposed a heavy ex- penditure on the holder of it. The honorarium payable on admission amounted, in an obscure place like Thamugadi, to about £32 for the duumvirate, and £24 for the aedileship7 In
> PetroD. Sai, 46, ferram oi)timum or iivir oensoria potestate auinq. etc.,
datnniB est, sine fnga, camarium iu or shortly qoinqueimalis ; cf. Or. Henz.
medio, etc. 3882, 3721.
^ The title of the highest magistracy ^ Arnold, Prov. Adm. pp. 225, 226.
varied a good deal : CL Marq. R&nu St. ^ Or, Henz, 643.
L 475, 89 ; Or, ffenz, iii. Ind, 154. • Lex Malag. § 51 ; Or. 7421 ; Marq.
' Marq. L 485 ; Henz, Ind. p. 157. i. 475 ; C. Th, xii. 5, 1.
Often described aa iivir qoinquennalis, ^ O.I.L, viiL 2841 ; 17838.
CHAP. 11 MUNICIPAL UFE S13
the greater Italian cities it probably wonld be much more ; at Pompeii the newly elected duumvir paid more than £80.^ But the man chosen by the people often felt bound to outstrip the bare demands of law or custom by a prodigal liberaUty. He must build or repair some public work, to signalise his year of office, and, at the dedication of it, good taste required him to exhibit costly games, or to give a banquet to the citizens, with a largess to all of every i*ank small or great.^
But in return for its liabilities, the position of a duumvir gave undoubted power and distinction. The office was the image or shadow of the ancient consulship, and occasionally, as the inscriptions attest, a Hadrian or an Antoninus Pius did not disdain to accept it.^ The duumvirs commanded the local militia, when it was, on emergency, called out^ They presided at meetings of the people and the Curia, they pro- posed questions for their deliberation, and carried the decrees into effect They had civil jurisdiction up to a certain amount, and their crimiual jurisdiction, which, in the third century, had been transferred to imperial functionaries, was, according to the most probable opinion, undiminished at least down to the end of the first century.^ This judicial power, however, was limited by the intercessio of colleagues and the right of appeal They had extensive responsibilities in finance, for the collection of dues and taxes, and the recovery of all moneys owing to the municipality.^ After the fall of the free Bepublic, when &o many avenues of ambition were closed, many an able man might well satisfy his desire for power and distinction by the duumvirate of a provincial town.
The Curia, or local senate, is peculiarly interesting to the his- torical student, because it was to the conversion of the curiales into a hereditary caste, loaded with incalculable liabilities, that the decay of the Western Empire was to a large extent due.^ But, in the reign of Domitiau, the Curia is still erect and dignified. Although the individual decurio seldom or never assumes the title senator in the inscriptions,^ the Curia as a
^ Marq. i 499 n. 13. ' FriedL Oma Trim, JBinl, 28 ;
Duruy, v. 849 sqq. « Or. Eenz, 7080, 7082, 8811, 8817, « j^ Malag.^60 sq.
^^2. 7 See Jioman Soeiely in Uu Last
> Ih, 8817 ; cf. Spftrt. Hadr, o. 19. f?f^~7 ^f ^ JVeMem Empire, bk.
' IIL 0. 2.
* Lex Urson, § 108. « There is one oaM in Or. jffenz, 2279.
214 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
whole often bears the august name and titles of the majestic Roman Senata^ And assuredly down to the middle of the second century there was no lack of candidates for admission. Every five years the roll of the Curia was revised and drawn up afresh by the quinquennales. The conditions were those for holding a magistracy, including a property qualification, which varied in different places.^ The number of ordinary members was generally 100.' But it was swelled by patrons and other extraordinary members. The quinquennales, in framing the list, took first the members on the roll of die previous term, and then those who had been elected to magistracies since the last census. K any vacancies were still left, they were filled up from the ranks of those who, not having yet held any municipal office, were otherwise qualified by the possession of a sufficient fortune.^ In the Album Camuii, the men who had held official rank constitute at least two-thirds of the Curia. In the composition of such a body there would appear to be ample security for administrative skill and experience. And yet we shall find that it was precisely through want of prudence or skill that the door was opened for that bureaucratic interference which, in the second century, b^an, with momentous results, to sap the freedom and independence of municipal Ufa
The honours and powers of the provincial council were long sufficient to compensate the decurio for the heavy demands made upon his generosity. To all but comparatively few the career of imperial office and distinction was closed. His own town became each man's ** patria/' as Como was even to a man like Pliny, who played so great a part in the life of the capital^ There is the ring of a very genuine public spirit and a love for the local commonwealth in a host of the inscriptions of that aga^ The vastness and overwhelming grandeur of a world-wide Empire, in which the individual citizen was a mere atom, made men crave for any distinction which seemed to raise them above the grey flat level which surrounds a democratic despotism. And even the ordinary
^ V, Or, Hmut, vol. iii Ind, p. 152. Or., howeyer, interprets OY. as Giyium
• PUn. i^. i 19 ; at Como the census nnivereorum in 764.
was Ha 100,000 ; of. Petron. SaL 44. ^/ ^^"^i*? ^, Jure Muntc^p, p.
oD \ Marq. Iwm, of. l 5U4.
* The Garia is sometimes designated * Plin. Ep, iv. 18, 9.
as Oviri, Or. HeruL 764, 8787, 1662. « ^g. Or, Henz, 8703, 7190.
CHAP. II MUNICIPAL LIFE 816
decorio had some badges to mark him off from the crowd. The pompons honoriiic titles of the Lower Empire, indeed, had not come into vogua But the Curial had a place of honour at games and festivals, a claim to a larger share in the distributions of money by private benefactors, exemption, as one of the honestiares, from the more degrading forms of punishment, the free supply of water from the public sources,^ and other perquisites and honours, which varied in different localities. The powers of the Curia were also very consider- able. The duumvirs indeed possessed extensive prerogatives which strong men may have sometimes strained.* But there was a right of appeal to the Curia from judicial decisions of the duumvirs in certain casea And their control of games and festivals, and of the finances of the conmiunity, was limited by the necessity of consulting the Curia and of carrying out its orders.' In the lex Ursonensis we find a long list of matters on which the duumvirs were obliged to take their in< structions from the Curia.^ The quorum needed for a valid decision varied in different places. In the election of a patron a quorum of two-thirds of the decurions was legally required.^ The names of the duoviri appeared at the head of every curial decree, as those of the consuls in every senatusconsultuuL
After the local aristocracy of curial rank came, in order of social precedence, members of the knightly class and the order of the Augustales. In the latter half of the first century eques- trian rank had been conferred with perhaps too lavish a hand. And satire was never tired of ridiculing these sham aristocrats, Bithynian kuights as they were called, often of the lowest origin, who on public occasions vulgarly asserted their mush- room rank.^ In particular, the army contributed many new knights to the society of the provincial towns. A veteran, often of humble birth, who had risen to the first place among the sixty centurions of a legion, was, on his discharge with a good pension, sometimes raised to equestrian rank. He frequently returned to his native place, where he became a personage of some mark. Such men, along with old officers of
^ Friedl. Cena Trim, Einl, 81. * Ih. § 99 ; Ohneaaeit, Ik Jurt
« Plin JJ,. iv 22. This autocratic ^T^^'^'^l 2i« Unm. §§ 96, 97,
act was the abolition of the games ^^ iso
Vienne by a duumvir. ^'llMt, iu. 29 ; ▼. 14 ; ▼. 28 ; Ju?.
> Lex Urmm. § 129. i. 28 ; iii. 181, 159.
216
SOCIAL LIFE
BOOK 11
higher grade, frequently appear in the iuscriptions inveated with priesthoods and high magistracies/ and were sometimes chosen as patrons of the community.^ Many of them were undoubtedly good and public-spirited men, with the peculiar virtues which the life of the Soman camp engendered. But some of their class also displayed that coarse and brutal self- assertion, and that ignorant contempt for the refinement of culture, on which Persius and Juvenal poured their scorn.'
The Augustales, ranking next to the cuiial order, are pecu- liarly interesting, both as representing the wide difiTusion of the cult of the emperors, and as a class composed of men of low, or even servile origin, who had made their fortunes in trade, yet whose ambition society found the means of satisfying, without breaking down the barriers of aristocratic exclusivenesa^ The origin of the order of the Augustales was long a subject of debate. But it has now been placed beyond doubt that^ in \ the provincial towns^it was a plebeian institution for the cult ; of Augustus, and succeeding emperors, modelled on the aristo- '\ cratic order of the Sodales Augustales, which was established by Tiberius in the capital.* The Augustales were elected by vote of the local curia, without regard to social rank, although probably with due respect to wealth, and they included the leaders of the great freedman class, whose emergence is one of the most striking facts in the social history of the time. Figuring on scores of inscriptions, the Augustales are mentioned only once in extant Koman literature, in the novel of Petronius, where the class has been immortalised, and probably caricatured.* The inscription, for which Trimalchio gives an order to his brother Augustal, the stone-cutter, is to record his election in absence to the Sevirate, his many virtues and his millions. Actual monuments at Assisi and Brescia show that Trimalchio was not an altogether imaginary person.^
1 Or, Hena. 7002, 7018, 3785, 8789, 3798, 8788. 8747.
« lb, 2287, 8714, 8861.
• Pera. iii. 77 ; Juv. xn.
^ In the Inscr. they are mentioned after the decurionn and bffore the nlebe; of. Or, Hem, 4009, 8807, 1167. On the distinction between the An- gostales and the Seviri Aufjr, v, Marq. lt»m, St. i. 514 ; Ohnesseit, Ik Jur§ Mnnie, 46 ; Nesaling, De Sewris Aug,
Marq. says, soheinen die Augustales als lebensiangliche MitgUeder dcs Collegia ms, die Seviri als juhrlich wechseludo Beamte desselben zu be- trachten za sein.
' Marq. i. 513; Ohnesseit, p. 46 ; cf. Oi\ Hmz, 8959, 7089; Tac. Ann, i 54, 78.
• Petron. 66, 71.
7 Or. 2983; O.LL. v. 4482.
CHAP. II MUNICIPAL LIFE 217
Tet the Augustales, in spite of the vulgar ostentation and self-assertion, which have characterised similar classes of the nofwotaxix riches in all ages, were a very important and useful order. They overspread the whole Koman world in the West Their monuments have been traced, not only in almost every town in Italy, and in great provincial capitals, like Lyons or Tarraco, but in Alpine valleys and lonely outposts of civilisa- tion on the edge of the Sahara.^ Tlieir special religious duties involved considerable expense, from which no doubt the more aristocratic class were glad to be relieved. They had to bear the cost of sacrifices and festivities on certain days in honour of dead emperors. They had to pay an entrance fee on admission to the college, which the ambitious among them would often lavishly exceed.* They wei-e organised on the lines of other collies, with patrons, quinquennales, and other officials. They had their club-houses where tlieir banquets were regularly held, they possessed landed property, and had their common places of burial.^ But their expenditure and their interests were by no means limited to their own imme- diate society. They regarded themselves, and were generally treated as public officials, ranking next to the magistrates of the Curia. They had the right to wear the purple-bordered toga, and to have lictors attending them in the streets.^ Places of honour were reserved for them at the games and festivals. Although as a class they were not eligible for a seat in the Cuiia, or for the municipal magistracies, yet the omavrLenta, the external badges and honours attached to these offices, were sometimes granted even to freedmen who had done service to the community. Thus an Augustal who had paved a road at Cales received the omamenta of a decurio.*^ And another, for his munificence to Pompeii, by a decree of the Curia, was awarded the use of the bisellium, a seat of honour which was usually reserved for the highest dignitaries.^ But the orna- ments and dignities of their own particular college became objects of pride cmd ambition. Thus a man boasts of having been made primus Av^gvstoLis perpetuus, by a decree of the Curia.^ A worthy of Brundisium received from the Curia a
» Or, Hem, 3917, 8924, 1561, 7092, * Petron. Sat. 66.
4077, 8127, 4020, 5655, 2874. » Or, Hem. 6988.
* Friedl. Cena THm. Einl, 87. « Ih, 4044, 7094.
» Or. Henz. 8787-8 ; 7108. ^ Ih, 7112.
218
SOCIAL LIFE
BOOK II
public funeral, with the ornaments and insignia of an Augustal.^ In this way, in a society highly conventional, and dominated by caste feeling, the order of the Augustales provided both a stimulus and a reward for the public spirit of a new class, powerful in its wealth and numbers, but generally encumbered by the heritage of a doubtful origin. It was a great elevation for a man, who, perhaps, had been sold as a boy in some Syrian slave market into the degradation of a minion, and who had emerged, by petty savings or base services, into the comparative freedom of a tainted or despised trade, to find himself at last holding a conspicuous rank in his municipality, and able to purchase honour and deference from those who had trampled on him in his youth.
The Augustales shared with the members of the Curia the heavy burdens which public sentiment then imposed upon the rich. Direct taxation for municipal purposes was in the first century almost unknown. The municipalities often possessed landed property, mines, or quarries. Capua is said to have had distant possessions in the island of Crete.^ The towns also derived an income from the public baths,' from the rent of shops and stalls in the public places, from the supply of water to private houses or estates, and from port dues and tolls. A very considerable item of revenue must have been found in the fee which all decurions, Augustales, and magistrates paid on entering on their office or dignity. Since the reign of Nerva, the towns had the right of receiving legacies and bequests.* And, on the occurrence of any desolat- ing calamity, an earthquake or a fire, the emperor was never slow or niggardly in giving relief. In the year 53 A.D. the town of Bologna received an imperial subsidy of about £83,000.^ The cities of Asia were again and again relieved after desolating earthquakes.^
With regard to municipal expenditure, the budget was free from many public charges which burden our modern towns. The higher offices were unpaid, and in fact demanded large generosity from their holders. The lower functions were dis-
» C.LL. ix. 68.
* Friedl. Qeiw. Trim, Kinl. 42.
* Plin. Ep. Tiii. 8, 6.
« Friedl. Cfena Trim, EM, 48.
» Tac. Ami. xiL 58.
• Sneton. Vesp, 18 ; Tac. Ann. i\, 47 ; of. Nipperdey's note rofori-ing to the monument erected to Tiberins in a.d. 30, at Puteoli.
CHAF. II MUNICIPAL LIFE «19
charged, to a great extent, by communal slaves. The care or construction of streets, markets, and public buildings, although theoretically devolving on the community through their aediles, was, as a matter of fact, to an enormous extent undertaken by private persons. The city treasury must have often incurred a loss in striving to provide com and oil for the citizens at a limited price, and the authorities were often reviled, as at Trim- alchio's banquet, for not doing more to cheapen the necessaries of life.^ Although our information as to municipal expenditure on education and medical treatment is scanty, it is pretty clear that the community was, in the Antonine age, beginning to recognise a duty in making provision for both. Vespasian first gave a public endowment to professors of rhetoric in the capital.^ The case of Como, described in Pliny's letters, was probably not an isolated one. Finding that the youth of that town were compelled to resort to Milan for higher instruction, Pliny, as we have seen, proposed to the parents to establish by general subscription a public school, and he offered himself to contribute one-third of the sum required for the foundation, the rest to be provided by the townsfolk, who were to have the management and selection of teachers in their hands.' The Greek cities had public physicians 500 years before Christ,^ and Marseilles and some of the Glallic towns in Strabo's day employed both teachers and doctors at the public expense.^ The regular organisation of public medical attend- ance in the provinces dates from Antoninus Pius, who required the towns of Asia to have a certain number of physicians among their salaried officers.* The title ArchiaJter, which in the Theodosian Code designates an official class in the provinces as well as at Rome, is found in inscriptions of Beneventum and Pisaurum belonging to an earlier date.^ But these departments of municipal expenditure were hardly yet fully organised in the age of the Antonine^, and were probably not burdensome. The great field of expenditure lay in the basilicas, temples, amphitheatres, baths, and pavements, whose
* Petron. 44. • Strab. iv. c. i. 5 (181), aofpurrds ' Snot Fesp, xviii. Latinis Qraeois- ycOtf (tro^ixwroL . . . koipj fuaSo^firvoi
que rhetoriboB annua centena con* KaOdirep iceU larpo^.
*»'piin. Ep, iv. 18. • ^"1- ^*- "• ^^7-
* Herodot. iii. 181. ' Or. ffenx. 8994, 4017.
220 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
vanidhing remains give us a glimpse of one of the most brilliant ages in history.
The municipal towns relied largely on the voluntary muni- ticence of their wealthy members for great works of public utility or splendour. But we have many records of such enterprises carried out at the common expense, and the name of a special magistracy {curator operum pvblicorum) to superintend them meets us often in the inscription^^ These undertakings were frequently on a great scale. The famous bridge of Alcantara was erected in the reign of Trajan by the combined eiforts of eleven municipalities in Portugal' In Bitbyuia the finances of some of the great towns had been so seriously disorganised by expensive and ill-managed undertakings that the younger Pliny was in the year 111 A.D. sent as imperial legate by Trajan to re- pair the misgovernment of the province.' Pliny's correspondence throws a flood of light on many points of municipal adminis- tration, and foreshadows its coming decay. The cities appear to have ample fimds, but they are grossly mismanaged There is plenty of public money seeking investment, but borrowers cannot be found at the current rate of 12 per cent. Pliny would have been inclined to compel the decurions to become debtors of the state, but Trajan orders the rate of interest to be put low enough to attract voluntary borrowers.* Apamea, although it had the ancient privilege of managing its own affairs, requested Pliny to examine the public accounts.^ He did the same for Prusa, and found many signs of loose and reckless finance, and probable malversation.^ Nicaea had spent £80,000 on a theatre, which, from some faults either in the materials or the foundation, was settling, with great fissures in the walls.^ The city had also expended a large sum in rebuilding its gymnasium on a sumptuous scale, but the fabric had been condemned by a new architect for radioed defects of structure. Nicomedia has squandered £40,000 on two aqueducts which have either fallen or been abandoned.' In authorising the con- struction of a third the emperor might well emphatically order the responsibility for such blunders to be fastened on the proper
^ Or. Hem, 8716, 6709, 7146.
a Friedl. SUUngeseh, iii. 116 ; CIM ii pp. 89-96.
» Plin. Ad Traj. 17.
* lb, 54, 66, 28. * Jb, 47.
• iJ 17. ' lb. 89. • lb. 87.
CHAF. u MUNICIPAL LIFE 221
persons.^ In the same city, when a fire of a most devastating kind had recently occurred, there was no engine, not even a bucket ready, and the inhabitants stood idly by as spectators.* Pliny was most assiduous in devising or promoting engineering improvements for the health and convenience of the province, and often called for expert assistance from Rome. Irregu- larities in the working of the civic constitutions also ^ve him much trouble. The ecdiwA or defensor has demanded re}>ay- ment of a largess made to one Julius Piso from the treasury of Amisus, which the decrees of Trajan now forbade.' Just as Pliny had suggested that members of a curia should be forced to accept loans from the State, so we can see ominous signs of a wish to compel men to accept the curial dignity beyond the legal number, in order to secure the honorarium of from £35 to £70 on their admiasion.* The Lex Pompeia, which forbade a Bithynian municipality to admit to citizenship men from other Bithynian states, had long been ignored, and in numbers of cities there were many sitting in the senate in violation of the law. The Pompeian law also required that a man should be thirty years of age when he was elected to a magistracy or took his place in the Curia, but a law of Augustus had reduced the limit for the minor magistracies to twenty-two. Here was a chance of adding to the strength of the Curia which was seized by the municipal censors. And if a minor magistrate might enter the Curia as a matter of course at twenty-two, why not others equally fit ? ^ In another typical case the l^ate was disturbed by the lavish hospitality of leading citizens. On the assumption of the toga, at a wedding, or an election to dvic office, or the dedication of a public work, not only the whole of the Curia, but a large number of the common people, were often invited to a banquet and received from their host one or two denarii apiece.^ Pliny was probably unnecessarily alarmed. The inscriptions show us the same scenes all over the Empire/ and the emperor with calm dignity leaves the ques- tion of such entertainments to the prudence of his lieutenant.
* Plin. Ad Traj, 88. • lb, 116.
« /5 88 ''Or. Hens. 7001 ; Fried!. Ccna
» lb, 110 ; cf. Marq. Bm, St. i. 622. ^'*'»- ^*'^/? J c?;™P^°'>' l^^werer.
* Plin. Aa Trai, 1^2, lU. 116. S^b^ ^. '^^^'hZn'^^l^]
* /&. 79. 0. L L. ii. Sup^. p. 862.
222 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
There are many religious questions submitted to the emperor in these celebrated despatches, especially those relating to the toleration of Christians.^ But, however profoundly interesting, they lie beyond the scope of this chapter. We are occupied with the secular life of the provincial town. And the Letters of Pliny place some things in a clear liglit. In the first place, the state has begun in the reign of Trajan to control the municipality, especially in the management of its finances; but the control is rather invited than imposed. At any rate, it has become necessary, owing to malversation or incompetence.* Nothing could be more striking than the contrast between the civic bungling exposed by Pliny, and the clear, patient wisdom of the distant emperor. And in another point we can see that the municipalities have entered on that disastrous decline which was to end in the ruin of the fifth century. Wasteful finance is already making its pressure felt on the members of the Curia, and membership is beginning to be thought a burden rather than an honour. From the reign of Trajau we begin to hear of the Curatores, who were imperial officers, appointed at first to meet a special emergency, but who became permanent magistrates, with immense powers, especially over finance.* The free civic life of the first century is being quietly drawn under the fatal spell of a bureaucratic despotism.
The cities did much for themselves out of the public revenues.^ But there are many signs that private ambition or munificence did even more. The stone records of Pompeii confirm these indications in a remarkable way. Pompeii, in spite of the prominence given to it by its tragic fate, was only a third-rate town, with a population probably of not more than 20,000.^ Its remains, indeed, leave the impression that a considerable class were in easy circumstances; but it may be doubted whether Pompeii could boast of cmy great capitalists among its citizens. Its harbour, at the mouth of the Sarno, was the outlet for the trade of Nola and Nuceria.
^ Plin. Ad Traj, 96. Admin, 286. Of. Or. Henz. 8899,
* Friedl. Cena Trim. Eiml, 88; 8902,3989. For a good example of the Griard, Plid, pp. 246-7. function of the Curator, of. Or, 8787.
* The dUferent classes of Caratores, ^ For the sources of these, of. Marq. which must be carefully distinguished, R^m, St. ii p. 96.
are clearly given by Arnold, Hwk ' Mau, Ptnnpeii (Eng. Tr.), p. 16.
CMAP. II MUNICIPAL LIFE 883
There ^ere salt works iu a suburb uear the sea. The fish sauces of Umbricius Scaurus had a great celebrity.^ The vine and the olive were cultivated on the volcanic offshoot from Vesuvius ; but the wine of Pompeii was said by the elder Pliny to leave a lingering headacha Mill-stones were made from the lava of the volcano. The market gardeners drove a flourishing trade, and the cabbage of Pompeii was celebrated. On the high ground towards Vesuvius many wealthy Komans, Cicero, and Drusus, the son of Claudius, built countiy seats, in that delicious climate where the winters are so short, and the summer heats are tempered by unfailing breezes from the mountains or tbe western sea. All these things made Pompeii a thriving and attractive place ; yet its trade hardly offered tbe chance of the huge fortunes which could be accumulated in those days at Puteoli or Ostia^
Nevertheless, a large number of the public buildings of Pompeii were the gift of private citizens. The Holcouii were a great family of the place in the reign of Augustus. M. Holconius Bufus had been ordinary duumvir five times, and twice quinquennial duumvir ; he was priest of Augustus, and finally was elected patron of the town.^ Such dignities in those days imposed a corresponding burden. And an inscrip- tion tells that, on the rebuilding of the great theatre, probably about 3 B.C., Holconius fiufus and Holconius Celer defrayed the expense of the crypt, the tribimals, and the whole space for the spectators. Women did not fall behind men in their public benefactiona On the eastern side of the forum of Pompeii there is a building and enclosure, with the remains of porticoes, colonnades, and fountains, which are supposed to have been a cloth market. In a niche stood a marble statue, dedicated by the fullers of Pompeii to Eumachia, a priestess of tbe city. And Eumachia herself has left a record that she and her son had erected the building at their own expense.'* The dedication probably belongs to the reign of Tiberius. The visitor who leaves the forum by the arch, at the north-east corner, and turns into the broadest thoroughfare of the town, soon reaches tbe small temple of Fortuna Augusta, erected in the reign of Augustus Both the site and the building were
^ Mau, Pompeii (Eng. Tr.), p. 16. • Mau, p. 14a
" Petron. Sat, 88. * Id. p. 111.
224 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
the gift of one M. Tullius, who had, like M. Holconius, borne all the honours which the city could bestow.^ The amphitheatre in the south-east comer of the town, the scene of so many gladiatorial combats recorded in the inscriptions, was erected by two men of the highest official rank, C. Quinctius Valgus and M. Porcius, probably the same men who bore at least part of the cost of the smaller theatre of Pompeii^ The last instance of this generous public spirit which we shall mention is of interest in many ways. It is well known that in the year 63 A.D. an earthquake overthrew many buildings, and wrought great havoc in Pompeii. Among other edifices, the temple of Isis was thrown down. The temple, of which we can now study the remains, had been built by a boy of six years of age, Numerius Popidius Celsinus, who, in acknowledg- ment of his own, or rather of his father's liberality, was at that nnripe age co-opted a member of "the splendid order." ' This mode of rewarding a father by advcmcing his infant son to premature honours is not unknown in other inscriptions.*
The literature of the age contains many records of profuse private liberality of the same kind. The circle and family of Pliny were, as we have seen in this, as in other respects, models of the best sentiment of the time. Pliny was not a very rich man, according to the standard of an age of colossal fortunes ; yet his benefactions, both to private friends and to the communities in which he was interested, were on the scale of the largest wealth It has been calculated that he must have altogether given to his early home and fatherland, as he calls it, a sum of more than £80,000 ; and the gifts were of a thoroughly practical kind — a library, a school endowment, a foundation for the nurture of poor children, a temple of Ceres, with spacious colonnades to shelter the traders who came for the great fair.* A great lady, Ummidia Quadratilla, known to us not altogether favourably in Pliny's letters, built a temple and amphitheatre for Casinum.* From the elder Pliny we learn that the dis- tinguished court physicians, the two Stertinii, whose professional income is said to have ranged from £2000 to £5000 a year, exhausted their ample fortune in their benefactions to
» Mau, p. 124. * Or, Henz, 7008, 7010.
•^ Id. pp. 147, 206. * Daray, v. 396.
' Id. p. 164. « Or. 781.
aiAP. II MUNICIPAL UFE 885
the city of Naples.^ A private citizen bore the cost of an aque- duct for Bordeaux, at an expenditure of £160,000.* Anotiier benefactor, one Crinas, spent perhaps £80,000 on tiie walls of Marseilles.' The grandfather of Dion Chrysostom devoted his entire ancestral fortune to public objecta^ Dion, himself, according to his means, followed the example of his ancestor. The site alone of a colonnade, with shops and booths, which he presented to Prusa, cost about £1800. When Cremona was destroyed by the troops of Vespasian in A.D. 69, its temples and forums were restored by the generous zeal of private citizens, after all the horror and exhaustion of that awful conflict^
But the prince of public benefactors in the Antonine age was the great sophist Herodes Atticus, the tutor of M. Aurelius, who died in the same year as his pupil, 180 A.D. He acted up to his theory of the uses of wealth on a scale of unexampled munificence.^ His family was of high rank, and claimed descent from the Aeacidae of Aegina. They had also apparently in- exhaustible resources. His father spent a sum of nearly £40,000 in supplementing an imperial grant for the supply of water to the Troad. The munificence of the son was extended to cities in Italy, as well as to Corinth, Tbessaly, Euboea, Boeotia, Elis, and pre-eminently to Athens. He gave an aqueduct to Canusium and Olympia, a racecourse to Delphi, a roofed theatre to Corinth.^ He provided sulphur baths at Thermopylae for the visitors from Thessaly and the shores of the Maliac gull He aided in the restoration of Oricum in Epirus, and liberally recruited the resources of many another decaying town in Greece. He was certainly benevolent, but he had also a passion for splendid fame, and cherished an ambition to realise the dream of Kero, by cutting a canal across the Corinthian Isthmus.^ But Attica, where he was bom, and where he had a princely house on the Hissus, was the supreme object of his bounty. In his will he left each Athenian citizen an annual gift of a mina. He would offer to the Virgin Goddess a sacrifice of a hundred oxen on a single day ; and, when the great festivals came round, he used to
* Flin. H, N, xxiz. 5. templaqne munificentia mnnioipnm.
» Duruy, v. 896. • Philoetr. ViL Soph, U. 1 ; Friedl.
* Plin. /.& SiUengeach, iL p. 120.
* D. OhryB. Or. 46 (619). ' Philostr. FU. Soph, ii 6.
* Tao. Mid. iiL 84, reposita fora • lb. u. 6.
826 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
feast the people by their tribes, as well as the resident strangers, on couches in the Ceramicus. He restored the ancient shrines and stadia with costly marbles. And, in memory of Bh^illa, his wife, he built at the foot of the acropolis a theatre for 6000 spectators, roofed in with cedar wood, which, to the eye of Pausanias, surpassed all similar structures in its splendour.^ The liberality of Herodes Atticus, however astonishing it may seem, was only exceptional in its scale. The same spirit prevailed among the leading citizens or the great patroni of hundreds of communities, many of them only known to us from a brief inscription or two ; and we have great reason to be grateful on this score to the imperial l^islation of later days, which did its best to preserve these stone records for the eyes of posterity.' But in forming an estimate of the splendid public spirit evoked by municipal life, it is well to remind ourselves that much has necessarily been lost in the wreck of time, and also that what we have left represents the civic life of a comparatively brief period. Tet the remains are so numerous that it is almost impossible to give any adequate idea of their profusion to those who are unacquainted with the inscriptions. The objects of this liberality are as various as the needs of the community — temples, theatres, bridges, markets, a portico or a colonnade, the relaying of a road or pavement from the forum to the port, the repair of an aque- duct, above all the erection of new baths or the restoration of old ones, with perhaps a permanent foundation to provide for the free enjoyment of this greatest luxuiy of the south. The boon was extended to all citizens of both sexes, and in some cases, even to strangers and to slavea' There is an almost monotonous sameness in the stiff, conventional record of this vast mass of lavish generosity. It all seems a spon- taneous growth of the social system. One monument is erected by the senate and people of Tibur to a man who had borne all its honours, and had left the town his sole heir.^ On another, an Augustal of Gales, who had received the insignia of the duumvirate, tells posterity that he had laid down a broad road through the town.^ Another bene-
1 PhUostr. VU. Sopk. ii 8. » Or. Henz. 6993, 7018, 7190, (J622,
a C. Theod, iz. 17, 6 ; Nq9. ValetU. 2287, 6985, 8825. 6. ^ lb. 6994. 6 n, 6988.
CHAP. II MUNICIPAL LIFE tt7
fEustor bore the chief ooet of a new meat market at Aesemia, the authorities of the town supplying the pillars and the tiles.^ A priestess of Calama in Numidia expended a sum of £3400 on a new theatre.' Perhaps the commonest object of private liberality was the erection or maintenance of public baths. An old ofiScer of the fourth legion provided free bathing at Suessa Senonum for every one, even down to the slave girls.* At Bononia, a sum of £4350 was bequeathed for the same liberal purpose.^ A magnate of Misenum bequeathed 400 loads of hard wood annually for the furnaces of the baths, but with the stipulation that his son should be made patron of the town, and that his successors should receive all the magis- tracies.^
These are only a few specimens taken at random from the countless records of similar liberality to the parent city. The example of the emperors must have stimulated the creation of splendid public works in the provinces. It has been remarked by M. Boissier that the imperial government at all times displayed the politic or instinctive love of monarchy for splendour and magnificence.^ The Koman Code, down to the end of the Western Empire, gives evidence of a jealous care for the preservation of the monuments and historic bnildings of the past, and denounces with very imconventional energy the '' foul and shameful " traffic in the relics of ancient ^ry which prevailed in the last age of the Empire.^ After great fires and desolating wars, the first thought of the most frugal or the most lavish prince was to restore in greater grandeur what had been destroyed. After the great confla- gration of A.D. 64, which laid in ashes ten out of the fourteen regions of Rome, Nero immediately set to work to rebuild the dty in a more orderly fashion, with broader streets and open spaces.* Vespasian, on his accession, found the treasury loaded with a debt of £320,000,000. Yet the frugal emperor did not hesitate to begin at once the restoration of the Capitol, and aU the other ruins left by the great struggle of A.D. 69 from which his dynasty arose.* He even undertook some new
» Or. Hem. 7013. « Boiasier, UOpp, p. 44.
« a/.X. vui. 5366 ; she received the 7 gee Rmn. Soc, in the Last CerUury qf
hoDoor of five statues in return. the Western Empire (Ist ed.), p. 202. » Or, Hem. 2287. a a ^ xr •
» Ih. 8772. * Suet. Vesp, ix. ; D. Cass. Ixvi. 10.
228 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
works on a great scale, the temple of Peace and the amphi- theatre, on the plans projected by Augustus. Titus completed the Colosseum, and erected the famous baths.^ Domitian once more restored the Capitol, and added many new buildings, temples to his " divine " father and brother, with many shrines of his special patroness Minerva; a stone stadium for 30,000 people, and an Odeum for an audience of 10,000.' Trajan was lauded by Pliny for his frugal administration of the treasury, combined with magnificence in his public works.' Nor was the encomium imdeserved. He made docks and erected warehouses at Ostia ; he ran a new road through the Pomptine marshes; he lavished money on aqueducts and batha^ His most imposing construction was a new forum between the Capitoline and the Quirinal, with stately memorials of the achievements of his reign. But the prince of imperial builders and engineers was Hadrian. Wherever he went he took with him in his journeys a troop of architects to add something to the splendour or convenience of the cities through which he passed. "In almost every city," says his biographer, "he erected some building." ^ But the capital was not neglected by Hadrian. He restored historic structures such as the Pantheon and the temple of Keptune, the forum of Augustus, and Agrippa's baths, with no ostentatious intrusion of his own name.^ In his own name he built the temples of Venus and Boma, the bridge across the Tiber, and that stately mausoleum, which, as the castle of S. Angelo, links the memory of the pagan Empire with the mediaeval Papacy and the modem world. The example of the imperial masters of the world undoubtedly reinforced the various impulses which inspired the dedication of so much wealth to the public service or enjoyment through all the cities of the Empire.
But the wealthy and public -spirited citizen was also expected to cater for the immediate pleasure or amusement of his neighbours in games and feasts. We have seen that Pliny, during his administration of Bithynia, seems to have r^arded the public feasts given to a whole commune on occasions of
^ Suet. TiL TiL nemine ante se ^ D. Cass. IxyiiL 7, 15 ; Plin. Aiim^.
munifioentia minor. 29, 51.
„ o ^ -. .. * Ael. Spart. Hadflr, c. 29.
Suet IhiMi, V. « 76. c 19, § 10, eaque omnia pro-
' Plin. FaiMg. 51. priis auctonun nominibua conaeoraTit
CBAF. 11 MUNICIPAL UFE 229
private rejoicing, as dangerous to the general tranquillity. Yet the usage meets us everywhere in the inscriptions, and even in the literary history of the time. This spacious hospitality was long demanded from the rich and powerful, from the general at his triumph, from the great noble on his birthday or his daughter's marriage, from the rich burgher at the dedication of a temple or a forum which he had given to the city, from the man who had been chosen patron of a town in expectation of such largesses, not to speak of the many private patrons whose morning receptions were thronged by a hungry crowd, eager for an invitation to dinner, or its equivalent in the sportula.^ Julius Caesar on his triumph in 46 B.C. had feasted the people at 22,000 tables.* Great houses, like the sumptuous seat of Caninius fiufos at Como, had enormous banquet halls for such popular repasts.* The Trimalchio of Petronius ^^esires himself to be sculptured on his tomb in the character of such a lavish host^ There was in that age no more popular and effective way of testifying gratitude for the honours bestowed by the popular voice, or of winning them, than by a great feast to the whole commune, generally accompanied by a distribution of money, according to social or official grade. It was also the most popular means of prolonging one's memory to bequeath a foundation for the perpetual maintenance of such repasts in honour of the dead.^ One P. Lucilius of Ostia had held all the great offices of his town, and had rewarded his admirers with a munificence apparently more than equivalent to the official honours they had bestowed. He had paved a long road from the forum to the arch, restored a temple of Vulcan, of which he was the curator, and the temples of Venus, Spes, and Fortuna ; he had provided standard weights for the meat market, and a tribimal of marble for the forum. But probably his most popular benefaction was a great banquet to the citizens, where 217 couches were arrayed for them.^ The same munificent person had twice entertained the whole of the citizens at luncheon. Elsewhere a veteran, with a long and varied service, had settled at Auximum where he
^ On the tiwrtiila at this time, ct cri^/irai^ar : D. Can. 48, 21, 8. 8o0t iVm, xyi., Ikm, Tii ; Marq. /V. ' Plin. Ep, L 8, triolinia ilia popu-
1, 207 sq. ; Momma. Lt CM, p. 109. laria. ^ Petron. 71.
* Pint OoM. 56, itrridaas fiiw iw dur- ^ Or. ffene. 7115, 1868, 4088, 4115.
/aplots KoL ^i^iXioct TpuOiUfOit b/ioO * lb. 8882.
SaO SOCIAL LIFE book ii
had been elected patron of the community. His old comrades, tiie centurions of the Second Legion (Traj. Fortis) erected a monument to his virtues, and, at the dedication, he gave a banquet to the townsfolk.^ One other example, out of the many which crowd the inscriptions, may serve to complete the picture of civic hospitality. Lucius Cornelius of Surren- tum received on his death the honour of a public funeral by a vote of the Curia. The inscription on his statue records that, on assuming the garb of manhood, he had provided a meal of pastry and mead for the populace ; when he became aedile, he ex- hibited a contest of gladiators ; and, twice reaching the honoun of the duumvirate, he repaid the compliment by splendid games and a stately banquet*
At these entertainments a gift of money, always graduated according to the social rank of the guests, decurio, augustal, or plebeian, was generally added to the fare.' Sometimes the distribution took the form of a lottery. A high official of Beneventum, who had probably inherited a fortune from his father, a leading physician of the capital, once scattered tickets among the crowd, which gave the finder the right to a present of gold, silver, dress, or other smaller prizes.^ Women appeared sometimes both as hostesses and guests on these occasions. Caesia Sabina of Veii, on the day on which her husband was entertaining all the citizens, invited the female relatives of the decurions to dinner, with the additional luxury of a gratuitous bath.^ It is curious to observe that at the festivities in which women are entertained, the sharp demarcation of ranks is maintained as strictly as it is among their male relations. Thus, in a distribution at Yolceii, the decurions, augustales, and vicani, receive respectively thirty, twenty, and twelve sesterces apiece ; while the proportion observed among the ladies of the three social grades is sixteen, eight, and four. Nor were children, even those of the slave class, forgotten on these festive occasions. One kindly magnate of Ferentinum left a fund of about £750 to give an annual feast of pastry and mead upon his birthday for all the inhabitants with their wives, and at the
^ Or. Hewx. 8S68. Or. 842 ; MommB. CMUg, p. 110.
* Ih. 6211. « Or, Henx, 8894 ; of. Suet Cdlig, 18.
• Marq. Prw. L 210 ; Petron. 46 ; » Or. Henz, 8788.
CHAP. 11 MUNICIPAL LIFE 831
same time, 300 pecks of nuts were provided for the children, bond and frea^
These provincial societies, as we have already seen, were or- ganised on aristocratic or plutocratic principles. The distinction between honestior and hv/m/Uiory which becomes so crael in the Theodosian Code, was, even in the Antonine age, more sharply drawn and more enduring than is agreeable to our modem notions of social justice. The ridi have a monopoly of all ofiBdal power and social precedence; they have even the largest share in gifts and paltry distributions of money which wealth might be expected to resign and to despise. Their sons have secured to them by social convention, or by popular gratitude and expectancy, a position equal to that of their ancestora The dim plebeian crowd, save for the right of an annual vote at the elections, which was in a few generations to be withdrawn, seem to be of Uttle more consequence than the slaves; they were of far less conse- quence than those freedmen who had the luck or the dexterity to build up a rapid fortime, and force their way into the chasm between the privileged and the disinherited. Yet this would hardly be a complete and penetrating view of the inner working and the spirit of that municipal society. The apparent rigidity and harshness of the Unes of demarca- tion were often relieved by a social sentiment which, on the one hand, made heavy demands on rank and wealth, and on the other, drew all classes together by the strong bond of fellowship in a common social life. There has probably seldom been a time when wealth was more generally regarded as a trust, a possession in which the community at large has a right to share. There never was an age in which the wealthy more frankly, and even recklessly, recognised this imperious daim. It would indeed be difBcult to resolve into its elements the complicated mass of motives which impelled the rich burgher to undertake such enormous, and often ruinous, expenditure for the common good or pleasure. There was of course much of mere selfish ambition and love of popularity. The passion for prominence was probably never stronger. Direct or even veiled corruption of the electors was, indeed, strictly prohibited by law.^ But it was a recognised
' C.I.L, X. 6853 ; Friedl. Cma Trim, p. 66. « Lex Urson. § 182.
238 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
principle of public life that the city should honour its bene- factors, and that those \vhom she had raised to her highest distinctions should manifest their gratitude by some contribu- tion to the comfort or the enjoyments of the people. But, when we have admitted all vulgar motives of munificence, a man would show himself a very unobservant, or else a very cynical student of the time, if he failed to recognise that, among these countless benefactors, there were many animated, not only by a sense of duty, but by a real ardour of public spirit, men who wished to live in the love and memory of their fellows, and who had a rare perception of the duties of wealth. Philostratus has left us in his own words a record of the principles which inspired Herodes Atticus in his almost fabulous donations to many cities in Asia, Greece, and Italy. Herodes used to say that the true use of money was to succour the needs of others ; riches which were guarded with a niggard hand were only a ** dead wealth " ; the coffers in which they were stowed away were merely a prison ; and the worship of money resembled the sacrifice which the fabled Aloidae offered to a god after putting him in chains.^ The main character- istics of human nature are singularly fixed from age to age, although the objects of its love and devotion may endlessly vary. The higher unselfish impulses must assert themselves in any society which is not plunging into the abyss. The choicer spirits will be always ready to la\d8h effort or material wealth on objects which are sacred to their own age, although they may seen chimerical or unworthy to the next And we may well believe that the man who in the second century built a bath or a theatre for fellow townsmen, might possibly, had he lived in the fifth, have dedicated a church to a patron saint, or bequeathed his lands to a monastery.
The Antonine age was on one side perhaps rather coarse in its ideals, passionately fond of splendour and brilliant display, proud of civic dignity, and keenly alive to the ease and comfort and brightness which common effort or individual generosity might add to the enjoyment of lifa It was also an intensely sociable age. Men looked for their happiness to their city rather than to the family or the state. If their city could not play a great part as an independent commonwealth,
1 Philostr. ViL SopK. iL 1.
CHAP. II MUNICIPAL UFE 233
it mighty by the self-sacrifice of its sons, assert its dignity among its rivals. It could make itself a society which men would proudly or affectionately claim as their " patria " and their parent, and on which they would vie with one another in lavishing their time and their gold And the buildings and banquets and bright festivals, on which so much was lavished, were enjoyed by all citizens alike, the lowest and the highest, although high and low had sometimes by prescriptive usage an unequal share in the largesses. The free enjoyment of sumptuous baths, of good water from the Atlas, the Apennines, or the Alban Hills, the right to sit at ease with one's fellows when the Psevdolus or the Adelphi was put upon the boards, the pleasure of strolling in the shady colonnades of the forum or the market, surrounded by brilliant marbles and frescoes, with fountains shedding their coolness around ; the good fellowship which, for the time, levelled all ranks, in many a simple com- munal feast, with a coin or two distributed at the end to recall or heighten the pleasure — all these things tended to make the city a true home, to some extent almost a great family circle. There was much selfishness and grossness, no doubt, in all this civic life. Which later age can cast the first stone? Yet a study of the inscriptions of the Antonine age leaves the impression that, amid all the sharply drawn distinctions of rank, with all the petty ambition and self-assertion, or the fawning and expectant servility, there was also a genuine patriotic benevolence on the one hand, and a grateful recogni- tion of it on the other. The citizens record on many a tablet their gratitude to patron or duumvir or augustal, or to some simple old centurion, returned from far frontier camps, who had paved their promenade, or restored their baths, or given them a shrine of Neptune or Silvanus. They also preserved the memory of many a kindly benefactor who left, as he fondly thought for ever, the funds for an annual feast, with all the graduated shares scrupulously prescribed, to save an obscure tomb from the general oblivion. Thus, although that ancient city life had its sordid side, which is laid bare with such pitiless Babelaisian realism by Petronius, it had its nobler aspect also. Notwithstanding the aristocratic tone of municipal society in the age of the Antonines, it is possible that the separation of classes in our great centres of population is
td4 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
morally more sharp and decided than it was in the days when the gulf between social ranks was in theory impassable.
There is however another side to this picture of fraternal dvic life. If some of its pleasures were innocent and even softening and elevating, there were others which pandered to the most brutal and cruel passions. The love of amusement grew upon the Boman character as civilisation developed in organisation and splendour, and unfortunately the favourite amusements were often obscene and crueL The calendar of the time is sufficiently ominous. The number of days which were annually given up to games and spectacles at Home rose from 66 in the reign of Augustus, to 135 in the reign of M. Aurelius, and to 175, or more, in the fourth century. In this reckoning no account is taken of extraordinary festivals on special occasions.^ The Flavian amphitheatre was inaugu- rated by Titus with lavish exhibitions extending over 100 days.' The Dacian triumphs of Trajan were celebrated by similar rejoicings for 123 days, and 10,000 gladiators were sent down into the arena.' The rage of all classes of the Boman populace for these sights of suffering and shame con- tinued imabated to the very end of the Western Empire. The lubricity of pantomime and the slaughter of the arena were never more fiercely and keenly enjoyed than when the Germans were thundering at the gates of Treves and Carthage.^
It is difficult for us now to understand this lust of cruelty among a people otherwise highly civilised, a passion which was felt not merely by the base rabble, but even by the cultivated and hiunane.^ There was undoubtedly at all times a coarse insensibility to suffering in the Soman character. The insti- tution of slavery, which involves the denial of ordinary human rights to masses of fellow-creatures, had its usual effect in render- ing men contemptuously callous to the fate of all who did not belong to the privil^d class. Even a man of high moral tone like Tacitus, while he condemns Drusus for gloating over his gladiatorial shows, has only a word of scorn for the victims of the butchery.* And the appetite grew with what it fed on.
^ FriedL SiUmiffeMeh, ii 142 ; ct Jol. ical fMyofidxoi fiijpioi li^wWirayro.
Capitol. M. Ant, o. x. ^ Salv. De Gub, Dei, vi. § 69.
* Suet ro. Til * Axig.CoT^.TlS; ct Sym. ^. U. 4d.
* D. Cast. 68. 15, xal $4as iv rpiffl * Tac. Ann, L 76, vili sanguine nimis Ktd etKoai KoL harbw iipipeut irolrifftw . . . gaudens.
CHAP. II MUNICIPAL UFE S36
From father to son, for nearly seven centuries, the Boman character became moi'e and more indurated imder the influ- ence of licensed cruelty. The spectacle was also surrounded by the emperors, even the greatest and best, for politic reasons, with ever growing splendour. The Flavian amphitheatre, which renudns as a monument of the glory of the Empire and of its shame, must have been a powerful corrupter. There, tier above tier, was gathered the concentrated excitability and contagious enthusiasm of 87,000 spectators. The imperial circle and the emperor himself, members of high senatorial houses, the great officers of state, the priests, the vestal virgins, gave an impressive national dignity to the inhuman spectacle. And now and then an Eastern prince or ambassador, or the chief of some half-savage tribe in Grermany or Numidia,^ amused the eyes of the rabble who swarmed on the upper benches. Every device of luxurious art was employed to heighten the baser attractions of the scene. The magnificent pile was brightened with gems of artistic skill' The arena was tesselated with rich colouring from the sunlight which streamed through the awnings. The waters of perfumed fountains shot high into the air, spread- ing their fragrant coolness ; and music filled the pauses in the ghastly conflict From scenes like these was probably drawn the picture in the Apocalypse : Mulier drcumdata purpura et coccino---maier f(yrni4Mti(mum — ebria de sanguine sanctorum.
In the first and second centuries the passion for cruel excitement was as strong in the provincial towns as it was even at Bome. This may have been partly due to the monotony of provincial life. It was also stimulated by the ease with which public sentiment extorted the means for these gratifications from the richer citizens. The opinion of the powerful and enlightened class, with rare exceptions, made no effort to purify and humanise the grossness of the masses. Seneca and Demonax indeed display a modem humanity in their view of the degrad- ing influence of these displays.* A humane magistrate of Yienne, one Trebonius Bufinus, in the reign of Trajan, having autocratically abolished them in his city, was called upon to
' Suet. Calig, xxzv. Percoaslt : stabain deflxas et ore patent!,
Ounotaqae minbar, etc.
VIdlmiia in caeltm tiabibua spectaculA textis p|„^ n^^.Ki ru^ jv « oo. TnA Amm 8oigere,Tarpoiampropedespectantlaculmen_ *^*^t. ItetpuOl, Uer, rr, c Z», LitlO. JJtm.
Slo undiqae ftalgor C. 57.
236 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
defend his conduct before the emperor, and Junius Mauricus had the courage to express before the council a wish that they could be abolished also at Eome.^ Augustus had, by an imperial edict, restrained the cruel exhibitions of the father of Nero.* Yee- pasian, according to Dion Cassius,' had little pleasure in the shows of the arena. But the emperors generally, and not least Vespasian's sons, encouraged and pandered to the lust for blood.^ The imperial gladiators were organised elaborately in four great schools by Domitian,^ with a regular administra- tion, presided over by officers of high rank. The gentle Pliny, who had personally no liking for such spectacles, applauded his friend Maximus for giving a gladiatorial show to the people of Verona, to do honour to his dead wife, in the true spirit of the old Bruti and Lepidi of the age of the Punic Wars.^ He found in the shows of Trajan a splendid incentive of con- tempt for death.
It is little wonder that, with such examples and such approval, the masses gloated unrestrained over these inhuman sports. The rag -dealer at Trimalchio's dinner is certainly drawn to the life.^ They are going to have a three days' carnival of blood« There is to be no escape ; the butcher is to do his work thoroughly in full view of the crowded tiers of the amphitheatre. It was in Etruria, and in Campania, where Trimalchio had his home, that the gladiatorial combats took their rise. Campanian hosts used to entertain their guests at dinner with them in the days before the second Punic War.^ And it was in Campanian towns that in the first century was displayed most glaringly the not unusual combination of cruelty and voluptuousness. The remains of Pompeii furnish us with the most vivid and authentic materials for a study of the sporting tastes of a provincial town« It is significant that the amphitheatre of Pompeii, which was capable of holding 20,000 people, was built fifty years before the fiLrst stone amphitheatre erected by Statilius Taurus at Boma^ It is also remarkable that, although Pompeii is mentioned only twice by Tacitus, one of the references is to a bloody riot
1 Plin. Ep.i^.72. » D. Oass. 67. 1 ; of. FriedL ii. 202.
> Suet Nero, iv. < Plin. Ep, yL 34 ; Paneg, 88.
* D. Oaas. S6. 15 ; c£. M. Aor. ri 46. ' Petron. 45.
^ D. Oaas. 68. 10 and 15, 66. 25 ; ' Strabo, v. c 4, 18.
Snet Ntro, xi; Snet Dom, iv. * Man, 206, 207.
CHAP. II MUNIUPAL LIFE »7
arising out of the games of the amphitheatre.^ In the year 59 AJX a Eoman senator in di^race, named Livineius B^ulu8» gave a great gladiatorial show at Pompeii, which attracted many spectators from the neighbouring town of Nuoeria. The scenes of the arena were soon reproduced in a fierce street fight between the people of the two towns, in which many Nucerians were left dead or wounded. The catastrophe was brought before the emperor, and referred by him to the Senate, with the result that Pompeii was sternly deprived of its fftvourite amusement for a period of ten years. But when the interdict was removed, the Pompeians had the enjoyment of their accustomed pleasure for ten years more, till it ¥ras finally interrupted by the ashes of Vesuvius.
A building* at Pompeii, which was originally a colonnade connected with the theatre,* had been converted into barracks for a school of gladiators in the time of the early Empire.* Behind the colonnade of more than seventy Doric columns had been built a long row of small ceUs, with no opening except on the central enclosure. There was a mess room, and the exedra on the southern side served as a retiring room for the trainers and the men in the intervals of exercise. The open area was used for practic& These buildings have yielded many specimens of gladiators' arms, helmets, and greaves richly embossed in relief, scores of mail- coats, shields, and horse-trappings. In one room there were found the stocks, and four skeletons with irons on their l^s. In another, eighteen persons had taken refuge in the last catastrophe, and, among them, a woman wearing costly jewels. The walls and columns were covered with inscriptions and rude sketches of gladiatorial life. Indeed the graffiti relating to it are perhaps the most interesting in Pompeii On some of the tombs outside the city we can still read the notices of coming games, painted on the walls by a professional advertiser, one AemUius Celer, " by the light of the moon." ^ They announce that a duumvir or aedile or flamen will exhibit twenty or thirty pairs of combatants on the cdends of May or the ides of ApriL There will also be a hunt» athletic
^ Tao. Ann, ziv. 17. ^ Mau, 216, 217. The words in one
* Mail, 152. of these, flaminia Neronia Caesaris Aug.
* FriedL SiUenffescK. iL 206. fill, fix the date between 60 and 54 a.d.
888 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
games, a distribution of gifts, and awnings will be provided. Programmes were for sale in advance, with a list of the events. The contents of one can still be read scratched on a wall, with marginal notes of the results of the competition. In one conflict, Pugnax, in the Thracian arms, had beaten Murranus the Myrmillo, fighting in the arms of Oaul, with the fish upon his helmet; and the fate of Murranus is chronicled in one tragic letter p. (periit). Two others fought in chariots in old British fashioa And the Publius Ostorius who won was, as his name may suggest, a fireedman, now fighting as a voluntary combatant, according to the inscription, in his fifty-first conflict^ The tomb of Umbricius Soaums, on the highway outside the Herculaneum gate, was adorned in stucco relief with animated scenes from the arena of hunting and battie. Hunters with sword and cloak, like a modem toreador, are engaging lions or tigera Two gladiators are charging one another on horseback. Here, a vanquished combatant, with upturned hand, is imploring the pity of the spectators, while another is sinking in the agony of death upon the sand. The name, the school, and the fighting history of each combatant are painted beside the figure.' The universal enthusiasm for the shows is expressed in many a rude sketch which has been traced by boyish hands upon the walls. The record of the heroes of the arena was evi- dently then as familiar as that of a champion footballer or cricketer is now to our own sporting youth. In the peristyle of a house in Nola Street, the names of some thirty gladiators can be read, with the character of their arms and the number of their conflicts. Portraits of gladiators are figured on lamps and rings and vases of the period. The charm of their manly strength, according to Juvenal, was fatal to the peace of many a Eoman matron of the great worid. And the humbler giils of Pompeii have left the memorial of their weakness in more than one frank outburst of rather unmaidenly admiration.'
It is a grave deduction from the admiring judgment of the glory of the Antonine age, that its most splendid remains are the stately buildings within whose enclosure, for centuries, the populace were regaled with the sufferings and the blood of
1 Man, 217, 218. « lb, 411.
• lb. 220 ; Juv. yi. 82 ecjii. ; cf. Msrt v. 24.
CHAP. II MUNICIPAL UFE
the noblest creatines of the wild animal world and of gallant men. The deserts and forests of Africa and the remotest East contributed their elephants and panthers and lions to these scenes. And every province of the Empire sent its contingent of lecroits for the arena, Gaul, Germany, and Thrace, Britain and Dacia, the villages of the Atlas, and the deserts of the Soudan.^ Just in proportion to the depth of the impress made by Roman civilisation, was the amphitheatre more or less popular in the provinces In Italy itself the passion was naturally strongest. Quiet little places, buried in the Apennines, or in the mountains of Samnium, had their regular spectacles, and record their gratitude for the pleasure to some magistrate or patron.' The little town of Fidenae, in the reign of Tiberius, gained for a moment a sinister feune by the collapse of its amphi- theatre, involving the death or mutilation of 60,000 spectators.^ An augustal of Praeneste endowed his town with a school of gladiators, and received a statue for this contribution to the pleasures of the populace.^ A. Clodius Flaccus of Pompeii, in his first duumvirate, on the ApoUinaria, gave an exhibition in the forum of bull-fighting, pugilism, and pantomime. He signalised his second tenure of the office by a show of thirty-five pairs of gladiators, with a hunting scene of bulls, boars, and bears.^ At Mintumae, a monument reminds " the excellent citizens " that, in a show lasting for four days, eleven of the foremost of Campanian gladiators had died before their eyes, along with ten ferocious bears.* At Compsa in Samnium, a place hardly ever heard of^ the common people erected a statue to a priest of Magna Mater, who had given them a splendid show, and he in turn rewarded their gratitude by a feast to both sexes, which lasted over two days.^ Similar records of misplaced munificence might be produced from Bovianum and Beneventum, from Tibur and Perusia, and many another obscure Italian town. But the brutal insensibility of the age is perhaps no- where so glaringly paraded as in the days following the short- lived victory of the Vitellian arms at Bedriacum. There, on that ghastly plain, on which his rival had been crushed and had closed a tainted life by a not inglorious death, Yitellius
» Friedl. ii. 189. « Ih, 6148; C./.I. x. 1074, 6012.
* 76. ii. 92. This was given postulante poptUo,
* Tac. Ann. iv, 62. ' Or, Hem. 6968, 6972, 2531 ; C.I.L.
* Or. Henz. 2532. » lb. 2530. x. 228.
840 SOCIAL UFE book ii
gloated over the wreck of the great struggle. The trees were cat down, the crops trampled into mire ; the soil was soaked and festering with blood, while mangled forms of men and horses still lay rotting till the vultures should complete their obsequies. Within forty days of the battle, the emperor attended great gladiatorial combats given by his generals at Cremona and Bononia, as if to revive the memory of the carnage by a cruel mimicry.^ The grim literary avenger of that carnival of blood has pictured the imperial monster's end, within a short space, in colours that will never fade, deserted by his meanest servants, shuddering at the ghastly terrors of the vast, silent solitudes of the palace, dragged forth from his hiding, and flung with insults and execrations down the Gemonian Stairs. The dying gladiator of Cremona was more than avenged.'
The western provinces bordering on the Mediterranean, Gaul, Spain, and Africa, drank deepest of the spirit which created the great amphitheatres of Aries, Treves, and Carthage, Placentia and Verona, of Puteoli, Pompeii, and Capua. But the East caught the infection, and gladiatoiitd combats were held at Antioch in Pisidia, at Nysa in Caria, and at Laodicea ; Alexandria had its amphitheatre from the days of Augustus, and a school of gladiators, presided over by a high imperial officer.' The Teutonic regions of the north and Greece were almost the only provinces in which the bloody games were not popular. The one Greek town where the taste for them was fully developed was the mongrel city of Corinth, which was a Boman colony. In the novel of Apuleius we meet a high Corinthian magistrate travelling through Thessaly to collect the most famous gladiators for his shows.^ Yet even in Greece, even at Athens, which had been the home of kindly pity from the days of Theseus, the cruel passion was spreading in the days of the Antonines. Plutarch urges public men to banish or to restrain these exhibitions in their cities.^ When the Athenians, from an ambition to rival the splendour of Corinth, were meditating the establishment of a gladiatorial show, the gentle Demonax bade them first to overturn their altar of Pity.* The apostles of Hellenism, Dion, Plutarch,
> Tm. Hid, XL 70-72. * ApuL Md, x. 18 ; cf. iv. 18.
» /& iii 84. * P*^^ Reipubl, Ger. Pr. 80; Philoatr.
ApolL Tyan. iv. 21. » Or. ffenz, 8726, 6166 ; Strab. • Luc. Dem, 67 ; cf. Mah»ffy, Greek
ZTii 1, 10 ; Friedl. iL 204, 878 sqq. World under Boman Stoay, p. 271.
CHAP, n MUNJUPAL LIFE Ul
and Taraan, wen unaiimioiis in eondemniiig an inaiiUilion which sacrificed the ImYeat men to the hrntal p^wnAna of the moh.
The games €i the aiena were scHnetimes held at the expense of the mnnicipalitj on gieat festiYals^ with a public officer, bearing the title of aurator} to direct them. But, perhaps more frequently, they were given by great magistrates or priests at their own expense ; or some rich parvenu, like the cobbler of Bologna or the fuller of Modena» who have been ridiculed by Martial, would try by such a display to force an entrance into the guarded enclosure of Roman rank.- There were also fre- quent bequests to create a permanent agonistic foundation. The most striking example of such a l^acy is to be found on an inscription in honour of a munificent duumvir of Pisaurum. He left a capital sum of more than £10,000 to the community. The interest on two-fifths of this bequest, perhaps amounting to £500, was to be spent in giving a general feast on the birthday of the founder's son. The accumulated interest of the remaining three- fifths, amounting, perhaps, to £4000, was to be devoted to a quinquennial exhibition of gladiatora* An aedile in Petronius is going to spend between £3000 and £4000 on a three days' show.^ The cost of these exhibitions, however, must have widely varied We hear of one in the second century B.a which cost over £7000.* The number of pairs engaged appears from the inscriptions to have ranged from five to thirty. The shows lasted from one to as many as eight days.^ And the quality of the combatants was also very various. Tiberius once recalled some finished veterans from their retirement at a fee of about £800 each.^ On the other hand, a grumbler at Trimalchio's dinner sneers at a stingy aedile, whose gladiators were "two-peimy men," whom you might knock over with a breath.^ Besides the great imperial schools at Praeneste, Capua, or Alexandria, and the '* families " maintained at all times by some of the great nobles, there
1 Or, ffenz. 2878, 7087, 148, 2532. dnng, mit der die Schaaspiele in der
* Mart iii 59, 18. letzten Zeit der Bepablik gegeben t (^^ ffenz. 81. wurden ; oC. CLL, iL 6278 {Suj^ p.
* P«tron. 45. . ^ ^^^ 2580, 2588 ; FriedL
* FriedL SiUengeieh. il 187, Doch Oena Tnm, p. 58 ; Oic. Ad AU. 12, 2.
dieae Summe enoheint gering im Ver- ^ Saet TA. tIL gleich ndt der koloesalen Yenchwen- ' Petron. 45^
R
n
^ipsBt Uoopi^ kepc vp far sfeeaiMOwB tniitas for
at %bmt giog iaso which Yitdliiis aold his UooLUeKMiie
The lififrwinffi of gHitiminr wm long xegvded as m tainted one^ on which aooal yiiUinpaft and law alike placed their ban. It WW a calling which inrlndfri the Tilest or the most mfortmate of mankind SiaTes, churns in war, or criminals condfmnfd for aerioos offenoea, lecniited its iank&^ The death in the arena waa thna often, realty, a deferred poniahment for erime But even from the later days of the Sepablic» men of fiteebiith were aomrtimfa attactod bj the &lae glory or the solid rewards at the profeasion. Freedmen aomedmea foi^t at the can of their patronfli' And, irtien Septimins Serenu began to reendt the Prelonan gnaid from the proYincea^ the yoath €i Italy, wbo had long enjoyed the monopoly of that pampered corps^ natitififd their oombatiTe or predaUxy instinctt by joining the ranks either of the ghdiatocs or of the fariganda.^ llie gladiator had, indeed, to sabmit to fearfbl perils and a cruel discipline: His oath boond him to endnre onflinchingly scourging, burning or death* His barracks were a closely gnarded jftiaoa, and, although his fine was neceesarily good, bis training was entirely directed to the {nrodnction of a fine fighting animal, who would give good ^ort in the arena. Yet the profiBsaion most have had some powerful attractions. Some of the emperors^* Titos and Hadrian, themselves took a pleasure in the gladiatorial exeicisesL Commodus, as if to eoofirm the scandal about his parentage, actoaUy descended into the arena,' and imperial example was followed by men of high rank, and eren, according to the satirist, by matronly ▼iragoes.' The splendour of the arms, the ostentatious pomp of the scene of combat, the applause of thousands of spectators on the crowded benches, the bsdnation of danger, all this inrested the cruel craft with a false glory.* The mob of all ages are ready to make a hero of the man who can perform rare feats of physical strength or agility. And the
> FfiadL SMmi^eMk. iL 202; Sntt « D. Cast. 6S. 15 ; Spart. Hadr. 14;
KUdL zii eirmmfonnao laaiatae cf. Soet Calig. zzziy.
veodidit ' LamprkL Com. zi ; at riiL ;
• fritdl aUimfetdi. iL 102. Fried). SUUnge9eh. iL 15a
* PetroD. 45 ; D. Qm. 60. Oa * Saet Jul. Oom. xzzix. ; Ja? . tl « D. Cms. 74. 2L 252.
• FriedL SiUett^uOL iL 190. • FriadL SiUm^mdL iL 108w
CHAP. II MUNICIPAL LIFE MS
skilful gladiator evidently became a hero under the early Empire, like his colleague of the red or green. His profes- sionAl record was of public interest; the number of his combats and his victories was inscribed upon his tomb.^ His name and his features were scratched by boys on the street walls. He attracted the unconcealed, and not always discreet, admiration of women,' and his praise was sung in classic verse, as his pathetic dignity in death has been immortalised in marble. The memories of a nobler life of freedom sometimes drove the slave of the arena to suicide or mutiny.' But he was oftener proud of his skill and courage, and eager to display them. When shows wei-e rare in the reign of Tiberius, a Myrmillo was heard to lament that the years of his glorious prime were running to waste.^ Epictetus says that the imperial gladiators were often heard praying for the hour of conflict'
Great imperial schools were organised on the strictest military principles, and were under the command of a pcocurator who had often held high office in the provinces or the army.* Each school had attached to it a staff of masseurs, surgeon -dressers, and physicians to attend to the general health of the members. There were various grades according to skill or length of service, and a man might rise in the end to be trainer of a troop. Oladiators, like all other callings in the second century, had their colleges. We have the roll of one of these, in the year 177 A.D., a college of Silvanus.^ The members are divided into three decuries, evidently according to professional rank, and their names and arms are also given. Their comrades often erected monuments to them with a list of their achievements. Thus a dear companion-in-arms commemorates a young Secutor at Pacoimus, who died in his thirtieth year, who had fought in thirty-four combats, and in twenty-one came off victorious.'
Our authorities do not often permit us to follow the gladiator into retirement. The stem discipline of the LudvA no doubt made better men even of those condemned to it for grievous crimes. The inscriptions contain a few brief records
> Or. Rem. 2571, 2572 ; C.LL. x. guch. iL 211.
7864 ; zii. 5886. ^ Sen. De Prov, iv.
* Hau, Pompeii, p. 219 sq. * Epict. Diss. L 29, § 87.
* Sen. Ep, 70, § 20 ; Tac. Ann, xv. * Friedl. SitUngeaeh. iL 204.
46 ; Sym. £p. IL 46 ; of. Friedl. SiUm- ^ Or. ffemt. 2566. * lb. 2571.
244 SOCIAL UFE book ii
of their fiEonily life, which seems to have been as natural and affectionate as that of any other class ; wives and daughters lamenting good husbands and fathers in the usual phrases, and fathers in turn mourning innocent young lives, cut short by the cruelty of the gods.^ Sometimes the veteran gladiator might be tempted to return to the old scenes for a high fee, or he might become a trainer in one of the schools.' His son might rise even to knightly rank ; ' but the career of ambition was closed to himself by the taint of a profession which the people found indispensable to their pleasures, and which they loaded with contempt
The inscriptions pay all honour to the voluntary, single- minded generosity with which men bore costly charges, and gave time and effort to the business of the city. But there was a tendency to treat public benefactions as the acknowledg- ment of a debt, a return for civic honours. We can sometimes even see that the gift was extorted by the urgency of the people, in some cases even by menaces and force.^ The cities took advantage of the general passion for place and social precedence, and, often from sordid motives, crowded their curial lists with patrorvi and persons decorated with other honorary distinctions. On the famous roll of the council of Canusium, out of a total of 164 members, there are 39 patrorvi of senatorial or knightly rank, and 25 praeteactati, mere boys, who were almost certainly of the same aristocratic class, and were probably destined to be future patrons of the town.^ In the desire to secure the support of wealth and social prestige, the municipal law as to the age for magisterial office was frequently disr^arded, and even mere infants were sometimes ndsed to the highest civic honours.^ The position of patron seems to have been greatly prized, as it was heavily paid for. A great man with a liberal soul might be patron of several towns,^ and sometimes women of rank had the honour conferred on them.' The ornamefrUa or external badges of official rank were frequently bestowed on people who were not eligible by law for the magistracy. A resident alien {incola),
' Or.ffenz, 2572-9; CI.L. xu. 8829. youth of twenty had been iivir quin-
' Or, Hem, 2578-6 ; D. Cass. 72. 22. quennalis, and had given a gladiatorial
' Jay. iii. 158. snow. Cf. 3714, quaestor designatoi^
^ CI.L. X. 1074. est annorum xziiiL, 8745, 8246, 8768.
» Or. Hem. 8721. » Ih, 3764.
• Ih. 7008, 7010 ; cf 7082. where a • Ih, 8778, 4086, 82, 5184 ; cf. 8744.
CHAP. II MUNICIPAL LIFE 145
or an augustal, mi^t be co-opted into the " splendid order " of the Coriay or he might be allowed to wear its badges, or those of some office which he could not actually hold.^ But it is plain that such distinctions had to be purchased or repaid. The city seldom made any other return for generous devotion, unless it were the space for a grave or the pageant of a public funeral It is true that a generous benefactor or magistrate is frequently honoured with a statue and memorial tablet Indeed, the honour is so frequently bestowed that it seems to dwindle to an infinitesimal valua* And it is to our eyes still further reduced by the agreeable convention which seems to have made it a matter of good taste that the person so distinguished by his fellow-citizens should bear the expense of the record himself ! ' Nor did the expectations of the grateful public end even there ; for, at the dedication of the monument, it was seemingly imperative to give a feast to the generous com- munity which allowed or required its benefactor to bear the cost of the memorial of his own munificence.^ It is only fidr, however, to say that this civic meanness was not universal, and that there are records to show that even the poorest class sometimes subscribed among themselves to pay for the honour which they proposed to confer.'
The Antonine age was an age of splendid public spirit and great material achievement But truth compels us to recognise that even in the age of the Antonines, there were ominous signs of moral and administrative decay. Municipal benefactors were rewarded with local fame and lavish flattery; but the demands of the populace, together with the force of example and emulation, contributed to make the load which the rich had to bear more and more heavy. Many must have ruined themselves in their effort to hold their place, and to satisfy an exacting public sentiment Men actually went into debt to do so ; * and as municipal life became less attractive or more burdensome, the career of imperial office opened out and offered far higher distinction. The reorganisation of the
* Or. Hem. 8709, 8750 ; C.LL. xiL 7190, 4100.
8S08, 8219. » /d. 8866, ex aere oollato ; 6996.
* Plut ReipM, Chr, Pr. c 27. * This seema clear from Pint jBm>. ' Or, Hem, 6992. Oer, Pr, c 81, koI il^ dwut^/unm
* lb, 8811, 8722, 6999, 7007, 7004 oUrp^ Sifta mU KarayiXniroif cirac rtpl Oionore qiiib inpentam remidt), 7011, rdt \tirovpyia9.
846 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
imperial service by Hadrian had immense effects in diverting ambition from old channela It created a great hierarchy of office, which absorbed the beet ability from the provinces. Provincials of means and position were constantly visiting the capital for purposes of private business or pleasure, or to represent their city as envoys to the emperor. They ofben made powerful Mends during their stay, and their sons, if not they themselves, were easily tempted to abandon a municipal career for the prospect of a high place in the imperial army or the civil service.^ It is true that the local tie often re- mained unbroken. The country town, of course, was proud of the distinction to which its sons rose in the great world ; and many a one who had gained a knighthood or some mili- tary rank, returned to his birthplace in later years, and was enrolled among its patrons. We may be sure that many a successful man, like the Stertinii of Naples, paid "nurture fees " in the most generous way. But already in the reign of Domitian, as we have seen, legal provision had to be made for the contingency of an insufficient number of candidates for the municipal magistraciea Already, in the reign of Trajan, the cities of Bithynia are compelling men to become members of the Curia, and lowering the age of admission to official rank.^ Plutarch laments that many provincials are turning their backs on their native cities and suing for lucrative offices at the doors of great Koman patrons.' ApoUonius of Tyana was indignant to find citizens of Ionia, at one of their great festivals, masquerading in Boman namea^ The illus- trious son of Chaeronea, with a wistful backward glance at the freedom and the glories of the Periclean age, frankly recognises that, under the shadow of the Boman power, the civic horizon has drawn in.^ It is a very different thing to hold even the highest magistracy at Thebes or Athens from what it was in the great days of Salamis or Leuctra. But Plutarch accepts the Empire as inevitable. He appreciates its blessings as much as Aristides or Dion Chrysostom. He has none of the revolutionary rage which led ApoUonius to cast reproaches at Vespasian, or to boast of his complicity
1 Plat. Riip. <?«r. /v. a 18 ; ct 0. 10. « Thilostr. Apoll T. iv. 5.
* Hin. Ai. X. 118; 79. « Pint Beip, Chr, Fr. o. 82; cf.
* Pint. Aeip. Oer, Pr. a 18. GHard, Marak de PiuL p. 280.
CHAP. II MUNICIPAL UFE W7
in the overthrow of Nera^ He has little sympathy with philosophers like Epictetus, who would sink the interesto of everyday polities in the larger life of the universal com- monwealth of humanity. The Empire has extinguished much of civic glory and freedom, but let us recognise its compen- sating blessings of an ordered peace. Spartam nodus es, heme excmoj might be the motto of Plutarch's political counsels. He himself, with a range of gifts and culture, which has made his name immortal, did not disdain to hold a humble office in the poor little place which was his hom& And he appeals to the example of Epameinondas, who gave dignity to the magistracy which was concerned with the duty of the cleansing of the sewers and streets of Thebes.' He tells his young pupil that, although we have now no wars to wage, no alliances to con- clude, we may wage war on some evil custom, revive some charitable institution, repair an aqueduct, or preside at a sacri- fica Yet Plutarch has a keen insight into the municipal vices of his age, the passion for place and office, the hot unscrupulous rivalry which will stoop to any demagogic arts, the venality of the crowd, and the readiness of the rich to pamper them with largesses and shows, the insane passion for pompous decrees of thanks and memorial statues ; above all, the eager servility which abandoned even the poor remnant of municipal liberty, and was always inviting the interference of the prince on the most trivial occasiona' Such appeals paralyse civic energy and hasten the inevitable drift of despotism. He exhorts men to strive by every means to raise the tone of their own community, instead of forsaking it in fastidious acorn, or ambition for a more spacious and splendid life.
The growing distaste for municipal honours was to some extent caused by bureaucratic encroachments on the independ- ence of the Curia. As early as the reign of Trajan there are unmistakable signs, as we have seen, of financial mismanage- ment and decay. The case of Bithynia, in Trajan's reign, is sometimes treated as an exceptional on& It may be doubted whether it is not a conspicuous example of general dis- organisation. The Bithynian towns were probably not alone in their ill-considered expenditure on faultily planned aqueducts
» Philortr. Apoll T. v. 41, 10 ; ct " Plat. Heip. Oer, Pr. c Ifi.
CMard, p. 227. * lb. c 27, 29, 80, 20.
248 SOCIAL UFE book u
and theatres. Apamea was certainly not the only city which called for an imperial auditor of its acoounta In- scriptions of the reign of Trajan show that many towns in Italy, Como» Canusium, Praeneste, Pisa, Beigamum, and Caere, had curators of their administration appointed, some as early as the reigns of Hadrian or Trajan.^ These officeis, who were always unconnected with the municipality, took over the financial control, which had previously belonged to the duumvirs and quaestors. They were often senators or equites of high rank, and a single curator sometimes had the supervision of several mimicipalities. The case of Caere is peculiarly instructive and interesting.^ There, an imperial freed- man, named Vesbinus, proposed to erect at his own cost a club-house (jphretrium), for the augustales, and asked the municipal authorities for a site dose to the basilica. At a formal meeting of the Curia, the ground was granted to him, subject to the approval of Curiatius Cosanus, the curator, with a vote of thanks for his liberality. A letter to that official was drawa up, stating the whole case, and asking for his sanction. The curator, writing from Ameria, granted it in the most cordial terms. It is noteworthy that at the very time when Caere was consulting its curator about the proposal of Yesbinus,' the Bithynian cities were laying bare their financial and engineering difficulties to Pliny and Trajan. The glory of free civic life is already on the wan& The municipality has invited or submitted to imperial controL The burdens of office have begun to outweigh its glory and distinction. In a generation or two the people will have lost their elective power, and the Curia will appoint the municipal officers from its own ranks. It will end by becoming a mere administrative machine for levying the imperial taxes ; men will fly from its crushing obligations to any refuge ; and the flight of the curiales will be as momentous as the coming of the Groths.^
The judgment on that externally splendid city life of the
1 Or. Henz, 4007 (Oannsium), 2891 '-' Or. Henz, 8787, placuit tibi scribi
(Praeneste), 4491 (Pisa), 8898 (Ber- an in hoc quoque et ta consensuroa
gamura), 8787 (Caere). For plaoos esses.
outof Italy, cf. C./.i^. xiL 8212 (datus ' a.d. 113, as the names of the
a Trajano) ; viii. 2408, 2660 (Timgad consuls show.
and Larabesi ; iiL 8485 (Aqnincani) ; ^ See Iio)nan Society in the LaM
ii. 484 (EmeriU) ; 4112 (Tarraco) ; of. Century qfthe JFeetem Empire, p. 208
X. ; ii. p. 1158 ; Capitol. At, Ant, c 11. sqq.(lst eel.)-
CHAP. II MUNICIPAL UFE 849
Antonine age will be determined by the ideals of the inquirer. There was a genuine love of the common home, a general pride in its splendour and distinction. And the duty, firmly imposed by public sentiment on the well-endowed to contribute out of their abundance to its material comfort and its glory, was freely accepted and lavishly performed. Nor was this expenditure all devoted to mere selfish gratification. The helplessness of orphanhood and age, the penury and monotonous dulness of the lives of great sunken classes, the education of the young, were drawing forth the pity of the charitable. Muni- ficence was often indeed, in obedience to the sentiment of the time, wasted on objects which were unworthy, or even to our minds base and cori-upting. Men seemed to think too much of feasting and the cruel amusement of an hour. Yet when a whole commune was r^aled at the dedication of a bath or a temple, there was a healthy social sympathy diffused for the moment through all ranks, which softened the hard lines by which that ancient society was parted.
Yet, in looking back, we cannot help feeling that over all this scene of kindliness and generosity and social goodwill, there broods a shadow. It is not merely the doom of free civic life, which is so clearly written on the walls of every curial haU of assembly &om the days of Trajan, to be fulfilled in the long-drawn tragedy of the fourth cmd fifth centuries ; three hundred years have still to run before the inevitable catastrophe. It is rather the feeling which seems to lurk under many a sentence, half pitiful, half contemptuous, of M. Aurelius, penned, perhaps, as he looked down on some gorgeous show in the amphitheatre, when the Numidian lion was laid low by a deft stroke of the hunting-spear, or a gallant Myrmillo from the Thames or the Danube sank upon the sand in his last conflict^ It is the feeling of Dion, when he watched the Alexandrians palpitating with excitement over a race in the circus, or the cities of Bithynia convulsed by some question of shadowy precedence or the claim to a line of sandhills. It is the swiftly stealing shadow of that mysterious eclipse which was to rest on intellect and literature till the end of the Western Empire. It is the burden of all religious philosophy from Seneca to Epictetus,
» M. Aui-cl. vi. 40 ; vii. 8 ; ix. 80.
tfO SOCIAL UFE K)oc ii
which was one long warning against the perila of a material- ised civilisation. The warning of the pagan preacher was little heeded; the lesson was not learnt in tima Is it possible that a loftier spiritual force may find itself equally helfdess to arrest a strangely similar decline ?
CHAPTEE III
TH£ OOLLBGKS AND PLKBBUN LIFE
The Fapului or FUbe of a municipal town of the early Empire is often mentioned in the inscriptions along with the Ordo and the Augustales, generally in demanding some benefaction, or in doing honour to some benevolent patron.^ They also appear as recipients of a smaller share at public feasts and distributions. They occasionally engage in a fierce conflict with the higher orders, as at Puteoli in the reign of Nero, when the discord was so menacing as to call for the presence of a praetorian cohort^ The election placards of Pompeii also disclose a keen popular interest in the municipal elections.' But the common people are now as a rule chiefly known to us from the inscriptions on their tombs. Fortunately there is an immense profusion, in all the provinces as well as in Italy, of these brief memorials of obscure lives. And although Soman literature, which was the product of the aristocratio class or of their dependents, geneially pays but little attention to the despised mass engaged in menial services or petty trades, we have seen that the novel of Petronius flashes a brilliant light upon it in the reign of Nero.
The immense development of the free proletariat, in the time of the early Empire, is one of the most striking social phenomena which the study of the inscriptions has brought to light It has sometimes been the custom to speak of that society as depending for the supply of its wants entirely on slave labour. And undoubtedly at one time slave labour occupied the largest part of the field of industry. A household in the
> Or. Herut, Ind. 151 ; C.I.L, zii. p. > Tac. Ann. ztii. 48 ; Hi (».«. pleU)
940 ; Or, Bern. 8763, 7170 (oonsenans magistntaara et primi otyawiae aTari-
plabis) ; CLL. xiL 3185 (ex postala- tiam increpantat.
tionepopuli); x. 5007, 1030,8215,3704. • Cl.L. iv. 202, 710; 787.
251
268 SOCIAL UFE book u
time of the Bepublic, of even moderate wealth, might have 400 slaves, while a Crassus would have as many as 20,000, whom he hired out in various industries.^ But several causes conspired gradually to work a great industrial revolution. From the days of Augustus, the wars beyond the frontier, which added fresh territory and yielded crowds of captives to the slave-markets, had become less frequent And it is prob* able that births among the slave class hardly sufficed to maintain its numbers against the depletion caused by mortality and manumission. The practice of emancipating slaves of the more intelligent class went on so rapidly that it had even to be restrained by law.^ Masters found it economically profitable to give skilful slaves an interest in the profits of their industry, and the peciUiumi, which was thus accumulated, soon provided the means of purchasing emancipation. At the same time, the dispersion of colossal fortunes, gained in the age of rapine and conquest, and squandered in luxury and excess, together with the exploitation of the resources of favoured regions, which were now enjoying the blessings of unimpeded commerce, rapid intercommunication, and perfect security, must have given an immense stimulus to fi:ee industry. A very casual glance at the inscriptions, under the heading Artes et Opifida^ will show the enormous and flourishing development of skilled handicrafts, with all the minutest specialisation of the arts that wait on a highly-organised and luxurious society. The epitaphs of these olracure toilers have been brought to light in every part of the Koman world, in remote towns in Spain, Gkiul, Noricum, Dacia, and North Africa, as well as in the ancient centres of refinement in Italy or the Greek East. On a single page or two you can read the simple record of the bridle-maker or flask-maker of Narbonne, the cabriolet-driver of Senegallia, the cooper of Tr&ves, the stone-cutter of Nimes, the purple-dealer of Augsburg, beside those of the wool-comber of Brescia, the oculist of Bologna, the plumber of Naples, or the vendors of unguents in the Via Sacra, and the humble firuiterer of the Circus Maximus.^ Many of these people had risen from
1 Marq. PHv, L 159, 160; Duray, « Or. Hem, 4148, 4143, 4268, 4154.
Hiti. des Rom, ▼. 681 ; Athen. vL 272 D. For the provinces of. C.LL, iL SuppL
' Suet. Odav. 40 ; D. Cass. 55. 18. p. 1171 ; viii. p. 1102 ; x. 1168 ; zii.
* Or, Henz. iii. Ind, p. 180. p. 948.
CHAP. Ill THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAN LIFE 863
slaverj into the freedman claaa Most of them are evidently humble folk, although, like a certain female pearl-dealer of the Via Sacra, they may have freedmeu cmd freedwomen of their own, for whom they provide a last resting-place beside them- selves.^ The barber, or auctioneer, or leather-seller, who had become the owner of lands and houses, and who could even give gladiatorial shows, excited the contempt of Juvenal and Marticd.* But these insignificant people, although despised by the old world of aristocratic tradition, were proud of their crafts. They tell posterity who and what they were, without any vulgar concealment; nay, they have left expensive tombs, with the emblems or instruments of their petty trades proudly blazoned upon them like the armorial devices of our families of gentle birth. In the museum of S. Grermain may be seen the efiBgy of the apple-seller commending his fruit to the attention of the ladies of the quarter ; the cooper, with a cask upon his shoulder; the smith, hammer in hand, at the forge ; the fuller, treading out and dressing the cloth.' This pride in honest industry is « a new and healthy sign, as a reaction from the contempt for it which was engrained in old Eoman society, and which is always congenial to an aristocratic caste supported by slave labour. In spite of the grossness and base vulgarity of sudden wealth, portrayed by Petronius and Juvenal, the new class of free artisans and traders had often, so far as we can judge by stone records, a sound and healthy Ufe, sobered and dignified by honest toil, and the pride of skill and independence. Individu- ally weak and despised, they were finding the means of developing an organisation, which at once cultivated social feeling, heightened their self-respect, and guarded their collective interests. While the old aristocracy were being rapidly thinned by vice and extravagance, or by confiscation, the leaders of the new industrial movement probably founded many a senatorial house, which, in the fourth and fifth centuries, in an ever-recurring fashion, came to regard manual industry with sublime contempt, and traced themselves to Aemilius Paullus or Scipio, or even to Aeneas or Agamemnon.^
The organisation of industry through the colleges attained
1 Or. Henx. 4148, Marcia margari- * Jut. i. 24; x. 224; Mart. iii. 16,59. taria de Via Sacra legavit . . . libertiB ' Dnray, ▼. 6S7. libertabusque aula ... ^ S. Hieron. Ep, 108, § 8.
254 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
an immense development in the Antx)nine age» and still more in the third century, after the definite sanction and encourage- ment given to these societies bj Alexander Severua The records of the movement are numerous, and we can, after the scholarly sifting of recent years, now form a tolerably complete 6md vivid conception of these corporations which, springing up at first spontaneously, in defiance of government, or with its reluctant connivance, were destined, under imperial control, to petrify into an intolerable system of caste servitude in the last century of the Empire of the West^
The sodalitia and coll^a were of immemorial antiquity. Certain industrial colleges and sacred sodalities were traced back to Numa, and even to the foundation of Bome.' In the flourishing days of the Bepublic they multiplied without restraint or suspicion, the only associations at which the law looked askance being those which met secretly or by night It was only in the last century of the Bepublic that the colleges came to be regarded as dangerous to the public peace, and they were, with some necessary exceptions, suppressed by a decree of the Senate in 64 b.c. They were revived again for factious or revolutionary purposes in 68 B.c. by Clodius.' The emperors Julius and Augustus abolished the firee right of association, except in the case of a few consecrated by their antiquity or their religious character.^ And it was enacted that new colleges could not be created without special authorisation. In the middle of the second century, the jurist Grains lays it down that the formation of new collies was restrained by laws, decrees of the Senate, and imperial constitutions, although a certain number of societies, both in Home and the provinces, such as those of the miners, salt workers, bakers, and boatmen, were authorised' And down to the time of Justinian, the right of free association was jealously watched as a possible menace to the public peace. The refusal of Trajan to sanction the formation of a company of firemen in Nicomedia, with the reasons which he gave to Pliny for his dedsion, furnishes the best concrete illustration
^ Homan Society in the Lad Century Numa^ o. 17, ^p Si dtaro/AJ^ jcard rdt
of the Western Empire (Ist ed.), p. r^yat a^Xip-wr, xfi^^x^iap, ktX, 198. * Momras. Jk ColL p. 76.
' Momnuu De Coll, (Morel) p. 2S8q.; * Saet. Caes, 42 ; Odav. 82. Bouwier, JUl. Bam, it 278 ; Plot. > Momms. De Coll. p. 84.
CHAP. Ill THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAN UFE S50
of the imperial policy towards the colleges.^ That the danger from the colleges to the public order was not an imaginary one» is clear from the passage in Tacitos describing the bloody riots between the people of Nuceria and Pompeii in the reign of Kero» which had evidently been fomented by ** illicit " dabs.* It is seen even more strikingly in the serious troubles of the reign of Aurelian, when 7000 people were killed in the organised outbreak of the workmen of the mint.' Yet it is pretty dear that, in spite of legislation, and imperial distrust^ the colleges were multiplying, not only in Home, but in remote, insignificant places, and even in the camps, from which the legislator was specially determined to avert their * temptations. In the blank wilderness, created by a universal despotism, the craving for sympathy and mutual succour inspired a great social movement, which legislation was power- less to check. Just as in the reigns of Theodoeius and Honorius, imperial edicts and rescripts were paralysed by the impalpable, quietly irresistible force of a universal social need or sentiment One simple means of evasion was pro- vided by the government itsdf, probably as early as the first century. In an inscription of Lanuvium, of the year 136 A.D., there is a recital of a decree of the Senate according the right of association to those who wish to form a funerary Gollq^ provided the members did not meet more than once a month to make thdr contributions.^ It appears from liarcian's reference to this law that other meetings for purposes of rehgious observance might be held, the pro- vinons of the ^maJMsc^nmUwrn against illicit collies being carefully observed.^ Mommsen has shown that many other pious and charitable purposes could be easily brought within the scope of the funerary association. And it was not difficult for a society which desired to make a monthly contribution for any purpose to take the particular form recognised by the law. In the reign of M. AureUus, although membership of two colleges is still prohibited, the coU^es obtained the legal right to recdve bequests, and to emandpate
' Plin. Ep. X. 34. ^ Or, ffem. 6086 ; cf. Mommt.
* Tbo. Ann. xiv. 17, re sd patres De CoU. p. 98 ; Boiarier, JUl, Mom, ii.
iilaU . . . collegia quae contra leges 813 ; Dorny, ▼. 408. inititiierant diesoliita.
' Vop. Jurel. c. 88. ' Monune. J)e Coll, p. 87.
Sfi6 SOCIAL UFE book ii
their slaves. And finally, Alexander Severas organised all the industrial collies and assigned them defenaores}
The law against illicit associations, with all its serious penalties, remained in the imperial armoury. But the Empire, which had striven to prevent combination, really furnished the greatest incentive to combine In the face of that world- wide and all-powerful system, the individual subject felt, ever more and more, his loneliness and helplessness. The imperial power might be well-meaning and beneficent, but it was so terrible and levelling in the immense sweep of its forces, that the isolated man seemed, in its presence, reduced to the insig- nificance of an insect or a grain of sand. Moreover, the aristocratic constitution of municipal society became steadily more and moie exclusive. If the rich decurions catered for the pleasures of the people, it was on the condition that they retained their monopoly of political power and social precedence. The plebeian crowd, recruited &om the ranks of slavery, and ever growing in numbers and, in their higher ranks, in wealth, did not indeed dream of breaking down these barriers of exclusive- lUess; but they claimed, and quietly asserted, the right to organise a society of their own, for protection against oppression, for mutual sympathy and support, for relief from the deadly dulness of an obscure and sordid life. Individually weak and despised, they might, by union, gain a sense of collective dignity and strength. To our eyes, as perhaps to the eyes of the Soman aristocrat, the dignity might seem far from imposing. But these things are greatly a matter of imagination, and depend on the breadth of the mental horizon. When the brotherhood, many of them of servile grade, met in full con- clave, in the temple of their patron deity, to pass a formal decree of thanks to a benefactor, and regale themselves with a modest repast, or when they passed through the streets and the forum with banners flying, and all the emblems of their guild, the meanest member felt himself lifted for the moment above the dim, hopeless obscurity of plebeian life.
No small part of old Soman piety consisted in a scrupulous reverence for the dead, and a care to prolong their memory by solid memorial and solemn ritual, it might be to maintain some faint tie of sympathy with the shade which had passed
^ Lamprid. Alex. Sev. a 88 ; cf. Daniy, t. 408.
CRAF. ui THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAS UFE VI
into a dim and rather cheerless worid. The conceptioQ of that other state was alwajs Tagae» often porelj negative. It ia not often that a spirit is sped on its way to join a loTed one in tiie Elysian fields, and we may fear that such phrases, when they do occnr, are rather literary and conventional.^ The hope of blessed reonion after death seld(»n meets us till we come to some monument oi a Christian freedman.' But two of the deepest feelings in the Boman mind did duty for a dear £Euth in the life beyond the tomb: one was fiunily piety, the other the passionste desire of the parting spirit to escape Delect and oblivion. Whoever will cast his eyes over some pages of the sepulchral inscriptions will be struck with the intensity and ¥rarmth of afiTection, the bitterness of loss and grief, which have been committed to the stone. The expressions, of course, are often conventional, like obituary memorials in every age. The model wife appears again and again, loving, chaste, pious, a woman of the antique model, a keeper at home, who spun amoDg her maids and suckled her own children, who never gave her husband a moment's vexation, except when she died.' Grood husbands seem to have been not less common. And the wife's grief sometimes far outruns the regular forms of eulogy or regret In one pathetic memorial of a union formed in earliest youth, the lonely wife b^ the unseen Powers to let bar have the vision of her spouse in the hours of night, and bring her quickly to his side.^ There is just the same pure affection in the less r^ular, but often as stable, unions of the slaves and soldiers, and the con^it&emo/is is lamented with the same honourable affection as the great lady, although the faulty Latin sometimes betrays the class to which the author belongs. The slave world must always have its shame and tragedy ; yet many an inscription shows, by a welcome gleam of light, that even there human love and ties of family were not always desecrated.' The slave nurse erects a monument to her little foster child ; or a master and mistress raise an affectionate memorial to two young vtmat
^ Or, Benz, 4841, Elysiis campis ' lb. 4662, Qntia SUvana Uxor irirum
floreat umbra tibi ; but cf. 4793, manuB ezpecto meam.
levo contra denm qui me inDOcentem ' lb. 2677, 2655, 4626, 4689, 4848.
rastnlit ; 4796, Dii irati aeterno somno Domuraseryavit, lanam fedt Dixi, abei. daderunt. * lb. 4775.
B lb. 2669, 466S, 2418, 2414.
S
268 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
who died on one day. A freedman bewails, with warm sincerity, a firiendship begun in the slave market, and never interrupted till the last fatal hour.^ The common tragedies of affection meet us on these slabs, as they are reproduced from age to age with little variation. The prevalent note is. Vale vaU in aetemum, with thoughts of the ghostly ferryman and the infernal stream and hopeless separation. Now and then, but seldom, a soul passes cheerfully from the light which it has loved, happy to escape the burden of old age.* And sometimes, too, but seldom, we meet with a cold, hard gross- ness, which looks back with perfect content upon a full life of the flesh and takes the prospect of nothingness with a cheerful acquiescenca'
The true Soman had a horror of the loneliness of death, of the day when no kindly eye would read his name and style upon the slab, when no hand for evermore would bring the annual offering of wine and flowers. It is pathetic to see how imiversal is the craving to be remembered felt even by slaves, by men plying the most despised or unsavoury crafts. The infant Julius Diadumenus, who has only drawn breath for four hours, receives an enduring memorial. A wife consoles her grief with the thought that her husband's name and fame will be forever prolonged by the slab which she dedicates.^ On another monument the traveller along tlie Flaminian Way is begged to stop and read again the epitaph on a boy of nine.* Many are tortured by the fear of the desertion or the violation of their " eternal home." An old veteran bequeaths from his savings a sum of about £80, to provide a supply of cil for the lamp above his tomb.^ An unguent seller of Montferrat leaves a fine garden to afford to the guardians of his grave an annual feast upon his birthday, and the roses which are to be laid upon it for ever.^ Many a prayer, by the gods of the upper and the lower worlds, appeals to the passing wayfarer not to disturb the eternal rest^ The alienation or desecration of a tomb is forbidden with curses or the threat of heavy
^ Or. Bens, 2815, 2817, 4687, 4777, tantum meam est. Non fui, fiii ; non
4658. sum, non cnro ; 4807, 7407, 7887.
'* i&. 4852, efifugi crimen longaseneoU * lb. 4795, 7406.
tnnra. " lb. 4836.
* lb. 4816, balnea, yina, Venus cor- * lb. 4416.
rampant corpora nostra, sed yitam ^ lb. 4417.
faciunt Vixi; qnod comedi et ebibi ^ Jb. 4781, 4788, 4.
I
CHAP, m THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAN UFE 188
penaltiea.^ A jdaoe of bmial was a ooreled posseeBiOQ, was not eaailj attainable by the poor and friendless^ and praetical persons guarded their repose against lawless intrusion by requiring the delinquent to pay a heavy fine to the municipal or to the imperial treasury, <Nr to the pontifical coll^a It was the most effectoal way of secorii^ the peace (rf the dead. For the public anthoritieB had a direct pecnniaiy interest in enforcii^ the penalty for the desecration. But it would be interestii^ to know how Icmg these prorisions to protect for ever the peace of the departed fulfilled the hopes of the testator.
The primary object of a multitude of coUeges, like that of the wonhippers oS. Diana and Antinous at Lanuvium, was undoubtedly, after the reign of Nerva, the care of the memory of their members after death. In the remarkable inscription of Lanuyinm, as we have seen, the formal permission by decree of the Senate, to meet once a month for the purpose of a funerary contribution is recorded.* It was a momentous concession, and carried consequences which the l^;islator may or may not have intended.' The jurist Marcian, who gives an imperfect citation of this part of the decree, goes on to add, that meetings for a religious purpose were not prohibited, provided that the previous l^islation against illicit societies was observed.^ And the law of the Lanuvian CroU^e shows how often su6B meetings might take place. It did not need much ingenuity to multiply occasions for reunion. The anniversary of the foundation, the birthday of founders or benefiBustors, the feast of the patron deity, the birthday of the emperor, these and the like occasions furnished legal pretexts for meetings of the society, when the members might have a meal together, and when the conversation would not always be confined to the funerary business of the college. At a time when, according to juristic theory, a special permission was needed for each new foundation^ and when the authority was grudgingly accorded, the whole vast plebeian mass of petty traders, artisans, freedmen, and slaves were at one stroke
^ Or. Htnz. 4386, 4357, 4360, 4862, volent in funeim, in id coUe^um oootnt
4388, 4396, 4428, 4425, 4427. neque sub siiecie ejus oollegii nisi
* i5. 6086. Ex S.C.P.R. quibus semel in mense coeant, etc
ccriTe oonvenire collcgiumque habere ' Boissier, RU, Horn, ii. 818.
liceat qui stipem menstruani conferre ^ Momma. De OoU* p. 87.
260 SOCIAL LIFE book n
allowed to organise their societies for buriaL We may fairly assume that, liberally interpreted, the new law was allowed to cover with its sanction many a college of which fimeral rites were not the sole, or even the primary object And this would be made all the easier because many of the industrial colleges, and perhaps still more of the stiictlj religious colleges, had a common burial-place, and often received bequests for funerary purposes. This is the case, for example, with a college of worshippers of Hercules at Interamna, and a similar college at Seate.^ A young Belgian, belonging to the guild of armourers of the 20 th legion, was buried by his college at Bath.^ One C. Valgius Fuscns gave a burial-ground at Forum Sempromi, in Umbria. to a college of muleteers of the Porta Gullica, for their wives or concubines, and their posterity.^ There is even a burial-place, duly defined by exact measurement, for those " who are in the habit of dining together," a description which, as time went on, would have applied as accurately as any other to many of these clubs.*
We are, by a rare piece of good fortune, admitted to the interior of one of the purely funerary colleges. In the reign of Hadrian there was at Lanuvium a college which, by a curious fancy, combined the worship of the pure Diana with that of the deified minion of the emperor. It was founded in A.D. 133, three years after the tragic death of the young favourite. And in 136, the patron of the society, who was also a magnate of the town, caused it to be con- vened in the temple of Antinous. There he announced the gift of a sum of money, the interest of which was to be spent at the festivals of the patron deities ; and he directed that the deed of foundation should be inscribed on the inner walls of the portico of the temple, so that newly admitted members might be informed of their rights and their obliga- tions. This document, discovered among the ruins of the ancient Lanuvium in 1816, reveals many important facts in the constitution and working of funerary colleges.^ It recites, as we have seen, a part of the sencUtcsconmltum, which
^ Or. Senz, 2899, 2400. una epulo vesci solent
> Jb. 4079. * A 6086 ; Momms. De CM, p. 98;
> lb. 4093. Boifisier, JUL Horn, il p. 309 aqq. ; * lb. 4078, Loo. top. conyictor. qai Daruy, v. 412.
:hap. Ill THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAN LIFE S81
mthorised the existence of such coUegee, and after loyal Irishes for the prosperity of the emperor and his house, it >ray8 for an honest energy in contributing to the due inter- nent of the dead, that by regular payments the society may irolong its existence.
The entrance fee of the college is to be 100 sesterces 16b. 8d.), together with a flagon of good wine. A monthly mbscription of five asses is appointed. It is evident that ihe members are of the humblest class, and one clause shows ihat they have even a sprinkling of slaves among them, who, irith the permission of their masters, might connect them- lelyes with these burial clubs.^ The brethren could not aspire x> the erection even of a colvmJtniTiwm^ still less to the pos- leaeion of a common burial-ground. They confined themselves K> making a funeral grant of HS.300 to the appointed heir xf each member who had not intermitted his payments to the sommon fund.^ Out of this sum, HS.60 are to be paid to members present at the funeral The member dying intestate prill be buried by the society, and no claim upon his remain- og interest in it will be recognised. The slave, whose 9ody was retained by his master after death, was to have a ^vm/m imajgiwiriwrn^ and probably a cenotaph. In the case if a member dying within a radius of twenty miles from Lanuvium, three members, on timely notice, were deputed to mange for the funeral, and required to render an account of the sxpenses so incurred. A fee of HS.20 was granted to eacL But if any fraud were discovered in their accounts, a fine of luadruple the amount was imposed. Lastly, when a member lied beyond the prescribed limit, the person who had arranged lis funeral, on due attestation by seven Soman citizens, and lecurity given against any further claims, received the burial ipmt, with certain deductions.* In such precise and orderly Suhion, with aU the cautious forms of Soman law, did this poor little society order its performance of duty to the lead
Our knowledge of the funerary colleges is still further unplified by an inscription of a date twenty years later than
> Or, Hen2. 6086 ; Col. ii., placait * Momms. De Coll, p. 99 ; Boisder, it qnisquifl semis ex boo collegio liber RU, Rom, ii. p. 809. ■otoi fiiArit etc. ' Momms. be ColL p. 104.
268 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
that of Lauuvium.^ In the reign of Antoninus Pius a lady named Salvia Marcellina resolved to commemorate her husband by a gift to the college of Aesculapius and Hygia. She presented to it the site for a shrine close to the Appian Way, a marble statue of Aesculapius, and a hall opening on a terrace, where the banquets of the brotherhood should be held. To this benefaction Marcellina, along with one P. Aelius Zeno, who apparently was her brother, added two donations of HS.1 5,000 and HS.l 0,000 respectively, the interest of which was to be distributed in money, or food and wine, at six different festivals. The proportions assignable to each rank in the college were determined at a full meeting, held in the shrine of the ''Divine Titus." Marcellina attaches certain conditions to her gift. The society is to be limited to sixty members, and the place of each member, on his decease, is to be filled by the co-optation of his son. If any member chooses to bequeath his place and interest, his choice is confined to his son, his brother, or his freedman, and he is required to pay for this limited freedom of selection by re- funding one-half of his burial grant to the chest of the coU^e.^ The college of Aesculapius is nominally a religious and funerary corporation, yet there is only a single reference, in a long document, to the subject of buriaL No information is given as to the amount of the funercUidum or burial grant, the sources from which it is derived, or the conditions on which it is to be paid. The chief object of Marcellina seems to have been to connect the memory of her husband with a number of festivals, for the perpetuity of which she makes provision, to promote social intercourse, and to prevent the intrusion of strangers by making membership practically hereditary.
The colleges, of whose inner working we have tried to give a picture, are classed as religious corporations in the collec- tions of the inscriptions. They bear the name of a god, and they provide a solemn interment for their members. But in these respects they do not differ from many other collies which are regarded as purely secular. The truth is, that any attempt to make a sharp division of these societies on such lines seems futile. Sepulture and religion being admitted by the
* Or. Henz, 2417 ; Jnnio Rnfino Cob. i.e, a.d. 168 ; Momma, p. 73.
* Momma. IH Coll, p. 93.
CHAP. Ill THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAN UFE 293
government as legitimate objects for association, any coU^, however secular in its tone, might, and probably would, screen itself under sacred names. Nor would this be merely a hypocritical pretence. It is clear that many of the purely industrial collies, composed as they were of poor people who found it impossible to purchase a separate burial-place, and not easy, unaided, to bear the expense of the last rites, at once consulted their convenience, and gratified the sentiment of fraternity, by arranging for a common place of interment And with rqgard to religion, it is a commonplace to point out that all Graeco- Soman societies, great or small, rested on religion. The state, the clan, the family, found their ideal and firmest bond in reverence for divine or heroic ancestors, a reverent piety towards the spirits who had passed into the unseen world. The colleges, as we shall see presently, were formed on the lines of the city which they almost slavishly imitated.^ It would be strange and anomalous if they should desert their model in that which was its most original and striking characteristic. And just as Cleisthenes found divine and heroic patrons for his new tribes and demes,' so would a Boman coU^e naturally place itself under the protection of one of the great names of the Iloman pantheon. Sometimes, no doubt, there may not have been much sincerity in this conformity to ancient pieties. But do we need to remind ourselves how long a life the form of ancient pieties may have, even when the fiuth which gave birth to them has become dim and faint ?
The usual fashion of writing Iloman history has concen- trated attention on the doings of the emperor, the life of the noble class in the capital, or on the stations of the legions and the political organisation of the provinces. It is a stately and magnificent panorama. But it is apt to throw the life of the masses into even deeper shadow than that in which time has generally enwrapped them. We are prone to forget that, behind all this stately life, there was a quiet yet extra- ordinarily busy industrial activity which was its necessary basis and which catered for all its caprices. In the most cursory way Tacitus tells us that a great part of Italy
^ They have their ordo, plebe, de- honorati, patroni, qoaestores, etc.; v. enriones, qainqaennales, caratoree, ^enc /nd |>. 176 sqq. ' HeiodotT.66.
264 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
was gathered for the great fair at Cremoua, on the fateful days when the town was stormed by the army of Yespasiau.^ Yet what a gathering it must have been ! There were laid out in the booths the fine woollens of Parma and Mutina, the mantles of Ganusium, the purples of Tarentum, the carpets of Patavium. Traders from Ilva brought their iron wares, Pompeii sent its fish sauces, and Lucania its famous sausages. Nor would there be missing in the display the oil of Yenafrum, and the famous Setine and Falemian vintages.^ The improve- ment of the great roads in the reign of Trajan must have given a vast stimulus to inland commerce. And we may be sure that many a petty merchant with his pack was to be seen along the Aemilian or Flaminian ways, like the travelling vendor of honey and cheese, whom Lucius, in the tale of Apuleius, meets hurrying to Hypata.' The great roads of Spain, since the days of Augustus, carried an immense traffic, which made even the distant Gades a magnificent emporium and one of the richest places in the Soman world.^
The wandering traders in Germany, Spain, or Syria, by a natural instinct drew together in their exile. In the revolt of Julius Civilis, they are found settled among the Batavians, and a colUgiwrn, peregrinarum has left its memorial on the lower Khine.^ The sodalicivm urbanum at Bracara Augusta is a similar society.* Another mercantile college meets us at Apulum in Dacia.^ The Syrians of Berytus had a club at Puteoli, and there were at least two clubs of Syrian traders at Malaga.^ The graves of Syrian traders have been found at Sirmium in Pannonia, and, on the other hand, there are memorials of Soman merchants at Apamea and Tralles, at Salamis and Mitylene.' Immense stimulus to this transmarine trade must have been given by the Emperor Claudius, who provided insurance against loss by storms, and a liberal system of bounties and rewiurds for shippiag enterprise.^^ Apollonius of Tyana once expostulated with a young Spartan, who claimed descent from Callicratidas, for having forsaken the true career
^ Tao. ffist. iii. 82, tempos quo^ue « C.I.L, iL 2428.
mercatos ditem alioaui cdoniam migore 7 /^, {\i 1500.
opum specie compleoat « rx • -iaqa ikjq
« FriedL Cena THm, EinL p. 68. , l?' !^. ^^tw^! '. ^^.^ » Apul. MeL 16. ^' "^ ^^^' ***» ^^^^ «^^^-
* Momms. Horn. Prov, L 74. ^^ Suet Claud, xriiL ; cf. Merirale,
* Or. JETmis. 178 ; Tac HiU. iv. 5. vi. 126 sq.
CHAP. Ill THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAN UFE
266
of a man of his race, to soil himself with the trade of Carthage and Sicily. It is the sentiment of Juvenal who treats as a lunatic the man who will venture his life with a cargo on the wintry Aegean.^ But the antiquarian rhetoric attributed to Apollonius embalms the fact that at the opening of a springtime in the reign of Domitian, a great merchant fleet was lying at Malea, ready to sail to the western seas.' These wandering merchants, wherever they went, banded them- selves in colleges for mutual protection and for society. In the same way, old soldiers, on their return from long service on the frontiers, gathered in military brotherhoods at such places as Ostia or Misenum.' The veterans of Augustus seem to have become a distinct and recognised class, like the Augustales.^ Colleges of youth sprang up everywhere from the days of Nero, at Beneventum, Cremona, and Ameria, or at Moguntiacum, Lauriacum, and Poetovio.* They were formed, like our own sporting clubs, for exercise and healthy rivaliy, often under the patronage of the divine hero who, to all the moralists of that age, had become the mythic type of the continent vigour of early manhood. There is one sodality at least devoted to the preservation of chastity.* But it is balanced by the clubs of the "late sleepers" and ''late drinkers " of Pompeii.^
The colleges in which the artisans and traders of the Antonine age grouped themselves are almost innumerable, even in the records which time has spared. They represent almost every conceivable branch of industry or special skill or social service, from the men who laid the fine sand in the arena, to the rich wine merchants of Lyons or Ostia.^ The mere catalogue of these associations in an index will give an enlarged conception of the immense range and minute special- isation of Boman industry. It may be doubted whether a similar enumeration of our English crafts would be longer or more varied. The great trades, which minister to the first necessities of human life, occupy of course the largest space, the bakers, the cloth-makers, the smiths, carpenters, and wood-
* Juv. xiv. 276.
* JPhilostr. Apoll, Tyan, iv. 34.
» Or. Ifenz, 6111, 6886. ^ Ih. 4109.
• lb, 6414, 2211, 4095, 4100, 4096 ; C.LL. X. 6928, 1493 ; iii. 4046, 6678. « Or. ffensL 2401. ' aLL, iv. 676, 681. 8 Or. Hem, 4068, 4072, 4087, 7007.
266 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
merchants, trades often grouped together, the shoemakeis and fullers and carders of wool The mechanics, who made the arms and engines for the l^ions, naturally hold a prominent place. Nor less prominent are the boatmen of Ostia, and of the Bhone and the Sadna^ The sailors of these great rivers had several powerful corporations at Lyons, and, on many an inscription,' claim the wealthiest citizens, men who have gained the whole series of municipal honours, as their chiefs and patrons. Aries, which was then a great sea-port, had its five corporations of sailor-folk, and Ostia an equal number, charged with the momentous task of taking up the cargoes of the African corn-ships for the bakeries of Rome.' Transport by land is represented by colleges of muleteers and ass drivers in the Alps and Apen- nines.^ All the many trades and services which ministered to the wants or pleasures of the capital were similarly banded together, the actors and hom-blowers, the porters and paviors, down to the humble dealers in pastils and salt fish.^ We have seen that even the gladiators, in their barrack-prisons, were allowed to form their clubs. Although traces of these combinations are found in remote and obscure places all over the Soman world, it is at great conmiercial centres, at Ostia, Puteoli, Lyons, and Home itself, that they have left the most numerous remains They had probably for one of their objects the protection of their members against encroachments or fiscal oppression. Strabo once came across a deputation of fishermen on their way to plead with the Emperor for a reduction of their dues.^ Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that these trades unions were always organised for trade objects, or that the separate colleges were composed of people engaged in the same occupation. They had many honorary members from among the richer classes, and, even in the lower ranks, in defiance of the law,^ a dealer in salt might be enrolled among the boatmen of the Rhone, and member of a college of builders.^ In truth, the great object of association among these humble people appears to have been not so much the protection of their trade, as the cheer-
1 Or. Henz, 4248, 7205, 6950. ' Ih, 4105, 2619, 4118, 4112, 2625.
« Ih, 7007, 7264, 4110, 6950. • Boissier, lUL Rom. ii p. 286.
» Ih. 8655, 6029, 3178. ' Dig. L. 7.
^ Ih. 4098, 7206. * Boissier, lUl Horn, ii 287.
CHAP, ui THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAN LIFE 267
folnees of intercourse, the promotion of fellowship and good- will, tiie relief of the dulness of humdrum lives.
Probably no age, not even our own, ever felt a greater craving for some form of social life, wider than the family, and narrower than the State. It was a movement at which, as we have seen, even the greatest and strongest of the emperors had to conniva It penetrated society down to its lowest layers. Even the slaves and freedmen of great houses orgamsed themselves in colleges. There were colleges in the imperial household.^ T. Aelius Primitivus, chief of the imperial kitchen, being a man of great posthumous ambition, left the care of his own and his wife's monument to the coU^e of the palatine cooka^ In the inscriptions of Moesia there is the album of a Bacchic club of household slaves containing 80 names, with apparently different grades among them, designated by such titles as archimysta, houUtUa^ f rater and JUius? A similar club of the servile class, devoted to the worship of Isis, existed at Tarraco.*^ The officers of another bear the pompous titles of tribune, quaestor, and triumvir, and the slab records the thanks of one Hilara, that her ashes have been allowed to mingle in the same uru with those of Mida the chamberlain.^ A provincial treasurer at Ephesus, who was a vema Atcffusti, commits the custody of his wife's monument to five colleges of slaves and freedmen in the emperor's household. One of the colleges bears the name of Faustina. Another college is devoted to the cult of the Lares and images of Antoninus Pius.^ Private masters aeem to have encouraged the formation of such associations among their dependents, and sometimes to have endowed them with a perpetual foundation.^ It was probably politic, as well as kind, to provide for slaves social pleasures within the circle of the household, and thus to forestall the attrac- tions of the numerous clubs outside, which freely offered their hospitality.^ We may be sure that the college " which was in the house of Sergia Paulina" was not encouraged by the mistress without good reason.
^ Or, Senz, 6802. ut ossa sua in oUa Midaes coicerentur
* Ih. cum mort. esset.
» C/.Z. iil 2, 6150. « C./.Z. iii 6077, v, note.
« lb, ii. 6004. ' Or, ffenz, 2386, 4938, 4123.
* Or. Henz, 2863, Hilara viva rogavit ^ Such as that in Or, Henz. 6086.
268 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
Thus it appears that in every part of the Roman world, in the decaying little country town, and in the great trading centres, the same great movement of association is going on apace. It swept into its current almost every social grade, and every trade, handicraft or profession, the pastil-makers, the green-grocers and unguent sellers of Some, the muleteers of the Alps, the fullers of Pompeii, the doctors at Beneventum, the boatmen of the Seine, the wine merchants of Lyons. Men formed themselves into these groups for the most trivial or whimsical reasons, or for no reason at all, except that they lived in the same quarter, and often met^ From the view which the inscriptions give us of the interior of some of these clubs, it is clear that their main purpose was social pleasure. And this is especially true of the clubs of the humblest class. M. Boissier has well remarked that the poor workman, the poor freedman, with the brand of recent slavery upon him, who was often engaged in some mean or disgusting occupation, amidst a society which from tradition regarded any industry soiled by servile touch with distant scorn, must have felt themselves solitary exiles in the desert of a great town, the most awful desert in the world. The remote splendour of the court and aristocratic life must have deepened the gloom of isolation and helplessness. Shut out for ever from that brilliant world of fashion and pleasure and power, whose social life seemed so charming and gay and friendly, the despised and lonely toiler sought a refuge in little gatherings of people as lonely as himself. At some chance meeting, some one, more energetic than the rest, would throw out the suggestion to form a club, on the model of some of the old trade societies which had always been authorised by the State from the days of Numa, or of those newer associations which were now tacitly permitted under the guise of religion. A small entrance fee would meet, for the time, their modest expenses. In that age of generous or ambitious profusion, it was not hard to find some influential patron, a kindly gracious noble, or an aspiring or generous parvenu, to give the infant society his countenance, along with a substantial donation for the building of a club- house, and for simple convivial pleasures on his birthday, and other festivals which could easily be multiplied. Then the
^ Or. Hem. 6010, C!olIeg. Capitol inorum, etc ; of. Oio. Ad QuinL Frair. ii. 5.
CHAP. Ill THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAN LIFE 269
brethren met in solemn form to frame their constitution and commemorate their benefactor, on one of those many monu- ments which illuminate a social life on which the literature of the age is generally silent.
The continuity and repetition of proved political organisa- tion is a notable characteristic of the great races which have left, or are destiaed to leave, their mark on history. The British settlers on the prairies of Oregon or Manitoba immedi- ately order themselves into communities, which are modelled on a social system as old as the Heptarchy. The Latin race had perhaps an even more stubborn conservatism than the English. Under the most various circumstances, the Soman instiactively clung to forms and institutions of tested strength and elasticity, and consecrated by the immemorial usage of his raca The most distant and most humble muni- cipality was fashioned after the pattern of the great " city which had become a world." ^ It had its senate, the ordo splendi- dissimus et amplissimvs, and the popular assembly which elected the magistrates. The municipal magistrates, if they do not always bear the ancient names, reproduce in shadowy form the dictators, the praetors, the aediles, quaestors, and censors of the old republic.^ The same continuity of form is seen in the colleges. As the municipal town was modelled on the constitu- tion of the State, so we may say that the college was modelled - on the municipal town. The college, indeed, became a city for the brotherhood, at once a city and a home. They apply to it such terms as respublica collegii} The meetings often took place in a temple, whether of a patron deity or of an emperor, as those of the Soman Senate were held in the temple of Concord or of Bellona. There they elected their administrative ofl&cers, generally for a period of one year ; in some cases, by way of special distinction, for life. The heads of these little societies bear various names, magistri, curatores, quinquennodes, prtufectiy or praesides} They have also quaestors,*^ who managed their financial affairs, which, although perhaps on no great scale, still involved the investment of trust moneys to yield the prescribed amounts which had to be distributed either as burial
» ButiL Namat i. 63. * lb. 6127, 7181, 7182, 8217, 4188 (r.
« Or. ffenz. Ind. p. 154 sqq. ^^f^"" "^*^,^«*i^" J^'^^JJP^TAa ^^^ ^
*^ ^^ C.LL, X. p. 1168 ; ul (2) p. 1180.
» Ih, 4068, 4107. » Or. Bern. 2868, 7183, 6872.
870 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
payments, or in food and money on the high festivala. The number of the members was generally limited, either by the government in the interests of public order, or by the will of a benefactor, to prevent the pn^reesive diminution in the value of the divisible shares of the income.' A periodical revision of the roll of members was therefore conducted every five years, as it was in the municipality, by the chief officers, exercising for the time censorial powers in miniature. Fortu- nately the albums of three or four colleges have been preserved. The lists throw a vivid light on their constitution and social tone. We have drawn attention in a former chapter to the strict gradation of social rank in the city polity. The same characteristic is repeated in the collegiate organisation. In these humble plebeian coteries, composed of *" men without a grand- father," of men, perhaps, whose father was a slave, or of men who were slaves themselves, there emerges, to our astonishment, a punctilious observance of shadowy social distinctions, which ia an iaheritance from the exclusive aristocratic pride of the old republic. This characteristic has excited in some French critics and historians a certain admiration,' in which it is not altogether easy to join. Gradation of rank to ensure devotion and order in public service is a precious and admirable thing. But artificial and unreal distiactions, invented and conferred to flatter wealth, to stimulate or reward the largesses of the rich patron, to gratify the vulgar self-complacency of the parvenu, are only a d^rading form of mendicancy. Some indulgence is no doubt due to men who were still under the yoke of slavery, or only just released from it ; the iron had entered into their souls. But both the college and the municipality of the Antonine age cannot be relieved of the charge of purchased or expectant deference to mere wealth. Hence we cannot altogether share the pleasure of M. Boissier in these pale and vulgar reproductions of the hierarchy of a real aristocracy. But the image of the hierarchy is there, and it is very instructive. In a college of smiths in Tarraconensis, there were fifteen patrons at the head of the roll, followed by twelve decurions, including two doctors and a soothsayer, one
' Or. 2417, at ne plores adlegautur the oolL fabromm is to be limited to
quam nnmenis 8. s. etc ; C.I.L, IL 150. 1167, coUe^o hominum centum dum-
jtaxet constituta Cf. Plin. z. 88, where ' Boissier, Rel, Rom, iL 295.
CHAP. Ill THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAN UFE 271
man isolated by the honours of the hisMivm^ two honorary members, twenty-eight plain plebeian& There were also several "mothers" and "daughters" of the society.^ The album of another club at Ostia shows a list of nine patrons, two holders of quinquennial rank, and one hundred and twenty -three plebeians.^ The plebs of many colleges included slaves, and in more than one inscription the men of ingenuous and those of servile birth are cai*efully distinguished, the slaves being sometimes placed at the bottom of the roll* Yet it was surely a great advance when slaves and freemen could meet together for the time, on a certain footing of equality, for business or convivial intercourse. The rigid lines of old pagan society are indeed still marked on the face of these clubs. And yet many an inscription leaves the impression that these little societies of the old pagan world are nurseries, in an imperfect way, of the gentle charities and brotherliness which, in shy retire- ment» the young Church was cultivating in her disciples to be the ideal of the world.
These collies became homes for the homeless, a little fatherland, or pcUria, for those without a country. Some- times they may have met in low taverns, which were on that account jealously watched by some of the emperors.'^ But they generally attained to the possession of a club-room or sehola, a name which had been previously given to the lounging- room of the public baths. Sometimes the schola was erected at their own cost, the site being perhaps granted by some rich patron, or by the town council, on a vacant spot close to the basilica or the theatre.^ But frequently a hall was built for them by some generous friend. A like generosity often provided for them a little chapel of their patron deity, with a shaded court, or a balcony open to the air and sun, where the brethren took their common meals.* Or a rich patron, anxious to secure some care and religious observance of his last resting-place, would bequeath to a college a pleasant garden adjoining the tomb, with a house in which to hold their meetings.^ And, as a further security
^ Or. Eem. 4065. • Or, ffenz, 4088, 8298, 2279, 8787,
' 76. 4054, 2417, 4056. 4085.
in'/T'S.S!"^ 'i^r "?• -"lo"^ y^oweyer, « ^ 2417, solarium tectum junctum
4 n 7Z ' Fa a ?^' ^ -^ . * "» q«o populua coUegi a. a. cpuletur.
* D. Caas. 60. 6, rd re jrav^Xcta ^t d i r i ^ r
'WiArret ivuf(» jrarAwre, kt\. ' lb. 4070.
272 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
against neglect and oblivion, a sum of 10,000 or 15,000 sesterces would be invested to provide a dinner for the college on their benefactor's birthday.^ As years went on, the scene of many a pleasant gathering became a centre round which clustered a great deal of sentiment, and even pride. We may imagine that, allowing for differences of time and faith, the little school or shrine would, in the course of years, attract something of the feeling which consecrates an ancient village church in England, or a little Bethel which was built in the year of the visit of John Wesley. It became a point of honour to make gifts to the schola, to add to its comfort or beauty. One benefactor would redeem a right of ancient lights, or build a boundary wall.^ Another would make a present of bronze candelabra on a marble stand, with the device of a Cupid holding baskets in his hands.* Or a college would receive from its curator a gift of some silver statues of the gods, on the dedication of the schola, with a brass tablet, no doubt recording the eveut.*^ The gift of a place where the brethren of the club might be buried beside their wives or concubines, was probably, to these poor people, not the least valued benefaction.^ Many a humble dona- tion was probably made, which was too slight for a memorial But it happens that we have one record of gifts evidently offered by poor, insignificant people. It is contained in a very interesting inscription found upon a rock near the theatre at Philippi in Macedonia.* It records that P. Hostilius Phila- delphus, in recognition of the aedileship of the college, which had been conferred upon him, bore the expense of polishing the rock, and inscribing upon it the names of the members of a college of Silvanus, sixty-nine in number, together with a list of those who had presented gifts to their temple. The coU^ was a religious one, with a priest who is named in the first place. It is also a funerary society, and seems to be com- posed of freedmen and of slaves, either belonging to the colony or private masters. They had just erected a temple of their patron god, to which some had given subscriptions in money, while others made various offerings for its adornment One
1 Or. Hem, 65,900, 4088 ; cf. 4107, ' Ih. 4068. « Ih, 2502. 4866. ■ lb, 2400, 4093.
« lb. 2416, 4057. « C.LL. iii. 1, 633.
CHAP. Ill THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAN LIFE 87S
brother presents an image of the god in a little shrine, another statuettes of Hercules and Mercury. There is another donation of some stone -work in front of the temple, and Hostilius, at his own expense, cut away the rock to smooth the approach to the shrine. Most of the gifts are of trifling value, a poor little picture worth 15 de^Mtrii, a marble image of Bacchus costing not much more. But they were the offerings of an enthusiastic brotherhood, and the good Hostilius has given them an immortality of which they never dreamed.
The contributions of the members would generally have been but a sorry provision for the social and religious life of a college. Beproducing, as it did, the constitution and the tone of the city in so many traits, the college in nothing follows its model so closely as in its reliance on the generosity of patronage. At the head of the album of the society there is a Ust, sometimes disproportionately long, of its patroni, Crountless inscriptions leave us in no doubt as to the reason why the patron was elected. His raison d'itre in the slab is the same as in the city ; it is to provide luxuries or Bunosements for the society, which the society could not generally obtain for itself. The relation of patron and client is, of aU the features of ancient life, the one which, being so remote from the spirit of our democratic society, is perhaps most difficult for us to understand. The mutual obligations, enforced by a powerful traditional sentiment, were of the most binding, and sometimes burdensome character. And in that Form of relation, between former master and freedman, which became so common in the first age of the Empire, the old DEiaster was bound to continue his support and protection to bhe emancipated slave.^ Although there was much that was sordid and repulsive in the position of the client in Juvenal's and Martial's days, we must still recognise the fact that the fortune of the rich patron had to pay a heavy price Tor social deferenca Not less heavy was the demand made [>n the patrons of municipalities and colleges.
There must have been wide distinctions of dignity and importance among the industrial colleges of the Empire. The centonarii, the fabri, and dendrophoH of the more important centres, such as Aquileia, Lyons and Milan, the
* Marq. Priv. i. 203.
T
i74 SOCIAL UFE book ii
boatmen of Aries or Ostia, would probably have looked down with scorn on the flute-players of the Via Sacra, the hunters of Corfinium, or the muleteers of the Porta GaUica.^ And there was a corresponding variety in the rank of the patrons. Some are high officiids of the Empire, procurators of provinces, curators of great public works, or distinguished officers of the legions. Or they are men evidently of hi^ position and commanding influence in their province, priesto of the altar of Augustus, augurs of the colony, magistrateB or decurions of two or three cities.' Sometimes the patron is a great merchant, with warehouses of oil or wine at Lyons or Tarragona or Ostia.' Tet in spite of his wealth, the patron's social position in those days might be rather uncertain, and we may without difficulty, from modem analogies, believe that a new man might find his vani^ soothed, or his position made less obscure, by being known as the titular head of an ancient corporation of the cloth- workers, or dendrophori, or of the boatmen on the Sa6ne. Probably in obscure country towns, remote from the seat of Empire, these bourgeois dignities were even more valued.^ The humbler collies would have to be content with one of the new freedmen, such as the vulgar friends of Trimalchio, who, after a youth of shameful servitude, had leapt into fortune by some happy chance or stroke of shrewdness, and who sought a compensation for the contempt of the great world in the deference and adulation of those who waited for their largessea The election of a patron was an event of great moment, especially to a poor collega And it was conducted with a formal preciseness, and an assumption of dignity, which, at this distance of time, are sometimes rather ludicrous. In a little town of Cisalpine G^ul in the year 190, the college of smiths and clothworkers met in solemn session in their temple. Their quaestors, who may have had the financial condition of the coll^ in view, meide a formal proposal that the collie should set an example of the judicious reward of merit, by electing one Tutilius Julianus, a man distinguished by his modesty and liberality, as the patron of their society The meeting
> Or. Hem. 4082, 4118. » Or. ffenz. 7007, 4109.
« lb. 4082, 194. 78, 4077, 6654, 4109,
4069 ; C.I.L. iiL 1, 1209, 1497, 1051 ; * C.I.L. iu. 1968 ; Or. Ema. 8927.
X. 228 ; 1696 ; 8910. 8821. G275.
i»AP. in THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAN UFE 876
Bommended the sage propoeal of the quaestors, and formally molved that the honourable Julianus should be requested to accept the distinction, with an apology for so tardy a BBOOgnition of his merits, and that a brass plate, containing a ooiiy of this decree, should be placed above his door.^
It is significant that the patrons were, in very many cases, Beviri and Augustales, a body which in the provinces, as we have Men, was generally composed of new men of the freedman class. Altbongh they were steadily rising in importance and in strength of oxg^nisation, the provincial Augustales always ranked after the decurions of a town. They often displayed boundless liberality to their city and to their own order.^ But the leading Augustales seem to have been quite as generous to the other corporations who placed themselves under their patronage. And they were not unfirequently patrons of several colleges.' It is no long task to find men who were the titular protectors of two or three, of eight, or even of as many as twelve or fifteen colleges. One inscription to Cn. Sentius of Ostia would Mem to indude among his dependents almost every industrial Hdlege in that busy port^ Sentius must have been a very pealthy and a very generous man to accept the patronage of 10 many societies, which in those days expected or demanded that their honours should be paid for in solid cash. The srowning distinction of a statue, or a durable inscription, was jfben solemnly decreed with all seemly forms of deference or uutinted flattery in a full meeting of the society. But in a peat majority of cases we are amused or disgusted to read that, after all his other liberalities, the benefactor or his heir is permitted to pay for the record of popular gratitude.^ This fact may explain the extraordinary abundance of these honours, if it somewhat lowers their value in the eyes of posterity.
Bat, besides the benefactions which sprang either from imbition or real generosity, a vast number were inspired by the Boman passion for long remembrance, and for the continuity [rf funerary rituaL The very position of so many tombs by the side of the great roads beyond the city gates, was a silent
^ Or. Htm. 4188. « lb, 4109.
• Ih, 7116, 8914, 8928, 40S0, qni
GMniltates anat colL reliq. ' Ih. 8734, honore nsiis impeiiBam
* Ai 4109 ; 194, 4069, 4071, 4094, ramiait ; ct 7011, 6992, 7190, bo
£« SyriAT LIFE BOOK ii
sppeftl to ihe psKK trsi^jcr =iX so fecTK (he deputed. Tlie 2DQeftI s Also 'joec ez^PSK^r Side OK Okc sooe br tfaoae who faftd =o ocisfi' nfenas cf pr:LuC;zis:? cbor own ineuiutr or that of »xae one i£«rr IotssL I: s isLpoocLie to read vithoat some aikjCir:'CL :£e paja* of as. lui Spaaisa soldkz, that his brethren of thie erj^ggr zji J agitg «:ij^ grwf Hke his» if thej will only kerp the lasip acmiDS f ^r ener ov^ the tomb of his child.^ The aki>re opoleni took nure e^iaoocate iumha^m to ptoTide for the goardiaziship of their 'Iftss bjaKL"^^ They often attached to the uxnb a £eli ^or gari-rfg of ojoaderahle extent, to be calti- TBfied f'^r proit, or to bear the raseB for the annual offering. The whole area, the dimensions of whidi, in many inacriptioDS, are defined wiih mathematical {xecisicn, would be soironnded DT a wmll Within the encIosixr« there woold be a little shzine containing ftameiy c-f the dead, an arbonr and a well, and a hall in wi&ich the kindred of coming generations might hold their annual banquet, till the tie was dissolved br the cruel obli- vion of time.' There will be a cottage (ia&ema) in which a &eed- man or dependent of the house maj be lodged, to watch over the repxe of the dead.* But all these precautions, as the testator feels, were likely to be defeated in the end by the vicissitudeB of human fortunes* He had, indeed, before his eyes the fate of many a forsaken and forgotten tomb of old worthies of the BepubUa Families die out ; £uthfid freedmen and their children cannot keep their watch for ever. The garden will grow wild, a time may come when no kindly hand will poor (he libation or scatter the roses on the natal day. Families will die out, but a coU^e may go on for ever by the perpetual renewal of its members. Inspired with this idea, a worthy of Nimes created a funerary oolite to dine regularly in his honour.* It was to consist of thirty persons, and the number was to be maintained by co-optation into the places of deceased members. Members of the college who were obliged to be absent might send one of their friends to join in the repast Thus the dead man, who had taken such care to prolong his
> CLL, it 2102. xHixl, lat p. moE., 7SS5, 4SS7, 4070,
• Or. Hemx. 4S71. 4070, 4400, 7S«6 ; *^f^- ^.^ . ...
cf. Mmrq. Pr. L 870. ^ ^- 4866 ejnsqoa iii*o»I«i oUtm
* diue penaB aliqiwiii libeitonim meoram
* Or, Hemz. 4456 andimke in qoftnit . . . sint, 4637, 4S63. ■imoUcra, etc., 4510, 4400 ana qou ■ ik 6206.
SDto fe ett iDAoem cincta long, pi * Ih, 4366.
CHAP, m THE COLLEGES ASD FLLSEIAS . /--i^
memoTj. would at no distani dtte be fesdvelj celebrtxed bv people who barelj knew his name. Many anoiher lef: a bequest to a college to he speni in a fiMs: on ihe ;e^tator'$ memorial dar.* A feaedman of Mevania leaves a linv legacy of HS.1000 to the gnild of clothworkei^ of vhv^m ho 18 patron, with the oondidon that not less than twelve of their nomber shall feast onoe a vear in memonr of him/ A more liberal provision for convivial enjoyment was left to a college of Silvanns in honour of Domitian. It consist<Hi of the rents of four estates, with their appaiteuanoes« whioh were to be spent on the birthdays of the emperor and liis wife, "for all time to come," with the sacrifices piv>ix^r to such a holy season.' Due provision is often made for the seemly and impressive performance of a rite which was at once a religious duty and a convivial pleasure. There is a curious letter of the time of Antoninus Pius containing a deed of gift to the coU^e of the fahri at Xarbo, in return fiu- their constant favours to the donor. One Sextus Fadius presents them with the simi of 16,000 sesterces, the interest of which is to be di\'ided every year at the end of April for ever, at a banquet on his birthday ; the guests on this festive occasion are to be habited in their handsomest attire.^
But the fullest and minutest arrangements for these moilest meals are to be found in the document relating to the foundation of the poor college of Diana and Antinous, to wliich reference has already been made. The master of the feast was taken in regular order from the roll of the society. Each brother had to accept this office in his turn, or pay a fine of five shillings of our money. The regular festivals of the club were six in the year, on the natal days of Diana and Antinous, and those of the foimder and some of his relatives. There is some obscurity in the regulations for these common feasts, and at first sight they are a ludicrous contrast to the pontiff's famous banquet in the days of Julius Caesar, described by Macrobius.* M. Boissier naturally refuses to imagine that even the poor brethren of the dub of Diana and Antinous would be contented with bread, four sardines, a bottle of good wine, with hot water and the
» Or, Henz. 8999, 4076, 4107, 4088. * lb, 7216 (a.d. 149).
• Ih, 8999. » Macrob. Sat, iii. 13, 11-18.
» lb, 6086.
278 SOCIAL LIFE book ii
proper table service. The slave steward of Horace probably found much better fare in his papifui} Dr. Mommsen has resolved the mystery. It is evident, from several inscriptions, that sportuUu were sharply distinguished from distributions of bread and wine.' The sp(yrtvla was a gift of richer food or dainties, which in public distributions might be carried home ; it was sometimes an equivalent in money. If those who received the vpoHvla preferred to enjoy it at a common table, an appointed member of the college would have the food prepared, or convert the money into dishes for the feast The bread and wine he might add from his own pocket, if they were not provided by the foundation. How much for these meals came from the club funds, and how much out of the pocket of the magister coenae, is not always clearly stated. But we may be sure, from the tone of the times, that additions to a modest menu were often made by the generosity of patrons and officers of the club.
It would be futUe and uninteresting to pursue into aU iU minute details throughout the inscriptions, the system of sporttUae founded by so many patrons and benefactors. Any one who wishes can temperately regale himself for hours at these shadowy club -feasts of the second century. Perhaps the clearest example of such distributions is the donation of Marcellina and Aelius Zeno to the little college of Aesculapius, to which reference has been made for another purpose.' On seven different anniversaries and festivals, sums of money, with bread and wine, were distributed to the brethren of the collie in due proportions, according to their official dignity and social rank. Thus, in the division on the 4th of November, the fete- day of the society, the shares in money, according to the various grades, from the father of the college downwards, are six, four, and two. The division of the wine, according to social rank, follows the proportion of nine, six, and threa A slightly different scale is followed on the birthday of the Emperor Antoninus Pius in September, and on the day for New Year's gifts in January. But in these benefactions the difference of grade is always observed, the patron and the chief magistrates and
^ Boissier, lUl. Horn, iL 819 ; Marq. 2^5 (panem viBiim et sportaUs dedit), iV. L 208 ; Hor. Ep. 1 14, 21. 8949.
* Momins. De CoUeg, p. 109; cf. Or, * Or. Henz. 2417.
CHAP. Ill THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAN UFE «79
magnateB of the society always receiving a laiger share than tiie obscure brethren at the bottom of the list. In the college of Aesculapius, Marcellina herself, and Aelius Zeno, the two great benefactors of the society, along with the highest of its dignitaries, are allotted three times as much as the plebeian brother. The excellent Marcellina, who, in the fourth century might perhaps have followed S. Jerome and Paula to Bethlehem, was the widow of a good and tender husband, who had been curator of the imperial picture galleries.^ Had she been drawn into the ranks of that hidden society, who were beginning to lay their dead in the winding vaults beneath the Appian Way, she would certainly have dealt out her bounty on a different scale and on different principles. Her bequest to the college of Aesculapius reveals how deep in the soul of a charitable pagan woman, who was probably sprung from servile stock, lay that aristocratic instinct of the Eoman world which survived the advent of the Divine Peasant and the preaching of the fishermen of Galilee, for far more than four hundred years.
The most curious and interesting among the regulations for these club entertainments are those relating to order and decorum. The club of Diana and Antinous was not very select, being probably composed of poor freedmen and slaves.^ The manners of this class, if we may judge by the picture given by Petronius, were, to say the least, wanting in reserve and self-restraint. The great object of such reunions was, as the founder tells us, that the brethren might dine together cheerfully and quietly.^ Hence he most wisely orders that all serious proposals and complaints shall be reserved for business meetings. If any member quits his place or makes a disturbance, he is to pay a fine of four sesterces. Twelve sesterces is the penalty for insulting a fellow -guest. The man who, under the influence of good wine, so far forgot himself as to insult the chief officer of the society, was to be punished by a forfeit of twenty sesterces, which would probably be a powerful discouragement of bad manners to most of the brotherhood of Antinous.
Many another gift or bequest, of the same character as
1 FL ApoUoni Proc Au^. ^ui fuit a cf. the oompositioii of the club in Or,
piuacothecis . . Optimi piiBsimi, etc. 2394.
* Or, ffenss, 6086, qaisqais ex hoc ' lb. at qaieti et hilares diebus
edUegio msrrua defanctus faerit, etc. ; solemDibaa epalemnr, etc.
280 SOCIAL UFE book ii
Marcellina's, meets the eye of the stodent of the inaciiptioDS. The motives are singularly onifonn — to repay the honours con- ferred by a college, to celebrate the dedication of a statue, to save from forgetfulness a name which to us is only a bit of the wreckage of time. Everything is conventional about these be- questa The money is nearly always left for the same purpose, an anniversary repast in honour of the humble dead, of tbe emperor, or of the patron gods. Sometimes the burial fee is refunded to the college, with the prayer that on the natal day the poor pittance derived from the gift be spent on pious rites, with roses strewn upon the grave.^ Another will beg only that the lamp in the humble vault may be kept for ever burD- ing. These pieties and longings, which have their roots in a rude pagan past before the dawn of history, were destined to prolong their existence far into Christian times. The lamp will be kept burning over many a tomb of saint or martyr in the fourth or fifth century. And the simple feasts which the clothworkers of Brescia, or the boatmen of Ostia or Lyons, observed to do honour to some departed patron, will be celebrated, often in riotous fashion, over the Christian dead in the days of S. Augustine and S. Paulinus of Nola.^
Dr. Mommsen believes that the collegiate life which blos- somed forth so luxuriantly in the early Empire, was modelled on the sacred union of the Roman family.' And the instinct of the Roman nature for continuity in institutions prepossesses us in favour of the theory. In the college endowed by Marcellina and Zeno, there are a father and a mother, and else- where we read of daughters of a college The members some- times call themselves brethren and sisters.^ One of the feasts of the brotherhood is on the day sacred to " dear kinship," when relations gathered round a common table, to forget in kindly intercourse any disturbance of affection.* They also met in the early days of January, when presents were exchanged. Above all, like the primal society, they gathered on the birthdays of the revered dead to whom they owed duty and remembrance. And in many cases the members of the society reposed beside
» Or. ffem, 4107. * Or. Henz, 2417, 4066, 2892, 8774,
« S. Paul. NoL Carm, xxvil 647- ^^^V^o?;^*^?f' ••• ir it ..* j- 686 ; S. Aug. £p, 82 ; Semu v. ^' ^- 2417, Item vm K. Mart, die
° ^ Karae cognationis eodem loco divi-
' De Coll, p. 8. derent sportulas, eta
CHAP. Ill THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAN UFE 281
one another in deatb.^ The collie was a home of fraternal equality in one sense. As M. Boissier has pointed out, the members had equal rights in the full assembly of the club. A quorum was needed to pass decrees and to elect the officers. And, in the full conclave, the slave member had an equal voice with the freeman, and might, perchance, himself even be elected to a place of dignity.^ He might thus, in a very humble realm, wield authority for the time over those who were accustomed to despise him. It is true that he needed his master's leave to join a college, and his master had the legal power to deny to him the last boon of burial by the hands of his collegiate brethren.* Yet it was undoubtedly a great stride in advance when a slave could sit at table or in council on equal terms with free-born men, and might receive pious Soman burial, instead of being tossed like a piece of carrion into a nameless grave. The society of one of these humble colleges must have often for the moment relieved the weariness and misery of the servile life, and awakened, or kept alive, some sense of self-respect and dignity. The slave may have now and then felt himself even on the edge of political influence, as when his college placarded its sympathies in an election contest on the walls of PompciL Tet we must not allow ourselves to be deceived by words and appearances. In spite of legislative reform, in spite of a growing humane sentiment, whether in the Porch or the Christian Church, the lot of the slave and of the poor plebeian will be in many respects as hopeless and degraded in the reign of Honorius as it was in the reign of Trajan.^ Even in the reign of Trajan, it is true, perhaps even in the reign of Nero, there were great houses like the younger Pliny's, where the slaves were treated as humble friends, where their weddings were honoured by the presence of the master, where, in spite of legal disabilities, they were allowed to dispose of their savings by wilL^ And the inscriptions record the gratitude
^ Or. ffenz, 2899, 4078, 4098. Sat. i. 11, 12 sqq. ; C, TheocL iz. 6, 2,
« CLL. I 1406 ; ii 6927. ^ ' ^"- ^^» 8 ; ix. 7, 4 ; ix. 9, 1 ; ix. 12,
» Momma. De CoU, p. 102 ; Plin. Ep. ' » PHn. Ep. yiii 16, § 1 ; on the more
▼iii- 10* humane feeling to slaves, cf. Sen. £p,
^ For the contempt for slaves in the 47 ; De Ira^ liL 24, 82 ; De CUm, i.
fourth and firth centuries, v. S. Hieroii. 18 ; De Ben. iii 18, 19, 20 ; Jnv. xiv.
j^ 54, § 6 ; Salv. De Ovh. Dei, iv. 26. 16 ; Spart Hadr. o. 18 ; Wallon,
For humaner sentiment, cf. Macrob. UExlav. i. c. 11 ; Marq. Pr. L 177.
SOUAL UFE Kx>K n
tad aflectioD to their mMtrm and noitreneB of mmnj who were in actual alaTery, or who had but joat emeiged from ik Bat theae jnttanrffi eaimot make in fofgei the cmel contempt and barfaaritj of which the alare was stOl the rictim, and which was to be hia lot for manj genentioBs jet to ran. And therelore the impforement in the condition of the slare or of his poor {debeian brother by the theorrtical equality in the ocdlegea, maj be eaaily exaggerated. In the humblest dL theae dabs, the distribotion of good Cue and money is not aoooniing to the needs of the members, bat regolated by their social and official rank. We cannot feel confident that in social intercoorse the same distinction may not hare been coldly obaenred. In modern times we ofken see a readiness to accord an equality of material enjoyment, along with a stiff gnaidian- diip of social diBtinctions which are often microscopic to the d^ached obserrer. And it woald not be sorprisii^ to discorer that the " master ^ or the ** mother ^ of the cdlege of Antinoos protected their dignity by an icy reserve at its festive meetings.
The question has been raised whether the ordinary colleges were in any sense charitable institotions for mutual help. And certainly the inscriptions are singularly wanting in records of bequests made directly for the relief of poverty, for widows and orphans or the sick. The donations or bequests of rich patrons seem to have had chiefly two objects in view, the commemoration of the dead and the provision for social and convivial enjoyment It is true that, just as in municipal feasts, there is often a dis- tribution of money among the members of colleges. But this appears to be deprived of an eleemosynary character by the fact that by far the largest shares are assigned to those who were presumably tiie least in need of them. Yet it is to be recollected that we probably have left to us the memorial of only a small proportion of these gifts, and that, if we had a full list of all the benefactions bequeathed to some of the colleges, the total amount received by each member in the year might be very considerable, if judged by the standard of ordinary plebeian incomes. To tiie ambitious slave any addition, how- ever small, to Mb growing fetfulvamy which might enable him to buy his freedom, would certainly be grateful
There is one class of colleges, however, which were un-
CHAF. in THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAN LIFE
doabiedlj fonned to meet various exigencies in the ooone of life, as well as to make a provision for decent bnriaL These are the military dubs, on the objects and constitution of which a flood of light has been thrown by the study of the inscrip- tions in the great l^onaiy camps of North Africa.^ A passage of Yegetius shows us the provident arrangement made by government for the future of the ordinary legionary.' It is well known that, on the accession of each new emperor, or on the occurrence of some interesting event in the history of the prince's family, or of some great military success, and often without any particular justification, a donative was distributed throughout the army. It sometimes reached a considerable amount, ranging firom the 25 denarii granted by Vespasian, to the 5000 of M. AureUus.* One half of this largess was by orders set aside, and retained under the custody of the standard-bearers, to provide a pension on the soldier's retire- ment from the service. Another fund, entirely different, was formed by the soldiers' own contributions, to furnish a decent burial for those who died on service. But the law against the formation of colleges fell with peculiar severity on the soldier.^ Not even for a religious purpose was he permitted to join such a society. This prohibition, however, seems to have been relaxed in the case of the ofiBicers, and some of the more highly skilled corpa^ And we have among the inscrip- tions of Lambaesis a few instructive records of these military colleges.^
Lambaesis, as we have seen, was one of those camps wliich developed into a regular municipality, after the recognition of soldiers' marriages by Septimius Severua Henceforth the camp became only a place of drill and exercise, and ceased to be the soldier's home. And on the ground where the soldiers' huts used to stand, there are left the remains of a number of buildings of the basilica shape, erected probably in the third century, which were the club-houses of the officers of the Tertia Augusta. The interior was adorned with statues of imperial personsges, and on the wall was inscribed the law of the college,
* Cagtutt, UAmUs Bom. pp. 467 sqq. * Of. If arcian ap. Momma. Ik Coll.
* Veget ii. 20. p. 87, neve militea collegia in oaatria
* D. CasB. 66. 22 ; Capitol. M, ArU, habeant
e. 7 ; D. Caaa. 78. 8 ; Oagnat, p. 469 ; ^ Cacpat, pw 408.
Maiq. lUhn. St. ii. pp. 186, 648. ^ CJ.L. viiL 2662-7.
284
SOCIAL LIFE
BOOK II
commencing with an expression of gratitude for the very liberal pay which enabled the collie to make provision for the future of its members.^ The provision was made in various ways. An ambitious young ofBcer was allowed a liberal viaticum for a journey across the sea to seek promotion* If promotion came, he received another grant to equip him. One half the amount granted in these cases was mercifully paid to him in the unpleasant contingency of his losing his grada If he died on active service, his heir received a payment on the larger scala And, when a man, in due course, retired from the army, he received the same sum under the name of aniUarium, which has puzzled the antiquary.^
It has been maintained that these military clubs were really and primarily funerary societies.* And provision for burial was certainly one of their object& Yet, on a reading of the law of the society of the Comi^cines, it may be doubted whether the subject of burial is more prominent than the other contingencies of the officer's life, and in some of the inscriptions, burial is not even alluded to. The grant on retirement or promotion, and the grant to his heir on the death of a member, are the same. But probably the majority of officers had the good fortune to carry the money with them into peaceful retirement, if not into higher rank in another corps. In this case they would probably join another college, whether of soldiers or veterans, and secure once more the all -important object of a decent and pious interment The military clubs seem rather intended to furnish an insur- ance against the principal risks and occasions of expenditure in a soldier's career. A calculation shows that, after providing for all these liabilities, the military college must have had a considerable surplus.^ How it was spent, it is not hazardous to conjecture. If the poor freedmen and slaves at Ostia or Lanuvium could afford their modest meals, with a fair £dlowance of good wine, drunk to the memory of a generous
^ Cagnat, pp. 467, 540 ; cf. Boissier L'A/r, Bom, d. 111. C.LL. viii. 2664, optiones scholam snam cum statuis et iniaginibus domus div. ex largissiniis stipendiis . . . fecerunt, etc
^ C.LL. viiL 2662, S, 4; 2567, iii. 3524 ; Henz, 6790 ; Cagnat, p. 472 ; Marq. Rom. St. iL 644.
• Cagnat, p. 474.
* The Comicines of the Srd Legion at Lambesi paid an entrance fee of 750 denarii {Soamnari nomine). The anu- larinm on retirement, and the funera- ticium, were each 500 denarii. It would seem that there must have been a con- siderable surplus. CLL, Tiii 2657.
CHAP. Ill THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAN LIFE 286
benefactor, we may be sure that the collie of the Comiciiries at Lambesi would relieve the tedium of the camp by many a pleasant mess dinner, and that they would have been astonished and amused on such occasions to hear themselves described merely as a burial society.
The foundation law of the college of Diana and Antinous betrays some anxiety lest the continuity of the society should be broken. And in many a bequest, the greatest care is taken to prevent malversation or the diversion of the funds from their original purpose.^ We feel a certain pathetic curiosity, in reading these records of a futile eflfort to prolong the memory of obscure lives, to know how long the brotherhoods continued their meetings, or when the stated offerings of wine and Sowers ceased to be made. In one case the curiosity is satisfied and we have before our eyes the formal record of the extinction of a college. It is contained in a pair of wooden tablets found in some quarry pits near Alburnus, a remote village of Dacia. The document was drawn up, as the names of the consuls show, in the year 167, the year following the fierce irruption of the Quadi and Marcomanni into Dacia, Pannonia, and Noricum, in which Alburnus was given to the flames.^ Artemidorus the slave of ApoUonius, and Master of the college of Jupiter Cemenius, along with the two quaestors, places it on record, with the attestation of seven witnesses, that the college has ceased to exist. Out of a membership of fifty -four, only seventeen remain. The colleague of Artemi- dorus in the mastership has never set foot in Alburnus since his election. The accounts have been wound up, and no balance is left in the chest For a long time no member has attended on the days fixed for meetings, and, as a matter of course, no subscriptions have been paid. All this is expressed in the rudest, most ungrammatical Latin, and Artemidorus quaintly concludes by saying, that, if a member has just died, he must not imagine that he has any longer a college or any claim to funeral payments ! The humble brothers of the society, whom
^ Or. Hem, 6086, nniversi consentire mine or quarry about 1780, along with
debemoB at longo tempore in veterescere some other private documents of a
poanmuB ; cf. 4857, 4360, 4366, 4386, commercial character ; v. C.I.L, iii.
4895. p. 213, and 921. The dates range from
131 to 167 A.D. Cf. Or. Henz. 6087;
• The diptych, which has been singii- Schiller, Oesch. der r^m, Kaiserseit, i.
larly preserved, was found in a deserted 2, p. 643.
286 SOCIAL UFE book ii
Artemidorus reproaches for their faithless Diligence, may probably have fled to some refuge when their masters' lands were devastated by the Marcomanni, or been swept on in the fierce torrent of invaders which finally broke upon the walls of Aquileia.
BOOK m.
W:BC PHILOSOPHIA sine VIBTUTE est NEC SINE
PHILOSOPHIA VIRTUS
I
CHAPTER I
THE PHILOSOPHIO DIBSOTOS
PhUiOSOPHT in the time of Seneca was a very different thing from the great cosmic systems of Ionia and Magna Oraeda, or even from the system of the older Stoicism. Speculative interest had long before his time given way to the study of Qioral problems with a definite practical aim. If the stimulus of the searching method of Socrates gave an impetus for a aentury to abstract speculation, it had an even more decided ind long-lived influence in diverting thought to moral questions bona the old ambitious paths. His disciples Antisthenes Uid Aristippus prepared the way for the Stoic and Epicurean schools which dominated the Soman world in the last century of the Bepublic and the first of the Empire. And even Plato and Aristotle indirectly helped forward the movement It is not merely that, for both these great spirits, the cultivation of oharacter and the reform of society have a profound interest Bat even in their metaphysics, they were paving the way for the more introspective and practical turn which was taken by post- Aristotelian philosophy, by giving to what were mere conceptions of the mind a more real existence than to the things of sensa^ The " ideas " or " forms " which they contrast with the world of concrete things, are really creations of the individual mind of which the reality must be sought in the
1 See ZeUer, Phil, der Grieeh, ill. 1, 11^ 14, Jener dualistiBche Idealismiis, vdohen Plato begriiDdet, aud auch imtoteles nioht gnindsatzlich iiber- vnnden hatta, fnhrt in letzter Bezie- Inng aaf nichts anderes znriick, als nf den Oegensatz dee Inneren und AeniMron des Denkens and der gegen-
standlichen Welt . . . £s war nor ein Schritt weiter in dieser Richtnng, wenn die nacharistotelische Philoeopnie den Menschen in gmndtiitslicher Abkehr von der AoBsenwelt auf rich selbat wie«, um in seinem Innem die fiefrie* digimg zn snohen, etc.
290 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book in
depths of consciousness, however they may be divinised and elevated to some transcendental region beyond the limits of sense and time. With Aristotle, as with Plato, in the last resort, the higher reason is the true essence of man, coming into the body from a diviner world, and capable of lifting itself to the ideal from the cramping limitations of sensuous life. The philosopher in the PhoLedo who turns his gaze persistently from the confusing phantasmagoria of the senses to that realm of real existence, eternal and immutable, of which he has once had a vision, is really the distant progenitor of the sage of Stoicism, who cuts himself off from the external objects of desire, to find within a higher law, and the peace which springs from a life in harmony with the Beason of the world.
The ancient schools, if they maintained a formal individu- ality even to the days of Justinian,^ had worked themselves out A host of scholarchs, from all the cities of the Greek East, failed to break fresh ground, and were content to guard the most precious or the least vulnerable parts of an ancient tradition. Moreover, the scrutiny of the long course of specu- lation, issuing in such various conclusions, with no criterion to decide between their claims, gave birth to a scepticism which sheltered itself even under the great name of the Academy. And as the faith in the truth of systems dwindled, the marks of demarcation between them faded ; men were less inclined to dogmatise, and began to select and combine elements from long discordant schools. In this movement the eclectic and the sceptic had very much the same object in view — the support and culture of the individual moral life.^ The sceptic sought his ideal in restrained suspense of judgment and in moral calm. The eclectic, without regard to speculative consistency, and with only a secondary interest in speculation, sought for doctrines from any quarter which provided a basis for the moral life, and, in the conflict of sjrstems on the deeper questions, would fall back, like Cicero, on intuition and the consent of consciousnesa^ Creative power in philosophy was no more. Speculative curiosity, as pictured in the Phaedo or
> See Luc. Ewn, c 3, awrH-aimu ix Apoll. T, L 7, &8. « Zeller, iii. 1. Id, fiaaikitat /uffBwpopd rtt o6 ^\ri xarh, * lb, 493-5 ; Uberweg, HiaL ^IhiL
yivri T041 0tXotf^A0oif, ZrciilVoif X^w, ktK i. 220 ; Cic De Nat, Dear, i. c. 17 : D§
Of. Capitol. M, AfU. c 8 ; Philostr. Fin, I c 9,
CHAP. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR 291
the ThMuUtu^ had lost its keenness. The imperious craving was for some guide of life, some medicine for the deeply-felt maladies of the souL
The extinction of the &ee civic life of Greece, the conquests of Macedon, the foundation of the world-wide empire of Bome, had wrought a momentous moral change. In the old city- stete, religion, morals, and political duty were linked in a gracious unity and harmony. The citizen drew moral support and inspiration from ancestral laws and institutions clothed with almost divine authority. Even Plato does not break away from the old trammels, but requires the elders of his Utopia as a duty, after they have seen the vision of God, to descend again to the ordinary tasks of government. But when the corporate life which supplied such vivid interests and moral support was wrecked, the individual was thrown back upon himself. Morals were finally separated &om politics. Henceforth the great problem of philosophy was how to make character self-sufficing and independent ; how to find the beatitude of man in the autonomous will, fenced against all assaults of chance and change.^ At the same time, the foundation of great monarchies, Macedonian or Soman, embracing many tribes and races and submerging old civic or national barriers, brought into clearer light the idea of a uni- veraal commonwealth, and placed morals on the broad founda- tion of a common human nature and universal brotherhood. The mundane city of old days, which absorbed, perhaps too completely, the moral life and conscience of her sons, has vanished for ever. And in its place and over its ruins has riaen an all-embracing power which seems to have all the sweep of an impersonal force of nature, though it is sometimes impelled by one wild, lawless will. If, in return for the loss of civic freedom, ambitious and patriotic energy, or pride of eiyic life, it has given to its subjects a marvellous peace and order and culture, have not the mass of men become grosser and more materialised? If there is greater material well- being and better administration, have not the moral tone and ideal, in the lack of stimulus, been lowered ? Has not vice beoome more shameless, and the greed for all things pleasant grown harder and more cruel? Are not the mass of men
^ Bu88el], Sehaol of PlalOy p. 264 ; ZeUer, iii. 1 ; p. 8, 9.
292 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
hopelessly and wearily wandering in a tangled maze without a clue ? ^
With such questionings ringing in his inner ear, the man with some lingering instinct of goodness might well crave, beyond anything else, for an inner law of life which should bring order into the chaos of his conduct and desires.' And philosophy, having in magnificent effort failed to scale the virgin heights, fell back on conduct, which seemed then, even more than to a lost teacher of our youth, " three-fourths of Ufa" The great science which, in the glory and fresh vigour of the Hellenic prime, aspired to embrace all existence and all knowledge, to penetrate the secret of the universe and Gkni, by general consent narrowed its efforts to relieve the struggles of this transient life set "between two eternities." The human spirit, weary of the fruitless quest of an ever-vanishing ideal of knowledge, took up the humbler task of solving the ever-recurring problem of human happiness and conduct Henceforth, in spite of traditional dialectic discordance, all the schools. Stoic or Epicurean, Sceptic or Eclectic, are seeking for the secret of inner peace, and are singuleirly unanimous in their report of the discovery.* The inner life of the spirit becomes all in alL Speculation and political activity are equally un- important to the true life of the soiQ. Calm equipoise of the inner nature, undisturbed by the changes of fortunes or the solicitations of desire, is the ideal of all, under whatever differ- ence of phrase. What has he to do with any single state who realises his citizenship in the great commonwealth of man ? If the secret of peace cannot be won by launching in adventurous thought into the Infinite, perchance it may be found in discipline of the rebellious wilL Philosophy, then, must become the guide of life, the healer of spiritual maladies.^ It must teach the whole duty of man, to the gods, to the state, to parents and elders, to women and to slaves. It must attempt the harder task of bringing some principle of order into the turmoil of
' On pessimism in the reign of * Zeller, iii. 1, pp. 12, 14 ; cf. Baor,
Angastns, v. Boissier, Bjtl, Bom, i p. Ch, Hist, i. p. 14 (Tr.). 241. Cf. Sen. De Ira, iL B; De Ben.
i. 10 ; Ad Marc 20, 22 ; Toe. Hist, it ^ Cic. Tusc iii. S, est profecto animi
87 ; Petron. 88. medicina philosophia ; Sen. ^. 22,
> Cf. Epict. iii. 18, §§ 9, 10, where the vena tangenda est ; Ep, 58 ; Epust iiu
contrast oetween the "pax Romana" 28, § 80, (arpeidy im rd tw ^\oa6^Q¥
and moral unrest is drawn. tf^oXaoi^.
CHAP. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR 293
emotion and passion : it must teach us, amid the keen claims of competing objects of desire, to distinguish the true from the fedse, the permanent from the fleeting.
The moral reformer cannot indeed dispense with theory and a ground of general principles/ but he will not forget that his main business is to impart the ars vivendi ; he will be more oc- cupied with rules which maj be immediately applied in practice, than with the theory of morals. A profound acquaintance with the pathology of the soul, minute study of the weaknesses of character, long experience of the devices for counteracting them, will be worth far more than an encyclopsedic knowledge of centuries of speculation.^ He will not undervalue the moral discourse, with the practical object of turning souls from their evil ways ; but he has only contempt for the rhetoric of the class-room which desecrates solemn themes by the vanities of phrase-making.^ The best and most fruitful work of practical philosophy is done by private counsel, adapted to the special needs of the spiritual patient. He must be encouraged to make a full confession of the diseases of his soul.^ He must be trained in daily self-examination, to observe any signs of moral growth or of backsliding. He must be checked when over confident, and cheered in discouragement He must have his enthusiasm kindled by appropriate examples of those who have trodden the same path and reached the heights.^
This serious aim of philosophy commended itself to the intensely practical and strenuous spirit of the Eomans. And although there were plenty of showy lecturers or preachers in the first century who could draw fashionable audiences, the private philosophic director was a far more real power. The triumph of Aemilius Faulus brought numbers of Greek exiles to Italy, many of whom found a home as teachers in Eoman families.^ Panaetius, who revolutionised Stoicism, and made it a working system, profoundly influenced the circle of Scipio Aemilianus, in whose house he lived. Great generals and leaders of the last age of the Eepublic, a Lucullus or a Fompey, often carried philosophers in their train. From Augustus to
^ Sen. Ep. 94, § 5, § 22. » Plat. (?) De Lib. EcL c 14.
s «L, lu 8 A * ^Uer, Pka. der OrUeh. iiL 1, 487 ;
^' ^' ^ °' Pint Aemil, P. c. vi. ; Plin. E. N,
» Pint Le lUct, BtU, Avd.Q.B\ Epiot xxxv. 135 ; Polyb. xxxiL 10. But ct
iii28, §28. Mahaffy on Zeller's view, in Greek
* Plat De RmL RoL And. c. 12. World under Sonum Sway, p. 67.
294 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
Elagabalus we hear of their presence at the imperial court The wife of Augustus sought consolation on the death of Drusus from Areus, her husband's philosophic director.^ Manj of these men indeed did not take their profession very seriously, and in too many cases they were mere flatterers and parasites whom the rich patron hired from ostentation and treated with contumely.* Both Nero and Hadrian used to amuse themselves with the quarrels and vanity of their philosophers.^ But in the terror of the Claudian Caesars, the Stoic director is often seen perform- ing his proper part. Julius Canus, when ordered to execution by Caligula, had his philosopher by his side, with whom he dis- cussed till the last fatal moment the future of the souL^ The officer who brought the sentence of death to Thrasea found him absorbed in conversation with the Cynic Demetrius on the mystery which the lancet was in a few moments to resolve.^
Of this great movement to cultivate a moral life in paganism L. Annaeus Seneca was not the least illustrious representative. Musonius, his younger contemporary, and Epictetus, the pupil of Musonius, were engaged in the same cure of souls, and taught practically the same philosophic gospeL They equally paid but slight attention to the logic and physics of the older schools.* Virtue, to all of them, is the one great end of philo- sophic effort. They were all deeply impressed by the spiritual wants of the time,^ and they all felt that men needed not subtleties of disquisition or rhetorical display, but direct, personal teaching which appealed to the conscience. To all of them the philosopher is a physician of souls. Musonius and Epic- tetus were probably loftier and more blameless characters than Seneca. Epictetus especially, from the range and simple attractiveness of his teaching, might seem to many a better re- presentative of the philosophic director than Seneca. Seneca, as the wealthy minister of Nero, excites a repugnance in some minds, which prevents them doing justice to his unquestion- able power and fascination. His apparent inconsistency has
* Sen. Ad Marc, 4. " Tao. Ann, xvi. 34.
« Luc. Dt ifef-c. Comd, 2, 4, 25. « Zeller, iii 1, 666, 663.
» Tao. Ann. xiv. 16. etiam sapientiae 7 Epict. iii. 23. ^ 24-84 ; i 4. § 9,
doctoribus tempixs impertiebat jK)8t oSroy, im^iv, iiSri 8i* ain-oG S^rarai
epulas, utque contraria adseverantmm XpiJcrtinror At^aytypiixrKHP, B», wij rodt
&cordia frueretar ; Spart. Hixdr. 15. ^eoiJt, xpok6tt€is &r0piaTe. Ilotaw rpo-
* Sen. De Tranq, xir. § 7. itoin^ ;
CHAP. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR S95
condemned him in the eyes of an age which professes to believe in the teaching of the Mount, and idolises grandiose wealth and power. His rhetoric offends a taste that can tolerate and applaud verbose banalities, with little trace of redeeming art He cannot always win the hearing accorded to the repentant sinner, whose dark experience may make his message more real and pungent. The historian, however, must put aside these rather pharisaic prejudices, and give Seneca the poeition as a moral teacher which his writings have won in ages not less earnest than ours. Nor need we fear to recognise a power which led the early Fathers to trace the spiritual vision of Seneca to an intercourse with S. Paul,^ supported by a feigned correspondence which imposed on S. Augustine and S. Jerome.' The man who approaches Seneca thinking only of scandals gleaned from Tacitus and Dion Cassius,^ and frozen by a criticism which cannot feel the power of genius, spiritual imagination, and a profound moral experience, behind a rhetoric sometimes forced and extravagant, had better leave him alona The Christianity of the twentieth century might well hail with delight the advent of such a preacher, and would certainly forget all the accusations of prurient gossip in the accession of an immense and fieiscinating spiritual force. The man with any historical imagination must be struck with amazement that such spiritual detachment, such lofty moral ideals, so pure an enthusiasm for the salvation of souls, should emerge from a palace reeking with all the crimes of the haunted races of Greek legend. That the courtier of the reigns of Caligula and Claudius, the tutor and minister of Nero, shoidd not have escaped some stains may be probable : that such a man should have composed the Letters and the Bt Ira of Seneca is almost a miracle. Yet the glow of earnestness and conviction, the intimate knowledge of the last secrets of guilty souls, may well have been the reward of such an ordeal
Seneca's career, given a latent fimd of moral enthusiasm, was really a splendid preparation for his mission, as an analyst of a corrupt society and a guide to moral reform. He lived
^ TertnlL Ih An, c 20, Seneca saepe etiam ad Panlmn apoatolnm leguntar noster ; S. Hieron. Adv, Jovin, i. epistolae.
49. ' The worst about Seneoa ia colleoted
in D. Cass. 61. 10. But cf. the attack
' S. Hieron. Adv, Jovin, i. 29 ; Z>e of P. SuiUins, Tac. Ann, xiii. 42 and Scrip, BecL 12 ; S. Ang. Ep, 153, cnjns xiy. 52.
896 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book in
I
through the gloomiest years of the imperial tyranny; he been in the thick of its intrigues, and privy to its darkest secrets; he had enjoyed its £ftvour, and knew the perils of its jealousy and suspicion. He came as an in£Emt from Cordova to Eome in the last years of Augustus.^ In spite of weak health, he was an ardent student of all the science and philosophy of the time, and he fell under the influence of Sotion, a member of the Sextian School, which combined a rigorous Stoicism with Pythagorean rules of life.' As a young advocate and prosperous ofiGidal, he passed unharmed through the terror and ghastly rumours of the closing years of Tiberius.' His eloquence in the Senate excited the jealousy of Caligula, and he narrowly escaped the penalty.^ In the reign of Claudius he must have been one of the inner circle of the court, for his banishment, at the instance of Messalina, for eight years to Corsica was the penalty of a supposed intrigue with Julia, the niece of the emperor.^ Seneca Imew how to bend to the storm, and, by the influence of Agrippina, he was recalled to be the tutor of the young Nero, and on his accession four years after- wards, became his flrst minister by the side of Burrus.^ The famous quinquennium, an oasis in the desert of despotism, was probably the happiest period of Seneca's life. In spite of some misgivings, the dream of an earthly Providence, as merciful as it was strong, seemed to be realised.^ But it was, after all, a giddy and anxious elevation, and the influence of Seneca was only maintained by politic concessions, and was constantly threatened by the daemonic ambition of Agrippina.® And Seneca had enemies like P. SuiUius, jealous of his power and his millions, and eagerly poiating to the hypocrisy of the Stoic preacher, whom gossip branded as an adulterer and a usurer.^ The death of Burrus gave the last shock to his power.^^ His enemies poured in to the assault. The emperor had long wished to shake off the incubus of a superior spirit ; and the
1 Sen. Ad ffelv. xix. § 2. * D. Cass. 61. 4 ; Tao. Ann. ziiL 2.
« Sen. Ep. 108, §§ 13-17. ^^^ m^^ "^ intrigue with Agrip-
Z^' '^^ U'- ^' abandoned- PT^ ii'cz«». i. 5. 8.
JS^^^^SZ'Jf !L'3«n^L^^ ' Tao. Ann. xiii. '2, quo fadUu.
cSt mir • • • ▼°l'»P**tibn8 conoe^ii retinerent.
< D. Cass. 69. 19. • 7J. xiiL 42 ; D. Cass. 61. 10.
" lb. 60. 8 ; 61. 10 ; Ttia Ann. xiii. ^® Tac. Ann. xiv. 62, moxB Burri 42, schol. Jut. y. 109. infregit Senecae potentiam, etc
CHAF. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR S07
the pointed eloquence, and more pointed saicasms, the gaidens and villas and loidlj state of the great minister, sug- gested a poesible aspirant to the principate. Seneca acted on his principles and ofiTered to give up everything.^ But his torture was to be prolonged, and his doom deferred for about two years. His release came in the fierce vengeance for the Pisonian conspiracy.*
Seneca was an ideal director for the upper class of such an age. He had risen to the highest office in a world-wide monarchy, and he had spent years in hourly fear of death He had enjoyed the society of the most brilliant circles, and exchanged epigrams and repartees with the best ; he had also seen them steeped in debauchery and treachery, and terror- stricken in base compliance He had witnessed their fantastic eflTorts of luxury and self-indulgence, and heard the tale of wearied sensualism and disordered ambition and inefiTectual lives.* His disciples were drawn, if not from the noblest dass, at any rate from the class which had felt the disillusionment of w^th and fashion and power. And the vicissitudes in his own fate and character made him a powerful and sympathetic adviser. He had long to endure the torturing contrast of splendid rank and wealth, with the brooding terror of a doom which might sweep down at any moment He was also tortured by other contrasts, some drawn by the fierceness of envious hatred, others perhaps acknowledged by conscienca Steeped in the doctrines of Chrysippus and Pythagoras, he had subdued the ebullient passions of youth by a more than monastic asceti- cism.* He had passionately adopted an ethical creed which aimed at a radical reform of human nature, at the triumph of cultivated and moralised reason and social sympathy over the brutal materialism and selfishness of the age. He had pondered on its doctrines of the higher life, of the nothingness of the things of sense, on death, and the indwelling Gknl assisting the struggling soul, on the final happy relea&e from all the sordid misery and terror, until every earthly pleasure and ambition faded away in the presence of a glorious moral ideaL* And yet this pagan monk, this idealist, who would have been at home with S. Jerome or Thomas & Kempis, had accumulated
* Tac^nfkxiy.54. « i&.xv.66»qq. ^'Sen. Bp, 108, §§ 17-22.
» Sen. JSp,bb]De Tranq, 1 and 2. * CL Baur, Ch, HiaL L p. 16 (Tr.).
2d8 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
a vast fortune, and lived in a palace which excited the envy of a Nero. He was suspected of having been the lover of two princesses of the imperial house.^ He was chaiged with having connived at, or encouraged the excesses of Nero, and even of having been an accomplice in the murder of Agrippina, or its apologist^ Some of these rumours are probably false, the work of prurient imaginations in the most abandoned age in histoiy. Yet there are traces in Seneca's writings that he had not passed unscathed through the terrible ordeal to which character was exposed in that age. There are pictures of voluptuous ease and jaded satiety which may be the work of a keen sym- pathetic observation, but which may also be the expression of repentant memory.' In any case, he had sounded the veiy depths of the moral abysses of his time. He had no illusions about the actual condition of human nature. The maas of men, all but a few naturally saintly souls, were abandoned to lust or greed or selfish ambition. Human life was an obaoene and cruel struggle of wild beasts for the doles flung by fortune into the arena.^ The peace and happiness of the early Eden have departed for ever, leaving men to the restlessness of exhausted appetite, or to the half-repentant sense of impotent lives, spent in pursuing the phantoms of imaginary pleasure, with broken glimpses now and then of a world for ever lost.^ With such a scene about him in his declining years, whatever his own practice may have been, Seneca came to feel an evangelistic passion, almost approaching S. Paul's, to open to these sick perishing souls the vision of a higher life through the practical discipline of philosophy.
The tendency to regard the true function of philosophy as purely ethical, reforming, guiding and sustaining character and conduct, finds its most emphatic expression in Seneca. He is far more a preacher, a spiritual director, than a thinker, and he would have proudly owned it His highest, nay, one may almost say his only aim, is, in our modern phrase, to which his own sometimes approaches, to save souls. Philosophy
^ D. Cass. 61. 10. qnae te morantur consmnpsisti. . . ,
' Tao. Ann, ziiL 18 ; ziv. 7 ; and Nihil tibi loxuria tna in futaros annoi
11, sed Seneca adyerao ramore erat, reservavit intaotam : of. Etp, 89, 1 21 ;
^nod oratione tali confessionem scrip- 90, § 42.
Hifiseli.
» Sen. Ep, 77, § 16, ecquid habes * ^ ^^^ "• ®-
propter quod expeotes ! Volnptatesipsas * ^ 90, §§ 88-41.
CHAP. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR »9
in its highest and best sense is not the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, nor the disinterested play of intellect, regardless of intellectual consequences, as in a Platonic dialogua^ It is pre-eminently the science or the art of right living, that is of a life conformed to right reason.^ Its great end is the production of the m'pum, the man who sees, in the light of Eternal Keason, the true proportions of things, whose affections haye been trained to obey the higher law, whose will has hardened into an unswerving conformity to it, in all the difficulties of conduct.' And the true philosopher is no longer the cold, detached student of intellectual problems, £Btr removed from the struggles and the miseries of human life. He has become the generis hvmani 'pwtdcugogus^ the schoolmaster to bring men to the Ideal Man. In comparison with that mission, all the sublimity or subtlety of the great masters of dialectic becomes mere contemptible trifling, as if a man should lose himself in some game, or in the rapture of sweet music, with a great conflagration raging before his eyes. In the universal moral shipwreck, how can one toy with these old world trifles, while the perishing are stretching out then* hands for help ? ^ Not that Seneca despises the inheritance of ancient wisdom, so far as it has any gospel for humanity.^ He will accept good moral teaching from any quarter, from Plato or Epicurus, as readily as from Chrysippus or Panaetius.^ He is ready to give almost divine honours to the great teachers of the human race. But he also feels that no moral teaching can be final. After a thousand ages, there will still be room for making some addition to the message of the past There will always be a need for fresh adjustments and applications of tiie remedies which past wisdom has handed down.^
It is almost needless to say that Seneca has almost a con- tempt for the so-called liberal studies of his day.^ There is only one truly liberal study, that which aims at liberating the will fEic»n the bondage of desire. Granted that it is necessary as a
^ Ep, 49, § 5, non vaco ad istas ' Efp, 66, § 12.
ineptiks : ingens negotium in manibas ^ ^. 99, § 13 ; 117, §§ 80, 31.
•It ; Bp, 76, § 6, non delectent, verba » ^. 48, § 8 ; 75, § 6.
nortra, sed proaint . . . non qiiaerit e jg^. 64. § 8 ; 58, § 26.
rplSlSr<,urr Siisfjn'tei.' ^\^V^B.,^ whe™ ho defend-
perantiae genua est Cf. ^. 71, § 6. li-picnrus.
• j^ 89, § 8, nee ^hiloaophia sine ' ^* ^^» § 8.
▼irtnte eat, nee sine philoaophia virtus. ' Ep, 88, § 37, § 20.
300 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
mental discipline to submit to the grammarian in youth ; yet experience shows that this training does nothing to form the virtuous character.^ Who can respect a man who wastes his mature years, like Didymus, in inquiries as to the relative ages of Hecuba or Helen, or the name of the mother of JBneas, or the character of Anacreon or Sappho ? ' The man of serious purpose will rather try to forget these trifles than continue the study of them. And Seneca treats in the same fashion the hair-splitting and verbal subtleties of some of the older Stoics. He acquiesces indeed, in their threefold division of Philosophy into Logic, Physics, and Ethics ; but for the first department he seems to have but scant respect, though once or twice he amuses his pupil Lucilius by a disquisition on Genus and Species, or the Platonic and Aristotelian "Causes," in the style of the Stoic scholasticism.' Seneca was writing for posterity; he has his intellectual vanity; and he probably wished to show that, while he set but little store by such studies, this was not due to an imperfect knowledge of them. It is because life is too short, and its great problems are too urgent, to permit a serious man to spend his precious years in fruitless intellectual play. He calls on Lucilius to leave such barren subtleties, which bring the greatest of all themes down to the level of intellectual jugglery.*
For the department of Physics Seneca has much more respect, and he evidently devoted much attention to it We have traces of some lost works of his on scientific subjects, and there is still extant a treatise in seven books on Naiwtd Qiiestions, which became a handbook of science in the Middle Ages.'^ It deals with such subjects as we meet with in the poem of Lucretius, thunder and lightning, winds and earth- quakes, and rising and failing springs. But it has perhaps less of the scientific spirit than Lucretius, according to our modern standards. We have abundant reference to old physical authorities, to Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander, Diogenes of ApoUonia, to Caecina and Attains. But the conception of any scientific method beyond more or
^ JS^. 88, § 2, unmn studimn vere istom ladnxn literariam philoBophomm
liberale est quod liberum facit, etc qui rem magnificam ad syUabas vocant,
" i&. § 39 ; of. £p. 88. etc
' £p. 89 ; 66, § 88 ; 68, § 8. » Teaffel, ii. § 284, n. 6 ; of. Zeller,
* lb. 71, § 6, erige te et relinqae Fhil, der Cfrieeh, iii 1, p. 628.
CHAP. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR 801
less ingenioDS hypothesis, or of any scientific verification of hjrpothesis, is utterly absent This is of course a general characteristic of most of the scientific effort of antiquity. The truth is that, although Seneca probably had some interest in natural phenomena, he had a far more profound interest in human nature and human destiny. The older Stoics, with some variations, subordinated Physics to Ethics, as of inferior and only subsidiary importance.^ Seneca carries this subordination almost to extremes, although he also is sometimes inconsistent.' He thinks it significant that while the World-Spirit has hidden gold, the great tempter and corrupter, far beneath our feet, it has displayed, in mysterious yet pompous splendour, in the azure canopy above us, the heavenly orbs which are popularly believed to control our destiny in the material sense, and which may really govern it, by raising our minds to the contemplation of an infinite mystery and a marvellous order.' To Seneca, as to Kant, there seems a mystic tie between the starry heavens above and the moral law within. In the prologue to the Natural Questions, indeed, carried away for the moment by the grandeur of his theme, Seneca seems to exalt the contemplation of the infinite distances and mysterious depths and majestic order of the stellar world far above the moral struggles of our mundane lifa The earth shrinks to a mere point in infinitude, an ant-hill where the human insects mark out their Lilliputian territories and make their wars and voyages for their lifetime of an hour.* This, however, is rather a piece of rhetoric than a careful statement of Seneca's real view. In the Letters, again and again, we are told that virtue is the one important thing, that the conquest of passion raises man to be equal to God,^ and that in the release of the rational or divine part of ub from bondage to the fiesh, man recovers a lost liberty, a primeval dignity. But m this struggle the spirit may re- fresh and elevate itself by looking up to the divine world from which it draws its origin, and to which it may, perchance, return. To Seneca's mind the so-called physics really involve
^ Zeller, iii 1, p. 56. tiam. . . . Panctam est istad in quo
» Ep. 117, % 19 ; NaL Qiuiest. ProL ; ^^tis, m quo bellatifl ; Surrom m-
*. 66, § 15 ; cf. Zeller, iiL 1, 622. ?P°^^"1P*^*,!^°*; ®*^ ' ^^' M»°«>o.
oom, octp. 1. 10, 9 0. » NtU. Quaest. v. 15 ; cf. Ep. 88, § 15. 6 Sen. Ep, 78, § 13. sic deus non vin-
^ NaL Quaest, Prol, § 11, formicarum cit sapientem felicitate etiamsi vincit
iite discnrsiis e&t in angusto laboran- aetate.
302 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
theology and metaphysics. lu the contemplation of the vast- ness of the material universe, the mind may be aroused to the urgency and interest of the great questions touching God, His relation to fate, to the world, and man.^ The scientific in- terest in Seneca is evidently not the strongest. There are still indeed the echoes of the old philosophies which sought man's true greatness and final beatitude in the clear vision of abstract truth. But Seneca is travelling rapidly on the way which leads to another vision of the celestial city, in which emotion, the passionate yearning for holiness as well as truth, blends with and tends to overpower the ideal of a passionless eternity of intellectual intuition. In Seneca's rapturous outburst on the gate of deliverance opened by death, making allowance for difierence of associations and beliefs, there is surely a strange note of kindred sympathy, across the gulf of thirteen centuries, with Thomas ^ Kempis.^
The Natural Questions were, as he tells us, the work of his old age.^ He has a lofty conception of his task, of the im- portance of the subject to the right culture of the spirit, and he summons up all his remaining energy to do it justice. But the work falls far short, in interest and executive skill, of a treatise like the De Beneficiis, and the principle of edification — omniims sermonibits aliqvdd saliUare miseendtim* — is too obtrusive, and sometimes leads to incongruous and almost ludicrous effects. A reference to the mullet launches him on a discourse on luxury.^ A discourse on mirrors would hardly seem to lend itself to moralising. Yet the invention furnishes to Seneca impressive lessons on self-knowledge, and a chance of glorifying the simple age when the unkempt daughter of a Scipio, who received her scanty dowry in uncoined metal, had never had her vanity aroused by the reflected image of her charms.* The subject of lightning
^ Cf. PL Phaed. 79 D ; Arist Eth, petua claritate splendida, sed non nisi
ix. 8, § 7. a longe et per speoolum peregrinantibni
^ Ep. 102, § 26, dies iste, qaem in terra.
tenquam extremum reformidas aetemi , j^^ q^^^ ^ p^^ ^^^
natalis eat . . . discatietur ista caJigo x-_ji. ^- -,„..., «,-««.«,«, ••»,«» tJLA .
et lux undique clara percutiet . . . ^" .f^'l^r^nT^^ ^^
11 ^ L 1. u vj. ne menta ponam senex.
nulla serenum umbra turbabit. Cf. . -.,\. -^ ..
De ImU, m, 48, §1.0 sunemae ^^' ^, ^^» S 2-
civitatis mansio beatisrima ! 0 dies * ^^« "i** § 18-
aetemitatia elarissima, ouam nox non * Ih, i. 17, § 8, An tu exiatimas auro
obecurat. aed aumma Veritas semper inditom habuisse Sdpionis filias specu-
irradiat ! Lucet quidem Sanctis per- lum cum illis dos fuiaset aes grave T
MAP. 1 THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR 303
latoially gives occasion to a homily against the fear of death.^ 1 prologue, on the conflict to be waged with passion and nzury and chance and change, winds up abruptly with the nvitation — quxuram'm ergo de aqvis . . . qua rcUione jwmi} The Dvestigation closes with an imaginative description of the preat cataclysm which is destined to overwhelm in ruin the ireeent order. The earthquakes in Campania in 66 a.d. toturally furnish many moral lessons.^ The closing passage of he Naiural Questions is perhaps the best, and the most worthy f Seneca. In all these inquiries, he says, into the secrets of latore, we should proceed with reverent caution and self- Sstrost, as men veil their faces and bend in humbleness before » sacrifice.^ How many an orb, moving in the depths of space, ifls never yet risen upon the eyes of man.* The Great Author iimself is only dimly visible to the inner eye, and there are "ast regions of His universe which are still beyond our ken, fhich dazzle us by their effulgence, or elude our gross senses tj t^eir subtle secrecy. We are halting on the threshold of he great mysteries. There are many things destined to be erealed to far-distant ages, when our memory shall have laaeed away,* of which our time does not deserve the revelation. )iiT energies are spent in discovering fresh ingenuities of uzury and monstrous vice. No one gives a thought to ihilosophy; the schools of ancient wisdom are deserted and eft without a head."^ It is in this spirit that Seneca under- iook his mission as a saviour of souls.
Seneca, in the epilogue to the Naiural Questions, remarks laiCBStically that, as all human progress is slow, so, even with tU our efforts of self-indulgence, we have not yet reached the iomhed perfection of depravity; we are still making discoveries invica In another passage he maintains that his own age is no RTorse than others.^ But this is only because at all times the mass of men are bad. Such pessimism in the first and second centuries WIS a prevalent tone We meet it alike in Persius, Petronius, Martial, and Juvenal, and in Seneca, Tacitus, Pliny, Epictetus,
^ NiaL QuaetL ii. 59, § 3. ^ 76. § 5, malta venientiB aevi popu-
' /(. iii 1, § 1. las ignota nobis sciet, multa saeculis
* /(. vi 82. tunc futons, cum memoria nostra ex-
* lb, Tii 30, § 1. oleyerit, reservantur. ' i&. viL 30, § 8, quam multa praeter ' 7& viL 81
Imm per seoretum eunt nunquam hu*
nmis oculia orientia ? ^ De Bene/, L 10.
304 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book in
and Marcos Aurelius.^ The rage for wealth and loxuiy, the frenzy of vice which perverted natural healthy instincts and violated the last retreats of modesty, the combination of ostentation and meanness in social life, the cowardice and the cruelty which are twin offspring of pampered self-indulgence, the vanity of culture and the vanishing of ideals, the vague restless ennui, hovering between satiety and passion, between faint glimpses of goodness and ignominious failure, between fits of ambition and self-abandoned Janguor, all these and more had come under the eye of Seneca as an observer or a director of souls.' It is a lost world that he has before him, trying finiit- less anodynes for its misery, holding out its hands for help from any quarter.' The consuming earnestness of Seneca, about which, in spite of his rhetoric, there can be no mistake, and his endless iteration are the measure of his feeling as to the gravity of the case. Seneca is the earliest and most powerful apostle of a great moral revival His studied phrase, his epigrammatic point seem often out of place ; his occasionally tinsel rhetoric sometimes offends a modern taste. We often miss the austere and simple seriousness of Epictetus, the cultivated serenity and the calm clear-sighted resignation of Marcus Aurelius. Still let us admit that here is a man, with all his moral faults which he freely confesses, with all his rhetoric which was a part of his very nature, who felt he had a mission, and meant to fulfil it with all the resources of his mind. He is one of the few heathen moralists who warm moral teaching with the emotion of modern religion, and touch it with the sadness and the yearning which spring from a consciousness of man's infinite capacities and his actual degradation; one in whose eyes can be seen the amor viterioris ripae, in whose teaching there are searching precepts which go to the roots of conduct, and are true for all ages of our raca He adheres formally to the lines of the old Stoic system in his moments of calm logical consistency. But when the enthusiasm of humanity, the passion to win souls to goodness and moral truth is upon him^ all the old philosophical differences fade, the new wine bursts the old bottles ; the Platonic duaUsm, the eternal conflict of
1 Sen. i)0 /m, u. 8, 9 ; Ad Marc ii. < Sen. Ep. 77, § 6 ; 24, §25; 89, §2U
11, 17, 20 ; Tac. Hist, ii. 37 ; Petron. 95, § 16 ; 2>tf Tranq, c. i iSW. 88 ; M. Aurel. v. 83 ; v. 10. » Ep, 48, § 8.
CHAP. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR 305
flesh and spirit,^ the Platonic vision of Gkxi, nay, a higher vision of the Creator, the pitiful and loving Guardian, the Giver of all good^ the Power which draws us to Himself, who receives us at death, and in whom is our eternal beatitude, these ideas^ so alien to the older Stoicism, transfigure its hardness, and its cold, repellent moral idealism becomes a religion.' Seneca's system is really a religion ; it is morality inspired by belief in a spiritual world and " touched by emotion." In a remarkable letter, he discusses the question whether, for the conduct of life, precept is sufiQcient without dogma, whether a man can govern his life by empirical rules, without a foundation of general principles. Can a religion dispense with dogma ? ' Seneca, as a casuist and spiritual director, was not likely to undervalue the importance of definite precept, adapted to the circimistances of the casa The philosopher, who was a regular ofBcial in great families, probably dealt chiefly in precept, on a basis of authority concealed and rarely scrutinised. Bat Seneca is not an ordinary professional director. He has a serious purpose; he feels that he is dealing with the most momentous of all problems — ^how to form or reform a life, with a view to its true end, how the final good of man is to be realised only in virtuous action. But action will not be right and virtuous unless the will be also right, and rightness of will depends on ordered habit of the soul,^ and that again springs from right general principles or dogmas. In other words, a true theory of conduct is necessary to virtue in the highest sense. Mere imperative precept and rule cannot give steadiness and continuity to conduct. The motive, the clear perception of the guiding principle, can alone dignify an act with a peculiar moral distinction. In order to possess that character, the external act must be rooted in a faith in the rational law of conduct Particular precepts may produce an external obedience to
^ Ep. 71, § 27 ; 94, %f>^\ Ad Marc different view, Bargmann. Sen€ea's
24» § 5 ; ^' 79, § 12, tunc animus Theologie in ihrem Verhdltn. zum
noster fiabebit quod CTatuletur sibi, /S^toiosmiA*, etc, pp. 20-82. ThatBui^-
eun emissoB hia tenebris, in quibus mann's is the truer view appears from
Tolntator, non tenni visu clara per- Sen. Ep, 95, § 49 ; 65, § 9 ; De Clem.
ipexerit . . . et caelo redditus suo i. 5, § 7 ; De Bene/, ii. 29, § 4 ; De Prov.
faerit ; ZeUer, iiL i. 637. v. 10 ; De Ira, ii. 28, § 1 ; J^. 41, § 2
« JBp. 79, § 12 ; 102, § 22, per has t Eo Q5 % 10
mortalis aevi moras illi meliori vitae ^* "*'»«* *
longioriqne proluditur, §§ 26, 28 ; Ep, * lb, % 57, rursus voluntas non erii
73, § 15, Dens ad homines venit, etc recta nisi habitus animi rectos fuerit,
But of. ZeUer, iii. 1, 650 ; and, for a etc.
X
306 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
that law, but they cannot give the uniformity and certainty of the inner light and the r^ulated wilL
Seneca is not a sectarian dogmatist, although he lays so much stress on the necessity of dogma to virtuous conduct He boldly declares that he does not follow absolutely any of the Stoic doctors. He defends Epicurus against the vulgar misunderstanding of his theory of pleasure, and the more vulgar practical deductions from it. He often quotes his maxims with admiration to Lucilius.^ In his views of the nature of God and His relation to the external world and to the human soul, Seneca often seems to follow the old Stoic tradition. There are other passages where he seems to waver between different conceptions of God, the Creator of the univeise, the incorporeal Reason, the divine breath diffused through all things, great and small. Fate, or the inmiutable chain of inter- linked causation.' It is also clear that, from the tone of his mind, and the fact that the centre of philosophical interest for him is the moral life of man, he tends towards a more ethical conception of the Deity, as the Beii^ who loves and cares for man. All this may be admitted and will be further noticed on a later page. Yet Seneca, in strict theory, probably never became a dissenter from the physical or ontological creed of his school He adhered, in the last resort, to the Stoic pan- theism, which represented (rod and the universe, force and formless matter, as ultimately issuing from the one substratum of the ethereal fire of Heraclitus, and in the great cataclysm, returning again to their source.' He also held theoretically the Stoic materialism, and the Stoic principle, that only corporeal natures can act on one another.^ The force which moulds indeterminate matter into concrete form is spirit, breath, in the literal sense, interfused in rude matter, and by its tension, outward and again inward upon itself, producing form and quality and energy. Mere matter could never mould itself, or develop from within a power of movement and action. But
^ Dt ViL Beat, xiL § 4, nee aesti- potens omnium, sive incorporalu rmtio
mant, voluptas iUa Epicuri qnam sobria ingentium operum artifex, uve diviniu
et sicca sit, sed ad noraen ipsum advo- spiritos per omnia aaqnali intentione
lant quaerentes libidinibos suis patro- diffoBus, sive latum et immutabilis
cinium aliquod ac yelamentum. Cf. causarum inter se cohaerentium series.
JBp, 18, § 14 ; 16, § 7 ; 22, § IS ; 2S, Cf. N. Quaest, u. 45, § 2.
••* Ad Helv. viil § 3, quiaquis forma- ' ^' 7^' § ^^
tor universi fiiit, sive ille deus eat ^ ^. 57, § 8 ; 66, § 12 ; 117, f 2.
CHAP. 1 THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR 307
this material force which shapes the universe from within is also rational, and the universe is a rational being, guided by the indwelling reason to predestined ends, and obedient to a universal law. The Gk)d of the Stoics is thus a very elastic or comprehensive conception. He may be viewed as the ubiquitous, impalpable force, which may, in the lack of more accurate expression, be called air, ether, fire. He is the soul, the breath, the Anima Mundi He is also the universal law, the rational principle, underlying all the apparently casual and fitful phenomena of physical nature and human lifa God may also surely be regarded as the eternal Fate, the power in the ruthless, yet merciful sequence of inevitable causation.^ And, in milder and more optimistic moods, we may view Hiin as a watchful Providence, caring for men more than they seem to care for themselves, saving them from the consequences of their own errors and misdeeds. In Seneca, He develops into a moral and spiritual Being, the source of all spiritual intuition and virtuous emotion, the secret power within us making for righteousness, as He is the secret force in all nature making for order.*
It seems a little crude and superficial to contrast the materialist and idealist conceptions of God in the later Stoic creed. What human conception of Him is free from similar contradictions ? How can any conception of Him, expressed in human language, avoid them ? And in Seneca's conception of soul, even as material, there is something so thin, so subtle, and elusive, that the bounds of matter and spirit seem to melt away and disappear.^ However loyal he may be in form to Stoic materialism, Seneca in the end regards God as no mere material force, however refined and etherealised, but a spiritual power; not perhaps limited by the bounds of personality, but instinct with moral tendencies, nay, a moral impetus, which no mere physical force could ever develop.* The growing dualism in Seneca's metaphysics is the result of the growing dualism of his psychology. In accord with the old Stoic doctors, he sometimes formulates the material nature of the soul, and its essential unity. It is, like the Anima Mundi,
^ Zeller, ThU, der Oriech. iiL 1, 122 ; ' Ep. 57,§8,aDirau8quiextenui8simo
of. NcU, Quaest, ii. 46, § 2. constat, deprehendi non potest, eto.
' De Prov, L ii. § 6 ; Dc Ira, iL 27 ; * Burgmano, Seneea's Theologie, pw
De Bene/, ii. 29 ; Ep. 78, § 16. 41.
308
THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY
BOOK III
warm breath or sabtle fire, penetrating all parts of the body, dischaiging currents from the central heart to the several organs. It is primarily rational, and aU the lower powers of passion are derived from the controlling and unifying reason. It is a spark of the universal Spirit^ holding the same place in the human organism as the Divine Spirit does in the universe.^ But experience and reflection drove Seneca more and more into an acceptance of the Platonic opposition of reason and passion, an unceasing struggle of the flesh and spirit, in which the old Stoic theory of the oneness of the rational soul tended to disappear.^ This is only one, but it is the most important, modification of ancient theory forced on Seneca by a closer application of theory to the facts of human life, and a completer analysis of theuL The individual consciousness, and the spectacle of human life, alike witness to the inevitable tendency of human nature to corruption. Even after the great cataclysm, when a new earth shall arise from the waters of the deluge, and a new man, in perfect innocence, shall enter on this fair inheritance, the clouds will soon gather again, and darken the fair deceitful dawn.' The weary struggle of flesh and spirit will begin once more, in which the flesh is so often the victor. For to Seneca, as to the Orphic mystics and to Plato, the body is a prison, and life one long punishment.^ Such is the misery of this mortal life, such the danger of hopeless corruption, that no one would accept the gift of existence if he could foresee the evil in store for hiuL* And death, the object of dread to the blind masses, is really the one compen- sation for the calamity of birth, either as a happy return to antenatal tranquillity, or as the gateway to a glorious freedom and vision of the Divine.^ Seneca, indeed, does not always express himself in this strain. He is often the consistent, orthodox Stoic, who glories in the rounded perfection of the
^ Bp, 65, § 24, quern in hoc mondo deuB obtinet, huuo iu homiue animns.
" PL Fh(ud, 88 0, D ; 79 B ; D ; cf. Zeller, PKU. der OriecK. iil 188 ; iu. 2, p. 634; Sen. Ep. 71, §27.
^ NaL Quaest, iiL 30, § 8, sed iUis quoqne innooentia non diirabit — dto nequitia subrepit
^ Mp. 120, § 14 ; 65, § 16, nam corpuB boo animi pondua ac poena est ; premente illo uigetur, m Tincolia
est, eto. Ad Polyb, iz. § 6, omnia vita supplicium est ; Ad Marc xx. § 2.
» lb. 22, § 8.
* JSp. 24, § 18, mors nos aat oon- sumit aut eximit ; JSp. 86, § 10 ; 102, § 23 ; DePrav. vi. § 6 ; Ad Marc 25, § 1 ; ib. 19,§5 ; 20, §2, qoae efficit at uasci non sit supplicium ; o£ Epict. ii. 1 ; iiL 10 ; iii. 13 ; iv. 1 ; M. Aorel. vliL 18 ; vL 28 ; iiL 3 ; ix. 8.
CHAP. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR 809
sapi&Mt triumphing, even in this life, over all the seductions of sense and the fallacies of perverted reason, and, in virtue of the divine strength within him, making himself, even here below, equal with Gk)d in moral purity and freedom.^ In such moods, he will adhere to the Stoic psychology : reason will be all in all ; virtue will be uniform, complete, attained by one supreme victorious effort But the vision is constantly crossed and darkened by doubts which are raised by the terrible facts of lifa The moral problem becomes more difficult and com- plicated ; the vision of perfection recedes to an infinite distance, and the glorious deliverance is reserved for an immortal life of which the older Stoics did not often dream.
Still, we ceoi find in Seneca all the Stoic gospel, and moral idealism. '' Nil bonum nisi verum " is the fundamental principle. The failures, aberrations, and sins of men arise from a fiEdse conception of what is good, produced by the warping effect of external things upon the higher principle. The avaricious, the ambitious, the sensual, live in a vain show. They are pursuing unreal objects of desire, which cheat and befool the reason, and turn to ashes when they are won. The '' kingdom of Heaven is within." It is the freedom, the peace, the tranquil sense of power over all that is fortuitous and external and fleeting, which alone can realise the highest good of man.' It is attained only by virtue, that is, by living in obedience to the law of reason, which has its voice and representative in each human souL The summons to yield ourselves to the law of nature and reason simply calls us to obey our highest part {jo ffi^iioviKov^ which is a steadfast witness to the eternal truth of things, and, if unbribed and unperverted, will discern infallibly the right line of conduct amid all the clamorous or seductive temptations of the flesh or of the world. Nothing is a real good which has not the stamp and hall-mark of reason, which is not within the soul itself, that is within our own power. Everything worth having or wishing for is within. External things, wealth, power, high place, the pleasures of sense, are transitory, de- ceptive, unstable, the gifts of Fortune, and equally at her
^ Ep. 58, § 11, est aliquid quo sapiens est ; 72, f 8.
anteoedat deum ; cf. Ep, 59, § 16, ' i^. 74, § 1 ; 62, § 8, brevissima ad
talis est sapientis animus, qualis mun- divitias per contemptum diTitiamm
das super Innam ; semper iAio serenum via est ; 59, § 14.
310 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
mercy. In the mad struggle for these ephemeral pleasures, the wise man retires unobserved from the scene of cruel and sordid rapacity, having secretly within him the greatest prize of all, which Fortune cannot give or take away.^ If these things were really good, then Grod would be less happy than the slave of lust and ambition, than the sensualist who is fasci- nated by a mistress or a minion, the trader who may be ruined by a storm, the wealthy minister who may at any moment be ordered to death by a Nero.' The only real liberty and human dignity are to be found in renunciation. If we jealously guard and reverence the divine reason within us, and obey its monitions, which are in truth the voice of Gtod, the Universal Beason, then we have an impregnable fortress which cannot be stormed by any adverse fortune. The peace and freedom so won may be called, although Seneca does not so call it, the '' peace of God." For it is in fact the restored harmony between the human spirit and the Beason of the world, and the cessation of the weary conflict between the "law in the members" 6md "the law of the mind," which ends so often in that other peace of a "mare mortuum," a stillness of moral death.'
The gospel of Seneca, with all its searching power, seems wanting in some of the essentials of an effective religion which can work on character. Where, it may be asked, is the force to come from which shall nerve the repentant one to essay the steep ascent to the calm of indefectible virtue? And what is the reward which can more than compensate for the great renunciation? With regard to the first question, the Stoic answer is clear. The reforming force is the divine reason, indwelling in every human soul,^ which, if it is able, or is permitted, to emancipate itseK from bondage to the things of sense, will inevitably gravitate to the divine world, from which it sprang. The question of necessity and freedom of the will has not much interest for Seneca, as a practical moralist He believes theoretically in the old Stoic dogmas on the subject
^ Ep, 74, H 6-12 ; cf. M. Aiircl. y. ista bona non sunt, quae yocantur, ant
16, v\)v 8k 6fftp T€p TXtlto ns d^ipQv homo felicior deo est, etc.
h.vTOv rointi» 1j xal d<paipo6fiep6s n ' JEp. 67, § 14.
To&ruy di'^TTxu, Toa^8€ fioXXw i,yaObi ^ Ep, 66, §12, ratio autem nihil aliud
iffTi : Epiot. iL 16, § 18 ; iiL S, § 14. eat ^uam in corpus humannm pars
^ Sen. ^. 31, § 10 ; 74, § 14 aut divini spiritus mersa.
CHAP. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR 311
From one point of view, God may be regarded as the eternal Fate, the inevitable law of causation. And as the Universal £eason, He cannot act otherwise than He does, without violating His very nature. But His action is self-determined and there- fore free and spontaneoua^ This freedom man only attains by breaking away from the cruel servitude to passion and external circumstanca As a practical moral teacher, Seneca is bound to say that we can take the higher road if we will. The first step towards freedom is to grasp firmly the fundamental law of the moral life — that the only good lies in conformity to reason, to the higher part of our being. If we yield to its bidding, we can at once cut ourselves off from the deceitful life of the senses, and the vision of the true beatitude in virtue at once opens on the inner eye. When that vision has been seen, we must then seek to form a habit of the soul which shall steadUy conform to the univeraal law, and finaUy give birth to a settled purpose, issuing inevitably in virtuous act^ It is this fixed and stable resolution which is the Stoic ideal, although experience showed that it was rarely attained. The great renunciation is thus the entrance on a state of true free- dom, which is realised only by submitting ourselves to the law of reason, that is of God. By obedience to rational law man is raised to a level far transcending the transient and shadowy dignities of the world. His rational and divine part is reunited to the Divine Spirit which '' makes for righteous- ness " ; he places himself in the sweep and freedom of a move- ment which finds its image and counterpart in the majestic and ordered movements of the heavenly spheres. If we ask, how can poor humanity, so abject, so brutalised, so deadened by the downward pressure of the flesh 6uid the world, ever release itself and rise to those empyrean heights, the answer is, through the original strength of the rational, which is the divine element in the human souL It may be, and actually is, in the mass of men, drugged and silenced by the seductions of sense and the deceptions of the world. But if, in some moment of detachment and elation, when its captors and jailors relax their guard, it can escape their clutches, it will at
^ Nat, QuaesL ii. 36; De Prov, 5, quidem fata, sedsequitnr; semper paret» § 8, eadem necessitate et deos adligat semel jussit.
. . . ille ipse omninm conditor soripsit ^ Mp, 96, § 57 ; cf. 116, § 7, sativ
naturm dedit roboris si iUo ntamnr.
312 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
once seek the region of its birth, and its true homa It is in the kindred of the human reason with the Divine, the Beason of the world, that we must seek the reconciliation of two apparently opposite points of view. At one time the Stoic doctor teUs us that we must trust to our own strength in the moral struggle. And again Seneca, in almost Christian phrase, comforts his disciple with the vision of Gkxi holding out a succouring hand to struggling virtue, just as he warns the backslider of an eye ''that seeth in secret" Woe to him who despises that Witnesa^
With such a conception of the relation of the human reason to the Divine, Seneca was bound to believe that humem nature, as it is, had fallen away from original and spontaneous innocence. In the equal enjoyment of the unforced gifts of nature, in the absence of the avarice and luxury which the development of the arts, the exploitation of the earth's hidden wealth, and the competitive struggle, bom of a social life growing more and more complicated, have generated, the primeval man was un- solicited by the passions which have made life a hell.^ Yet this blissful state was one of innocence rather than of virtue ; it was the result of ignorance of evil rather than determined choice of good.' And the man who, in the midst of a corrupt society, fights his way to virtue, will take far higher moral rank than our simple ancestors, who wandered in the unravaged garden of the Golden Age. For the man bom in a time when the nobler instincts have been deadened by the lust of gold and power and sensual excess, the virtuous will can only be won by a hard struggle.
Confronted with the facts of life, and fired with a passion to win men to a higher law, the later Stoicism had in some points to soften the rigid lines of earlier theory. The severe idealism of the great doctors was a mere dream of an impossible detach- ment, the inexorable demand of a pitiless logic. Virtue, being conformity to the immutable law of reason, was conceived as a rounded, flawless whole, to which nothing could be added, and to which nothing must be wanting. It presupposes, or is
^ Ep, 73, § 15, non sunt di fastidio- fecit aliena et in angustum ex immenso
dosi : adacendentibns manum |)orri- rcdacta paupertatem intulit, et mults
guut ; Ep, 83, § 1, uihil deo oloaum est ; concnpiscendo omnia amisit Ep, 43, § 5, O to niiserum si contemnis
huDc testeni. ^ lb, § 46, non fuere sapicntes ; . . .
' Ep. 90, § 38 sqq. avaritia omnia ignorantia rcnim innocentes erant.
CHAP. I
THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR
313
identical with, a settled intellectual clearness, an unclouded knowledge of the truly good, which must inevitably issue in perfect act. It is a single, uniform mental state from which aU the separate virtues spring as from a single root.^ The moral value of an act depends entirely on vnll, intention, that is, on the intellectual perception. And as there are no gradations in the mental state, so there are no gradations in moral conduct which issues from it. There are no distinctions between things morally good, between '' divine " things ; and so, just as in the older Calvinistic system, there is no class intermediate between the wise and the foolish, the saved and the lost And conversion, ^transfiguration," the change from folly to wisdom, is regarded as instantaneous and complete.' Even those who are struggling upward, but have not yet reached the top, are still to be reckoned among the foolish, just as the man a few inches below the waves will be drowned as certainly as if he were simk fathoms deep. And, as there is no mean state in morals, so the extremes are necessarily finished and perfect types of virtue and reprobacy. The ideal Bwpiem^^ who com- bines in himself all the moral and intellectual attributes that go to make up the ideal of serene, flawless virtue, has been the mark for ridicule from the days of Horace.^ Such an ideal, soaring into the pure cold regions of virgin snow, left the great mass of men grovelling in filth and darkness. And it was in this light that the severe Stoic regarded the condition of the multitude They are all equally bad, and they will always be bad, from age to age. Every generation mourns over its de- generacy, but it is no worse than its ancestors, and its posterity will be no better. The only variation is in the various fashion of the vicea* In any crowded scene, says Seneca, in the forum or the circus, you have a mere gathering of savage beasts, a spectacle of vice incarnate.^ In the garb of peace, they are engaged in a truceless war, hating the fortunate, trampling on the fallen.
1 Sen. Ep, 66, § 13 snq. ; 113, § 14 ; Cic TvM, iv. 16, 34 ; Plut. VirL Mor, c. 2 ; Zeller, iii 1, p. 224.
■ Zeller, Phil, der Griech. iii. 1, p. 235 ; Plut De Prof, in Virt i. CxrTt rbw xput KdKiffTW iffripas ytyopipoi Kpdri- OTOP xrX. ; Adv, St, c. x. ; cf. Sen. Ep, 76. § 19.
* Hor. Sat, i. 3, 124 ; Sen. Ep. i. 1, 106 ; cf. J^. 73, § 13 ; Aelian, Var, Hist,
iv. 13 ; Luc. ViL Auct, c 20, fi6pot oJW-ot 0'o06f, fi&pot fraX6t, fU^ot <Udp€tbt /9ourtXei>f ^ifyrtap, kt\,
^ Sen. De Bene/, L 10, § 1, hoc mi^'ores nostri questi sunt, hoc nos querimnr, hoc posteri nostri ^uerentur, eversos mores, regnare ncqnitiam, in deterina res hnmanas labi. Cf. Ad Pdyb, c iv.
' De Ira, iL 8, § 1, istio tantnmdem esse yitiomm qnantnm hominnm.
814 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
Viewing this scene of shameless lust and cupidity where every tie of duty or friendship is violated, if the wise man were to measure his indignation by the atrocity of the offenders, his anger must end in madness. But we are all bad men living among the bad, and we should be gentle to one another.
The idealism and the pessimism of the earlier Stoics were alike fatal to any effort of moral reform. The cold, flawless perfection of the man of triimiphant reason was an impossible model which could only discourage emd repel aspirants to the higher life. The ghastly moral wreck of ordinary human nature, in which not a single germ of virtuous impulse seemed to have survived the ruin, left apparently no hope of rescue or escape. If morals were to be anything but an abstract theory, if they were to have any bearing on the actual character and destiny of man, their demand must be modified. And so in many essential points it was, even before Seneca.^ The ideal contempt for all external things had to give way to em Aristotelian recognition of the value of some of them for a virtuous lifa And Seneca is sometimes a follower of Aristotle, as in the admission, so convenient to the millionaire, that wealth may be used by the wise man for higher moral ends.' He will not be the slave of money ; he will be its master. He will admit it to his home, but not to YAb heart, as a thing which may take to itself wings at any moment, but which may meanwhile be used to cheer and warm him in his struggles, and may be dispensed in beneficent help to dependents. In the same way, beside the ideal of perfect conformity to the law of reason, there appeared a class of conditional duties. To conform absolutely to the law of reason, to realise the highest good through virtue, remains the highest Stoic ideal. But if, beside the highest good, it is permitted to attach a certain value to some among the external objects of desire, manifestly a whole class of varying duties arises in the field of choice and avoidance.^ And again the ideal of imperturbable calm, which approached the apathy of the Cynics, was softened by the admission of rational dispositions of feeling.^ These concessions to im-
1 Zoller, Fhil der Cfrieeh, iiL 1, p. * Sen. De VU, Beat, c. 22.
687 ; of. p. 249. Cf. Martlia, M<rr, * Ep, 74, § 17; 87, § 29 sq. : DeBen^
80U8 VEmp. p. 62. On Seneca's re- v. 18, § 1 sq. ; Zeller, iiL 1, p. 638.
Ution to the old Stoic theology, v. ^ eOrdOcuu, cf. De Brev, ViL xiy. §
Burgmann, Seneca*8 Thcdogie, p. 42 sq. 2; De Ira, IL 2-4 ; Zeller, iiL 1, p. 216.
CHAP. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR 815
perious facts of human life, of course, modified the awful moral antithesis of wise and foolish, good and reprobate. Where is the perfectly wise man, with his single moral purpose, his unruffled serenity, his fuU assurance of his own impregnable strength, actually to be found ? ^ He is not to be discovered among the most devoted adherents of the true philosophic creed. Even a Socrates falls short of the sublime standard. If we seek for the wise man in the fabulous past, we shall find only heroic force, or a blissful, un tempted ignorance, which are alike wanting in the first essential of virtua' As the perfect ideal of moral wisdom, imperturbable, assured, and indefectible, receded to remote ideal distances, so the condemnation of all moral states below an impossible per- fection to indiscriminate reprobacy^ had to be revoked. Seneca maintains that men are all bad, but he is forced to admit that they are not all equally bad, nay, that there are men who, although not quite emancipated from the snares of the world and the flesh, have reached various stages on the upward way. He even distinguishes three classes of pro- ficienies, of persons on the path of moral progress.^ There is the man who has conquered many serious vices, but is still captive to othera Again, there is the man who has got rid of the worst faults and passions, but who is not secure against a relapse. There is a third class who have almost reached the goal They have achieved the great moral victory ; they have embraced the one true object of desire; they are safe from any chance of falling away ; but they want the final gift of full assurance reserved for the truly wise.^ They have not attained to the crowning glory of conscious strength. Seneca is still in bondage to the hard Stoic tradition, in spite of his aberrations from it. The great Catholic virtue of himiility is to him still, theoretically at least, a disqualification for the highest spiritual rank.
And yet Seneca is far from wanting in humility. In giving counsels of perfection, he candidly confesses that he is himself far from the ideal.^ Indeed, his Letters reveal a character
' De Tranq. vii. § 4, ubi enim * Ep, 75, § 8 sqq.
istuni invenies quern tot secolis qnaeri- ^ Ep, 72, § 8 sapiens laetitia fruitur
IDU8 ? Pro optuno est miniine malus. maxima, continua, sua.
J^. 42, § 1. • Ep, 67, § 3, non de me loquor, qui
^ Ep, 90, § 44 sqq. multum ab homioe tolerabili, nedum a
* Ep. 72, §§ 6-11 . perfecto absum : cf. Ep. 89, § 2.
i
816 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
which, with lofty ideals, and energetic aspiration, is very far removed from the serene joy and peace of the true Stoic sage. He has not got the invulnerable panoply from which all the shafts of fortune glance aside. He shows again and again how deep a shadow the terror of his capricious master could cast over his life, how he can be disturbed even by the smaller troubles of existence, by the slights of great society, by the miseries of a sea voyage, or the noises of a batL^ In the counsels addressed to Lucilius, Seneca is probably quite as often preaching to himself. The ennui, the unsteadiness of moral purpose, the clinging to wealth and power, the haunting fears or timid anticipations of coming evil, for which he is constantly suggesting spiritual remedies, are diagnosed with such searching skill and vividness that we can hardly doubt that the physician has first practised his art upon himself.' Nor has he entire faith in his own insight or in the potency of the remedies which ancient wisdom has accumulated. The great difficulty is, that the moral patient, in proportion to the inveteracy of his disease, is unconscious of it.' Society, with its manifold temptations of wealth and luxury and irrespons- ible ease, can so overwhelm the congenital tendency to virtue.^ that the inner monitor may be silenced, and a man may come to love his depravity.'^ If men are not getting better, they are inevitably getting worsa There is such a state, in the end, as hopeless, irreclaimable reprobacy. Yet even for the hoary sinner Seneca will not altogether despair, so long as there lingers in him some divine discontent, however faint, some lingering regret for a lost purity. He will not lose hope of converting even a mocker like Marcellinus, who amuses himself with jeers at the vices and inconsistencies of professing philosophers, and does not spare himself. Seneca may, perchance, give him a pause in his downward coursa^
Seneca's gospel, as he preaches it, is for a limited clasa With all his professed belief in the equality and brotherhood of men, Seneca addresses himself, through the aristocratic Epicurean Lucilius, to the slaves of wealth and the vices
1 Ad Polyh, ii. § 1 ; ^. 68, § 4 ; * Ep, 94, §§ 66, 66.
^Ep, 24 • cap. § 14. ! ^T^' ^^^» ^^^"^ ®™^ ®* •'^* simnl et
• Ep, 68, S 7, quo quia pejus se habot, ^'** minuB sentit. * Ep, 29.
CHAP. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR 817
which it breeds. The men whom he wishes to save are masters of great households^ living in stately palaces, and striving to escape from the weariness of satiety by visits to Baiae or Praeneste.^ They are men who have awful secrets, and whose apparent tranquillity is constantly disturbed by vague terrors,^ whose intellects are wasted on the vanities of a conventional culture or the logomachies of a barren dialectic.^ They are people whose lives are a record of weak purpose and conflicting aims, and who are surprised by old age while they are still barely on the threshold of real moral lifa^ With no religious or philosophic faith, death is to such men the great terror, as closing for ever that life of the flesh which has been at once so pleasant and so tormenting.^ In dealing with such people, Seneca recognises the need both of the great principles of right living and of particular pre- cepts, adapted to varieties of character and circumstanca The true and solid foundation of conduct must always be the clear perception of moral truth, giving birth to rightly-directed pur- pose and supplying the right motiva For example, without a true conception of God as a spirit, worship will be gross and anthropomorphic.^ The doctrine of the brotherhood of all men in the universal commonwealth is the only solid ground of the social charities and of humanity to slaves. Yet dogma is not enough ; discipline must be added. The moral director has to deal with very imperfect moral states, some of quite rudimentary growth, and his disciples may have to be treated as boys learning to write, whose fingers the master must guide mechanically across the tablet^ The latent goodness of humanity must be disencumbered of the load which, through untold ages, corrupt society has heaped upon it The delusions of the world and the senses must be exposed, the judgment, confused and dazzled by their glamour, must be cleared and steadied, the weak must be encouraged, the slothful and back- sliding must be aroused to continuous effort in habitual con- verse with some good man who has trodden the same paths before.®
1 Ep, 28, § 1. ^ Bp, 95, § 49.
3 ^* i?7^fi*s?: \f^k «*' ^ ^^' ' ^- ^*' § ^' ^^^ puerorum tenen-
-« *^' /« o ?- ' • J ^. xL tor et aliena manu per literarum
* Efp,\Z, § 17, quid est turpiua quam gin^ukcra ducuntor. aenex yivere inapiens i
» Ep, 24. » J^. 11, § 8 ; Plut Bt iV. Virt xr.
318 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
Thus the great "Ars Vitae/' founded on a few simple principles of reason, developed into a most complicated system of casuistry and spiritual direction. How far it was successful we cannot pretend to say. But the thoughtful reader of Seneca's Letters cannot help coming to the conclusion that, even in the reign of Nero« there must have been many of the proficierUes, of C€uididates for the full Stoic faith. If Seneca reveals the depths of depravity in his age, we are equally bound to believe that he represents, and is trying to stimulate, a great moral movement, a deep seated discontent with the hard, gross materialism, thinly veiled under dilettantism and spurious artistic sensibility, of which Nero was the type. Everything that we have of Seneca's, except the Tragedies, deals with the problems or troubles of this moral life, and the demand for advice or consolation appears to have been urgent. Lucilius, the young Epicurean procurator, who has been immortalised by the Letters, is only one of a large class of spiritual in- quirers. He not only lays his own moral difficulties before the master, but he brings other spiritual patients for advice.^ There were evidently many trying to withdraw from the tyranny or temptations of high life, with a more or less stable resolution to devote themselves tx) reflection and amendment It is a curious pagan counterpart to the Christian ascetic movement of the fourth and fifth centuries.^ And, just as in the days of S. Jerome and S. Paulinus, the deserter from the ranks of fashion and pleasure in Nero's time had to encounter a storm of ridicule and misrepresentation. Philosophic retreat was derided as mere languid self-indulgence, an unmanly shrinking from social duty, nay, even a mere mask for the secret vices which were, too often with truth, charged against the soi-disant philosopher.^ Sometimes the wish to lead a higher life was openly assailed by a cynical Epicureanism. Virtue and philosophy were mere idle babble. The only happiness is to make the most of the senses while the senses still keep their fresh lust for pleasura The days are fleeting away never to return in which we can drink with keen zest
^ Ep, 25, § 1. 123, § 15, illos quoauo nocere nobis
* S. Hieron. Ep. 127, §§ 5-7; Up. existimo, qui nos slid specie StoicM
118, § 5 ; Sulp. Sev, ii. 13, § 7. sectae hortantur ad vitia : hoc enim
> Sen. Ep, 36, § 1, illam objorgant jactant solum sapientemetdoctam
quod umbram et otiuni petierit ; J3p. amatorem.
CHAP. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR 319
the joys of the flesh What folly to spare a patrimony for a thankless heir 1 ^ Seneca had to deal with many souls waver- ing between the two ideal& One of his treatises is addressed to a kinsman, Annaens Serenus, who had made a fiiU confession of a vague unrest, an impotence of will, the conflict of moral torpor with high resolve.^ In his better moments, Annaeus inclines to simplicity of life and self-restraint Yet a visit to a great house dazzles him and disturbs his balance, with the sight of its troops of elegant slaves, its costly furniture and luxurious feasting. He is at one time drawn to philosophic quietude; at another he becomes the strenuous ambitious Soman of the old days, eager for the conflicts of the forum. He 18 always wavering between a conviction of the vanity of literary trifling and the passion for literary fame.' Cannot Seneca, to whom he owes his ideal, furnish some remedy for this constant tendency to relapse and indecision ?
It is in the sympathetic handling of such cases, not in broad philosophic theory, that the peculiar strength of Seneca lies. EQs counsels were adapted to the particular difficulties presented to him. But many of them have a universal validity. He encourages the wish to retire into meditative quietude, but only as a means to moral cure.^ Betreat should not be an ostentatious defiance of the opinion of the world.^ Nor is it to be a mere cloak for timid or lazy shrinking from the burdens of life. You should withdraw from the strife and temptations of the mundane city, only to devote yourself to the business of the spiritual city, to cultivate self-knowledge and self-government, to inspire the soul with the contempla- tion of the Eternal and the Divine. Solitude may be a danger, unless a man lives in the presence of " One who seeth in secret," ^ from whom no evil thought is hidden, to whom no prayer for evil things must be addressed.^ And, lest the thought of God's presence may not come home with sufficient
» Sen. Ep. 123, § 10. Cf. Inscr. Or. * ^. 7, § 8 ; 19, § 2.
^?*%/Sw *^^^' *^^^' ' ^V' 68, ipsum otium absconde ;
Vt lyunq.i. jactandi autem genus est nimis latere.
• Ih, 1. §§ 13-16, nee aegroto nee ** ®
valeo ; . . . In omnibus rebus haec ^P- 43, § 4 ; cf. 83, § 1 ; 10, § 2,
me aequituT bonae mentis infinnitas. mecum loquor . . . cave ue cum
lb. § 17, TOCO, si ^uod habes remedium homine malo loquaris. ono hano nuctuationem meam sistam, ^ Ep. 10, § 5, turpissima vota dis
dignmn me putes qui tibi tranquilli- insusurrant ; cf. Pers. StU, ii. 7-18;
tatem debeam. Sen. Ep. 41, § 1.
320 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
urgency, Seneca recommends his disciples to call up the image of some good man or ancient sage, and live as if under lus eya^ The first step in moral progress is self-knowledge and confession of one's faults.' Ignorance of our spiritual disease, the doom of the indurated conscience, is the great danger, and may be the mark of a hopeless moral state. Hence the necessity for constant daily self-examination. In the quiet of each night we should review our conduct and feeling during the day, marking carefully where we have fallen short of the higher law, and strengthening ourselves with any signs of self- conquest. Seneca tells us that this was his own constant practice.' For progress is only slow and difficult. It requires watchful and unremitting effort to reach that assured and settled purpose which issues spon- taneously in purity of thought and deed, and which raises man to the level of the Divine freedom. There must be no pauses of self-complacency until the work is done. There is no mediocrity in morala There must be no halting and un- steadiness of purpose, no looking back to the deceitful things of the world. Inconstancy of the wavering will only shortens the span of this short life. How many there are who, even when treading the last stage to death, are only beginning to live, in the true sense, and who miss the beatitude of the man who, having mastered the great secret, can have no addition to his happiness from lengthened years. In the long tract of time any life is but a moment, and of that the least part by most men is really lived.^ And this unsettled aim is liable to constant temptation from without. We are continually within sight and earshot of the isles of the Sirens, and only the resolution of a Ulysses will carry us past in safety.^ In fact no isle of the Sirens can have been more dangerous than the life of a great household in the Neronian age, when the dainties and the vices of every land assailed the senses with multiplied seductions, and men craved in vain for a heightened and keener sensibility. Perpetual change of scene to the shores of Baiae,
1 J^. 11, § 8 ; 104, § 21, viye cam ' Dt Ira, iii. 36, § 8.
Chrysippo, cam Poaidonio. * Ep, 82, § 2, in tanta brevitate vitae
' Ep. 6, § 1 ; i^. 28 ; Ep, 50, § 4 ; qaam breviorem inconstantia facimoa,
Plut De Prof, in Virt, c. zL rb etc. ; Ep. 99, § 11, intelliges eUam in
irdOoi \iy€i» Kal 'Hpf fiox'^pio-i' droica- lon^isaima vita minimum ease qaod
X&rreof o6 ^auXov &r eUi rpoKowijs vivitur. fffifieTor. ^ Ep, 56, § 15 ; 51, § 5.
CHAP. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR Z%\
to Apulia, to some glen in the Apennines, or to the northern lakes, or even further, to the Shone, the Nile, the Atlas, was sought by the jaded man of pleasure or the man struggling in vain to reform. But Seneca warns his disciple that wherever he may go he will take his vices and his weakness with him.^ Let him try to work out his salvation within his great palace on the Esquiline. Surrounded by splendour and luxury, let him, for a time, isolate himself from them; let him lie on a hard bed, and live on scanty fare, and fiEuicy himself reduced to that poverty which he dreads so much and so foolishly.* The change will be good for body and soul ; and the temporary ascetic may return to his old life, at least released firom one of his bugbears, and refreshed with a new sense of freedom.
Such were some of the precepts by which Seneca strove to fortify the struggling virtue of his disciples. But he never concealed from them that it is only by struggle that the remote ideal can be attained. " Vivere militare est." And almost in the words of S. Paul, he uses the example of the gladiator or the athlete, to arouse the energy of the aspirant after moral perfection.^ "They do it for a corruptible crown."* The reward of the Stoic disciple is vain and poor to the gross materialist. But, from the serene heights, where ideal Beason watches the struggle, the only victor is the man who has adopted the watchwords — self-knowledge, renunciation, resigna- tion. Only by following that steep path can any one ever reach the goal of assured peace within, and be delivered from the turmoil of chance and change. The misery of the sensual, the worldly, and the ambitious lies in the fact that they have staked their happiness on things which are beyond their own power, which are the casual gifts of fortune, and may be as capriciously withdrawn. This state is one of slavery to external things, and the pleasure, after all, which can be drawn from them is fleeting. Hence it is that the sensualist is equally miserable wlien his pleasures are denied, and when they are exhausted.* He places his happiness in one brief
1 i5^. 61, § 4 ; 104, § 20, ri vis pere- » Ep, 96, § 6.
griiiAtiones habere jacundas, tuum * Ep, 78, § 16, 4, nos quoque evio-
comitem sana. camus omnia, quorum praemium non
> j^. 17, § 5 ; 18, § 8 ; Ep, 87, § 1 ; corona nee palma eat, etc.
cf. Martha, p. 42. = Bt VU. Beat. vii. § 4 ; ^. 83, § 27.
Y
322 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY wjok hi
moment, with the danger or the certainty either of privation or satiety. The wise man of the Stoics, on the other hand, has built his house upon the rock. He shuns, according to the Pythagorean maxim, the ways of the multitude, and trusting to the illumination of divine Beasoii, he takes the narrow path.^ His guiding light is the principle that the *' kingdom of heaven is within," that man's supreme good depends only on himself, that is, on the unfettered choice of reason. To such a man "all things are his," for all worth having is within him. His mind creates its own world, or rather it rediscovers a lost world which was once his. He can, if he will, annihilate the seductions of the flesh and the world, which cease to disturb when they are contenmed. He may equally extinguish the griefs and external pains of life, for each man is miserable just as he thinks himself' Human nature, even unfortified by philosophic teaching, has been found capable of bearing the extremity of torture with a smile. The man who has mastered the great secret that mind may, by its latent forces, create its own environment, should be able to show the endurance of a Scaevola or a B^ulus.' All he needs to do is to unmask the objects of his dread.^ For just as men are deluded by the show of material pleasure, so are they unmanned by visionary fears. Even the last event of life should have no terror for the wise man, on any rational theory of the future of the souL The old mythical hell, the stone of Sisyphus, the wheel of Ixion, Cerberus, and the ghostly ferryman, may be dismissed to the limbo of fable.^ For the man who has fol- lowed the inner light, death must either be a return to that antenatal calm of nothingness which has left no memory, or the entrance to a blissful vision of the Divine.^ Even in this luxurious and cfieminate time, men and women of all ranks and ages have shown themselves ready to escape from calamity or danger by a voluntary death.^ And what after all is death ? It is not the terminus of life, a single catastrophe of a moment In the very hour of birth we enter on the first stage in the journey to the grave. We are dying daily, and our last day
* Bp. 87. % 17 ; J?p. 68, § 27 ; cf. Epiot ii. 1.
' Ep, 96; 98, §§ 2, 7. * Z>0 /Vov. vi. § 6 ; AdMwrc^\ JSp,
* De Prov, iii. § 4. 102, §§ 23-26, Per haa mortalia aevi . * JSp. 24, § 13, rebus persona de- moras illi raeliori vitae longiorique pro- menda est Inditur.
> lb, § 18 ; cf. Ep, 36, % 10 ; Ep. 80, ' Ep, 24, § 11.
CHAP. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR 523
only completes Uie process of a life-loD^ death.^ And as to the shortness of oar days, no life is short if it has been folL' The mass of men are only living in an ambignoos sense ; they linger or vegetate in life, they do not really live. Nay, many are long since dead when the hoar of so-called death arriTe& And the men who monm over the shortness of their days are the greatest prodigals of the one thing that can never be replaced.* In the longest life, on a rational estimate, how small a fraction is ever really lived ! The whole past, which might be a sore and precious possession, is flui^ away by the eager, worldly man.^ The fleeting present is lost in onrest or reckless procrastination, or in projecting ourselves into a future that may never come. Thus old age surprises us while we are mere children in moral growth.^
At certain moments, the Stoic ideal might seem to be in danger of merging itself in the self-centred isolation of the Cynic, asserting die defiant independence of individual virtue, the nothingness of all external goods, the omnipotence of the solitary wilL And undoubtedly, in the last resort, Seneca has pictured the wise man thus driven to bay, and calmly defying the rage of the tjTant, the caprices of fortune, the loss of health and wealth, nay the last extremity of torture and ignominious death. His own perilous position, and the prospect of society in the reign of Nero, might well lead a man of meditative turn so to prepare himself for a fate which was always imminent. But the Stoic doctor could never acquiesce in a mere n^ative ideal, the self-centred inde- pendence of the individual souL He was too cultivated, he had drunk too deep of the science and philosophy of the past, he had too wide an outlook over the facts of human life and society, to relegate himself to a moral isolation which was apt to become a state of brutal disregard of the claims of social duty, and even of personal self-respect^ Such a position was absolutely impossible to a man like Seneca. Whatever his practice may have been, it is clear that in temperament he was almost too soft and emotional. He was a man with an
^ Ep. 24, § 20 ; Ep. 36. " Ih, iz. § 4, puerilea adhuc animos
^ Ep, 93, § 2, longa est vita si senectus oppritiiit
plena est ; cf. 101, § 10, singulos dies * Zeller, FKH, der OrUdu iii. 1, p.
singnlas ritas pnta. 329, der Stoiker ist za gebildet . . . um
* DeBrev. Vit. viii. § 1. denWerthderwissensohaftlichenWelt-
* Ih, X. betrachtung za yerkennen.
324 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
intense craving for sympathy, and lavish of it to others ; he was the last man in the world who could enjoy a solitary paradise of self-satisfied perfection. It is true the Boman world to the eyes of Seneca lay in the shadow of death, crushed under a treacherous despotism, and enervated by gross indulgence. Yet, although he sees men in this lurid light, he does not scorn or hate them. It was not for nothing that Seneca had been for five years the first minister of the Boman Empire. To have stood so near the master of the world, and felt the pulse of humanity from Britain to the Euphrates, to have listened to their complaints and tried to minister to their needs, was a rare education in social sympathy. It had a profound effect on M. Aurelius, and it had left its mark on Seneca.^
Two competing tendencies may be traced in Stoicism^ and in Seneca's exposition of it On the one hand, man must seek the harmony of his nature by submitting his passions and emotions to his own higher nature, and shaking himself free from all bondage to the flesh or the world. On the other hand, man is regarded as the subject of the universal Beasou, a member of the universal commonwealth, whose maker and ruler is Grod.' The one view might make a man aim merely at isolated perfection ; it might produce the philosophic monk. The other and broader conception of humanity would make man seek his perfection, not only in personal virtue, but in active sympathy with the movement of the world. The one impulse would end in a kind of spiritual selfishness. The other would seek for the full development of spiritual strength in the mutual aid and sympathy of struggling humanity, in friendship,' in the sense of a universal brotherhood and the fatherhood of God. There are two cities, says Seneca, in which a man may be enrolled — the great society of gods and men, wide as the courses of the sun ; the other, the Athens or the Carthage to which we are assigned by the accident of birth.^ A man may give himself to the service of both societies, or he may serve the one and neglect the other. The wise man alone realises to the full his citizenship in the spiritual commonwealth, in pondering on the problems of
^ Gf. Zeller, FhH, dtr Orieeh. iiL 1, ^ Burgmann, Seneca's ITieologie, p.
p. 277, die Philosophic immer nur die 26. * Ep, 109, § 10 ; 9, § 15.
gebchichtlich Yornandenen Zustande * De Otio^ iy. ; Ep, 68, § 2 ; cf. S.
abspiegele. Aug. De Civ, Dei^ xi. 1.
CHAP. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR 326
human conduct, the nature of the soul, of the universe and God, and conforming his moral being to the eternal law of Natura The sage, a Zeno or a Ghrysippus, may rightly devote himself exclusively to contemplation and moral self-culture.^ He may not, by wealth and station, have access to the arena of active life. And, although a seeming recluse, he may really be a far greater benefactor of his kind than if he led the Senate, or commanded armies. There may be cases in which a man may be right in turning his back on public life, in order to concentrate all his energies on self-improvement. And Seneca does not hesitate to counsel Lucilius to withdraw himself from the thraldom of office.^ Yet Zeno's precept was that the wise man will serve the State unless there be some grave impediment in his way.' For, on Stoic principles, we are all members one of another, and bound to charity and mutual help. And all speculation and contemplation are vain and firivolous imless they issue in right action. Yet the practical difficulty for the sapiens was great, if not insuperable. AYhat earthly conmionwealth could he serve with consistency ; is it an Athens, which condemned a Socrates to death, and drove an Aristotle into exile ? ^ How please the vulgar sensual crowd without displeasing God and conscience ? It might seem that the true disciple of Stoicism could not take a part in public life save imder some ideal polity, such as Plato or Ghrysippus dreamed of.^ Here, as elsewhere, the problem was solved with varying degrees of consistency. The problem is stated by Seneca — ^"Se contentus est sapiens ad beate vivendum, non ad vivendum." ^ It is the ever-recurring conflict between lofty idealism and the facts of human life, which is softened, if not solved, from age to age by casuistry. The wise and good man should have the springs of his happiness in himself. Yet a wise friend may call forth his powers, and furnish an object of self-sacrifice.^ The wise man will not entangle himself in the cares of family life.® Yet wife and child are
* Zeller, FhU, der Orieeh, iii. 1, p. rempablicam sapiens sit acoessnruB,
274 ; Stob. Flcr. 45, 29 ; Sen. Ep, 29, ad Atbenas in qua Socrates dam*
§11. nator, etc.; of. Diog. Laerl, v. 1.
> Ep. 19, § 6, subdue cenricem jugo » jrj. yii. § 131.
H**?^ /w ••• fi o ^ ^ A * Sen. Ep. 9, § 13.
» De (ku), m. § 2, accedet ad rem- .. „ .Jl 'J^
publicam nisi si quid impedierit. ' ^P' 1^*» § ^ "^^•
"* lb. viii § 1, interrogo ad quara ^ Epict. Diss. iii. 22, § 69.
326
THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY
BOOK III
needed to give completeness to the life of the citizen. Since man exists for the general order, how can he avoid lending his services to the State, unless there be some insuperable bar? The controversy between the dream of solitary perfection and altruism was variously solved, and the particular solution could always be defended in the light of the great law of life. Epictetus, cut oflF from the great world by servile birth and poverty, could make light of marriage, of the begetting of future citizens, and the duties of political life.^ On the other hand, M. Aurelius, by nature as detached as Epictetus, might refuse to follow the transcendental counsels of Chrysippus and Seneca. He might strive painfully to reconcile devotion to an irksome political charge with a dream of that unseen common- wealth " in which the cities of men are as it were houses." *
Yet in spite of these difficulties about public duty, no one outside the pale of Christianity has perhaps ever insisted so powerfully on the obligation to live for others, on the duty of love and forgiveness, as Seneca has done. We are all, bond or free, ruler or subject, members one of another, citizens of a universal commonwealth.' We have all within us a portion of the Divine spirit. No man can live entirely to himself^ If we are not doing good to others we are doing harm. The nature of man and the constitution of the universe make it a positive obligation to seek the welfare of our fellows.^ The social instinct is innate and original in us. As man is flung upon the world at birth, or in the natural state, with all his immense possibilities as yet undeveloped, no creature is so helpless.' It was only by combination and mutual good offices that men were able to repel the dangers which sur- rounded the infancy of the race, and to conquer the forces of nature. Man is bom for social union, which is cemented by concord, kindness, and love,^ and he who shows anger, selfishness, perfidy, or cruelty to his fellows strikes at the
1 Epict. Diw. i. 9, § 1 sqq. i) rh roO XvKpdrovt, firfdiwcm Tp6s rw mtObyuafov, rodaw&s i<rrtMy ebrw &ri ^Adrfpcuos fj KopLrBiot, dXX' 6ti Kdcfuot,
■ M. AoreL iii. 11 ; vl 44, r6\is Kcd rarpls dn fUv ^AyrtaylytfifMi ^'Pc&fii;, (ibs 8k iy$p<Snrifi 6 ILbcttat,
> Sen. Ep, 95, § 52 ; cf. M. Anrel. iv. 4, 6 K6ff/iot uxrtufel riXis iarl : Epict Dis8,l IS, §8; dcDeLeg. L7, 28,ut
jam uniTersus hie mundos una civitaa sit commanis deomm atqne hominnm ezistimanda.
^ Sen.^. 47, § 2, alteri yiyas oportet, si vis tibi Tivere ; Ep, 55, non sibi viyit qui neminL
» De Otio, iii. § 5.
" De Bene/, ir. 18, § 2, nndiiin et infirmum societas munit.
^ Z)« /m, i. 6, § 2.
CHAP. 1 THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR 327
roots of social life. Nor should the spectecle of universal depravity cause us to hate or despise our kind.^ It is quite true that the mass of men are bad, and always will be bad, with only rare exceptions. If society is the source of many blessings, it is also a great corrupter, and the conquest of nature and the development of the arts have aroused insatiable passions which have darkened the eye of reason.^ Tet this crowd of sinners are our brothers, with the germs of virtue in their grain. They have taken the broad way almost necessarily, because it is broad. A general may punish individual soldiers, but you must pardon an army when it deserts the standards, llie truly wise, not knowing whether to laugh or weep, will look kindly on the erring masses, as sick men who need a physician.' And beside the few truly wise, who can cast the first stone ? We are all more or less bad, we have all gone astray.* And yet we constantly show the utmost severity to the faults of others, while we forget or ignore our own.^ Even as God is longHsuffering to transgressors, and sends His rain upon the evil and good alike, so should we be merciful in judgment and lavish in beneficence.' The spectacle of uni- versal greed and selfishness and ingratitude should not harden us against our fellows, but rather make us turn our eyes to our own faults.^ Sometimes, indeed, the note of humility is absent, and Seneca is the serene sapiens contra mundum, or the proud Roman gentleman who will not demean himself to resent or even notice the insults or injuries of the spiteful crowd.® They will pass him by as the licensed jests of the slaves on the Saturnalia. He reminds himself that it is the lower air which is turbid with storm and thunder ; the ether which spreads around the stars is never vexed and darkened by the tempest' This is one of the recurring contrasts in Seneca between the moral tone of the old world and that of the great movement which was setting in. But the new prevails in the end. The conception of God as cold reason or impersonal law
^ De Ira, ii 10, § 5 sqq. * De Ben, iy. 4 and 5 ; iY,2Si De Ira^
* lb, ii. 8 and 9 ; j^. 90, § 9 sqq. ; iii. 26.
N, Quaeat, v. 15. "^ D$Jra,u, 28.
' lb, ii. 10, §§ 6-8. " lb. iiu 5, ingens animus et Tenia
^ De Clem, L 6, § 3, peocayimcia aestimator sui non Tindicat injnriam
omnes. quia non sen tit . . . Ultio doloria
' De Ira, it 28, § 8, aliena vitia in confossio est
oonlis habemns, a tergo nostra sunt. ' lb, iii. 6.
328 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book in
or fate gives way to the thought of a Grod who guides by His providence, who embraces all by His love, whose goodness is as boundless as His power, who is best worshipped by the imitation of His goodness.^ As the vision grows, the pride of the invulnerable wupitm, who might make himself the equal or more than the equal of God,' shrinks and is abased. We are all more or less bad, and we should be gentle to one another.^ Do we complain of coldness and ingratitude? Let us think how many a kindness done to us in early days, the tenderness of a nurse, a friend's wise counsel or help in critical times, we have carelessly let slip from memory.* The faults which irritate us in another are often lurking in ourselves. Forgive if you wish for forgiveness ; conquer evil with good ; do good even to those who have wrought you evil* Let us copy the serene example of those Eternal Powers who constantly load with their benefits even those who doubt of their existence, and bear with unruffled kindness the errors of frail souls that stumble by the way.
And as we shall not be harsh to those of our own externa] rank, so shall we soften the lot of those whom fortune has condemned to slavery. Even the slave is admitted to that great city of gods and men, which has no frontiers, which embraces all races and ranks, where all ranks should be levelled by the consciousness of a common Divine descent and a universal brotherhood of men.* The conquests of Macedon and Eome, overthrowing all old-world national barriers, had prepared the way for the greatest and most fruitful triumph of ancient philosophy. And the Stoic school has the glory oi anticipating the diviner dream, yet far from realised, of a human brotherhood under the light from the Cross. Seneca has never risen higher, or swept farther into the future than in his treatment of slavery. He is far in advance of many a bishop or abbot or Christian baron of the middle aga Can a slave confer a benefit? he asks.^ Is his service, however lavish, not merely a duty to his lord, which, as it springs
1 J^.65,§24;^c2ir«;v.viiL§S;i^. « Z)0 /m, iii. 26; JhBm, i. 10.
41, § 2 ; i^ Bm, Iy. 4 and 7 ; ^. 10, ^ JH Btn, viL 28, § 2.
§ 5, sio vive taniouam dens Tideat ; ' JH Ira^ iii. 26 ; iL 28 ; ii. 81.
Siedler, Dt Sm, PhU, Mor. p. 14 ; * De Beti, iii. 28, unus omninm
Burgmann, Seneca's Theologies p. 82. purens mundos est. CtJSp.i7\ Delta,
' De Prov. vi. § 6, hoc est qno doom iii. 24 ; iii. 85 ; De Clem, i. 18.
antecedatis. ' De Ben, iii. 18.
CHAP. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR 329
from constraint, is undeserving of gratitude ? Seneca re- pudiates the base suggestion with genuine warmth. On the same principle a subject cannot confer a benefit on his monarch, a simple soldier on his general. There is a limit beyond which power cannot command obedience. There is a line between cringing compliance and generous self-sacrifica And the slave has often passed that limit He has often borne wounds and death to save his master^s life in battle. He has often, in the years of the terror, endured the last extremity of torture, rather than betray his secrets.^ The body of the slave is his master's ; his mind is his own.^ It cannot be bought and sold. And in his inner soul, the slave is his master^s equal. He is capable of equal virtue and equal culture; nay, in both he may be his master's superior. He can confer a benefit if he can suffer injury in the outrages which cruelty and lust inflict upon him. When he confers a benefit, he confers it as man upon man, as an equal in the great family whose Father is God.
Seneca gives a lurid picture of the corruption of women in the general licence of his age.' Tet he has a lofty ideal of what women might become. like other Stoic preachers, it was his good fortune to be surrounded by good women from his infancy. He remembers the tenderness of his aunt, in whose arms he first entered Some as a child, who nursed him through long sickness, and broke through her reserve to help him in his early career of ambition. Her blameless character escaped even the petulance of Alexandrian gossip.^ His letters to his mother, Helvia, reveal a matron of the best Roman type — strong, self-denying, proud of her motherhood, and despising the extravagance and ostentation of her class. In spite of her father's limited idea of female culture, she had educated herself in liberal studies, and found them a refuge in affliction.* Marcia was of a softer type, and gave way to excessive grief for a lost child. Tet it is to her that Seneca unfolds most fully his ideal of feminine character. He will not admit the inferior aptitude of women for virtue and cultura'
1 Dt Ben. iiL 19 and 26 ; cf. Maorob. « Ad Hdv. ziz. § 2, § 6 ; Marcia's
Sat, i. 11, § 16. husband, probably Vitrasius PoUio,
' De Ben, iii. 20, interior ilia pars was goyemor of Egypt. — Teuffel, R,
mancipio dari non potest LU, § 282, 1.
» Ad ffelv, xyi. § 8 ; Ep, 05, § 21, » Ad ffelv. xy.-xvii. § 3.
libidine vero ne maribns qnidem ^ Ad Mare. zyi. par illis, mihi orede,
cednnt. yigor, etc.
330 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
Women have the same inner force, the same capacity for noble- ness as men. The husband of Paulina who surrounded him vrith affectionate sympathy, and was prepared to die along with him, the man who had witnessed the stem courage and loving devotion of the wives of the Stoic martyrs, might well have a lofty ideal of woman's character.^ But to any true disciple of the Porch that ideal had a surer ground than any personal experience, however happy. The creed which Seneca held was at once a levelling and an elevating creed. It found the only nobility or claim to rank in higher capacity for virtue.' It embraced in the arms of its equal charity all human souls, bond or free, male or female, however they might be graded by convention or accident, who have a divine parentage, and may, if they will, have a lofty, perhaps an eternal future.
And now, in taking leave of Seneca, let us forget the fawning exile in Corsica, the possible lover of Julia or Agrippina, the millionaire minister of Nero, who was surrounded by a luxury and state which moved the envy of the tyrant* Bather let us think of the ascetic from Lis early youth, who, raised by his talents to the highest place, had to reconcile an impossible ideal with the sordid or terrible realities of that rank which was at once a " pinnacle and a precipice." ^ He was continually torn by the contrast between the ideal of a lofty Stoic creed and the facts of human life around him, between his own spiritual cravings and the temptations or the necessities of the opportimist statesman. He was imbued with principles of life which could be fully realised only in some Platonic Utopia ; he had to deal with men as they were in the reign of Nero, as they are painted by Tacitus and Petronius. If he failed in the impossible task of such a reconciliation, let us do him the justice of recognising that he kept his vision clear, and that he has expounded a gospel of the higher life, which, with all its limitations from temperament or tradition, will be true for our remotest posterity, that he had a vision of the City of Gk)d.^ He was not personally perhaps so pure and clear a soul as Plutarch or Aristides or Dion Chrysostom. But he
^ Tac. ^717^. XT. 68, 64 ; Sen. Ep. ^ Ep, 94, § 7S, qnae aliis exoelaa
104, §§ 1-6. videntnr, ipsis praerupta sunt
> Dt Bm. iii. 28 ; iii. 20.
' Ad Polyb, xiL xiiL § 4 ; D. Cass. ' Ih (Hio, iv. dnas respublicas
Izi 10 ; Tac Ann. xiii. -42. animo complectaraur, etc.
CHAP. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR 331
had utterly cast ofi' that heathen anthropomorphism which crossed and disturbed their highest visions of the Divine.^ Seneca is far more modem and advanced than even the greatest of the Neo-Platonic school, just because he saw that the old theology was hopelessly effete. He could never have joined in the last struggle of philosophic paganism with the Church. And so the Church almost claimed him as her son, while it never dreamt of an afi&nity with Plutarch or Plotinus.
Indeed, there needed only the change of some phrases to reconcile the teaching of Seneca with that of the great ascetic Christian doctors. Many of the headings of the Imitation might be attached to paragraphs of Seneca — *' of bearing with the faults of others " ; " of inordinate afiections " ; " of the love of solitude and silence " ; " of meditation on death " ; " of humble submission " ; '* that to despise the world and serve God is sweet"; "of the acknowledgment of our own infirmities, and the remembrance of Grod's benefits " ; '' of the contempt of temporal honour and vain secular knowledge " ; ** of the day of eternity and this life's straitness." In truth, the great spirits of all ages who have had a genius for religion, after due allow- ance for difference of association and difference of phrase, are strangely akin and harmonious. And Seneca had one great superiority over other equally religious souls of his time, which enables him to approach mediaeval and modem religious thought — he had broken absolutely with paganism. He started with belief in the God of the Stoic creed ; he never mentions the Stoic theology which attempted to reconcile Him with the gods of the Pantheon. In spite of all his rhetoric, he tries to see the facts of human life and the relation of the human spirit to the Divine in the light of reason, with no intervening veil of legend. God is to Seneca the great Eeality, however halting human speech may describe Him, as Fate, or Law, or Eternal Season, or watchfixl loving Providence. God is within us, in whatever mysterious way, inspiring good resolves, giving strength in temptation, with all-seeing eye watching the issue of the struggle. God is without us, loading us with kindness
' Sen. Frag, ap. Aug. De Civ. Deif tiius, ut nos ad aurem simulacri qnasi vi. 10 ; Ep, 41, § 1, non sant ad caelum inagia exaudiii possimns admit tat. elevandae manus, nee ezorandaa aedi-
332 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
even when we offend, chastising us in mercy, the goal of all speculation, He from whom we proceed, to whom we go at death. The true worship of Him is not in formal prayer and sacrifice, but in striving to know and imitate His infinite goodness. We mortal men in our brief life on earth may be citizens of two commonwealths, one the Some or Corinth of our birth, the other that great city of gods and men, in which all are equally united, male and female bond and free, as children of a common Father. In this ideal citizenship, in obedience to the law of the spiritual city, the eternal law which makes for righteousness, man attains his true freedom and final beatitude in communion with kindred souls.
Tet, as in mediaeval and puritan religious theory, there is in Seneca a strange conflict between pessimism and idealism. To the doomed philosophic statesman of the reign of Nero, the days of man's life are few and evil. Life is but a moment in the tract of infinite age, and so darkened by manifold sins and sorrows that it seems, as it did to Sophocles, a sinister gift.^ On the other hand, its shortness is a matter of no importance ; the shortest life may be full and glad if it be dignified by effort and resignation and conformity to the great law of the universe. The wise and pious man, ever conscious of his brief time of probation, may brighten each passing day into a festival and lengthen it into a life. The shortness of a life is only au illusion, for long or short have no meaning when measured by the days of eternity. And the philosopher may unite many lives in one brief span. He may join himself to a company of sages who add their years to his, who counsel without bitterness, and praise without flattery; he may be adopted into a family whose wealth increases the more it is divided ; in him all the ages may be combined in a single lifa^ To such a spirit death loses all its terrors. The eternal mystery indeed can be pierced only by imaginative hope. Death, we may be sure, however, can only be a change. It may be a passage into calm unconsciousness, as before our birth, which will release us from all the griefs and tumults of the life here below. It may, on the other hand, prove to be the morning of an eternal day, the entrance to a radiant and untroubled world of infinite possibilities. In any case, the 'spirit which
» Sen. Ad POjfit, It. « De Brev. Vit, xt. § 8 sq.
CHAP. I THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR 333
has trained itself in obedience to eternal law, will not tremble at a fate which is surely reserved for the universe, by fire or flood or other cataclysmal change. The future in store for the soul is either to dwell for ever among things divine, or to sink back again into the general soul, and God shall be all in all.
CHAPTER II
THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY
Tub gospel of philosophy expounded by Seneca was rather an esoteric or aristocratic creed. With all his liberal sentiment, his cosmopolitanism, his clear conception of human equality and brotherhood, Seneca always remains the director of souls like his own, enervated by wealth, tortured with the ennui of jaded sensibility, haunted by the terror of the Caesars.^ Indeed Stoicism was always rather a creed for the cultivated upper class than for the crowd. In its prime, its apparatus of logical formulae, its elaborate physics and metaphysics^ its essentially intellectual solution of the problems both of the universe and human life, necessarily disabled it from ever developing into a popular system. And in the later days of the Bepublic, theory became more important than practice, and logic passed into casuistry.^ But in the first century, Stoicism came to be much more a religion than a philosophy, or even a theology. Its main business, as conceived by men like Seneca, is to save souls from the universal ship- wreck of character' caused by the capricious excesses of luxury, the idolatry of the world and the flesh, which sprang from a riotous pride in the material advantages of imperial power, without a sobering sense of duty or a moral ideal But, in the nature of things, this wreck of character was most glaringly seen among the men who were in close contact with the half insane masters of the world in the first century, and who possessed the resources to exhaust the possi-
^ Sen. Ep, 77, § 6, cogita quamdiu De Tranq, ii. § 13 ; x. § 5, 6.
jam idem facias : ciboB, soronua, libido ; ' Zeller, PhxL dir Griech, iii. 1, pp.
per banc oiroalam cnrritur ; Ep, 24, 46, 47 ; cf. Sen. Ep, 88, § 20 ; 117, §
§ 25, qaosdam subit eadem faciondi 20.
▼idendique satietas ; Ep, 89, § 21 ; 95, ' Sen. Ep. 48, § 8, omnes ondique ad
§ 20 ; 18, § 4 ; 24, §§ 11-14 ; 91, § 5, 6 ; te manus tendunt, etc
334
CHAP. II THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 335
bilities of pleasure or the capacities of the senses to enjoy. It is to people of this class, who still retained some lingering instincts of goodness, weary with indulgence, bewildered and tortured by the conflict of the lower nature with the weak, but still disturbing, protests of the higher, that Seneca addresses his counsels.
But what of the great masses lying outside the circle of cultivated and exhausted self-indulgence, that plebeian world of which we have seen the picture in their municipalities and colleges ? It is clear from the records of their daily life, their ambitions, their tasks and amusements, that, although perhaps not generally tainted with such deep corruption as the nobles of the Neronian age, their moral tone and aspirations hardly correspond to the material splendour of the Empire. Even apart from the glimpses of low life in Petronius, Martial, and Apuleius, apart from the revelations of Pompeii, and the ghastly traditions which haunt the ruins of countless theatres and amphitheatres, the warnings of preachers of that age, such as Dion Chrysostom, and the reflections of the infinitely charitable M. Aurelius, leave no very favourable impression of the moral condition of the masses.^ How could it be other- wise ? The old paganism of Bome did indeed foster certain ancestral pieties which were the salt of the Boman character. But it unfortunately also gave its sanction to scenes of lust and cruelty which went far to counteract in later times any good it did. Nor had the old religion any means for edifica- tion and the culture of character. It had no organisation for the care and direction of souls in moral doubt and peril. If its oracles might, from a few old-world examples, seem to supply such a spiritual want, the appearance is delusive even according to pagan testimony. Poets and moralists alike thundered against the shameless impiety which often begged the sanction of a prophetic shrine for some meditated sin,* and the charge has been confirmed by the resurrection of these old profanities from the ruins of Dodona.* But even without
' M. Aurel. ix. 34 ; v. 83, 7u/a'd 'OXv/iiroy dird y(Qovh% evpvoSelys. Petrou.
w6fu^€ p\iir€ip rd f vxd/xa a&rCjv. &r€ Sat, 88 ; Sen. De Ira^ ii 8 ; D. Chrys.
ioKoOci pKiwreuf ipiywres If w^eXetr xiii. § 18, 88 ; vii. 183.
e^vfiMovrres^ 6arj otriais ; . . . kcU iruWSta ' Pers. ii. 4 sqq. ; cf. Herod, vi. 86 ;
9uu9ai6fi(va koI waiSla ^cX^feiJco, yc- Luc Icaromen, 25.
Xuvra, ftm €^6ds KXaiovra. Uiffnt 6^ ' Beruays, Lucian wid die Kyniker^
ccU alduit Knl SIkti xai dXi^^eca wobt p. 84.
336 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
direct testimony, we might fairly conclude that the Antonine Age was, by reason of its material development, in special need of spiritual teaching and evangelism. The whole stress of public and private effort was towards the provision of comfort or splendour or amusement for the masses. And, within the range of its ambition, it succeeded marvellously. Nor should an impartial inquiier refuse to admit that such an immense energy has its good moral side. The rich were rigorously taught their duty to society, and they improved upon the lesson. The masses responded to their generous public spirit with gratitude and affection ; and the universal kindliness and fraternity diffused through all ranks on days of high religious festival or civic interest, afforded a very whole- some and gratifying spectacle.^ There was an undoubted softening of the Soman character. And the labours of the great Stoic lawyers were giving expression to cultivated moral feeling, in a more liberal recognition of the natural rights ot the weak and oppressed, of women and of slaves. Tet a society may be humane and kindly while it is also worldly and materialised. To us at least, the forces of the Antonine age seem to have expended themselves chiefly on the popular pleasures and external adornments of life, or a revival, often in the grossest and most absurd forms, as we shall see in a later chapter, of the superstitions of the past With all its humani- tarian sentiment and all its material glories, the Boman world had entered on that fatal incline, which, by an unperceived yet irresistible movement, led on to the sterUisation of the higher intellect, and the petrifaction of Boman society which ended in the catastrophe of the fifth century.
The triumphs and splendour of corporate life in the age of the Antonines are certainly a dazzling spectacle. Yet to the student who is more occupied with the painful moral education of the race, the interest lies in a different direction. It was a worldly age, but it was also an age ennobled by a powerful protest against worldliness. And in this chapter we shall study a great movement, which, under the name of philosophy or culture, called the masses of men to a higher standard of life. This movement, like all others of the same kind, had its
^ V. p. 231 of this work. Yet cf. irXoi^ioc ipplrrown xal duwofMis IXd- Luc. Somn. seu Oalhut, 22, ot di cKwral ere ktX.
CHAP, u THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 337
impoBton who diagiaoed ik Yet the man who has panned them with such mordmiit ridicule and pitiless aoorn, the man who was ntterly sceptical as to the Talne of all philosophic effort, in the last lesort apfvoaches Terj near to the view of human life which was preached by the men whom he derides.' Lnoian bdoiq^ to no philosophic school : he woold himself haye zepndiated adhesion to any system. The advice of Teiresias to Menippus, when he sought him in the shades, would certainly have been Lndan's to any young disciple who omsulted him. Have dcme with all these verbal sabtleties and chimerss ; swear allegiance to no sect ; make the best of the present; and take things generally with a smile.* Yet who can read the I>ialogme$ of ike Dead without feeling that there is a deeper and more serious vein in Ladan than he would oonfess ? AlthAngh he pouted his contempt upon the Cyuio street preachers, although in the Auciiom of Livee the Cyuic's sells for the most paltry price, the Cynic alone is allowed to carry with him across the river of death his characteristic qualities, his boldness and freedom of speech, his bitter kughter at the follies and illusions of mankind.' There are many indications in these dialogues that, if Lucian had turned Cynic preacher, he would have waged the same war on the pleaBures and illusory ambitions of man, he would have outdone the Cynics in brutal frankness of exposure and deuun- dation, ss he would have surpassed them in rhetorical and imaginative charm of style.^ He has a vivid and awful con- ception of Death, the great leveller, and sees all earthly wealth and glory in the grey light of the land where all things are forgotten. Bank and riches, beauty and strength, the lust of the eye and the pride of life, are all left behind on the borders of tiie realm of " sapless heada" * If Lucian has any gospel it is that the kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor. He is as ' ready as some of the Christian Fathers to condemn the rich ' eteniaUy.* And therefore we are not surprised that Lucian has little eye for the splendour of his age, unless indeed iu
» Croiwt, ImcUa, \k 1M, il a tabi i. 8 ; Samn. 21.
forteflMDt knr infloenoe en ^crirant les * Loe. Traj, 15 ; Neq/mn, 12.
Dialagmm ^ marU. •Traj. 19 ; Qrn. 7 ; Menip, n
! V^ ^^^ ^ ^ X<-^» « oTTf tXmVioc vpotrt€ffw Axoi
» Lne. FU. AueL 11 ; Tn^, 24 ; «tX. Ct Samn. 14, 15, ol U (»Xarf«io
* Ct Loc. Oar. 15, 20 ; Dial, Mori, punm, cf. 22. i^ fn^
338 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
the phrase, " Great cities die as well as men." ^ He seems to have little appreciation for its real services to humanity. Its vain, pretentious philosophy, its selfishness of wealth, its vices hidden under the guise of virtue, drew down his hatred and scorn. Yet one cannot help feeling, in reading some of Lucian's pieces, that, man of genius as he was, a man of no age, or a man of all ages, he is looking at human life from far above, with no limitations of time, and passing a judgment which may be repeated in the thirtieth century.*
This lofty or airy detachment in regarding the toils and ambitions of men is perhaps best seen in the Charon. In this piece Lucian shows us the ideal spectator taking an outlook over the scene of human life. The fenyman of the dead, who has heard so many laments from his passengers for the joys they have lost, wishes to have a glance at this upper world which it seems so hard to leave behind. He joins the company of Hermes, and, by an old-world miracle, they gain an observatory on high-piled Thessalian mountains from which to watch for a while the comedy or the tragedy of human life.^ A magic verse of Homer gives the spectral visitor the power to observe the scene so far below. And what a sight it is ! It is a confused spectacle of various effort and passion — men sailing, fighting, ploughing, lending at usury, suing in the law-courts. It is also a human swarm stinging and being stung. And over all the scene flits a confused doud of hopes and fears and follies and hatreds, the love of pleasure and the love of gold. Higher still, you may see the eternal Fates spinning for each one of the motley crowd his several thread. One man, raised high for the moment, has a resound- ing fall ; another, mounting but a little way, sinks unperceived. And amidst all the tumult and excitement of their hopes and alarms, death kindly snatches them away by one of his many messengers. Yet they weep and lament, forgetting that they have been mere sojourners for a brief space upon earth and are only losing the pleasures of a dream.^ To Charon the bubbles in a fountain are the truest image of their phantom
^ Char, 23, diro&i^jcoi;(ri y6,p^ cD ^uricoireiy 8a Kal rd ^ir/yeia, dffwtp
vopO/itdf KoX ir6Xeit <b<nr€p AyOpdnroi, Todh d^uOf^t '^A'^'d dyiXat . . . ydfuwt,
' As in learomen, 15 ; Char. 17. yevitreist $aviTovtt auccumfpluir 06pvfioi^,
• Char. 3 ; of. a saying of Plato, ioprds, 0pc^ovf, kt\.
quoted in M. Anrel. yii. 48, koX Sij * Luc. CTiar, 17, dTlanw &rw€p ^
irepi ijfBpd>wia9 roi>r \lrfQvt w<no6ft/e¥09 dpeiparot rdrra inr^p yi^t d^rrcf.
THE PSnjOSOPMiC MISSXLKJUtr
fiM'i'mg find teisaw spaedilT, cs^mis sinesllxiu^ ^^
laiL GkavB s so »s^rad W ife piaiios cf it ill, daii, ftwi bis iMwasudai paiiks, lie vcnld &xd pncsh m senMn totbesiIlT crowd aad wim ikem «f "At doan v^ieii is in 9tet« far aIL But the wiser or move crncil HerxMs itolls kiai diat all except a feir iicre llieBr eus smr dos^ siioppad ttuoDi llie cieir of OJ5BMJM wiicB ttier ptsaad the Siren isks.
This Tiew <tf famziBii life, hslf^ooDtempUMSKs lislf-piUMiie^ wliicfa die grest ioanoelMi of aD die drasios of rdjgioD or philosophy is his taine has deetriied widi his own grtphie power, w» die Tiew of die v«y philoBophT which he dkoided Fhiloeoph J had a seeond time tained from heaTeo to oaidt The eSatt to sotre die liddle of die oniTerse by a siogle farmnla, or bj die fine-drawn sabdedes of dialectic; has bem abandoned. In Ludan's Ametiam 0/ Livn, in which die merits of the Tanoofl sdiools are balanced and estimated in terms of cash, it is significant that only a slight and perfunctoty rrferenoe is made to the great cosmic or metaphysical theories of Elea or Ionia, to the Pythagmean doctrine of numbexs, to the l^hesian doctrine of tbe eternal flow, or the ideal system of Flato.^ We have aeen that, althongfa Seneca has a certBun interest in the logic and physics of the older Stoicism, he makes all purely speculatiTe inquiry ancillary to moral progress. The same diversion of interest from the field of speculation to that of conduct is seen even more decidedly in Epictetus and M. Aurelius.* The philosophic Emperor had, of course, studied the great cosmic systems of Heraclitus and Epicurus, Plato and Aristotle* They furnish a scenery or background, some- times, especially that of Heraclitus, a dimly-seen foundation, for his theory of conduct. But, in spite of his sad, weary view of the pettiness and sameness of the brief space of conscious- ness between " the two eternities," the whole thought of M. Aurelius is concentrated on the manner in which that brief moment may be worthily spent So, Epictetus asks, What do I care whether all things are composed of atoms or similar parts or of fire or earth? Is it not enough to know the
1 Luc. Fit Aud. 8, 13, 16. PhU. der Grueh, iil. 2, p. 20S ; Hatch,
' Epict. Diss, iv. i. 138, 'Apoy ^ireu-a Hxbhert Lee p. 142. rd ru)¥ tf^oXo^rcjcci^y koX twp ftwpuv ' M. Aurel. vi. 15 ; vii. 19 ; vi. 24, 42,
ffrX. M. Aurel. tu. 67 ; of. Zeller, 47 ; YiiL 6 ; zl 20 ; yiil 8 ; tIL 67.
340 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book in
nature of good and evil ? ^ Just as in the days of Socrate? the whole stress of philosophy is directed towards the discoveiy of a role of life, a source of moral clearness and guidance, with a view to the formation or reformation of character.
Seneca and Epictetus and Lucian and M. Aurelius all alike give a gloomy picture of the moral condition of the massea And we may well believe that, in spite of the splendour of that age, in spite of a great moral movement which was stirring among the leaders of society, the mass of men, as in every age, had little taste for idealist views of life. Yet Seneca» not- withstanding his pessimism, speaks of the multitudes who were stretching out their hands for moral help. There must have been some demand for that popular moral teaching which is a striking feature of the time. Men might jeer at the philosophic missionary, but they seem to have crowded to listen to him — on the temple steps of Bome or Ephesus, in the great squares of Alexandria,^ or in the colonnades at Olympia, or under the half- ruined walls of an old Milesian colony on the Euxine.' The rush of the porters and smiths and carpenters to join the ranks of the Cynic friars, which moved the scorn of Lucian,^ must have corresponded to some general demand, even if the motive of the vagrant missionary was not of the purest kind. There must have been many an example of moral earnestness like that of Hermotimus, who had laboured hard for twenty years to find the true way of life, and had only obtained a distant glimpse of the celestial city.^ After Dion's conversion, as we may fairly call it, he deems it a sacred duty to call men to the way of wisdom by persuasion or reproach, and to appeal even to the turbulent masse&^ We shall see how well he fulfilled the duty. For nearly a century at Athens, the gentle De- monax embodied the ideal which his friend Epictetus had formed of the Cynic father of all men in God ; and his immense ascendency testifies at least to a widespread respect and admiration for such teaching and example.^ It is not necessary
» Bpiot. Fr. 176 ; cf. Din, iiL 21, « Philoetr. AyoU. Tyan. t. 26 ; D.
f 28, dXXd, ef fl-e }/nrxoy(tfy€i tA dtwpij- Cbrys. Or, zxxii.
fiara, KaBij/ufot a^rd rrpi^ a^bt Hrl » Philoatr. Apoil. Tyan, iv. 41 ; ir.
awMToO • itCKbaoitop ^ jirfihrm' etvjfs 24 ; D. Chrys. xxxri § 17. ffeavT6p : of. M. Aarel. ii. 17, rov dpOpco' * Luc. Fug. c. 12.
irirov /nov o /ih xP^m myfiij . . . r/ • ffermat, o. 2, 26.
oCr rh rapaTi/i^tu Svrdfiewop ; iv ica2 • D. Chrys. Or, IxzyiiL ; MartliA,
fi^ror, fpiKoffw^ Mor, sous VBmp, rom, p. 300.
' Luc. (!) Dim, c. 7, 8.
CHAP. II THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 341
to suppDse that the people who thought it an honour if Demonax invited himself to their tables, the magistrates who rose up to do him reverence as he passed, or the riotous assembly which was awed into stillness by his mere presence, were people generally who had caught his moral enthusiasm.^ They were at the very time eager to have gladiatorial shows established under the shadow of the Acropolis. But it is some- thing when men b^in to revere a character inspired by moral forces of which they have only a dim conjecture. And amid all the material splendour and apparent content of the Antonine age, there were signs that men were becoming conscious of a great spiritual need, which they often tried to satisfy by accumulated superstitions. The ancient routine was broken up ; the forms of ancestral piety no longer satisfied even the vulgar ; the forms of ancient scholastic speculation had become stale and frigid to the cultivated ; the old philosophies had left men bewildered. Henceforth, philosophy must make itself a religion ; the philo- sopher must become an " ambassador of God/'
" There is no philosophy without virtue ; there is no virtue without philosophy,'' said Seneca,^ and herein he expressed truly the most earnest thought of his own age and the next Lucian, in the dialogue which is perhaps his most powerful exposure of the failure of philosophy, bears testimony to the boundless ex- pectations which it aroused in its votaries. Hermotimus, the elderly enthusiast, whom the mocker meets hurrying with his books to the philosophic school, has been an ardent student for twenty years; he has grown pale and withered with eager thought Tet he admits that he has only taken a single step on the steep upward road. Few and faint and weary are they who ever reach the summit^ Tet Hermotimus is content if, at the dose of the efforts of a lifetime, he should, if but for a moment, breathe the air of the far-off heights and look down on the human ant-hill below. Such spirits dream of an apotheosis like that which crowned the hero on Mount Oeta, when the soul shall be purged of its earthly passions as by fire, and hardly a memory of the illusions of the past will remain.^ Lycinus, his friend, has once himself had a vision of a celestial city, from
^ Loc (f) DeTTL 0. 68. ' Luc. ffennoL o. 5.
* Ih. c. 7, KoX o9roc ^ irrh ^Xoo'o^t ' Sen. Ep, 89, S 6 ; cf. A. Oell. xvii &av€p inr6 ripot wfAt Awopra ravra 19, 4. ir€piaip€64mt ktK.
84S THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
which ambition aud the greed of gold are baiushed, where there is no discord or stiife, but the citizens live in a deep peace of sober virtue. He had once heard from an aged man how any one might share its citizenship, rich or poor, bond or free, Greek or barbarian, if only he had the passion for nobleness and weie not overcome by the hardness of the journey. And the sceptic avows that long since he would have enrolled himself among its citizens, but the city is far off, and only dimly visibla The paths which are said to lead to it run in the most various directions, through soft meadows and cool shaded slopes, or mounting over bare rough crags under a pitiless blaze. And at the entrance to each avenue there is a clamorous crowd of guides, each vaunting his peculiar skill, abusing his rivals, and pointing to the one sure access of which he alone has the secret key. A similar scene, equally illustrative of the moral ferment of the time, is sketched in another charming piece.^ It is that in which the rustic Pan, with his memories of the shepherd's pipe and the peace of Arcadian pastures, describes the strange turmoil of contending sects which rings around his cave on tlie edge of the Acropolis. There, in the Agora below, rival teachers, with dripping brow and distended veins, are shouting one another down before an admiring crowd. And the simple old deity, to whom the language of their dialectic is strange, seems to think that the victory rests with the loudest voice and the most blatant self-assertion.
The sly ridicule of Lucian, so often crossed by a touch of pathos, is perhaps the best testimony to the overpowering interest which his age felt in the philosophy of conduct. And it was no longer the pursuit merely of an intellectual aristocracy. Common, ignorant folk have caught the passion for apostle- ship. Everywhere might be met the feimiliar figure, with long cloak and staff and scrip, haranguing in the squares or Ismes to unlettered crowds.^ And the preacher is often as unlearned as they, having left the forge or the carpenter's bench or the slave prison,' to proclaim his simple gospel of renunciation, with more or less sincerity. Lucian makes sport of the quarrels and contradictions of the schools. And it is true that the old
^ Lnc. Bia Ace, c. 11. iwkp cod (fnXoao^wtri /crX.
3 lb. c. 6, &iraPTaxoO TiiyciP paOdt ' Fug, c. 12 ; Fit AucL c 10 ; D.
Kal pifiKlov iv rj) dfMrtp^ xal rdrret Chrys. xzxii. 9 ; xxziv. 3.
CHAP. II THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 343
names still marked men off in different camps, or rather churches. But their quarrels in Ludan and in Philostratus ^ seem to be personal, the ofispring of very unphilosophic ambition and jealousy, or greed or petty vanity, rather than the wholesome and stimulating collision of earnest minds contend- ing for what they think a great system of truth. The rival Sophists under the Acropolis were quarrelling for an audience and not for a dogma. Scientific interest in philosophy was to a great extent dead. For centuries no great original thinker had arisen to rekindle it And in the purely moral sphere to which philosophy was now confined, the natural tendency of the different schools, not even excluding the Epicurean, was to assimilation and eclecticism.^ They were aU impartially endowed at the university of Athens, and a youth of enthusiasm would attend the professors of all the school& Apollonius, although he finally adopted the Pythagorean discipline, pursued his studies at Aegae under Platonists and Stoics,' and even under Epicureans. Seneca came under Pythagorean influences in his youth, and he constantly rounds off a letter to Liicilius with a quotation from Epicurus. Among the tutors of M. Aurelius were the Peripatetic Claudius Severus, and Sextus the Platonist of Ghaerouea.^ Hence, although a man in the second ceutury might be labelled Platonist or Stoic, Cynic or Pythagorean, it would often be difficult from his moral teaching to discover his philosophic ancestry and affinities. And, just as in modem Christendom, although sectarian landmarks and designations are kept up, the popular preaching of nearly all the sects tends to a certain uniformity of emphasis on a limited number of momentous moral truths, so the preaching of pagan philosophy dwells, almost to weariness, on the same eternal principles of true gain and loss, of the illusions of passion, of freedom through renunciation.
The moral teaching or preaching of the Antonine age naturally adapted its tone to the tastes of its audience ; there was the discourse of the lecture -room, and the ruder and more boisterous appeal to the crowd. Both passed under the name of philosophy, and both often degraded that great name by an affectation and insincerity which cast discredit on a
' PhilMtr. Apoll. Tyan, y. 87. effoo^es. Un ^lectidsme taperfide
* Zeller, Fhii. der Orieeh, in. 1, p. ^tait k la mode.
488. Renan, Les J^. p. 884, lea differ- * Philostr. Apoll, Tyan. i. 7.
ences des ecoles ^talent h pea prte * Capitol. M. Ant. c. 8.
344 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
great and beneficent movement of reform. The philosophic lecturer who has a serious moral purpose is in theory dis- tinguished from the rhetorical sophist, who trades in startling effects, who rejoices in displaying lus skill on any subject however trivial or grotesque, who will expatiate on the gnat or the parrot, or debate the propriety of a Vestal's marriage.^ The exercises of the rhetorical school had gone on for five hundred years, and, with momentous effects on Soman culture, they were destined to continue with little change till the Goths were masters of Bome.^ The greed, the frivolity, and the overweening vanity of these intellectual acrobats are a commonplace of literary history.' The sophist and the lecturing philosopher were theoretically distinct But un- fortunately a mass of evidence goes to show that in many cases the lecturing philosopher became a mere showy rheto- rician. A similar desecration of a serious mission is not unknown in modem times. The fault is often not with the preacher, but with his audience. If people come not to be made better, but to be amused, to have their ears soothed by flowing declamation, to have a shallow intellectual curiosity titillated by cheap displays of verbal subtlety or novelty, the unfortunate preacher will often descend to the level of his audience. And in that ancient world, according to the testimony of Seneca, Musonius, Plutarch, and Epictetus, the philosophic preacher too often was tempted to win a vulgar applause by vulgar rhetorical arts.^ He was sometimes a man of no very serious purpose, with little real science or originality. He had been trained in the school of rhetoric, which abhorred all serious thought, and deified the master of luscious periods and ingenious turns of phrasa He was, besides, too often a mere vain and mercenary adventurer, trading on fim attenuated stock of philosophic tradition, and a bound- less command of a versatile rhetoric, cultivating intellectual insolence as a fine art, yet with a servile craving for the applause of his audience.^ Many a scene in the now faded history of their failures or futile triumphs comes down to us
^ Marihft, MoraliaUs «mf rBmp. p. * Epictii. 19;iiL23; Plut ZfeiSMto
276 ; Capes, Untv, Life, p. 58 aqq. Sat, And. vii. viii. ; A. Gall t. i. ;
* Bonuxn Society in the Latt Century Zeller, iiL 1, p. 657. 4^ the fFeitern Empire (lit ed.), p. 855.
* Capea, Umv, Life, p. 69. * Philostr. FiL Soph, i. 3.
CHAP. II THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 345
from Plutarch and Epictetus and Philostratus.^ Sometimes the gaps upon the benches, the listless, inattentive air, the slow feeble applause, sent the vain preacher home with gloomj fears for his popularity. On other days, he was lifted to the seventh heaven by an enthusiastic genteel mob, who followed every deft turn of expression with shouts and gestures of delight, and far-fetched preciosities of approbation. At the close, the philosophic performer goes about among his admirers to receive their renewed tribute. " Well, what did you think of me ? " — " Quite marvellous, I swear by all that is dear to me." — ^"But how did you like the passage about Pan and the nymphs ? '' — *' Oh, superlative ! " It is thus that a real winner of souls describes the impostor.^ Even estimable teachers did not disdain to add to the effect of their lectures by carefully polished eloquence, on exquisite toilet, and a cultivated dignity. Such a courtly philosopher was Euphrates, the Syrian Stoic, whose acquaintance Pliny had made during his term of service in the East Euphrates was stately and handsome, with flovdng hair and beard, and a demeanour which excited reverence with- out overawing the hearer.' Irreproachable in his own life, he condenmed sin, but was merciful to the sinner. Pliny, the amiable man of the world, who had no serious vices to reform, found Euphrates a charming lecturer, with a subtle and ornate style which was entirely to his taste. He treats Euphrates as a rhetorician rather than as a philosopher with a solenm message to deliver. To serious moralists like Seneca, Musonius, Plutarch, and Epictetus the showy professor of the art of arts was an offence. With their lofty conception of the task of practical philosophy, they could only feel contempt or indignation for the polished exquisite who trimmed or inflated his periods to please the ears of fashionable audience& They all condemn such performances in almost identical terms. The mission of true philosophy is to make men examine themselves, to excite shame and pain and penitence, to reveal a law of life and moral freedom which may lead to amendment and peace.^
1 Philostr. ViJL Soph, i. iv. #5eX7« * Epict iii. 28, aXX' /roW^ fu'
ri re IpcS ^^ ^iy/iaros koI rtp f^iu} tM /im 0C& nU Qovftoffrvt. Plot,
r^ yXtSirnit. A. OeU. v. 1, 8 ; Sen. J)e Reda Bat, Aud. o. Till ; cf. Hatch,
JSp, 108, fi 6, non id agant ut aliqua illo Hibheri Lee p. 9ff.
Titia deponant aed ut oblectamento ' Flin. JSp. L 10.
aurinm perfrnantur. Cf. Philoatr. « Bpict iii 21 ; ii. 1 ; ii 28 ; Sen.
FU. Soph, i. 7. Bp. 108, § 6.
846 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book iii
" There is no good in a bath or in a discourse which does not cleanse." The true disciple and the true teacher will be too much absorbed in the gravity of the busmess to think of the pleasure of mere style. To make aesthetic effect the object of such discourses, when the fate of character is at stake, is to turn the school into a theatre or a music-hall, the philosopher into a flute-player.^
The volume and unanimity of these criticisms of the rhetori- cal philosopher show that such men abounded ; but they also show that there must have been a great mass of serious teachers whom they travestied* It has perhaps been too little recognised that in the first and second centuries there was a great propa- ganda of pagan morality running parallel to the evangelism of the Church.^ The preaching was of very different kinds, according to the character of the audiences. The preachers, as we have said, belonged to all the different schools, Stoic or Platonist, Cynic or Pythagorean ; sometimes, like Dion, they owed little academic allegiance at alL Sometimes the preaching approached to modem conceptions of its office ; ' at others, it dealt with subjects and used a style unknown to our pulpits.^ The life of ApoUonius of Tyana may be a romance; it certainly contains many narratives of miracles and wonders which cast a suspicion upon its historical value. Yet even a romance must have real facts behind to give it probability, and the preaching, at least, of Apollonius seems to belong to the world of reality. Apollonius was probably much nearer to the true ecclesiastic and priest of modern times than any ancient preacher. He had been trained in all the philosophies; he had drunk inspiration from the fountain of all spiritual religion, the East He was both a mystic and a ritualist. He rejoiced in converse with the Brahmans, and he occupied himself with the revival or reform of the ritual in countless Greek and Italian temples.^ He had an inmiense and curious faith in ancient legend.^ The man who could busy himself
^ A. GelL T. 1, 2, tun Bcias neqne * Philostr. ApoU, Tyan. iv, 8 ; iv. 42 ;
illi philosophum loqoi sed tibiciuem D. Chrys. zzziii. § 28 ; zzzir. § 4 ; zl.
oaneie. Philoitr. VU. Soph, iii. 8, §81.
^IA/oi6s T§ vouctkuripovt aUKoO koX \6pov * Cf. A. Qell. zii. 1, nihil, iuqnit,
40iiydy€TQ is r^ Xiryw, D. Ohrys. Or, dnbito qoin fiUam lacte siio nntritnra
zzzv. §§ 7, 8. tit
' For a oomparatiye estimate see * Philostr. ApdL Tyan, iii. 41 sqq. ;
Gapes, Univ, L\r4 in Andent AUiens, iv. 24 ; iv. 18, 20 ; i 11 ; i. 81. p. 90 ; Hatch, HihbeH Lee, p. 106. * Ih, iv. 18, 16, 19, 20, 83 ; vi. 40.
CHAP. II THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 847
with the restoration of the true antique form of an obsolete lite at Eleusis or Athens or Dodona, also held conceptions of prayer and sacrifice and mystic communion with God, which might seem irreconcilable with any rigidly formal worship.^ The ritualist was also the preacher of a higher morality. From the steps of the temples he used to address great audiences on their conspicuous faults, as Dion did after him. In the parable of the sparrow who by his twitter called his brethren to a heap of spilt grain, he taught the people of Ephesus the duty of brotherly helpfulness.^ He found Smyrna torn by factious strife, and he preached a rivalry of public spirit.' Even at Olympia, before a crowd intent on the strife of racers and boxers and athletes, he discoursed on wisdom and courage and temperance.* At Eome, under the tyranny of Nero, he moved from temple to temple exciting a religious revival by his preaching.^ One text, perhaps, contains a truth for all generations — " My prayer before the altars is — Grant me, ye Gods, what is my due."^ What effect on the masses such preaching had we cannot tell — ^who can tell at any time ? But there are well-attested cases of individual conversion undei pagan preaching. Folemon, the son of a rich Athenian, was a very dissolute youth who squandered his wealth on low pleasure. Once, coming from some revel, he burst with his companions into the lecture room of Xenocrates, who happened to be discoursing on temperance. Xenocrates calmly con- tinued his remarks. The tipsy youth listened for a while, then fluug away his garland, and with it also his evil ways;^ he became the head of the Academy. A similar change was wrought by the teaching of Apollonius on a debauched youth of Corcyra, which we need not doubt although it was accom- panied by a miracla®
Musonius, another preacher, was a younger contemporary of Apollonius. His fame as an apostle of the philosophic life aroused the suspicions of Nero, and he was exiled to Gyarus.^
1 Philostr. ApoU. T^fan, v. 25, rd 8^ Hfi^/xirovf t^ rxoK'¥ rrX. : Epict
ruw roApuv oXijm, koX irdaa iOitro, od«r iiL 1, fi 14 ; Hor. Sat. ii. 3, 268, qna«ro,
^irh€i rd rocdde, kt\, faciasne, quod olim Mutatos Pofemon f
' Ih, iy. 8. ' lb, iv. 8. Cf. the conversion of Isaens, Philoitr.
* lb, iv. 81. » lb, iv. 41. Fii. Sopfi, I 217.
* lb, L 11 ; iv. 40, &9€ dfxofMi, S)9tol ^ PhUostr. ApoU, Tyan, ir. 20 ; cf. dolrp-i /AM rd 6<p€i\6fiepa, L 18.
7 Diog. Laert iv. 8, 1, kcU Tore • lb, vil 16 ; cf. Tac. Ann. xv. 71 ; . . . fi€96(av Kal €ffr€^avuft4pot tls rifp D. Caaa. Ixii. 27.
348 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book m
The suspickm may have been ocmfinned bj his intunacj with BabeUins Flaatos and great Stoacs like Thiasea.^ He met with gentler treatmoit under the Flarians,' and he probably flaw the reign of Trajan. He is not known to hare written anything. The fragments of his teaching in Stobaens are {HTobably drawn firom notes of his lectores^ as the tearJiing of Epictetos has been preserved by Arrian. Mascmins is not a specolatiye philosopher bat a physician of sonl& Philoso^y is the way to goodness: goodness is the goal of philosophy. And philosophy is not the monopoly of an intellectaal caste ; it is a matter of precept and practice, not of theory. Hie true moral teacher, working on the germ of virtae which there is in each human soul, thinking only of reformii^ his disciples, and nothing of applause, may win them to his ideal Musonius fortified the austere Stoic and Cynic precepts by the ascetic discipline of the Pythagorean school He taught the forgiveness of injuries and gentleness to wrongdoers. He is one of the few in the ancient world who have a glimpse of a remote ideal of sexual virtua WhUe his ascetic principles do not lead him to look askance at honourable marriage, he denounces all unchMtity, and demands equal virtue in man and woman .« He was, according to Epictetus, a searching preacher. He spoke to the conscience, so that each hearer felt as if his own feults were set before his eyes. His name will go down for ever in the pages of Tacitus. When the troops of Vespasian and Yitellius were fighting in the lanes and gardens under the walls of Borne, Musonius joined the envoys of the Senate, and at the risk of his life harangued the infuriated soldiery on the blessings of peace and the horrors of civil war.^ Many of the moral treatises of Plutarch are probably redacted from notes of lectures delivered in Boma As we shall see in a later chapter, Plutarch is rather amoral director and theologian than a preacher. But his wide knowledge of human nature, his keen analysiB of character and motive and human weakness, his spiritual discernment in discovering remedies and sources of strength, above all his lofty moral ideal, would have made him a powerful preacher in any age of the world But it is in
^ Tao. Ann. zt. 71 ; ziv. 69 ; Epiot Uov^tn^tov U r^ *Pc6AMff ^/SotXc
11,27. TheBafaiisMosoniiisRafna. ' Zeller, PhiL der Greieh, iiL 1,
* D. OftM. IztL 18, ird^rar rodt pp. 651-^58.
^CKoah^wt b Ode^ranrnf^ irXV toO * Tac. ffist, iiL 81.
CHAP, u THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 349
the discourses of Maximus of Tyre that we have perhaps the nearest approach in antiquity to our conception of the sermon. Probably if any of us were asked to explain that conception, he might say that a sermon was founded on some definite idea of the relation of man to the Infinite Spirit, that its object was, on the one hand, to bring man into communion with God, and, on the other, to teach him his duty to his fellowmen and to himself. The discourses of Maximus have all these characteristics. Maximus of Tyre is little known now, and although to the historian of thought and moral life he is attractiye, he has not the strength of a great personality. Yet, along with Plutarch, he shows us paganism at its best, striving to reform itself, groping after new sources of spiritual strength, trying to wed new and purer spiritual ideals to the worn-out mythology of the past Maximus is very much in the position of one of our divines who finds himself bound in duty to ediiy the spiritual life of his fiock, without disowning the religious traditions of the past, and without refusing to accept the ever- broadening revelation of God. Some of his discourses may seem to us frigid and scholastic, with a literary rather than a religious interest. But in others, there is a combination of a systematic theology with a mystic fervoui* and a moral purpose, which seems hardly to belong to the ancient world.^
In his oration to the Alexandrians,^ Dion Ghrysostom speaks with unwonted asperity of the Cynics, haranguing with coarse buffoonery a gaping crowd in the squares and alleys or in the porches of the temples. He thinks that these men are doing no good, but rather bringing the name of philosophy into contempt It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that this view of the Cynic profession was very general in that age. The vulgar Cynic, with his unkempt beard, his mantle, wallet, and staff, his filth and rudeness and obscenity, insulting every passer-by with insolent questions, exchanging coarse jests and jeers with the vagabond mob which gathers at his approach, is the commonest figure in Greek and Soman literature of the time. The ''mendicant monks" of paganism have been painted with all the vices of the dog and ape by Martial and Petronius
1 Max. Typ. v. viiL §§ 3, 10 ; xL ; « D. Chrys. Or. xxxiL fi 9, ^irm M
xiv. I 8 ; xyii. For the little known (ot Ki/rurot) Ir re rpiUois xoi crepwrdis
of him, V, Zeller, Phil, der Oriech, iii. koX TvKCcaf Upw dytlpovai «rcU dirarMO'i
2, p. Ib2, n. 8. Toiddpia ical wa&rat, kt\.
Z60 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
and Seneca, by Dion and Athenaeus and Alciphron and Epictetus, above all by Lucian.^ The great foe of all extrava- gance or enthusiasm in religion and philosophy fastened on the later followers of Diogenes with peculiar bitterness. His hostility, we may surmise, is directed not against their tenets, but their want of decent culture. In the Banqu^, the Cynic Alcidamas is drawn with a coarse vigour of touch which is intended to match the coarseness of the subject. He bursts into the dinner-party of Aristaenetus uninvited, to the terror of the company, ranges about the room, snatching tit -bits from the dishes as they pass him, and finaUy sinks down upon the floor beside a mighty flagon of strong wina He drinks to the bride in no elegant fashion, challenges the jester to fight, and, when the lamp is extinguished in the obscene tumult, is finally found trying to embrace the dancing ghl' But Lucian's bitterest attack on the class is perhaps delivered in the dialogue entitled the Fuffitives, Philosophy, in the form of a woman bathed in tears, appears before the Father of the gods. That kindly potentate is affected by her grief, and inquires the cause of it Philosophy, who had been commissioned by Zeus to bring healing and peace to human life in all its confusion and ignorance and violence, then unfolds the tale of her wrongs.^ It is a picture of vulgar pretence, by which her fair name has been besmirched and disgraced. Observing the love and reverence which her true servants may win from men, a base crew of ignorant fellows, trained in the lowest handicrafts, have for- saken them, to assume the garb and name of her real followers.^ It is a pleasant change from a life of toil and danger and hardship, to an easy vagabond existence, nor is the transfor- mation difficult A cloak and a club, a loud voice and a brazen face and a copious vocabulary of scurrilous abuse, these are all the necessary equipment Impudent assurance has its usual success with the crowd, who are imable to see through the disguise. If any one attempts to challenge the
1 Sen. J?p. 5, § 1 ; 29, § 1 ; Mart. iv. » l^^ C<mmv. c. 16, 86, etc.
58, cum baculo peraque senem . . . cui ' Fug. c. 5, 15.
dat latratos obna tnrba cibos ; Epict ^ Ih, c. 12, xareWop Hjw cU8Q 8arj wapii
iii. 22 ; D. Ohrys. Or. xxziv. § 2 ; rtSr roXXwr 4trrt rots hulpois rMf ^/xotf,
Athen. iii. 118 ; Petron. 14 ; Alciphr. . . . radra Tdrra rvpavvlda o6 fUKfAp
iii 55 ; Caspari, De Oynicia, p. 10. ^oOrro cIVm.
CHAP. XI THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 861
claims of the impostors, be is answered with a blow or a taunt And thus by terrorism or deceit, they usurp the respect which is due to the real philosopher, and manage to live in plenty and even in luxury. Kor is this the worst For these pretended ascetics, who profess to scorn delights, and to endure all manner of hardness, are really coarse common sensualists, who go about corrupting and seducing. Many of them heap up a fortune in their wanderings, and then bid farewell to scrip and cloak and the tub of Diogenea And so plain unlearned men come to regard the very name of philosophy with hatred and contempt and all her work is undone, like another Penelope's web.^
Even the stoutest defender of the Cynic movement, as a whole, feels constrained to admit that the charges against the Cynics were, perhaps, in many cases, trua' It was a move- ment peculiarly attractive to the lawless, restless hangers-on of society, who foimd in an open defiance of social restraints and a wandering existence, a field of licence and a chance of gain. Some of the great Cynics, indeed, were interested in physical speculation, and were widely cultivated men.' But the Cynic movement, as a whole, rested on no scientific tradition, and the most serious and effective preacher of its doctrine needed only a firm hold of a few simple truths, with a com- mand of seizing and incisive phrase.^ There was no pro- fessional barrier to exclude the ignorant and corrupt pretender. For the Cynics, from the very nature of their mission and their aims, never formed an organised school or society. Each went his ovm way in complete detachment To the superficial observer, the only common bond and character- istic were the purely external marks of dress and rough bearing and ostentatious contempt for the most ordinary comforts and decencies of life, which could easily be assumed by the knave and the libertine. Hence, as time went on, although good Cynics, like Demonax or Demetrius, acquired a deserved influence, yet the greed, licentiousness, and brutal
1 Luc. Fug. c. 17-21, ol IhkGnrax ^ » Plut (?) De Plac Phil, a 8 ; ir. 6 ;
ravra hpCayref KaraTT^ovauf iidij ipiKo- Luc. (?) Demon, 4, woirfrais ff^rrpo^
ctMaif jcrX. iyhero , , , iraU rdt ^ ^tXoff'O^
^ Bemays, Die Kyniker, p. 89. wpoaipifftu . . . '/^Urraro : cf. Gaspari,
Roheit and arbeitsscheues Vagabun- I>e Chfn, p. 0 ; Zeller, iii 1, p. 686.
deDthum . . . maasten die Kyniache ^ Ot Lac (?) Dem, 14 sqq. ; C^pari,
Lebenaweise sehr bequem findea. p. 6.
862 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
violence of others brought great discredit on the name. Epictetus, who had a lofty ideal of the Cynic preacher as an ambassador of God, lays bare the coarse vices of the pretender to that high service with an unsparing hand.^ It is evident, however, that certain of the gravest imputations, which had been developed by prurient imaginations, were, by an unwholesome tradition, levelled at even the greatest and best of the Cynics.^ And S. Augustine, in referring to these foul charges, afiSrms, with an honourable candour, that they could not be truly made against the Cynics of his own day.^ More- over, the Boman nature never took very kindly, even in some of the cultivated circles, to anything under the name of philosophy/ Even M. Aurelius could not altogether disarm the suspicion with which it was regarded. And the revolt of Avidius Cassius was to some extent an outburst of impatience with the doctrinaire spirit of the phiiosopha anicuia, as Cassius dared to call him.^ And there were many things in the Cynic movement which specially tended to provoke the ordinary man. It threw down the gauntlet to a materialised age. It preached absolute renunciation of all social ties and duties, and of all the pleasures and refinements with which that society had surrounded itself. In an age which, even on its tomb- stones, bears the stamp of a starched conventionality and adherence to use and wont, the Cynic was a defiant rebel against all social restraints. In an age which was becoming ever more superstitious, he did not shrink from attacking the &ith in the gods, the efficacy of the mysteries, the credit of the most ancient oracles.^ And, finally, while philosophy in general after Domitian found support and patronage at the imperial court, no emperor gave his countenance to the Cynics till the Syrian dynasty of the third century.^ We have here surely a sufficient accumulation of reasons for hesitating to
^ Epict iiL 22, § 80, e/t rods wOp dwo- » Capitol. Avid. Caas. 1, § 8, in a
pkiro/up roi>t r/WTej^f rvXawpodt letter of Venis, te philoeopham ani-
jcrX., Lao. Fug. 14, jccU oi roWijt wpaiy- colam, me luxoriosam morionom
liartlat tti rptPibwiw wtpipaKiffOiu. Yooat : cf. o. 14.
■ Luc. Ver. Hist, ii 18 ; Athen. iv. - -, tw «?- -i «, •
168 • xiii. 588. Beniays, Die Kymker, p. 81, ne
» 8. Aug. Civ. D. xiv. 20. nemo "^^.^^ ^\ T^imX^ni deiatiache Sect.
Umen eonim audet hoc facere. '^^^''\ ^ heUeniach-romiache Alter-
< D. Ohrya. Or. budi. 2 ; Pera. t. ^^^"^ herTorgebracht hat.
189 ; Petron. Sat. 71 ; Tao. Agr. 4 ; "^ Ih. p. 80 ; of. D. Caas. IxxriL 19,
Hid. iy. 5 ; Plin. Ep. L 22 ; Quintil. for the farours showered on the Cynic
zi. 1, 86 ; xiL 2, 6. Antiochns bj Severua.
CHAP. II THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 363
accept the wholesale coudemuation of a class of* men who, instead of disarming opposition, rather pliuned themselves on provoking it.
A good example of the merciless, and not altogether scrupulous fashion in which the Cynics were handled bj con- temporaries is to be found in Lucian's piece on the death of Peregrinus.^ Peregrinus was a native of Parium on the Pro- pontis, and a man of fortune. He loved to call himself Proteus, and, indeed, the strange vicissitudes of his career justified his assumption of the name.^ On reaching manhood, he wandered from land to land, and in Palestine he joined a Christian brotherhood, in which he rose to a commanding influence, which drew down the suspicion of the government, and he was thrown for a time into prison.^ His persecution called forth, as Lucian ungrudgingly admits, all the fearless love and charity of the worshippers of " the crucified Sophist" Beleased by a philosophic governor of the type of Gallic, he gave up the remnant of his paternal property, amounting to fifteen talents, to his native city.^ Peregrinus had already assumed the peculiar dress of the Cynic, and set out on fresh wanderings, having, from some difi'erence on a point of ritual, severed his connection with the Christian brotherhood. He then came under the influence of an Egyptian ascetic and of the mysticism of the East. In a visit to Italy he acquired celebrity by his fierce invectives, which did not spare even the blameless and gentle Antoninus Pius.^ The Emperor him- self paid little heed to him, but the prefect of the city thought that Home could well spare such a philosopher, and Peregrinus was obliged to return to the East. Henceforth Greece, and especially Elis, was the scene of his labours. He abated none of his energy, dealing out his denunciations impartially, and not sparing even the philosophic millionaire Herodes Atticus for providing the visitors to Olympia with the luxury of pure water.* He even tried to stir up Greece to armed revolt His fame and power among the Cynic brotherhood were at their height, or perhaps beginning to wane, when
* On Lnoian's Peregrinus^ v. Caspari, * /6. c. 17, 18 ; cf. the rudeDess of D€ Cyn. p. 24 sq. ; Beiiiays, p. 42 aqq. Demetrius to Vespasian, Suet. Vettp,
■ Luc. J>t Morte Pertgr, c. 6, 10 sq. xiii. ; D. Cass. Ixvi. 18.
* 76. c. 11, 12. • Luc. De Morte Peregr. c. 19, /cacwi
* lb, c. 14. ^6pet;eyu)f sara9i7Xdyarraroi>t''EXX);fat.
2 A.
364 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY ■ook hi
he conceived the idea of electrifying the world and giving a demonstration of the triumph of philosophy even over death by a self-immolation at Olympia. There, before the eyes of men gathered from all quarters, like Heracles, the great Cynic exemplar, on Mount Oeta, he resolved to depart in the blaze and glory of the funeral pyre kindled by his own hand. And perhaps some rare lettered Cynic brother set afloat a Sibylline verse, such as abounded in those days, bidding men prepare to revere another hero, soon to be enthroned along with Heracles in the broad Olympus.
Such a career, ambiguous, perhaps, on the most charitable construction, attracted the eye of the man who sincei^y believed, under all his persiflage, that both the religion and the philosophy of the past were worn out, and were now being merely exploited by coarse adventurers for gain or ambition. Moreover, the Philoctetes of the Cynic Heracles, his pupil Theagenes, was attracting great audiences in the Gymnasium of Trajan at Bome.^ The self- martyrdom of their chief had given a fresh inspiration to the Cynic brotherhood. Who knows but a legend may gather round his name, altars may be raised to him, and the ancient glamour of the " flashing Olympus " will lend itself to glorify the unculti- vated crew who profane the name of philosophy, and are an offence to culture ?
There is no mistaking the cold merciless spirit in which Lucian, by his own avowal, addressed himself to the task of exposing what he genuinely believed to be a feigned enthu- siasm. Even the lover of Lucian receives a kind of shock from the occasional tone of almost cruel hardness in his treatment of the Cynic apostle. When Lucian's narrative of the youthful enormities of Peregrinus is analysed, it is perceived that the accuser is anonymous, and that other names and particulars are carefully suppressed.* For the gravest charges of youthful depravity no proof or authority is given ; they seem to be the offspring of that prurient gossip which can assail any character. They are the charges which were freely bandied about in the age of Pericles and M. Aurelius, in the age of Erasmus and the age of Milton. There must have been something at least
^ Oupari, Dt C^. p. 16 ; Bernays, Lma, u, die Kyniker, p. 16.
« lb, p. 64.
CHAP. II
THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY
365
remarkable and fascinating, although marred by extravagance,^ about the man who became a great leader and prophet among the Chrifitians of Palestine, and who was almost worshipped as a god. When he was thrown into jail, their widows and orphans watched by the gates ; his jailers were bribed to admit some of the brethren to console his solitude ; large sums were collected from the cities of Asia for his support and defence.' The surrender of his paternal property to his native city, an act of generosity which had many parallels in that age, is attributed to no higher motive than the wish to hush up a rumour that Peregrinus had murdered his father. The charge apparently rested on nothing more substantial than malignant gossip.' The migration of Peregrinus from the Christian to the Cynic brotherhood was not so startling in that age as it may appear to us. Transitions to and fro were not uncommon between societies which had the common bond of asceticism and contempt for the world.^ Moreover, Lucian, with all his delicate genius, had little power of understanding the force of religious enthusiosnL It is pretty clear that Peregrinus was not an ordinary Cynic ; he had felt the spell of Oriental and Pythagorean mysticism. His Cynicism was probably tinctured with a religion of the same type as that of Apollonius of Tyana.' And it is his failure to appreciate the fervour of this mystical elation in Peregrinus and his disciples which misled Lucian, and makes his narrative misleading.
Lucian suggests that, when he visited Olympia for the fourth time, he found that the influence of Peregrinus was on the wane.' Yet even from Lucian's own narrative it is clear that Peregrinus and his doings were attracting almost as much attention as the games. On Lucian's arrival, the first thing he heard was a rumour that the great Cynic had resolved to die upon a flaming pyre, like the hero who was the mythic patron of the school. Peregrinus professed that by his self-
^ This offended Demonax, of. Lqo. (!) 2>em. c. 21, Utpeypu^e odx d¥0p(inri^eit. ^ Luo. De Morie Peregr, c 18.
* lb. 10, 14. 87 ; l^niays, p. 64.
* Cf. Ari~tia. Or, xlvi. (bind. vol. iL p. 402), rots i¥ t% HaKanrrbrfi SiHraefidiTi 'auparXi^toi ro^ rp6vovt, Bern ays, p. 36, Dbertritte aus dem einen in das «nder« Lager vorkampn ; Hatch, Hih, Lse, p. 166 ; cf. Caspari, De Cyn. p. 26 ;
Jul. Or. Tii. 224. C. rd 9^ AWa yt
wdtrra iarlp hiuw re jcdire/yott (%.€. X/noria- rotf) raparXi^to. JcaroXeXoJrare rfp^ varplSa CHrrep iKttPot.
• Luc. De Morte Peregr. c 86, it rV fuffritifiplaw drojSX^arbir : o. 25, 6T(at r^ Kapreplay irtdel^jfrcu (boirep ol Bpay* luUef, ^irefroct yb.p aOr^ i^lov Otayiinis
• lb. c 2.
866 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
immolation he was going to teach men, in the most impressive way, to make light of death. And many a Cynic sermon was evidently delivered on the subject, the greatest preacher being Theagenes, for whom Lucian displays a particular aversion. There were, of course, many sceptics like Lucian himself. And it is in the mouth of one of these enemies of the sect, in reply to Theagenes, that Lucian has put the defamatory version of the life of Peregrinus,^ to which we have referred
Lucian assumes firom the first that the self-martyrdom of Peregrinus was prompted by mere vulgar love of notoriety.* Yet it is quite possible that this is an unfair judgment The Stoic school, with which the Cynics had such a close affinity, allowed that, in certain circumstances, suicide might be not only a permissible, but a meritorious, nay, even a glorious act of self-liberation.' Seneca had often looked gladly to it as the ever open door of escape from ignominy or torture. The brilliant Stoic Euphrates, the darling of Boman society, weary of age and disease, sought and obtained the permission of Hadrian to drink the hemlock.^ And that emperor himself, in his last sickness, begged the drug from his physician who killed himself to escape compliance.^ Diogenes had handed the dagger to his favourite pupil, Antisthenes, when tortured by disease.* The burden of the Cynic preaching was the nothingness of the things of sense and contempt for death. Is it not possible that what Lucian heard from the lips of Peregrinus himself was true, and that he wished, it may be with mingled motives, by his own act to show men how to treat with indifference the last terror of humanity ?
That the end of Peregrinus was surrounded by superstition and magnified by grandiose effects is more than probabla Such things belonged to the spirit of the age. And the calm, critical good sense of Lucian, which had no sympathy with these weaknesses, saw nothing in the scene but calculating imposture. Already oracles were circulating in which Pere-
^ Lao. Dt Morte Pereffr, c. 7 8qq. * D. Cass. Ixix. 8, koI 6 B^^pdr^ o
' lb, c. 4, tit K9ifo6^tcuf Twkt TovTo ^\6<ro<pot iwi0a9€y ^^eXom^f, ifirpi^wp-
iMO^powrt, rot ai>r4} Kal rod 'ASpiavov KWfwm 3idt
* Sen. Ep, 68, § 36 ; 70, § 8 ; Z>0 rh yiipat koI Sid r^r w6aov rteiV.
Prov. iL 10 ; vi 9 7 ; J5« /m, iii. 16 ; , , „ „ ,
Jk r, BeaL 19 ; Epict i. 24. Cf. Plin. ^^^' ^P*^'^- ^«^^- ^- ^^
Ep. i. 12 ; i. 22 ; iii 7 ; iii. 9 ; vi. • Dioff. Laert. vi. 18 ; cf. vi 77, for
24 ; BoiBsier, UOpp, p. 212 sqq. the death of Diogenes himMlf.
CHAP. II THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY Wl
grinoB appears as the phceniz, rising unscathed and rejuvenescent from the pyre, predicting that he is to be a guardian spirit of the night, that altars will rise in his honour, and that he will perform miracles of healing. Theagenes blazed abroad a Sibylline verse which bade men, " when the greatest of the Cynics has come to lofty Olympus, to honour the night- roaming hero who is enthroned beside Hephaestus and the princely Hector." ^ Lucian foimd himself wedged in a dense crowd who came to hear the last apology of the Cynic apostle. Some were applauding, and some denouncing him as an impostor. Lucian could hear little in the mel^e. But now and then, above the roar, he could hear the pale, tremulous old man tell the surging crowd that, having lived liked Heracles, he must die like Heracles, and mingle with the ether, "bringing a golden life to a golden close."' Lucian thought his paleness was due to terror at the nearness of his self-imposed death. It was more probably the result of ascetic fervour and overstrained excitement The spectacle sent Lucian away in a fit of rather cruel laughter.'
The closing scene, which took place two or three miles from Olyinpia, was ordered with solemn religious effect It evidently impressed even the sceptic's imagination. A high pyre had been prepared, with torches and faggots ready. As the moon rose, the voluntary victim appeared in the garb of his sect, surrounded by his leading disciples. He then dis- robed himself, flung incense on the flame, and, turning to the south, cried aloud — " Daemons of my father and my mother graciously receive me." After these words, he leapt into the blaze which at once enveloped him, and he was seen no more.^ The Cynic brothers stood long gazing into the pyre in silent grief, until Lucian aroused their anger by some jeers, not, perhaps, in the best taste. On his way back to Olyropia, he pondered on the follies of men, and the craving for empty fama^ To Lucian there was nothing more in the tragic scene than that And he amused himself by the way with the creation of a myth, and watching how it would grow. To some who met
* Luc Dt Morte Peregr. c. 29. the self-immolation of Peregrinna port
* Ih. c. 83. fiotion, and that Lucian 'sobjectthrooghp
* 7&. c 34, iyCa U, eUd^€is, otfuu, out was to discredit Christianity. rdf iyik<a9, v. Baur's viow of this * Luc. Ds Morte Pertgr, a 86. piece {Ch, Hid, ii. 170). He thinks » lb. c 88.
858 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book in
him on the road, too late for the spectacle, he told how, as the pyre burst into flame, there was a great earthquake accom- panied by subterranean thunder, and a vulture rose from the fire, proclaiming in a high human voice, as it winged its way heavenwards,"! have left earth behind, and I go to Olympus."^ The poor fools, on whose credulity Lucian was rather heart- lessly playing, with a shudder of awe fell to questioning him whether the bird flew to the east or the west And, on his return to Olympia, he was rewarded in the way he liked best, by finding the tale which he had cradled already full grown. A venerable man, whom he encountered, related that with his own eyes he had seen the vulture rising from the pyre, and added that he had just met Per^rinus himself walking in the " seven- voiced cloister," clothed in white raiment, and with a chaplet of olive on his head.^
Lucian's picture of the death of Peregrinus, whatever we may think of its fairness and discernment, is immensely valuable for many things besides the light which it casts on Lucian's attitude to all forms of extravagance and superstition. In spite of his contempt for them, he himself reveals that the Cynics were a great popular force. We see also that Cynicism was, in spite of its generally deistic spirit, sometimes leagued with real or affected religious sentiment As to the real character of Peregrinus, there is reason to believe that Lucian did not read it aright. The impression which the Cynic made on Aulus Grellius was very different When Gellius was at Athens in his student days, he used often to visit PeregiHnus, who was then living in a little hut in the suburbs, and he found the Cynic's discourses profitable and high-toned. In particular, Peregrinus used to tell his hearers that the chance of apparent evasion or concealment would never tempt the wise man to sin. Concealment was really impossible, for, in the words of Sophocles, " Time, the all-seeing, the all-hearing, lays bare all secrets." Evidently Peregrinus had other admirers besides the Cynic brethren who hailed his apotheosis at Olympia.' Who can draw the line, in such an age, between the fanatic and the impostor ?
The bitterness with which Lucian assails the Cynics
^ Lno. D% McrU Ptmgr, o. 89. atque constantem vidimus . . . de-
* i%. 0. 40. yeraantem in qoodam tugnrio extra
' A. Q«U. xiL 11, Tiram gravem nrbem.
CHAF. n THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 559
of his day, while it was justified bj the scandalous morals of a certain number, is also a testimony to the world- wide influence of the sect The ranks of these rude field- preachers would not have attracted so many impostors if the profession had not commanded great power and influence over the masses. The older Cynicism, which sprang from the simpler and more popular aspect of the Socratic teaching, had long disappeared. Its place was taken by the Stoic system, which gave a broad and highly elaborated scientific basis to the doctrine of the freedom and independence of the virtuous wilL The rules of conduct were deduced from a well-articulated theory of the universe and human nature, and they were expounded with all the dexterity of a finished dialectia The later Stoicism, as we have seen, like the other schools, tended to neglect theory, in the effort to form the virtuous character — a tendency which is seen at its height in Musonius and Epictetus. But, as Stoicism became less scientific, it inclined to return more and more to the spirit and method of the older Cynicism. The true, earnest Cynic seems to be almost the philosophic ideal of Epictetus. Thus it was that, in the first century after Christ, Cynicism emerged from its long obscurity to take up the part of a rather one-sided popular Stoicism. It was really pointed or sensational preaching of a few great moral truths, common to all the schools, which the condition of society urgently called for.^
The ideal of the Cynic life has been painted with gentle enthusiasm by Epictetus.' The true Cynic is a messenger from Zeus, to tell men that they have wandered far from the right way, that they are seeking happiness in regions where happiness is not to be found. It is not to be found in the glory of consulships, or in the Grolden House of Nero.' It lies close to us, yet in the last place where we ever seek it, in ourselves, in the clear vision of the ruling faculty, in freedom from the bondage to imagined good, to the things of sense.^ This preaching was also to be preaching by example.
^ Zeller, Thil der, Orieeh, iii 1, p. dXXaxoC (ifToOffi r^r odfflay roO dyaBoO
685 ; Bernays, Lue, u. die Kyniker, p. 8tov o^k farip, Swqv d* fffrw o6k iwOvfioOw'
27 sq. Tcu rrX.
s Epiot Diss, iiu 22, § 23, dXX' €ld4wat > lb. iii. 22, §§ 2S-S0.
9€t Sn d'>7«Xot ixb At^f AWtrraXroi rp6t * lb. § 8S, 0rov o^ doMtrt Mk BfKtn
rodt dpBpCrwovt, w€pi dyaOQif koL KaxCip ^^p^cuadr^. e/ Tdp i^tf Xtfrw, cOpfrr dr ^
intoM^iay a^dif Sri TerXdvifprai Kal bfuv 6w rrX.
360 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
The gospel of renunciation has been discredited from age to age when it has come from the lips of a man lapped in downy comfort, who never gave up anything in his life, and who indo- lently points his flock to the steep road which he never means to tread with his own feet But the Cynic of Epictetus, with a true vocation, could point to himself, without home or wife or children, without a city, without possessions, having forsaken all for moral freedom.^ He has done it at the call of God, not from mere caprice, or a fancy to wander lawlessly on the outskirts of society.^ He has done it because the condition of the world demands such stern self-restraint in the chief who would save the discipline of an army engaged in desperate battle. It is a combat like the Olympian strife which he has to face, and woe to him who enters the lists untrained and unprepared.' The care of wife and children is not for one who has laid upon him the care of the family of man, who has to console and admonish, and guide them into the right way/ All worldly loves and entanglements must be put aside by one who claims to be the " spy and herald of God.** The Cynic is the father of all men ; the men are his sons, the women his daughters.^ When he rebukes them, it is as a father in Gk)d, a minister of Zeus. Nor may he take a part in the govern- ment of any earthly state, which is a petty affair in comparison with the ministry with which he is charged. How should he meddle with the administration of Athens or Corinth, who has to deal with the moral fortunes of the whole commonwealth of man.* Possessing in himself the secret of happiness and woe, he never descends into the vulgar contest, where he may he overcome by the vilest and poorest spirits, for objects which he has trained himself to regard as absolutely indifferent or worthless. And so, he is proof against the spitefulness ot fortune and the baseness or violence of man. He will calmly suffer blows or insults as sent by Zeus, just as Heracles bore cheerfully and triumphantly the toils which were laid on him by Eurystheus. The true Cynic will even love those who buffet and insult him.^ He will also resemble his patron hero
^ Epiot Din. iii. 22, f 47, tUrk lu, * lb. % 52. * lb. § 67.
&Ti AtoXLi ilfu, doorot, drTi^/uiir, dSoi/Xot. ' lb, § 81, wdpras ^Opiitiroyt rercu-
^ /^. § 58, Kvpuc^ d^ Kaiffop rlf iartw dowoltiratf rodf ApBpus lio^ ^a, tAi
i^ 6 Karaveirofi^Cn aMy koU tp Xar/)e(Wt, yvpaxxas $vyaTipat. h Zt6%. • lb. i 84. 7 lb. § 100.
CHAP. II THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 361
in the fresh comely strength of his body, which is the gift of temperance and long days passed under the open sky.^ Above all, be will have a conscience clearer than the sun, so that, at peace with himself and having assurance of the friendship of the gods, he may be able to speak with all boldness to his brothers and his children.' This was the kind of moral ministry which was needed by the age, and, in spite of both undeserved calumny, and the real shame of many corrupt impostors in its ranks, the missionary movement of Cynicism was one of undoubted power and range. The resemblance, in many points, of the Cynics to the early Christian monks and ascetics has been often noticed, and men sometimes passed from the one camp to the other without any violent wrench.' The rhetor Aristides, in a fierce attack on the Cynic sect, makes it a reproach that they have much in common with " the impious in Palestine." Tatian, and others of the Gnostic ascetics, were in close connection with leading Cynics.* How easily they were absorbed into the bosom of the Church we can see from the tale of Maximus, an Egyptian Cynic of the fourth century, who continued to wear the distinctive marks of the philosophic brotherhood, till he was installed as bishop of Constantinople.' And the contemporary eulogies of Cynic virtue by John Chrysostom and Themistius testify at once to the importance of a movement the strength of which was not spent till after the fall of the Western Empire, and to its affinities for the kindred movement of Christian asceticism.
These " ambassadors of God," as they claimed to be, cared little, like S. Paul, for " the wisdom of the world," or for the figments of the poets, and those great cosmic theories which enabled Seneca to sustain or rekindle his moral faith. With rare exceptions, such as Genomaus of Gadara, they seldom committed their ideas to writing.' For the serried dialectic of the Stoics they substituted the sharp biting epigram and lively repartee, in which even the gentle Demonax indulged.^ Demetrius, wbo saw the reigns of both Caligula and Domitian,' was a man of real power and distinction. He was revered by
» Enict iii. 22, §§ 86, 87. ^ Ih. p. 87 ; Caspari, De Oyn. ^ 2b.
• lb, § 93, Tpb xdvrtav di rb rjyefuunKbv • lo, p. 5.
aCrroO bei Kadapdintpov tlvm. rod ^Mov. "* l<uc. (?) Dffik c. 16-21.
* Bernavs, Luc u. die Kyniker, pp. " Sen. Ben, viL 11 ; Philostr. Apoll, 86-88. ' * Jb. p. 99. T. vii. 42.
968
THE GOSPEL Of PHILOSOPHY
ui
Seneca as a moral teacher of remarkable influence, " a great man even if compared with the greatest/'^ who lived up to the severest counsels which he addressed to others. He would bear cold and nakedness and hard lodging with cheerfid fortitude ; he was a man whom not even the age of Nero could corrupt His poverty was genuine, and he would never b^.^ He set little store by philosophical theory, in comparison with diligent application of a few tried and well-conned precepts.' Tet he had the brand of culture, and once, when his taste was offended by a bad, tactless reader, who was ruining a passage in the Bacchae, he snatched the book from his hands and tore it in pieces.^ Although he disdained the trimmed, artificial eloquence of the schools, he had the fire and impetus of the true orator.^ With little taste for abstract musings, he con- soled the last hours of Thrasea in prison with a discourse on the nature of the soul and the mystery of its severance from the body at death.* He formed a close alliance for a time with that roaming hierophant of philosophy, Apollonius of Tyana, the bond between them being probably a common asceticism and a common hatred of the imperial tyranny.^ For Demetrius, if not a revolutionary, was a leader of the philosophic opposition, which assailed the emperors, not so much in their political capacity, as because they too often represented and stimulated the moral lawlessness and materialism of the age. Our sympathies must be with Demetrius when he boldly faced the dangerous scowl of Nero with the mot, ** You threaten me with death, but nature threatens you." ' But our sympathies will be rather with Vespasian, the plain old soldier, who, when Demetrius openly insulted him, treated the " Cynic bark " with quiet contempt.^ In truth, the Flavian emperors, till the ex- pulsion of the philosophers by Domitian, seem to have been on the whole indulgent to the outspoken freedom of the Cynics.^ Occasionally, however, the daring censor had, in the interests of
* Sen. Ben, vii. i. 8, vir meo judi- cio DQAf^as etiamsi maximiB compare- tur ; rii. 8, 2.
« Id. Bp. 20, 9 ; Fit, B. xviii. 8.
' Id. De Ben, r'lL 1, § 3, 6gr«*gia hoc dic«re tolet, Pins prodesae, ai pauca praecepta sapientiae teneas, aed ilU in promptu tibi sint, etc
^ Luo. Adv. Indod, 19.
" Sen. Dc Ben, vii. 8, 2.
• Tac. Ann, xvi. 84.
7 Philostr. Apoll, Tyan, It. 25, 42 ; vi. 18 ; viii. 10 ; vii. 42. > Epict Din, i. 25, § 22, drctXt^ iuk
* Suet. Fesp. xiii. philoBophoram contumaciam leniasime talit ; IMnn. z. ; D. Cas^. Ixn. 18.
^* Bcrnaya, Lvc, u, dis Kyniktr, p. 29.
CHAP. II THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 368
authority, to be restrained. Once, when Titus was in the theatre, with the Jewess Berenice by his side, a Cynic, bearing the name of the founder of the sect, gave voice in a long bitter oration to popular feeling against what was regarded as a shameful union. This Cynic John the Baptist, got off with a scourgiDg.^ A comrade named Heros, however, repeated the offensive expostulation, and lost his head. Peregrinus, for a similar attack on Antoninus Pius, was quietly warned by the prefect to leave the precincts of Rome. In the third century there was a great change in the political fortunes and attitude of the sect; Cynics are even found basking in imperial favour, and lending their support to the imperial power.'
The Cynics, from the days of Antisthenes, had poured contempt on the popular religion and the worship of material images of the Divine. They were probably the purest monotheists that classical antiquity produced.' Demetrius is almost Epicurean in his belief in eternal Fate, and his con- tempt for the wavering wills and caprices which mythological fancy ascribed to the Olympian gods.*^ Demonax, the mildest and most humane member of the school in imperial times, refused to offer sacrifices or even to seek initiation in the Mysteries of Eleusis.^ When he was impeached for impiety before the Athenian courts, he replied that, as for sacrifices, the Deity had no need of them, and that touching the Mysteries, he was in this dilemma : if they contained a revelation of what was good for men, he must in duty publish it ; if they were bad and worthless, he would feel equally bound to warn the people against the deception. Biit the most fearless and trenchant assailant of the popular theology among the Cynics was Oenomaus of Gadara, in the reign of Hadrian.* Oenomaus rejected, with the frankest scorn, the anthropomorphic fables of heathenism. In particular, he directed his fiercest attacks against the revival of that faith in oracles and divination which was a marked character- istic of the Antonine age. Plutaitih, in a charming walk
^ D. Cms. IxvL 15. « Sen. Jh Prav, 5, H 5-7.
* Lno. De Alorte Peregr, o. 19 ; the * Luc Dem, o. 11 ; Oenom. Fr, 18,
attempt of Peregrinus in Greece is prob- oAr d^draroc, dXXd \lOuw koI (t^XiVM
ably referred to in Jul. Capitol. AtU, dtax&rai dr^pifrrwr, 14; of. Julian, Or,
P. 5, § 5 ; cf. Bernays, p. 30 ; Caspari, ?ii. 204, a, 10 Cm. p. 15. * Caspari, De Cm, p. 12 ; Bernajrt, |i.
3 Beroays, p. 31. 35 ; M\w,PhU,dtrOrim^. iii. l.p.69a
aN THE GOSFBL Of FBIU050PHY mok m
describes a Cjnie uined DSiymBS aa ■wiiT'ng the inflfnne of oncks on homui duuihetisr.^ Btt Ofpntnani, as we know him from Easebiiis, was a £tf mme fanokiaale and moie piulcai ieoDoelatt than IHdjmitt. He eooalraeted an daboiate hktorical demonsciatioo to show that the ondes w«ie iDSpiied neither bjr the gods nor bgr ctaemfina, but were a Tery homan erjDtriTance to dope the eredalooa. And in eonnectaon with the wahgeet of oiades, he dealt with the qoestaon of free-will, and anerted la^s inaHcnahle liberty, and the leqwMnhfli^ far all his actions which is the neoessazj conoomitant of betdonL Oeaomaos treated Dodona and Delphi with sach jaonqr disrespect that, at the distinre of a centmr and a hal^ his memory aroused the anger of Jolian to soch a degree^ that the imperial ehami»on of psginism coold hardly find words strong enoo^ to express lus feelings.' Oenomaos is a wreccb who is catting at the roots, not only of all reverence far diirine thii^s, bat of all those moval instincts imfdanted in cror soals by (Sod, which aie the foandation at all ri^t oondact and jostioe. For soch fellows no ponishment coold be too severe ; they are worse than brigands and wreckera.'
The rescdote rejection ol the forms of popular worship, and of the claims of divination, is hardly less mariced in the mild and tolerant Demonar.^ Demonaz, whose life extended prob- ably from 50 to 150 a«d^^ sprang from a family in Cypros of some wealth and distinction, and had a finished literary coltora* Bat he had conceived fit>m childhood a passion for the philo- sophic life, according to the ideal of that aga His teachers were Cynics or Stoics, bat in speculative opinion he was broadly Eclectic In his long life he had associated with Deme- trius and Epictetos, ApoUonius and Herodes Atticua^ When asked once who was his favourite philosopher, he replied that he reverenced Socrates, admired Diogenes, and loved Aristippus.' His tone had perhaps the greatest affinity for the simplicity of
'-Pint. De Def, Or. rii Bat its author was a contemporary and
' Julian, Or. riL 209. friend of Demonax (c. L irl ttrfogrm
* JnL Tit 209, 210, Stm^pmm yap wv^trftwhtof^).
t^d n Twr i^ ifnuaUu Xt^rrn/irrwr • ZeUcr, Pkil dor Gruek. iiL 1, p.
«U i»re«Xi7^Mr rdf drrdf ^i r^ Xv/coi- 091 n. 5.
p40Bai roTf KorawXiokvi. %\ i^ »— ^ o «„^
* Bemays. Luc, u. di$ KyiUker, p. 104, , *;? ^^* agTMa with Bekker that. the thmanax ^ /o. c. 8, 24, 81. canhardlybeagaioiseworkof Lndan. ' /i. c. 62.
CHAP. II THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 366
the Socratic teaching. But he did not adopt the irony of the master, which, if it was a potent arm of dialectic, often lefb the subject of it in an irritated and humiliated mood Demonax was a true Cynic in his contempt for ordinary objects of greed and ambition/ in the simple, austere fashion of his daily life, and in the keen epigrammatic point, often, to our taste, verging on rudeness, with which he would expose pretence and rebuke any kind of extravagance.' But although he cultivated a severe bodily discipline, so as to limit to the utmost his external wants, he carefully avoided any ostentatious singularity of manner to win a vulgar notoriety. He had an infinite charity for all sorts of men, excepting only those who seemed beyond the hope of amendment' His counsels were given with an Attic grace and brightness which sent people away from his company cheered and improved, and hopeful for the future. Treating error as a disease incident to human nature, he attacked the sin, but was gentle to the sinner.^ He made it his task to compose the feuds of cities and to stimulate unselfish patriotism; he reconciled the quarrels of kinsmen ; he would, on occasion, chasten the prosperous, and comfort the failing and unfortunate, by reminding both alike of the brief span allotted to either joy or sorrow, and the long repose of oblivion which would soon set a term to all the agitations of sorrow or of joy.^
But there was another side to his teaching. Demonax was no supple, easy-going conformist to usages which his reason rejected. Early in his career, as has been said, he had to face a prosecution before the tribunals of Athens, because he was never seen to sacrifice to the gods, and declined initiation at Eleusis. In each case, he defended his nonconformity in the boldest tone.* To a prophet whom he saw plying his trade for hire, he put the dilemma : " If you can alter the course of destiny, why do you not demand higher fees % If everything happens by the decree of God, where is the value of your art?"^ When asked if he believed the soul to be immortal, he answered, " It is as immortal as everything else." ^ He derided, in almost brutal style, the effeminacy of the sophist Favorinus, and the extravagant grief of Herodes Atticus for his son.* He ruth-
^ Lac. (t) Dem. o. 5, 6. * Ih, c. 11, rpaxirrtpw ^ irard H^
' lb. c. 14. kavro^ xpoalpeciw drcXoyi^aro.
• Jb, c. 7. * lb. 6. ' /*. 0. 87.
• lb. 9, 10. • lb. 82. • lb. 0. 12. 24.
866 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book ni
lesfllj exposed the pretences of sham philosophy wherever he met it When a youthful Eclectic professed his readiness to obey any philosophic call, from the Academy, the Porch, or the Pythagorean discipline of silence, Demonax cried out^ '* Pythagoras calls you/' ^ He rebuked the pedantic archaism of his day by telling an affected stylist that he spoke in the fashion of Agamemnon's time.' When Epictetus advised him to marry and become tlie father of a line of philosophers, he asked the celibate preacher to give him one of his daughters.' The Athenians, from a vulgar jealousy of Corinth, proposed to defile their ancient memories by establishing gladiatorial shows under the shadow of the Acropolis. Demonax, in the true spirit of Athens from the time of Theseus, advised them first to sweep away the altar of Pity.*
Demonax lived to nearly a hundred years. He is said never to have had an enemy. He was the object of universal deference whenever he appeared in public. In his old age he might enter any Athenian house uninvited, and they welcomed him as their good genius. The children brought him their little presents of fruit and called him father, and as he passed through the market, the baker-women contended for the honour of giving him their loaves. He died a voluntary death, and wished for no tomb save what nature would give him. But the Athenians were aware that they had seen in him a rare apparition of goodness; they honoured him with a splendid and imposing burial and mourned long for him. And the bench on which he used to sit when he was weary they deemed a sacred stone, and decked it with garlands long after his death.^
Demonax, by a strange personal charm, attained to an extraordinary popularity and reverence. But the great mass of philosophic preachers had to face a great deal of obloquy and vulgar contempt. Apart from the coarseness, arrogance, and inconsistency of many of them, which gave just offence, their very profession was an irritating challenge to a pleasure- loving and worldly age. Men who gloried in the splendour of their civic life, and were completely absorbed in it, who
^ Luc. (f) Dm^. c 14, oSroj, #^, * Ih, c 55.
wpoffttirCjp rb tifonOy xaXti ae Jlv$ay6pas. * lb, c. 57.
> lb. c 26, 0-^ ii /Ml un iw* 'AyofUfi- • Jb, c 68 aqq.
CHAP. II THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 367
were flattered aud cajoled by their magistrates and popular leaders, could hardly like to be told by the vagrant, homeless teacher, in beggar's garb, that they were ignoraut and per- verted and lost in a maze of deception. They would hardly be pleased to hear that their civilisation was an empty show, without a solid core of character, that their hopes of happiness from a round of games and festivals, from the splendour of art in temples and statues, were the merest mirage. The message BeaJLi pauperes spiritu — Beati qui lugent, will never be a popular ona That was the message to his age of the itinerant Cynic preacher, and his unkempt beard and ragged cloak and the fashion of his life made him the mark of cheap and abundant ridicule. Sometimes the contempt was deserved; no great movement for the elevation of humanity has been free from impostors. Tet the severe judgment of the Cynic missionaries on their age is that of the polished orator, who had as great a scorn as Lucian for the sensual or mercenary Cynic, and yet took up the scrip and staff himself, to propagate the same gospel as the Cynics.^
Dion Chrysostom was certainly not a Cynic in the academic sense, but he belonged to the same great movement He sprang from a good family at Prusa in Bithynia.' He was trained in all the arts of rhetoric, and taught and practised them in the early part of his life. A suspected friendship led to his banishment in the reign of Domitian, and in his exile, with the Phaedo and the De Falsa LegcUione as his com- panions, he wandered over many lands, supporting himself often by menial service.' He at last found himself in his wanderings in regions where wild tribes of the Getae for a century and a half had been harrying the distant outposts of Hellenic civilisation on the northern shores of the Euxine.^ The news of the death of Domitian reached a camp on the Danube when Dion was there. The soldiery, faithful to their emperor, were excited and indignant, but, under the spell of Dion's eloquence, they were brought to acquiesce in the accession of the blameless Nerva. Dion at length returned to Home, and rose to high favour at court Trajan often
. 1 D. Cbrvs. Or. zxxiv. § 2 ; Izzii. § 2. MoralisUt sous VEmp, ttrni. 294, giyeA
* Cf. Philostr. VU. Sojfh, L 7. For a good sketch of Dion's career. othT authorities v. Zeller, Phil, der ' D. Cbrys. Or, ziii. § 1. Orieeh. iii. 1, p. 729, n. 1. Martha, ^ Philostr. Fit. Sofh, L 7.
388
THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY
BOOK III
invited Lim to his table, and used to take him as compauion in his state carriage, although the honest soldier did not pretend to appreciate Dion's rhetoric.^
During his exile, as he tells us, Dion had been converted to more serious views of life. The triumphs of conventional declamation before fashionable audiences lost their glamour. Dion became conscious of a loftier mission to the dim masses of that far - spreading empire through whose cities and wildernesses he was wandering.* As to the eyes of Seneca, men seemed to Dion, amid all their fair, cheerful life, to be holding out their hands for help. Wherever he went, he fouud that, in his beggar's dress, he was surrounded by crowds of people eager to hear any word of comfort or counsel in the doubts and troubles of their lives. They assumed that the poor wanderer was a philosopher. They plied him with questions on the great problem. How to live ; and the elegant sopliist was thus compelled to find an answer for them and for himself.'
Dion never quite shook off the traditions and tone of the rhetorical school The ambition to say things in the most elegant and attractive style, the love of amplifying, in leisurely and elaborate development, a commonplace and hackneyed theme still clings to him. His eighty orations are many of them rather essays than popidar harangues. They range over all sorts of subjects, literary, mythological, and artistic, political and social, as well as purely ethical or religious. But, after all, Dion is unmistakably the preacher of a great moral revival and reform. He cannot be classed definitely with any particular school of philosophy. He is the apostle of Greek culture, yet he admires Diogenes, the founder of the Cynics.* If he had any philo- sophic ancestry, he would probably have traced himself to the Xenophontic Socrates.^ But he is really the rhetorical apostle
1 Philostr. Vii, Soph, i. 2 ; AryetfaAid ivnrrfi€^fjL€vot it t6w Aluwa *^tI iiiw 'Kiyeit, oOk otSa, ^hKQ 8i at Ji)t ifuivr^,'*
• D. Chrys. Or. xiii § 6, 9, 10, rroK^p re raireiy^iv dya\afiufp xal rSXKa iro\<i<raf ifiaurbr -/jXtb/trpf rarraxou.
' lb. § 12, ToXXoJ yiip "iifidmav vpoa- i^irrer, 5 ri /mm ^oIwmto dY'-Bbv ^ Kaxbw, (iffre ijrayicai^^bfirfr ^porrlitiw inrkp rv(ma¥ fra fx^M* AroKplt^effBai rott ipttrCunw. With the conrenion of Dion of. that
of Isaeus and Polciiion, etc., Philostr. FU, Soph. I p. 218 ; ApM. 7'yan. i. 18 ; iv. 20 ; Epiot. iii 1 ; Diog. Laert. ir. 8, § 1.
* D. Chrys. Or. xrxviL § 25 ; iv. § 1 ; ▼i.
» Or. 117. ; xiiL § 13, 14, Mort {nr6 dwofUat ia iwi rtva \6ywf d^cuor XtyhfAtvoif thr6 riwos Soiirpdrovt ktX. : cf. XV iii. § 14, rdwTuy dpurrot ifiol koI Xiwri- HKiffraros Tpdt ravra rdrra ^€P0^w.
CHAP. IX
THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY
369
of the few great moral principles which were in the air, the common stock of Platonist, Stoic, Cjnic, even the Epicurean. Philosophy to him is really a religion, the science of right living in conformity to the will of the Heavenly Power. But it is also the practice of right living. No Christian preacher has probably ever insisted more strongly on the gulf which separates the commonplace life of the senses from the life devoted to a moral ideal.^ The only philosophy worth the name is the earnest quest of the path to true nobility and virtue, in obedience to the good genius, the unerring monitor within the breast of each of us, in whose counsels lies the secret of happiness properly so called.^ Hence Dion speaks with the utmost scorn alike of the coarse Cynic impostor, who disgraces his calling by buffoonery and debauchery,* and the philosophic exquisite who tickles the ears of a fashionable audience with delicacies of phrase, but never thinks of trying to make them better men. He feels a sincere indignation at this dilettante trifling, in view of a world which is in urgent need of practical guidanca^ For Dion, after all his wanderings through the Boman world, has no illusions as to its moral condition. He is almost as great a pessimist as Seneca or JuvenaL In spite of all its splendour and outward prosperity, society in the reign of Trajan seemed to Dion to be in a perilous state. Along with his own conversion came the revelation of the hopeless bewilderment of men in the search for happiness. Dimly conscious of their evil plight, they are yet utterly ignorant of the way to escape from it. They are swept hither and thither in a vortex of confused passions and longings for material pleasures.^ Material civilisation, without any accom- panjing moral discipline, has produced the familiar and inevit- able result, in an ever-increasing appetite for wealth and enjoyment and showy distinction, which ends in perpetual dis- illusionment. Dion warns the people of Tarsus that they are all
* D. Chrys. Or. Ixx. § 1, 7 ; ra^iXov pioi dXXof yJkv TWf <pt\o<ro<poOpTotf dXXot M Twy woXK&w i»$fHiyrwv ; cf. xiii. § 33.
» lb, xui. § 28 ; xxiii. § 7, odrow rb9 rvxiirra iiyaOov ScUfiwot ^yy SiKalvt (ipf Kol ipporlfiun Kol (r(i)<f>p6v(as ; cf. Epict. i. § 14, iirlrpoirov iKdcTifi irapio'Tria'e, rbv ixdirrov Salfiova kt\, M. Aiirel. y. 27.
» D. Chnrs. Or, xxxiL § 9 ; xxxr. § 2, 8 ; xxxiy. § 2.
* Or. xvi § 2, 8 ; xxxr. § 8 ; cf. xiii. § 11, of fi^p y^p ToXKol runf KoXovfUrcMf <piKoff6<fHav ainoiH drtucijpOTTOVffiP rrX.
• Or. xiiL § 18, 84, mxovp di fUH. rcirref d^poret, ifupdfuifoi rdrret iw ra^fp ical irtpi rd ai^d, vtfA. re XA^AUkra Kal 86^f Ktd avfidrvif ru^dr ifdowdt rrX.
2b
870 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
Blink in a deep sensual slumber, and living in a world of mere dreams, in which the reality of things is absolutely inverted. Their famous river, their stately buildings, their wealth, even their religious festivals, on which they plume themselves, are the merest show of happinesa^ Its real secret, which lies in temperance, justice, and true piety, is quite hidden &om their eyes. When that secret is learnt, their buildings may be less stately, gold and silver will perhaps not be so abundant, there will be less soft and delicate living, there may be even fewer costly sacrifices as piety increases ; but there will be a clearer perception of the true values of things, and a chastened temperance of spirit, which are the only security for the permanence of society. And the moralist points his audience to the splendid civilisations of the past that have perished because they were without a soul. Assyria and Lydia, the great cities of Magna Graecia which lived in a dream of luxury, what are they now ? And, latest example of all, Macedon, who pushed her conquests to the gates of India, and came into possession of the hoarded treasures of the great Eastern Empires, is gone, and royal Pella, the home of the race, is now a heap of bricks.^
It needed a courage springing from enthusiasm and con- viction to preach such unpalatable truths to an age which gloried in its material splendour. Dion is often conscious of the difficulty of his task; and he exerts all his trained dexterity to appease opposition, and gain a hearing for his messaga* As regards the reforn^ Df character, Dion has no pew message to deliver. His is the old gospel of renunciation for the sake of freedom, the doctrine of a right estimate of com- peting objects of desire and of the true ends of life. Dion, like nearly all Greek moralists from Socrates downwards, treats moral error and reform as rather a matter of the intellect than of emotional impulse. Vice is the condition of a besotted mind, which has lost the power of seeing things as they really are ; ^
1 Or, zxxiil § 17, 2d, 82; cf. the « Or. xiy. § 2 ; xiil § 18, ^Mkovt d^ /mc
ghastly exposure in Or. vii. § 188. rdrref A</>pweSf kt\. : cf. Zeller, PhiL
* Or, xzxiii. §§ 24-28, cf rit iUpxo*-ro der Or. iii. 1, p. 730, er zeigt mit den
IIAXaF o^di arffieu» (j^eroi T6Xeci^, Stoikem, doss die wahre Freiheit mit
cddhr 81x0. Tov ToXi)r xipofiow e&oi awr€- der Vemiinftigkeit, die Sklaverei mit
rpLUfUvw ip T^ rdwifk Cf. xiii. §§ 38, 84. der Unvemuml zusammenfalle ; cf. Or.
' A good example is the opening of xvi § 4. Or, xxxiL
CHAP. II THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONAR Y 371
conversion must be effected, not by appeals to the feelings, but by clarifying the mental vision. There is but little reference to religion as a means of reform, although Dion speaks of the love of God as a support of the virtuous character. As an experienced moral director, Dion knew well the necessity of constant iteration of the old truths. Just as the sick man will violate his doctor's orders, well knowing that he does so to his hurt, so the moral patient may long refuse to follow a principle of life which his reason has accepted.^ And so the preacher, instead of apologising for repeating himself, will regard it as a duty and a necessity to do so.
But Dion did not aim at the formation of any cloistered virtue, concentrated on personal salvation. He has a fine passage in which he shows that retreat, {avaympii]ai,i) detach- ment of spirit, is quite possible without withdrawing from the noises of the world.^ And he felt himself charged with a mission to bring the higher principles of conduct into the civic life of the tima We know from Pliny's correspondence with Trajan, that the great cities of Bithynia, and not least Dion's birthplace,^ were then suffering from unskilful administration and wasteful finance. Dion completes the picture by showing us their miserable bickerings and jealousies about the most trivial things. He denounces the unscrupulous flattery of the masses by men whose only object was the transient distinction of municipal office, the passion for place and power, without any sober wish to serve or elevate the community. He also exposes the caprice, the lazy selfishness, and the petulant ingratitude of the crowd.^ Dion, it is true,is an idealist, and his idefds of society are perhaps not much nearer realisation in some of our great cities than they were then. He often delivered his message to the most unpromising audiences. Some of his finest conceptions of social reorganisation were expounded before rude gatherings on the very verge of civilisation.* Once, in his wanderings, he found himself under the walls of a half-ruined Greek town, which had been attacked, the day before, by a horde of Scythian barbarians. There, on the steps of the temple of Zeus, he
1 Or. xvii. 2, 8. • Plin. Ep, x. 17, 28, 24, 68 ; Bury,
Rfyin, Emp, p. 489.
« Or. XX. § 8, M^ otp fieXrUmi koI * D. Chrys. Or. xxxiv. § 10, 14, 48 ;
XuaireXeardrn vaaQp ii els airrhv dyax*^ xxxyiiL § 11 ; xxxir, § 16, 19, 29, 81. fnicit ktK. Hatch, Hih. Lee. p. 160. ' Ih. xxxvL
S72
THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY
BOOK III
expounded to an eager throng of mean Greek traders, with all the worst vices, and only some faded traces of the culture of their race, the true meaning of city life.^ It is a society of men under the kingship of law, from which all greed, intem- perance, and violence have been banished ; a little world which, in its peaceful order and linked harmonies, should be modelled on the more majestic order of the great city of the universe, the city of gods and men.
How for from their ideal were the cities of his native land, Dion saw only too welL The urban life of Asia, as the result of the Greek conquests, has perhaps never been surpassed in external splendour and prosperity, and even in a diffusion of intellectual culture. The palmy days of the glorious spring- time of Hellenic vigour and genius in Miletus, Phocaea, and Rhodes, seemed to be reproduced even in inland places, which for 1500 years have returned to waste.' Agriculture and trade combined to produce an extraordinary and prosperous activity. Education was endowed and orgstnised, and literary culture became almost universal* Nowhere did the wandering sophist find more eager audiences, and no part of the Soman world in that age contributed so great a number of teachers, physicians, and philosophers. The single province of Bithynia, within half a century, could boast of such names as Arrian, Dion Cassius, and Dion Chrysostom himself. But moral and political improvement did not keep pace with an immense material and intellectual progress. The life of the cities indeed was very intense ; but, in the absence of the wider interests of the great days of freedom, they wasted their energies in futile contests for visionary distinctions and advantages. A continual struggle was going on for the " primacy " of the province, and the name of metropolis. Ephesus, the real capital, was challenged by Smyrna, which on its coins describes itself as " first in greatness and beauty."^ The feuds between Nicomedia and its near neighbour Nicaea caused Dion particular anxiety, and his speech
* D. Chrys. Or.^ xxxvi. § 16, 8, 9, irdrref ol Bo/nw^ercrai xtfX rbw voifjT^ iffTovidKoauf rrX. Cf. § 20, 28.
* Momm8.i2om.iVov. i. pp. 826,854; of. Aristid. Or, xiv. xv. 228-230 (Dind.).
' Momma. Jiofn. Prov, i. p. 862 ; cf. Philostr. ApolL Tyan, i. 7 ; ViL Soph. i, p. 220, KoZ Tpopijffta'Oou Hrl ftiya rdr
KXa^o/iei'df iiyovfiivup el rocoDrof ^ drj)^ ifiTaiieiuxroi infmrli^ kt\.
^ Momma. Bom, Prov, i. pp. 829, 880; cf. Aristid. Or, xy. ; Philostr. ApoU, Tyan, iv. 7, ^poreif ^/cAevcr ^^' iavrois fiSXKow 1j tQ T^t TliKivt rAIcc D. Ohrys. Or, xxxiv. 48 ; Friedl. SiUmig. ui. p. 111.
CHAF. n TBM, riUuLJSsjt^j^ ^..sna
and great
the/
advantages at
Boman guicLBUK; vko hb^s izpon tiiaa, t2ie pcnv to in jure both the mal dimaacss.' Tbe sae k true of ctber cstKs. Tarsus is engaged in bisier ecBtemaon wiih llaDns for a nMi« line of fwmdhiTh on tikor fronciea.* Kan s native Frnsa has an exaspented qnanel vixh Ajwra for no solid reason what- eYer« alUioiigb the tvo tovm are ckndT Hnfced br natme to one another, and mnSaallT dependent through their trade and manuEictarea. AD this nrinfimihle and foolish jeakmsj Dion exposes with excellent skill and sense; and he emploTs an abundant wealth of iUosoadon in painting the happiness which attends harmony and good-wilL It is the law of the universe, from the tiny gregarious insect whose life is bat far a day, to the eternal pvooeasion of the starry spheres. The ant» in the common industry of the LQliputian conmionwealth, 3^ds to his brother toiler, or helps him on his way.* The primal elements of the Cosmos are tempered to a due observance of their several bounds and laws. The sun himself hides his splendour each night to give place to the lesser radiance of the stars. This is rhetoric, of course, but it is rhetoric with a moral burden. And it is impossible not to admire the lofty tone of this heathen sophist, preaching the duty of foigiveness, of mutual love and deference, the blessing of the quiet spirit " which seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no eviL"^ There is a certain pathos in remembering that, within the very walls where these elevated orations were delivered, there were shy companies of men and women meet- ing in the early dawn to sing hymns to One who, three generations before in Galilee, had taught a similar gospel of love
1 D. Chrya. Or, xxxviiL § 7, 31, 86. » /6. xxxviii. §§ 26-81.
« />. xl. § 27, ^ Ik TUP ^7r>« o^«» * ^' x^cxiv. §§ 4i-48, alfOpaw ^«f
Kol 6fi6pvy 8ia<f>ofA koI rb fuirot odikw xal t6 irp6t r§ X//uq; xi^w Mtwbt d^ca. AXXo toucof i) trrdffei fuas rdXius Ihrov xal "^ lb, xl. § 86.
yd/Aunf Kcifwlaf kt\. ^ lb, xxxviii |S 42-46.
874 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
and self-suppression, but with a strange mystic charm, denied to the pagan eloquence, and that Dion seems never to have known those with whom he had so close a kindred.^
In many another oration Dion strove to raise the moral tone of his aga His speech to the Alexandrians is probably his most gallant protest against the besetting sins of a great population. Alexandria was a congeries of many races, in which probably the Hellenic type of the Ptolemies had succumbed to the enduring Egyptian morale} It was a populace at once sensual and superstitious, passionately devoted to fidi excite- ment, whether of games or orgiastic religious festival, with a jeering irreverent vein, which did not spare even the greatest Emperors. It was a curious medley — the seat of the most renowned university of the ancient world, the gathering- place and seed-ground of ideas which united the immemorial mysticism of the East with the clear, cold reason of Hellas — and yet a seething hot-bed of obscenity, which infected the Boman world, a mob who gave way to lunatic excitement over the triumph of an actor, or a singer, or the victor in a chariot- race.^ It required no ordinary courage to address such a crowd, and to charge them with their glaring faults. The people of Alexandria are literally intoxicated with a song. The music which, according to old Greek theory, should regulate the pas- sions, here only maddens them.^ And in the races all human dignity seems to be utterly lost in the futile excitement of the spectators over some low fellow contending for a prize in solid cash.^ Such a mob earns only the contempt of its rulers, and men say that the Alexandrians care for nothing but the " big loaf and the sight of a race.^ ' All the dignity which should surround a great people is forgotten in the theatre. It is useless to boast of the majestic and bounteous river, the harbours and markets crowded with the merchandise of Western or Indian seas, of the visitors from every land, from Italy, Greece, and Syria, from the Borysthenes, the Oxus, and the Ganges.^ They come to witness the shame of the second
» Plin. Ep. X. 96, § 7. * D. Chrys. Or, xxxii. § 67, 41, 61,
« Mahaffy, Oruk World under 55 ; PI. Hep. iii 399 ; Arist PoL viiL 5.
JUnmn Sway, p. 242 ; Meriyale. vul , ^ ^hrys. Or, xxxii. § 75.
p. 239 ; Momms. Rom, Frov, u. p. 264. '' '
» Momma, ii p. 268; D. Chrys. xxxii. ; ' -^- § SI, oTs fx6wo¥ «« TapafidXKetp
Tao. Hist, iv. 81 ; AeL Spart. Hadr, c ^^^ ^oXin^ Vo"-
12, 14 ; D. Cass. Ixix. 11 ; Petron. 81, 68. ^ lb, % 40.
CHAF. n THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 375
ci^ in the wodd, which, in the wantonness of prosperity, has lost the temperate dignity and orderly cahn that are the real glory of a great peopl&
Aa a foil to the feverish life of luxury, quarrelsome rivalry, and vulgar excitement which prevailed in the great towns, Dion has left a prose idyll to idealise the simple pleasures and virtnea of the country.^ It is also a dirge over the decay of Greece, when crops were being reaped in the agora of historic cities, and the tall grasses grew around the statues of gods and heroes of the olden tima* A traveller, cast ashore in the wreck of his vessel on the dreaded Hollows of Euboea, was sheltered, in a rude, warm-hearted fashion, by some peasants. Their fathers had been turned adrift in the confiscation of the estate of a great noble in some trouble with the emperor, and they had made themselves a lonely home on a pastoral slope, close to a stream, with the neighbouring shade of trees. They had taken into tillage a few fields around their huts ; they drove their cattle to the high mountain pastures in summer time, and in the winter they turned to hunting the game along the snowy tracks. Of city life they know hardly anything. One of them, indeed, had been twice in the neighbouring town, and he tells what he saw there in a lively way. It is all a mere shadow or caricature of the old civic life of Greece. There are the rival orators, patriot or demagogue, the frivolous and capricious crowd, the vote of the privilege of dining in the town-hall. The serious purpose of the piece, however, is to idealise the simple virtue and happiness of the country folk, and to discuss the disheartening problem of the poor in great cities.' It is in the main the problem of our modem urban life, and Dion had evidently thought deeply about it, and was an acute observer of the social misery which is the same from age to age. Fortified by the divine Homer and ordinary experience, he points out that the poor are more generous and helpful to the needy than are the rich out of their ample store. Too often the seeming bounty of the wealthy benefactor is of the nature of a loan, which is to be returned with due interest^ The struggles and temptations of the poor in great cities suggest a
^ See an excellent analysis of this ' i(. §§ 105^108.
piece (Tii.) in Mahaffy's Qruik World ^ id. §§ 82-89, oZ -ydp 5^ ^o^/>on)(rcit
und/er Roman Sway, pp. 277-288. koX x^P^^^» ^^ ckow^ tis dpOQt, o^iw
' D. Chiys. Or, rii. § 84 sqq. dia^povauf ipdwup koX io^tiiap.
376 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY took hi
discussion of the perpetual problem of prostitution, which probably no ancient writer ever faced so boldly. The double degradation of humanity, which it involved in the ancient world, is powerfully painted;^ and the plea that the indulgence in venal immorality is the only alternative to insidious attacks on family virtue is discussed with singular firmness and yet delicacy of touch.' The same detachment from contemporary prejudice is shown in Dion's treatment of slavery. He sees its fell efiects on the masters, in producing sensuality, languor, and helpless dependence on others for the slightest services. He points out that there is no criterion afforded by nature to distinguish slave and free. The so-called free man of the highest rank may be the offspring of a servile amour, and the so-called slave may be ingenuous in every sense, condemned to bondage by an accident of fortune.' Just as external freedom does not imply moral worth, so legal enslavement does not imply moral de- gradation.^ If moral justice always fixed the position of men in society by their deserts, master and slave would often have to change places.^ In Dion's judgment as to the enervating effects of slavery on the slave-owning class, and the absence of any moral or mental distinction to justify the institution, he is in singular harmony with Seneca.
The similarity of tone between Seneca and Qion is perhaps even more marked in their treatment of monarchy. Inherited, like so much else, from the great Greek thinkers of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., the ideal of a beneficent and unselfish prince, the true "shepherd of the people," the antithesis of the lawless and sensual tyrant, had become, partly, no doubt, through the influence of the schools of rhetoric, a common possession of cultivated minds. Vespasian gave it a certain reality, if his son Domitian showed how easily the king might pass into the tyrant. The dream of an earthly providence, presiding over the Boman world, dawned in more durable splendour with the accession of Trajan, and Pliny, his panegyrist, has left us a sketch of the patriot prince,
^ D. ChiyB. Or, vii. § 188 ; Muso- Jut. ziv. 16 ; Sen. Bm. iiL 21 ; j^
nius, Stob. FUrr, ▼!. 61 ; cf. on this 47 ; cf. Donis, ii 152 ; Boissier, BA.
subject Denia, Idies Morales, etc. iL p. Mam. ii. p. 854.
184. « Cf. Newman's PolUies qfArisMli,
* D. Chrys. Or, vii. § 189. Introd. p. 144.
» lb. X. § 18 ; XV. § 6 ; 6, 81 ; cf. • D. Ohiys. Or. xv. § 81.
CHAP. II THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY ZTl
which is aknost identical with the lines of Dion's ideaL^ Both Dion and Pliny were favoarites of Trajan, and some of Dion's orations were delivered before his court As a court preacher, he justly boasts that he is no mere flatterer, although we may suspect that his picture of the ideal monarch might have been interpreted as drawn from the character of Trajan, just as his picture of the tyrant was probably suggested by Domitian.* Still, we may well believe the orator when he says that the man who had bearded the one at the cost of long exile and penury, was not likely to flatter the other for the gold or honours which he despised. And in these discourses, Dion seems full of the sense of a divine mission* Once, on his wanderings, he lost his way somewhere on the boundaries of Arcadia, and, ascending a knoll to recover the track, he found himself before a rude, ruined shrine of Heracles, hung with votive ofierings of the chase.' An aged woman sat by them who told him that she had a spirit of divination from the gods. The shepherds and peasants used to come to her with questions about the fate of their flocks and crops. And she now entrusted Dion with a message to the great ruler of many men whom she prophesied Dion was soon to meet^ It was a tale of Heracles, the great benefactor of men from the rising to the setting sun, who, by his simple strength, crushed all lawless monsters and gave the world an ordered peace. His father inspired him with noble impulse for his task by oracle and omen, and sent Hermes once, when Heracles was still a boy at Thebes, to show him the vision of the Two Peaks, and strengthen him in his virtue.* They rose from the same rocky roots, amid precipitous crags and deep ravines, and the noise of many waters. At first they seemed to be one mountain mass, but they soon parted wide asunder, the one being sacred to Zeus, the other to the lawless Typhon. On the one crest, rising into the cloudless ether, Eingship sits enthroned, in the likeness of a fair, stately woman, dad in robes of glistening white, and wielding a sceptre of brighter and purer metal than any silver or gold. Under her steady gaze of radiant dignity, the good felt a
» D. Chrya. t)r. L § 18 ; u. §§ 76-77 ; » D. Ohryi. Or. i f 79 ; cf.iiL|§6,8.
iii. § 39. 62, 107 ; iv. § 63 ; cf. Plin. » /6. L § 52,
Paneg. 72, 80, 67 ; Sen. Dt CUm, i 18, * /J. § M.
§ 4 ; L 19, § 2. ' 76. f 66.
^
378 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
cheerful confidence, the bad quailed and shrank away. She was surrounded by handmaidens of a beauty like her own. Justice and Peace and Order. The paths to the other peak were many and secret, and skirted an abyss, streaming with blood or choked with corpses. Its top was wrapped in mist and cloud, and there sat Tyranny on a far higher and more pompous throne, adorned with gold and ivory and many a gorgeous colour, but a throne rocking and unstabla She strove to make herself like to Kingship, but it was all mere hollow pretence. Instead of the gracious smile, there was a servile, hypocritical leer; instead of the glance of dignity, there was a savage scowl. And around her sat a throng bearing ill-omened names, Cruelty and Lust, Lawlessness and Flattery and Sedition. On a question from Hermes, the youthful Heracles made his choice, and his father gave him his commission to be the saviour of men.
In this fashion Dion, like Aeschylus, recasts old myth to make it the vehicle of moral instruction, just as he finds in Homer the true teacher of kings.^ The theory of ideal monarchy is developed at such length as may have somewhat wearied the emperor. But it really is based on a few great principles. True kings, in Homer's phrase, are sons of Zeus, and they are shepherds of the people. All genuine political power rests on virtue, and ultimately on the favour of Heaven. A king is appointed by God to work the good of his subjects. And, as his authority is divine, an image on earth of the sovereignty of Zeus, the monarch will be a scrupulously religious man in the highest sense,* not merely by offering costly sacrifices, but by righteousness, diligence, and self-sacrifice in performing the duties of his solenm charge. The many titles addressed to Father Zeus represent so many aspects of royal activity and virtue. The true prince will be the father of his people, surrounded and guarded by a loving reverence, which never degenerates into fear. His only aim will be their good. He will keep sleepless watch over the weak, the careless, those who are heedless for themselves. Commanding infinite resources, he will know less of mere pleasure than any man within his realm. With such immense responsibilities, he will be the most laborious of all. His only advantage over the private citizen is in his boundless
* Or. iy. § 89. » 76. uL |§ 61, 62, rh dpx«^ oWo/«5s H^vilov dXK* Wroror «rX.
CHAP. II THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 379
command of friendship ; for all men must be well-wishers to one wielding such a beneficent power, with whom, from his conception of his mission, they must feel an absolute identity of interest. And the king^s greatest need is friendship, to provide him with myriads of hands and eyes in the vast work of government^ Herein lies the sharpest contrast between the true king and the tyrant, a contrast which was a commonplace in antiquity, but which was stamped afresh by the juxtaposition of the reign of Domitian and the reign of Trajan. The universal hatred which pursued a bad Caesar even beyond the grave, which erased his name from monuments and closed its eyes even to intervals of serious purpose for the general weal, was a terrible illustration of the lonely friendlessness of selfish power.* Instead of loyal and grateful friendship, the despot was mocked by a venal flattery which was only its mimicry. The good monarch will treat flatterers as false coiners who cause the genuine currency to be suspected This counsel and others of Dion were often little regarded by succeeding emperors. Tet even the last shadowy princes of the fifth century professed themselves the guardians of the human race, and are oppressed by an ideal of universal beneficence which they are impotent to realise.'
Hitherto we have been occupied with the preaching of Dion on personal conduct, the reform of civic life, or the duties of imperial power. It cannot be said that he discusses these subjects without reference to religious belie& and aspirations.^ But religion is rather in the background; the reverence for the Heavenly Powers is rather assumed as a necessary basis for human life rightly ordered. There is one oration, however, of supreme interest to the modem mind, in which Dion goes to the root of all religion, and examines the sources of belief in God and the justification of anthropo- morphic imagery in representing Him. This utterance was called forth by a visit to Olympia when Dion was advanced in years.^ The games of Olympia were a dazzling and
1 D. Chrys. Or. iiL §§ 88, 88, 107. ' Nw. FcOenL titTiii. ; Leg. Anthem,
* Saeton. Dot/i. xzxiii. ; Calig, Ix. tit i. ; Nov, Mart, ii abolendam Caeiianiin memoriam ao di- a r\ rrt, n. •• <> iok l xi.
rnenda tempU censneront; cf. Or. Hem. \ »• Chiys. Or.xw. § 186, where the
698. 699, 767. where the names of «^ *^5 P™ wedlock are appealed to
Cal^nla and Domitian hare been agMUBt vagrant vice, erased. « /». zii § 20.
380 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
inspiring spectacle, and the multitude which gathered there from all parts of the world was a splendid audience. But, with the sound of the sacred trumpet, and the herald's voice, proclaiming the victor, in his ears, Dion turns away from all the glory of youthful strength and grace, even from the legendary splendour of the great festival,^ to the majestic figure of the Olympian Zeus, which had been graved by the hand of Pheidias more than 500 years before, and to the thoughts of the divine world which it suggested. That greatest triumph of idealism in plastic art, inspired by fiEunous lines in the UiaA, was, by the consent of all €tntiquity, the masterpiece of Pheidias. Ancient writers of many ages are lost in admiration of the mingled majesty and benignity which the divine effigy expressed. To the eyes of Lucian it seemed " the very son of Kronos brought down to earth, and set to watch over the lonely plain of Elis."^ There it sat watching for more than 800 years, till it was swept away in the fierce, final effort to dethrone the religion of the past Tet the majestic image, which attracted the fury of the iconoclasts of the reign of Theodosius, inspired Dion with thoughts of the Divine nature which travelled far beyond the paganism either of poetry or of the crowd. It was not merely the masterpiece of artistic and constructive skill which had fascinated the gaze, and borne the vicissitudes, of so many centuries, that moved lus admiration ; it was also, and more, the moral effect of that miracle of art on the spectator. The wildest and fiercest of the brute creation might be calmed and softened by the air of majestic peace and kindness which floated around the gold and ivory. "Whosoever among mortal men is most utterly toil-worn in spirit, having drunk the cup of many sorrows and calamities, when he stands before this image, methinks, must utterly forget all the terrors and woes of this mortal life." •
But the thoughts of Dion, in presence of the majestic figure at Olympia, take a wider range. His theme is nothing
^ D. Ohrya. Or. xii. § 26. * Or. xii. § 51, ipepdnrw 64, &t 9jf v
TorrcXwr MTOwds r^ ^/n/x^* voXXdr ' Luc. De Saertf. 11, Uorrai hfid» . . . diroyrXi^ar (v/i^opdr koX Xihrat ^ r$
HiffoUaw ipfffUajf hrwKVWuif jceireXev- 4p ivOfHoirivtfi pitp decvd mi x"^*^
CHAP, n THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 381
less than the sources of our idea of God, and the place of art in religion. He pours his scorn upon hedonistic atheism. Our conception of God is innate, original, universal among all the races of men.^ It is the product of the higher reason, con- templating the majestic order, minute adaptation, and bene- ficent proYiBion for human wants in the natural world. In that great temple, with its alternations of gloom and splendour, its many voices of joy or of terror, man is being perpetually initiated in the Great Mysteries, on a grander scale than at Eleusis, with God Himself to preside over the rites. The belief in God depends in the first instance on no human teaching, any more than does the love of child to parent But this original intuition and belief in divine powers finds expression through the genius of inspired poets ; it is reinforced by the imperative prescriptions of the founders and lawgivers of states ; it takes external form in bronze or gold and ivory or marble, under the cunning hand of the great artist ; it is developed and expounded by philosophy.^ Like all the deepest thinkers of his time, Dion is persuaded of the certainty of God's existence, but he is equally conscious of the remote- ness of the Infinite Spirit, and of the weakness of all human efibrt to approach, or to picture it to the mind of man. We are to Dion like '' children crying in the night, and with no language but a cry."' Tet the child will strive to image forth the face of the Father, although it is hidden behind a veil which will never be withdrawn in this world. The genius of poetry, commanding the most versatile power of giving utterance to the religious imagination, is first in order and in power. Law and institution follow in its wake. The plastic arts, under cramping limitations, come later still to body forth the divine dreams of the elder bards. Dion had thought much on the relative power of poetry and the sculptor's art to give expression to the thoughts and feelings of man about the Divine nature. The boundless power or licence of language to find a symbol for every thought or image on the phantasy is seen at its height in Homer, who
> Or. zlL §§ 27, 28, 88, 42 ; cf. Sen. ' Ih. § 61, tSiOT^p n^coc roidcf
Ep. 117, § 6, omnibus insita de dis rarpbs 1j h'Tp^i dreaToa-fiiwoi . . dpi-
opinio est. yowri x^^P^^ ^^ wapoViri roXXdxir dree-
» D. Chrys. Or, xii. §§ 42, 43. pdyrrorret ktX.
862 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY ■ook ii
riots in an almost lawless exercise of his gifts.^ But the chief importance of the discussion lies in an arraignment of Pheidias for attempting to image in visible form the great Soul and Buler of the universe, Whom mortal eye has never seen and can never see. His defence is very interesting, both as a clear statement of the limitations of the plastic arts, and as a justification of material images of the Divine.
Pheidias pleads in his defence that the artist could not, if he would, desert the ancient religious tradition, which was consecrated in popular imagination by the romance of poetry ; ^ that is fixed for ever. Granted that the Divine nature is far removed from us, and far beyond our ken; yet, as little 4)hildren separated from their parents, feel a strong yearning for them and stretch out their hands vainly in their dreams, 60 the race of man, from love and kindred, longs ever to draw nigh to the unseen God by prayer and sacrifice and visible symbol. The ruder races will image their god in trees or shape- less stones, or may seek a strange symbol in some of the lower forms of animal life.* The higher may find sublime expression of His essence in the sun and starry spheres. For the pure and infinite mind which has engendered and which sustains the universe of life, no sculptor or painter of Hellas has ever found, or can ever find, full and adequate expression.^ Hence men take refuge in the vehicle and receptacle of the noblest spirit known to them, the form of man. And the Infinite Spirit, of which the human is an effluence, may perhaps best be embodied in the form of His child.^ But no effort or ecstasy of artistic fancy, in form or colour, can ever follow the track of the Homeric imagination in its majesty and infinite variety of expression. The sculptor and painter have fixed limits set to their skill, beyond which they cannot pass. They can appeal only to the «ye ; their material has not the infinite ductility and elasticity of the poetic dialect of many tribes and many generations. They can seize only a single moment of action or passion, and fix it for ever in bronze or stona Tet Pheidias, with a certain
^ D. Chrys. Or. xiL § 62. ^pbvi\9%» nin^w Ka$* aMp^ o6r€ nt rXi-
* lb, % 56. 0Ti7r o(ht rir ypajf^ebt eUdffai Svwaii^ » /J. § 61 ; of. Plut De la. et Osir, irrai : Plut De It. Ixxix.
bud., Ixxii., IxxtL ; PhUostr. Apcfl. • Of. Max. Tyr. 2>iw. viii § 8, r^ ^^
Tfan. vL 19 ; Max. Tyr. Diss. yiii. *EXXiyyijr^ ri/ior ro^ ^eodt ipo^lfft r«3r
J 5. ^' TO ^^f KoXKlcrois, CXji fih icaBapq^
* D. Chrys. Or. xii. § 59, wew yiip xal i»of4i 9i ivBptawlvin rixif ^ ixptfisi.
CHAP, II THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY 383
modest self-assertion, pleads that his conceptiou of the Olympian Zeus, although less various and seductive than Homer's, although he cannot present to the gazer the crashing thunderbolt or the baleful star, or the heaving of Olympus, is perhaps more elevat- ing and inspiring.^ The Zeus of Pheidias is the peace-loving and gentle providence of an undisturbed and harmonious Greece, the august giver of all good gifts, the father and saviour and guardian of men. The many names by which men call Mm may each find some answering trait in the laborious work of the chisel. In the lines of that majestic and benign image are shadowed forth the mild king and father, the hearer of prayer, the guardian of civic order and family love, the protector of the stranger, and the power who gives fertile increase to flock and field. The Zeus of Pheidias and of Dion Sa a God of mercy and peace, with no memory of the wars of the Giants.^
Dion is a popular teacher of morality, not a thinker or theologian. But this excursion into the field of theology shows him at his best. And it prepares us for the study of some more formal efforts to find a theology in the poetry of legend.
1 D. Chrys. Or, xiL § 78. « Ih, §§ 74. 76.
CHAPTER III
THK PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN
Tub times were ripe for a theodicy. Seligion of every mood and tone, of every age and clime, was in the air, and philosophy had abandoned speculation and turned to the direction of con- duct and spiritual life. The mission of philosophy is to find the one in the many, and never did the religious life of men offer a more bewildering multiplicity and variety, not to say chaos, to the ordering power of philosophy. The scepticism of the Neronian age had almost disappeared. The only rationalists of any distinction in the second century were Lucian and Galen.^ It was an age of imperious spiritual cravings, alike among the cultivated and the vulgar. But the thin abstractions of the old Latin faith and the brilliant anthropomorphism of Greece had ceased to satisfy even the crowd. It was an age with a longing for a religious system less formal and coldly external, for a religion more satisfying to the deeper emotions, a religion which should offer divine help to human need and misery, divine guidance amid the darkness of time ; above all, a divine light in the mystery of death. The glory of classic art had mysteriously closed. It was an age rather of material splendour, and, at first sight, an age of bourgeois ideals of parochial fame and mere enjoyment of the hour. Tet the Antonine age has some claim to spiritual distinction. In the dim, sub-conscious feelings of the masses, as well as in the definite spiritual effort of the higher minds, there was really a great movement towards a ruling principle of conduct and a spiritual vision. Men often, indeed, followed
^ Friedl. Sittengesch, iiL pp. 430, 485 ; cf. Thiersch, PoliHk u, PhU, in ihrem Verh&Un, zur Rdigion, p. 9.
384
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 886
the marsh-l^ht through strange devious paths into wildernesses peopled with the spectres of old-world superstition. But the light of the Holy Grail had at last flashed on the eyes of some loftier minds. From the early years of the second century we can trace that great combined movement of the new Platonism and the revived paganism,^ which so long retarded the triimiph of the Church, and yet, in the Divinely-guided evolution, was destined to prepare men for it.
The old religion had not lost all hold on men's mindSy as it is sometimes said to have done, in i-ather too sweeping language. The punctilious ritual with which, in the stately narrative of Tacitus, the Capitol was restored by Vespasian, the pious care with which the young Aurelius recited the Salian litany in words no longer understood, the countless victims which he offered to the guardian gods of Some in evil days of pestilence and doubtful war, these things reveal the strength of the religion of Numa. Two centuries after M. Aurelius was in his grave, the deities which had cradled the Soman state, and watched over its career, were still objects of reverence to the conservative circle of Symmachus. A religion which was intertwined with the whole fabric of government and society, which gave its sanction or benediction to every act and incident in the individual life, which was omnipresent in game and festival, in temple and votive monument, was placed far beyond the influence of changing fashions of devotion. It was a powerful stay of patriotism, a powerful bond of civic and family life ; it threw a charm of awe and old-world sanctity around everything it touched. But for the deeper spiritual wants and emotions it furnished little nutriment. To find relief and cleansing from the sense of guilt, cheer and glad exaltation of pious emotion, consolation in the common miseries of life, and hope in the shadow of death, men had to betake themselves to other systems. The oriental religions were pour- ing in like a flood, and spreading over all the West. One Antonine built a shrine of Mithra,^ another took the tonsure of Isis.* The priests and acolytes of the Egyptian goddess were everywhere, chanting their litanies in solemn processions
^ Thiersch, Poliiik und Fhilosophie ^ R^ville, Bel. unier den Sev. p. 81.
i» ihrem VtrMUnin vwr Religion^ pp. 14, 16. ' Lamprid. CommoduBy c. 9.
2 0
386 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book m
along the streets, instructing and baptizing their catechumens, ana, in the alternating gloom and splendour of their mysteries, bearing the entranced soul to the boundaries of life and death.^ Mithra, "the Unconquered," was justifying his name. In every district from the Euxine to the Solway he brought a new message to heathendom. Pure from all grossness of myth, the Persian god of light came as the mediator and comforter, to soothe the poor and broken-hearted, and give the cleansing of the mystic blood. His hierarchy of the initiated, his soothing symbolic sacraments, his goigeous ritual, and his promise of immortality to those who drank the mystic Haoma, gratified and stimulated religious longings which were to find their full satisfaction in the ministry of the Church.
But the religious imagination was not satisfied with historic and accredited systems. Travel and conquest were adding to the spiritual wealth or burden of the Koman race. In lonely Alpine passes, in the deserts of Africa, or the Yorkshire dales, in every ancient wood or secret spring which he passed in his wanderings or campaigns, the Soman found hosts of new divinities, possible helpers or possible enemies, whose fiEkvour it ¥ras expedient to win.^ And, where he knew not their strange outlandish names, he would try to propitiate them all together under no name, or any name that pleased them.^ And, as if this vague multitude of ghostly powers were not large enough for devotion, the fecundity of imagination created a host of genii, of haunting or guarding spirits, attached to every place or scene, to every group or corporation of men which had a place in Boman life. There were genii of the secret spring or grove, of the camp, the legion, the cohort, of the Soman people, above all, there was the genius of the emperor.^ Apotheosis went on apace — apotheosis not merely of the emperors, but of a theurgic philosopher like ApoUonius, of a minion like Antinous, of a mere impostor like Alexander of Abonoteichos.^ Old oracles, which had been suppressed or decadent in the reign of Nero, sprang into fresh life and popularity in the reign of Trajau. New sources of oracular
1 Apal. Met. xi. c. 11, 22. (Neronis), 3953 (Hadriani).
> Or, Htm. 186, 193, 228 sqq., 275, ^ Lamprid AUx. Sev. c 29 ; Span.
1637, 1680, 6873, 6879, 6887, 1998. Eadr. 14, § 6; Luc. Perecr. c 29;
* C.LL. vi. 110, 111. Fried). SUUnffeseh, iiL pp. 464-466.
« Or. Hem. 6628 (foDtU), 4922 Thiersch, Pol, u, PhU. in VtrhSUn.
(oastronim), 1704 (legionia), 1812 «Mri20^. p. 10.
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 387
inspiration were opened, some of them challenging for the time the ancient fEime of Delphi or Dodona.^ According to Ludan, oracles were pealing from every rock^and every altar.^ Every form of revelation or divination, every avenue of access to the Divine, was eagerly sought for, or welcomed with pious credulity. The study of omens and dreams was reduced to the form of a pseudo-science by a host of writers like Artemidorus. The sacred art of healing through visions of the night found a home in those charming temples of Asclepius, which rose beside so many hallowed springs, vdth fair prospect and genial air, where the god revealed his remedy in dreams, and a lore half hieratic, half medical, was applied to relieve the sufferer.* Miracles and special providences, the most marvellous or the most grotesque, were chronicled with unquestioning faith, not only by fanatics like Aelian, but by learned historians like Tacitus and Suetonius. Tales of witchcraft and weird sorcery are as eagerly believed at Trimalchio's dinner-table^ as in lonely villages of Thessaly. On the higher level of the new Pythagorean faith, everything is possible to the pure spirit To such a soul God will reveal Himself by many voices to which gross human clay is deaf ; the future lays bare its secrets ; nature yields up her hidden powers. Spiritual detachment triumphs over matter and time ; and the Pythagorean apostle predicts a plague at Ephesus, casts out demons, raises the dead, vanishes like a phantom from the clutches of Domitian.^ At a superficial glance, a state of religion such as has been sketched might seem to be a mere bewildering chaos of infinitely divided spiritual interest. Men seem to have adopted the mythologies of every race, and to have superadded a new mythology of positively boundless fecundity. A single votive tablet will contain the names of the great gods of Latium and Greece, of Persia, Commagene, and Egypt, and beside them, strange names of British or Swiss, Celtic, Spanish, or Moorish gods, and the vaguely -designated spirits who now seemed to float in myriads around the scenes of human lifa^ Yet,
^ Luc AUx, 19; Friedl. ^Sfittm^. • Philoefcr. Apott, Tyan. v. 12 ; iv.
iii p. 470 ; Thiersch, p. 19. 5 ; iv. 10 ; vii. 5.
« Lao. Deor, Cane 12, dXXd Ijhi was • C.I.L, xii. 8070, 4816 ; viiL 9195 ;
>JBo9 Ktd was puftM . . . xp^f^^^ ^i^ 4^78, Jovi, Jaiioni, Minervae, Soli
* Friedl. SiUeng, iii. pp. 474-478 ; Mithrae, Hercali, M&rti, Genio loci, Wolff, Ik Nov, Orae. AetaU^ p. 29 sq. Diis, Deabusque omnibus ; of. TiiL
* Petron. Sat. 61, 62. 4578 ; ▼! 504.
388 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY JOOK hi
unperceived by the ordinary devotee, amid all this confufled ferment, a certain principle of unity or comprehension was asserting its power. Although the old gods in Lucian's piece might comically complain that they were being crowded out of Olympus by Mithra and Anubis and their barbarous com- pany,^ there was really little jealousy or repulsion among the pagan cults. Ancient ritual was losing its precision of out- line ; the venerable deities of classical myth were putting off the decided individuality which had so long distinguished tiiem in the popular imagination.^ The provinces and attributes of kindred deities melted into one another and were finally identified ; syncretism was in the air. Without the unifjring aid of philosophy, ordinary piety was effecting unconsciously a vast process of simplification which tended to ideal unity. In the Sacred Orations of Aristides, Poseidon, Athene, Serapis, Asclepius, are dropping the peculiar powers by which they were so long known, and rising, without any danger of collision, to all-embracing sway. So, the Isis of Apuleius, the '' goddess of myriad names," in her vision to Lucius, boldly claims to be " Queen of the world of shades, first of the inhabitants of Heaven, in whom all gods find their unchanging type.*' Of course, to the very end, the common superstitious devotion of the masses was probably little influenced by the great spiritual movement which, in the higher strata, was moulding heathen fiaith into an approach to monotheism. The simple peasant still clung to his favourite deity, as his Catholic descendant has to-day his favourite saint. But it is in the higher minds that the onward sweep of great spiritual move- ments can really be discerned. The initiation of Apuleius in all the mysteries, the reverent visits of Apollonius to every temple and oracle from the Granges to the Guadalquivir, the matins of Alexander Severus in a chapel which enshrined the images of Abraham and Orpheus, of Apollonius and Christ ; ^ these, and many other instances of all-embracing devotion, point forward to the goal of that Platonist th^odic^ which it is the purpose of this chapter to expound.
The spectacle of an immense efflorescence of pure paganism,
> Luo. «7t<p. Trag, S, 9 ; Dtor, Cone. Soph. SheL pp. 62, S4 ; of. ApoL lid.
8 aqq. xL c. 5 ; Macrob. SaL L 17.
* rhilostr. Apoll T. vL 40 ; Baum- * Apul. Met, xi. cc. 3-4.
gart, Ari9tid€$ oUs BepHUemtaiU der * Lamprid. Alex, Sev, c. 29.
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 389
most of it bom of very mundane fears and hopes and desires, to men like Lucian was a sight which might, according to the mood, move to tears or laughter. But the same great impulse which drove the multitude into such wild curiosity of super- stition, was awaking loftier conceptions of the Divine, and feelings of purer devotion in the educated And sometimes the very highest and the veiy lowest developments of the protean religious instinct may be seen in a single mind. Was there ever such a combination of the sensualist imagination with the ideal of ascetic purity, of the terrors and dark arts of anile superstition with the mystic vision of God, as in the soul of Apuleius ? The painter of the foulest scenes in ancient literature seems to have cherished the faith in a heavenly King, First Cause of all nature, Father of all living things,^ Saviour of spirits, beyond the range of time and change, remote, ineffable. The prayer of thanksgiving to Isis might, mvJtaiii mutandis, be almost offered in a Christian church. The conception of the unity and purity of the Divine One was the priceless conquest of Gieek philosophy, and pre-eminently of Plato. It had been brought home to the Boman world by the teaching of Stoicism. But there is a new note in the monotheism of the first and second centuries of the Empire. God is no longer a mere intellectual postulate, the necessary crown and lord of a great cosmic system. He has become a moral necessity. His existence is demanded by the heart as well as by the intellect. Men craved no longer for a God to explain the universe, but to resolve the enigma of their own lives ; not a blind force, moving on majestically and mercilessly to " some far-off event," but an Infinite Father guiding in wisdom, cherishing in mercy, and finally receiving His children to Himself. This is the conception of God which, from Seneca to M. Aurelius, is mastering the best minds, both Stoic and Platonist.' Seneca, as we have seen in a former chapter, often speaks in the hard tones of the older Stoicism. Sometimes
1 ApnL ApoL c 64 (586), totias > Thiersch, Pol, u. PhiL in ihirem
natarae causa et ratio, snmnms animi Verhaltn, zurRel, p. 21, man nenntden
genitor, aetemuBanimautuin sospitator Marcus elDen Stoiker. . . . Aber
. . . Deque tempore neque loco neque seine Dogmatik und seine ganzeSeelen-
Tice ulla comprehenaus, nemlni ena* bestimmnng gehort schon weit mehr
bills ; of. MeL xi. c. 25 ; Denis, HitA, dem Neoplatonismus an. OL Bnssell,
det ItUes Morales, ii. p. 264. School qfPkUo, pp. 278-290.
390 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
Grod, Nature, Fate, Jupiter, are identical terms.^ But the cold, materialistic conception of God is irreconcilable wift many passages in his writings. Like Epictetus and M. Aurelius, Seneca is often far more emotional, we may say, far more modern, than his professed creed. The materialistic Anima Muvdi, interfused with the universe and the nature of man, becomes the infinitely benign Creator, Providence, and Guardian, the Father, and almost the Friend of men. He is the Author of all good, never of evil : He is gentle and pitiful, and to attribute to Him storm or pestilence or earthquake or the various plagues of human life is an impiety. These things are the result of physical law. To such a God boundless gratitude is due for His goodness, resignation in the wise chastenings of His hand. He chastises whom he loves. In bereavement, He takes only what He has given. He is our ready helper in every moral effort ; no goodness is possible without His succour. In return for all His benefits. He asks for no costly material offerings, no blood of victims, no steaming incense, no adulaticm in prayer. Faith in Qod is the true worship of Him. K you wish to propitiate Him, imitate His goodness. And for the elect soul the day of death is a birthday of eternity, when the load of corporeal things is shaken off, and the infinite splendour of the immortal life spreads out with no troubling shadow.'
Hardly less striking is the warmth of devout feeling which suffuses the moral teaching of Epictetus and M. Aurelius. They have not indeed abandoned the old Stoic principle that man's final good depends on the rectitude of the wiiL But the Stoic sage is no longer a solitary athlete, conquering by his proud unaided strength, and in his victory rising almost superior to Zeus. Growing moral experience had taught humility, and inspired the sense of dependence on a Higher Power in sympathy with man.' No true Stoic, of course, could ever forget the Divine element within each human soul which linked it with the cosmic soul, and through which man might bring himself into harmony with the great polity of
^ Sen. De Ben. iy. 7. Ira, ii. 27 ; De Clem, i, 7 ; De Bm, 1.
29.
> Zeller,/%i;.<i0rGWM4.iii.l,p.649. * Epict i 9, § 7, r6 a^ t^ Mr mf.
GL Sen. Bp, 10, § 5 ; j^. 78, g 16 ; ^. r^v ^eir koX xaHpa mX KifSc/i^
41, 1 2 ; ^. 68, § 7 ; Ep. 88, § 1 ; i^. odxh-i iijut&t iiatp^enu XinrOr nl
96, § 60 ; ^. 102, § 28, nnlU Mrennm ip6pw : cf. i. 8, § 8 ; DenU, Hisi. dee
nmbra tarbabit ; De Frov, iy. 7 ; De IdUe Morale*^ ii. p. 241.
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 391
gods and men. But, somehow, the Divine Power inmianent in the world, from a dim, cold, impalpable law or fate or im- personal force, slowly rounds itself off into a Being, if not apart from man, at any rate his superior, his Creator and Guardian, nay, in the end, his Father, from whom he comes, to whom he returns at death. Some may think this a decline from the lofty plane of the older school. The answer is that the earlier effort to find salvation through pure reason in obedience to the law of the whole, although it may have been magnificent, was not a working religion for man as he is constituted. The eternal involution of spirit and matter in the old Stoic creed, the cold, impersonal, unknowable power, which, under whatever name, Law, Beason, Fate, Necessity, permeates the universe, necessarily exclude the idea of design, of providence, of moral care for humanity. The unknown Power which claims an absolute obedience, has no aid or recognition for his worshipper. The monism of the old Stoics breaks down. The human spirit, in striving to realise its unity with the Universal Spirit, realises with more and more intensity the perpetual opposition of matter and spirit, while it receives no aid in the conflict from the power which ordains it ; it '^ finds itself alone in an alien world." The true Stoic has no real object of worship. If he addresses the impassive centre and soul of his universe, some- times in the rapturous tones of loving devotion, it is only a pathetic illusion born of the faiths of the past, or inspired by a dim forecast of the faiths of the coming tima How could the complex of blind forces arouse any devotion? It demanded implicit submission and self-sacrifice, but it gave no help, save the name of a Divine element in the human soul; it furnished no inspiring example to the sage in the conflicts of passion, under obloquy, obstruction, and persecution. Mean- while, in this forlorn struggle, the human character was through stress and storm developing new powers and virtues, lofty courage in the face of lawless power, pious resignation to the blows of fortune, gentle consideration and mercy even for slaves and the outcasts of society, ideals of purity unknown to the ancient world in its prima The sage might, according to orthodox theory, rest in a placid content of rounded perfection. But human nature is not so constituted. In proportion to spiritual progress is the force of spiritual longings; \taJH
3M THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book in
in/wndo corde, ipsi Deum wdebunt. The froitfol part of Stoicism as a religion was the doctrine that the human reason is a part of the soul of the world, a spark of the Divine mind. At first this was only conceived in the fashion of a materialistic pantheism.^ The Idndred between the individual and the general soul was little more than a physical doctrine. But it developed in minds like Epictetus and Seneca a profound spiritual meaning; it tapped the source of all real religion. Pure reason can never solve the religious problem. The history of religions shows that a conception of God which is to act effectually on composite human nature is never reached by the speculative intellect What reason cannot do is effected by the '' sub-conscious self/' ' which is the dim seat of the deeper intuitions, haunted by vague memories, hereditary pieties, and emotional associations, the spring of strange genius, of heroic sacrifice, of infinite aspiration. There throbs the tide " which drew from out the boundless deep." Thus the Stoic of the later time became a mystic, in the sense that "by love and emotion he solved the dualism of the world/' ^ God is no longer a mere physical law or force, however subtilised, sweeping on in pitiless impetus or monotony of cyclic changa God is within the human soul, not as a spark of empyreal fire, but as the voice of conscience, the spiritual monitor and comforter, the "Holy Spirit,"^ prompting, guarding, consoling in life and death. God is no longer found so much in the ordered movement of the spheres and the recurring processes or the cataclysms of the material universe. He is heard in the still small voice. It is thus that the later Stoicism melts into the revived Platonism.
Probably Seneca and Epictetus, had they been interrogated, would have loyally resolved their most rapturous and devout language into the cold terms of Stoic orthodoxy. But the emotional tone is a really new element in their teaching, and the language of spiritual abandonment, joyful resignation to a Higher Will, free and cheerful obedience to it in the confidence of love, would be absurdly incongruous if addressed to an
> Zeller, PhU. der Cfrieeh, iiL 1, pp. ' Baaaell, School qf Plato, p. 806.
179, 1S4.
* James, Farietia of JUligioua Belie/, * Sen. £p. 41, § 2, sacer intra noe
pp. 511, 512. spiritns sedet
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 393
abstract law or physical necessity.^ The fatherhood of Ghxl and the kinship of all men as His sons is the fundamental principle of the new creed, binding us to do nothing unworthy of such an ancestry.^ At other times we are soldiers of God in a war with evil, bound to military obedience, awaiting calmly the last signal to retreat from the scene of struggla* The infinite benevolence of (rod is asserted in the face of all appear- ances to the contrary. This of course is all the easier to one trained in the doctrine that the external fortune of life has nothing to do with man's real happiness. The fear of God is banished by the sense of His perfect love. The all-seeing eye, the all-embracing providence, leave no room for care or fore- boding. The Stoic optimism is now grounded on a personal trust in a loving and righteous will : " I am Thine, do with me what Thou wilt" " For all things work together for good to them who love Him." The external sufferings and apparent wrongs of the obedient sons of God are no stumbling-blocks to faith/ The great heroic example, Heracles^ the son of Zeus, was sorely tried by superhuman tasks, and won his crown of inmiortality through toil and battle. ''Whom He loves He chastens." Even apparent injustice is only an education through suffering. These things are " only light afilictions " to him who sees the due proportions of things and knows Zeus as his father. Even to the poor, the lame, the blind, if they have the divine love, the universe is a great temple, full of mystery and joy, and each passing day a festival In the common things of life, in ploughing, digging, eating, we should sing hymns to God. "What else can I do," says Epictetus, " a lame old man, than sing His praise, and exhort all men to join in the same song ? " ' Who shall say what depth of religious emotion, veiled under old- world phrase, there was in that outburst of M. Aurelius : "All harmonises with me which is in harmony with thee, 0 Universe. Nothing for me is too early nor too late which is in due season for thee. . . . For thee are all things, in thee are all things,
^ Yet ol Zeller, uL 1, p. 649. dergbtt- * Ih, 107, § 9 ; Epict Vim, iiL 24.
liche Beistaiid, welchen er verlangt, ist ^ Epiot. ViM, iii. 20, § 11, Jra«c6r
kein iiberDatiirlicher. Seneca bad ytlrtaif ; Airrifi' dXX' ifiol dya$if yvfi-
broken away unconsciously from tbe ydfei fiov rb eOyvm/My, rb iintucit : iv.
old Stoic idea of God, more than Zeller 1, § 89 ; M. Aurel. yl 44. will admit, or bis words have no * Epict L 16, § 20, ri ^ydp dWo
meaning. di^o/Mu y4p<aw x"''^ ^' M^ ^^e'v rbif
« Sen. Ep. 96, |§ 61, 62. etl» ; ktX
S9i THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book in
to thee all things return. The poet says, Dear City of Cecrops ; and wilt not thou say, Dear City of Zeus ? " ^
The attitude of such souls to external worship in every age may be easily divined without the evidence of their words. If (jod is good and wishes only the good of His creatures, then to seek to appease His wrath and avert His capricious judgments becomes an impiety. If men's final good lies in the moral sphere, in justice, gentleness, temperance, obedience to the higher order, then prayer for external goods, for mere indulgences of sense or ambition, shows a hopeless misoon- ception as to the nature of God and the supreme destiny of man.^ On the other hand, without giving up the doctrine that the highest good depends on the virtuous will, the later Stoics and Platonists have begun to feel that man needs support and inspiration in his moral struggles from a higher Power, a Power without him and beyond him, yet who is allied to him in nature and sympathy. Prayer is no longer a means of winning temporal good things " for which the worthy need not pray, and which the unworthy will not obtain." It is a fortifying communion with the Highest, an act of thanksgiving for blessings already received, an inspiration for a fuller and diviner life.* It is an effort of gratitude and adoration to draw from the Divine source of all moral strength.
It must always remain to modems an enigma how souls living in such a spiritual world refused to break with heathen idolatry. Seneca, indeed, poured contempt on the grossness of myth in a lost treatise on superstition;^ and he had no liking for the external rites of worship. But in some strange way M. Aurelius reconciled punctilious devotion to the popular gods with an austere pantheism or monotheism. It is in Platonists such as Dion or Maximus of Tyre that we meet with an attempted apology for anthropomorphic symbolism of the Divine.' The justification lies in the vast gulf which separates the remote, ineffable, and inconceivable purity of Gk)d from the feebleness and grossness of man. Few
* M. AureL iv. 28. «lwu rOi^ vb wofAirnaif' iyCt hk 6/uhia9
« Ih, ix. 40; Sen. £p. 10, §6. icai MXeicTor irjit ^J^ «pi rfir
s Philostr. Apoll Tyan. ir. 40, S>^ « Frag, preserred in S. Ang. JM CVk.
tCxofML, & $eolf iolr/ri ftoi rd 6^\^uva, Deif tL 10.
Max. Tyr. JXss. xi 8, dXU ad ftiw » D. Chrys. Or, xu. 9 24 (412 R) ;
^t rV 'Tov 4n\wT&^v tirx!^ ainfaip Max. Tyr. Diss, Tiii. 10.
CHAF. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 895
are they who can gaze in unaided thought on the Divine splendour unveiled. Images, rites, and sacred myth have been invented by the wisdom of the past, to aid the memory' and the imagination of weak ordinary souls. The symbols have varied with the endless variety of races. Animals or trees, mountain or river, rude unhewn stones, or the miracles of Pheidias in gold and ivory, are simply the sign or picture by which the soul is pointed to the Infinite Essence which has never been seen by mortal eye or imaged in human phantasy. The symbol which appeals to one race may be poor and con- temptible in the eyes of another. The animal worship of Egypt gave a shock to minds which were lifted heavenwards by the winning majesty of the Virgin Goddess or of the Zeus of Olympia. The human form, as the chosen tabernacle of an efiBuence of the Divine Spirit, might well seem to Dion and Maximus the noblest and most fitting symbol of religious worship. Tet, in the end, they are all ready to tolerate any aberration of religious fancy which is justified by its use.^ The most perfect symbol is only a faint adumbration of " the Father and Creator of all. Who is older than the sun and heavens, stronger than time and the ages and the fleeting world of change, unnamed by any lawgiver, Whom tongue cannot express nor eye see. Helpless to grasp His real essence, we seek a stay in names or images, in beast or plant, in river or mountain, in lustrous forms of gold and silver and ivory. Whatever we have of fairest we call by His name. And for love of Him, we cling, as lovers are wont, to anything which recalls Him. I quarrel not with divers imagery, if we seek to know, to love, to remember Him."* This is the outburst of a tolerant and eclectic Platonism, ready to condone everything in the crudest religious imagery. But a more conscientious scmtiny even of Grecian legend demanded, as we shall see, a deeper solution to account for dark rites and legends which cast a shadow on the Infinite Purity.
The Stoic theology, which resolved the gods of l^end into thin abstractions, various potencies of the Infinite Spirit interfused with the universe,^ was in some respects congenial
^ Max. lyr. Din, viii. §§ 5-10 ; dca^ttfrfar, firrcM-ar ^or, ^pdrorfav PhiloBtr. ATpoll, T^n, vi. 19. iiJl»w^ fiPTffiowtvirwffat^ fA^oi^.
' Zeller, /%t/. der Oriech, iii 1, p. 3 Max. Tyr. viii. 10, od vcfic^fa^ rift 299 sqq. ; S. Aug. De Civ. Dei, ri. 5.
806 THE GOSPEL OP PHILOSOPHY book hi
to the Soman mind, and reflected the spirit of old Boman religion. That religion of arid abstractions, to which no myth, no haunting charm of poetic imagination attached,^ easily lent itself to a system which explained the gods by allegory or physical rationalism. That was not an eirenicon for the second century, at least among thoughtful, pious men. The philosophic effort of so many centuries had ended in an eclecticism for purely moral culture, and a profound scepticism as to the attainment of higher truth by unaided reason.' Mere intellectual curiosity, the desire of knowledge for its own sake, and the hope of attaining it, are strangely absent from the loftiest minds, from Seneca, Epictetus, and M. Aurelius.* Men like Lucian, sometimes in half melancholy, half scornful derision, amused themselves with ridiculing the chaotic results of the intellectual ambition of the past.^ They equally recognised the immense force of that spiritual movement which was trying every avenue of accredited religious system or novel superstition, that might perchance lead the devotee to some gUmpse of the divine world. And side by side with the recrudescence of old-world superstitions, there were spreading, from whatever source, loftier and more ethical conceptions of (}od, a dim sense of sin and human weakness, a need of cleansing and support from a Divine hand. Stoicism, with all its austere grandeur, had failed in its interpretation both of man and of God. Popular theology, however soothing to old associations and unregenerate feelings, often gave a shock to the quickened moral sense and the higher spiritual intuitions. Tet the venerable charm of time-honoured ritual, glad or stately, the emotional effects and dim promise of revelation in the mysteries of many shrines, the seductive allurements of new cults, with a strange blending of the sensuous and the mystic, all wove around the human soul such an enchanted maze of spiritual fascination that escape was impossible, even if it were desired. But it was no longer desired even by the highest intellecta The efforts of pure reason to solve the mystery of God and of man's destiny had failed. Yet men were ever " feeling after Grod, if haply they might find Him." And the
^ Mommsen, HiA, of Jtome, L p. 188 ' Sen. Ep. 117, §§ 19-80 ; Bpiot
(Tr.) ; Preller, Eom. Myth, p. 2. L 17 ; M. Aarel. viL 67. Bat of. Tiii
' ZeUer, Phil, dtr Oriech, iii. 1, pp. 18 ; xii. 14 ; viii. 8.
18-20. * Luc Hermot, a 25, 84, 87 aqq.
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 8d7
Gkxi whom they sought for was one on whom they might haug, in whom they might have rest. Where was the revelation to come from ? Where was the mediator to be sought to reconcile the ancient fiedths or fables with a purified conception of the Deity and the aspiration for a higher moral life ?
The revived Pythagorean and Platonist philosophy which girded itself to attempt the solution was really part of a great spiritual movement, with its focus at Alexandria.^ In that meeting-point of the East and West, of all systems of thought and worship, syncretism blended all faiths. Hadrian, in his letter to Servianus, cynically observes that the same men were ready to worship impartially Serapis or Christ* Philosophy became more and more a religion ; its first and highest aim is a right knowledge of God. And philosophy, having failed to find help in the life according to nature, or the divine element in individual consciousness, had now to seek support in a Grod transcending nature and consciousness, a God such as the mysticism of the East or the systems of Pythagoras and Plato had foreshadowed. But such a God, transcending nature and consciousness, remote, ineffable, only, in some rare moment of supreme exaltation, dimly apprehensible by the human spirit,' could not ccdl forth fully the loving trust and fervent reverence which men longed to offer. Heaven being so far from earth, and earth so darkened by the mists of sense, any gleam of revelation must be welcomed from whatever quarter it might break. And thus an all-embracing syncretism, while it gratified ancestral piety, and the natural instinct of all religion to root itself in the past, offered the hope of illumination from converging lights. Or rather, any religion which has won the reverence of men may transmit a ray from the central Sun. The believer in God, who longs for communion with Him, for help at His hands, might by reverent selection win from all religions something to satisfy his needs. A revelation was the imperious demand. Where should men be so likely to find it as in the reverent study of great historic efforts of humanity to pierce the veil ?
^ tiberweg, HiA, Phil, L p. 282 ; Chrifiti opiscopos dlcimt, etc. Zeller, Phil, der OrUeh. ill 2, p. 88 ; * Max. Tyr. Diss, xiv. 8, ^ Tdp dr
Thier8ch,Po2t<i^u./'Ai/. etc, pp. 15, 16. r^ did /U<rw roXXj) t6 Bwffr^ vpit t6
* Flav. Vop. Fit Solum, c. 8, §2, iO&parwBirrtixiffBriri^oifpaploviTb^tiSn
iilic qui Serapem colunt ChristiaDi re koX bfuhJias iri fiii rjit dai/ioifiw raOrift
sunt, et deyoti sant Serapi, qui se ^do'cwt, irrX. Of. xri 9.
S86 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY iook hi
The philosophy which was to attempt the revival of paganism in the second century, and which was to fight its last battles in the fourth and fifth, traced itself to Pythagoras and Plato. Plato's affinity with the older mystic is well known. And the reader of the Phaedo or the BeptMic will not be sur- prised to find the followers of the two masters of Greek thought who believed most in a spiritual vision and in an ordered moral life, united in an effort which extended to the close of the Western Empire,^ to combine a lofty mysticism with ancestral faith. The two systems had much in common, and yet each contributed a peculiar element to the great movement. Pytha- goreanism, although its origin is veiled in mystery, was always full of the mysticism of the East Platonism was essentially the philosophy of Greek cultura The movement in which their forces were combined was one in which the new Hellenism of Hadrian's reign reinforced itself for the reconstruction of western paganism with those purer and loftier ideas of God of which the East is the original home. The effort of paganism to rehabilitate itself in the second century drew no small part of its inspiration from the r^ons which were the cradle of the Christian faith.'
Seneca seems to regard Pythagoreanism as extinct* Tet one of his own teachers, Sotion, practised its asceticism,^ and in the first century B.C., the traces of at least ninety treatises by members of the school have been recovered by antiquarian care, many of them forgeries foisted on ancient names.^ As a didactic system, indeed, the school had long disappeared, but the Pythagorean askesis seems never to have lost its continuity. It drew down the ridicule of the New Comedy. It may have had a share in forming the Essene and Therapeutic disciplina* In the first century B.c. it had a distinguished adherent in P. Nigidius Figulus, and a learned expositor in Alexander Polyhistor. Its endiuing power as a spiritual creed congenial to paganism is shown by the fistct that lamblichus, one of the latest Neo-Platonists, and one of the ardent devotees of superstition, expounded the Pythagorean system in many treatises and composed an imaginative bio-
^ Ifacrob. Som, Scip, i 8 ; ii. 17. torem non invenit
3 Zeller, Phil, der Oriech, uL 2, « S«ii. £p. 49, § 2 ; lOS, § 17-
pp. 67-62. ' Z«ller, iii. 2, p. 85.
< Sen. Nat. Q. vii. 82, 2, Pythigorica • tJberweg, BiU, Phil. L p. 228 ; ot
ilia invidiosa turbae sohola praecep- Hatch, Hitiirt Lee p. 148.
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN S89
grapby of the great founder.^ To the modem it is best known through the romantic life of ApoUonius of Tyana^ by Philo- atratus, which was composed at the instance of Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus, who combined with a doubtful virtue a love for the mysticism of her native East' Apollonius is surrounded by his biographer with an atmosphere of mystery and miracla But although the critical historian must reject much of the narrative, the faith of the Pythagorean mission- ary of the reign of Domitian stands out in dear outline. Apollonius is a true representative of the new spiritual movement His mother had a vision before his birth. His early training at Aegae was eclectic, like the spirit of the age, and he heard the teaching of doctors of all the schools, not even excluding the Epicurean.' But he early devoted himself to the severe asceticism of the Pythagorean sect, wore pure linen, abstained from wine and flesh, observed the five years of silence, and made the temple his home. The worship of Asclepius, which was then gaining an extraordinary vogue, had a special attraction for him, with its atmosphere of serenity and ritual purity and its dream oracles of beneficent healing. Apollonius combines in a strange fashion, like Plutarch and the eclectic Platonists, a decided monotheism with a conserva- tive devotion to the ancient gods. He looks to the East, to the sages of the Ganges, for the highest inspiration. He worships the sun every day.^ Tet he has a profound interest in the popular religion of the many lands through which he travelled. He frequented the temples of all the gods, dis« coursed with the priests on the ancient lore of their shrines, and corrected or restored, with an authority which seems to have never been challenged, their ritual where it had been forgotten or mutilated in the lapse of agea^ He sought initia- tion in all the mysteries. He wrote a book on Sacrifices which dealt with the most minute details of worship.* He had a profound interest in ancient legend, and the fame of the great Hellenic heroes, and, having spent a weird night with the shade of Achilles in the Troad, he constrained the Thessalians
1 tJberweg, HisL PhU. I p. 252 ; cf. * lb. ii 88.
EnDapiaii, ViL Iambi. « m • i, o ,« • oi lo nn
» PkloLtr. ApoU. Tyan. L 8, 1 ; cf. . V^' i- H, § 1« J i- 81 ; it. 19, 20 ;
Ael. Spart. VU, Sev. 18. ^^' *^-
a Philostr. Apoll. Tyan. i. 7. • Jb. iii. 41.
400 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
to restore his fallen honours.^ The temples recognised in him at once a champion and a reformer. The oracular seats of Ionia showed an unenvious admiration of his gifb of prophecy, and hailed him as a true son of ApoUo.^ His visit to Borne in the darkest hour of the Neronian terror seems to have aroused a strange religious fervour ; the temples were thronged with worshippers ; it was a heathen revival'
Yet this strange missionary held principles which ought to have been fatal to heathen worship. He drew his central principle from Eastern pantheism, which might seem irrecon- cilable with the anthropomorphism of the West It is true that under the Infinite Spirit, as in the Platonist th^odic^e, the gods of heathen devotion find a place as EUs ministers and viceroys.^ But the eternal antithesis of spirit and matter, and the contempt for the body as a degrading prison of the divine element in man,'^ the ascetic theory that by crucifying the flesh and attenuating its powers, the spirit might lay itself open to heavenly influences, these are doctrines which might appear utterly hostile to a gross materialist ritual And as a matter of fact, Apollonius to some extent obeyed his principles. He scorned the popular conception of divination and magia^ The only legitimate power of foreseeing the future or influencing the material world is given to the soul which is pure from all fleshly taint and therefore near to God. He feels profoundly that the myths propagated by the poets have lowered the ideal of Gk)d and the character of man, and he greatly prefers the fables of Aesop, which use the falsehoods of the fiancy for a definite moral end.^ The mutilation of a father, the storming of Olympus by the Giants, incest and adultery among the gods, must be reprobated, however they have been glorified by poetry. Apollonius poured contempt on the animal worship of ilgypt^ even when defended by the dialectic subtlety of Greece.^ He was repelled by the grossness of bloody sacrifices, however con- secrated by immemorial use. For the nobler symbolism of
^ Philostr. ApolX, Tyan. vr. 18 ; iv. iv iK^i^xf Oedis, ot rd fUpnti airoG Kvfiep-
16. pQfft : cf. Max. Tyr. Din, xiv. § 6 sqq.
2 lb, iv. 1, X6701 re repl airrov 4<f>olTw » Philostr. A poll. Tyan, iL 87 ; vl
ol fiiv iK Twi KoXo0wr( /Myrelov Kowwy^ 11 ; vii. 26 ; Max. Tyr. DtM, xiiL § 5.
T^f iavToO ffo^as koX drex^i^t tro^v rdr • Philostr. Apoll. T^n, vi 10 ; ir,
ipdpa fdoyra, ol di ix Aidifufp, 40 ; v. 12 ; iv. 18 ; iv. 44.
• lb. iv. 41. ' lb. iv. 18 ; iii. 25.
* lb. iii. 85, r)^ d^ (Wpeiy drodor^or) > lb. vi. 19.
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 401
Hellenic art he had a certain sympathy, like Dion, but only as symbolism. Any sensible image of the Supreme, which does not carry the soul beyond the bounds of sense, defeats its purpose and is degrading to pure reUgion. Pictured or sculptured forms are only aids to that mystic imagination through which alone we can see God. Finally, his idea of prayer is intensely spiritual or ethical " Grant me, ye gods, what is my due " is the highest prayer of Apollonius.^ Yet, as we have already seen, the religion of Apollonius is thoroughly practical He was a great preacher. He addressed vast crowds from the temple steps at Ephesus or Olympia, rebuking their luxury and effeminacy, their feuds and mean civic ambition, their love of frivolous sports or the bloody strife of the arena.* Next to the knowledge of God, he preached the importance of self-knowledge, and of lending an attentive ear to the voice of conscienca He crowned his life by asserting fearlessly the cause of righteousness in the awful presence-chamber of Domitian.
About the very time when Apollonius was bearding the last of the Flavians, and preaching a pagan revival in the porticoes of the Boman temples, it is probable that Plutarch, in some respects a kindred spirit, w^as making his appearance as a lecturer at Bome.' The greatest of biographers has had no authentic biography himselt* The few certain facts about his life must be gleaned from his own writings. He was the descendant of an ancient family of Chaeronea, famous as the scene of three historic battles, " the War-God*s dancing-place," and his great- grandfather had tales of the great conflict at Actium.^ In the year 66 A.D., when Nero was distinguishing or disgracing him- self as a competitor at the Greek festivals, Plutarch was a young student at the university of Athens, imder Ammonius,* who, if he inspired him with admiration for Plato, also taught him to draw freely from all the treasures of Greek thought. Plutarch, before he finally settled down at Chaeronea, saw something of the great Boman world. He had visited Alex-
* Philostr. AfoU, Tyan. iv. 40. ii/iup "SUapxos Biirf^iro ktK : Volkmann, ^ lb It 22 * iv 41 * v 26 P* ^^*
* Grfard. D, la Mo^aU de ' Plutarch, * ^l?;^^l''^82^^°J,' ^i H ' p. 82 ; Volkmann, LOm, etc. p. 87. ^f. f^ft% .'?' ^^j .f }'.
* For the apocryphal accounts, v, EuDap. VU, Soph. Prooenu 6, iw oft Gr^rd, p. 8 aqq. 'A/i/uAn6r re Ijw UXovrdpxov roO ^etord-
' VU, Anton, c. 68, 6 yovp ir/>6irainrof tov yeyoi^Cin diSdffKoKot.
2 D
TSB GuS^EI. OF F-n-Ii'A'PST
Ii wtk alao C2U& aee '3^ ^iie
so
arose QL vi^raL.^
ftS Rnmf ^ inri ttC' hii teazaaL^ WliCe ibe vms rmwirkmg die izu€fxfti KbcsziesT k& alao frffff**^'^ xiit aca iBUBfiazicey aL pieasuil •Otti partsea, o€ ataaj sen of acafciffliir and olKexal Cuae, aooie irf w^MOk bekogcd u> the ciEcie of Plin j and Taduia^^
hai hk aa&re Greece, wisii iia great memones^ and his lutive Cfaaeronea^ u> which he was linked br aztcestral pieij, had far a anan like Flatazch fat sttunger dianiw than the capiui of the worid. With oar loTe of excitement and penonai pcominenoey it is hard to coooaTe how a man <rf immenae onltore and brilliant literair power oovald endure the mcnotony of booigeois soci^ in depopolated and decaying GieeoeL* Y^ Pintazch aeems to have found it easy, and even pleasant He was too great to allow his own acheme of life to be crossed and distorfaed by Tolgar opinion an ej^iemeial ambition. His family relations were sweet and ha|^j. His married life realised the hi^est ideals of happy wedloc^L* He had the respectful affection of his brothers and older IHiMonAn- Tlie petty magistracies, in which he made it a duty to serve
> SymptM. r. 6, § 1 ; ViL AgenL c 19 ; VolluDMm, pp. S4, SS. ^ Pftue. (Hr, kt^mi, c 20.
• Hymm$. riiL 7, | 1 ; Vit. Dewi. c 2, 1a tbtt pmig» he my, 06 #x*Mf
didXtKTct' (rwh xpcdr voXirurwr . . . i^ •wort Koi wOp^ rift iiXixLas 'jp^dfu&a 'Pi0ftmuctlit ypdfAfioffiM irrvyxi^w. Cf. Friu, Am. 4.
* fimtU Dam. e. zx. ; 8pMt. VU. Hadr. c, 10, f 6; Aul. GelL zii. 2; Lac. lAxivfu 0. 20 ; Friedl SiUengeMch, iii pi 278 ; VbwM, SuiUnu, p. 96 ; Qr^aid, MvraU d* Plvi, p. 83; cf. S«n. j^ 114, f 18, multi ez alirao aeenlo petmit
Teres : dnodedm talmli loqiaiiDtiir.
* Fried! SittMmfmk. iiL p. 8S0.
* FUL />f OirMt. CL 15, 4|Mv ««rf ^F *Pwyi9 8usXry«fi^oir 'Petfvrucov HAm 8r dr^rreve A«i^an«yif . . . 4>;pearo rrX.
^ Plat. />f Tromq. cl 1 ; iSlyMim; i 9 ; V. 7, S 10 ; riii 1 ; Z3te Cokih. /ra, e. L ; Sympot. u. 8 ; L 5 ; cf . PUn. Ep. L 9 ; iT. 5 ; ^. L IS ; it. 4 ; Tac. A^. c. 2 ; cf. Suet Feap. c. zzu.
' For a deacription of this aociety, •ee Mahaffy's Greek World wndtr Bni, Sway, c xliT.
* Pint, dmnl, ad Ux. o. vr, x.\ Cor^, Praee. c zUt.
CHAT, m THE PHUjDSOi'JnC IHEOIjOGIAX 4n
native town, v«3t; dignififld in iik eyes bj tlie thought that E^MuneuKxidaB had onoe been chais>eQ with the cleansing <tf the streetB of niritea.^ His joaeBduKNi of ApoUo ax Ddphi waa probably fai more anxacure than the imppxial hcmoius which, acoarding to kgend, were aSered to him by Tiajan and Hadrian.* To his historic and religioiifl iTnaginarian the ancient shrine which looked down on the gulf from the foot of the ** Shining Bocks," was sacred as no other spot on earth. Althou^ in Plotaich s day Delphi had declined in splendour and bme^ it was still soiroimded with the g^amoor of immemoiial sanctity and power. It was still the spot from which divine voices of warning or oonnsel had issned to the kings of Lydia, to chiefs of wild hordes upon the Strymon, to the envoys of the Soman Taiqnins, to every city of Hellenic name from the Eoxine to the Atlantic. We can still almost make the round €i its antiquarian treasures under his genial guidance. Probably Plutarch's happiest hours were spent in accompanying a party of visitors, — a professor on his way home from Britain to Tarsus, a Spartan traveller just re- turned from Car Indian seas, — around those sacred scenes ; we can hear the debate on the doubtful quality of Delphic verse or the sources of its inspiration : we can watch them pause to recall the story of mouldering bronze or marble, and wake the echoes of a thousand years.^
Plutarch must have been a swift and indefatigable worker, for his production is almost on the scale of Varro, Cicero, or the elder Pliny. Yet he found time for pleasant visits to every part of Greece which had tales or treasures for the antiquary. He enjoyed the friendship of the brightest intellects of the day, of Herodes Atticus, the millionaire rhetorician,^ of Favorinus, the great sophist of Gaul, the intimate friend of Herodes and the counsellor of the Emperor Hadrian, of Ammonius, who was Plutarch's tutor ; of many others, noted in their time, but who are mere shadows to us. They met in a convivial way in many places, at Chaeronea, at Hyampolis, at Eleusis after the Mysteries, at Patrae, at Corinth during
^ Plut. Pruec Ger. JRcipub. c. 15 ; Volkniauii, p. 91. cf. Sympos. vL 8, § 1. • Zfe Def. Orae, o. v. viii.
■ Plut. yf" .^"ni SU Ger. Reap, c. 17, * Jb, c. ii.
oicBd fte TV IIi;^^ XeiTovpyouma roXXdf • Trench, Plutarch^ p. 22 ; Volk»
TvOiiiau buidos, UXo&rapxoi' cf. mann, p. 58.
404
THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY
III
the Isthmian games, at Thermopylae, and Athens in the house of Ammonias, or at Aedepsns, the Baden of Euboea, where in the springtime people found pleasant lodgings and brisk intercourse to relieve the monotony of attendance at the baths.^ Plutarch had a large circle of relatives, — ^his grandfather Lamprias, who had tales from an actual witness of the revels of Antony at Alexandria ; ' Lamprias his elder brother, a true Boeotian in his love of good fare, a war-dance, and a jest ;' his younger brother Timon, to whom Plutarch was devotedly attached.^ His ordinary society, not very distinguished socially, was composed of grammarians, rhetoricians, countiy doctors, the best that the district could afford.^ The talk is often on the most trivial or absurd subjects, though not more absurdly trivial than those on which the polished sophist dis- played his graces in the lecture-halL^ Yet graver and more serious themes are not excluded,^ and the table-talk of Greece in the end of the first century is invaluable to the student of society. In such scenes Plutarch not only cultivated friend- ship, the great art of life, not only watched the play of intellect and character; he also found relief from the austere labours which have made his fame. It is surely not the least of his titles to greatness that, in an environment which to most men of talent would have been infinitely depressing, with the irrepressible vitality of genius he contrived to idealise the society of decaying Greece by linking it with the past.
And, with such a power of reviving the past, even the dulness of the Uttle Boeotian town was easily tolerable. We can imagine Plutarch looking down the quiet street in the still vacant noontide, as he sat trying to revive the ancient glories of his race, and to match them with their conquerors, while he reminded the lords of the world, who, in Plutarch's
^ Plut. Sympcs. ii 2, § 1 (EleusU) ; y. 8, § 1 (Athens) ; 1. 10, § 1 ; ii. 1, § 1 (Patrae) ; iu. 1, § 1 ; iv. 4, § 1 (Aedep8Us),x>'Wo'' jrarc^ireua^/i^or oIk"^ <re<ri . . . fidXurra d* dy$€i rb x<aplo¥ diKfid^orrot tapos, roWol yhp d^KvoOw- rai T^v &pav aitr&Oi^ Kal ffwowrUif voiourrai ft/tt' dXXi^Xw iv iifpBlafOit wofftt Kal vXelaraf wtpl \6yovt (nrb 0^oX^r dtar/K/Sdr ^ourt : cf. YolkniADn, p. 57.
* Fit, Anion, c. 28, dtifyeiro ywi^
ijfjuijy r^ Tdwinp Aa/irpl^ ^tkAras i *AfJupi<r<r€in larpbi elrai jiiw iw 'AXc^or* Speltf. rdre fuufOdvunf rijw r4x''V^$ ktK
' Sympos. ii. 2, § 1 ; ix. 15, § 1 ; YiiL 6, § 5.
* De Fr, Am, c 16.
* Sympos, iv. 1, 1 ; iv. 4, 1 ; v. 10, 1 ; V. 6, 1.
* lb. ix. 4, § 1 ; Mahafiy, Greek World, etc p. 338.
' Plut. Sympoe, viii. 2 ; viii, 7.
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 406
early youth, seemed to be wildly squandering their heritage, of the stem, simple virtue by which it had been won. For in the Lives of great Greeks and Somans, the moral interest is the most prominent It is biography, not history, which Plutarch is writing.^ Setting and scenery of course there must be ; but Plutarch's chief object is to paint the character of the great actors on the staga Hence he may slur over or omit historic fitcts of wider interest, while he records apparently trivial incidents or sayings which light up a character. But Plutarch has a fine eye both for lively social scenes and the great crises of history. The description of the feverish activity of swarming industry in the great days of Pheidias at Athens, once read, can never be forgotten.^ Equally indelible are the pictures of the younger Cato's last morning, as he finished the Phiiedo, and the birds began to twitter,' of the flight and murder of Pompey, of the suicide of Otho on the ghastly field of Bedria- cum, which seemed to atone for an evil life. Nor can we forget his description of one of the saddest of all scenes in Greek history, which moved even Thucydides to a restrained pathos, — the retreat of the Athenians from the walls of Syracuse.
Plutarch was before all else a moralist, with a genius for religion. His ethical treatises deserve to be thoroughly explored, and as sympathetically expounded, for the light which they throw on the moral aspirations of the age, as Dr. Mahafiy has skilfully used them for pictures of its social life. He must be a very unimaginative person who cannot feel the charm of their revelation. But the man of purely speculative interest will probably be disappointed. Plutarch is not an original thinker in morals or religion. He has no new gospel to expound. He does not go to the roots of conduct or faith. Possessing a very wide knowledge of past speculation, he might have written an invaluable history of ancient philosophy. But he has not done it. And, as a man of genius, with a strong practical purpose to do moral good to his fellows, his choice of his vocation must be accepted without cavil. He was the greatest Hellenist of his day, when Hellenism was capturing
* VU, Alex, 0. 1, olht yhp Iffroplat 'Hjp wpbs Karaw&rfffip ifdovs Kcd rpfnrov ypdipo/itp dXXd piovs oihe rats iwnpave- wapaSidods
aper^t i) KaKlat. So FU. Nic, c. 1, Ftt^rertcL c 12.
od rV dxfnioroif dBpoll^tap lirroploM dXXd ' Vit, Cat, Min, o. 70.
406 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book ii
the JEtoman world. He was also a man of high moial ideals, nnoeTe piety, and absorbing interest in the (Sate of human character. With all Aat wealth of learning, pluloeophic or historical, with all that knowledge of human nature, what nobler task could a man set himself than to attempt to give some practical guidance to a generation conscious of moral weakness, and distracted between new spiritual ideals and the mythologies of the past ? The urgent need for moral culture and reform of character, for a guiding force in conduct, was pro- foundly felt by all the great serious minds of the Flavian age, by Pliny and Tacitus, by Juvenal and Quintilian. But Plutarch probably felt it more acutely than any, and took endless pains to satisfy it It was an age when the philosophic director and the philosophic preacher were, as we have seen, to be met with everywhere. And Plutarch took his full share in the movement, and influenced a wide circla^ If he did not elaborate an original ethical system, he had studied closely the art of moral reform, and Christian homilists, from Basil to Jeremy Taylor, have drawn freely from the storehouse of his precept and observation. In many tracts he has analysed prevailing vices and faults of his time, — flattery, vain curiosity, irritable temper, or false modesty, — and given rules for curing or avoiding them. In these homilies, the fundamental principle is that of Musonius, perhaps adapted &om an oracle to the people of Cirrha " to wage war with vice day and night, and never to relax your guard." ' The call to reform soimded all the louder in Plutarch's ears because of the high ideal which he had con- ceived of what life might be made if, no longer left to the play of passion and random influences, character were moulded from early youth to a temperate harmony. To such a soul each passing day might be a glad festival, the universe an august temple full of its Maker's glories, and life an initiation into the joy of its holy mysteries.*
In the work of moral and religious reconstruction Plutarch and his contemporaries could only rely on philosophy as their guida Philosophy to Plutarch, ApoUonius, or M. Aurelius, had a very different meaning from what it bore to the great
^ Qr^rd, MoraU (U Plut. pp. 86, ' Plut De Tranq. c. xz. diH^ M
52, 67. dyadbi o^ rr&cap ijftdpav hfrr^ ifpiiTtu ;
« Cr. A. Qell. zviiL 2. kt\.
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 407
thinkers of Ionia and Magna Graecia. Not only had it deserted the field of metaphysical speculation; it had lost interest even in the mere theory of morals. It had become the art rather than the science of life. The teacher of an art cannot indeed entirely divorce it from all scientific theory. The relative importance of practical precept and ethical theory was often debated in that aga But the tendency was undoubtedly to subordinate dogma to edification.^ And where dogma was needed for practical effect, it might be drawn from the most opposite quarters. Seneca delights in rounding off a letter by a quotation from Epicurus. M. Aurelius appeals both to the example of Epicurus and the teaching of Plato.' Man might toy with cosmic speculation; the Timaeus had many commentators in the first and second centuries.' But, for Plutarch and his contemporaries, the great task of philo- sophy was to bring some sort of order into the moral and religious chaos. It was not original thought or discovery which was needed, but the application of reason, cultivated by the study of the past, to the moral and religious problems of the present. The philosopher sometimes, to our eyes, seems to trifie with the smallest details of exterior deportmeDt or idiom or dress ; he gives precepts about the rearing of children ; he occupies himself with curious questions of ritual and antiquarian interest.^ These seeming degradations of a great mission, after all, only emphasise the fact that philosophy was now concerned with human life rather than with the problems of speculation. It had in fact become an all-embracing religion. It supplied the medicine for moral disease ; it furnished the rational criterion by which all myth and ritual must be judged or explained.'^
Plutarch was an eclectic in the sense that, knowing all the moral systems of the past, he was ready to borrow from any of these principles which might give support to character. Whether, if he had been bom four or five hundred years earlier, he might have created or developed an original theory himself, is a question which may be variously answered. One may reasonably hesitate to assent to the common opinion that
^ Sen. Ep. 88, ad virtutem nihU * Zeller, ThU. dvr QT,'m.\,^ 720 n.
conferunt liberalia stadia ; of. Ep, 94, « A. Gell. i. 10 ; ii 26 ; TiL 18 ; xii.
95, § 41. 1 ; PhiloBtr. ApoU. Tyofit, vr. 20 ; ▼.
' M. AnreL viL 35 ; iz. 41 ; Epict. 16.
Ercug. lii. ' Oakeamith, Rd, qf PlvlareK, p. 64
408 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book in
Plutarch had no genius for original speculation. Had he come under the influence of Socrates, it is not so certain that he might not have composed dialogues with a certain charm of fresh dialectic and picturesque dramatic power. It is a little unhistorical to decry a man of genius as wanting in speculative originality, who was bom into an age when speculation had run dry, and thought was only subsidiary to conduct. When the dissonant schools forsook the heights of metaphysic and cosmo- logy to devote themselves to moral culture, an inevitable tendency to eclecticism, to a harmony of moral theory, set in. The practical interest prevailed over the infinitely divisive forces of the speculative reason. Antiochus, the teacher of Cicero,^ while he strove to re-establish Platonism, maintained the essential agreement of the great schools on the all-important questions, and freely adopted the doctrines of Zeno and Aristotle.^ Fanaetius, the chief representative of Boman Stoicism in the second century B.C., had a warm admiration for Plato and Aristotle, and in some essential points forsook the older teaching of the Porch.^ Seneca, as we have seen, often seems to cUng to the most hard and repellent tenets of the ancient creed. Tet a sense of practical difficulties has led him to soften and modify many of them — the identity of reason and passion, the indifference of so-called " goods/' the necessity of instantaneous conversion, the unapproachable and unassailable perfection of the wise man. Plutarch's own ethical system, so far as he has a system, is a compound of Platonic and Aristotelian ideas, with a certain tincture of Stoicism.^ Platonism, which had shaken off its sceptical tendencies in the first century B.C., had few adherents at Some in the first century of the Empira* The Stoic and Epicurean systems divided the allegiance of thinking people till the energetic revival of HeUenism set in. Epictetus indeed speaks of women who were attracted by the supposed freedom of sexual relations in Plato's Utopia.® Seneca often refers to Plato, and was undoubtedly influenced by his spirit
1 Plut. Gic, c. 4. * 76. iii. 2, pp. 144, 146.
« Zeller, Phil, isr Or, iii. 1, p. 684, . ^ ., , ^ •• on o a j • •
in der Hauptsache die bedeutendsten , ' S«n. i\ <U, Qu. vu. 82. 2 ; Acidemia
Philoeophenichalen ubereinstiinmen. et veterea et mmorea nuUum antistitem
» Jb. p. 608. • Epict Fr, liu.
CHAP. Ill
THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN
409
But in the second century, the sympathetic union of Platonic and Pythagorean ideas with a vigorous religious revival be- came a real power, with momentous effects on the future of philosophy and religion for three centuries. Plutarch's reverence for the founder of the Academy, even in little things, was unbounded.^ It became with him almost a kind of cult. And he paid the most sincere reverence to his idol by imitating, in some of his treatises, the mythical colouring by which the author of the Phaedo and the Republic had sought to give body and reality to the unseen world.^ Plutarch condemned in very strong language the coarse and sophistical modes of controversy with which the rival schools assailed one another's tenets.' Yet he can hardly be acquitted of some harshness in his polemic against the Stoics and Epicureana Archbishop Trench, in his fascinating and sympathetic treatment of Plutarch, laments that he did not give a more generous recognition to that noblest and most truly Boman school which was the last refuge and citadel of freedom.* We may join the archbishop in wishing that Plutarch, without compromising principle, had been more tolerant to a system with which he had so much in common, and which, in his day, had put off much of its old hardness. But he was essentially a practical man, with a definite moral aim. He took from any quarter principles which seemed to him to be true to human nature, and which furnished a hopeful basis for the efforts of the moral teacher. But he felt equally bound to reject a system which absorbed and annihilated the emotional nature in the reason,^ which cut at the roots of moral freedom, which recognised no degrees in virtue or in vice, which discouraged and contemned the first faint struggles of weak humanity after a higher life, and froze it into hopeless impotence by the remote ideal of a cold, flaw- less perfection, suddenly and miraculously raised to a divine independence of all the minor blessings and helps to virtue.^
^ Sympos, yii. 1 ; Consol, ad ApolL
ZZZVL
* eg. De Oen. Soer, xzii sqq. ; Le Ser, Num. Find. xzii.
' Non po89e Suav. vivi ue. Epic o.
XtlKvOifffu^t, dXal^oPtlaSf iratpi^eis, dr- ipo^wlas . . . crwdyoyT€t 'ApurroriXovt KoX XtaKpdrovt koX Tlv6ay6pov koX rlpoi
yhp o^yl ruf iirKpayQw, KareaKidaaay i
Adv. Col. 0. iL
. * Trench, Plut. p. 93.
• Plut. De Viri. Mor. c. vii. sqq.
' Adv. Stoicos, c. x. dXXd Carrtp 6 inixp^ dir^wr iw dakdff<r(i r^t iiri^awdat oOdiv ^frrov xvlyrrai rod KOTC^eduK&rof dpTMdt xwmxKoaiatt crX. Cf. Sen. Ep. 66, § 10 ; ZeUer, Phil, der Oriech, uL 1, p. 2S0.
410 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY mx m
Sneh an ideal laay be magirffimit, bas it is not life. For man, lunatiriitgd as he ii^ and plarfd in audi an eBTinxment^ it it a dangeroaa mental hnbit to tndn tlie aool to regaid all tUngi aa a fleering and monotoiMma aiiav, to coltivrnte the trntHmm wiime, or a calm irfBgnatinn to the Httlfiwai of man placed for a brief space between the two etemitiea.^ The phiksophic watkrer may brace himself to endure the nmnd of hvman dntiei^ and to live tar the commonwealth of man ; he nmj be generooa to the mgiatefiil and tderant to the Tulgar and the biYciaas ; he maj make his life a perpi^al sacrifice to dntjr and the higher btw, but it ia all the while leaUj s psthetic protest against the pitiless Power which has made man ao litde and so great, doomed to the life of the leaves and the insects, jet tortured with the longing for an jitfinite fiitnreL
On some great central traths, soch as the inwardness of happiness and the brotheriiood of man, Plotarch and the Stdca were at on& And the general tone of his moral teaching bears manj marks of Stoic infloence.* But the Stoic psydiologT, the Stoic fatalism and pantheism aronsed all the controversial vehemence of Flntarch.* The Stoic held the essential nnity of the soul, that reason and passion are not two distinct principles, bat that passion is reason depraved and diverted to wrong objects. It is the same simple, indivisible power which shifts and changes and submits itself to opposing influenceiL Passion, in fact^ is an impetuous and erring motion of the reason, and vice, in the old Socratic i^irase, is an error of judg- ment, a fit of ignorance of the true ends of action. But as» according to Stoic theory, the human reason is a portion of the Divine^ depravity becomes thus a corruption of the Divine element, and the guarantee for any hope of reform is lost For himself, Plutarch adopts the Platonic division of the soul into the rational, spirited, and concupiscent elements, with some Aristotelian modifications.^ The great fact of man'a moral nature is the natural opposition between the passions and the rational element of the soul; it corresponds to a similar division in the mundane souL* All experience attests a oon-
1 M. Aurti iz. 82 ; xiL S2 ; ix. 14 ; ' Zeller, PhU. dn^ &r. iii 1, p. 208 ;
zL 1 ; TiL 1 ; tL 48 ; iz. 14. cT. ia 2, p. 188 ; Plat De Vvrt Mmr.o.
* De Trang, c iii, It,, zir., zriL ; TiL
Aln. Firt. c. tl ; ftd init ; Zeller, liL
1. p. 281. • Zeller. iiL 2, p. 164.
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 411
•taDty nataral, and sustained rebellion of the lower against the higher. Principles so alien and disparate cannot be identified, any more than you can identify the hunter and his quarry.^ But, although in the unr^ulated character, they are in violent opposition, they may, by proper culture, be brought at last into a harmony. The function of the higher element is not to extinguish the lower, but to guide and control and eleyate it* Passion is a force which may be wasted in vagrant, wild excess, but which may also be used to give force and energy to virtue. To avoid drunkenness, a man need not spill the wine; he may temper its strength. A controlled anger is the spur of courage. Passion in effect is the raw material which is moulded by reason into the forms of practical virtue, and the guiding principle in the process is the law of the mean between excess and defect of passion.' This is, of course, borrowed from Aristotle, and along with it the theory of education by hTibit, which to Plato had seemed a popular and inferior conception of the formation of the virtuous character.^ By the strong pressure of an enlightened will, the wild insurgent forces of the lower nature are brought into conformity to a higher law. It is a slow, laborious process, demanding infinite patience, daily and hourly watchfulness, self-examination, frank confession of faults to some friend or wise director of souls.^ It needs the minutest attention to the details of conduct and circumstance, and a steady front against discouragement from the backsliding of the wavering will.^ In such a system the hope of reform lies not in any sudden revolution. Plutarch has no faith in instant conversion, reversing in a moment the in- grained tendencies of years, and setting a man on a lofty height of perfection, with no fear of falling away. That vain dream of the older Stoicism, which recognised no degrees in virtuous progress, made virtue an unapproachable ideal, and paralysed struggling effort. It was not for an age stricken or blest with a growing sense of moral weakness, and clutching eagerly at any spiritual stay. Plutarch loves rather to think of character under the image of a holy and royal building whose founda-
» Bt VirL Mar. viL * PI. Phaed. 82 b ; cf. Archer-Hind,
« Ih. iv. sq. ; De Cw. L ^VV'\ to Phaed^
^ ' • Pint De Cohtb. Ira, h iL ; Ik
» De VirL Mor. vi ; Gr^rd, p. Pro/, in Virt xiii xL iil 78. • De Prof. ir. ; De Cohib. Ira, ii
412 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
tions are laid in gold, and each stone has to be chosen and carefully fitted to the line of reason.^
Plutarch also accepted from the Peripatetic school the principle, which Seneca was in the end compelled to admit, that the finest paragon of wisdom and virtue is not quite self-sufficing, that virtuous activity needs material to work upon,^ and that the good things of the world, in their proper place, are as necessary to the moral musician as the flute to the flute-player. Above all, Plutarch, with such a theory of character, was bound to assert the cardinal doctrine of human freedom. He had a profound faith in a threefold Providence, exercised by the remote Supreme Deity, by the inferior heavenly powers, and by the daemons.' But Providence is a beneficent influence, not a crushing force of necessity. To Plutarch fatalism is the blight of moral efibrt. Foreknowledge and Fate are not conterminous and coextensiva Although everything is foreseen by heavenly powers, not everything is foreordained.^ The law of Fate, like the laws of earthly jurisprudence, deals with the universal, and only consequentially with the particular case. Certain consequences follow necessarily from certain acts, but the acts are not inevitably determined.^ Man, by nature the most helpless and defenceless of animals, becomes lord of creation by his superior reason, and appropriates all its forces and its wealth by his laborious arts.^ And the art of arts, the art of life, neither trusting to chance nor cowed by any fancied omnipotence of destiny, uses the will and reason to master the materials out of which happiness is forged. Thus the hope of a noble life is securely fenced in the fortress of the autonomous will. To the Stoic the vicious man was a fool, whose reason was hopelessly besotted. The Platonist cherished the better hope, that reason, though darkened for a time and vanquished by the forces of sense, could never assent to sin, that there still remained in every ' human soul a witness to the eternal law of conduct.
* Dt Prof. xvii. dXX* A yt irpoKfyirroV' * Ih, c. iv. v. ob T&tm KoBapQt od8i ret, cts ijdfj KoBdirep UpoO riyoi oUodo- Siappifidrip ^ elfjLapfUvri TtpUyti^ dXX' 4tfa fi'^fiaros Kal paaiXiKoD tov piov KeKp&nfrai Ka66\ov.
Xpv<ria KpuvU oi>9h elinj Tpoalcrrai rQv ' Ih, c iv. c^ta koX 6 r^ 0'Vewf w6fiM
yipofUvufyf ktX. rd fUf Kad6\ov avfiirepiKafifidiKt Tpvqymh
' Adv, St, iv. viL fUvdn, rd ^ Ka$' (KOffra irofidrm.
• De Fato, c. ix. (572). (Pint ?) • Ik Fart, c. iii. iv.
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 413
With such a faith as this, an earnest man like Plutarch was bound to become a preacher of righteousness and a spiritual director. Many of his moral treatises are the expanded record of private counsel or the more formal instruction of the lecture-hall. He had disciples all over the Boman world, at Bome, Chaeronea, Ephesus, and Athens.^ His conception of the philosophic gathering, in which these serious things were discussed, is perhaps the nearest approach which a heathen ever made to the conception of the Christian church.* In theory, the philosopher's discourse on high moral themes was a more solemn affair than the showy declamation of the sophist, whose chief object was to dazzle and astonish his audience by a display of rhetorical legerdemain on the most trivial or out-worn themes. But the moral preacher in those days, it is to be feared, often forgot the seriousness of his mission, and degraded it by personal vanity and a tinsel rhetoric to win a cheap applause.' The sophist and the philosopher were in fact too often undistinguishable, and the philosophic class-room often resounded with new-fangled expressions of admiration. For all this Plutarch has an indignant contempt. It is the prostitution of a noble mission. It is turning the school into a theatre, and the reformer of souls into a flatterer of the ear. To ask rhetoric from the true philosopher is as if one should require a medicine to be served in the finest Attic ware.* The profession of philosophy becomes in Plutarch's eyes a real priesthood for the salvation of souls. He disapproves of the habit, which prevailed in the sophist's lecture theatre, of proposing subtle or frivolous questions to the lecturer in order to make a display of cleverness. But he would have those in moral difBculty to remain after the sermon, for such it was, and lay bare their faults and spiritual troubles.^ He watched the moral progress of tus disciples, as when Fundanus is congratulated on his growing mildness of temper.^ The philosopher was in those
^ Greard, p. 68 sq. videbis cui philosophi scbola diverso-
^ Plat 2>e Btd. Rat. Aud. c. vi. riam otii sit, etc. ; £pict. Diss, ii. 28.
dib d€t dxpodffdai roO \4yoifTos Tkeunf xal * De lied. Bat, Aud. o. ix. tuoiin icri
rp4op &tnr€p i<f> iirrlaaiif UfAv Kal fiij povKofjJptp ticTp dwridorw hw /if; t6
OwrUu drapx^f' rapeiXtj^ifiipoy ktX. : cf. dyy^y ^k rrjs *Attik^s Kuiktddos i K€Kepa-
yiiL dXX' €ls didcurKaXeToif d^ucrai t<^ /uvfUvoy.
"XAyifi rbv /Sfor iTrayop6(aa6fieyos : c. xii. ' lb. c. zii.
• lb, c. viL viii. ; cf. Sen. Ep. 108, • De Cohib. Ira, c. i. tA 8i ff4>obpbp
f 6, magnam banc auditorom partem iKttvo koX didrvpoif rpbt tfty^w bpum-L fjLOi
414 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY hook m
dajs, and often too truly, charged with gross inconsistency in his private conduct. Plutarch believed emphatically in teaching by exampla The preacher of the higher life should inspire such respect that his frown or smile shall at once affect the discipla^ Plutarch evidently preustised his remedies on himself. His great gallery of the heroes of the past was primarily intended to profit others. But he found, as the work went on, that be was himself *' much profited by looking into these histories, as if he looked into a glass, to frame and fashion his life to the mould and pattern of these virtuous noblemen." '
Plutarch, as we have seen, waged determined war with the older Stoic and Epicurean systems ; yet his practical teaching is coloured by the spirit of both. This is perhaps best seen in the tract on Tranquillity, which might almost have been written by Seneca. Although Plutarch elsewhere holds the Peripatetic doctrine that the full life of virtue cannot dispense with the external gifts of fortune, he asserts as powerfully as any Stoic that life takes its predominant colour from the character, that '' the kingdom of Heaven is within," that no change of external fortime can calm the tumults of the souL You seem to be listening to a Stoic doctor when you hear that most calamities draw their weight and bitterness from imagination, that ex- cessive desire for a thing engenders the fear of losing it, and makes enjoyment feeble and uncertain, that men, by forgetting the past in the vanishing present, lose the continuity of their lives.^ Is it Plutarch himself, or some Christian preacher, who tells us that seeming calamity may be the greatest blessing, that the greatest folly is unthankfulness and discontent with the daily lot, that no wealth or rank can give such enchanted calm of spirit as a conscience unstained by evil deed or thought, and the power of facing fortime with steady open eye ? * It is surely the greatest literary genius of his age, buried in a dull Boeotian town, who bids us think of the good things we have, instead of envying a life whose inner griefs we know not, who ever looks on the brighter side of things and dignifies an obscure
-wf^w olhu Kal x^tp^^cs Tifi XcryuTfuf UXdriav ktX,
yeyeprifjidvotf hripxcrtu Tpbn rbv OvftAif * Trench, PltU. p. 8S.
tlrtip ktX. • De Tranq. c xvi. xvii. xir. xt.
^ De Beet. Hat, Aud. o. xii. ; of. De * lb. o, xix. dyvooOyrn Haw iorl
Fro/, c. xy. rl$€<r9(u -wpb d^daXfiwy rpbs dXvirUu' dya66p rb fUXer^ kuI
roi>f tirras dyaOods ^ ycyevrffUpovs Kcd idvaffdoi irp6i t^¥ rtjxv^ Ai^tifiydai roSr
^OMowdcu rl S' df irpa^€w ip ro&rtp tft/taaip dyrt/SX^rety.
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 416
lot by grateful content, who is not vexed bj anothei^s splendid fortune, because he knows that seeming success is often a miserable failure, and that each one has within him the springs of happiness or misery.^
The discipline by which this wise mood, which contains the wisdom of all the ages, is to be attained is expounded by Plutarch in many tracts, wliich are the record of much spiritual counsel The great secret is a lover's passion for the ideal and a scorn for the vulgar objects of desire.^ Yet moral growth must be slow, though steady and unpausing, not the rush of feverish excite- ment, which may be soon spent and exhausted.' The true aspirant to moral perfection will not allow himself to be oast down by the obstacles that meet him at the entrance to the narrow way, nor will he be beguiled by pomp of style or subtlety of rhetoric to forget the true inwardness of philosophy. He will not ask for any witness of his good deeds or his growth in virtue; he will shrink from the arrogance of the mere pretender. Rather will he be humble and modest, harsh to his own faults, gentle to those of others. Like the neophyte in the mysteries, he will be awed into reveiont silence, when the light bursts from the inner shrine.^ This humility will be cultivated by daily self- scrutiny, and in this self-examination no sins will seem little, and no addition to the growing moral wealth, however slight, will be despised.* To stimulate ei!brt, we must set the great historic examples of achievement or self-conquest before our eyes, and in doubt or difficulty, we must ask what would Plato or Socrates have done in such a case ? • Where they have suffered, we shall love and honour them all the more. Their memory will work as a sacred spelL
Platarch expounded the gospel of a cheerful and contented life, and he evidently practised what he preached. Yet, like all finely strung spirits, he had his hours when the pathos of
^ Plat Dt Tranq. c. xi. xiii. xiv. ^i ^hos fUya Idwv Uov dvaicrbptav ipotyo-
ixoffTot iw iavrf^ ra rijs tiBv/iUis Kal ttjs fjJvwy, Cxjirep $€<} r^ Xiytfi TaveLvbt
dvffOvfilat ixfi ra/iCia. avulreTat rrX.
* De Prof. 0. xiv. difiXutfia Si aiVroC * 76. c. xrii
wpura fUp 6 rpbt rd iraivoiufiewa j^Xtn • lb. c, xv ; cf. Sen. &). 11, § S ;
xa2 t6 rouw e&eu «-po^t)/Aout, d davftd- aliquis vir bonus nobis eugendus est
iiofuw, ktX. . . . ut fcie tanquam iUo spectante
' 76. c. i-iv. vivamus, et omnia tanquam illo
* lb. c X. 6 8i irrbt yevbiuvoi koX vidento faciamus.
416
THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY
BOOK m
life was heavy upon him, and death seemed the sovereign remedy for it all. Any one who shares the vulgar notion that the Greeks, even of the great age, were a race living in perpetual sunshine and careless enjoyment of the hour, should read the Consolation to Apollonius on the death of his son. He will there find all the great poets, from Homer downwards, cited in support of the most pessimist view of human life.^ In the field of philosophy, it finds the most withering expression in the doctrine of Heraclitus, which did so much to mould the thought of Plutarch's great master, and which coloured so many of the meditations of M. Aurelius.^ Our life is but in miniature a counterpart of the universal flux, and each moment is the meeting place of life and death. Years, many or few, are but a point, a moment in the tract of infinite age.* The noble fulness of a life must be sought not in a sum of years, but in a rounded completeness of virtue. When we look at the chance and change and sorrow of life, death seems really the great deliverer, and in certain moments, it may be hailed as Heaven's last, best gift.* Whether it be an unawaking sleep or the entrance to another scene of being, it cannot be an evil ; it may perchance be a blessing. If there is nothing after it, we only return to our calm antenatal unconsciousness.^ Or if there be another life, then for the good and noble there is a place assuredly prepared in some happy island of the West, or other mystic region, which we may picture to ourselves, if we please, in the Orphic visions glorified by Pindar.*
We are now on the threshold of another world, from which many voices were coming to the age of Plutarch. After philosophy has done its utmost to mould the life of sixty or seventy years into a moral harmony, with its music in itself,' the effort ends in a melancholy doubt. The precept of Seneca and Plutarch, that you should live ynder the tutelary eye of some patron sage of the past, revealed a need of exterior help
* Plut (?) CansoL ad ApoU, c. vi. viL aqq.
* M. Aurel. vii. 1 ; vii. 19 ; vL 16 ; ^i' i^ TO&r(fi Tfp rvrafu^ rl dw ris To&ruy Xftpa9eb»riaif ixTifAifyjeieM i<f> od irnjvai o6k i^«rTUf : ix. 82 ; cf. CqmoI. ad Apoll. c X, Kol i 4>V^^ 'HpdifXetroj, raM r' if I ^v Kal r€0yfjK69.
* CoTuol. ad ApoU. c. xviL t6 rt toK^
rpbt rbv Airetpw d^opwnp o/^hu
* lb. c xiv.
B Jb. c. zv. ; cf. Sen. JS^ 99, I 80 ; JEp. 86 ; £p. 24.
' Consol. ad ApoU. c. xxxir. xxxr. kuI X^P^t ff-i airoT€Tayfiivoi ip <} SuLTpLfiwnw cd To&ruM yl/irxai : Find. 0^ iL 106 sqq.
7 Plut. De FirL Mar. c yi.
CHAF. in THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 417
for the virtnons will The passion for continued existence was sobered by the sense of continued moral responsibility and the shadow of a judgment to coma Vistas of a supernatural world opened above the struggling human life on earth and in far mysterious distances beyond. When philosophy had done its utmost to heal the diseases of humanity, it was confronted with another task, to give man a true knowledge of God and assur- ance of His help in this world and the next Philosophy had for ages held before the eyes of men a dim vision of Him, sublime, remote, ineffabla But it was a vision for the few, not for the many. It was rather metaphysical than moral and spiritual It paid little heed to the myths and mysteries by which humanity had been seeking to solve its spiritual enigmas. This long travail of humanity could not be ignored by a true religious philosophy. Some means must be found to reconcile ancient religious imagination with the best conception of the Divina
The problem indeed was not a new one, except in the sense that an intense revival of religious faith or superstition demanded a fresh th^odic^e. As early as the sixth century B.G., the simple faith in legend had been shaken among the higher minds in a great philosophic movement which extended over many ages. Some had rejected the myths vdth scorn. Others had proceeded by the method of more or less critical selection. Others, again, strove to find in them a historical kernel, or an esoteric meaning veiled in allegory. The same methods reappeared in the age of Yarro and Scaevola,^ and, five centuries later, in the theology of Macrobius.* The effort, however, of the Platonists of the second century has a peculiar interest, because some fresh elements have been added to the great problem since the days of Xenophanes and Euhemerus and Yarro.
To Plutarch, theology is the crown of all philosophy.' To form true and worthy conceptions of the Divine Being is not less important than to pay Him pious worship. Plutarch's lofty conception of the Infinite and Supreme, like that of Maximus of Tyre, dominates all his system. In a curious
1 S. Aug. Ih Civ, DH, ir. 27 ; vi. Society in the Last CmUury <ff the W. 2. Bmpire, p. 77 (Ist ed.)*
* Maorob. SaL L c. 17 ; cf. Itoman * J>e D^. Or. c 2.
418 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY aooK lu
treatise on Isis and Osiris, he reviews many a device of acholastic subtlety, many a crude guess of embryonic science, many a dream of Pythagorean mysticism, to find an inner meaning in the Egyptian myth. Yet it embalms, in all this frigid scholasticiflm, the highest and purest expression of Plutarch's idea of the Suprema In the end he breaks away from all lower mundane conceptions of the Divine, and reveals a glimpse of the beatific vision. " While we are here below," he says, " encumbered by bodily affections, we can have no intercourse with God, save as in philosophic thought we may faintly touch Him, as in a dream. But when our souls are released, and have passed into the r^ion of the pure, invisible, and changeless, this God will be their guide and king who depend on Him and gaze with insatiable longing on the beauty which may not be spoken of by the lips of man." ^ To Plutarch God lb the One, Supreme, Eternal Being, removed to an infinite distance from the mutable and mortal — the Being of whom we can only predicate that " He is/' who lives in an everlasting " now," of whom it would be irrational and impious to speak in the terms of the future or the past' He is the One, the Absolute of Eleatic or Pythagorean philosophy, the Demiurgus of Plato, the primal motive power of Aristotle, the World-Soul of the Stoics. Yet Plutarch is as far removed from the ^Epicureanism which banishes God from the universe as he is from the pantheism of east or west, which interfuses the world and God.' Plutarch never abandons the Divine personality, in whatever sense he may hold it God is Uie highest perfection of goodness and intelligence, the Creator, the watchful and benevolent Providence of the world, the Author of all good. His power, indeed, is not unlimited. There is a power of evil in the world which must be recognised. And, as good cannot be the author of evil, the origin of evil must be sought in a separate and original principle, distinct &om, but not co-equal with, God : a principle recognised in many a theology and philosophy of east and west, and called by many
^Del8.et Oiir, c. Izxix. Phil, der OrUeh. iiL 2, p. 14S ; 2^ /i.
« De EI ap, DelpK o. xix. iOti^ oOd* ^ ^f ^ ^ *®' ^^} ^^' ^^' ^ ^
&f (^ Am^ i^Up ToO 5rrot X^cir Cn i^ ^^J^"' w4fvK€w, 6pjl^€f$4u di koI audi
^* itrroL '^oieuf o6 x4<f>vKf¥ : De Ser. Kum. Find,
0. iv. y. xviiL ; Nitsch, De PluU Tkeo-
* De U, et Onr, c. U,7S;De BI ap, logo, p. 8 ; Qr^ard, MaraU de PlmL pi
Delph. c. 20 ; D^, Or, c. 9, ad fin, ; 263 ; cf. Burgmann, Seneea*$ Theolcgii,
Oakeamith, i2e/. o/PiuL p. 88 ; Zeller, pp. 14-20.
CHAP. Ill THE PHmOSOPHlC THEOLOGIAN 410
names — Ahrixnan or Hades, the "dyad" of Pythagoras, the " strife " of Empedocles, the *' other " of Flato.^ Its seat is the World-Soul, which has a place alongside of God and Matter, causing all that is deadly in nature, all moral disorder in the soul of man. Matter is the seat both of evil and good.^ In its lower regions it may seem to be wholly mastered by the evil principle ; yet in its essence it is really struggling towards the good, and, as a female principle, susceptible to the formative influence of the Divine, as well as exposed to the incursions of evil Plutarch's theory of creation is, in the main, that of the Timaeus, with mingled elements of Stoic cosmogony. Through number and harmony the Divine Mind introduces order into the mass of lawless chaos. But while God stands outside the cosmos as its creator, He is not merely the divine craftsman, but a penetrating power. For from Him proceeds the soul which is interfused with the world and which sustains it Through the World-Soul, God is in touch with all powers and provinces of the universe. Yet throughout the universe, as in the human soul, there are always present the two elements side by side, the principles of reason and unreason, of evil and of good.'
The vision of the one eternal, passionless Spirit, far removed fix>m the world of chance and change and earthly soilure, was the conquest of Greek philosophy, travailing for 800 years. But it was a vision far withdrawn ; it was separated by an apparently impassable gulf alike from the dreams of Hellenic legend and from the struggling life of humanity. The poets, and even the poet of divinest inspiration, had bequeathed a mass of legend, often shocking to the later moral sense, yet always seductive by its imaginative charm. How to reconcile the fictions of poetry, which had so long enthralled all imaginations, with higher spiritual intuitions, that was the problenL It was not indeed a new problem. It had driven Xenophanes into open revolt, it had exercised the mind of the reverent Pindar and the sceptical Euripides. It had suggested to Plato the necessity of recasting myth in the light of the Divine purity.* But the
^ Zeller.iiL 2, p.l62;D«/«. 0.45-49; « Diog. LAert ix. § 18, y^pa</>€ 8i
JDe SL Bep. o. 88. icai [Scyo^dyi^] Utifiovs Koff *H<r(^ov
« Pint De An, Procr. c. 6. *;«1 'Ofii^pov iiniTKCnrro»p ttjrfir rA «iepi
0€u)v tlpuffiiva : v, extracts in Ritter > Zeller, FhU, der Oricch, iii. 2, and Preller, Hist. Phil. p. 82 ; Plat, p. 155 ; Plat. Tittl 29, 80. lUp. il pp. 878-880.
490 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
new Hellenism of the second centuiy was a great literary, eireu more than a theological or philosophic, movement; and the glory of Greek literature was inseparably linked with the glory and the shame of Greek mythology. To discard and repudiate the myths was to give the lie to the divine poets. To ex- plain them away by physical allegory, in the fashion of the Stoic theology, or to lower the ''blessed ones" of Olympus to the stature of earthly kings and warriors, after the manner of Euhemerus, was to break the charm of poetic l^end, and violate the instincts of ancestral piety.^ And there were many other claimants for devotion beside the ancient gods of Bome and Greece. Persia and Phrygia, Commagene and Egypt, every region from the Sahara to Cumberland, were adding to the pantheon. Soldiers and travellers were bringing their tales of genii and daemons from islands in the British seas and the shores of the Indian Ocean.' How could a man trained in the mystic monotheism of 800 years reconcile himself to this immense accretion of alien superstition ?
On the other hand, from whatever quarter, a new spiritual vision had opened, strange to the ancient world. It is not merely that the conception of God has become more pure and lofty; the whole attitude of the higher minds to the Eternal had altered. A great spiritual revolution had concurred vdth a great political revolution. The vision of the divine world which satisfied men in the age of Pericles or in the Punic wars, when religion, politics, and morality were linked in unbroken harmony, when, if spiritual vision was boimded, spiritual needs were less clamorous, and the moral life less troubled and selfH^onsoious, could no longer appease the yearnings of the higher minda Both morality and religion had become less formal and external, more penetrating and exigent. Prayer was no longer a formal litany for worldly blessings or sinful indulgence, but a colloquy with God, in a moment of spiritual exaltation.' The true sacrifice was no longer " the blood of bulls," but a quiet spirit. Along with a sense of frailty and bewilderment, men felt the need of
' Plat Ih Is. c. xziii. tt (E^/Aepos) ^X r^ roO ^CKoah^v «^xV oinivw
. . . wwatf d$€6nfTa jrarao-KcAimwi tup o^ irap&rrta¥* iyC^ 9i 6fuKLa9 lad
rijt olKov/tdirift. StdXeicrov Tpds rods $§odt v€pl rdr
' Plat De Def. Or, o. 18, 21. rapdrrvp, /rrX. : Martlia, MonduU$wy»
' Sen. Ep. 10, § 6 ; Bp, 41, § 1 ; Pen. VEmp. p. 168 ; Denie, Idiet Mwaim,
ii. 78 ; Max. T^. Din. xL § 8, (r^ iu^ ii p. 245 sqq.
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 421
purification and spiritual support The old mysteries and the new cults from the East had fostered a longing for sacramental peace and assurance of another life, in which the crooked should be made straight and the perverted be restored.
In Maximus of Tyre,^ although he has no claim to the reputa- tion of a strong and original thinker, we see this new religious spirit of the second century perhaps in its purest form. Man is an enigma, a contradiction, a being placed on the confines of two worlda A beast in his fleshly nature, he is akin to God in his higher part, nay, the son of God' Even the noblest spirits here below live in a sort of twilight, or in a heady excite- ment, an intoxication of the senses. Yet, cramped as it is in the prison of the flesh, the soul may raise itself above the misty region of perpetual change towards the light of the Eternal. For, in the slumber of this mortal life, the pure spirit is sometimes visited by visions coming through the gate of horn,' visions of another world seen in some former time. And, following them, the moral hero, like Heracles, the model of strenuous virtue, through toil and tribulation may gain the crown. On this stormy sea of time, philosophy gives us the veil of Leucothea to charm the troubled waters. It is true that only when release comes at death,does the soul attain to the full vision of God. For the Highest is separated from us by a great gulf. Yet the analysis of the soul which Maximus partly borrows from Aristotle, discovers His seat in us, the highest reason, that power of intuitive, all-embracing, instantaneous vision, which is distinct firom the slower and tentative operations of the understanding. It is by this higher faculty that God is seen, so far as He may be, in this mixed and imperfect state.^ For the vision of God can only in any degree be won by abstraction from sense and passion and everything earthly, in a struggle ever upwards, beyond the paths of the heavenly orbs, to the region of eternal calm " where falls not rain or hail or any snow, but a white cloudless radiance spreads over all." * And when may we see God ? " Thou shalt see Him fully," Maximus says, " only when
> Of the life of Maximas of Tyre little o^/c olda* rh 8i Ayakfia jKw, }d$ot Ijv
is known. He began his career as a rerpdytawoi. Of. Zeller, iiL 2, p. 183 n.
teacher iJroUbly about 166 a.d. Uke , ^^^^ ^yr^ j^^^^^ j^. § 7.
other philoeophers of his time, he had ^ „ ,•!>•, • q
trarelled widely. See the references to ^ tf* -'- KL ^
Arabia and Phrygia in Disa. viii., e.g. ^- ^^'' 8 «•
f S, 'ApdfiiM /Up ffipcvffi fih Simi^a di ^ Jb. % 10.
4it THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book ni
He calls thee, in age or death, but meantime glimpses of the Beatity which eye hath not seen nor can toDgue speak of, may be won, if the veils and wrappings which hide His splendour be torn away.^ But do not thou profane Him by ofiTering vain prayers for earthly things which belong to the world of chance or which may be obtained by human effort, things for which the worthy need not pray, and which the unworthy will not obtain. The only prayer which is answered, is the prayer for goodness, peace, and hope in death." ^
How could a Platoniat of the second century, we may ask, holding such a spiritual creed, reconcile himself to Greek mythology, nay, to all the mythologies, with all the selfish gross- ness of their ritual ? Plutarch and Maximus of Tyre answer the question by a piously ingenious interpretation of ancient legend, and partly by a system of daemons, of mediating ami ministering spirits, who fill the interval between the changeless Infinite and the region of sin and change.
In religion, they say, in effect, we must take human nature as we find it. We are not legislating for a young race, just springing from the earth, but for races with conceptions of the Divine which run back through countless ages. There may be, here and there, an elect few who can raise their minds, in rare moments, to the pure vision of the Eternal. But heaven is so far from earth, and earth is so darkened by the mists of sense, that temple and image and sacred litany, and the myths created by the genius of poets, or imposed by lawgivers, are needed to sustain and give expression to the vague impotent yearnings of the mass of men.^ The higher intuitions of religion must be translated into material symbolism ; " here we see, as through a glass darkly." And the symbols of sacred truth are as various as the many tribes of men. Some, like the Egyptian worship of animals, are of a degraded type. The Greek anthropomor- phism, although falling far short of the grandeur and purity of the Infinite, yet furnishes its noblest image, because it has glorified by artistic genius the human body, which has been chosen as the earthly home of the rational soul.^ And the cause of myth and plastic art are really one ; nay, there is no opposition or con-
> Max. Tyr. I>is9. xvii. § 11. rh ^Bpwrtiw iroi Iwvrht r^O $dmf 6em
' 76. xL § 2, § 7. oipapod yij, ffrffuta raDra i/tffxi'O^^i^ttro*
* 76. yiii § 2, dXX' iffBerh ar KOfuBi « D. Gbrys. Or, xii. § 59 (404 R).
CHjr. in THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 488
traafcyinfaot^ between poetic mythology and religious philosophy. They are different methods of teaching religious truth, adapted to different stages of intellectual development. Myth is the poetic philosophy of a simple age, for whose ears Uie mystic truth must be sweetened by music, an age whose eyes cannot bear to gaze on the Divine splendour unveiled.^ Philosophic theology is for an age of rationalism and inquiry ; it would have been unintelligible to the simple imaginative childhood of the race. Maximus has the same faith as Plutarch that the mythopoeic age possessed, along with an enthralling artistic skill, all the speculative depth and subtlety of later ages. It is almost a profanity to imagine that Homer or Hesiod or Pindar were less of philosophers than Aristotle or Chrysippus.* It was assumed that the early myth-makers and lawgivers possessed a sacred lore of immense value and undoubted truth, which they dimly shadowed forth in symbolism of fanciful tale or allegory.^ The myth at once hides and reveals the mystery of the Divina If a man comes to its interpretation with the proper discipline and acumen, the kernel of spiritual or physical meaning which is reverently veiled from tlie profane eye will disclose itself. And thus the later philosophic theologian is not reading his own liigher thoughts of God into the grotesque fancies of a remote antiquity ; he is evolving and interpreting a wisdom more original than his own. In this process of rediscovering a lost tradition, he pushes aside the mass of erroneous interpretations which have perverted the original doctrine, by literal acceptance of what is really figurative, by abuse of names and neglect of realities, by stopping at the symbol instead of rising to the divine fact^
The treatise of Plutarch on Isis and Osiris is the best illustration of this attitude to myth. Plutarch's theology, though primarily Hellenic, does not confine its gaze to the Greek Olympus; it is intended to be the science of human religion in general It gives fonnal expression to the growing tendency to syncretism. The central truth of it is, that as the sun and moon, under many different names, shed their
* Mar. Tyr. Din. x. g 8, ^^ ^wx^^ • • • * Pl«t. JOa/a Ixviii. ; xr. ; Max. Tyr.
i^tiro ^offo^s fjMvaiKrjs t'vqs rrX. Cf. X. §§ 5-7 ; of. Macrob. Som. Scip, L 2, g 5, rdwra /mrrii altfiyfidrup Kal ropd 7-19 ; Hatch, Uibberi Ltc, p. 55 aq.
« /». X. § 8. « Plat De /«. Ixd. ad Jin.
4S4 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book in
light on all, so the gods are yariously invoked and honoured by various tribes of men.^ But there is one supreme Baler and Providence common to alL And the lower deities of difTerent countries may often be identified by the theologian, under all varieties of title and attribute. So, to Plutarch as to Herodotus, the immemorial worships of Egypt were the prototypes or the counterparts of the cults of Greece.* There was a temple of Osiris at Delphi, and Clea, to whom Plutarch's treatise is addressed, was not only a hereditary priestess of the Egyptian god, but held a leading place among the female ministers of Dionysus.' It was fitting that a person so catholic in her sympathies should have dedicated to her the treatise in which Plutarch expounds his aU-embracing theology.
In this treatise we see the new theology wrestling in a hopeless struggle to unite the thought of Pythagoras and Plato with the grossness of Egyptian mytL It is a striking, but not a solitary, example of the misapplication of dialectie skill and learning, to find the thoughts of the present in the fancies of the past, and from a mistaken piety, to ignore the onward march of humanity. Arbitrary interpretations of myth, alike unhistorical and unscientific, make us wonder how they could ever have occurred to men of intellect and learning. Yet the explanation is not far to seek. More elevated con- ceptions of God, the purged and clarified religious intuition, do not readily find a substitute for the old symbolism to express their visions. Beligion, beyond any other institution, depends for its power on antiquity, on the charm of ancestral pieties. A religious symbol is doubly sacred when it has minis- tered to the devotion of many generations.
In interpreting the powerful cult of Isis, which was spread- ing rapidly over the western world, Plutarch had two objects in view. By reverent explanation of its legends and ritual, he desired to counteract its immoral and superstitious tendencies;^ he also wished, in discussing a worship so multiform as that of Isis, to develop his attitude to myth in general We
1 Plat D€ Is. c. Uvii. &ffT€p ffXiot koI fUvtav, frtpai rap' Mpoct icarii whiunn
o-eXiJni kqX odpaj^^ Kcd 'vij irocrd irotfiir, yeydpoffi rifial <rcU Tpoaifyoptcu^ rrX. 690/JLdterai $' SXKus inr dWtav, oOrtat ' lb, 0. Ui. ; xxiv. ; cf. Herodot. iL
hfiit \6yov toO raOra Koa/ioOrrot Kal 0. 50. fu&s vpoifoias iriTpor€vo6<nit, Kcd ' Plat De li, c xzxr.
9wd^wf ^wpyiaw M vdrras reray- * lb, 0. xx.
CMAF. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 426
cannot follow him minutely in his survey of the various attempts of philosophy to find the basis of truth in Egyptian legend. Some of these explanations, such as the Euhemerist, be would dismiss at once as atheistic.^ On others, which founded themselves on physical allegory, he would not be 80 dogmatic^ although he might reject as impious any tendency to identify the gods with natural powers and producta' As a positive contribution to religious philosophy, the treatise is chiefly valuable for its theory of Evil and of daemonic powers, and above all for the doctrine of the unity of God, the central truth of all religions.
The daemonology of the Platonists of the second century had its roots deep in the Hellenic past, as it was destined to have a long future. But it was specially evoked by the needs of the pagan revival of the Antonine aga The doctrine had assumed many forms in previous Greek thought from the days of Hesiod, and it has various aspects, and serves various purposes, in the hands of Plutarch, Apuleius, and Maximus of Tyre. It was in the first place an apologetic for heathenism in an age distracted between a lofty conception of one infinite Father and legends of many lands and many ages, which were consecrated by long tradition, yet often shocking to the spiritual sense. As the conception of God became purer and seemed to withdraw into remoter distances, souls like Apuleius, wedded to the ancient rites, found in the daemons, ranging between earth and ether, the means of conveying answers to prayer, of inspiring dreams and prophecy, of ordering all the machinery of divination.^ To others, such as Maximus of Tyre, the doctrine seemed to discover a spiritual support for human frailty, guardians in temptation and the crises of life, mediators between the human spirit, immured for a time in the prison of the flesh, and the remote purity of the Supreme.* To other minds the daemon is no external power, but dwelling within each soul, as its divine part, a kind of ideal personality,^ in following whose ghostly promptings lies the secret of happiness.
^ Plat. 2>0/«. c xziiL rcM-ai'd^e6r77xi AureL y. 10, 27, 0n %^tori /loi firiiiw
KarturKtidMPwn r% tUKOVfUrrit, wpdrrtiw rapd rbif ifii^p O^w ical doi-
* Ih, c. Izvi. fiwa: viL 17 ; Epict. L 14, § 12, reU ' ApuL De Deo Soer. c. vL (133). (6 0€^) hrlrpoww iKiarti^ Tap4<mfff€, ^ Max. Tyr. Diss. xiv. §§ 7, 8. t6p iicdtrrov Salftwaf ical wapiStaKM
* CI Robde, Psyche, ii 361, 1. M. ^vXAffffetw adrdr ai)rfp, rrX.
426 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY aooK iii
Finally, the doctrine created an eschatology by which vistas of moral perfection were opened before purer spirits in worlds to come, and the infinite responsibilities of this life were terribly enforced by threats of endless degradation.^
The daemons who came to the aid of mythology in the Antonine age, were composite beings, with a double nature corresponding to the two worlds of the Divine and human which they linked together. They are at once divine in power and knowledge, and akin to humanity in feeling and passion.^ They are even liable to mortality, as was proved by the famous tale of the voice which floated to the Egyptian pilot from the Echinad isles, announcing that the great Fan was dead.^ Their sphere is the middle space between the lofty ether and the mists of earth. This spiritual mediation, as Maximus points out, is not an exceptional principle. There is a chain of being in the universe, as it had been developed in the cosmic theory of Aristotle, by which the remote extremes are linked in successive stages, and may be blended or reconciled, in a mean or compound, as in a musical harmony. The principle is seen operating in the relation of the great physical elements. Thus, for example, fire and water are at opposite poles : they cannot pass immediately into one another, but air furnishes a medium between the two, and reconciles their opposition by participating in the warmth of the one element and in the moisture of the other.^ The suggestions of cosmic theory seemed to receive support from many tales which, in that age of luxuriant superstition, were accepted even in educated circles. Travellers, returning from Britain, told weird stories of desolate islands in the northern seas which were the haunts of genii.* A Spartan visitor to Delphi related how, on the shores of the Indian Ocean, he had met with a hermit of a beautiful countenance and proof against all disease, who spoke with many tongues, and derived his mystic powers from intercourse with the spirits which haunted those distant solitudes.^
Plutarch also justifies his theory of daemons by an appeal to the authority of Hesiod, of Pythagoras and Plato, Xeuocrates
1 Plut JH Sera Num, Find. c. » Plut De Def, Or. c. xvii
xxii. * Max. Tyr. xv. § 3.
* Apal. De Deo Soer. c. xiii. ; Max. * Plut. De Def. Or. c xviiL
Tyr. XV. § 4 ; Plot De Def. Or. c x. • Ih. c. xxL
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 427
and Ghrysippus.^ He might have added others to the list. For, indeed, the conception of these mediators between the ethereal world and the world of sense has a long history — too long to be developed within our present limita Its earliest appearance in Greece was in the Workz and Days of Hesiod, who first definitely sketched a great scale of being — gods, heroes, daemons, and mortal men. Hesiod's daemons are the men of the golden age, translated to a blissful and immortal life, yet linked in sympathy with those still on earth — " Ministers of good and guardians of men." ^ The conception was introduced at a time when new moral and spiritual forces were at work, which were destined to have a profound and lasting influence on paganism for a thousand years. The glamour of the radiant Olympus and the glory of heroic battle were fading. Men were settling down to humdrum toil, and becoming acutely conscious of the troubles and sadness of life. With a craving for support and comfort which the religion of Homer could not give, the pessimist view of life, which colours Hesiod's poetry, sought consolation in a mysticism altogether strange to Homer, and even to Hesiod. The feeling that humanity had declined from a glorious prime and, in its weakness and terror at death, needed some new consolations, was met by a system which, although Orpheus may never have existed, will always be called by his name.' The Chthonian deities, Dionysus and Demeter, sprang into a prominence which they had not in Homer. The immortal life began to overshadow the present, and in the mysteries men found some assurance of immortality, and preparation for it by cleansing from the stains of time. That idea, which was to have such profound influence upon later thought, that there is a divine element in man, which is emancipated from the prison of the flesh at death, became an accepted doctrine. At the same time, the faith in helpers and mediators, half human, half divine, lent itself to the support of human weakness. The heroic soul who passed victoriously through the ordeal of this life, might in another world become the guardian and exemplar of those who were still on earth. In the Ionian and Eleatic schools the doctrine was held
* Plut De la, 0. xxv. ; De Def. Or, • For the spiritual influences at
0. X. work V. LobecK, Aglaoph, p. 812 ;
« Hes. Op. et D. 126 ; cf. Rohde, Grote, i. p. 28 ; Bury, HiH, of Oreeee,
Psffche, i. p. 96. p. 812 ; Uardie, Leehtres, p. 57.
428 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
in 8ome sense by all the great thinkers, by Thales^ Anaxi- mander, Heraclitus, Xenophanes. To Thales the world was full of daemons.^ In the mystic teaching of Heraclitns the universe teems with such spirits, for in the perpetual flux and change, the divine is constantly passing into the death of mortal life and the mortal into the divine.' Empedodes, in conformity with his cosmic dualism, first made the distinction between good and bad daemons, and followed Pythagoras in connecting daemonic theory with the doctrine of a fall from divine estate, and long exile and incarnation in animal forma' It was in the dim system of Pythagoras that the doctrine became a really religious tenet, as it was to the Platonists of the Antonine age. Pythagoras was more priest and mystic than philosopher. He had far more in conmion with the Orphici, with Abaris and Epimenides, than with Thales or Anaximander. His school, for we can hardly speak of himself, connected the doctrine of daemons with the doctrines of me- tempsychosis and purification and atonement in another world. Souls released from the prison-house of the flesh are submitted to a purgatorial cleansing of a thousand years. Some pass the ordeal victoriously, and ascend to higher spheres. Others are kept in chains by the Erinnyes. The beatified souls become daemons or good spirits, ranging over the imiverse, and manifesting themselves in dreams and omens and ghostly monitions, sometimes becoming even visible to the eye.^ But their highest function is to guide men in the path of virtue during life, and after death to purify the disembodied spirit, which may become a daemon in its turn. This is the theory, which, with somp modifications, was adopted by the later Platonists. It was popularised by Pindar, " the Homer of the Pythagorean school" He was captivated by its doctrine of the migrations of the soul, of its ordeal in a future life, and its chastisement or elevation to lofty spiritual rank as daemon or hero. In the second Olympian ode, the punishment of the
^ Diog. Laert i. 27« d/9xV ^ twf Cf. M\p rl^rcor ffKwat wp^ ^olfMrvi
rdrrwr Mwp ^con^aro, koI r^r Khcfunp (hrvt^rtp wait Tp6s dp6p&t, Rittor and
tfi^vxow Koi Jhu/xA»ntp rXifipfri, Preller, Hist. PhiL p. 23 ; Diog.
' fferad, Beliq. p. 26 Bywater, Laert ix. 1, § 7. *A0dwaroi Btnfrol, 0PftTol dOdifaroi garret • t,.xx j T>-^n rr*^ m...
retfrefiref. 6 M 'HpdicXfiT^ ^i^rcr tfri • ^^6, 7 ; Hild, £tude tur Ut$ Dimons,
K9Xr6 t^p KoX rh dwoBopeiP koI ip T<f P* 22^-
ii^p i^itidt im Kol h r^ reBpdi^tu, ktX, * Diog. Laert. yiii 1, § 80 aqq.
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 429
wicked aud the beatitude of noble spirits, in the company of Peleos and Achilles in the happy isles, are painted in all the glowing imagery of the Apocalypsa^
The daemonology of Pythagoras, along with the doctrine of metempsychosis in its moral aspect, was adopted by Plato, whether as a serious theory or as a philosophic myth. The chief passages in Plato where the daemons are mentioned are suffused with such mythic colour that it would perhaps be rash to extract from them any sharp dogmatic theory.' But Plato, holding firmly the remote purity of God, strove to fill the interval between the mortal and the Infinite by a graded scheme of superhuman beings. The daemon is a compound of the mortal and the divine, spanning the chasm between them. This is the power which conveys to Gk)d the prayers and sacrifices of men, and brings to men the commands and rewards of the gods, which operates in prophecy, sacrifice, and mystery. And again the daemon is a power which is assigned to each soul at birth, and which at death conducts it to the eternal world, to receive judgment for its deeds, and perhaps to be condemned to return once more to earth. The reason in man, his truly divine part, is also called his daemon, his good genius. It is the power whose kindred is with the world of the unseen, which is immortal, and capable of a lofty destiny.
like his master Plato, Maximus of Tyre seems to know nothing of the evil daemons, who, as we shall presently see, were used by Plutarch to account for the immorality of myth. To Maximus the daemons are rather angelic ministers, sent forth to advise and succour weak mortal men.^ They are the necessary mediators between the one Supreme and our frail mortal life. Dwelling in a region between earth and ether, they are of mingled mortal and divine nature, weaker than the gods, stronger than men, servants of God and overseers of men, by kinship with either linking the weakness of the mortal with the Divine. Great is the multitude of this heavenly host, interpreters between God and man : " thrice ten thousand are they upon the fruitful earth, immortal, ministers of Zeus," healers of the sick, revealers of what is dark, aiding the
^ Find. OU ii. 105 sqq. Mo. fMKd- ' Sympas. 202 s ; PoliL 271 D ;
pwr rcM-of ihKtavibn adpai xtpiTvioivuf' Phaed, 107 D, 108 b; Tim, 90 A.
dr* d7Xawr dfwSpivw, Hdiap 8' dWa ^pfi€i. * Max. Tyr. Diss. xir. § 8.
430 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book in
craftsman, oompanions of the wayfarer. On laiid and sea, in the city and the field, they are ever with us. They inspired a Socrates, a Pythagoras, a Diogenes, or a Zeno ; they are present in all human spirits. Only the lost and bopelees aool is without the guardianship of such an unearthly friend.
The earlier Platonist or Pythagorean daemonology was not employed to explain or rehabilitate polytheism. Although Plato would not banish myth from his Utopia, he placed bis ban on the mythopoeic poets who had lent their authority to tales and crimes and passions of the gods. Myth could only be tolerated in the education of the young if it conformed to the standard of Divine perfection.^ God cannot be the author of evil, evil is the offspring of matter; it is a limitation or an incident of the fleeting world of sense. It is only relative and transitory, and can never penetrate the realm of the ideal But to Plutarch evil was an ultimate principle in the universe, ever present along with the good, although not perhaps of equal range and power.' And Plutarch would not banish and disown the poets for attributing to the gods passions and crimes which would have been dishonouring to humanity. He would not abandon the ancient ritual because it contained elements of gloom and impurity which shocked a refined moral sense. Mythology and ritual, as they had been moulded by poets or imposed by lawgivers, were intertwined with the whole life of the people and formed an essential element in the glory of Hellenic genius. The piety and aesthetic feeling of the priest of Delphi still clung to ancient ritual and legend, even when the lofty morality of the Platonist was offended by the grossness which mingled with their artistic charm. Might it not be possible to moralise the pagan system without discrediting its authors, to reconcile the claims of reason and conservative religious feeling? Might it not be possible to save at once the purity and majesty of God and the inspiration of the poets ?
To Plutarch the doctrine of daemons seemed to furnish an answer to this question ; it also satisfied other spiritual cravings which were equally urgent. The need of some mixed nature
^ Plat Rep, XL S77-S80. lliw kqX d^xh^i ^^^P dya0oO koI kcukoC,
' Plut D« It, c. xlv. cdrlaif di kokoO r^y ^aip ix€w : cf. Hatch, MibUH rdyaS^ odx ^ rapd^x'^h ^'' y4wwip Lee p. 218.
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 431
to mediate between the ethereal world and the region of sense became all the more imperious as the philosophic con- ception of God receded into a more remote and majestic purity. The gradation of spiritual powers, which had been accepted by so many great minds from the time of Hesiod, at once guarded the aloofness of the Supreme and satisfied the craving of the religious instinct for some means of contact with it, for divine help in the trials of time. These mediating spirits were also made in Plutarch's theology to furnish an explanation of oracles and all forms of prophecy, of the inspired enthusiasm of artist, sage, and poet. Finally, the theory, with the aid of mythic fancy, oast a light on the fate of souls beyond the grave, and vindicated the Divine justice by a vision of a judg- ment to come.
Plutarch's daemonology, as he admits himself, is an inherit- ance from the past. The daemons are beings half divine, half human ; they are godlike in power and intelligence, they are human in liability to the passions engendered by the flesh. This host of spirits dwell in the borderland below the moon, between the pure changeless region of the celestial powers and the region of the mutable and the mortaL Linking the two worlds together by their composite nature, the daemons differ in degrees of virtue; some are more akin to the Divine perfection, others more tainted by the evil of the lower world.^ The good spirits, as they are described by Maximus of Tyre, are true servants of God and faithful guardians of human virtua But the bad daemons assume a special prominence in the theology of Plutarch. Nor was the development unnatural His conception of immortality, and the necessity of purification in another world, raised the question as to the destiny of souls whose stains were indelible. If purified souls are charged as daemons with of&ces of mercy, may not the impure prolong their guilt in plaguing and corrupting mankind? May not the exist- ence of such sombre spirits account for the evil in the world, the existence of which cannot be blinked ? Although there are traces iA this moral dualism long before Plutarch's time, both in Greek poetry and speculation, it was Xenocrates who first formulated the doctrine of evil daemons in relation to mythology.^ "It can-
^ Dt Is, c xzvi. un rwp daifUpwi^ wpoaipeaLP : De D^, Or. o. z., o. zvL fUKT^ Ktd AjftbftaXop ^6fft9 ix^fi^p Jtal ^ Ik Is. c zzy.
438 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book ni
not be/' he taught, " that unlucky days and festivals, conducted with scourgings and fasts, lamentations and lacerations and impure words and deeds, are celebrated in honour of the blessed gods or good daemons. They are rather offered to those powerful and terrible spirits of evil in the air whose sombre character is propitiated by such gloomy rites." These sinister spirits assert their vast power, and display their malevolence, not only in plague, pestilence, and dearth, and all the desolating convulsions of the physical world, but in the moral perversion and deception of the human race. They are accountable for all that shocks the moral sense in the impure or ghastly tales which the poets have told of the gods, and in the gloomy or obscene rites which are celebrated in their honour. The poets and early myth-makers have not invented the evil in myth and rite ; they have been deceived as to the authors of the evil Each of the blessed gods has attached to him a daemon who is in some respects his counter- part, wielding his power, but who may perpetrate every kind of moral enormity in his name, and who demands to be honoured and propitiated after his own evil natura The bad daemons, in fact, masquerade as gods and bring disgrace upon them. It was not the Blessed Ones who mutilated a father, who raised rebellion in Olympus and were driven into exile, who stooped to be the lovers of mortal women. These are the works of spirits of evil, using their fiendish cunning to deceive a simple age. Its poetry was seduced to cast a magical charm over their lusts and crimes; its superstition was terrified into appeasing the fiends by shameful orgies or dark bloody rites. Poets and founders of ritual have been faithful to supernatural fact, but they did not see that in the supernatural order there are evil powers as well as good. They are sound in their record but wrong in their interpretation. In this fashion Plutarch and his school strove to reconcile a rational faith with the grossness of superstition, to save the holiness of God and the glory of Homer.
But the bad daemons who were called in to save the ancient cults proved dangerous allies in the end. Few who really know him will be inclined to question the sincere mono- theistic piety of PlutarcL And a sympathetic critic will even not withhold from him a certain respect for his old-world
CHAK III
THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN
433
attachment to the forms of his ancestral worship. He knew no other avenue of approaching the Divine. Yet only the imperious religious cravings and the spiritual contradictions of that age could excuse or accoimt for a system which was disastrous both to paganism and philosophy. The union of gross superstition with ingenious theology, the licence of subtlety applied to the ancient legends, demanded too much credulity from the cultivated and too much subtlety from the vidgar. It undermined the already crumbling polytheism ; it made philosophy the apostle of a belief in a baleful daemonic agency. If a malign genius was seated beside every god to account for the evil in nature or myth, might not a day come when both friends and enemies would confound the daemon and the god ? ^ Might not philosophy be led on in a disastrous decline to the justification of magic, incantations, and all theurgic extravagance ? That day did come in the fourth century when Flatonism and polytheism in close league were making a last stand against the victorious ChurcL Even then indeed a purer Flatonism still survived, as well as a purer paganism sustained by the mysteries of Mithra or Demeter. But the paganism which the Christian empire found it hardest to conquer, and which propagated itself far into the Christian ages, was the belief in magic and occult powers founded on the doctrine of daemons. And the Christian controversialist, with as firm a faith in daemons as the pagan, turned that doctrine against the faith which it was invented to support The distinction of good and bad daemons, first drawn by Xenocrates and Chrysippus, and developed by Plutarch, was eagerly seized upon by Tatian and S. Clement of Alexandria, by Minucius Felix and S. Cyprian.' But the good became the heavenly host of Christ and His angels ; the bad were identified with the pagan gods. What would have been the anguish of Plutarch could he have foreseen that his theology, elaborated
^ Hr.Oakesmith thinks that Plutarch tended to identify them, Rd, of Plut, p. 127.
> Tatian, Adv, Cfr, 20 ; Clem. Alex. Ad CfenL 26 ; Cypr. i^. 75, 10 ; Min. Felix, c. 26, 27, isti igitur impuri spiritos daemonea, . . . sub statuia et imaginiboa delitescont, et adflata ano anotoritatem quad piaeaentia naminia
conaequontor, dnm inapirant interim yatei, dnm fania immorantnr . . . aortea regnnt, oracnla efficinnt, falsia ploribua involnta, eto. Cf. Tertoll Apal, c xxii. operatio eoram est hominis everaio . . . Itaqne corporibna qnideiu et valitndinea infligaut et aU- quos caana aoerboa, eto. Of. De IdoL c. ix ; Manry, La ifagie, p. 99 aqq.
2 V
434 THE GOSPEL OB PHILOSOPHY book hi
with such pious subtlety and care, would one day be used against the gracious powers of Olympus, and that the spirits he had conjured up to defend them would be exorcised as maleficent fiends by the triumphant dialectic of S. Augustina^
The daemonology of Plutarch also furnished a theory of prophetic powers, and especigdly of the inspiration of Delphi It was in the porticoes of the shrine of Apollo, or among the monuments of ancient glory and devotion, that the most inter- esting of Plutarch's religious essays were inspired. He probably bore the honours of the Delphic priesthood down to the last days of his long life. But in the years when Plutarch was ordering a sacrifice or a procession, or discussing antiquarian and philo- sophic questions with travellers firom Britain or the eastern seas, Delphi had lost much of its ancient power and renown. Great political and great economic changes had reduced the functions of the oracle to a comparatively humble sphere. It was no longer consulted on afiairs of state by great potentates of the East and West. The farmers of Boeotia or the Arcadian shepherds now came to seek the causes of failure in their crops or of a murrain among their herds, to ask advice about the purchase of a piece of lemd or the marriage of a child. So far back as the days of Cicero the faith in oracles had been greatly shaken,* and even the most venerable shrines were no longer resorted to as of old. Powerful philosophic schools, the Gjrnic and the Epicurean, poured contempt on all the arts of divination. Maiiy of the ancient oracles had long been silent In Boeotia, where, in the days of Herodotus, tiie air Was full of inspiration,' the ancient magic only lingered around Lebadea. Sheep grazed around the fanes of Tegyra and the Ptoan Apollo. While in old days at Delphi, the services of two, and even three, Pythian priestesses were demanded by the concourse of votaries, in Plutarch's time one priestess sufficed.* But the second century brought, along with a general religious revival, a restoration of the ancient faith in oracles. The voice of Delphi had been silenced for a time by Nero, and the sacred chasm had been choked with corpses because the
' Aug. Dt Civ. Dei, viii. 14-22. Strab. viL 7, 9, ixXiKoiTe Sitwt koIH
' Cic. De Div, ii. 57, 117, oar iato iiarrtiw rh iv AuSd^ji t(o,edw€p t^Xo.
modojam oracnla Delphis non edantar * Herodot viiL 134.
... lit nihil possit esse oontemptiiis ^ ^ Plat De Def, Or, o. v. viiL
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 435
priestess had branded the emperor as another Orestes.^ But the oracle, although shorn of much of its glory, recovered some of its popularity in the second century. It received ofiPerings once more from wealthy votaries. The emperor Hadrian characteristically tested its omniscience by a question as to the birthplace of Homer. Curious travellers from distant lands, even philosophers of the Cynic and Epicurean schools, came to visit the ancient shrine, to make the round of its antiquarian treasures, and to discuss the secret of its inspira- tion.' A new town sprang up at the gates of the sanctuary ; sumptuous temples, baths, and halls of assembly replaced the solitude and ruins of many generations. The god himself seemed to the pious Plutarch to have returned in power to his ancient seat.'
The revival of Delphi gladdened the heart of Plutarch as a sign of reviving religion and Hellenism. And although the oracle no longer wielded an oecumenical primacy, its antiquities and its claims to inspiration evidently attracted many curious inquirers. We are admitted to their conversations in the Delphic treatises of Plutarch. His characters bear the names of the old-world schools, but there is a strangely modem tone in their discussions. Sometimes we might fancy ourselves listening to a debate on the inspiration of Scripture between an agnostic, a Catholic, and an accommodating broad Church- man. Plutarch himself, or his representative, generally holds the balance between the extreme views, and tries to reconcile the claims of reason and of faith. It is clear that even in that age of religious revival there was no lack of a scepticism like that of Lucian. Even in the sacred courts of Delphi the Epicurean might be heard suggesting that, because, among a thousand random prophecies of natural events, one here and there may seem to tally with the fact, it does not follow that the prediction was sure and true at the moment of deliverance ; ^ the wandering word may sometimes hit the mark. The fulfilment is a mere coincidence, a happy chance. Boethus, the sceptic, is easily refuted by the orthodox Serapion, who makes an
^ D. Cass. Ixiii. 14, jca2 rh luurrtiov p. 252. icaWXurer, dySpilywovs is t6 arhfuov^ i^ * De Pyth, Or. c. x. Todr6 y€ /ioX-
o9 rd lepdy rveufjLa di^fcc, ff^xi^as. Xoy ^/^ou jcoU diaawtipau Xiryovs . . .
• Plat. De Def. Or, c. ii off w\aMb»f.'.ivoii dinJi'Ti;<re roXXdicif ^
• De Pyth, Or, a xxix. ; v. Qreard, TT^xtt f^^*
436 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
appeal to well-known oracles which have been actually fulfilled, not merely in a loose, apparent fashion, but down to the minutest details of time, place, and memner,^ In these dis- cussions, although the caviller is heard with a tolerant courtesy, it is dear that faith is always in the ascendant Yet even faith has to face and account for an apparent d^eneracj which might well cause some uneasiness. For instance, is it not startling that, in the name of the god of music, many oracles should be delivered in trivial, badly-fashioned verses ? ^ Can it be that Apollo is a meaner artist than Hesiod or Homer ? On the other side, it may be said that the god is too lofby to care to deck his utterances in the graces of literary form, or, by a more probable theory, he inspires the vision but not the verse. But what of the oracles of later days, which are delivered in the baldest prose ? Is this not a disturbing sign of degeneracy ? Can this be worthy of the god ? The defender of the faith has no difficulty in quieting the suspicion. Even in the great ages we know that oracles were sometimes delivered in prose,^ and in ancient times excited feeling ran naturally into verse/ The stately hexameter was the appropriate form of utterance when the oracle had to deal with great events affecting the fate of cities and of nations. Inspiration is not independent of surrounding circumstances, and the functions of the oracle have changed since the days of Croesus and Themistocles. The whole style of human life and the taste of men are less imposing and stately. The change in the style of the oracle is only part of a general movement^ For ages simple prose has taken the place of artistic rhythm in other departments besides the sphere of prophecy. We do not despise the philosophy of Socrates and Plato, because it does not come to us clothed in verse, like the speculations of Thales, Parmenides, and Empedocles. And who can expect the simple peasant girl, who now occupies the tripod, to speak in the tones of Homer ? ^ The dim grandeur of the old poetic oracles had indeed some advantages, in aiding the memory by the use of measured and musical expression, and in veiling the full meaning of the Gk>d from irreverent or hostile eyes. But
1 Dt Pyth, Or. c xl * Ih. o. xxir.
■ lb, c V. xrii
' lb, c xix. * lb, xxii rpa^ii^a iy otidqL yntpyO^-
* lb, 0, xxiii. wetHJTUJ kt\.
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 487
their pom{X)us ambiguity, providing apparently so many loop- holes for evasion, brought discredit on the sacred art, and encouiaged the imitative ingenuity of a host of venal impostois who, around the great temples, cheated the ears of slaves and silly women with a mockery of the mysterious solemnity of the Pythian verse.^
The more serious question as to the cause of the extinction of oracles brings the discussion nearer to the great problem of the sources of inspiration. It is true that the fact may be accounted for to some extent by natural causes. Oracles have never ceased, but the number has been diminished. God measures His help to men by their needs, and as they grow more enlightened they feel less need for supernatural guidance. This, however, is evidently dangerous ground. But surely the poverty and depopulation of Greece are enough to account for the disappearance of oracles. A country which can hardly put three thousand hoplites in the field — as many as Megara alone sent forth to fight at Plataea — cannot need the many shrines which flourished when Greece was in its glory.' But it may be admitted that oracles can and do disappear. And this is in no way derogatory to the power of God. For it is not the great Gknl Himself who utters the warning or the prophecy by the voice of the priestess. Such a doctrine is lowering to His greatness and majesty. In prophecy and divination, as in other fields, God operates, through instruments and agents, on a given matter, and in concurrence with physical causes. The matter in this case is the human soul, which, in greater or less degrees, can be acted on by supernatural influ- ences.' The exciting cause of the '* enthusiasm " or inspiration, applying a sudden stimulus to the soul, may be some vapour or exhalation from the earth, such as that which rose from the deft beneath the Delphic tripod.^ Lastly, there is the daemon, a supernatural being, who, by his composite nature, as we have seen, is the channel of sympathy between the human and the Divine.^ But among the causes of a£3atus or inspiration,
^ Ih PytK, Or, c. xzt. wKelmis fUpToi e/r rd ffd>fULra rOw wpo^ifrOtf ^ro^$4y'
voiifrijH^r Mw-Xficfw ddo^las t6 dyvfrru:6p yea$ai ; o. xlviiL ; JM Fyth. Or. o. zxi.
Koi dyofHuop KoX wept t4 firrpv^ «ai <repd- * De Def. Or,^ xlii. ^^vxrjt rb lurruchv
rtia6vfu>K^»Kalw\aM<ifi€Pot'yirotKTK dartp 6/ifia 8wr€u rod ffwtidwrorrot
• be D^, Or, c. viii. olKtiov KtU (rwtrtB^iyoPTOt,
* lb. c ix. e^^t yiip Ko/udi rh * lb. o. x. xii. ^eit eM rwts iv
438 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book m
some may, iu cases, disappear and cease to operate. The intoxicating fume or vapour is a force of varying intensity, and may exhaust itself and be spent, as a spring may fail^ or a mine may be worked out^ The daemon may migrate from one place to another, and with its disappearance, the oracle will become silent, as that of Teiresias at Orchomenus has long been, just as the lyre becomes silent when the muaician ceases to strike the strings.^
In all this theory Plutarch is careful to guard himself against a purely materialistic theory of the facts of inspiration.' Physical causes may assist and predispose, but physical causes alone will not account for the facts of inspiration. The daemon is a necessary mediator between the human soul and God, a mes- senger of the divine purpose. But the real problem of inspira- tion is in the soul of man himself, in the possibility of contact between the soul and a supernatural power. This question is illuminated in Apuleius and Plutarch and Maximus of Tyre by a discussion of the daemon of Socrates. It was by a natural instinct that the Antonine Platonists went back to the great teacher of Plato for support of the system which was lo link religion with philosophy by the daemonic theory. In Plutarch's dialogue on the Genius of Socrates, the various theories of that mysterious influence current in antiquity are discussed at lengtL The leuiguage in which Socrates or his disciples spoke of its moni- tions lent itself to dififerent interpretations. Was his daemon an external sign, as in augury, an audible voice, or an inner, perhaps supernatural light, a voice of reason, speaking to the sours highest faculty, through no uttered word or symbol ? * The grosser conceptions of it may be dismissed at once. The daemon of Socrates does not belong to the crude materialism of divination, although the philosopher could forecast the disaster of Syracuse.^ Nor was it any ordinary faculty of keen intellectual slirewdness, strengthened and sharpened by the cultivation of experience. Still less was it any hallucination,
T&B^ Oprird, oOf dalfiowat 6p$Qs #x« ' /6. c xxxviii. ; ^laury, p. 149.
jfarA y6fiop waripw ffi^adai : cf. Plat. • Plut De Def, Or, c xlvL
Sympas, 202 b ; ApaL De Deo Soer. * De Oen, Socr. o. xi. xx. ; d
c yi. ; Max. Tyr. Diss xiv. §§ 2-8. Hild, jStude sur Us Demons, p. 263
^ De Drf. Or, c. xliiL tQp di w€pl sqq. 'rHiw (t^ip yijp) Swdfuwp wij fUv ix- * .
i\f/€it frij W y€Piff€is , . . tU^ icrt Hiw
ffv/ifialp€i¥t rrX. ^opduf wpo€iT€tp a^6p rrX.
aMiP {t^p yifp) dvpdfuwp rij fUv ix- ^ De Gen. Socr, c xi. &Ko6ia 6i nl
\tl\f/€it frij 9i y€Piff€is , . . tU^ icrt Hip ip ZureM^ r^ 'AdrjpaUap Bvwdfutis
CHAP. Ill THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN 439
bordering on insanity, which is merely a perversion of the senses and reason. It was rather a spiritual intuition, au immediate vision, not darkened or weakened by passing through any symbolic medium of the senses, a flash of sudden insight such as is vouchsafed only to the select order of pure and lofty spirits, in whom from the beginning the higher portion of the soul has always risen high above the turbid and darkening influence of the senses.^ That such a faculty exists is certain to the Platonist and the Pythagorean. But in the mass of men it is struggling against fleshly powers, sometimes defeated, sometimes victorious, inspiring ide^, or stinging with remorse, until perchance, late and slowly, after chastisement emd struggle, it emerges into a certain calm. Pythagoreans, such as Apollonius, taught that the diviner, the mantic, faculty in man was more open to higher influences when emancipated from the body in sleep, and that it could be set free in waking hours by abstinence and ascetic discipline.^ Plutarch laid stress on the latter part of this theory, but ridiculed the notion that the soul could be most clear and receptive when its powers were relaxed. But the capacity of the higher reason in the loftier souls is almost without limit. The reason, which is the daemon in each, when unimpeded by bodily obstruction, is open to the lightest, most ethereal touch. Spirit can act directly by inmiediate influence upon spirit, without any sensuous aid of word or sign.* The influence is a " wind blowing where it listeth/' or a strange sudden illumination, revealing truth as by a flash. The disembodied spirit, cleansed and freed from the servitude of the body, and now a real daemon, possesses all these powers and receptivities in the fullest measure. But it gains no new power when it quits the body, although its spiritual faculties may have been dulled and obstructed by the flesh. The sun does not lose its native radiance when for a moment it is obscured by clouds.* And thus a Socrates may even here below have a spiritual vision denied to us ; a Pythia may be inspired by the daemon of the shrine to read the future of a campaign. Nor is there anything more
^ Plut. De Oen, Socr, c. zx. X67M ^ wdrrwf ^p6fiepoi /i^oii
• PhUostr. Apoll, T, vL 11. ^n/xoOtrt ro?? d$6pvpop Ijdot kqI ri/iftfAw
' De Oen, Socr, c. xx. al 8^ tQp ^ouo-i t^p ^hoc^ ' ^^ ^ **^ UpoOt xal
^aiyMptav (piyy^ txowrtu rott iwafUpois StufMOpioin dy$piinrovs KoKoOfUP ; of. De
iXXdfirovffiPf od Sedfiepcu ^ftdrup oM* Def, Or, c. xxxviiL
dpoftAriop /crX. oOtoji ol tQp dcup^ttp ^ De IMf, Or. c. xxxix.
440 THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHY book hi
wonderful in prediction than in memory.^ In this unresting flux of existence, the present of brief sensation is a mere moment between the past which has ceased to be and the future which is to be bom. If we can still grasp the one, may we not anticipate the other ?
It is thus that, by a far-reaching theory of inspiration, Plutarch strove to rehabilitate the faith in oracular lore. The loftier philosophic conception of the Supreme is saved from contamination with anything earthly by the doctrine of daemons, themselves released from the body, yet, through the higher faculty in all souls, able to act directly upon those still in the flesL The influence is direct and immediate, yet not in- dependent of purely physical causes or temperament " The treasure is in earthen vessels." But the full vision is only reserved for the spirit unpolluted and untroubled by sense and passion. Plutarch is preparing the way for the "ecstasy" of later Neo-Platonism. All thus speculation of course lent itself to a revival of heathen superstition. Yet it is intei'estbg to see how, in many a flash of insight, Plutarch reveals a truth for all generations. We, in our time, are perhaps too much inclined to limit the powers of the human spirit to the field of sense and observation. The slackening hold on faith in a spiritual world and a higher intuition may well be visited by the proper Nemesis, in the darkening of the divine vision, whether as religious faith or artistic inspiration. The dream of an earthly paradise enriched with every sensuous gratification by a science working in bondage to mere utility may have serious results for the spiritual future of humanity. It may need a bitter experience to dispel the gross illusion ; yet men may once more come to believe with Plutarch that, as it were, at the back of every soul there is an opening to the divine world firom which yet may come, as of old, the touch of an unseen hand. .
* Dt D^, Or, c zxxix.
BOOK IV.
ADSCENDENTIBUS DI MANUM PORRIOUNT
CHAPTER I
SUPERSTITION
Superstition in all ages is a term of unstable meaning. Men even of the same time will apply it or deny its application to the same belief. The devout beliefs of one period may become mere superstitions to the next. And, conversely, what for a time may be regarded as alien superstition, may in course of time become an accepted portion of the native creed. This was the history of those Eastern cults which will be described in coming chapters. At first, they fell under Cicero's definition of superstition, viz. any religious belief or practice going beyond the prescription of ancestral usage.^ But a day came when they were the most popular worships of the Boman world, when great nobles, and even the prince himself, were enthusiastic votaries of them.* The religion of Mithra, when it was confined to an obscure circle of slaves or freedmen at Ostia, was a superstition to the pontifical college. It took its place with the cult of the Roman Trinity when Aurelian built his temple to the Sun and endowed his priesthood.^
Plutarch devoted a treatise to the subject of superstition. And his conception of it is more like our own, less formal and external, than that of Cicero. He develops his view of the degradation of the religious sense by contrasting it with atheism. Atheism is a great calamity, a blindness of the reason to the goodness and love which govern the universe. It is the extinction of a faculty rather than the perversion of one.*
* Cic !)€ NcU. Deor. i. 17, 42, § » Vop. Aurdian, c 35, § 8.
117 ; ii 28, § 70 ; DeDiv, ii. 72 ; Sen. * Plut De Superst, c 5, 6, ^ lUv
Ep, 128 ; Boissier, Rd, Rom, i. 23. d^e^t dird^cia vp^t rb 0€t6p icri . . .
il Si SeuriSaifioi'la xoXi^dOeia Kaxbv
' Lamprid. Com. o. 9. t6 dyaSbv hvwoowra,
443
444 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iy
But superstitioii both believes and trembles. It acknow- ledges the existence of supernatural powers, but they are to it powers of evil who are ready to afflict and injure, to be approached only in terror and with servile prostration. This craven fear of God fills the whole universe with spectres. It leaves no refuge whither the devil-worshipper can escape from the horrors which haunt him night and day. Whither can he flee from that awful presence ? Sleep, which should give a respite from the cares of life, to his fevered mind, swarms with ghostly terrora^ And death, the last sleep, which should put a term to the iUs of life, only unrolls before the superstitious votary an awful scene of rivers of fire and black- ness of darkness, and sounds of punishment and unutterable woe.' To such a soul the festivals of ancestral religion lose all their solemn gladness and cheering comfort The shrines which should offer a refuge to the troubled heart, even to the hunted criminal, become to him places of tortura And the believer in a God of malignant cruelty betakes himself in despair to dark rites from foreign lands, and spends his substance on impostors who trade upon his fears, ^^tter, says the pious Plutarch, not believe in God at all, than cringe before a God worse than the worst of men. Unbelief, calamity though it be, at least does not dishonour a Deity whose existence it denies. The true impiety is to believe that God can be wantonly faithless and revengeful, fickle and cmeL*
Tlie earnestness, and even bitterness, with which Plutarch assails the degrading fear of the supernal Powers have caused some rather shallow critics to imagine that he had a sympathy with scepticism.^ How such an idea could arise in the mind of any one who had read his treatise on the Genius of Socratee or on Isis and Osiris, or on the Delays of Divine Justice, it is difficult to imagine. Plutarch's hatred of superstition is that of a genuinely pious man, with a lofty conception of the Divine love and pity, who is revolted by the travesty of pure religion,
^ D€ Superst. c 8, /Ji6yri ybip oii * lb. o, 6, 0oj9o(frrm rodf $to^ al
iTirMenu vpbit rdf (hryor . . . efdwXa KaraL^vyovauf trl Toi>t $ec6f, Ko\ajce6mm
^piKfl^dfi Kal Tepd(ma ^ifffAara koI roit^ds koX Xoiiopowru^, Gf. Bacon's Buayt, Of
riyat iytipovaa Kal ffrpofiouffa i^ dBXiw Superstition, ** It were better to Itan
inrxiiy* ^ no opinion of God at aU, than anch aD
^ lb, 0. 4, ffXfPiwTovffa rf Bavdrt^ opinion as is unworthy of Him," KaKZ'p MyotoM dSopdrvy, * Gr^rd, p. 269.
CHAP. I SUPERSTJTJON 445
which is repeated from age to age. It is the feeling of a man to whom religion is one of the most elevating joys of life, when he sees it turned into an instrument of torture. But the force of the protest shows how rampant was the evil in that age. Lucretius felt with the intensity of genius all the misery which perverted conceptions of the Divine nature had inflicted on human life.^ But the force of Boman superstition had endlessly multiplied since the days of Lucretius. Tt was no longer the exaggeration of Bomian awe at the lightning, the flight of birds, the entrails of a sacrificial victim, or anxious observance of the solemn words of ancestral formulae, every syllable of which had to be guarded from mutilation or omission. All the lands which had fallen to her sword were, in Plutarch's day, adding to the spiritual burden of Bome. If in some cases they enriched her rather slender spiritual heritage, they also multiplied the sources of supernatural terror. If in the mysteries of Isis and Mithra they exalted the soul in spiritual reverie and gave a promise of a coming life,^ they sent the Boman matron to bathe in the freezing Tiber at early dawn and crawl on bleeding knees over the Campus Martins, or purchase the interpretation of a dream from some diviner of Palestine or a horoscope from some trader in astral lore.* The Platonist, nourished on the pure theism of the Fhaedo and the Republic, and the priest of that cheerful shrine, which the young Ion had each bright morning swept with myrtle boughs and sprinkled with the water of the Castalian spring,^ whose holy ministry gladdened even the years of boyhood — a man with such experience had a natural horror of the dark terrors which threatened to obscure the radiant visions of Delphi and Olympus.
Livy complained of the neglect in his day of signs and omens which formerly were deemed worthy of historical record.* The contempt for augury in the time of Cicero was hardly concealed among the cultivated.^ The details of parts of the ancient bird-lore eluded the researches of the elder Pliny. The emperor Claudius, lamenting the neglect of the ancient science, demanded a decree of the Senate to restore it
^ Lnc. i. 65 ; iu. 991 ; cf, Cio. D4 Luc. Philcps. c 7-18. JHv. ii. 72. * Eurip. Ian, 104.
* ApuL Met, zi. c. 24. * Lir. xliii. 18.
» Jut. Ti 628, 647 ; Mart. vii. 54 ; « Cio. De Div, ii. 24.
446 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book jv
to its former efficiency.^ These are some signs of that general decay of old Soman religion in the last century of the Bepublic, which was partly due to philosophic enlightenment, partly to the confusion and demoralisation of civil strife, but perhaps even more to the dangerous seductions of foreign superstitions.* Among the counsels of Maecenas to Augustus, none is more earnest and weighty than the warning against these occult arts.' Augustus is advised to observe, and enforce the observance of the time-honoured ancestral forms, but he must banish sorcerers and diviners, who may sow the seeds of conspiracy against the prince. The advice was suited oa While the emperor rebuilt the fallen temples and revived the ancient Latin rites, 2000 books of unlicensed divination were in one day given to the flames.^ The old religion, which had absorbed so much from the augural lore of Etruria,' was itself certainly not free from superstition. The wrath of the Lemures,^ the darkness of the inner forest, the flash of lightning, the flight of birds, the entrails of a sacrifice, excited many a fear, and might cause a man to suspend a journey, or break up an assembly of the peopla But the Romans had, in the early ages, after their orderly legal fashion, reduced the force of these terrors by an elaborate art which provided a convenient resource of statecraft, and a means of soothing the alarms of the crowd.
But foreign and unregulated superstitions, firom the second century B.C., were pouring in from the East to put a fresh load on the human spirit or to replace the waning faith in Italian augury. In 139 B.a Cornelius Scipio Hispalus vainly strove by an edict to stop the inroads of the star readers.^ But treatises on this pretended science were in vogue in Varro's time, and are quoted by the great savant with approval^ These impostors were swarming in Some at the time of Catiline's conspiracy,^ inflating the hopes of the plotters.
^ Tac. Ann, xi. 15, rettulit deindo ^ Cic. Bt Leg. iL 9 ; Fowlei*, Bom,
ad senatum super coUegio haruspicum. Fed, p. 288.
ne vetustiasima Italiae diaciplina per e Qt. FazL iU. 285 ; Lucr. L 181 ;
desidiam exolesceret Liv. i. 20.
2 Warde Fowler, lUm. Fedivala, ' Val. Max. I. 8, 3 ; of. Cic /?#
p. 343. Div. ii. 48.
« D. Cass. liL 86, roiH W 5^ ^littm-ds » Aul. Gell. iii. 10.
Ti irepl tA Seior Kal ^€i Kal ic6\ai-€. 9 q^^ j^ ^^ iU. 4 ; of. Plat ViL
* Suet. Octav, xxxi. Cic c. 17.
CHAP. I SUPERSTITION 447
Suetonius has surpassed himself in the collection, from many sources, of the signs and wonders which foi*eshadowed the great destiny, and also the death of Augustus. And it is noteworthy that, among these predictions, are some founded on astrology.^ On the day of the emperor's birth, P. Nigidius, a learned astrologer, found that the position of the stars foretold a coming master of the world. Augustus himself received a similar forecast from Theagenes, a star-reader of ApoUonia. He had his horoscope drawn out, and a silver coin was struck with the stamp of Oapricont
This fatalist superstition infected nearly all the successors of Augustus in the first and second centuries. Astrology is essentially a fatalist creed, and the heir to the great prize of the principate, with the absolute control of the civilised world, was generally designated by that blind impersonal power whose decrees might be read in the positions of the eternal spheres, or by signs and omens upon eartL Suetonius, Tacitus, Dion Cassius, have chronicled, with apparent faith, the predictions of future power which gathered round the populai- candidate for the succession, or the dark warnings of coming disaster which excited the prince's feais and gave courage to enemies and rivals. It is not hard to see why the emperors at once believed in these black arts and profoundly distrusted their professors. They wished to keep a monopoly of that awful lore, lest it might excite dangerous hopes in possible pretenders.' To consult a Chaldaean seer on the fate of the prince, or to possess his horoscope, was always suspicious, and might often be fatal' The astonishing thing is, that men had sudi implicit faith in the skill of these Eastern impostors, along with such distrust of their honesty. They were banished again and again in the first century, but persecution only increased their power, and they always returned to exercise greater influence than ever.* Never was there a clearer proof of the impotence of government in the face of a deep-seated popular belief.
Tiberius, who had probably no real religious faith, was,
^ Suet Odav, zciv. xcvii ' Saet. Dom, z. interemit Met
PompeiaDum quod habere impera-
' Gf. D. Cass. Ixvi. 9, roCrt re d0T/>o- toriam genesm vnlgo ferebatur. >JrfovtUrifl'^ditJi'nii^fM€p(Ottffvaaia,- * Tac. Ann, ziL 62 ; ii 82, 75; D.
v6t) KflUroc voffi roif d/>2^rocf x/^fi^^' ^^^>^^* ^x* ^ > Suet FiUU, xiv.
448 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book if
from his youth, the slave of astrology.^ An adept had, at his birth, predicted his lofty destiny.' He had in his train one Thrasyllus, a noted professor of the science, who had often to read the stars in the face of death, and he was surrounded in his gloomy retirement at Capreae by a " Chaldaean herd." ' Claudius was pedantic and antiquarian in his religious tastes, and, while he tried to revive old Boman augury, he banished the astrologers.^ A great noble who had the temerity to consult them as to the time of the emperor's death shared the same fate. Nero, who despised all regular religion, except that of the Syrian goddess, was the prey of superstitious terror. The Furies of the murdered Agrippina, as in Aeschylean tragedy, haunted him in dreams, and he used the aid of magic to evoke and propitiate the awful shade.^ When, towards the end of his reign, his prospects grew more threatening, the appearance of a comet drove him to consult Balbillus, his astrologer, who advised that the portended danger should be diverted from the emperor by the destruction of the great nobles. Some of the craft had predicted that Nero should one day be deserted and betrayed, while others consoled him with the promise of a great monarchy of the East with its seat at Jerusalem.^ The terrible year which followed Nero's death was crowded with portents, and all the rivals for the succession were equally slaves of the adepts, who exploited their ambitions or their fears. The end of Galba was foreshadowed, from the opening of his reign, by ominous dreams and signs.^ The hopes of Otho had long been in- flamed by the diviner Seleucus,^ and by Ptolemaeus, who was his companion during his command in Spain.^ When he had won the dangerous prize, Otho was tortured by nightly visions of the spirit of Galba, which he used every art to lay. Tet this same man set out for the conflict on the Po in defiant disregard of omens warranted by the ancient religion.^^ His end, which, by a certain calm
^ Suet Tih, Izix., circa deot negli- * Suet Ntr, Ix. ; xxzlr., liMsto par
gentior quippe addictoB mathematicae, magos saoro erooare ma&M et exonn
etc. tentarit.
s lb. ziT. Yet ct his lore of mTthi- * lb. zl.
cal ntuqoA^ ib, Ixz. ' Suet. Oaib, zviiL
* Juv. z. 94. S«e the remarkable " Suet Otho, iv. chapters in Tac. Ann. tL 21-22. * Tac. ffia. I 22.
* Tac. Ann, zil 62. " Suet Otho, viL tUL
CHAP. I SUPERSTITION 449
nobility, seemed to redeem his life, was portended by a sign which Tacitus records as a fact At the very hour when Otho was falling on his dagger, a bird of strange form settled in a much frequented grove, and sat there undisturbed by the passers-by, or by the flocks of other fowls around.^ The horo- scope of Otho's rival Vitellius had been cast by the astrologers, and their reading of his fate gave his parents acute anxiety. He used to follow the monitions of a Grerman sorceress. Tet, like so many of his class in that age, he had but scant respect for accredited beliefs. It was noted with alarm that he entered on his pontificate on the black day of the Allia.^ The astrologers he probably found more dangerous than helpful, and he ordered them to be expelled from Italy.' But it is a curious sign of their conscious power and their audacity, that a mocking counter edict to that of Vitellius was immediately published by unknown hands, ordaining the death of the per- secutor within a certain day.*
The emperors of the Flavian dynasty, although their power was stable and the world was settling down, were not less devoted to Eastern superstitions than any of their predecessors. Vespasian indeed once more exiled the astrologers, but he still kept the best of them in his train.^ He had consulted the oracle on Mount Carmel, and obeyed the vision vouchsafed in the temple of Serapis.^ His son Titus, who may have had ramantic dreams of an Eastern monarchy, consulted foreign oracles, worshipped in Egjrptian temples, and was a firm believer in the science of the stars.^ Domitian was perhaps the most superstitious of all his race. The rebuilder of Boman temples and the restorer of Boman orthodoxy had also a firm faith in planetary lore. He lived in perpetual fear of his sudden end, the precise hour and manner of which the Chaldaeans had foretold in his early youth.® Among the many reasons for his savage proscription of the leading nobles, one of the most deadly was the possession of an imperial horoscope. On his side too, the haunted tyrant diligently studied the birth -hour of suspected or possible
1 Tac. H%$t. ii. 50. ijl/x^pas icrX.
« Suet. ViUU, iii xi. xiv. '^ lb. Ixvi. 9, 10.
» Tac Hitl, ii. 62. « Tac. Hi$L ii. 78.
♦ D. QaoA, Ixv. 1, iLmTapirrt€i\a» ' Suet. TiluB, v. viiL ix.
dtroXXoT^MU U rod ^ov 4rr^ rifl " Id. Donu xiv. XT.
2 a
450 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iy
pretenders to the throne. In the last months of his reign, his terror became more and more and more intense ; never in the same space of time had the lightning been so bos}-. The Capitol, the temple of the Flavians, the palace, even Domitian's own sleeping chamber, were all struck from heaven. In a dream, the haunted emperor beheld Minerva, the goddess whom he specially adored, quitting her chapel, with a warning that she could no longer save him from his doom. On the day before his death, the emperor predicted that, on the next, the moon would appear blood red in the sign of Aquarius. On his last morning, a seer, who had been summoned from Glermany to interpret the menacing omens, and who had foretold a coming change, was condemned to death.^
Hadrian, that lover of the exotic and the curioos, was particularly fascinated by the East. He had probably no settled faith of any kind, but he dabbled in astrology, as he dabbled in all other arts.^ It was a study which had been culti- vated in his family. His great-uncle, Aelius Hadrianus, was an adept in the science of the stais, and had road the prediction of his nephew's future greatness.* When the future emperor was a yoimg military tribune in lower Moesia, he found the forecast confirmed by a local astrologer. He consulted the BOTtts VirgUianae about his prospects, with not less hopeful results. He practised with intense curiosity other dark magical arts, and the mysterious death of Antinous on the Nile was by many believed to have been an immolation for the Emperor's safety.* Hadrian was glad to think that the spirit of his minion had passed into a new star which had then for the first time appeared. On every 1st of January, Hadrian predicted, with perfect assurance, the events of the year, down to his own last hour.^ Even the last great imperial figure in our period is not free from the suspicion of having tampered with the dark arts. Julius Capitolinus reports % rumour that M. Aurelius consulted the Chaldaeans about the infatuated passion of Faustina for a gladiator.^ In Ins
* Suet. Dom. x. xiv. xv. xvi. ; D. L'^L Chr6L c. 2. Cass. Ixvii. 15, Tdprtoi yi.p Kal 6 Ao/uri- * Spart. Hadr. c 2, § 4.
avbt rCjy Tpiirrtav r6.i re iifUpas Kal rds * D. Cass. Ixix. 11, /MPrelcut fiAy^
&pat ip oTj iyeyirrp^TO ii(UfKorCjp . . . ¥€iai% re xoyrodaratir e'xp^'^ '"'X, vpoQMiiKiaKt, ^ Snart Hadr. o. 16, § 7.
' Spart Hadr, o. 16 ; cf. Beoao, * la. M, Anton, o. 19.
CHAP. I SUPERSTITION 461
account of the famous rainfall that miraculously refreshed the Boman troops in the Marcomannic war, D. Cassius ascribes the miracle to the magic arts of an Egyptian sorcerer whom M. Aurelius kept in his train.^ Xiphilinus, however, who attributes the marvel to the prayers of the Thundering Legion, expressly denies that the emperor gave his countenance to these impostors. Another suspicious incident comes to us on the authority of Lucian. When the war on the Danube was at its height, the new oracle of Alexander of Abonoteichos had, by mingled audacity and skill, rapidly gained an extraordinary influence even among the greatest nobles in Italy. Butilianus, one of the foremost among them, was its special patron and devotee, and actually married the daughter of Alexander by an amour with Selene ! Probably through his influence, an oracle, in verse of the old Delphic pattern, was despatched to the headquarters of the emperor, ordering that a pair of lions should be flung into the Danube, with costly sacrifices and all the fragrant odours of the East' The oracle was obeyed, but the rite was followed by an appalling disaster to the Boman arms. The impostor was equal to the occasion, and defended himself by the example of the ambiguity of the Delphic oracle to Croesus, before the victory of Cyrus. What part M. Aurelius had in this scene we cannot pretend to tell, but the ceremony could hardly have been performed without, at least, his connivance. Nor does his philosophic attitude exclude the possibility of a certain faith in oracular foresight and divination. He believed that everything in our earthly lot was ordained from eternity, and, with the Stoic fatalism, he may have held the almost universal Stoic faith in the power to discover the decrees of fate.'
Nearly all the writers from whom we derive our impressions of that age were more or less tinged with its superstitions. Even the elder Pliny, who rejected almost with scorn the popular religion, was led by a dream to undertake his history of the wars in Germany.* His nephew, although he rejoiced at being raised to the augurate, and restored a temple of Ceres on his lands, seems to have clung to the old religion rather
1 D. Cass. Ixzi 8. Div, L 88 (82) ; ZeUer, PhiL der
^ Luc. Alex. c. 85, 47. Orieeheny iii 1, p. 313 sqq. ^ M. Aurel. x. 5 ; ix. 27 : on the
Stoic belief in divioation, v. Cic De * Plin. Ep, iiL 5, § 4.
452 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iv
as a matter of sentiment than from any real faith. But he had a genuine belief in dreams and apparitions, and he sends his friend Sura an elaborate account of the romance of a haunted house at Athens.^ His friend Suetonius had been disturbed by a dream as to the success of a cause in which he was to appear. Pliny consoled him with the hackneyed interpretation of dreams by contraries.^ The biographer of the Caesars may contend with Dion Cassius for the honour of being probably the most superstitious chronicler who ever dealt with great events. Suetonius is shocked by the arrogance of Julius Caesar when he treated with disdain the warning of a diviner from the inspection of a victim's entrails.* He glorifies the pious Augustus by a long catalogue of signs and celestial omens which foretold the events of his career.^ Suetonius must have been as keen in collecting these old wives* tales as the more sober facts of history,* and, if we may believe him, the palace of the Caesars for a hundred years was as full of supernatural wonders and the terrors of magic and dark prophecy as the Thessalian villages of Apuleius.^ The super- stitions of the Claudian and Flavian Caesars could nowhere have found a more sympathetic chronicler.
Inmiensely superior in genius as Tacitus is to Suetonius, even he is not emancipated from the superstition of the age. But he wavers in his superstition, just as he wavers in his conception of the Divine government of the world.^ Although he occasionally mentions, and briefly discusses, the tenets of the Epicurean and the Stoic schools, it does not seem probable that Tacitus had much taste for philosophy. Full of the old sena- torial ideals, he considered such a study, if carried to any depth, or pursued with absorbing earnestness, to be unbecoming the gravity and dignity of a man of rank and affairs.^ Moreover, his views of human destiny and the Divine government were coloured and saddened by the Terror. Having lived himself through the reign of Domitian, and seen all the horrors of its
^ Plin. Ep, vii. 27. ^ v. Fabian, Q\i,id Tac dn num, div.
' lb, i. 18, V. 5, 5 ; cf. Mayor's learned judicaverit, pp. 7, 18, 16, 21, 24, 29 ;
note on iil 6, 4 ; Gregorovius, Hadrian^ Nipperdey, Einleiiung^ xiv. xxtl ;
p. 229 sqq. Tac Hiit. v. 5 ; u. 88 ; Ann, iii 18 ;
* Suet J%U. Goes, Ixxvii. vi. 22 ; xiv. 12 ; cf. Peter, DU Qttch,
* Id. Oetav, xciii. lAtt ii. p. 221.
* Of. Mac^, SuUone, p. 69 sqq.
• ApoL Ma, iv. 27 ; L 8 ; cf. P<
>etron. • Tac. Agric c. 2, 4 ; JSUL iv. 5 ;
SaL 62, 63. Ann, xiv. 12.
CHAP. I SUPERSTITION 463
dose, having witnessed, in humiliating silence, the excesses of frenzied power and the servility of cringing compliance, Tacitus had little faith either in Divine benevolence or in tempted human virtua^ Even the quiet and security of Trajan's reign seemed to him but a precarious interval, not to be too eagerly or confidently enjoyed, between the terror of the past and the probable dangers of a coming age.^ The corruption of Boman virtue has justly earned the anger of gods, who no longer visit to protect, but only to avenge.* And, in the chaos of human affairs, the Divine justice is confused; the good suffer equally with the guilty.^ Amid obscure and guarded utterances, we can divine that, to Tacitus, the ruling force in human fortunes is a destiny which is blind to the deserts of those who are its sport.^ He probably held the widespread belief that the fate of each man was fixed for him at his birth, and, although he has a profound scorn for the venality and falsehood of the Ghaldaean tribe, he probably had a wavering faith in the efficacy of their lore.* Nor did he reject miracle and supernatural portent on any ground of a scientific conception of the universe/ His language on such subjects is often perhaps studiously ambiguous. Sometimes he appears to report the tale of a portent, as a mere piece of vulgar superstition. But at other times, he records the marvel with no expression of scepticism.* And in his narrative of Otho's death and the miracles of Vespasian, the threats of heaven which ushered in Gralba's brief reign in darkness broken by lurid lightnings, the neglected signs of the coming doom of Jerusalem, the glare of arms &om contending armies in the sky, the ghostly voices, as of gods departing from the Holy of Holies, as in the tale of many another omen, dream, or oracle, the historian gives an awe and grandeur to a superstition which he does not explicitly reject.^
Nor need we be superciliously surprised that the greatest
' AgrU, 0. 45 ; Hist, L 2 ; iiL 87 ; quod in civitate nostra et vetabitnr sem-
Ann, i. 7. per et retinobitur ; cf. Hitl, v. 4 ; Ann,
' Afvn, LI. yi. 28 ; It. 58 ; cf. Fabian, p. 19.
» Hist. i. 3 ad fin, ' Hist, it 50.
* Ann, zyI. 88, aequitate demn erga ' lb. ir. 81 ; ot Nipperdey, Einl, bona malaque documenta. xxtL
» lb, vi. 22 ; cf. Mackail. Bam, LiL • Hist, iL 60 ; ir. 81 ; i. 6 ; i 18 ;
p. 210. y. 18 ; Ann, i 65 ; iL 14 ; Hist, iiL
* HisL L 22, genus hominnm 56 ; iv. 88 ; cf. Fabian, Quid Toe. ds potentibns infidum sperantibua fallax, num, div. judieaverit, p. 19.
464 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book nr
master of historic tragedy, born into such an age, should have had the balance of his faith disturbed. His infancy and boy- hood coincided with the last years of Nero.^ His youthful imagination must have been disordered and inflamed by the tales, circulating in grave old Senatorial houses, of wild excess or mysterious crime on the Palatine, the daring caprice of imperial harlots, the regal power and fabulous wealth and luxury of the imperial freedmen, the lunacy of the great line which had founded the Empire, and which seemed destined to end it in shame and universal ruin. That the destinies of the world should be at the mercy of a Pallas, a Caligula, or an Agrippina was a cruel trial to any faith. The carnival of lust and carnage in which the dynasty disappeared,^ the shock of the fierce struggle on the Po, in which the legions of the East and the West fought with demoniac force for the great prize, deepened the horrors of the tragedy and the gloomy doubts of its future historian. The dawn of a timorous hope, which broke under the calm, strong rule of Vespasian, was overc€ist, during the early manhood of Tacitus, by the old insanity of power which seemed to revive in the last of the Flavians. Such an experience and such an atmosphere were enough to disorder any imagina- tion. The wild Titanic ambition in the Claudian Caesara, a strange mixture of vicious, hereditary insanity,' with a fevered imagination which, intoxicated with almost superhuman power, dreamt of unheard of conquests over nature, made the Julio- Claudian emperors, in the eyes of men, a race half-fiend, half- god. Men hated and loathed them, yet were ready to deify them. It did not seem unnatural that Caligula should throw a gigantic arch over the Fonim, to link the imperial palace with the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol.* Men long refused to believe in the death of Nero, and his reappearance was expected for generations.* In spite of the Augustan revival, the calm, if rather formal, sanity of old Boman religion had lost its power over cultivated minds. The East, with its fatalist superstitions, its apotheosis of lofty earthly sovereignty, its enthronement of an evil power beside the good, was completing the overthrow of the national faith. The air was
* Peter, QtscK, LUt, ii. p. 42. • Suet Nero^ c. iv. vL
' Tao. Hist, iii 83, siniul cruor et * Id. Calig. xxi. xxii. xxix. xxxir.
Btrues corponim, jnxta scorta et soortis xxxvii. ; cf. Mackail, Rom, LiL [v. 213
■imiles, etc. ^ Snet NerOy Ivil.
CHAP. I SUPERSTITION 466
full of the lawless and the supernatural. Science, in the modem sense, was yet unborn; it was a mere rudimentary mass of random guesses, with as little right to command the reason as the legends which sprang from the same lawless imagination. Philosophic speculation in any high sense had almost disappeared. The most poweiful system which still lingered, resolved the gods into mere names for the various potencies of that dim and awful Power which thrills through the universe, which fixes from the beginning the destinies of men and nations, and which deigns to shadow forth its decrees in omen or oracle. Awestruck and helpless in the face of a cruel and omnipresent despotism, with little light from accredited systems of philosophy or religion, what wonder that even the highest and most cultivated minds were darkened and bewildered, and were even ready to lend an ear to the sorcery of the mysterious East? The hesitating acceptance of the popular belief in clairvoyance hardly surprises us in a man like Tacitus, bewildered by the chaos of the Empire, and possessing few reasoned convictions in religion or philosophy. It is more surprising to find so detached a mind as Epictetus recognising in some sort the power of divination. He admits that men are driven to practise it by cowardice or selfish greed.^ He agrees that the diviner can only predict the external changes of fortune, and that on their moral bearing, on the question whether they are really good or evil, he can throw no light Yet even this preacher of a universal Providence, of the doctrine that our true good and happiness are in our own hands, will not altogether deny that the augur can forecast the future. We should, indeed, Epictetus says, come to consult him, without any selfish passion, as a wayfarer asks of a man whom he meets which of two roads leads to his journey's end.^ But the field for such guidance is limited. Where the light of reason or conscience is a sufficient guide, the diviner's art is either useless or corrupting. Nor should any ominous signs deter a man from sharing a friend's peril, even though the diviner may give warning of exile or death. Next to Aristides, there is probably no writer who reveals
^ Epict. Diss, ii. 7, § 10, ri othf li/xas ^ Ih. Cjt h 6doiT6po9 TwBdiferai . . .
iirl t6 ffw€x^ fjLayr€ij€o$ai d7et ; 'H votripa tCop bdu>p ^/>e< . . . o(^«m titt decXIa, t6 0o/3eur^ou ras tK^dveit. Kol M t6p Bebv §px«^Bai, Jh biriybiv.
Of. Ench, 82.
466 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iv
80 strikingly the mingled pietism and superstition of the time as Aelian. Although he preferred to compose his works in Greek, he was a native of the Latian Praeneste, that cool retreat of the wearied Boman, and the seat of the famous shrine of Fortuna Pnmigenia.^ It is a disputed point whether Aelian belongs to the second century or the third. But the more probable conclusion, favoured by the authority of Suidas, is that he lived shortly after the time of Hadrian.' His historical Miscellanies are a good example of that uncritical treatment of history and love of the sensational which were held up to scorn by Lucian.* But it is in the fragments of his work on Providence, that we have the best illustration of his religious attituda The immediate interference of die Heavenly Powers, to reward the pious beUever, or to punish the defiant sceptic, is triumphantly proclaimed. Miracles, oracles, presages, and warning dreams startle the reader on every page. Aelian wages war d (ndranot with the effeminate and pro&ne crew of the Epicureans, whom he would certainly have handed over pitilessly to the secular arm, if he had had the power/ He records with delight the physical maladies which are said to have afflicted Epicurus and his brothers, and the persecutioD of their sect at Messene and in Grete.^ After the tale of some specially impressive intei*ference of Providence, he launches ferocious anathemas at the most famous sceptics, Xenophanes, Diagoras, and Epicurus.^ He pursues Epicurus even to the tomb, and pours all his scorn on the unbelieving voluptuary's arrangements for biennial banquets to his shade/ He exults in the fate of one who, without initiation, tried to get a sight of the holy spectacle at Eleusis, and perished by fiedling firom his secret point of observation.® It is needless to say that miraculous cures by Asclepius are related with the most exuberant faith. Aristarchus the tragic poet, and Theopompus the comedian, were restored from wasting and hopeless sickness by the god.® Another patient of the shrine had the vision, which
1 Warde Fowler, Eonia.n Feriivala, » Ael. Far, Eist. xL 18.
p. 72; PreUer,2Jow.ify^(Tr.), p. 881. * v. Fragm, Ad. ap, Chvnov, n.
> Philostr. FiL Soph, ii. p. 273, 1014.
4$a6fia^e di rhp *'Hp<&drjif tin voiKiXttrrarw ^ lb. p. 1022.
jnrrhfxap : of. Ptaef, Jac Ferizonii « Jb, p. 1024.
ed. Aelianif Gronov. ; Suid. «rcU 4ao- ^ lb, p. 1023.
^UrrtwrtP ip '?(ifjLy oiJrJ iwl rOtv /uerA • lb, p. 1011.
'Aapiardr xf>^w. • lb, p. 1030.
CHAP. I SUPERSTITION 467
was probably often a real fact, of a priest standing beside his bed in the night, bringing counsels of healing.^ But the climax of ludicrous credulity is reached in the tale of the pious cock of Tanagra.^ This favoured bird, being maimed in one leg, appeared before the shrine of Asclepius, holding out the injured limb, and, taking his place in the choir that sung the morning paean, begged the god for relief and healing. It came before the evening, and the grateful bird, with crest erect, with stately tread, and flapping wings, gave voice to his deliverance in his own peculiar notes of praise ! The Divine vengeance is also displayed asserting itself in dreams. A traveller, stopping for the night at Megara, had been murdered for his purse of gold by the keeper of his inn, and his corpse, hidden in a dung-cart, was carried through the gates before dawn. At that very hour his wraith appeared to a citizen of the place, and told him the tale of the tragedy. The treacherous assassin was caught at the very point indicated by the ghost* The last dream of Philemon is of a more pleasing kind.* The poet, bemg then in his full vigour, and in possession of all his powers, once had a vision in his home at Peiraeus. He thought he saw nine maidens leaving the house, and heard them bidding him adieu. When he awoke, he told the tale to his boy, and finished the play on which he was at work ; then, wrapping himself in his cloak, he lay down to sleep, and when they came to wake him, he was dead. Aelian challenges Epicurus to deny that the maidens of the vision were the nine Muses, quitting an abode which was soon to be polluted by death.
Publius Aelius Aristides is one of the best representatives of the union of high culture with the forces of the religious revival. He saw the beginning and the end of the Antonine age. He was born in 117 a.d. at Adriani, in Mysia, where his family held a high position, his father being priest of Zeus. He received the most complete rhetorical training, and had been a pupil of Herodes Atticus. Travelling through Greece, Italy, and Egypt, and giving exhibitions of his skill in the fashion of the day,* Aristides won a splendid reputation, which swelled
^ Praqm.. Ael. pp. 1009, 1034. * lb. 1051.
2 lb. p. 1013. » r. Jebb's Aristides, ColUet. Hist.
3 lb. p. 1049. § vi.
468 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iv
his vanity to proportions rare even in a class whose vanity was proverbial. He won the restoration of the mined Smyrna from M. Aurelius, by an oration which moved the Emperor to tears.^ With a naturally feeble constitution and epileptic tendencies, the excitement of the sophist's life brought on an illness which lasted thirteen years. During that long ordeal, he developed a mystic superstition which, along with an ever- growing self-consciousness, inspired the Sacred Orations^ which appeared in 177, long after his health had been restored. He visited many seats of sacred healing — Smyrna, Pergamam, Cyzicus, Epidaurus — and, often in a cataleptic state, between sleep and waking, he had visitations of the Higher Powers in dreams. They gave him prescriptions of the strangest remedies, along with eulogies on his unrivalled talent, which he was solemnly enjoined to devote to the celebration of his deliverance by the Divine favour.^
Aristides zealously obeyed the Divine command. But whether his sole inspiration was simple gratitude and un- sophisticated piety, crossed by superstition, as has generally been assumed, may well be doubted.' The truth is, that in Aristides met all the complex influences of his age, both intellectual aud spiritual He was the most elaborate product of the rhetorical school, with its cultivated mastery of phrase, its exuberant pride in the power of words, its indifference to truth, in comparison with rhetorical effect The whole force of revived Hellenism was concentrated in this declamatory skilL^ At the same time, the religious revival was very far from being a return to the old religion, in its clear firm outlines and simple wholeness.^ The Zeus and Athene and Poseidon of the age of Aristides were not the divinities of the great age. Many influences had been at work to blur the clean-cut out- lines of Hellenic imagination, and to sophisticate the ancestral faith both of Greece and Bome. Men wished to believe in the ancient gods, but they were no longer the gods of Homer or of Aeschylus, the gods worshipped by the men who fought
» PhiloBtr. rU. Soph, il p. 268. Aristides, pp. 112, 118.
■ Friedl. SUtengesch, iii p. 440 sqq. ; * Baamgart, pp. 62, 102, Bald Ut in
Baumgart, A^. Aristides cUa Repraaen- der ganzen Heilangsgeschiclite dies di«
UmU der Soph, Shet, pp. 68, 96. Hauptaaohe, dass nun seia Rhetonn-
' Baamjprt rejects Welcker's view of turn die hochste Weihe erhalten habe.
the essentially religious character of ^ Id. p. 62.
CHAP. I SUPERSTITION 459
in the Samnite or the Punic wars. Greek philosophy for eight centaries had been teaching a doctrine of one Divine force or essence, transcending the powers and limitations of sense, or immanent in the fleeting world of chance and change. Pagan theology had elaborated a celestial hierarchy, in which the Deity, removed to an infinite distance, was remotely linked to humanity by a graduated scale of inferior spiritual beings, daemons, and heroes.^ Then came the religions of the East, with their doctrines of expiation for sin and ascetic preparation for communion, and visions of immortality. And, alongside of all these developments, there was a portentous growth of vulgar superstition, belief in dreams, omens, and oracles, in any avenue to the " Great Mystery." Sophistic rhetoric, from its very nature and function, was bound to reflect the religious spirit of the age, in all its confusion. The ancient myths, indeed, were revived and decked out with rich poetic colouring. Tet it is not the simple, naive, old pagan faith which inspires the rhetorical artist The pantheistic or theosophist doctrines, which were in the air, disturbed the antique character of the piece ^ But the sophist, if he occasionally catches the tone of new mysticism, or even of rationalist interpretation, is nothing if not orthodox on the whole, and he anathematises the impiety of free-thinking philosophy, with the same energy as Aelian. Above all, Aristides is in harmony with the infinite faith in miracle and heavenly vision which was rife.
From whatever cause, the worship of Asclepius had attained an extraordinary popularity in the age of the Anto- nines.* The conditions of health and disease are so obscure, the influences of will and imagination on our bodily states are so marked, that, in all ages, the boundaries between the natursd and the unknowable are blurred and may be easily crossed. The science of medicine, even down to the age of Hippocrates, or the age of Galen, had not abandoned all faith in the magical and mysterious.* Incantations long held their ground beside more scientific remedies. Health being the most precious and the most precarious of earthly blessings, it is not strange that, in an age of revived belief in the super-
* Baumgart, pp. 60, 61. * Philostr. A-poll. Tyan. iii. 44 ; D.
* Id. p. 64. Cass. Ixix. 22, 'Adpiavbs d^ fiayyapetan
* «. c iii. of Pater's Marius the iih riai xal yorirelcus iKCvodrb irore tow J^ncurean, vypoO.
400 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
natural, the god of health should attain a rank even on a level with the great Olympian gods. His temples rose in everj land where Greek or Soman culture prevailed. They weie generally built with an eye to beauty of scenery, or the virtueB of some clear, cold, ancient spring, or other health-giving powers in the site, which might reinforce the more mysterious influences of religion. And in every temple there was a hiemrchy of sacred servants, who guarded a tradition of hieratic ceremonial and of medical science.^ There was the chief priest, who may or may not have been a trained physician. There were the daduchi and pyrophori, who attended to the punctual service of the altars. There were the neoeori, who were probably physicians, and who waited on the patients, interpreting their visions, and often supplementing them by other visions of their own.* There were also, in a lower rank, nurses, male and female, who, if we may judge from Aristides, performed the sympathetic part of our own hospital-nurses.^ The patients came from all parts of the Graeco-Boman world. After certain offerings and rites, the sufferer took his place in the long dormitory, which often con- tained beds for 200 or 300, with windows open all night long to the winds of the south. The sick man brought his bed-coverings, and made his gift on the altar. The lamps were lighted in the long gallery, a priest recited the vesper prayera At a later hour, the lights were extinguished, strict silence was enjoined, and a hope for some soothing vision firom above was left as a parting gift or salutation by the minister as he retired.*
Divination by dreams was one of the most ancient and universal of superstitions in the ]^)agan world.^ It was also (me of the most persistent to the last days of paganism in the West The god of Epidaurus was still visiting his votaries by nighty when S. Jerome was composing his commentary on Isaiah.* Nor is the superstition unnatural. Sleep, the most mysterious of physical phenomena, gives birth to mental states which are a constant surprise. Thoughts and powers which are latent in the waking hours, then start into life with a strange vivid-
^ Caton, Temples and Ritual of * Ariatid. Or. p. 580 (Jebb).
Asklepios, p. 27. * Caton, p. 29.
^ Baumc;art, p. 97 ; cf. Ariatid. Or, ^ Maury, La Magie, p. 281.
p. 674 (Jebb's Ed.), 581. ' S. Hieron. in Is. c. W. p. 482.
HAP. I SUPERSTITION 461
less and energy! Memory and imagination operate with a oice which may well, in an age of faith, be taken for inspira- ion. The illusion of a double personality, which results from he helplessness of the mind to react on the impressions of ense, also easily passes into the illusion of messages and iromptings from powers beyond ourselves. Religious hopes nd cravings may thus easily and honestly seem to be fulfilled. But external causes also reinforced in the ancient world he deceptions of the inner spirit. The dream-oracle was enerally on a site where nature might touch the awe and pagination of the votary. Few could have descended into the loom of the cave of Trophonius without having their fancy prepared for visions.^ Exhalations from secret chasms, as at )elphi and Lebadea, aided by the weird spells of the Nymphs rho haunted such scenes, often produced a physical excite- lent akin to madness. Opiates and potions administered by he priests, with the effect of solemn religious rites, prepared he votary for voices from another world.* Soul and body reie still further prepared for the touch of a Divine hand by igorous fasting, which was enjoined as a preparatory disci- tline in so many mysteries of the renascent paganism.' The leavenly vision could only come to the clear spirit, purged as BUT as might be from the grossness of the flesh.^ 'EyKoifirja-i^: 3r the sake of healing became a great, and probably in the lain, a beneficent institution in the temples of many deities,^ pre- minently in those of Isis, Serapis, and Asclepius. The temple f Serapis at Canopus in Strabo's time was thronged by patients f the noblest rank, and was famous for its miraculous cures.^ Lmong the many attributes of Queen Isis, none made a deeper npression than her benignant power of healing even the most esperate cases.^ Her temples rose everywhere. Her dream iterpreters were famous from the days of Cicero.® In her brine at Smyrna Aristides had many of his most startling xperiences. According to Diodorus, her priests could point > numberless proofs of the power of the great goddess to cure
> Pausan. ix. 89, § 4 ; Max. Tyr. * Max. Tyr. xvi. i. ; Philostr. ApoU,
Has. xiv. 2. Tyan, it 87 ; vi. 11.
« Plat De W. Or, c. 41-46 ; PhUostr. ' ^ee a lUt in Tertullian, De Anvma,
r^> ^^ '• ^ ' '^' ^""^^^ ^ '* • Strab. xvu. 17 (1062). Tagie, p. 237. , ^.^ g.^ . ^^
» Apul. Met, xi. c. 22. • Oic. De Div, i. 68.
462 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book nr
the most inveterate disease. But the great healer was, of course, Asclepius. The remains of his splendid shrine at Epidaurus are a revelation at once of his fame and power, and of the scenes and occupations in which the devout health- seekers passed their days and nights. In his temple on the island in the Tiber, dreams of healing were still sought in the time of lamblichus. His shrine at Pergamum, which was the scene of so many of the strange visions of Aristides, in his many years of struggle with disease, was one of the most famous, and its inspired dreams were sought long afterwards by the emperor Caracalla.^
It would be idle to speculate on the relative effects of sound medical treatment and of superstition, stimulated by more or less pious arts, upon the constitution of the sufferer. The ^drtues of herb or mineral drug, of regulated food and abstinence, of bathing in naturally medicated waters, above all of a continual freshness in the air, must have hecome a tradition in these sacred homes of the god of health. Physical disease is often rooted in moral disorder, and for such troubled, tainted souls, with hereditary poison in vein and nerve, the bright cheerfulness, the orderly calm and confidence of the ritual, which had such a charm for the soul of Plutarch, may have exorcised, for the time, many an evil spirit, and wiped out the memory of old sins. Soothed and relieved in mind and body, the sufferer lay in the dimly lighted corridor, sinking to sleep, with a confidence that the god would some- how make his power felt in visions of the night* Through a sliding panel, hidden in the wall, a dim figure of gracious aspect might glide to the side of his couch, and whisper strange sweet words of comfort. But in many cases, there is no need to assume the existence of sanctified imposture.* A debilitated frame, nerves shattered by prolonged suffering, an im£^ination excited by sacred litany, ghostly counsels and tales of miracle, the all -pervading atmosphere of an immemorial faith, may easily have engendered visions which seemed to come from another world.*
^ Wolff, Dt Nov* Orac, Ael, p. 29. £ju8 sacerdotea fraud ibus famosi oppor-
^ Caton, p. 28. tuue Isidis templo Ponvpeiano oa^M
I ni^ vijn : OK convicti sunt ; ubi ipse Bcalinam vidi
i^ioa. oia 1. JO. secreUm, etc Maury, La Mcurie, pp.
* Wolff, Ik Nov, Orac AeL p. 81, 287-8.
CHAP. I SUPERSTITION 463
But from whatever source the visions came, they had a powerful effect on the imagination, and, through that, on the bodily health. Some of the prescriptions indeed given by these voices of the night may seem to us ludicrous or positively dangerous.^ But the tone and surroundings of these shrines, and the sense of being encompassed by Divine as well as human sympathy, probably counteracted any ill effects of quackery. The calm, serene order, which the hieratic spirit cultivates at its best, the cheerful routine of the sacred service, blending indistinguishably with the ministry to suffering, and consecrating and ennobling it, the confidence inspired by the sedate cheerfulness of the priests and attend- ants, reinforced by the countless cases of miraculous cures recorded on the walls,^ — all this must have had a powerful and beneficent influenca And the visitors were not all invalids. The games and festivals drew together many merely for society and amusement. The theatre at Epidaurus must have provided constant entertainment for a far larger concourse than the patients of the temple.' A healthy regimen, which is abundantly attested,^ with the charms of art and surrounding beauties of hill and woodland, tended of themselves to restore peace and balance to disordered nerves. And the social life, especially to Greeks, was probably the most potent influence of all. We can see from Aristides that troublesome cases were watched by a circle of curious sympathisers.^ In those marble seats, which can still be seen on the site, many a group, through many generations, must have sat listening to music or recitation, or discussing high themes of life and death, or amused with the more trivitd gossip of all gatherings of men.
Amid such scenes Aristides spent thirteen yeai-s of the prime of his manhood. With all the egotism of the self- pitying invalid, he has recorded the miautest details of his ailments. He seems to have been disordered in every organ, dropsical, asthmatic, dyspeptic, with a tumour of portentous size, and agonising pains which reduced him to the extremity of weakness.^ But the extraordinary toughness and vitality
* Cf. Manry, p. 240. * Caton, pp. 40, 88.
« See a list m Caton, p. 86 aq. . Bamngart, p. 101. ' Caton, p. 28 ; Pausan. u. 27, § 5 ; o » r
cf. Strab. yui. 0, § 15. " Gf. Aristid. Or. 586-588 ( Jebb, t L).
404 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
of the man is even more striking than his sufiferings. Aristides regarded health as the greatest of all blessings, the condition on which the value of all other blessings depends. And he acted on the belief. His hundred days journey to Kome is a miracle of endurance.^ Sacked with fever and astlmia, unable to take any food except milk, he struggled along, alter- nately through plains turned into lakes, or across the frozeu Hebrus, amid storm or rain or freezing cold.
The effects of this journey in aggravated suffering &om asthma, dropsy, nervous agony, are described with painful vividness. They were dealt with by the Boman surgeons in a fashion which makes one wonder how the patient survived such laceration.^ The invalid hastened home to Asia by sea The voyage was long and weary, a very Odyssey of storm and wandering. Aristides reached Smyrna in mid- winter, and all the physicians were puzzled to find any alleviation for his troubles.* Henceforth he passed, for thirteen years, from one temple to another, at the bidding of the gods — ^from Smyrna to Pergamum, or Chios, or Cyzicus, or Epidaurus — enduring often frightful hardships by land or sea. The description of his sufferings sometimes excites the suspicion that a warm imagination and the vanity of the literaiy artist have heightened the effect. A tumour of monstrous size,^ agonies of palpitation and breathlessness, the torture of dyspepsia, vertigo, and neuralgia which doubled up his limbs, and seemed to bend the spine outward like a bow^ — these are only a few of the morbid horrors which afflicted him.
The divine prescriptions were often as astounding as the malady was severe. Fresh air, exercise, bathing in the sacred wells, fasting and abstinence, indeed, may often have been sound treatment. But to these were added astonishing prescriptions of food or drugs, purgings and blood-letting which drained the body of its slight remaining strength, and which horrified the attendant physicians.^ But these were
1 Ariatid. Or. SST/E/S/x)! rdt ^^rtlpurro 0epfidis KOfiiaai, 0£, 614, kt\ and CoUeet, (nrb KpwrrdWoVf iredfa ii Xt/iyd^orra. ffist. ad an, 160, in Jebb*8 Ed.
^ lb. 538, Kal T^ot, ol larpol KorirefiMOP * jfj 504
rpA« Tiiy Kinmii Kara. rrX. i i - , x a V^ .
fovror V oSk wrOv^a els r&t nry&t r&t * Ariat Or. 501-8, 506, 631, 6S3.
CHAP. I SUPERSTITION 465
not the worst Again and again, Aristides was enjoined, when in a high fever, to bathe two or three times in an ice-cold river running in full flood, and then race a mile at full speed in the face of a northerly gala He obeyed in spite of all remonstrance, and the doctors and ihis anxious friends could only follow him to await the result of such extraordinary remedies. Strange to relate, their fears and forebodings proved groundless. Seligious excitement, combined with immense vanity and a strange vitality, carried Aristides victoriously through these ordeals,^ and his friends received him at their dose, with an indescribable genial warmth spread- ing through his whole body, and a lightness and cheerfulness of spirit which more than rewarded him for these strange hardships of superstition.
The faith of Aristides must have been very robust. His tortures lasted for nearly thirteen years, during which the divine prescriptions only seemed to add to their poignancy. But he was upheld by the belief that he was a special object of the Divine favour, and he persistently followed Divine recipes, which ordinary human skill and prudence would have rejected. No doubts, such as troubled his attendants, ever crossed his mind. How far his illness was prolonged by this obstinate adherence to the illusions of sleep and superstition,' in the face of expert advice, is a matter on which it would be useless to speculate. It is probable that the imagination and ex- uberant vanity of Aristides made him a more difficult patient than the ordinary people who frequented these shrines of healing. It is also evident that there was a body of more or less skilled medical opinion connected with the cult of Asclepius. Practical physicians came to the temples,* with the benevolence and the curiosity of their craft in all ages, to observe and study, or to advise a cautious interpretation of the revelations of the night. Aristides has preserved the names of some — ^Theodotus, Asclepiacus, and Satyrus. Long observation of the freaks of individual temperament and constitution must have suggested to thoughtful minds, with some instincts of scientific method, that the supernatural vision should be interpreted in the light of experience. An awful dream of Aristides that all his bones
» Arirtid. Or. 621. • Baumgart, p. 101 ; Aristid. Or. p.
* lb, 604-6, 641-2. 650 (Jebb, t. L).
2 H
466 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iv
and sinews must be excised, tamed, in the hands of a &dthfnl attendant, into a prediction of renewed vitality.^ And although some of the nurses, to whom he is so grateful, confirmed his visions by precisely similar revelations of their own,' others, oi the more skilled physicians, openly blamed his too confident reliance on his dreams, and his unwillingness to try the eflTect of more scientific treatment* Their proposals, however, were sometimes so severe and heroic that we may excuse him for preferring on the whole the more patient and gentle methods of the god. The sufiferer was sometimes favoured with epiphanies of Athene, Apollo, Serapis, and other great divinities, exalting him far above the rank of common votaries.^ And Asclepius himself, to whom his special devotion was given, not only lightened bis physical tortures, although after long years, but endowed him with hitherto unknown powers of rhetorical skill and readiness. The god became the patron of his whole professional life.^ And Aristides regarded him as the source of fresh inspiration, in the exercise of that word- craft of which he was the greatest master in his time. It is not hard to discern the meaning of this self-deceptioiL Before Aristides began to visit the temples of the god, he was already a finished rhetor, possessed of all the skill which the Greek schools could impart.® Prostrated by bodily suffering for years, cut off from that life of brilliant display, which was so lavishly rewarded by applauding crowds, the vain and amUtious declaimer had lost not only his bodily health, but all the joy and excitement of rhetorical triumph. Suddenly he found his balance restored ; the tide of energy returned to its old channela He could once more draw music from the almost forgotten instrument. He had once more the full lecture-hall under his spell What wonder that he should feel his powers redoubled when they were recovered, and that he should regard the god who had healed his bodily ailments as the author of a firesh literary inspiration ?
1 Aristid. Or. 553 ; Banmgart, p. 99. Aaklepioe alios verdanke, Leib, Lebeo,
' Aristid. Or, 506, 515; of. Bauxn- und speciell die Gabe der Rede, etc ; ot
gart, p. 122. p. 68, erhebt er ilrn aaoh ala den eigeiit*
' Aristid. Or. 505, tX 8i iptKdXow licheu Yerleiher and Spender Miner
i!;f Tdof drarra M rotf dptlpctfft rednerischen Gabon, etc, p. 69, er dem
voiovnipip, jcrX. Gotte einen starkeren nnd bleibenden
* lb. 529. Einfloss auch auf die Gostaltnng seinei
'^ Banmprt, p. 64, nnd dabei ent- inneren Lobens zaaobreibt.
wickelte sicb der Glanbe, dasa er dem * Id. p. 69.
CHAP. I SUPERSTITION 467
The debt vras repaid in these Sacred Orations.^ Some treat them as the expression of a genuine mystical piety, others are inclined to think that the incorrigible rhetorician is quite as evident as the pious votary.^ It would be an excess of scepticism to doubt that Aristides believed in his visions, and in the beneficent power of the god, for which he was full of pious gratituda Tet the rhetorical spirit of that age was an influence of singular intensity. It mastered not only the faculty of utterance, but the whole mind and life of the rhetorician. The passion to produce a startling or seductive effect on the audience had become a second natura Truth was a secondary matter, not from any moral obliquity, but from the influence of prolonged training. And so, we may retain a belief in the genuine piety or superstition of Aristides, while we may distrust his narrative. The piety or the mystic superstition may not have been less sincere, although it was mingled with egregious vanity, and expressed itself in the careftilly moulded and highly coloured phrases of the schools. Nor should we doubt the piety of Aristides because he deemed himself the special object of Divine favour. On such a principle all prayer for personal benefits would become profane ^otism. And although Aris- tides was profoimdly conscious that he was the first of Greek orators,' he was also profoundly grateful for the Divine grace which had renewed his powers for the glory of God and the delight and profit of mankind. Whether he would have been content to enjoy his mystic raptures without publishing them to the world, is a question which will be variously answered according to the charity and spiritual experience of the inquii*er.
Many another less famous shrine than that of Epidaurus offered this kind of revelation. The gods were liberal in their prophetic gifts in that age, and dreams were as freely sent as they were generaUy expected. There is no more striking example of the superstition of the age than the treatise of Artemidorus on the interpretation of dreams. Artemidorus lived towards the end of the second century. He was a native of Ephesus, but he called himself Daldianus, in order to share his distinction with an obscure little town in Lydia,
^ Ariatid. Or, 612, eMin i^ apx% irpoti- ' On his vanity «. Banmgut, d. 110. v€v 6 $€^ diroypd<p€tp rd ivelpara. The most glaring example is in Or, Sac
4, 591-2, ifyB&ncOt elf, \hfav r^ Oe^, * Bawngart, pp. 112, 128. xcU dt 1^, vi tt
468 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
which was the birthplace of his mother.^ The treatise is in five books, three of which are dedicated to Cassius Maximus, a Soman of rank, who was an adept in this pretended science ; the others are inscribed to the son of the antiior. In spite of absurd credulity, wild and perverted ingenuity, and a cold, quasi-scientific tolerance of some of the worst moral enormities of antiquity, Artemidorus seems to have been an earnest and industrious man, who wrote with the mistaken object of doing a service both to his own age and to posterity.^ Like other pious men of the time, he was afflicted by the profane attitude of the sceptics,' and determined to refute them by the solid proo& of a sifted experience. He also wished to furnish guidance to the crowd, who believed in their visions, but were bewildered from the want of clear canons of interpretation. There was evidently afloat a voluminous oneirocritic literature. But it was, according to Artemidorus, frequently wanting in depth and system,^ and random guesses had too often been the substitute for minute, exhaustive observation and a clear scientific method. Artemi- dorus was inspired to supply the want by a vision from Apollo, his ancestral patron.^ He procured every known treatise on dream&^ He travelled all over Asia, Greece, and Italy, and the larger islands, visiting the great festivals and centres of population, and consulting with all the seers and diviners, even those of the lowest repute. He took the greatest pains to ascertain the fiBLcts of the reported fulfilment of dreams, and to compare and sift the facts of his own observation. No austere scientific student of nature in our day ever took himself more seriously than this collector of the wildest and foulest hallucina- tions of pagan imagination. Artemidorus really believed that he was founding an enduring science for the guidance of all coming generations.
Tet the foundation of it all is essentially unscientific. To Artemidorus dreams are not the result of natural causes, of physical states, or of the suggestions of memoiy and
^ Artemid. OneWoerU, iii 66. ^ Artemid. OneimcrU. od 7^^ drd
» Ih. i. 1, ««A r^ e^XFVfrrlaw 06 fU»<» ir«lpaij,\>: airocxeSiditiwrn . . . oCtuh
Thp iifiUiiP o*r^ dXXd Kal rOr furhretra *^g*^-.. ^J*®**, - il^..!IZ^ A^n^'^i^ * /ft. iL 70, ad fin,
' Ih. Qt Tertollian, De An. 46, 47. o^k ^Kntffdfiijp 6»€tpoKpiTiKfm,
CHAP. I SUPERSTITION 469
assodatioiL They are sent directly by some god, as a promise or warning of the future. Nor should any apparent failure of the prediction tempt ns to impeach the truthfulness of the Divine author. Artemidorus affirms as emphatically as Plato, that the gods can never lia^ But although they sometimes ex- press themselves plainly, they also frequently veil their meaning in shadowy, enigmatic form, in order to test men's faith and patience.^ Hence there is need of skilled interpretation, which demands the widest observation, acute criticism combined with reverent faith, and deference to ancient custom and traditional lore. It is curious to see how this apostle of what, to our minds, is a pestilent superstition, pours his scorn on the newer or lower forms of divination.' The Pythagorean dream-readers, the in- terpreters from hand and face and form, the interpreters of sieve and dish and dice, are all deceivers and charlatans. The old formulated and accredited lore of birds and sacrificial entrails, of dreams and stars and heavenly portents, should alone be accepted by an orthodox faith. It is needless to say that Artemidorus believed in astrology as he believed in oneiro- mancy. Both beliefs go back to the infancy of the race, and both extended their dominion far into the Middle Ages.^
It would be impossible, in our space, to give any detailed conception of the treatment of dreams by Artemidorus. Nor would the attempt reward the pains; the curious specialist must read the treatise for himsel£ He will find in it one of the most astonishing efforts of besotted credulity to disguise itself under the forms of scientific inquiry. He will find an apparently genuine piety united with an unprotesting record of the most revolting prurience of the lawless fancy. He will find a subtlety and formalism of system and distinction worthy of a finished schoolman of the fourteenth century, and all employed to give order and meaning to the wildest vagaries of vulgar fancy. The classification of dreams by Artemidorus is a great effort, and is followed out in an exhaustive order. Every possible subject, and many that seem to a modem almost inconceivable, are catalogued, each in its proper place, with the appropriate principles of explanation. The hierarchy
^ Artemid. Oneirocrit, iv. 71. ffo^^Smpoi 6vm ^/mp atrOnr oddh iffi&t
' 2b, dXXd irori fUp dxXu>f \dyowri, ifiioffcwlffTin podKorrtu XafAfidt^Uf, Trark ^ aMcffwrau . . . iir€iSh ical ' lb, U. 69. * Maury, p. 241.
470 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM loOK nr
of gods and heroes in their various grodes, the orbs of the sky, the various parts of the bodily frame, from the hair of the head to the toes and nails, the various oocapations and multiform incidents in tiie life of man from the cradle to the grave,^ the whole list of animals, plants, and drags which serve his uses, — all these things, and many others which might conceivably, or inconceivably, enter into the fabric of a dream, are painfully collected and arranged for the guidance of the future inquirer. And this demands not only an effort of logical classification, but also an immense Imow* ledge of the customs and peculiarities of different races,* the special attributes of each of the gods, and a minute acquaintance with tiie natural history of the time. For, special circumstances and detsils cannot be safely n^lected in the interpretation of dreams. It may make tJie greatest difference whether tiie same dream comes to a rich man or a poor man,' to a man or a woman, to a married woman or a virgin, to old or young, to king or subject To one it may mean the greatest of blessings, to another calamity or death. For instance, for a priest of Isis to dream of a shaven head is of good omen ; to any other person it is ominous of eviL^ To dream that you have the head of a lion or elephant is a prediction of a rise above your natural estate ; but to dream that you have the horns of an ox portends violent death.* To dream of shoemaking and carpentry foretrils happy marriage and friendship, but the vision of a tanner's yard, from its connection with foul odours and death, may foreshadow disgiaoe and disaster.^ To dream of drinking cold water is a whole- some sign; but a fancied draught of hot fluid, as being unnatural, may forbode disease or failure.^ A man dreamt that his mother was bearing him a second time; the issue was that he returned from exile to his motherland, found his mother ill, and inherited her property. Another had a vision of an olive shooting from his head; he developed a vigour and clearness of thought and language worthy of the goddess to whom the olive is sacred.^ It would be wearisome, and even disgusting, to give other examples of this futile and almost
1 Artemid. OneiroerU. iv. Praef. » lb. I 87, 89.
« 76. ii. 4. • lb. I 61.
» lb, L 18, 17. ' lb. i. 66.
^ lb. I 22. • lb. V. IS.
CHAP. I SUPERSTITION 471
idiotic superstition, masquerading as a scienca A painstaking student might easily classify tiie modes of interpretation. They are tolerably uniform, and rest on fancifal but obvious conceits, superficial analogies, mere play upon words and impossible etymologies. The interpretations are as dull and monotonous as the dreams are various and fantastic. Many of these visions seem like the wildest hallucinations of prurient lunacy. It is difficult to conceive what was the ordinary state of mind and the habits of a people whose sleep was haunted by visions so lawless. It is perhaps even harder to imagine a father, with the infinite industry of which he is so proud, compiling such a catalogue for the study of his son.^
Lucian, through the mouth of Momus, pours his scorn on the new oracles which were chanting from every rock, vending their lies at two obols apiece, £tnd overshadowing the ancient glories of the more ancient shrines.^ In the last century of the Bepublic, and in the first century of the Empire, the faith in oracles had suffered a portentous decay. The exultation of the Christian Fathers at the desertion of the ancient seats of prophecy seems to find an echo in the record of heathen authors. Cicero speaks as if Delphi were almost silent' Strabo tells us that Delphi, Dodona, and Ammon had shared in the general contempt which had fBdlen on oracular divina- tion.^ From Plutarch we have seen that in Boeotia, the most famous home of the art, all the oracular shrines were silent and deserted, except that of Trophonius at Lebadea.^ And curious inquirers gave various explanations of this waning faith. Strabo thought that, with the spread of Boman power, the Sibylline prophecies and the Etruscan augury eclipsed the Greek and Eastern oraclea The explanation in Plutarch, as we have seen, is involved in an interesting discussion of the various sources of inspiration, and, in particular, of the office of daemons. One theorist of the positive type attributes the failure of the Greek oracles to the growing depopulation of Greece. It is a question of demand and supply. Others find
^ Artemid. OneiroerU, y. Praef. modo nostra aetate, sed jamdia, jam
' Luc Caneil, Dear, c 12, dXX' i^iy at nihil poaait ease oontemptiaa f
rat \l0os Kol rat fiiafibf xpn^t^^t i^^ * Strab. ix. 8, 4, (419), diXiytitfniTai
Of. Philostr. Apoll, Tyan, ir. 14. «* Ua»Qt koI rb Itpiif, rrX. : vii. 7, 9,
* Oic. i^ Div, iL 57, cor iato modo (828) (Dodona) ; zviL 1, 48 (Ammon).
jam oraoala Delphia non edontor non ' Pint De Ikf, Or. c 5.
472
THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM
BOOKPr
the explanation in physical changes, which have extingaished or diverted the exhalation that used to excite the prophetic powers of the Pythia. Another falls back on the theory of daemonic inspiration, which, mysteriously vouchsafed, may be as mysteriously withdrawn.^
The eclipse of the oracles was really a phase of that pagan unbelief or indifference which tended to disappear towa^ the end of the first century A.D. And the eclipse perhaps was not so complete as it is represented. Cicero himself consulted the Pythia about his future fame, and received an answer which revealed insight into his character.' GrermanicuB in the reign of Tiberius visited the shrine of the Clarian Apollo, and that of Apis at Memphis;' Tiberius tried the sacred lottery at Padua,^ CaUgula that of Fortune at Antium.^ Nero, although he is said to have choked the sacred chasm at Delphi with corpses, had previously sought light from the god on his perilous future.^ Before the altar of the unseen God on Mount Carmel, Vespasian received an impressive prophecy of his coming greatnesa^ Titus had his hopes confirmed in the shrine of the Paphian Yenus.^ When these lords of the world, some of whom were notorious sceptics, vhns paid deference to the ancient homes of prophecy, it may be doubted whether their prestige had been seriously shaken.
Although Delphi had not for many ages wielded the enormous political, and even international, power which it enjoyed before the Persian wars, still, even in the days of its greatest obscurity, it was the resort of many who came to consult it in the ordinary cares of life. Apollonius of Tyana, in the reigu of Nero, visited the old oracular centres, Delphi, Dodona, Abac, and the shrines of Amphiaraus and Trophonius.* They seem to be still active, although the sage had, in fulfilment of his mission, to correct their ritual The newer foundations, like that at Abonoteichos, found it politic to defer to the authority of oracles, such as those of Clarus and Didyma, with a great past^^ If the conquests of Borne for a time obscured their fame, the ease and rapidity of oom-
1 Plut Vt Def, Or, c. S, 88. ' Id. Cic, c. 6. ' Tac. Ann, iL 64. * Suet Tib, c. xir. » Id. CoUig, c. Wii.
• Id. Nero^ xl.
7 Tac Hist, it 78.
• Suet TU, a ▼.
" PhUostr. ApoU, Tyan. !▼. 34. '^ Luc AUx, c 29.
CHAP. I SUPERSTITION 473
munioatioii along the Soman roads, and the safety of the seas, must have swelled the number of their votaries bom all parts of the world. It is a revelation to find a Timgrian cohort at a remote station in Britain setting up a votive inscription in obedience to the voice of the Glarian Apollo.^ If new oracles were springing up in the Antonine age, the old were certainly not quite neglected In the reign of l^jan the shrine of Delphi recovered from its degradation by the violence of Nero.^ And Hadrian, as we have seen, tested the inspiration of the Pythia by a question as to the birthplace of Homer, which was answered by a verse tracing his ancestry to Pylos and Ithaca.' The ancient oracles were in full vigour under the emperors of the third century. Some of the greatest and most venerable — ^Delphi, Didyma, Mallus, and Dodona — were not reduced to silence till the reign of Gonstantine.^
But the old oracles could not satisfy the omnivorous super- stition of the time. The outburst of new oracles may be com- pared, perhaps, to the fissiparous tendencies of Protestantism in some countries, at each fresh revival of religious excitement Any fresh avenue to the " Great Mystery " was at once eagerly crowded. And tiie most recent claimant to inspiration some- times threatened to overshadow the tiudition of a thousand years, and to assert an oecumenical power.
One such case has been recorded and exposed with the graphic skill and penetrating observation of the greatest genius of the age. Lucian's description of the foundation of the new oracle of Asclepius at Abonoteichos in Paphlagonia, if it is wanting in the sympathetic handling which modern criticism has attained or can affect, is an unrivalled revela- tion of tiie superstition of the time. And a brief narrative of the imposture will probably give a more vivid idea of it than any abstract dissertation.
Alexander, the founder, was a man of mean parentage, but of remarkable natural gifts. Tall and handsome in no ordinary degree, he had eyes with a searching keenness, a look of inspiration, and a voice most clear and sweet.^ His mental gifts were equal to his physical charm. In memory, quick
^ Friedl. SiUengeaeh. iii. p. 469. * lb. f»f). 6p 59.
» D. Caaa. Ixiit 14. • Inn. AUvk o. ». 6^m\^ W9M t6
» V. Wolff. De Nw. Orac. Ad. \u 6. yppyti^ «at hinQi^ «<#M^i'«frtt, ktK
474 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
perception, shiewdness, and subtlety, he had few equals. Bat from his early youth, with the affectation of Pythagorean asceticism, he had all the vices which go to make the finished reprobate.^ After a youtii of abandoned sensuality, in concert with a confederate of no better character, he determined to found an orade. The times were fietvourable for such a venture. Never had selfish desire and terror, twin roots of superstition, such a hold on mankind.^ The problem was, where to establish the new shrina It must be founded among a crassly stupid population, ready to accept any tale of the marvellous with the most abandoned credulity.' P&phlagonia seemed to the shrewd observers the readiest prey. Tablets were dug up, which predicted an epiphany of Asclepius at Abonoteichos. A Sibylline oracle, in enigmatic verse, heralded the coming of the god. Alexander, magnificently attired, appeared upon the scene, with all the signs of mysterious insanity, and the Paphlagonians were thrown into hysterical excitement^ Their last new god was fished up fix)m a lake in the form of a young serpent, which had been artfully sealed up in a goose's ^g. When the broken shell revealed the nascent deity, the multitude were in an ecstasy of excitement at the honour vouchsafed to their city. The infant reptile was soon replaced by one full grown, to which a very elementaiy art had attached a human head. It was displayed to the crowds who trooped through the reception-room of the impostor, and they went away to spread throughout all Asia the tidings of the unheard-of miracle.^ Alexander had carefully studied the system of the older oracles, and he proceeded to imitate it. He received inquiries on sealed tablets, and, with all ancient pomp and ceremony of attendance, returned them, apparently untouched, with the proper answer. But Lucian minutely explains the art with which the seal of the missive was dexterously broken and restored.^ A hot needle and a delicate hand could easily reveal the secret of the question, and hide the trick. The oracle was primarily medical. Pre- scriptions were given in more or less ambiguous phrasea The charge for each consultation was, in our money, the
^ Lac. AUx, c. 4, 6. * Ih, o. 9.
^ lb, 0. 8, ^SUn Kvnwiriffap t^w rtaw * lb. o. 12.
it^fHbwiMf piar tw6 duoSy ro&rotp fuyl- ' lb, o. 16>18.
ffiXHP TVfKunfod/uifo^, * Jb, c 20.
caiAF. I SUPERSTITION 476
small fee of a Bhilling.^ Alexander was evidently a shrewd busmess man, and hia moderate charges attracting a crowd of inqnirers, the income of the oracle rose, according to Lucian, to the then enormous sum of nearly £7000 a year.^ But the manager was liberal to his numerous staff of secretaries, inter- preters, and versifiers.' He had, moreover, missionaries who spread hia fEune in foreign lands, and who offered the service of the oracle in recovering runaway slaves, discovering buried treasure, healing sickness, and raising the dead.^ Even the barbarians on the outskirts of civilisation were attracted by his fame, and, after an interval required to find a translator among the motley crowd who thronged from all lands, an answer would be returned even in the Celtic or Syrian tongue.^ The fame of the oracle, of course, soon spread to Italy, where the highest nobles, eager for any novelty in religion, were carried away by the pretensions of Alexander. None among them stood higher than Butilianus, either in character or official rank. But he was the slave of every kind of extravagant superstition.^ He would fall down and grovel along the way before any stone which was shining with oil or decked with garlands. He sent one emissary after another to Abonoteichos to consult tiie new god. They returned, some full of genuine enthusiasm, some hiding their doubts by interested exaggeration of what they had seen. Soon society and the court circle felt all the delight of a new religious sensation. Great nobles hurried away to Paphlagonia, and fell an easy prey to the gracious charm and the ingenious charlatanry of Alexander.^ Some, who had consulted the oracle by questions which might have a sinister meaning, and suggest dangerous ambitions, he knew how to terrify into his ser- vice by the hint of possible disclosure.^ All came back to swell the fEune of the Paphlagonian oracle and to make it fashionable in Italy. But none were so besotted as Butilistnus. This great Boman noble, who had been proved in a long career of office,^
^ Iiaa^2eas.a28,^raffroMjnU/DU0'9dff * lb, c. 51, dXXd ireU papfidpoit ro\-
4^* iKdtmpxP^/J^ ^pf^Xf'^ Kcd^^* 6/3oX(6. Xdctt ixp"!^^ • • • ^vpiarl Ij KeXriffrL
* If I am right in interpreting * lb, o, 80, dXX6irora repl rCtv $eQ9 Lncian's statement, dXX' e^t jrrd 4 rttriffrmiait, ktX,
6kt^ ftvpiddas igdffTov irovt IfSpoi^ep, ^ 7ft. c. 81.
' Laa Alex, c. 28 dvajof itfe/up * ift. a 82. iicdrrtp rb Kar^ i^lop. * ib. e, 90, 4v iroXXotr rd^t d^iffra-
* lb. c 24. fffjJifot.
476 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM booki?
at the mature age of sixty, stooped to wed the supposed daughter of the vulgar charlatan by Selene, who had honoured him with the love which she gave of old to Endymion!^ And Butilianus henceforth became the stoutest campion of Alexander against all assaults of scepticism. For, in spite of the credulity of the crowd and of the visitors from Bome, there was evidently a strong body of sturdy dissent There were, in those days, followers of Epicurus even in Paphlagonia, and, by a strange freak of fortune, the followers of Christ found themselves making common cause against a new outbreak of heathenism with the atheistic philosophy of the Garden.^ An honest Epicurean once convicted Alexander of a flagrant deception, and narrowly escaped being stoned to death by the fanatics of Paphlagonia.' One of the books of Epicurus was publicly burnt in the agora by order of Alexander, and the ashes cast into the sea. Lucian himself, with his sly, amused scepticism, tested and exposed the skill of the oracle at the most imminent risk to his life.^
But in spite of all exposure and opposition, the orade, managed with such art and supported with such blind enthusiasm, conquered for a time tiie Boman world. It was a period of calamity and gloom. Plague and earthquake added their horrors to the brooding uncertainty of the dim conflict on the Danube.^ The emissaries of Alexander went everywhere, exploiting the general terror. Prediction of coming evil was safe at such a time ; any shred of comfort or hope was eagerly sought for. A hexameter verse, promising the help of ApoUa was inscribed over every doorway as an amulet against the awful pestilence of 166 A.D. Another ordered two lion's cubs to be flung into the Danube, to check the advance of the Maroo- manni^ Both proved dismal failures, but without shaking the authority of the impostor, who found an easy apology in the darkness of old Delphic utterances. He established mysteries after the model of Eleusis, from which Christians and EpicureaDS were excluded under a solemn ban. Scenes of old and new mythologies were presented with brilliant efiects — ^the labour of
> Luc AUx. c 85. * i(. c 46.
"' lb. c. 88, ef Tif &$wt 1j XfHoriaw^ * i&. cc. 58 sqq.
6ftyli^, kt\, : cf. 25, \4yw d04w i/irt- ^^ CapitoL M. Ant. oo. 22, 17.
rXijadiu koI XfMTuufCaw rdr ILhrrWf jcrX. ' Luo. Alex, 00. 80-48.
CHAP. 1 SUPERSTITION 477
Leto, the birth of Apollo, the birth of Asdepius, the epiphany of Glycon, the new wondrous serpent-deity of Abonoteichos, the loves of Alexander and Selene. The second Endymion lay sleeping, as on Latmus in the ancient story, and the moon goddess, in the person of a great Boman dame, descended from above to woo a too real earthly lover.^
Lucian's history of the rise of the new oracle in Paphla- gonia is not, perhaps, free from some suspicion of personal antipathy to the founder of it. He attributes to Alexander not only the most daring deceit and calculating quackery, but also the foidest vices known to the ancient world. These latter charges may or may not be true. Theological or anti- theological hatred has in all ages too often used the poisoned arrow. And the moral character of Alexander has less interest for us than the spiritual condition of his many admirers and votaries. He can hardly be acquitted of some form of more or less pious imposture. How far it was accompanied by real religious enthusiasm is a problem which will be variously solved, and which is hardly worth the trouble of investigation, even if the materials existed for a certain answer. But the eager readiness of a whole population to hail the appearance of a new god, and the acceptance of his claims by men the most cultivated and highly placed in the Boman Empire, are &cts on which Lucian's testimony, addressed to contemporaries, cannot be rejected. Nor is there anything in our knowledge of the period from other sources which renders the thing doubtful. Creative mythology had revived its activity. Not long before the epiphany of Qlycon, in a neighbouring part of Asia Minor the Apostles Paul and Barnabas, after the miracidous cure of the impotent man, had difficulty in escaping divine honours. The Carpocratians, a Gnostic sect, about the same time built a temple in honour of the youthful son of their founder.* The com -goddess Annona first appears in the first century, and inscriptions, both in Italy and Africa, were set up in honour of the power who presided over the commissariat of the Boman mob.' The youthful favourite of Hadrian, after his mysterious death in the waters of the Nile, was glorified by instant apotheosis.
» Luc AUx, c 88. » Or. Hena, 1810, 6820 ; cf. Preller,
» FriedL SiUmguch, iiL 456. Bom. Myth. (Tr.), p. 416.
478 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book k
His statues rose in every market-place and temple court ; his soul was supposed to have found a home in a new star in the region of the milky way ; temples were built in his honour, and the strange cult was maintained for at least a hundred years after any motive could be found for adulation.^ The Cynic brothers, and the gaping crowd who stood around the pyre of Peregrinus at Olympia were eager, as we have seen, to hail the flight of a great soul to join the heroes and demigods in Olympus.' The cult of M. Aurelius was maintained by an enthusiasm very different from the conventional apotheosis of the head of the Boman State. We are told that he was adored, by every age and sex and class, long after his death. His sacred image found a place among the penaCes of eveiy household, and the home where it was not honoured was of more than suspected piety. Down to the time of Diocletian, the saintly and philosophic emperor, who had preached an imperturbable indifference to the chances and changes of life, was believed to visit his anxious votaries with dreams of promise or warning.^
Maximus of Tyre may have been guilty of no exaggeration when he reckoned the heavenly host as thrice ten thousand^ The cynical voluptuary of Nero's reign, who said that a town of Magna Graecia was inhabited by more gods than men, only used a comic hyperbole to enforce a striking fact,^ The anthropomorphic conceptions of Deity, which were prevalent, easily overleapt the interval between the human and Divine. The crowds of the Antonine age were as ready to recognise the god in human form as the Athenians of the days of Pisistratus, who believed that they saw in the gigantio Phye an epiphany of the great goddess of their Acropolis, leading the tyrant home.^ In the minds of a philosophic minority, nurtured on the theology of Plato, there might be the dim conception of one awful and remote Power, far removed from the grossness of earth, far above the dreams of mythologic poetry and the materialist imagination of the masses. Tet
1 D. Gaas. bdx. 11 ; of. Gregoror. penates . . . saorilef^ judioatoi «t
Hadrian, JO, 128. qui ^ua imaginem in sua domo dob
^ Luo. Ve McrU Peregr, c 29. kabmt.
* Jul. Capitol. M, AnL c 18, « Max. Tyr. Diss, ziv. 8.
hodieque in moltiB domibns M. An- ^ PetroD. Sat, 17.
tonini statoae oonsistant inter deos * Herod, i. 60.
CHAP. I SUPERSTITION 479
even philosophy, as we have already seen, had succumbed to the craving for immediate contact, or for some means of com- munication, with the Infinite Spirit The daemons of Plutarch and Maximus of Tjrre were really a new philosophic mythology, created to give meaning and morality to the old gods. These hosts of baleful or ministering spirits, with which the Platonist surrounded the life of man, divine in the sweep of their power, human in their passions or sympathies, belong really to the same order as the Poseidon who pursued Odysseus with tempest, or the Moon goddess who descended on Latmus to kiss the sleeping Endymion. Anthropomorphic paganism was far from dead ; it was destined to live openly for more than three hundred years, and to prolong a secret life of subtle influence under altered forms, the term of which who shall venture to fix ?
The daemons of the Platonic philosophers find their counter- part in the popular cult of genii. If there was a visible tendency to syncretism and monotheistic faith in the second century, there was a no less manifest drift to the endless multiplication of spiritual powers. The tendency, indeed, to create divine representatives of physical forces and dim abstract qualities was from early ages congenial to the Soman mind. All the phenomena of nature — every act, pursuit, or vicissitude in human life— found a spiritual patron in the Soman imagination.^ But the tendency received an immense impulse in the age with which we are dealing, and the inscriptions of the imperial period reveal an almost in- exhaustible fertility of religious fancy. Every locality, every society and occupation of men, has its patron genius, to whom divine honours are paid or recorded, — the canton, the muni- cipality, the curia ; the spring or grove ; the legion or cohort or troop ; the college of the paviors or smiths or actors ; the emperors, or even the great gods themselves.^
The old gods of Latium still retained a firm hold on the devotion of the simple masses, as crowds of inscriptions record. But ancient religion, in its cruder forms, divided and localised the Divine power by endless demarcations of place and function. Although the Soman centurion or merchant might
1 Preller, Myth, Itom, p. 65, 66, (Neronis), 198 (Arrernoram), 2204
8S7. (CoL Ostienna), 689 (munioipii), 1704
' Cf. Or. Henz, Ind. pp. 27, 28 ; v, (legionii), 4118 (paTimentariorum),
espeoially 1780 (genins Jovia), 1812 6628 (fontis).
480 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
believe in the power of his £Eumliar gods to follow him with their protection, and never forgot them, still each region, to which his wanderings carried him, had its peculiar spirits^ who wielded a special potency within their own domain, and whom it was necessary to propitiata On hmidreds of provindal inscriptions we can read the catholic superstition of the Roman legionary. The mystery of desert or forest, the dangers of march and bivouack, stimulated his devotion. If he does not know the names of the strange deities, he will invoke them collectively side by side with the gods whom he has been taught to venerata He will adore the "genius loci," ^ or all the gods of Mauritania or of Britain. And so the deities of Alsace and Dacia and Lusitania, of the Sahara and Cumberland, easily took their place in his growing pantheon.' They were constantly identified with the great figures of Greek or Soman mythology. Many an inscription is dedicated to Apollo Grannus of Alsace, whom Caracalk invoked for the recovery of his health, along with Serapis and Aesculapius.' Apollo Belenus, a favourite deity in Southern Gaul, was the special patron of Aquileia.^ Batucardus and Cocideus received vows and dedications in Cumberland and Westmorland, Arardus and Agho in the Pyrenees, Abnoba in the Black Forest ; ^ and many another deity with strange, out- landish name, like their provincial votaries, were honoured with sacred Boman citizenship, and took their places, althongji in a lower grade, with Serapis of Alexandria or Aesclepius of Epidaurus. The local heroes were also adored at wayside shrines or altars, which met the traveller in lonely passea In the heart of the Nubian desert, inscriptions, scratched on obelisk or temple porch, attest the tdl-embracing faith of the Boman legionary.^ At Carlsbourg in Transylvania, a legate of the 5 th Legion records his own gratitude to Aesculapius and all the gods and goddesses of the place, and that of his wife and daughter, for the recovery of his sight^ A praetorian prefect, visiting the hot springs of Vif left a graceful inscription to
1 Or, Uenz, 2135, Sei Deo Sei Deivae * Or, Henz, 1997-2001 ; ct D. Oul
Sao. etc. ; 1580, Aesoulapio et Hygiae Izxvii. 15.
caeterisQue diis deabusque hujas loci * Or, Henz, 828, 1967.
Salutaribos ; 5902, Hospitibaa diia » ih, 1959, 1986, 1954 ; o£ CLL
Maariois et genio looi, etc xii. 1556, 8097 ; Tiii 9195, 4578, 8804.
• FriedL SiUengekK. iiL pp. 4S&-4.
' QL Tertiill. ApoL o. 24. ? Or, Henz, 1580.
CHAP. I SUPERSTITION 481
the gods of the eternal fire.^ A legate of the 6th L^on returns pious thanks to Hercules and the genitu loci, at the baths in Dacia sacred to the hero.' Many a slab pays honour to the njrmphs who guarded the secret spring, especially where a source, long since forgotten, had resumed its flow.' A chief magistrate of Lambesi is specially grateful that the town has been refireshed by a new fountain during his year of office.^ The heroes of poetic legend were still bdieved to haunt the scene of their struggles. Apollonius once spent a night in ghostly converse with the shade of Achilles beside his tomb in the Troad, and was charged by the divine warrior to convey his reproaches for the neglect of his worship in the old Thessalian home of the Myrmidons.' The Troad had a hero of much later date, the proconsul Neryllinus, who was believed to deliver oracles and to heal the sick.^
In a time of such vivid belief in the universal presence of divine beings, faith in miracle was a matter of course. Christian and pagan were here at least on common ground. Nay, the Christian apologists did not dispute the possibility of pagan miracles, or even of pagan oracular inspiration. It is curious to see that Origen and Celsus, as regards the pro- bability of recurring miracle, are on very much the same plane of spiritual belief, and that the Christian apologist is fighting with one arm tied. He is disabled &om delivering his assaults at the heart of the enemy's position. The gods of heathenism are still to him living and potent spirits, although they are spirits of eviL^ The pagan daemonology, on its worse side, had been accepted by the champion of the Church. Yet it is hard to see how, on such principles, he could deal with the daemon of the ApoUine shrine at Delphi, when he denounced the Spartan Glauciis for the mere thought of a breach of faith to his friend,' or the daemon who lurked under the pure stately form of Athene Polissouchos, when she threw
1 Or. ffenz. 5689. ^ Orig. 0. Celtum, lib. iii p. 124,
' lb 1560 ^ Spencer ; lib. Tii p. 884, Triedl.
» d m2,'4, 7;Nymphi.obreditam "'.^.f^' ^ Aug. Z). CTk. S. xa 28
Aoaamm. etc. qtus lU stultus est qm non intelligat
^ThKTKfi ' ' ' *^<*'^*^® simili ab impuria dae-
10. 0708. monibuB ita Mne reaponaa, etc ; cf.
B Philoatr. ApoU. Tffon. ir. 16, viii. 22, mirabilibnaetudlacibiiaaiffnii
OerroXol ydp rd ivaylaftara xp^ow ff^ giye factonmi aire praediotorum aeoa
roX^ iKKtXoircurl auu. ae esse persnaaerant.
• Fried!. Sittaigekh. iii. p^ 479. « Herodot. vi 86.
2 r
48S THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
a maiden goddess's protection around the Antigones of Atbuis. In the field of miraole in the second century the heathen could easily match the Christian. With gods in every grove and fountain, and on every mountain summit ; with gods breathing in the winds and flashing in the lightning, or the ray of son and star, heaving in the earthquake or the November storm in the Aegean, watching over every society of men congregated for any purpose, guarding the solitary hunter or traveller in the Alps or the Sahara, what is called miracle became ts natural to the heathen as the rising of the sun. In fisu^ if the gods had not displayed their power in some startling way their worshippers would have been shocked and forlorn. But the gods did not fail their votaries. Unquestioning and imperious faith in this kind is always rewarded, or can tdways explain its disappointments. The Epicurean, the Cynic, or the Aristotelian, might pour their cold scorn on tales of wonder An tUumind like Lucian, attached to no school, and living merely in the light of clear cultivated sense, might shake his sides with laughter at the tales which were vouched for by a spiritualist philosophy. But the drift of the time was against all such protests. The Divine power was everywhere, and miracle was in the air.
Enough has been said of the dreams and signs and omens which in the first and second century heralded every accession to the throne and every death of a prince, and which even Tacitus records with more or less vacillating faith. Enooj^ too, has been said of the miracles of healing which weie wrought by the sons of Asclepius in his many shrines from Pergamum to the island in the Tiber. The miracles wrou^ by Vespasian at Alexandria are the most hackneyed example of belief in miracle, because the tale is told by the greatest master of vivid narrative in a book which every educated man has read. The sensible Vespasian was not coniBdent of his power to give energy to the impotent, even on the strength of a dream sent by Serapis, just as he jested on his deathbed about his approaching apotheosis. But the efBoiencf of the imperial touch was vouched for by eye-witnesses, to whom Tacitus would not refuse his credence. The chronicler of the age of Diocletian has surrounded the death-bed of Hadrian with similar wonders. A blind man fix>m Pannonis
CHAP. I SUPERSTITION 488
came and touched the fever-wracked emperor, and immediately regained his sight The l^end of the Thundering Legion was long the battle-ground of opposing faiths equally credulous, and equally bent on securing the credit of supernatural powera The timely rainfall was attributed with equal assurance to the incantations of an Egyptian sorcerer, to the prayers of the believers in Jupiter, or the prayers of the believers in Christ Apuleius, who was himself prosecuted for practising the black art, has filled his Thessalian romance with the most astounding tales of fantastic sorcery. He may have copied other lawless romances, but he would hardly have given such space to these weird arts if his public had not had an uneasy belief in them. The home of Medea in the days of M. Aurelius was a veritable witch's cave : the air is tremulous with superstitious fear : everything seems possible in the field of miraculous metamorphosis or monstrous vice. If Apuleius had meant to discredit superstition by wedding it to disgust- ing sensuality, he could hardly have succeeded better. But he was more probably bent, with perverted skill, on pro- ducing a work which might allure imaginations haunted by the ghosts of hereditary sensuality and a spiritual terror revived in redoubled force. An Egyptian priest with tonsure and linen robes raises a dead man to life who has been "floating on the Stygian streams.*' Or you are admitted to a witch's laboratory, open to all the winds and stored with all the wreckage of human life — timbers of ships splintered on cruel rocks, the curdled blood and mangled flesh of murdered men, toothless skulls gnawed by beasts of prey. You see the transformation going on before your eyes under the magic of mysterious unguents, the feathers springing from the flesh, or the human sinking into the ass's form. Tales like these, which to us are old wives' tales, may have had a strange charm for an age when human life was regarded as the slave of fate, or the sport of the inscrutable powers of the unseen universe.
CHAPTEB II
BELIEF IN IMMOBTALITT
A ORSAT part of the chann of those oriental reUgiona, on the study of which we are about to enter, lay in the assnranoe which they seemed to give of an immortal life. It would, therefore, appear a necessary preface to such a review to ex- amine some of the conceptions of the state of the departed which the missionaries of Isis and Mithra found prevalent in the minds of their future votaries. Immortality, in any worthy sense, is inseparable from the idea of God. And the conception of continued life must always be shaped by the character of a people's beliefs as to the powers of the unseen world. A pantheon of dim phantasms or abstractions wiU not promise more than a numb spectral future to the human shaick The nectar and ambrosia of Olympian feasts may have thdr human counterpart in an " eternal debauch." The Platoniat wiD find his eternal hope in emancipation from the prison of the fleA, and in the immediate vision of that Unity of all beauty, troth, and goodness, which is his highest conception of God. Bat not only does religion necessarily colour the conoeption of the eternal state : it may also furnish the warrant for a bdief in it And a religion which can give men a firm ground tat that faith will have an immense advantage over others whidi are less clear and confident as to another world. It is gepe^ ally admitted that the long array of philosophic argamflnti for immortality have by themselves little convincing powa They are not stronger, nor perhaps so strong as the argument fix>m the wish for continued life, inveterate in the human spirit, on which Plutarch laid so much stress.^ Even amid the
^ Pint Non poiae tuav. vivi, etc. o. 26 aq. ; Ik Ser, Nwn, Find. c. 18.
484
CHAP. 11 BEUEF IN IMMORTALITY 486
triomphant dialectic of the Phtudo, an undertone of doubt in any human proof of immortality is sometimeB heard, along with the call for some "divine doctrine" as a bark of safety on perilous seas.^ The inextinguishable instinct of humanity craves for a voice of revelation to solve the mystery of life and deatL
The Soman spirit, down to the Antonine age, had been the subject of many influences which had inspired widely various Ideas of the Aiture state. And the literary and funerary remains from Nero to M. Aurelius are full of contradictions on the subject. Nor, in the absence of authoritative revela- tion on a field so dark to reason, is this surprising. Even Christian teaching, while it offers a sure promise of a life to come, has not lifted the veil of the great mystery, and the material imagery of the Apocalypse, or the shadowed hints of Jesus or S. Paul, have left the believer of the twentieth century with no clearer vision of the life beyond the tomb than that which was vouchsafed to Plato, Cicero, Virgil, or Plutarch. '^We know not what we shall be," is the answer of every seer of every age. Something will always " seal the lips of the Evangelist," as the key of the Eumolpidae closed the lips of those who had seen the vision of Eleusia* The pagans of the early Empire were thus, in the absence of dogma and ecclesi- astical teaching, free to express, with perfect frankness, their unbelief or their varying conceptions of immortality, according to the many influences that had moulded them. Nor could these influences be kept apart even in the same mind. Even the poet seer, who was to be the guide of Dante in the shades, has fiuled to blend the immemorial faith of the Latin race with the dreams of future beatitude or anguish which came to him from Pythagorean or Platonic teaching.' In the sixth book of the Ameid the eschatologies of old Bome and Greece are com- bined, but not blended, with the doctrines of transmigration and purgatorial expiation descending from Pythagoras or the Orphic mystica Virgil, in fact, mirrors the confusion of beliefs which prevailed in his own age, and which pre-eminently characterised the age of the Antonines.
1 Plat Phaed. 85 D, tl fi^ ris ddrouro ^ Sonh. 0.0, 1065.
Aff^a\4cTepw erl ^paioripov dx^Tos ' Selkr*8 FirgU, p. 867 ; of. Boianer,
in \irfov Btiou riybs diaxopcv^rai. Bsl. Bom, i. 867.
486
THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM
BOOK If
Along with other archaic elements of the Latin faith, the cult of the Manes held its ground, especially in secluded homes of old Italian piety. The most ancient Indo-European ccbi- ception of the state after death was that of a continuance or faint, shadowy reproduction of the life on earth ; it was not that of a vast and mysterious change to a supernatural order. The departed spirit was believed to linger in a dim existence in the vault or grave near the feuniliar homestead.^ The tomb is not a temporary prison, but an everlasting home,* and often provides a chamber where the living members of the family or clan may gather on solemn days around the ashes of tiM dead.^ Provision is made for the sustenance of this spectnl life. Vessels for food and drink, the warrior^s arms, the work- man's tools, the cosmetics of the lady, the child's playthings, are buried with them.^ Or they are figured on their tombs cheerfully engaged in their familiar crafts,' not wiUi folded hands, and calm, expectant faces, like the marble forma which lie in our cathedral aisles awaiting the Hesunection.
With such views of the tomb, the perpetual guardianship of it became to the Soman a matter of supreme momenta It is a chapel or an altar, as well as a last homa^ It is the meeting-place, in faint ghostly communion, of the society which embraced, by its solemn rites, the membeis of the houaebokl church in the light or in the shades. All the cautions finms of Boman law are invoked to keep the sepulchre, with its garden and enclosure, from passing into alien handa. Its site is exactly described, with the minutest measnremonti, and the intruder or the alienator is threatened with cuzaes or with fines, to be paid into the public treasury/ Here, among his children and remotest descendants, among hia fireedmen and freedwomen, the Boman dreamed of resting for ever undisturbed.^ And many an appeal comes to us from the original slab not to violate the eternal peaca^ What that dim
^ Cio. Ttife. i. 16, sab terra cfiiBabaiit raUauAin vitam agi mortuorom ; of. F. de UoulaDges, Xa QiU Ant p. 8.
* Or. R«nz, 4525.
' /(. 4488, poatiomn com apparitorio^ et compitam a solo peonn. sua feoenmt, etc. ; CI. 4858 ; Petron. o. 71.
« Marq. Priv, I 867.
* Of. Duray, Hid. Ram. y. 687.
• Aesoh. Ch4)eph. 03, 4SS ; F. dt Coolangea, La CiUAnU p. 16.
^ Or. ffenx, 7864, 7888, 4076, 4417, 4422.
" lb. 4428, somno aetamo Mcr. . . feoenmt sibi et snis libertia libeiU* basque, etc., 4681, 4485.
> lb. 4781, 8, 5, 6, 4790, qnisqw boo sustulerit aut laeserit ultimai suorum moriatur.
CHAF, II BELIEF IN IMMORTAUTY iff!
life beneath the marble or the sod, at least in the later times, was conceived to be, how far it involyed a more or less vivid consdonsnees of what was passing in the world above, how figr it was a numb repose, ahnost passing into *' the eternal sleep,** seems to be uncertain. The phrases on the tomb in all ages are apt to pass into conventional forms, and personal temperament and imagination must always give varying colour to the picture. Such phrases as " eternal sleep," however, did not probably at any time imply complete imconsciousness. The old Latin faith that the Manes had a real life and some link of sympathy with the living was still strong and vivid in an age which was eager to receive or answer voices from the world beyond the senses. The wish to maintain, in spite of the severance and shock of death, a bond of communion between the living and the departed was one of the most imperious instincts of the Latin race. It was not a mere imagination, projected on far distant years, which craved for the yearly offering of violets and roses, or the pious ave of the passing traveller.^ The dwellers in the vault still remained members of the family, to which they are linked for ever by a dim sympathy expressed in ritual communion. Every year, on the dies parentcUes in February, there was a general holiday, cheerfully kept in honour of all those whose spirits were at peace.* On the eighth day, the festival of eara cognatio, there was a family love-feast, in which quarrels were forgotten, and the members in the spirit-world joined in the sacred meaL But besides this public and national commemoration, the birth- day of each departed member was observed with offerings of wine and oil and milk. The tomb was visited in solemn procession; dead and living shared the sacred fare ; flowers were scattered, and with an ave or a prayer for help and good fortune, the shade was left to its renewed repose.^ Many a slab makes anxious provision for these communions, and the offering of violets and roses in their season.^
But the Boman in his tomb longed to be near the sound of
^ Or. ffenz. 4776, 4419, 4420, 4415, ' Or. Iletu. 4414, 4417, nam can-
4737; T. LolliuB poflitas propter viam tores sabstitaam qui veecantnr ez at dicaat praetenentes, Lolli ave, of. horam hortoram redita natali mto et 4745. praebeant rosam in aetemam. Hot
naqae dividi neqae alienari volo.
> Fowler, Him, Fatiwdi, p. 807. ^ Ih. 4084, 4100, 4420.
488
THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM
BOOK I?
busy human life, and to fed the tread of pious feet, which might turn aside for a moment to salute even a stranger^s memory. This feeling is expressed in the long rows of vaults which line so many of the great roads, the Via Appia^ or the way from Pompeii to NoW There were many like that Htm Lollius who had himself laid dose to the road into Aquae Seztiae, that the passers might for ever greet his spirit with an aw} Others leave a prayer for all good things to thoee who will stop an instant and read the l^nd ; "may the earth lie light upon them when they too depart" ' The horror of the lonely soul, cut off from the kindly fellowship of the living, and lingering on in a forgotten grave, to which no loving hand should ever more bring the libation or the violets in spring, which should one day awake no memory or sympathy in any human heart, was to the old Boman the worst tenor in deatL This passion for continued memory, especially in great benefactors of their kind, is used by Cicero as an argument for immortality,^ and the passion for enduring life blends indistinguishably with the wish to be long remembered. Even Epicurus, the apostle of annihilation, made provision in his last testament for yearly offerings in honour of himself and Metrodorus his disciple — a curious instance of agnostic conformity.' The passion for remembrance was responded to by the dutiful devotion of many generations. The cult of the dead long survived in the cult of martyrs, and the pagan feasting at their tombs disturbed and perplexed S. Augustine and S. Paulinus of Nola.'
The old Boman thought of his departed friends as a com- pany of good and kindly spirits, who watched over the family on earth. But there was another conception of spirits in the other world, whether derived from the gloomy superstition of Etruria, or descending from days anterior to orderly devotion to the dead.^ The Lemures were a name of fear. They
1 Marq. Frim, L 862 ; Mau, F(miptii^ p. 421 acm. ; of. Cic T%uc i. 16.
* Or. Meiu, 4787.
* lb. 7896, 7402, vivite felioas qui legitis.
* Cio. Tiue. I 12, 27, quia (oaere- moniaa aepaloromm) ingeniia praediti neo tanta mm ooluiaaent, neo violataa tam inezpiabili religione lanzissent,
nisi haereret in eonun mentilniaiiioftai non interitam ease omnia tollenteiB, eto.
' Aelian, Fr. p. 1028 (Gronoy.).
* S. Panlin. l7oL Cfarm, 27 ; a Aug. Ep. 22, Serm. y. zyii. ; ot Sidon. Apoll. V. 17 ; Bingham, Aniiq, qf Ckr. Church, ii p. 1165.
7 Fowler, ]Umi. Fuiivah, p. lOS.
CHAP. II BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 489
were dark, malevolent spirits who craved for blood, as they had departed this life by a violent end Their festival, the Lemnria in May, was quite distinct from the festival of the Manes, and the household ritual for laying the ghosts by the spitting of black beans and a ninefold form of exorcism savours of a far-gone age. These maleficent powers were propitiated by blood-"— especially by the blood of men in the combats of the arena.
The visitations of these beings, whether as guardian, ministering spirits or as evil powers, were expected and believed in for many ages by all classes of Eoman minds. The andent Latin faith as to the state of the dead was, according to Cicero, confirmed by many tales of spiritual apparition. There are pathetic memorials which end with an appeal in which the lonely wife entreats the lost one sometimes to return in dream or vision.^ One vivacious inscription challenges the sceptic to lay his wager and make the experiment of a summons from the unseen world.^ The spread of cremation instead of burial gradually led to a new conception of the spirit as having a separate existence from the body, now reduced to a handful of grey ashes.' And spirits no longer clung to the body in the family vault, but were gathered in a dim region near the centre of the earth, where, according to gloomy Etrurian fancy, they were under the cruel care of the conductor of the dead, a brutal figure, with wings and long, matted beard, and armed with a hammer, who for ages appeared in human form to dose tlie last ghastly scene in the gladiatorial combats.^ From this limbo of the departed a sort of gateway was provided in every Latin town in the Mtmdus, a deep trench intended to repre- sent an inverted heaven, which was dug before the pomoerium was traced. Its lower aperture was closed by the stone of the Manes, which on three solemn days, in August, October, and November, was lifted to permit the spirits from the deep to pass for a time into the upper world. Thus a public sanction was given to the belief in the commerce between this life and the next*
^ Or, Hem. 4775, horis noctamiB at * Momma. Rom. HisL L p. 189 ;
earn yideam, et possim dnlcius et Tertull. Apol, xv. yidimus et Jovis
oeleriuB apat earn peryenire. fratrom fffadiatoram oadaveia cum
^ Ih. 7846. malleo deanoentem.
3 Marq. Priv. i pp. 488-9 ; Preller,
JUnn, Myth, (Tr.), p. 881. * Fowler, Bam, FuUvals, p. 211.
i90 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM iook i?
Cicero had said that the Mth in immortali^ waa sustained by the fact of spirits returning to the world of sense. In the first and second centuries there was no lack of such aids to faith. Apparitions became the commonest facts of life, snd only the hardiest minds remained incredulous about them. Philosophers of all schools, except the Epicurean^ were swept into the current. The FkHagufwitA of Lucian is a brilliant effort to ridicule the superstition of the age, but the attack would have been discredited if it had not had a foandation of fiEtct. There, around the sick-bed of Euciates^ himself saturated with philosophy, are gathered a Stoic, a Peripatetic, a Pythagorean, a Platonist, and a trained physician.^ And they r^ale one another with the most weird and exdtiDg tales of the marvellous. Ion, the Platonic student^ has seen the exorcism of a black and smoky daemon.^ Eucrates has seen such spirits a thousand times, and, from long habits has lost all fear of them. At vintage time, he once saw a gigantic Gorgon figure in the woods in broad daylight, and by the turning of a magic ring had revealed to him the golf of Tartarus, the infernal rivers, and been even able to recognise some of the ghosts below.^ On another day, as he lay upon his bed reading the Phaedo^ Ms ** sainted wife," who had recently died, appeared and reproached him because, among all the fineiy which had been burnt upon her pyre, a single gold-spangiled shoe, which slipped under the wardrobe, had been forgotten.^ Plutarch reports, apparently with perfect faith, the appearance of such spectral visitors at Ohaeronea.* The younger Pliny con- sulted his friend Sura as to the reality of such apparitions^ and reveals his faith in the gruesome tale of a haunted house at Athens, where a restless ghost, who had often disturbed the quiet of night with the clank of chains, was tracked to the mystery of a hidden grave.^ Suetonius, of course, welcomes tales of this kind from every quarter. Before Caligula's half-burnt remains were borne steedthily to a dishonoured burial, the keepers of the Lamian Gardens had been disturbed each night by ghostly terrors.^ The pages of Dion Cassius abound in similar wondeia
» Luc. Philops. c 6. • Plut driL c. 1, Art «>oXAr x^^m'
^ Ih c. 16 tldiUKuw Tcrwr ^r nf rhftn^ wpo^miW'
• n. cc 22-24. '^S'^ij^ Irll?*^ '^^"^ "'•
^*- "• 27. 1 Suet (Miff. c. 69.
CHAP. II BELIEF IN IMMORTAUTY 491
When Nero attempted to cut through the Isthmus of Corinth, the dead arose in numbers from their graves.^ In such an age the baleful art of " evocation " acquired a weird attractioQ and importance. By spells and incantations Hecate was invoked to send up spirits, often for evil ends.* And there were dark rumours of the spell being fortified by the blood of children. Many of the emperors from Tiberius to CaracaUa had dabbled in this witchcraft.' When Nero was haunted by the Furies of his murdered mother, he is said to have offered a magic sacrifice to evoke and appease her spirit^ The early Neo-Platonists were, of course, eager to admit the reality of such visits from the unseen world. In anxious quest of any link of sjrmpathy between this world and the next, Maximus tries to fortify his doctrine of daemons by stories of apparitions.' Hector has been often seen darting across the Troad in shining armour. At the mouth of the Borysthenes, Achilles has been espied by mariners, who were sailing past his isle, careering along with his yellow locks and arms of gold, and singing his paean of battle.
In enlarging its rather blank and poor conception of the future state, the Latin race, as in other fields, was content to borrow rather than invent The Sixth Book of the Aeneid was an effort not only to glorify the legendary heroes of Home, but to appease a new or revived longing for the hope of immortality, after the desolating nihilism of the Epicurean philosophy had run its course.' Virgil has some touches of old Boman faith about the dead, but the scenery of his Inferno is mainly derived from Greek poetry inspired by Orphism, and the vision is moralised, and also confused, by elements drawn from Pythagoras or Plato.^ The scene of Aeneas's descent to the underworld is laid by the lake of Avemus, where, buried amid gloomy woods, was the cave of the Cumaean Sibyl Cumae was the oldest Greek colony in the West Its founda- tion was placed long before the days of Bomulus. Bich, prosperous, and cultivated, at a time when the Bomans were a band of rude warriors, it must have early transmitted Greek
» D. Cass. Ixii 17. » Max. Tyr. xv. 7.
• Lobeck, Aglaopk, L p. 221. J Boiisior. J8«^ Bum, L p. 816.
» D. CSass. Ivii. 15. { ^an. yL p. 419 ; Rohde, Ptycht, ii p.
* Suet. JVJwv, c. xxxiv. 165.
49S THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iv
ideas of religion tx) the rising power on the Tiber.^ The Etrurians also, who affected so profoundly the tone of Soman religion, had come under Greek influences. The spectral fenj- man of the dead was a familiar figure in Etruscan art. Thus, both on the south and north, Latium had points of contact with the world of Hellenic legend And from the early days of the Bepublic, the worship of Greek gods — ^Apollo, Asdepius, or the Dioscuri — ^became naturalised at Some. Probably of even earlier date was the influence of the oracular lore of Greece through Delphi and the oracle of Cumae.*
On the threshold of the underworld Aeneas and the Sibyl are confronted by the monstrous forms of Hellenic l^end — Centaurs and Scyllas, Harpies and Gorgons, the fire -aimed Chimaera, and the hissing hydra of Lema.' They have to pass the ninefold barrier of the Styx in Charon's steel-grey bark. The grisly ferryman of the infernal stream, fool and unkempt, with fixed eyes of flame, is surrounded by a motley crowd, thick as autumnal leaves, all straining and eager for the further shore. Landed on a waste expanse of mud and sedge,^ they pass the kennel of triple-headed Cerberua, and on to the judgment seat, where Minos assigns to each soul its several doom, according to the deeds done in the body. Thence they traverse the ''mourning fields,"^ where are thoee sad queens of Grecian tragedy whose wUd loves have been their undoing, and among them Phoenician Dido, who, with stony silence and averted gaze, plunges into the darkness of the wood.^ As the dawn is breaking, they find themselves before the prison-house of the damned, rising amid the folds of the river of fire, with walls of iron and adamant, its portals watched by a sleepless Fury in blood-red robe.^ From within are heard the cries of anguish and the clank of chains, as the great rebels and malefieu^tors of old-world story — Ldon. Salmoneus, and the Titans — are tortured by lash and wheel and vulture.^ And with them, sharing the same agony, are those who have violated the great laws on which the Roman character was built^ Through other dusky ways and Cyclopean portals they at last reach the home of the blessed, as it was
^ Grote» iL p. 618 (ed. 1862). « Ih, 818, 416.
* Mommsen, K Hid, i. p. 187 ; ' Ih. 441. • /». 472.
VttWn, Bam, Myth. pp. 197, 407, 488. ? lb. 555. " lb. 600.
» Aen. vi. 289. • 76. 608.
CHAF. II BELIEF IN IMMORTAUTY 4d3
pictured long before in the apooalypee of Pindar — the meads and happ7 groves of Elysium, under another sun and other stars than ours, and baUied in the splendour of an ampler air.^ Here is the eternal home of the heroic souls of a nobler age^ men who have died for fatherland, holy priests and bards and founders of the arts which soften and embellish the life of men. But though their home is radiant with a splendour not of earth, they are, in old Soman and Greek £ashion, occupied with the toils or pleasures of their earthly life. Youthful forms are straining their sinews in the wrestling-ground as of old. The ancient warriors of Troy have their shadowy chariots beside them, their lances planted in the sward, their chargers grazing in the meadow. Others are singing old lays or dancing, and the bard of Thrace himself is sweeping the lyre, as in the days when he sped the Argo through the '' Clashing Bocks " in the quest of the fleece of gold.*
The vision closes with a scene which criticism has long recognised as irreconcilable with the eschatology of Greek legend hitherto followed by the poet, but which is drawn from a philosophy destined to govern men's thoughts of immortality for many ages. In a wooded vale, far withdrawn, through which Lethe glided peacefully, countless multitudes are gathered drinking the "water of carelessness and oblivion." These are they, as Anchises expounds to his son, who, having passed the thousand purgatorial years, to cleanse away the stains of flesh in a former life, and, having efiiaced the memory of it, now await the call of Destiny to a new life on earth.' This theory of life and death, coming down from Pythagoras, and popularised by Platonism, with some Stoic elements, had gained immense vogue among educated men of the last period of the Bepublic. Varro had adopted it as a fundamental tenet of his theology, and Cicero had embalmed it in his dream of Scipio, which furnished a text for Neo- Platonist homilies in the last days of the Western Empire.^
^ Am. 640 ; cf. Find. OU ii 130. § U ; xpSnla t4 ipaai To{rr» dxo^roi
* Atn, tL 645. rV ^hO(M* kvkXop drdyxrit d/ul^Ufftw
' lb, 748 ; cf. Conington's Firg, dXKor* AXXoct MetaSai ji^t : S. Aug.
Introd, Aen, vi p. 419 ; Lobeck, De Oiv. D.viL6;oL liebaldt, Theolog,
Aglaoph, ii. 798. Varr. i. p. 14 ; Cic. Bsp, vi 15-25 ;
« Diog. Laert. Vit, Pythag, viiL 1, Macrob. Som, Scip. L 14.
4d4 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM »ook nr
A fiery spirit animates the material universe, from the fifurthest star in ether down to the lowest form of animal life. The souls of men are sparks or emanations firom this general soul which have descended into the prison of the body, and during the period of their bondage have suffered contamina- tion.^ And the prison walls hide firom their eyes for a time the heaven from which they come. Nor when death releases them do they shake off the engrained corruption. Fcff a thousand years they must suffer cleansing by punishment till the stains are washed away, the deeply festering taint burnt out as by fire. Then only may the pure residue of ethereal spirit seek to enter on another life on earth.
Virgil, in his Nekuia, mirrored the confusion of beUefii as to the future state prevailing in his time. For his poetic sensibility, the old Boman faith of the Manes, the Greek l^nds of Tartarus and Elysium, the Pythagorean or Orphic doctrine of successive lives and purgatorial atonement, had each their charm, and a certain truth. On a subject so dim and uncertain as the future life, the keenest minds may have wavering conceptions, and in different moods may clothe them in various guise. This is the field of the protean poetic imagination inspired by religious intuiticm, not of the rigorous dogmatist But a great poet like Virgil not only expresses an age to itself : he elevates and glorifies what he expresses. He gives clear-cut form to what is vague, he spreads the warmth and richness of colour over what is dim and blank, and he imparts to the abstract teaching of philosophy a glow and penetrating power which may touch even the unthinking mass of men. The vision of the Sixth Book, moreover, like the Aeneid as a whole, has a high note of patriotism. Beside the water of Lethe are gathered, waiting for their call to earthly life, all the great souls from the Alban Silvius to the great Julius, all the Scipios, Gracchi, Decii, and Fabricii, who were destined through storm and stress to give the world the calm of the Roman peaca* The poet of Boman destiny had a marvellous fame among his countrymen. Men rose up to do him honour when he entered the theatre ; the
^ Hohde, JRmicA«, ii. 161, n. 1, 34, 812; tem, ex qao nostri animi oarperentnr,
Cic De JV. 1). L 11, 27 ; Pythagoras eto. qui censuit animnm ease per Datoram
remm omnem intentum dt oommean- * ^«f». ri. 756 tqq.
CHAP. II BEUEF W JMMORTAUTV 495
street boys of Pompeii scratched his verses on the walls.^ Can we doubt that the grandest part of his great poem, which lifts for a moment the veil of the unseen world, had a profound effect on the religious imagination of the future ?
The opinion long prevailed that the period of the early Empire was one of unbelief or scepticism as to the future life. The opinion was founded on literary evidence accepted without much critical care. Cicero and Seneca, Juvenal and Plutarch,^ had spoken of the Inferno of Greek l^end, its Cerberus and Chimaera, its gloom of Tartarus, as mere old wives' fables, in which even children had ceased to believe. But such testimony should edways be taken with a good deal of reserve. The member of a comparatively small literary and thoughtful circle is apt to imagine that its ideas are more widely diffused than they really are. It may well have been that thought- ful men, steeped in Platonic or Pythagorean faith as to the coming life, rejected as anthropomorphic dreams the infernal scenery of Greek l^end, just as a thoughtful Christian of our day will hardly picture his coming beatitude in the gorgeous colouring of the Book of Sevelation. Yet the mass of men will always seek for concrete imagery to body forth their dim spiritual cravings. They always live in that un- certain twilight in which the boundaries of pictured symbolism and spiritual reality are blurred and effaced. Lucian was a pessimist as to spiritual progress, and he may have exaggerated the materialistic superstition of his time; he had ample ex- cuse for doing so. Yet, artist as he was, his art would have been futile and discredited in his own time, if it had not had a solid background in widely accepted beliefs. And we cannot refuse to admit his testimony that the visions of the grim ferryman over the waters of Styx, the awful judge, the tortures of Tartarus, the asphodel meads, and the water of Lethe, the pale neutral shades who wandered expectant of the libation on the grave, filled a large space in the imagination of the crowd' Plutarch, who sometimes agrees with Juvenal and Seneca as to the general incredulity, at others holds that a large class of remorseftd sinners have a wholesome fear of the
> CJLL. i?. 2361, 1982 ; Mao, Urn- L 21, 48 ; Jay. xiU. 48 ; Plat Ih peii, 480-8 ; FriadL iiL p. 800. StiperU, c 4.
* Sen. Ad Mare, ziz. 4 ; Olo. IWe. ' Loo. J>e Lwitt, oe. 1-10.
498 THE RE VIVAL OF PA GANISM book it
legendary tortures of lost souls, and that they ate eager to puige their guilt before the awful ordeal of the Eternal Judgment^ And, however pure and etherealiaed his own views may have been as to the life to come, no one has left i^ isiset lurid picture of the flames, the gloom, the sounds of ezcrodatiiig anguish from the prison-house of the damned, which oppressed the imagination of the multitude in his time. One part of that vision had a peculiarly tenacious hold.* The belief in the gruff ferryman of the dead, who sternly exacted his &re, and drove from the banks of Styx those who had no right to cross the awful stream, was widely diffused and aorvived far into the medieval times. For many centuries, long before and long after the coming of Christ, the coin which was to secure the passage of the shade into the world below was placed in the mouth of the corpse.'
The inscriptions might be supposed to give authoritative evidence as to the belief of oidinary men about the future state. The funerary monuments &om eveiy part of the Roman world are almost countless for the period of the early Empire. Yet such records, however abundant, are not so clear and satisfactory as they are by some taken to ba The words of a tombstone are sometimes a sincere utterance of real affection and faitL They are also not unfrequenUy purely conventional, representing a respectable, historic creed, which may not be that of the man who erects the slab. Just as a Frenchman, who has never from inflGincy entered a church, may have his wife interred with all the solemn forms with which the Catholic Church makes the peace of the passing soul, so the Soman pagan may have often inscribed on his family tomb words which expressed the ancient creed of his race rather than his personal belief. Heredity in religion is a potent influence, and may be misleading to the inquirer of a later age. An epitaph should not be construed as a con- fession of fSedth.
The great mass of these inscriptions are couched in the same phrases, with only slight variations. The dedication IMs Manibus, representing the old Roman faith, is the heading of
^ Plat JV(m j). Suan. c. 27. ' Luo. Dt Lueht, c. 10 ; Fri«lL iil
^ Id. De Ser. Num. Find. iv. 44 ; p. 632 ; Rohde, Psueke, i. p. 806, n. 8 ; De Oen. Soar, c 22. Maury, La Magi^ p. 158.
CHAP. II BEUEF IN IMMORTALITY 497
the majority of them. The vault is an " eternal home/' whose peace is guarded by prayers or threats and entreaties. There is a rare dedication to the " ashes " of the dead. There are many to their "eternal repose."^ But it is surely rather absurd to find in expressions which occur almost in the same form in the niches of the Catacombs a tinge of Epicureanism. The poor grammarian of Como, who left all his substance to his town, may be permitted to enjoy " the calm peace " he claims after all the troubles of his life, without a suspicion that he meant the peace of nothingness.' A pious Christian may rejoice at escaping the miseries of old age, and even hail death as the last cure of all mortal ills.' Death and sleep have always seemed near akin, and when the Boman spoke of the sleep of death, he probably did not often mean that it had no awaking. The morning indeed, as we have seen, to old imaginations was not very bright " The day of eternity " was not irradiated with the golden splendour of Pindar's Happy Isles ; it was grey and sad and calm. But that it was felt to be a real existence is shown by the insistent demand on scores of monuments for the regular service of the living. Every possible precaution is taken by the testator that his family or his club shall maintain this sympathetic observance for ever/ With the idea of prolonged existence, of course, is blended the imaginative hope of having a continued memory among men. And probably the majority of the funerary inscriptions express this feeling chiefly. But the same is true of the monuments of every age, and warrants no conclusion as to the opinions about immortality held by those who raised them. There is abundance of the purest affection expressed on these memorials, and sometimes, although not very often, there is the hope of reunion after death. The wife of a phUologus at Narbonne confidently expects to meet him, or a mother prays her son to take her to himself.^ Such expressions of a natural feeling, the same from age to age, have really little ' value as indications of religious belief. But there are not want- ing in the inscriptions references to Tartarus and the Elysian fields, to Pluto and Proserpine, to Orcus who has snatched away some one in his bloom. " One little soul has been
1 Or. ffenz. 4448. * Ih. 1197. * Ih. 2982.
« lb. 4483, 4416, 4U7. ^ lb. 4662, 4756.
2 K
498 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
received among the number of the gods." ^ There are others, impregnated with the prevalent philosophy, which speak of the soul returning to its source, or of being dissolved into the infinite ether, or of passing to a distant home in the stai&' This, however, as M. Boissier says,' must have been the dretm of a small minority. The funerary inscriptions leave the impression that, down to the final triumph of the Church, the feeling of the Romans about death was still in the main the feeling of their remote ancestors of the Samnite and Punic wars. It was a social feeling, in the prospect of a dim life dependent on the memory of the living, a horror of loneliness and desertion, the longing for a passing prayer even from a stranger. Blessings are heaped on him who will not foiget the pious duty to the shade. On him who refuses it is invoked the bitterest curse to Roman imagination — ** May he die the last of his race."
But no dogmatic ecclesiastical system deterred the Roman from expressing frankly his unbelief in any future state. And the rejection of all hope for the future, sometimes ooupled with a coarse satisfiEtction with a sensual past, is the note of not a few epitaphs of this period. Matrinia, the wife of one C. Matrinius Valentius, an Epicurean philosopher, dedicates t tablet to his " eternal sleep," which in this case is no conven- tional phrasa^ And others, in even more decided language, parade their withering faith that this brief life is only t moment of consciousness between the blank of the past and the blank of the future, and record their indifference at pass- ing again into the nothingness from which they cama The formula is frequent — ^" Non fueram, non sum, neecio " ; or ''Non fui, fui; non sum, non euro." Another adds ''non mihi dolet."^ The subjects of some of these epitajdu seem to have obeyed literally the counsel of their master Lucretius, though in a sense different from lus, and to have risen up sated with the banquet of life. They express, with cjmical grossness, their only faith in the joys of the flesh, and their perfect content at having made the most of them.
1 Or. Htmz, 4581, 4841, 4849, 4701, « Or. Hwz, 1192.
7852. » lb, 7887, 4809, 4810, 4811, 4807.
3 Ih 7892 4813, vixi dum vixi bene ; jam met
peracta mox vestra agetar lalmli; > Bek Bom, I 842. valete et plaadite, 7411.
CHAP. II BEUEF IN IMMORTAUTY 490
" Balnea, Vina, Venus," sums up the tale.^ " What I have eaten, what I have drunk, is my own. I have had my life." * And the departing voluptuary exhorts his friends to follow his example: "My friends, while we live, let us live"; "Eat, drink, disport thyself, and then join us." ' A veteran of the fifth legion records, probably with much truth, that "while he lived he drank with a good will,"^ and he exhorts his surviviug friends to drink while they live. Under the con- fessional of St. Peter's at Bome, in the year 1626, was found a monument of one Agricola of Tibur and his wife. There was a figure holding a wine-cup, and an inscription so frankly sensual that the whole was destroyed by order of the Pope. From the copy which was kept, it appears that Agricola was perfectly satisfied with his life, and recommended his example to others, " since it all ends in the grave or the funeral fire." ^ But inscriptions such as these are the exception. The funerary records, as a whole, give a picture of a society very like our own, with warm affections of kindred or Mendship, clinging to ancestral pieties, ready to hope, if sometimes not dear and confident in fedth.
There was probably a much more settled faith in im- mortality among the ordinary masses than among the highly educated. The philosophy of Greece came to the cultivated Eoman world with many different voices on the greatest problem of human destiny. And the greatest minds, from Cicero to M. Aurelius, reflect the discordance of philosophy. Nay, some of those who, in more exalted moods, have left glowing pictures of the future beatitude, have also at times revealed a mood of melancholy doubt as to any conscious future life. The prevailing philosophy in the last generation of the Bepublic, demoralised by an internecine strife, was that of Epicurus.^ It harmonised with the decay of old Eoman religion, and with the more disastrous moral deterio- ration in the upper cultivated class. The cultivated patrician, enervated by vice and luxury, or intoxicated with the
1 Or. Heta. 4806, 7 ; 4 ; 4816, hio libenter ; bibite yos qui yivitis.
seoam habet omnia. Balnea, yina, ^ lb. 7410 — miaoete Lyaeam, etc.,
▼enns cormmpant corpora nostra, set caetera post obitam tellns oonsumit
ritam faoiunt. et ignis.
• lb, 7407. * Boissier, Sd. lUm. L 812-816 ;
> ai.L. ii 1877. Xbiersch, PolUik and PhiL in ihrem
« Or. Hem. 6674, dnm yizi bi(bi) VerhdUn. mr Bel. ^ 18.
600 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
excitement of civil war and the dreams of disordered ambi- tion, flung off all spiritual idealism, and accepted firanklj a lawless universe and a life of pleasure or power, to be ended by deatL The great poem of Lucretius, the greatest Unat de force in Latin, if not in any literature, braving not only the deepest beliefs of the Latin race, but the instinctive long* iugs of humanity, was a herculean attempt to relieve men from the horrors of Graeco-Etruscan superstition. Even the gay frivolity of the comic stage reveals the terror which the path to Acheron inspired in the thoughtless crowd ^ — the terror from which, with all the fervid zeal of an evangelist, Lucretius sought to relieve his countrymen.^ The pictures of Tartarus had burnt themselves into the popular imaginatiaiL And no message of Epicurus seems to his Soman interpreter so full of peace and blessing as the gospel of nothingness after death, the " morningless and unawakening sleep " which ends the fretful fever of life. As we felt no trouble when the storm of Punic invasion burst on Italy, we shall be equally unconscious when the partnership of soid and body is dissolved, even in the clash and fusion of all the elements in some great cosmic changa' The older Stoicism permitted the hope of t limited immortality until the next great cataclysm, in which, after many ages, all things will be swallowed up.^ Bat Chrysippus admitted this prolonged existence only for the greater souls. And Panaetius, in the second century B.a, among other aberrations from the old creed of his school, abandoned even this not very satisfactory hope of immortality.^ AristoUe, while he held the permanence of the pure thinking principle after death, had given little countenance to the hope of t separate conscious personality. And the later Peripatetics, like Alexander Aphrodisias, had gone farther even than their master in dogmatic denial of immortality.^ Whatever support the instinctive craving of humanity for prolonged existence could obtain from philosophy was offered by the
^ Boissier, lUl, Mom. L 810. M^hCP^ ^ iKrvptbattn,
3 Lacrot iii. 962, 991. > ZeUer, PhiL fUr Orisek. iiL 1, p.
3 lb. 844 sqq. 186 ; Cio. Tutc L 82, 79.
> Pint. (?) De Plac PhiL iv. 7, ot « Zeller, iii. 1, p. 711, koine Bmim-
ZrciKiro^ ikioOffw ix tQv o-w/bidrwr thStigkeit iat ohne kdiperiiolN
iro^ptffBai, rV M^*' i^Bipearipop dfta Bewegoog mdglich ; Renan, Atmrrotit
roTr ffvyxpl/Mffi ye^Meu' r^v Si Urxvpo- ppu 128 tq., 418 ; Rohde, HydU^ iL
W/Nv, cia iffti T€pl To^ ao^oOs, xal p. 809.
CHAP. II BEUEF IN IMMORTALITY 601
Platonic and Neo-Pythagorean 8chool& And their influence grew with the growing tendency to a revival of faith in the supernatural For Plato, with his intense belief in the divine affinity of the human spirit, must always be the great leader of those who seek in philosophy an interpreter and a champion of religious intuition. The Phaedo was the last consolation of many a victim of conscription or imperial tyranny. Its fine- spun arguments may not have been altogether convincing, as they hardly seem to be even to the Platonic Socrates. But Plato was not merely a dialectician, he was also a seer and a poet. And, on a subject so dim as immortality, where mere intel- lectual proof, it is generally recognised, can be no more than tentative and precarious, men with a deep spiritual instinct have always felt the magnetism of the poet who could clothe his intuitions in the forms of imagination, who, from a keener sensi- bility and a larger vision, could give authority and clearness to the spiritual intuitions of the race.^ The philosophy of the Porch gave to the Antonine age some of its lofbiest characters. But it was not the philosophy of the future. It was too cold, and too self-centred. It had too little warmth of sympathy with religious instincts which were becoming more and more imperious. Although, as we have seen in Seneca, it was softened by elements borrowed from Platonic sources, in Epictetus and M. Aurelius, in spite of a rare spiritual elevation, it displays the old aloofness from the mass of men, and a cold temperance of reserve on the great question of the future of the souL
There can be little doubt that in the last age of the Bepublic a negative philosophy conspired with a decaying religious sense to stifle the hope of immortality among the cultivated clasa Lucretius was certainly not a solitary member of his order. His great poem, by its combination of dialectic subtlety, poetic charm, and lofty moral earnestness, may have made many converts to its withering creed. In the debate on the fate of the Catilinarian conspirators, Julius Caesar could assert, without fear of contradiction or disapproval, that death was the final term alike of joy and sorrow in human life.^ This philosophy,
^ Of. Graham, Orted of Science (2nd tion which ootlineB the proyince of
ed.), p. 188, "The poets mnet oonnt the possible"; Jowett, Plato, L pp.
for mach in the arffnment, since they 889 sqq., etc possets in higher aegree than others the great creatiye faculty of imagina- * Sail. C(Uil, c. 51.
008 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book n
indeed, was waning in force in the time (^ Augustus, and its forces were spent before the close of the first century. Tet the elder Pliny, who saw the reign of Vespasian, invei^ almost fiercely against the vanity or madness which dreams of a phantom life beyond the tomb, and robs of its great chaim the last kindly boon of nature.^ Seneca on this, as on many other questions of high moment, is not steady and oonaisteni In moments of spiritual exaltation he is filled with apocalyptic rapture at the vision of an eternal world. At other times he speaks with a cold resignation, which seems to have been the fieishion with men of his class and time, at the possibility of extinction in death. To the toil-worn spirit, weary of the travail and disappointments of life, death will be a quiet haven of rest.' The old terrors of Charon and Cerberus, of the awful Judge and the tortures of Tartarus, are no longa believed in even by children.' And stripped of its mythic horrors, death, being the loss of consciousness, must be the negation of pain and desire and fear. It is, in fact, a retom to the nothingness from which we come, which has left no memory. N(m miser potest esse qui nuUus est.^ The literary men and men of the world in the age of the Flaviana^ like their successors ever since, probably occupied themselyes little with a problem so long debated and so variously solved. Quintilian treats the question of the existence of the dis- embodied spirit as an open one for dialectical debate.^ Tadtaa, at once credulous and sceptical, is no clearer on the subject of immortality than he is on the subject of miracles, or omens, or Providence. In his eulogy on Agricola he expresses a fednt, pious hope of eternal peace for his hero, if there is a place in some other world for pious shades, and the sages are right in thinking that great souls do not perish with the body.* This is a very guarded and hypothetical hope ; and, probably, the only immortality for his friend in which Tacitus had much confidence was the undying fame with which the pen of genius can invest its subject. Tacitus, like so many of his
^ Plin. H, N, vu. 55, 188. " Quint, /fu^. t. 14, 18, com, solnta
' Cf. Plat. (?) Ckma, ad ApoU. o. xiL corpora anima an tit immortalia Tel ad
xiii tempus oerte manoat, tit in dubia
* Sen. Ad Mare. o. xix.
« SeD.j^. 54,99, §80; /^iVo«.yL " Tac Agric o. 46 ; o£. Bohda^
%%; Ad Marc 25. Piyehe, ii. p. 818, n. 8.
CHAP. II BEUEF IN IMMORTAUTY 003
class, had the old Boman distrust of philosophy, and the philosophies of which men of his generation had a tincture had no very confident or comforting message about the soul's eternal destiny.
Hadrian, the most interesting of the emperors, was prob- ably a sceptic on this as on all kindred subjects. The greatest practical genius in the imperial line had, in the field of religion and speculation, an infinite passion for all that was curious and exotic.^ Tramping at the head of his legions through his world-wide domains, he relieved the tedium of practical administration by visiting the scenes of historic fame or the homes of ancient religion both in the East and West. The East particularly attracted him by its infinite fecundity of superstition. He came to see whether there was anything in these revelations of the unseen world ; he went away to mock at them. His insatiable curiosity had an endless variety of moods, and offered an open door to all the influences from many creeds. The restorer of ancient shrines, the admirer of Epictetus, the dabbler in astrology, the votary of Eleusis^ and all the mysteries of the East, the munificent patron of all professors of philosophy and the arts, the man who delighted also to puzzle and ridicule them,' had probably few settled convictions of his own. His last words to his soul, in their mingled lightness and pathos, seem to express rather regret for the sunlight left behind than any hope in entering on a dim journey into the unknown.
The Antonine age was for the masses an age of growing faith, and yet three or four of its greatest minds, men who had drunk deep of philosophy, or who had a rare spiritual vision, either denied or doubted the last hope of humanity. Epictetus came from Phrygia as the slave of a freedman of Nero.^ Even in his days of slavery, he had absorbed the teaching of Musonius.^ He received his freedom, but lived in poverty and physical infirmity till, in the persecution of Domitian's reign he was, with the whole tribe of philosophic preachers, driven from Eome,^ and he settled at NicopoUs in Epirus, where Arrian heard his discourses on the higher lifa
^ Spart Hadr. c. 18, § 8 ; 14, § 8 ; « ZeUer, FhiL cUr Orteeh, ill. 1,
17, fi 9 ; of. Gregoroyios, p. 808. p. 660 n.
s Bpart Hadr. 18, § 1. ' Epict 2>>it. ui. 6, § 10.
» A c 16, S 12 ; 16, § 8. • A. GelL xt. 11.
604 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book i?
According to Hadrian's biographer, he lived in the gteateet intimacy with that emperor.^ He refers more than once to the reign of Trajan,' but it is hardly possible that the tradition is true which carries his life into the reign of M. Aurelias^ although the great philosophic emperor owed much to his teaching.'
Epictetus is an example of a profoundly religious mind, to whom personal immortality is not a necessity of his religioD. The great law of life is glad submission to the will of God, to the universal order. Death, as an event which is bound to come soon or late, should be regarded without fear. The tremors it excites are like the shuddering of children at a tragic mask of Gorgon or Fury. Turn the mask, and the terror is gone.^ For what is death ? A separation of soul and body, a dissolution of our frame into the kindred elements.* The door is opened, God calls you to come, and to no terrible future. Hades, Acheron, and Cocytus are mere childish fancies.^ Tou will pass into the wind or earth or fire from which you come. Tou will not exist, but you will be some- thing dse of which the world now has need, just as you came into your present existence when the world had need of you. God sent you here subject to death, to live on earth a little while in the flesh, to do His will and serve His purpose, and join in the spectacle and festival But the spectacle for yon is ended ; go hence whither He leads, with adoration and grati- tude for all that you have seen and heard. Make room for others who have yet to be bom in accordance with His wilL^ Language like this seems to give slight hope of any personal, conscious life beyond the grava Epictetus, like the pious Hebrew of many of the Psalms, seems to be satisfied with the present vision of God, whether or not there be any fuller vision beyond the veiL Tet he elsewhere uses almost Platonic language, which seems to imply that the soul has a separate life, that it is a prisoner for a time in the bonds of the flesh, and that it passes at death to the kindred source from which
1 Ael. Spart. Ead/r, c 16. 14, 21, and Kohde, Ptycht, ii. SSO.
« Epict. DiM. iv. 6, fi 17. « Epict. Dias. iii 18, § 15.
' M. Aurel. i. 7, /col rh bmrxth rott ' /o. § 14, efrav U /lii wap^ ripay-
*EiriKTrfTeloit inrofitrfifiaauf C^ otKoSep xato, rd (UeucXip-iJc^ aintaiwti^ r^ Bipv
fUT4dwKe, ii^o^t, Kol X^et 0-cm, 'Epxov, IIoG ; E^f
* Epiot. Diss, ii 1, § 17. oUSh deii^- dXV 5^er, ^rov, e/t r^ ^dXa
* lb, iii 24, § 93 ; cf. M. Anrel. iv. koI avyytyif, €ls rd <rroix<(a.
CHAP, n BELIEF IN lAiMORTAUTY 505
it sprang.^ Tet even here the hope of an individual immor- tality, of any future reproduction on a higher scale of the life on earth, need not be implied ; it is indeed probably absent It is enough for the profoundly religious spirit of Epictetus that Grod calls us ; whither He calls us must be left to His will.
Gralen the physician shows a similar detachment from the ordinary hopes of humanity as to a future life, although it springs from a very different environment and train- ing from those of Epictetus. Bom in the reign of Hadrian, and dying in the reign of Septimius Severus, Galen represents the religious spirit of the Antonine age in his firm belief in a spiritual Power and Providence.' But in philosophy he was an eclectic of the eclectics. His medical studies b^an at the age of seventeen. The influence of the Platonist, Albinus of Smyrna, above all his stay at Alexandria, while they gave him a wide range of sympathy, account for the mingled and heterogeneous character of his philosophic creed, which contains elements from every system except that of Epicurus.^ The result is a curious hesitation and equipoise between conflicting opinions on the greatest questions. He is particularly uncertain as to the nature of the soul and its relation to the body. The Platonic doctrine that the soul is an immaterial essence, independent of corporeal support, seems to Gralen very disputable. How can immaterial essences have any separate individuality ? How can they difAise themselves over a corporeal frame and alter and excite it, as in lunacy or drunkenness? And again, if the Peripatetic doctrine be true, that the soul is the " form " of the body, we are soon landed in the Stoic materialism from which Galen shrank. The soul will become, as in the well-known theory refuted in the Phaedo,^ a " temperament " of bodily states, and its superior endurance, its immortality, will become a baseless dream. On these great questions the cautious man of science will not venture to come to any dogmatic conclusion.^
Galen came to Bome in the year 164, at the beginning of the reign of M. Aurelius. He soon rose to great fame in his profession, and when, in 168, he had returned to his native
1 Din. L 9, I 14, d^ ^t dreX^ci^ « Fhaedo, 86 B.
i»t» iSikb$aiJm9 «tX. > ZeUer, iii. 1, p. 740 ; Uberweg, HitL
* Uberweg, Hi9L PkU. L p. 287. PhU. L p. 237.
* Zeller, SL 1, p. 78S.
606 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM ■ook it
Pergamum, he was recalled by the emperors to meet tiiem at Aquileia. It was an anxious time. It was the second year of the campaign against the Marcomanni, and the legions, returning with Yerus from the East, had brought with them the taint of a pestilence which spread a desolation thronghont Italy from which it did not recover for age& The slaves were called to arms as in the Punic invasion, along with the gladiators, and even the brigands of Dalmatia, and the massing of the forces on the Adriatic only concentrated the malignity of the plague.^ Galen remained with the army for some time, lending his skill to mitigate the horrors of the disease. He returned to Bome in 170, and was left there in charge of the youthful Commodus. The philosophic Emperor and his philosophic physician must have often met in those dreadful years. And we may be sure, from the detachment of M. Aurelius, that their conversations would take a wider range than the sanitary arrangements of the camp. With death in the air, how could two such meu, trained under such masters, fail to question one another as to the sequel of death ? At auy rate the fact remains that M. Aurelius on this question is as submissive as Epictetus, as hesitating as Galen.
M. Aurelius is commonly spoken of as realising Plato's dream of the philosopher on the throna And yet the description is, without some additions and explanations, some- what misleading. Philosopher, in the large speculative senae^ he certainly is not in his Meditations. For the infinite curiosity of intellect, the passion to pierce the veil of the unknown, to build a great cosmic system, he seems to have had but little sympathy.' His is the crowning instance of philosophy leaving the heights and concentrating itself on con- duct, which becomes not merely " three-fourths of life," but the whole, and his philosophy is really a religion. It is a religion because it is founded on the great principle of unquestioning, uncomplaining submission to the will of God, the law of the whole universe. It is a religion because the repellent and rigorous teaching of the older Stoicism is, as it is in Epictetus, sufFiised with a glow of emotion.' And yet this religion, which
1 Jul. Capit U. ArU. c. 18 ; c. 21 ; * M. Arnold, Amy* t» OHUeiam,
cf. Merivale, Bam. Hid, viii. pp. 885-6. p. 427. ' M.Aar«Lyii.67;Zeller,iu.l,p.677.
CHAP. II BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY Wl
makes such immense demands on human nature, cuts itself off from any support in the hope of a future Ufa
On the subject of immortality, indeed, M. Aurelius some- times seems to waver. He puts the question hypothetically, or he suggests immortality as an alternative to extinction at deatL " If thou goest indeed to another life, there is no want of gods, not even there. But if to a state without sensation, thou wilt cease to be held by pains and pleasures, and to be a slave to the vessel" ^ In one doubtful passage he speaks of "the time when the soul shall fall out of this envelop, like the child from the womb." ^ He does not dogma- tise on a subject so dark. But his favourite conception of death is that of change, of transformation, of dissolution into the original elements. An Infinite Spirit, of which the individual soul is an emanation, pervades the universe, and at death the finite spirit is reabsorbed by the Infinite.^ With this is coupled the doctrine of the dark Ephesian philosophy, which through Platonism had a profound influence on later thought, life is but a moment of consciousness in the unresting flow of infinite mutation ; ^ it is a dream, a mere vapour, the sojourn of a passing stranger. And the last thought of Aurelius probably was that there was no place for a hope of separate conscious existence after the last mortal change. Soul and body alike are swept along the stream of perpetual transformation, and this particular '' ego," with all its dreams and memories, will never re-emerge in a separate personality.
M. Aurelius, from the frequency with which he returns to the subject, seems fully conscious of the instinctive passion for continued life. But he refuses to recognise it as original and legitimate, and therefore demanding some account to be given of it^ Still less would he ever dream of erecting it, as Cicero and Plutarch did, into a powerful argument for some corresponding satisfaction in another world. It is simply one
1 M. Aorel. I'iL 8, e^ U iw ipourBiial^ « vi. 42, 47 ; iz. 29, 32 ; yi. 16 ; tu.
wa^TH t6¥U¥ Kal ifioPvnr dvex^Ai^of, jcal 19 ; tl 86, tov t6 iyearCiiS rcQ xptm^^t
\aTpe6uf TOffo&r(p xeCpovi r^ dyyeUfi ariyfj.^ roO eUupot : Rohde, Psydie, ii.
Ij T€ple<m t6 (fwTfprrouw : Rohde, FiychSf p. 147. ii. pp. 827-28.
* IX. 8, oUrtas Ubix^cBai r^ &pa9 ' M. Aurel. yi. 49, ii-frn duo^epolrtit
h i rb ^nrxjipihv ffov rou iKirrpov im roaiivM rtvwf XirpCii' el kcU oA rpuk'
roi^rou ^icxecreircu. Koaitay ; o0rw di koX 6rt putxpi TocOpSe
' xii. 80-82. Map puariw 0-01 xal oC fiixpi rXe/oroi.
508 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iv
of the irrational appetites, a form of rebellion against the universal order, which must be crushed and brought into sub- mission to inexorable law. Neither do we find in M. Aurelius any feeling of the need for a rectification of the injustices of time, for any sphere for the completion of inefifectual lives, where the crooked may be made straight and the perverted be restored. He has, apparently, no sympathy with the sadness so often felt by the noblest minds, at having to go hence with so little done, so little known. The philosopher seems to have no wish to explore in some coming life the secrets of the universe, to prolong under happier conditions the endless quest of the ideal in art and knowledge and thought, which seems so cruelly baffled by the shortness of the life here below. The affectionate father and husband and friend seems to have no dream of any reunion with kindred souLs. Above all, this intensely religious and devout spirit seems to have no concep- tion, such as sometimes flashes on the mind of Seneca and of Plutarch, of a future beatitude in the full vision of God. This austere renunciation, if it was deliberate, of feelings and hopes so dear to humanity, excites a certain admiration, as the result of a stem self-disciplina It is the resignation of what are thought to be mere fond, self-flattering fancies in the cold light of truth, and, as such, it must ever command a reverent respect Tet how completely the renunciation cuts off M. Aurelius from the spiritual movement of his time, from the great onward sweep of humanity to a spiritual reconstruction !
The attitude of M. Aurelius to the instinctive longing for immortality is partly dictated by logical loyalty to the funda- mental principles of his theory of life, partly by personal temperament and scui experience. The cosmic theory of Heraclitus, the infinite flux of cydio change, left little ground for faith in the permanence of consciousness. The Stoic principle of submission to the law of the whole made it a duty to acquiesce calmly, or even cheerfully, in what has been ordained for us. Ilie whole duty, the sole blessedness of man, lie in bringing his will into conformity with the Eternal Reason, and in moulding this brief mundane life into a slight counterpart of the order of the mighty world. From one point of view the single human life is infinitely small, a mere
CHAP, n BELIEF IN IMMORTAUTY 509
point in infinite age,^ agitated by hopes and fears which are mere flitting dreams of a momentary consciousnesa Nay, the grandest features of its earthly home shrink to mean proportions before the eye of reason. Asia is a mere corner, the sea a drop, Athos a tiny dod in the universal Life is so little a thing that death is no eviL^ Tet, looked at on another side, the daemon, the divine spark within each of us, may, by its irresistible power, create a moral whole in each human spirit which, during its short space of separate being, may have the rounded harmony and perfectness of the whole vast order — ^it may become a perfect miniature of the universe of God.^ This consummate result, attainable, though so rarely attained, is the ideal which alone gives dignity to human life. The ideal of humanity lies not in any future life or coming age ; it may be, were the will properly aroused to its divine strength, realised here and now in our short span of forty years of maturity.^ Get rid of gross fears and hopes, aim only at the moral ends which the will, aided by the daemon within, can surely reach, dismiss the fear of censure from the ephemeral crowd around us, the craving for fame among ephemeral generations whom we shall not see,^ let the divine impulse within us gravitate to its proper orbit, and this poor human life is swept into the eternal movement of the great whole, and, from a moment of troubled consciousness, becomes a true life in God. Such a life, having fulfilled the true law of its being, is in itself rounded and complete: it needs no dreams of future beatitude to rectify its failures or reward its eager effort. Death to such a soul becomes an unimportant incident, fixed, like all other changes, in the general order. And the length or shortness of life is not worth reckoning. The longest life is hardly a moment in eternity: the shortest is long enough if it be lived welL This life, as fixed by eternal law, is a whole, a thing by itself, a thing with innumerable counterparts in the infinite past, destined to be endlessly reproduced in the years of the limitless future.^ To repine at
1 M. Auwl. ix. 82, dxar^f « tA »p6 * 76. x. 88 ; v. 11 ; v. 27.
rijii yewitrttas (Jt koI t6 yiierh. r^p didXwrtv * lb id. 1
6iuAiat dretpor.
« lb, vi. 86, ^ 'Acrte, ii Mfnlnrri, « lb, vi. 16 ; vL 2 ; vL 61 ; vii. 21,
yioptai TWf K6fffu>v . . . A0un /3wXdfK«r ^77^ f^^ 4 ^ vp^ rimw Xifiri
» lb. vii. 86. ^ lb. xi. 1 ; vii. 1.
610 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
its shortness is no more rational than to mourn the swift passing of a springtime, whose glorious promiBe, yet ever- withering charm, have come and gone in the self-same waj through myriads of forgotten yeara
This is the ideal view of an austere creed, with a grandeur of its own which all generations of the West have agreed to venerate. But the temperament and the history of M. Aureliiu had also their share in shaping his views of life and death. With infinite charity, indulgence, and even love for his fellows, he was a pessimist about human life.^ He had good excuse for being so. In the words of one who knew that age as only genius combined with learning can, U mande ffaUristaU ; and with good cause. The horizon was darkened with ominous thunder-clouds. The internal forces of the Empire were becom- ing paralysed bya mysteriousweaknesa The dim hordes beyond the Danube had descended with a force only to be repelled in many weary campaigns. Famine and pestilence were inflicting worse horrors than the Marcomanni It was the beginning of the end, although the end was long deferred. The world was growing sad ; but there was no sadder man than the saintiy Stoic on the throne, who had not only to face the Grermans on the Danube, and bear the anxieties of solitary power, bat who had to endure the keener anguish of a soul which saw tiie spiritual possibilities of human nature, but also all its Uttleness and baseness. The Emperor needed all the lessons of self- discipline and dose-lipped resignation which he had painfully learnt for himself, and which he has taught to so many genera- tions. There have been few nobler souls, yet few more hope- less. Like the arch mocker of the time, although firom a very difTerent point of view, he sees this ephemeral life, with its transient pleasures and triumphs, ending in dust and oblivion.' And its fragility is only matched by its weary sameness from age to age. The wintry torrent of endless mutation sweeps all round in an eternal vortex.^ This restless change is a movement of cyclic monotony* Go back to Vespasian or
^ M. AureL vi. 46, 47 ; viL 8 ; ix. 80. SKw odfflas, c^ dik x^Mi'^^ppou* dtex-
* lb. vi. 47 ; cf. Luc. Icaramenippus, irop€ijer(u xdrro rA ffib/taTo. Of. ix. 29,
c 18 ; Traj. sive Tyr, c 8 ; Charcn^ c. x^f*^PPo^ V tQp wdwrw ahiar rdm
17 ; Menip, c. 16, dXX' 6fi4Ma rd 6irra ^p€i,
^, AdriXa Kol dwewiypa^ jrrX. * lb, vii. 49 ; vii. 1 ; ix. 14 ; z. 28 :
' M. Aarel. vii 19, did -njs r(a^ xi. 1.
CHAP. II BEUEF IN IMMORTAUTY 611
Trajan: you will find the same recuiTing spectacle, men plotting and fighting, marrying and dying.^ The daughter who watches by her mother's death-bed soon passes away under other eyes. The soul can in vision travel far, and survey the infinity of ages.^ It can stretch forward into the endless ages to come, as it can go back in historic imagination through the limitless past Tet it finds nothing strange in the experience of the past, as there will be nothing new in the experience of our remotest posterity. The man whose course has run for forty years, if he has any powers of perception, has concentrated in his brief span the image of all that has been, all that ever wiU be in human thought or fate. The future is not gilded by any dream of progress : it is not to be imaged in any magic light of a Platonic Utopia, or City of God descending from heaven like a bride.^ From this " terrene filth," from these poor frivolous souls, what celestial commonwealth could ever emerge ? ^ The moral is, both on the ground of high philosophy and sfiul experience — " be content, thou hast made thy voyage, thou hast come to shore, quit the ship."
£ut even in heathendom, long before M. Aurelius was born, the drift of thought towards the goal of a personal immortality was strong and intensa And this was only one consequence of a movement which had profoundly affected human thought, and had compelled Stoicism to recast itself, as in the teaching of Seneca. Pure reason could not explain the relation of man to the universe, it could not satisfy the deepest human instincts. The maxim, " live according to Nature," was interpreted by the Stoic to mean a life in accordance with our own higher nature, the Divine element within us. Tet this interpretation only brought out the irreconcilable discordance between the two conceptions of Nature in the physical luiiverse and in the human spirit There are depths and mysteries in the one which have no answering correspondence in the other. Something more than reason is needed to solve the problems of human destiny, the mysterious range of human aspiration. Nature, as a system of cold impersonal processes, has no sympathy with man, she may be icily indifferent or actively hostile. To conform one's
^ M. Aurel. iv. 32. iroXirelair IXrt^e, dXX' d/Mrot; e^ r6
^ Ih. xi. 1. ppax^aroy Tpdttfft,
» lb, ix. 29, M^i i> nXdrww * lb. viL 47 ; ix. 84.
612 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
life to the supposed dictates of an abstract Beaaon, aaaertiiig itself in physical laws, which seem often to make a moclceiy of the noblest efifort and aspiration of man, demanded a servili^ of submission in human nature, and called upon it to disown a large part of its native powers and instincts. Man, a mare ghost of himself, attenuated to a bloodless shade, finds himself in presence of a power cold, relentless, unmoral, according to human standards, a power which makes holocausts of individual lives to serve some abstract and visionary ideal of the whola The older Stoicism provided no object of worship. For worship cannot be paid to an impersonal law without moral attributea Tou may in abject quietism submit to it, but you cannot revere or adore it It is little wonder that the Stoic sage, who could triumph over all material obstructions by moral enthusiasm, was sometimes exalted above the Zeus who represented mere passionless physical law. Such an idea — for it cannot be called a Being — ^has no moral import, it supplies no example, succour, or inspiration. The sage may for a moment have a superhuman triumph, in his defiance of the temptations or calamities with which Nature has surrounded him, but it is a lonely triumph of inhuman prida^ It may be the divine element within him which has given him the victory, but this is conceived as the mere effluence of that subtle material force which moves under all the phenomena of physical Nature. In surrendering yourself to the impulse of such a power you are merely putting yourself in line with the other irrational subjects of impersonal law. There is here, it need not be said, no stimulus to moral life, there is the absolute negation of it The affinity of the human soul with the soul of the world is a mere physical doctrine, however refined and subtle be the *^ iery breath " which is the common element of both. But prolonged ethical study and analysis combined with the infiltration of Platomsm by degrees to modify profoundly the Stoic concep- tion of the nature of God, and of the relation of man to TTiin God tended to become more and more a person, a moral power, a father. And the indwelling God became the voioe of conscience, consoling, prompting, supporting, inspiring an ideal of fuUer communion in another sphere. Was the longing for continued life, in communion with kindred souIb,
^ Sen. £p, 109, § 9.
CHAP. II BELIEF IN IMMORTAUTY 513
with a Divine Spirit, which has made us what we are, to be relegated to the limbo of anthropomorphic dreams ?
Seneca, as we have seen in a former chapter, still retains some of the hard orthodoxy of the older Stoicism. In his letters to Lucilius he occasionally uses the language of the old Stoic materialism.^ But there can be little doubt that Seneca had assimilated other conceptions antagonistic to it. God becomes more a Person, distinct from the world, whicli He has created, which He governs, which He directs to moral ends.^ He is not merely the highest reason. He is also the perfect wisdom, holiness, and love. He is no longer a mere blind force or fate ; He is the loving, watchful Father, and good men are His sons. The apparent calamities which they have to suffer are only a necessary discipline, for, '' whom He loves He tries and hardens by chastisement." ^ God can never really injure, for His nature is love, and we are continually loaded with His benefits.^ In his view of the constitution of man, Seneca has deviated even further from the creed of his school. He appears indeed to assert sometimes that the soul is material, but it is matter so fine and subtle as to be indis- tinguishable from what we call spirit. And the ethical studies of Seneca compelled him to abandon the Stoic doctrine of the simple unity of the soul for the Platonic dualism, with the opposition of reason and animal impulse. The latter has its seat in the body, or the flesh, as he often calls it. And of the flesh he speaks with all the contempt of the Phaedo, It is a mere shell, a fetter, a prison ; or a humble hostelry which the sold occupies only for a brief space.^ With the flesh the spirit must wage perpetual war, as the aUen power which cramps its native energies, darkens its vision, and perverts its judgment of the truth. The true Ufe of the spirit will, as in the theology of Plato, only begin when the unequal partnership is dissolved.*
The orthodox Stoic doctrine allowed a limited immortality, till the next great cosmic conflagration. But it was doubtful whether even this continued existence was real personal life, and with some Stoic doctors it was a privilege confined to the
» Sen. Ep. 67, § 7. » Sen. Ep. 65, § 22 ; 102, § 26 ; Ad.
' lb. 78, § 16 ; j^. 88. Hdv. 11, § 7 ; Ad Mare. 24, § 5 Of.
* Id. De Prov. iv. § 7, qaos anrnt Plat Phaed. 88 0, D. Philofiir. ApoU. indarat, exercet Tyan. yi. 11 ; vii. 26.
* Id. De Ben. iv. 4 ; De Ira, n. 27. • Plat Phaed. 79 c ; 81 A.
2 L
bU THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book nr
greater souls.^ like nearly all philosophers of this age, Seneca occasionally seems to admit the possibility of a return to ante- natal nothingness at death. " Non potest miser esse qui nnllus est" is a consolation often administered even by those who have the hope of something better than the peace of annihila- tion.^ It was a consolation which might be a very real one to men living in the reign of Nero. Taken at the worst, death can only be dissolution, for the rivers of fire and the tortures of Tartarus are mere figments of poetic fancy. The mind trained in submission to universal law will not shrink from a fate which awaits the universe by fire or cataclysmal change. Its future fate can only be either to dwell calmly for ever among kindred souls, or to be reabsorbed into the general whola' But in moments of spiritual exaltation, such an alternative does not satisfy Seneca. He has got far beyond the grim submission, or graceful contempt, of aristocratic suicide, or even the faith in a bounded immortality. He has a hope at times apparently more clear than any felt by the Platonic Socrates on the last evening in prison. Death is no longer a sleep, a blank peace following the futile agitations of life : it is the gateway to eternal peace. The brief sojourn in the body is the prelude to a longer and nobler lifa^ The hour, at which you shudder as the last, is really the birthday of eternity, when the mind, bursting from its fetters, will expatiate in all the joy of its freedom in the light, and have unrolled before it all the secrets and splendour of starry worlds, without a haunting shadow.' Nay, the vision is moralised almost in Christian fashion. The thought of eternity compels us to think of God as witness of every act, to remember that " decisive hour" when, with all veils and disguises removed, the verdict on our life will be pronounced. It also gives the hope of purging away for ever the taint of the flesh and entering on communion with the spirits of the blessed.^ Thus as though
^ Z6ller,PAi7.(i«r(7nec*.iii.l,p.l85. ^ Ep. 120, § 14; lOS^ | 28,
» Sen. -^d .Vans. 0.19, 20; cf.Plut(?) aliquando natura tibi arcana reto-
Cimw/. ad ApoU. o. 15, tit riiv o^V gentur : discutietur iaU caligo . . .
oCi' rd^uf ol re\evHio-aPT€t KaSlarayTcu nulla serenam umbra turbabit, ol.
TiTpdrris y€p4<r€un i cf. id. c. 84. Rohde, Psyche, ii. p. 828, n. 4, Bohde,
> Sen. Ep. 86; 71, fi 12; Ad Marc. ^^^^^^^^f^^^^^^^^^ottor^iog^
1 Q fi A f? Ri^l^HA A»iX U TTflSft anfficiently how far Seneoa iiaa departed
19, § 4. Cf. Kohde, Psyclu, u. p. 828. ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ Stoidam,
* Sen. Ep, 102, § 21. • -^. 26, § 6 ; Ad Mare. xxv.
CHAP. II BEUEF IN IMMORTAUTY 615
with the Eternal eyes upon him, a man should shrink from all the baser and meaner side of his corporeal life, and so prepare himself for the great ordeal, and the beatitude of the life to come.
In the apocalypse of Seneca a new note is struck in pagan meditation on the immortality. We have left far behind the thought of the Manes haunting the ancestral tomb, and soothed in returning years by the jet of wine or the bunch of violets. We are no longer watching, with Pindar or Virgil, the spirits basldng in Elysian meads and fanned by ocean breezes. We are far on the way to the City of God, eujviA fundamenta in montHms Sanctis. And indeed Seneca has probably travelled as far towards it as any one bom in heathendom ever did. It is not wonderful that, in the fierce reUgious struggle of the fourth century, his moral enthusiasm, his view of this life as a probation for the next, his glowing vision of an almost Christian heaven, should have suggested an imaginary intercourse with St PauL^
What were the influences which really moulded his highest conception of the future state, how much was due to a pure and vigorous spiritual intuition, how much to Platonic and Pythagorean sources, we cannot pretend to say. In Seneca's most enraptured previsions of immortality, the very exuberance of the rhetoric seems to be the expression of intense personal feeling. But Seneca's was a very open and sensitive mind. One of his teachers was Sotion, who, like his master Sextius, was called a Pythagorean, and who, on true Pythagorean principles, taught Seneca to abstain from animal food.* We may be sure that no Pythagorean teacher of that age would fail to discuss with his pupil the problem of the future life. It is true that Seneca only once or twice alludes to the doctrine of a previous life, and he only mentions the Pythagorean school to record the fact that in his day it was without a head.' But that does not preclude the supposition that he may have felt its influence in the formative years of youth. And the Pythagoreans of the early empire were a highly eclectic school
* See the apocryphal lnttpt«, ii. 4T7, * Sen. Kp. 108, S 17; cf. Philostr.
of Haase's ed. of ttcn. ; r-f, MtfliffiHifc, Apnll. Tyan. I. 7, 8.
8. PauTs Ep. to the mUmtUim, in • ftwii. Art^ Qu. vii. 82, § 2, Pytha-
268 sqq. Zeller, Phil. tUf (hi^u \\\ Muritm IIU Invi'HoBa turhaeschola prae-
1, p. 637, n. 1 ; Baiir, (Jh, ffi*f I \i: tn. i<ii)i|<imii nun invonit
616 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM loOK it
They still reproduced the spirit of their founder in mathematical symbolism, in the ideal of asceticism, in a pronounced religioiifl tendency.^ But they had absorbed much from Platonism, as well as from the Lyceum and the Porch. These mingled in- fluences also account for the profound alterations which Stoicism had undeigone in the mind of Seneca. And his contempt for the body or the flesh, and many of the phrases in which its cramping, lowering influences are described, savour of the Pythagorean and Flatonist schools.
But Seneca is an inconsistent, though eloquent and power- ful, expounder of that faith in personid immortality, with its moral consequences, which goes back through many ages to Plato, to Pythagoras, to the obscure apostles of the Orphic revelation, perhaps to Egypt.' The mythical Orpheus represents, in the field of religion and in the theory of life and death, an immense revolution in Greek thought and an enduring spirit which produced a profound effect down to the last years of paganism in the West^ With the names of Orpheus and Pythagoras are connected the assured faith in inmiortalitj, the conception of this life as only preparatory and secondary to the next, the need for purgation and expiation for deeds done in the body, the doctrine of transmigration and succes- sive lives, possibly in animal forms. Orpheus was also the mythical founder of mysteries in whose secret lore the initiated were always supposed to receive some comforting assurance of a life to come.^ A spokesman in one of Cicero's dialogues recalls with intense gratitude the light of hope and cheer- fulness which the holy rites had shed for him both on life and death.^ And Plutarch, on the death of their daughter, re- minded his wife of the soothing words which they had together heard from the hierophant in the Dionysiac mysteriea^ I^ng before their day Plato had often, on these high themes, sought a kind of high ecclesiastical sanction or suggestion for the tentative conclusions of dialectic.^ The great name of Orpheus,
1 Zeller, VhiX, derOridch, iu. 2, p. 95. lamblichus, Cratyl, 402 ; of. lambL
* Herodot ii. 128. Fythag, 145, 248.
' Herodotus never mentions Orpheus, * Iambi. Fythag, 151 ; Lobeck, Ag-
but speaks of rd 'Op^i/rd, ii 81 ; nor do Icutph, i. p. 288.
tlie schol. on Homer allude to him (Lob. * Cic. he Leg, ii. 14, 86, neque ■olom
Aglcutph, i. p. 540 ; of. AgUwph. p. 255 oum laetitla viyendi rationem acoepi-
sqq.). His ezistonce was denied by muSySededamcumspemelioremoriendi.
Aristotle (Cio. De Nat. Deor, 1. 88, 108). * Plut. Cans, ad Ux, c. 10.
Plato seems to be as assured of it as ^ Plat Phaed, 70 o ; 69 c.
CHAP. II BELIEF IN IMMORTAUTY 617
and the mystic lore of this esoteric faith, had indeed in Plato's day been sadly cheapened and degraded by a crowd of mercenary impostors.^ And even the venerable rites of Eleusis may have contained an element of coarseness, descending from times when the processes of nature were regarded unveiled.' But philosophy and reason, which purged and elevated religion as a whole, did the same service for the mysteries, and Oi'phic and Pythagorean became almost convertible.^ The systems represent a converging effort to solve those great questions which lie on the borderland of religion and philosophy, questions on which the speculative intellect is so often foiled, and has to fall back on the support of faith and religious intuition.^ In an age which had forsaken curious speculation, whose whole interest was con- centrated on the moral life, an age which longed for spiritual vision and supernatural support, an essentially religious philo- sophy like the new Pythagoreanism was sure to be a great power. Gathering up impartially whatever suited its main end from the ancient schools, maintaining a scrupulous rever- ence for all the devotion of the past, it shed over all a higher light, issuing, as its votaries believed, from the lands of the dawn.^ Keeping a consecrated place for all the gods of popular tradition, linking men to the Infinite by a graduated hierarchy of spirits with their home in the stars, it rose to the conception of the One, pure, passionless Being to whom no bloody sacrifice is to be offered, who is to be worshipped best by silent adoration and a life of purity. And in cultivating this purity, the grossness of the body must be attenuated by a strict rule of life.^ And though the Highest be so remote and 80 ethereal. He has not left us without messengers and inter- preters to bridge the vast interval between us and the Infinite, by means of dream and vision and oracle. A world of strange daemonic life surrounds us, a world of spirits and heroic souls akin to ours.^ For though we are immersed in the alien element of the flesh, yet our complex soul has a divine part, which may even here below have converse with the Divine. During its
1 Plat Rm, ii. 864 B. « Baar, Ch, Hid. ii p. 178.
V ^h ,^?^^^^ *^^ •^^^^'^■» P- 268, 8 Zeller,PAi/. derGrieeh, iiL 2 p. 99.
who think the ceremonies never were . , , „ ^ . *» a r
indecent Kohde, i. p. 289. ' Philoetr. Apoll I)ifan, i. 7, 8 ; cf.
> Herodot ii. 81 ; lumbl. Pytha4f, Sen. J^h 108, §§ 17-20.
151 ; Rohde, Pgychet ii. p. 103. ' Zellor, iii. 2, p. 122.
618 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iv
period of duress and probation, it may indeed become irremedi- ably tainted by contact with matter. It may also, hearkening to the voice of philosophy, hold itself clear and pure firom such defilement When the mortal severance of the two natures comes, the divine part does not perish with its mouldering prison, but it may have a very different destiny in the ages to come, according to the manner of its earthly life. This life and the eternal state are linked in an inevitable moral sequence; as we sow, so shall we reap in successive lives. There is a Great Judgment in the unseen world, with momentous, age-long effects. The spirit which has refused to yield to the seductions of the flesh may, in the coming life, rise to empyrean heights beyond human imagination to picture. The soul which has been imbruted by its environment may have to pass a long ordeal of three thousand years, and then return to another sojourn in human form, or it may sink hopelessly to ever lower depths of degradation.
The biography of Apollonius of Tyana is, of course, in one sense a romance.^ Yet its tales of miracle should hardly be allowed to obscure its value as a picture of the beliefs of that age. We cannot doubt that the Pythagorean apostle of the time of the Flavians went all over the Eomcm world, preaching his gospel of moral and ritual purity, kindling or satisfying the faith in the world of spirit, striving in a strange fashion to reconcile a mystic monotheism and devotion to a pure life of the soul with a scrupulous reverence for all the mythologies. It may, at first sight, appear strange that a mystic like Apollonius, of the Pythagorean school, should so seldom allude to the subject of immortality. The truth is that Apollonius was not a dogmatic preacher; he dealt little in theories. His chief business, as he conceived it, was with practical morality, and the reform or restoration of ritual where it had fallen into desuetude and decay.^ Penetrated as he was with the faith in a spiritual world, he seems to assume as a postulate the eternity of the soul, and its incarnation for a brief space on earth. During its sojourn in the flesh, it is visited by visions from on high,
* Philostr. ApoU, Tyan. i. 2 ; cf. ^ Philostr. AjpolX. Tyfooi. iv. 20 ; iii.
ZeUer, iii. 2, p. 134, n. ; Baiir, Ch, Hist, 41 ; i. 11, 16 ; vi. 40. il pp. 174, 206.
CHAP. 11 BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 619
and such revelations are vouchsafed in proportion to its ascetic purity.^ What conception of the life to come ApolloniuB entertained we cannot say ; but its reality to him was a self- evident truth. We are surrounded by the spirits of the departed, although we know it not. Sailing among the islands of the Aegean, he once gratified his disciples by the tale of his having met the shade of Achilles at his tomb in the Troad.' Men said that the hero was really dead, and in the old home of the Myrmidons, his worship was forgotten. But ApoUonius, in a prayer which he had learnt from the sages on the Ganges, called upon the heroic shade to dispel all doubts by appearing at his call. At once an earthquake shook the tomb, and a fair youthful form was by his side of wondrous beauty and superhuman stature, clothed in a Thessalian mantle. His stature grew more majestic, and his beauty more glorious as Apollonius gazed. But the sage had no weak fears in the presence even of so august a spirit, and pressed him with questions which savour far more of antiquarian than spiritual interest. Was Helen really in Troy ? Why does not Homer mention Palamedes ? The hero resolved his doubts, sent a warning message to the Thessalians to restore his forgotten honours, and in a soft splendour vanished at the first cock- crow.'
The biography of Apollonius closes with a tale which throws a strong light on the spiritual cravings of that age. The sage firmly believed in transmigration and immortality, although he discouraged debate on these high themes.^ After his death, the youth of Tyana were much occupied with solemn thoughts. But there was a sceptic among them who had vainly besought the departed philosopher to return from spiritland and dispel his doubts as to the future life. At last one day he fell asleep among his companions, and then suddenly started up as one demented, with the cry — ** I believe thee." Then he told his friends that he had seen the spirit of the sage, that he had been actually among them, though they knew it not, chanting a marvellous song of life and death. It told of the escape of the soul from the mouldering frame and
' Philostr. -^;»W. TVm. ii. 87 ; vi 11. d^drarof cfty, i^oa64t€t #n iiii/rKw
' lb. iv. 16. fih 6ti dXiT^^f 6 inrift adrrit \6yot,
* lb, iv. 16. ToKvrpayftoiftiF W /tii ^vyxupQp rd &d^
* lb, viii. 81, irepl ^hodh W, un /uydXa,
620 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM took rr
of its Bwift flight to ethereal worlds. " Thou shalt know all when thou art no more; but while thou art yet among the living, why seek to pierce the mystery ? " ^
The new Platonist school, with Plutarch and Maximus at their head, were, in this age, the great apostles of the hope of immortality. Platonists in their theory of mind and God, Neo- Pythagorean in their faith in the openness of the human spirit at its best to supernatural influences, they felt the doctrine of the coming life to be axiomatic. It is true that the author of the Consolation to Apollonitis, seems at times to waver, as Seneca did, between the idea of extinction at death and the hope of eternal beatitude.' This piece is full of pessimist thoughts of life, and embalms many a sad saying of the Greek poets on its shortness and its misery." Bringing far more sorrow than joy, life may well be regarded as a mysterious punishment That Thracian tribe which mourned at each birth as others do at death, had a true philosophy of man's estate. The great consolation is that, in the phrase of Heraclitus, death and life are one, we are dying every moment from our birth. Death is the great healer, in the words of Aeschylus, the deliverer from the curse of existence, whether it be an eternal sleep or a far journey into an unknown land. The prospect of blank nothingness offers no terrors ; for the soul only returns to its original unconsciousness. But this was hardly a congenial mood to the author, and before the close, he falls back on the solace of mystic tradition or poetic vision, that, for the nobler sort, there is a place prepared in the ages to come, after the Great Judgment, when all souls, naked and stripped of all trappings and disguises, shall have to answer for the deeds done in the body.^ The same faith is professed by Plutarch to his wife in the Consolation on the death of their little daughter, which took place while Plutarch was from home. The loss of a pure bright young soul, full of love and kindness to all, even to her lifeless toys, was evidently a heavy blow.' But Plutarch praises his wife's simple restraint and abstinence from the effusive parade of conventional mourning. All such displays seemed to him a rather vulgar intemperance
* Philostr. ApoU. Tyan. viii. 81, i) ri ' /5. c. 7 sqq.
fierii iifioiffty iClir wtpl rQvdt /larel^ct ; * lb. o. 86, rt^weOrat yiLfi deZ Kpfpwg^t,
* Plat (?) Cmsol. ad ApoU, o. 81 ; of. jctX.
c 15. ' Consol, tid Ubb, c.^.
CHAP. II BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 521
and self-indulgence.^ And why grieve for one who is spared all grief ? She had her little joys, and, knowing no other, she suffers no pain of loss. Yet Plutarch would not have his wife accept the cold consolation that death brings unconsciousness. He reminds her of the brighter, more cheering vision which they have enjoyed together as communicants in the Dionysiac mysteries. If the soul is undying, if it is of divine parentage and has a divine destiny, then the shortness of its imprison- ment and exile is a blessing. The captive bird may come by use and wont actually to love its cage. And the worst misery of old age is not grey hairs and weakness, but a dull absorption in the carnal and forgetfulness of divine things. " Whom the gods love die young." By calling them back early, they save them from long wanderings.^
Plutarch's belief in immortality is a religious faith, a practical postulate. He nowhere discusses the bases of the belief in an exhaustive way. It is rather inseparable from his conception of God and His justice, and the relation of the human soul to God.' He admits that the prospect of reward or punishment in another world has but little influence on men's conduct.^ Few believe in the tales of tortures of the damned. And those who do can soothe their fears, and pur- chase a gross immortality, by initiations and indulgences.'^ Yet it is impossible to doubt that to Plutarch the hope of the eternal life was a precious possession. He assails with force, and even asperity, the Epicurean school for their attempt to rob humanity of it, on the pretext of relieving men of a load of super- stitious fears. They are like men on board a ship who, letting the passengers know that they have no pilot, console them with the further information that it does not matter, as they are bound to drive upon the rocks.' The great promise of Epicurus was to free men from the spectral terrors with which poetic fancy had filled the scenery of the under world. But in doing so, he invested death with a new horror infinitely worse than the fabled tortures of the damned. It was a subtle fallacy which taught that, as annihilation involves the extinction of consciousness, the lamented loss of the joys and vivid energy
' Ckmtol. ad Ux. o. 4, 6. * Ih, o684w i^rt wp^ lifuis rodt ii&Frat
' Ckmtol. ad ApolL c. 17-24. ^^' dirurrofomu Kal XopBdyoviFiP.
^ • Non p. Suav, c. 26, 27.
s De 8er. Nvm. Find. o. 18 (661 a). « A e. 23 (1108).
522
THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM
BOOK IV
of life was a mere imagination projected on a blank future where no regret could ever disturb the tranquillity of nothing- ness.^ Plutarch took his stand on psychology. The passioD for continued existence is, as a matter of fact, the most im- perious in our nature. With the belief in immortality, Epicurus sweeps away the strongest and dearest hopes of the mass of men. This life is indeed full of pain and sorrow ; yet men cling to it passionately, merely as life, in the darkest hours. And they are ready to brave the worst horrors of Cerberos and Chimaera for the chance of continued existence.* The privation of a dream of happiness in another world is a real loss, even though, when the grey day of nothingness dawns, the consciousness of loss be gone. Is it a light thing to tell the nobler spirits, the moral athletes, who have battled with evil all life long, that they have been contending for a visionaij crown ?^ Is it nothing to the idealist who, amid all the obstructions of the life in the flesh, has been fostering his nobler powers, in the hope of eternal freedom and the full vision of truth, that that real life to which he fancied death was only the gateway is, after all, a mere illusion? Nor does Plutarch disdain to take account of that vivacity of love which in all ages has sought to soften the bitterness of parting by the hope of reunion and recognition in other worlds.*
The Consolation to ApoUonius only refers briefly to the pimishment of lawless wealth and power, as the complement to the reward of virtue.' But this aspect of immortality is dwelt on at length in the remarkable treatise on the Delays of the Divine Vengeance. The problem of hereditary guilt, and the punishment of the children for the sins of the fathers in this world, in view of the justice and benevolence of God, leads on to the thought of another tribunal which may terribly correct the injustices of time.® The doctrine of Divine providence and
* Non p, Suav, c. 80, 26.
^ lb, 0, 27, «t' ^r Sklyov S4(o X^tF irdrraf jnU vdaat thai irpo$6fiO\ft r^ Ktpp4p(p 8ia9dKt>€ff0(u 6ir(at iv r^ eb^ai diofUvfoa-i fiijd' d^aiptBQffi,
» lb, c. 23.
^ lb, 0. 28, iiXUnit iavrodt X^H^^ dirocrrtpoOffi , . . koX rhw ^IKov iraripa KoX T^v ^Xijif firpripa koI tov ywcuxa
Xpri<rHiP 6\ff€ff$ai /tii vpoadoicCimt
Kal ^\<Hf>po<r6rrjs ^ §X9wn9 ti rd ai>r4 TLvBaybpi^ Koi IlXdrfiyi'i ^o^^ovnntr.
' Consol, ad Apoll, a 86.
« D€ Ser, Nwn, Vimd, c. 16 : ct Or^rd, D€ la Morale (U PluL p. 288 ; Oaketmith, Rd. of Plut, p. Ill aqq.
)
CHAP. II BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 523
the doctrine of immortality stand or fall together.^ God could not take so much care for ephemeral souls, blooming for a brief space and then withering away, as in the women's soon-fading gardens of Adonis.* Above all, Apollo would be the greatest deceiver, the god who has «o often solemnly from the tripod ordered rites of expiation and posthumous honours to be paid to lofty souls departed* Yet, like his great master Plato, Plutarch felt that the full assurance of the long dream of humanity lies beyond the veil — that we know not what we shall be. And, like the master, he invoked the apocalyptic power of the religious and poetic imagination to fortify the hesitating conclusions of the reason.
The visionary power and charm of the great master, whose reign was to be prolonged for ages after Plutarch's time, is seen, perhaps in a faint reflection, in Plutarch's mythical forecast of the future of the soul. Plato's psychology, his sharp opposi- tion of the reason to the lower nature rooted in the flesh, his vision of the Eternal Goodness, his intensely moral conception of the responsibility of life on earth, its boundless possibilities of future unimpeded intuition, its possible eternal degradation through ages of cyclic change, all this, together with kindred elements, perhaps from the Semitic east, had left a profound effect on religious minds. The greatness of S. Augustine is nowhere more apparent than in his frank recognition of the spiritual grandeur of Plato. And that great spirit, so agile in dialectic subtlety, so sublime in its power of rising above the cramping limitations of our mortal life, is also, from its vivid poetic sympathy, most ready to aid weak ordinary souls to climb ** the altar stairs." Never was pure detached inteUigence wedded so harmoniously to glowing imagination, never was ethereal truth so clothed in the warm colouring and splendour of the world of sense. Where reason has strained its utmost strength to solve the eternal riddle, ecstatic vision and religious myth, transcending the limits of space and time, must be called in to lend their aid.
Plato and the Platonic Socrates are fully conscious that the conclusions of philosophic reason on a future state can be
* De Ser, N. Vind. v. c. 17, €U odr, ^e/Scu^v, rrX. (^>rpft \6y(K 6 rod $€od t^p trfibvoifiw koX ' lb, c. 17 (660 f).
r^ diafMv^ TTJt dt^OpunrLvrft i^vx^ ' If>, c 17, ad fin.
524 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM took iv
only tentative. And they often fall back on a divine doctrine, or tradition, or a mythopoeic power by which poetic imagina- tion peoples the dim regions of a world beyond the sensea The visions of Timarchus and Thespesius in Plutarch are, like the Nekuia of the Phaedo and of the lUpiMic, an e£fort of the religious imagination to penetrate the darkness from which reason recoils. Nor is the effort strange in one who, along with the purest conception of an immaterial spirit, still believed in the efficacy of legend and material symbol to reveal the truth which they veiled.^
Thespesius of Soli, a man of evil life, once fell from a height, was taken up for dead, but revived again on the third day, on the eve of his funeral He came back to the living an altered man, after a marvellous experience. His soul, on escaping from the body, was swept along a sea of light among the stars.^ He saw other souls emerging in the form of fiery bubbles, which burst and gave forth a subtle form in the likeness of man.^ Three or four he recognised, and would have spoken to them, but they seemed delirious or senseless, and shrank away from him, forming in the end little companies of their own, who swept along in wild disordered movements, uttering strange cries of wailing or terror. The soul of an old acquaintance then hailed him and became his guide, pointing out that the souls of the really dead cast no shadow, being perfectly pellucid, surrounded by light Yet some of them are marked with scales and weals and blotches. Adrasteia is the inevitable judge of all, and, through three ministers, three great classes of criminals receive their proper doom. Some are punished swiftly on earth, another class meet with heavier judgment in the shades. The utterly incurable are rutlilessly pursued by the Erinnys, and finally plunged in a dark abyss, of which the horrors might not be told The second class undergo a fierce purgatorial cleansing, in which some spirits have all their stains wiped out and become clear and lustrous. But where evil is more obstinate, and passion again and again asserts its power, the soul long retains a colour appropriate to its peculiar vice. The mean avaricious
> Robde, Psyche, iL pp. 276, 279 ; » Pint. De Ser, Nunu Vind. a 22
.Towett's Plato, L p. 896 ; PI. PhaecL (568 o).
85 c, D ; 60 B, c ; 69 o ; Meno 81 A ; * lb, elra firrY^vfUinis Irpifui r^
Ph(ud, 114 D, rh fih oSr rocaOra rofi^Xvyof, iK^iptiP r&rom ^odvac
9curxvp/(raa'tfac oCrun fx^^t ^ wpixci dif0pvwo€i9ri^ rbv d* &yKw rdrroXctf
»i^ ixof^^ dy^pl, #frX. irrX.
CHAP. II BELIEF IN IMMORTAUTY 52A
soul is dark and squalid ; the cruel is blood-red ; the envious violet and livid. Short of the worst eternal torture, souls with insatiable craving for fleshly deb'ghts, gravitate to a birth into low animal forms.^
Thespesius and his guide are then swept on wings of light to other and less gloomy scenes. Over the chasm of Forgetfulness, clothed in its recesses with flowers and herbs which exhale a fragrant odour, the opening through which Dionysus had passed to his place among the gods, floated a cloud of spirits like birds, drinking in the fragrance with mirth and gladness. On again they passed, till they came to a crater which received the flow of many -coloured streams, snow-white or rainbow-hued,* and hard by was the oracle of Night and Selene, from which issue dreams and phantoms to wander among men. Then Thespesius was dazzled with the radiance which shot from the Delphic tripod upwards to the peaks of Parnassus; and, blinded by the radiance, he could only hear the shrill voice of a woman chanting a song which seemed to tell of the hour of his own death. The woman, his guide explained, was the Sibyl who dwells on the face of the moon. The sweep of the moon's onward course prevented him catching the Sibyl's words to the full, but he heard a prophecy of the desolation of Campania by the fires of Vesuvius, and the death of the emperor.
Other scenes of punishment follow, among which Thespesius saw his own father rising from the abyss, covered with weals and marks of torture which had been inflicted for a long- buried crime. Finally, the friendly guide vanished, and Thespesius was forced onwards by dread spectral forms to witness fresh scenes of torment The hypocrite who had hidden his vices under a veil of decorum was forced, with infinite pain of contortion, to turn out his inmost soul. The avaricious were plunged by daemons by turns in three lakes, one of boiling gold, one of freezing lead, and one of hardest iron. But the worst fate of all was reserved for those whose sins had been visited on their innocent descendants upon earth, who pursued them with curses, or clung around them
* Plut. De Ser. Nunu Find, c. 22 Kparrlpa, /Uyaw, tls W ToOrw ^/i/^dXXorra (565). /ieOfiara rb fikw d^poO OdKiaaris Ij x^^<^
^ lb. c. 22 (566), Ido^ d^o/iay \afiiri>6Ttpoi^ kt\.
526 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book nr
in clouds like bees or bats, keeping ever poignant the memoiy of transmitted guilt and suffering.^
The vision of Timarchus, in the piece on the Grenius of Socrates, has a rather different motive from that which inspired the vision of Thespesiua Thespesius came back with a message as to the endless consequences of sin in worlds beyond the senses, and the far-reaching responsibilities of the life on earth. The expeiiences of Timarchus in the cave of Trophonius were intended to teach the doctrine of the existence, apart from the lower powers akin to fleshly nature, of the pure intelligence or daemon, which, coming from the Divine world, can catch its voices and transmit them to the mortal life here below. Timarchus made the descent into the cave of Trophonius and spent in its weird darkness two nights and a day, during which he saw a wondrous revelation of the spirit- world.^ His higher part, escaping from the sutures of the head, emerged in pellucid ether. There was no trace of earthly scenery, but countless islands swept around him, gleaming with the shifting colours of lambent fire, amid tones coming from ethereal distances.' From a yawning abyss of surging darkness arose endless wailings and moans. An unseen guide explained to him the fourfold division of the universe and the boundaries of its provinces. High above all is the sphere of the One and the Invisible. Next in order is the region of pure mind, of which the Sun is lord. The third is the debatable land between pure intelligence and the sensible and mortal — the region of soul, whose mistress is the mooiL Styx is the boundary between this lunar kingdom and the low world of matter, sin, and death. The three realms beneath the highest correspond to the three elements of our composite nature, — mind, soul, and body.* This mortal life is a temporary and unequal partnership of the Divine reason with the lower appetites, which have their roots in the flesh It is an exile, an imprisonment; it is also a probation of the higher part of human nature, and its escape comes to it by a twofold death
1 Plut Ik Ser. Num. Find. c. 22 ApoU. Tyan. viiL 19 ; Plut De Om.
(667 d), vdvTw Si xdax'^ip ikeyev olicrpd- Socr. c 21, 22 (689, 690) ; cL Gardner
TOTtt rdf iiSff SoKo6ffas d<f>€i<rdaL r^ ALktjs, and Jevons, Greek Antiq. pp. 267-8.
eZr aff^ifff uXXa/x^aw/t^j'a J- aCrcu 5' Vcw * Pint. De Oeru Socr. c 22 (690),
&if efs rijfas iicyiafom ij ircu^as ^ iroiv^ iLPap\i\ffa% Si iS^y fUw yiftf oOdtLfioO
W€piij\$€v ktX. xaOopay, vi/l<rovs Si Xafdroii^raf fidkoLK^
« Cf. Pausan. ix. 89, § 6 ; Philoetr. xvpl ktX. « lb. (691).
CHAP. II BEUEF IN IMMORTALITY 627
The first, imperfect and incomplete, is the severance of soul from body in what men call death, the falliug away of the gross wrappings of matter. This death is under the sway of Demeter. The second, under the care of Persephone, is a slower process, in whicli the ethereal reason, the true eternal personality of man, is finally released from association with the passionate and sensitive nature, which is akin to the bodily organism. After the first corporeal death, all souls wander for a time in the space between the moon and earth. In the vision of Timarchus, he saw over the chasm of darkness a host of stars with a curious variety of motion. Some shot up from the gulf with a straight decided impetus. Others wavered in deflexions to right or left, or, after an upward movement, plunged again into the abyss. These motions, as the invisible guide expounded, i-epresent the various tendencies of souls, corresponding to the strength or weakness of the spiritual force within them. All souls have an element of the Divine reason, but it is variously blended with the baser elements in different naturea In some it becomes completely sunk and absorbed in the life of the senses. In others, the rational part holds itself above the lower bodily life, and maintains an almost separate exist- ence. And yet there are natures in which the rational and irrational elements wage a long and indecisive conflict until, slowly, at last, the passions recognise their rightful mfwter, and become obedient to the heavenly voice within. The debased and hopeless souls, rising for a moment after death, are repelled with fierce angry flashes by the moon, and fall back again to the world of sense and corruption, to undergo a second birth. The purer souls are received by her for a loftier destiny. In some, the pure spiritual part is finally released by the love of the Sun from the lower powers of the soul, which wither and fade away as the body does on earth. Others, still retaining the composite nature, though no longer tainted by the flesh, dwell in the moon as daemons, but often revisit the earth on various missions, to furnish inspiration to oracles and mysteries, to save men from crime or to punish, to help the struggling by land or sea. But even the daemons may fall from their high estate. If, in their duties of provi- dence and succour, they show anger or favour or envy, they
628 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iv
may be thrust down once more into the puigatoiy of material form.*
It may well be that the misympathetic critic will regard such an imaginative invasion of the unseen as a freak of lawless fancy, hardly worth chronicling. And like all similar attempts, the apocalypse of Plutarch may easily be treated with an airy ridicule. To a more serious criticism, it seems vitiated by a radical inconsistency. Starting with the principle of the absolutely immaterial nature of the immortal part of man, it yet depicts its future existence in the warmest colours of the world of sense. Its struggles, its tortures, its beatitude, are described in terms which might seem fitting only to a corporeal nature. All this is true ; and yet the answer which Plutarch would probably have made to any such cavils is very simple. How can you speak of pure disembodied spirit at all, how can you imagine it, save in the symbolism of ordinary speech ? Befine and subtilise your language to the very uttermost, and it will still retain associations and reminiscences, however faint and distant, of the material world. Myth and symbol are necessary to any expression of human thought alike about Gtod and the future of the souL The Infinite Spirit and the future destiny of the finite, which is His child, are equally beyond the range of human sense and speech. When the human spirit has exhausted all its efforts of imagination to pierce the darkness of the world beyond the grave, it takes refuge in some religious system which claims to have a divine message and speaks in the tones of another world. The voice from eternity came to troubled heathendom from Egypt and the East.
* Plut. Dt Foe. in Orb. Lun. c. 80.
CHAPTER III
THE OLD BOMAN RELIGION
It is woll knowu that, from the second Punic War to the revival of Augustus, old Boman religion was falling into decay. Yet sweeping assertions about the religious condition of any age must be taken with some reserve. They are often unsafe about a contemporary society ; they must be still more so with regard to a society which is known to us almost entirely through the literary remains of a comparatively small cultivated class. Even among that limited circle, we can know only the opinions of a few, and hardly anything of its silent members, still less of the feelings of its women and dependents. A deep shadow rests on those remote granges and quiet country towns in Samnium or Lombardy where character remained imtainted in the days of Nero or Domitian, and where the religion of Numa long defied the penal edicts of Theodosius and Honorius. Lucretius, whose mission it was to liberate men from the terrors of old Latin and Etrurian super- stition, was not contending against an imaginary foe. The sombre enthusiasm which he throws into the conflict reveals the strength of the enemy. The grandmother of Atticus and Terentia, the wife of Cicero, were timorous devotees. Among the aristocratic augurs of Cicero's day there were firm believers in the sacred birds ; and Lentulus, a confederate of Catiline, trusted implicitly in the oracles of the SibyL^
Still there can be no doubt that in the governing and think- ing class of the last century of the Bepublic, scepticism and even open contempt for the old religion were rampant. Many causes were at work to produce this decadence of old Soman
^ Boittier, BsL Bom. i p. 67. 529
630 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iy
faitL It was hardly possible for the cultivated Boman of the days of Scipio Aemilianus, or of Cicero and Caesar, who had fought and travelled in many lands, and studied their mythologies and philosophies, to acquiesce in the faith of the simple farmers of Latium, who founded the Ambarvalia and Lupercalia, who offered the entrails of a dog to Bobigus ^ and milk to Pales and Silvanus, who worshipped Jupiter Feretrius under the mountain oak«' Since those far-off days, Latium had come under many influences, and added many new deities to her pantheon. The gods of Hellas had come to be identified with the gods of Borne, or to share their honours. Syncretism had been at work in Italy centuries before the days of Plutarch and Aristides. And the old Italian deities, who had only a shadowy personality, with no poetry of l^nd to invest fliem with human interest,melted into one another or into forms of alien mythology. Greek literature became familiar to the educated from the Hannibalic war, and a writer like Euripides, who had a great popularity, must have influenced many by the audadoos skill with which he lowered the dignity and dimmed the radiance of the great figures of Greek legend. The comic stage improved upon the lesson. Early in the second century Ennius translated the Sacred Histories of Euhemerus, and familiarised his countrymen with a theory which reduced Jupiter and Saturn, Faunus and Hercules, to the stature of earthly kings and warriors. But Greek philosophy was the great solvent of faith. The systems of the New Academy and Epicurus were openly or insidiously hostile to religious belief. But they had not so long and powerful a reign over the Boman mind as Stoicism, and, although the earlier Stoicism extended a philosophic patronage to popular religion, it may be doubted whether it stimulated faith. There was indeed a certain affinity between Stoical doctrine and old Boman religion, as there was between Stoic morals and old Boman character. In resolving the gods by allegory and pseudo-scientific theory into various potencies of the great World-Soul, the follower of Zeno did not seem to do much violence to the vaguely personified abstractions of the old Latin creed. Above all, with the ex- ception of Panaetius, the Stoic doctors did not throw doubt on the powers of divination and augury, so essential an element
^ W. Fowler, Ryin, FedivaU, p. 89. > lb. p. 229.
CHAP. Ill THE OLD ROMAN RELIGION §91
in t^e religion of Some. The power to read the future was a natuiBl corollary to the providence and benevolence of the gods.^ Yet, although the Stoic might strive to discover the germ of truth, he did not conceal his contempt for the husk of mythology in which it was hidden, and for many of the practices of worship.^
Quintus Scaevola and Vai'ro applied all the forces of subtle antiquarianism and reverence to sustain the ancestral faith. But they also drew the line sharply between the religion of philosophy and the religion of the State. And Varro went so far as to say that the popular religion was the creation of early statesmen,' and that if the work had to be done again, it might be done better in the light of phUosophy. The Stoic in Cicero, as Seneca did after him, treated the tales of the gods as mere anile superstition.^ It is probable that such was the tone, in their retired debates, of the remarkable circle which surrounded Scipio and Laelius. Panaetius, their philosophic guide, had less sympathy than any great Stoic with popular theology.^ Folybius gave small place to Providence in human afifairs, and regarded Boman religion as the device of statesmen to control the masses by mystery and terror.^ Tet these men were enthusiastic champions of a sjrstem which they r^arded as irrational, but which was consecrated by immemorial antiquity. Laelius defended the institutions of Numa in a speech of golden eloquence which moved the admiration of Cicero, just as Symmachus defended them five centuries later before the council of Valentinian.^ The divorce between esoteric belief and official profession must have insidiously lowered the moral tone of those who were at once thinkers and statesmen. Such a false position struck some of the speakers in Cicero's theological dialogues, and it makes his own opinions an enigma.' The external and utilitarian attitude to
» Cic. De Div. I 5, 9, existimo ... * Oic. />« Nat. D, il. 28, 70 ; ct Sen.
8i Dii not, esse qui diyinent ; L 98, Frag. 89 ; cf. £p. 95, 47. 82. si sunt Dii, neqne ante declarant * Cic. De Div, i. 3, 6. hominibuB qnae fhtora sint, aut non * Polyb. vi. 56, jreU /um 9okh t6
diligunt hominoe, ant quid eventarum irapd roit dXXoit difOpdnroit drnit^biuifw
sit Ignorant. This arnunont is attri- roOro ffwix€i9 rh, ^Fia/taiiaw wpdy/iara,
buted to Chrysippos and Diogenes in ii. \iyia di rijw 8€tffi8aifiop(aM. iirl roroC-
49, 101. T«r yiLp iKrerpaytfiifnu . . . &ar€ ft^
vlU). See Voto g opinion, «. Ti 6. iii,„^u<«tlnncaI»;«t^«AlH. > De Oiv. Dei, ri. 4. * Boiider, Bd. Bom. i. p. M.
(^39 THE REVIVAL OF PAGAJ^ISM book nr
t^e State religion hardly secured even punctual or reverent conformity in the last age of the Bepublio. Divination and augury had become mere engines of political intrigue, and the aristocratic magistrate could hardly take the omens vnthout a 8nul& Yarro could not repress the fear that the old religion, on which he expended such a wealth of learning, might pmsk from mere negligence.^ The knowledge of litnigical usage began to fade, and Yarro had to recall the very names of forgotten gods. An ancient priesthood of the highest rank remained unfilled for seventy years.' Scores of the most venerable temples were allowed to fall into ruin,* and ancient brotherhoods like the Titii and Fratres Arvales are hardly heard of for generations before the reforms of the Augustan aga It is not within the scope of this work to enter minutely into the subject of that great effort of reform or reaction. It is commonly said that the cool imperial statesman had chiefly political ends in view, and especially the aggrandisement and security of the principata And certainly Ovid, who strove to interest his countrymen in the revival of their religion, does not display much seriousness in religion or morals. He treats as lightly the amours of Olympus as the intrigues of the Campus Martins and the Circus. Yet it may well have been that after the terrible orgies of civil strife through which the Boman world had passed, Augustus was the convinced representative of a repentant wish to return to the old paths. The Boman character, through all wild aberrations of a trying destiny, was an enduring type. And Augustus, if he may have indulged in impious revels in his youth, which recall the wanton freaks of Alcibiades,^ had two great characteristics of the old Boman mind, formalism and superstition. He had an infinite faith in dreams and omens. He would b^in no serious business on the Nones.^ When he had to pronounce a funeral oration over his sister, Octavia, he had a curtain drawn before the corpse, lest the eyes of the pontiff might be polluted by the sight of death^ We may think that his
^ Aug. De Civ, D. vi. 2 ; cC Cio. I>i * Suet Oekn, c Sa
Leg, ii 13, 83, dnbium non est qain . ^ ^^ « ^
haecdiBciplinaetarsaugurumevanuerit * -'*• .^ 'Si ??"* o%a^d09tz cC
jam et yetuaUte et negligentia. ^'^^^ vl c 2S, f 1.
• D. Caaa. liv. 86 ; cf. W. Fowler's » Suet Odmf. a 91, 92. JRom, Feat. p. 848, Preller, Bom. Mythol.
p. 24. * D. Oaas. Ut. 85 «!/».
CHAP. Ill THE OLD ROMAN REUGION 633
religious revival was not inspired by real religious sentiment. Tet it is well to remind ourselves that old Boman religion, while it consecrated and solemnised the scenes and acts of human life, was essentially a formal religion ; the qpii« optTaium was the important thing. Its business was to avert the anger or win the favour of dim unearthly powers ; it was not primarily to purify or elevate the soul. Above all, it was interwoven from the beginning with the whole fabric of society and the State. Four centuries after Augustus was in his grave, it was only by a violent wrench, which inflicted infinite torture even on pagan mystics of the Neoplatonist school, that Bome was severed from the gods who had been the guardians and partners of her career for twelve hundred years. The altar of Victory which Augustus had placed in the Senate- house, and before which twelve generations of senators after him ofiered their prayers for the chief of the State, the most sacred symbol of the pagan Empire, was only removed after a fierce, obstinate struggle.
The religious revival of Augustus may not have aroused any deep religious sentiment; that, as we shall see, was to come from a different source. But it gave a fresh life to the formal religion of the State, which maintained itself till within a few years before the invasion of Alaric. The title Augustus which the new emperor assumed was one which, to the Boman mind, associated him with the majesty of Jupiter and the sanctity of all holy places and solemn rites.^ It was the beginning of that theocratic theory of monarchy which was to culminate, under the influence of Sun-worship, in the third century, and to propagate itself into ages far re- moved from the worship of Jupiter or the Sun. Although the counsels of Maecenas, recorded by Dion Cassius, may be apocryphal, Augustus acted in their spirit' As triumvir he had raised a shrine to Isis,' as emperor he frowned on alien worships.^ His mission was to restore the ancient religion of Latium. He burnt two thousand books of spurious augury, retedning only the Sibylline oracles.^ He restored the ancient
^ Oy. Fat^ i. 609, hio sooium irirrwt ai}r6t tv vifiw Knk ro^ dXXovt
snmmo cam Jore nomen habet. Sancta ri^ifr dj'd7jra{'e. vooant angurta patoee ; aujraaU vo- » ^^ ^j^i, 15 ^^
cantor Templa, Baoeidotam nte dioata ^ «. ,.
manu. * ^- !»▼. «•
* D. Cass, lit 86, ih fih $^» Tdrrjf * Saet Octav. c 81.
6U THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM iook nr
temples, 8ome of them, like those of Jupiter Feretrius and Juno Sospita, coeval with the Boman State, and enconraged bis friends to do the same for other venerable monuments of devotion. The most lavish gifts of gold and jewels were dedicated in the Capitoline temples. The precision of ancient augury was restored. Ancient priesthoods which had been long vacant were filled up, and the sacred colleges were raised in dignity and wealth^ Special care was taken to recall the vestals to the chaste dignity from which they had fallen for a hundred years. Before taking his seat, each senator was required to make a prayer, with an offering of incense and wine before the altar. Three worships, specially connected with the fortunes of Augustus or his race,*— those of Venue Grenetrix, Mars Ultor, and the Palatine Apollo,*— were revived with added splendour.^ The emperor paid special attention to the ancient sacred colleges, such as the Salii and Arvales, which went back to days far earlier than the Bepublic. Amid all the cares of State, he attended their meetings punctually. The dangerous right of co-optation was quietly withdrawn, till the members in the end owed their appointment to the sacer- dotal chief of the State.' The colleges became the most courtly and deferential supports of the prince's power. Prayers for his safety soon found a place in their antique litanies. It has been said with some truth that the Sahi and Arvales seem to be thinking more of the emperors than of the gods. The colleges had a courtly memory for all anniversaries in the imperial family. The Arval brothers achieved the infamy of complimenting Nero on his return after the miuxler of A^p- pina,^ and made vows of equal fervour for all the emperors of the year 69.*
But it was through the chief pontificate that the emperors did most at once to fortify and dignify their secular power, and to prolong the reign of the old Latin religion. It was the highest religious dignity of ancient Some. The college of which the emperor, as Pontifex Maximus, was head exercised a supreme and comprehensive control over the whole field of religion.^ It was charged with the duty of maintaining
1 D. Cass. IL 20. « CJ,L. vi. 2042 ; cf. 2U4 and 2034 ;
^ Boissier, tLd, Mom, i. 87. Boissier, MaL Mom. L p. 868.
» Momms. Mdm, StacUsr. ii. p. » CLL. vi. 2051, 2.
1024. « Momms. M9m, StaaUr, ii. p. 1022.
CHAP. Ill THE OLD ROMAN REUGION 686
the ancestral purity and exactness of the national worship, and of repressing tendencies to innovation and the adoption of alien rites. It selected the virgins who guarded the eternal fire, and sat in judgment on erring vestals and their betrayers. It had special jurisdiction in questions of adop- tion, burial, and sacred sites.^ From Augustus every emperor was also chief pontiff;^ even the Christian princes firom Constantine to Yalentinian and Yalens bear the honoured title in the inscriptions, and accepted the pontifical robes.* Thus the emperors strove in their religious attributes to connect themselves with the sacred tradition of Numa and the Boman kings. And, as time went on, the imperial house claimed a growing share in the pontifical honours. Nero, indeed, had been a member of all the sacred coU^^es as well as chief pontiff.^ But down to the reign of Vespasian only one of the " Caesares " could belong to the sacred coll^a But his sons Titus and Domitian were co-opted to the pontificate and all the priestly coU^^es before his death.' From Hadrian the pontificate and all the highest sacerdotal honours were held by all designated successors of the emperor.^ Antoninus Pius has the insignia of four priestly collies on his coins.^ M. Aurelius was one of the Salian brotherhood in his eighth year,^ and was received into all the coUeges at nineteen.® Commodus had reached the same sacred honours before he assumed the toga,^® and in five years more was Fontifex Maximus. Thus deeply had the policy of Augustus sunk into the minds of Ids successors. It is little wonder that never in the great days of the Republic were the forms of ancient religion more scrupulously observed than in the reign of M. Aurelius.^^
Private opinion after the Augustan revival greatly varied as to matters of faith. Men like the elder Pliny and Seneca scoffed at anthropomorphic religion. Men like Juvenal and Tacitus maintained a wavering attitude, with probably a receding £uth. Others like Suetonius were rapacious collectors of every scrap of the miraculoua The emperors who succeeded
1 Liy. i. 20. • Habel, p. 62.
3 Habel, DePonJtif. Earn. p. 45. W6. p. 24.
* Or. 1080, 1117 ; of. Zosun. iv. 86 ; « JuL Capitol M. AnL FML c 4. Amm. Marc xvL 10 ; Sym. Ep. x. 54. ' lb. o. 6.
* Habel, De Fwdif. Bma. p. 18. >^ Ih. c 16 ; Lamprid. Com. e. IS » /*. pp. 16, 17, 62 ; C.I.L. tL 983, (a. 176).
1984. " JoL CapitoL M. AnL a IS.
536 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book nr
Augustus were, with the exoeption of Nero, loyal sapponteis and protectors of the religion of the Stata Tiberiiia, although personally careless of reb'gion, displayed a scrupuloiis reject for ancient usage in filling up the ancient priesthoods^ and in guarding the Sibylline verses from interpolationa.^ He also frowned on the imported rites of Egypt.' Claudia^ at once pedantic and superstitious, revived venerable rites of the days of Tullus Hostilius, and, when an ill-omened bird alighted od the temple of Jupiter, as supreme pontiff the emperor pro- nounced the solemn form of expiation before the assembled people.^ Nero, and the Neronian competitors for the Empire, in the fierce conflict which followed his death, were, indeed, often, though not always, careless of ancient rite, but they were all the slaves of superstition.^ The Flavians and Antonines were religious conservatives of the spirit of Augustu& There is a monument to Vespasian of the year 78 A.D. as "the restorer of temples and public ceremonies." ^ The restoratian of the Capitol, which had been burned down in the civil wax; was one of the first tasks of his reign. And the ceremony made such an impression on the imagination of the youthful Tacitus, that he has recorded with studied care the stately and accurate ritual of olden time which was observed by the emperor.^ Domitian carried on the restoration on even a more splendid scale; he was a devotee of Minerva, and a rigorous vindicator of old ascetic religious law.^ The emperor Hadrian, whose character is an enigma of contrasts, to judge by his last famous jm dUtsprit on his death-bed, probably <Ued a sceptic. Yet his biographer tells us that he was a caiefid guajxlian of the ancient ritual.^ The archaistic fashion in literary taste, which had begun in the first century, and which culminated in Hadrian's leign, favoured and harmonised with a scrupulous observance of ancient forms in religion.^ The genius of one too early taken away has done more than a legion of historic critics to picture for us the sad, dutiful piety of a spirit of the Antonine age, steeped in philosophies which
^ Too. Ann. iv. 16. Yet he is said * Or, 2864.
to be wrea deot negligerUior, c. 69. * Tac EitL It. 58.
' /b. c. 86. 7 Suet J)om, a 5, 16.
* Saet Cfiaud. c. 22 ; Tao. Ann. * AeL Spart Badr. o. 22.
xiL 8. • Ih, li, % 5; Plin. A. yI 21.
« Suet Otho, e. 7, 8, 12 ; VUeU. e. § 1 ; Hac«, SfuSUme, p. 96 ; Kartha.
6, 11 ; Tte. EitL i. 87. MonUitiM, p. 184 sq.
CHAP. Ill THE OLD ROMAN RELIGION »37
made the passing moment of vivid artistic perception the great end of life, yet still instinct with the old Soman love of immemorial forms at the harvest gathering or the yearly offering to the dead members of the household^ The cheer- less negation of Epicurus, and the equally withering theology of the Stoics, could not weaken in Boman hearts the spell of ancestral pieties which clustered round the vault near the grey old country house of the race, looking down on the l^rirhene sea, or the awe of ancient grove or spring sacred to Silvanus and the Nymphs, or the calm, chastened joy in a ritual in which every act was dictated by a love of ceremonial cleanness and exactness, and redolent of an immemorial past. In such a household, and in such an atmosphere, the two great Antonines were reared. The first, who was before all else an honest country gentleman, fond of hunting, fishing, and the gladness of the vintage at Lorium, never failed to perform all due sacrifices unless he was ilL His coins bear the pictured legends of the infancy of Bome.' M. Aurelius was &mous as a boy for his knowledge of Soman ritual Enrolled in the college of the Salii in his eighth year, he performed all its sacred offices with perfect composure, reciting from memory, with no one to dictate the form, every word of the ancient liturgy which had in his generation become almost unin- telligible.^ In the terror of the Marcomannic invasion he delayed his departure for the seat of war to summon around him all the priests; he had the city purified in solemn, decorous fashion, not excluding even the rites of alien lands ; and for seven days the images of the gods were feasted on their couches along all the streets.^
The emperors from Augustus found religion a potent ally of sovereignty, and the example of the master of the world was a great force. Tet it may well be doubted whether, in the matter of religious conservatism, the emperors were not rather following than leading public opinion. Gods were in those times being created by the score ; apotheosis was in the air from the days of Nero to the days of the Seven. Petronius, with an exaggeration which has a certain foundation in fact, affirms that in Croton you could more readily light upon a god than on a man.* The
^ Pater, Marius^ chap, ii., xxyii. ' Ih, o. 4.
* Jul. Capitol. AvL P. c. 11. « lb. c 18. ' Petron. e. 17.
638 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book if
elder. Pliny uses almost the same strength of languaga Die grumUer in Lucian indignantly complains of the fashion in which the ancient gods of Olympus are being overshadowed by the divine fwrveMM of every clime. And, as we shall pres^itly see, the inscriptions reveal an immense propaganda of worships in tone and spirit apparently hostile to the old religion of the Latin raoe. Yet the inscriptions also show that the old gods had really little to fear from the new. A survey of the index to almost any volume of the Corpus will convince the student that the Trinity of the Capitol, — Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva^ — that Hercules and Silvanus, the Nymphs, Semo Sancus and Dea Dia, Mars and Fortuna, so far from being neglected, were apparently more popular than ever.^ In an age of growing monotheism the King of the gods was, of course, still supreme in his old ascendency. Jupiter is worshipped under many titles ; he is often coupled or identified with some provindal deity of ancient fame.' But Jupiter is everywhere. The Lord of the thunder and the tempest has shrines on the high passes of the Apennines or the Alps,' and soldiers or travellers leave the memorials of their gratitude for his protection on perilous journeys.^ The women of Campanian towns go in procession to implore him to send rain.^ Antoninus Pius built a temple to Juno Sospita of Lanuvium, where the goddess had a sacred grove, and a worsliip of great antiquity.* The Quinquatria of Minerva were not only celebrated with special honour by Domitian, but by large and powerful classes who owned her divine patronage, physicians and artists, orators and poets.^ Some of the old Latin deities seem to have even grown in popularity under the early Empire. Hercules, the god of plenty, strong truth, and good faith, whose legend is intertwined with the most venerable names in Boman story, has his altars and monuments everywhere.' Combining with his own native Latin character the poetic prestige of his brother of Greek legend, he became the symbol of world-
1 CLL. iii. p. 1160 sqq. ; xii p. * Or. Henz. 1267, 1271,
924 sqq. ; Or. Hem. iii ; ImL pp. 25, » Petron. Sat. 44.
''i M: xii 8070, 8077 ; 2883 ; iii j^Lf^ ^"±1^' d^' ''^ '' ''
2804, 6787 ; Or. jffenz. 1244, 1245. ™"®'' ^^^' ^^ ^' ^®^-
• liiv. xxi. 88, guera in summo sacra- Suet. Dom. c. 4.
turn vertice Poeninam montani appel- * Or. Hem. 1561, 1590 ; G.I»L, xii
lant ; Or. H^ta. 281-^, 5028, 1271. 4816 ; iii 1162.
CHAP. Ill THE OLD ROMAN RELIGION 080
wide conquest^ and was associated in tbe end with the triumph of the " uuconquered " Mithra. His image is stamped upon tbe coins of some of the emperors. Septimius Severus, Caracalla, and Diocletian took him for their great divine patron and ensample.^ Silvanus, too, the god of the primeval forest^ and, when the forest had receded, the god of the shepherd and the farmer, the guardian of boundaries, acquired a strange vogue in what was eminently an age of cities. One is apt, however, to forget sometimes that it was an age which had also a charm- ing country life. A Boman cavalry officer in Britain has left a memorial of his gratitude to Silvanus for the capture of a wild boar of surpassing size and stiength,* which had long defied the hunter. In one of the forest cantons of the Alps a procurator of the imperial estates inscribed his gratitude in a pretty set of verses to the god of the wilds, whose image was enshrined in the fork of a sacred ash.^ It is the record of many a day passed in lonely forest tracks, coupled with a prayer to be restored safely to Italian fields and the gardens of Borne. The nymphs and river gods had all their old honours. Chapels and hostelries, in the days of Pliny, rose on the banks of the Clitumnus, where the votaries easily combined pleasure with religious duty. The nymphs receive votive thanks for the discovery of hidden springs, or for the reappearance of some fountain long dried up.^ Aesculapius, who had been naturalised in Italy since the begmning of the third century B.C., sprang to a foremost place in the age of the Antonines. Whether it was "an age of valetudinarians," as has been said, may be doubtful ; but it was an age eagerly in quest of the health which so often comes from the quiet mind. Whatever we may think of the powers of the cdd Olympians, there can be no doubt about the beneficent influence of the god of Epidaurus. He was summoned to Bome 300 years before Christ, and obtained a home in the island in the Tiber, where for ages he gave his succour in dreama His worship spread far and wide, and was one of the last to succumb to the advance of the Church.^
The unassailable permanence of the old religion may perhajis
1 Prellw, p. 487. « Ih. 1082, 1684, 1687, 575da.
^ Or. Eenx. 1608. ^ Frailer, pp. 406-8 ; Or. 1580, 1581,
» Jb. 1618. 1572.
640 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM iook it
be still more vividly realised in the long unbroken life of sacred collies, such as the Salii nnd the Fratree Arvalea. The Arval brotherhood was probably the oldest sacred corporation of Latium, as its liturgy, preserved in the Acta from the reign of Augustus to that of Goidian, is the oldest specimen of the Latin language.^ According to the legend, the first members were the twelve sons of Acca Larentia, the foster-mother of Bomulus, and Eomulus himself first held the dignity of master of the brotherhood.' Its patron goddess, Dea Dia,' was, as her very name suggests, one of those dim shadowy conceptions dear to old Soman awe, who was worshipped in the stiU solitude of ancient groves, on whose trunks no axe of iron might ever ring/ a power as elusive and multiform to picturing fancy as the secret forces which shot up the com ear from the furrow. The whole tone of the antique ritual savours of a time when the Latin race was a tribe of farmers, believing with a simple faith that the yearly increase of their fields depended on the favour of secret unearthly powera The meetings of the coU^ took place on three days in May, the precise dates being fixed and solemnly announced by their master on the 3rd of January.* The festival b^an and ended in the master's house at Bome, tiie intermediate day being spent in a sacred grove on the right bank of the Tiber, about four miles from the dty. There was much feasting, at which the brethren were attended by the CSamiUi, four sons of high-bom senators. Com of the new and the preceding year was touched and blessed ; libations and inc^ise were offered to the goddess, and all the rites were performed with many changes of costume, which were rigidly observed.* In the ceremonies which took place in the grove, an expiatory sacrifice of two porkers and a white cow was always offered, to atone for the use of any iron implement, or other infringe- ment of the ancient rubric.^ Fat lambs were offered in sacrifice to Dea Dia, and ancient earthen vessels of rude make, resembling those of the age of Numa, were adored upon tiie altar.^ Ears of com, plucked in some neighbouring field, were
^ Or. Herw, 2270 ; ct Wordsworth, ■ lb. Ti. 2040, 2041, 2048 ; PtaUer,
Specimen nf Barly Latins p. 158 ; p. 294 ; OldenbeKig^ Ik Saeri$ iPK An.
dl.L. vi. 2024 sqq. p. 5.
« Preller, p. 293. • Oldenben^ p. 9.
* Fowler, Jtom. FstUvala, p. 74, 275. "* G.I.L. ▼L2086.
^ C/.X. Ti. 2059,obinlatumfiBrrnin, * Boissier, L p. 869; Oldenberg, &
etc. 41.
CHAP. Ill THE OLD ROMAN REUGION 541
blessed and passed from the hand of one member to another, and back again in reverse order, and, at last, in the closed temple, along with solemn dancing, the famous chant was in- toned from ancient scrolls, the words of which had long become strange even to the antiquary. After another meal in the hall of the brotherhood, the members passed on to the circus and gave the signal for the races to b^in.^
This ritual, so little heard of before the time of Augustus, is chiefly known to us from the Acta which have been recovered from the site of the ancient grove. The monuments of it extend from the reign of Augustus to the year 241 a.d.^ Members of the highest aristocracy and princes of the imperial house appear on its lists. Its membership was a high dis- tinction, and was sometimes conferred by the potent recom- mendation of the emperor.' The college evidently became a great support of the imperial power.
The emperors were elected moLgistri of the GoUoge, and we can read that Caligula, Nero, YespasiaUy and Titus were present at its meetings. In the opening days of January the most solemn vows are made in old Boman fashion for the emperor's safety, to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, to Salus and Dea Dia, and they are duly paid by offerings of oxen with gilded homs.^ So servile or so devoted to the throne was the brotherhood, that their prayers were offered with equal fervour for three emperors in the awful year 69 a.d.^ The vows made for Galba in the first week of January were alertly transferred to the cause of Otho the day after Galba's murder.^ The college met to sacrifice in honour of Otho's pontificate on the day (March 14) on which he set out to meet his doom in the battle on the Po. Thirteen days after his death, while the spring air was still tainted with the rotting heaps on the plain of Bedria- cum, vows as fervent or as politic were r^;istered for Yitellius. In the summer of the following year, the arrival of Vespasian in the capital was celebrated by the Arval brothers with sacrifices to Jupiter, Juno, Minerva and Fortuna Bedux.^
The college, as a matter of course, paid due honour to the emperor's birthday and all important anniversaries in his
1 Boiasier, i. p. 374 ; PreUer, p. 295. « Ih, 2024.
« Q.LL. vi. 2028-2118. » tb, 2061.
^ 76. 2056, ex tabelU miasa Imp. * Jan. 16, 69 a.d.
Vesp. oooptamns, eto. ' (7./.X. yi. 2052.
542
THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM
nr
fiuuily. It is interesting to see how for years the Neionian circle, the Othos and Vitellii, along wiUi Valerii and Cknmelii, appear in all the records of the coU^e.^ It was apparently devoted to Nera The brothers celebrate his birthday and all the civic and sacerdotal honours heaped upon him.' They make vows for his wife Octavia, and soon after, for the safety of Poppaea in childbirth. The matricide dreaded to vetom from Campania after his unnatural crime, but his admirers knew well the abasement of the Roman aristocracy, and promised him an enthusiastic reception. The Arval brotherhood^ whudi then included a Begulus and a Memmius, redeemed the promise, and voted costly sacrifices for his safe restoration to the capital^ They execrate the secret plots against his sacred person, and offer thanksgiving for the detection of the Pisonian conspiracy.^
The extant prayers and congratulations for the safety of Vespasian are much more quiet and restrained than those for his cruel son Domitian.^ The public joy at Domitian's safe return from ambiguous victories in Grermany or Dacia is faithfully re-echoed, and effusive supplications are recorded for his safety from all peril and for the eternity of the Empire whose bounds he has enlarged. There is a sincerer tone in the prayers, in the spring of 101, for the safe return of Trajan, when he was setting out for his first campaign on the Danube, and on his home-coming four years later.^ The Arval records of Hadrian's reign are chiefly noteworthy for his letters to the collie, recommending his friends for election.^ In the reign of Antoninus Pius the Acta register those perfervid acclamations which meet us in the later Augustan histories:' — ''O nos felices qui te Imperatorem videmus ; Di te servent in perpetuo; juvenis triumphis, senex Imperator ! " The young M. Aurelius is first mentioned in 166 a.d. Probably the sincerest utter- ance in the Arval liturgies is the petition for his safety, and that of L. Yerus, from peril in the years when the Quadi and Marcomanni swept down through Shaetia and the Julian Alps to the shores of the Adriatia*
1 CLL, vi. 2040, 2041.
« Ih, 2089.
» /*. 2042.
« Ih. 2044 ; of. 2029 (OaliguU).
' Ih. 2064, 2067.
• Ih. 2074. » Ih. 2078.
• Ih, 2086 ; of. FIaf. Von. /Vo6aij; 0.12. ^
• C./.X. vL 2092.
CHAP. Ill THE OLD ROMAN REUGION 543
It was thus that the antique ritual of a rustic brotherhood was converted into a potent support of the imperial power. No part of the Augustan revival was perhaps so successfuL Probably few of the emperors, or of the aristocratic brothers who intoned the litany for the safety of the imperial house, had much faith in its efficacy. But the ceremony linked the principate with the most venerable traditions of Latium, and with Romulus the first master of the college. When we read the minute and formal record of these coarse sacrifices and rude, fantastic rites, with the chanting of prayers no longer understood, we are amazed at the prolongation for so many ages of religious ideas which the Soman mind might appear to have outgrown. Tet in such inquiries there is often a danger of treating society as a uniform mass, moving together along the same lines, and permeated through all its strata by the same influences. In another chapter we have shown that the masses were probably never so superstitious as in the secoml century. And the singular thing is that the influx of foreign religions, due to the wide conquests of Bome, never to the end seems to have shaken the supreme attachment of the people to their ancient gods. It is true that the drift towards monotheism was felt even among the crowd. But while the educated might find expression for that tendency in the adoration of Isis or the Sun, the dim monotheism of the people turned to the glorification of Jupiter. Dedications to him are the most numerous in all lands. He is often linked with other gods or all the gods,^ but he is always supreme. And, while he is the lord of tempest and thunder,^ he is also addressed by epithets which show that he is becoming a moral and spiritiial power. On many a stone he appears as the governor and preserver of all things, monitor, guardian, and heavenly patron, highest and best of the heavenly hierarchy.^ Tet it is equally clear that other gods are worshipped in the same spirit as of old. Soman religion was essentially practical. Prayer and vow were the means to win temporal blessings. The gods were expected, in return for worship, to be of use to the devotee. It is evident from the inscriptions that this conception of religion was as
» CI.L, iii. 6788; Or. 1245, 1290. • C./.X. iii 1082, 1948, 1690; Or.
* Or. 1238, Fulgnratori, 1240, 1271, 1269, 1248, 1225, 1269 ; CLL. ziL Jovi 0. M. tempestatum potentL 1066.
644 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book vt
prevalent in the age of the Antonines» or of the oriental princes, as it was under the Hepublic The sailor still offers thanks for his preservation to Neptune and the gods of the sea^ The successful merchant still honours Mercury.' Minerva Memor receives thanks for succour in sickness. A lady of Placentia even pays her vows for the recovery of her hair.* The re- appearance of a hidden spring is still attributed to the grace of the Nymphs.^ And in many a temple the healing power of Aesculapius is acknowledged by grateful devotees.^
A more difficult problem is presented by the attitude of the cultivated class to the old mythologies. Since the days of Xenophanes and of Plato philosophy had revolted against the degradation of the Divine character by ancient legend It had taught for ages the unity of the mysterious Power or Goodness which lies behind the shifting scene of sense. Moreover, philosophy for generations had deserted the heights of specula- tive inquiry, and addressed itself to the task of applying the spiritual truth which the schools had won to the problems of practical religion and human life. Alike in Cicero, in Seneca, in Plutarch, and M. Aurelius, there are conceptions of Grod and the worship due to Him, of prayer, of the relation of conduct to religion, which seem irreconcilable with conformity to the old religion of Bome. How could a man, nourished on such spiritual ideas and refined by a thousand years of growing culture, take part in a gross materialistic worship, and even gallantly defend it against all assailants ?
The conformity of highly instructed minds to ancient systems which their reason has outgrown is not always to be explained by the easy imputation of dishonesty. And that explanation is even less admissible in ancient than in modem times. Soman religion did not demand any profession of faith in any theory of the unseen ; all it required was ceremonial purity and exactness. And the Soman world was never scandalised by the spectacle of a notorious sceptic or libertine holding the office of chief pontiff If a man were moie scrupulous himself, philosophy, whether of the Porch or the Academy, came to his aid. It would tell him that frail
> Or. 1886. « lb. 1410.
* n. 1428, 1429. rettitatione facto ribi oapiUoram.
* lb. 1684. » lb. 1572, 1576.
CHAP. Ill THE OLD ROMAN RELIGION 646
humanity, unable to comprehend the Infinite God, had parcelled out and detached his various powers and virtues, which it adored under material forms according to its varying needs.^ Or it found a place for all the gods of heathendom, as ministering or mediating spirits in the vast abyss which separates us from the unapproachable and Infinite Spirit* If the legends which had gathered around the popular gods offended a tender moral sense, men were taught that the apparent grossness was an allegorical husk, or a freak of poetic fancy which concealed a wholesome truth. Thus a pantheist or monotheist, who would never have created such a religious system for himself, was trained to cultivate a double self in matters of religion, to worship reverently with the crowd, and to believe with Zeno or with Plato.
The heathen champion in the dialogue of Minucius Felix maintains that, in the dimness and uncertainty of things, the safest course is to hold fast to the gods of our fathers.' The inclination of the sceptic was fortified by the conservative instinct of the Latin race and its love of precedent and precision of form. Moreover the religion of Kuma was probably more than any other involved and intertwined with the whole life of the people. It penetrated the whole fabric of society ; it consecrated and dignified every public function, and every act or incident of private life. To desert the ancient gods was to cut oneself off from Boman society, as the Christians were sternly made to feel. Ko established Church in modem Christendom has probably ever so succeeded in identifying itself with the national life in all its aspects. Alike under the Eepublic and under the Empire, religion was inseparable from patriotism. The imperial pontiff was bound to watch over the purity and continuity of the Latin rites. He might be a scoffer like fTero, or a spiritually-minded Stoic like M. Aurelius, an Isiac devotee like Commodus, or devoted to the Syrian worships like the Oriental princes of the third century. But he took his duties seriously. He would dance with the Salii,
^ PUd. K, N. ii 7, 5, fragilis et ' Min. FeL Odav, c 6« quanto
laboiiosa mortalitas in partes ista venerabilius ac melius antistitem yen-
digessit inGrmitatiB suae memor, ut tatis majornm ezcipere disdpliuam,
portionibus coleret quisqne qno mazime religiones traditas colore, deos, qnos a
indigeret parentibus ante imbntus es timere
^ V, snpra, p. 425 sqq. qnam nosae famUiarins, adorare, etc
2n
646 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iv
or accept with gratitude the mastership of the Arval brotherhood, or order a Uctisterniv/m to ward off a pestilence or a menacing invasion. The imperial colleges still held their meetings on the eve of the revolution of Theodosius. Antiquarian nobles still discussed nice questions of ritual in the reign of Honorius. At the end of the fifth century the Lupercalia were stiU celebrated with coarse, half -savage rites which went back to the prehistoric times.^ The imperial policy, founded by Augustus, no doubt inspired much of this conformity. But old Boman sentiment, the passion expressed with such moving eloquence by Symmachus, to feel himself in touch with a distant past' through a chain of unbroken continuity, was the great support of the State religion in the fourth century as in the first. Yet, among the great nobles who were its last champions — ^Flavianas, Praetextatus, or Volusianus — ^there was a spiritual craving for which the religion provided little satisfaction. They sought it in the rites and mysteries of Eastern lands which had little in common with the old Soman religious sentiment. In these alien rites they found a new religious atmosphere. The priest, set apart from the world, with his life-long obligations and the daily offices in the shrine, becomes in some way a minister to the spiritual life of his flock Instead of cold ceremonial observance, ecstatic emotion is aroused, often to a degree which was perilous to character. Through a series of sacraments, with ascetic preparation for them, the votary rose under priestly guidance to some vision of the eternal world, with a new conception of sin ; this life and the next were linked in a moral sequence, with tremendous issues of endless beatitude or endless degradation. In a temple of Magna Mater, Isis, or Mithra in the reign of Julian, we are far away from the worship of the Lares and the offering of a heifer to Dea Dia in the grove on the Tiber. We are travelling towards the spiritual mystery and sacramental consolations of the mediaeval Church.
' Virg. Aen, viii. 343 ; Ov. Fasti^ Gibbon, c. 36 ; Fowlor, Bom, FaL n, SIO. iL 267 ; Baronius, Ann, Ecd. viiL 60 ; ' Sym. BelaL 3.
CHAPTEK IV
MAGNA MATEB
The earliest invader from the East of the sober decorum of old Eoman religion, and almost the last to succumb, was Magna Mater of Pessinus. There is no pagan cult which S. Augustine, and many of the Fathers before him, assail with such indignant contempt as hers.^ And indeed it was long regarded with suspicion by old Bomans of the cultivated clasa For generations after her reception on the Palatine, no Boman was permitted to enter her official service. But there was something in that noisy and bloody ritual, and in the cruel, ascetic sacrifice of its devotees, which exercised an irresistible power over the imagination of the vulgar ; and even Lucretius felt a certain imaginative awe of the tower-crowned figure drawn by lions and adored by the cities of many lands.' Varro, who probably had no great love for the un-Boman ritual, found a place for the Phrygian goddess in his th^odicfe.' Her baptism of blood in the taurobolium was a rite of such strange enthralling influence that it needed all the force of the Christian Empire to abolish it. And on many of the last inscriptions of the fourth century the greatest names in the Boman aristocracy leave the record of their cleansing in the curious phrase renatus in aetemum.^ In his youth S. Augustine had seen processions of effeminate figures with dripping locks, painted faces, and soft womanish bearing, passing along the streets of Carthage, and begging alms of the crowd. His horror at the memory of the scene probably springs almost
1 Aug. De Civ. Dei, ii 4 ; TertulL » Aug. De Civ. Dei, vL 8, vii 24.
Apol 18 ; Adv, Marc i. 18. * CJ.L, vi. 499, 604, 609, 610,
611, 612; xii 1782. 1667; Or. 1899, • Luci-et ii. 600. 1890, 2335.
547
648 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iv
as much from the manly instincts of the Boman as firom the detestation of the Christian moralist for a debasing superstition.^
But S. Augustine knew well the power of the superstition. For more than 600 years the Great Mother had been enthroned on the Palatine; for more than 300 years she had captivated the remotest provinces of the West* In the terror of the Second Punic War, 204 B.C., she had been summoned by a solemn embassy from her original home at Pessinus in Galatia. In obedience to a sibylline command, the Boman youth with purest hands, together with the Eoman matrons, had welcomed her at Ostia.' The ship which bore her up the Tiber,^ when it grounded on a shoal, had been sent forward on its way, to vindicate her calumniated virtue, by the touch of a virgin of the Glaudian housa^ A decree of the Senate in 191 B.C. had given the strange goddess a home on the Pidatine, hard by the shrine of Apollo ; and the great Megalesian festival in April was founded.^ But the foreign character of the cult was long maintained. It was a time when the passion for religious excitement was in the air, and when its excesses had to be restrained by all the forces of the State. Ko Boman was permitted to accept the Phrygian priesthood for a century after the coming of the Great Mother.^ But towards tiie end of the Bepublic, the goddess had captured all imaginations, and her priests and symbols meet us in all the poets of the great age.^ Augustus restored her temple ; some of his freedmen were among her priests ; ^ livia is pictured with the crown of towers upon her brow.^® Then came a long interval, till the death of Nero, during which the Phrygian goddess is hardly heard of." With the accession of the Flavians the eastern cults finally entered on a long and unchallenged reign. Vespasian restored the temple of the Great Mother at Herculaneum, which had been thrown
1 Bt Civ. Dei, ii 4, 7, 8 ; vi. 7 ; vii. • Fowler, Bom. FesL p. 70.
24. ^ Val. Max. viL 7, 6 ; Goehler, JD^
* C.I.L. iL 179 (Spain, 108 p. Chr.) ; Matr. Magn. OuUu, p. 10.
iiL 1100, 1448 (Dacia, p. Chr. 110) ; " Luoret ii 600 ; Yirg. Aen. iz.
Or. ffenz. 5839 (Portugal). 620 ; z. 220 ; Oy. A. Am. L 607 ;
* Liv. 29, 10. Prop. UL 17. 86 ; cf. Preller, p. 484.
* Or. 1906, Navisalviae et matri D. ^ C.I.L. vL 496. {v. note). " Goehler, p. 12.
B Oy. Fasti, iv. 805 ; Sen. Frag. 80 ; ^ Yet cf. D. Cass. bd. 20, in$t^
Saet inb. C 2. p48iiff4 re'ArriF 6 Aifyowrrot.
CHAP. IV MAGNA MATER 649
down by an earthquake.^ In the reign of Trajan her worship had penetrated to the Spanish peninsula,^ and she is found, along with other Eastern deities, in the towns of the new province of Dacia.* The first glimpses of the taurobolium appear before the middle of the second century, and the god- dess figures on the coins of Antoninus Pius.^ A taurobolium for that emperor was offered "with intention" at Lyons in 160 A.D.,^ and there are several dedications to Magna Mater in the same reign made by colleges of the Dendrophori at Ostia.* Tertullian tells how a high priest of Cybele vainly offered his blood for the safety of M. Aurelius, seven days after the Emperor had died in his quarters on the Danube.^ It does not fall within the scope of our present inquiry to trace the immense popularity of the worship imder the princes of the third century. That was the period of the great triumph of the spiritual powers of the East At the end of the fourth century the Great Mother and Mithra were in the van of the pagan resistance to the religious revolution of Theodosius and his sons.®
The worship of Cybele, coming from the same regions as the Trojan ancestors of Home, was at first a patrician cult.* Members of the proudest houses bore a part in welcoming her to a place in the Soman pantheon.^^ Yet, as we have seen, Eomans were for generations forbidden to enrol themselves among her effeminate priesthood. By a curious contradiction of sentiment, people were fascinated by the ritual, while they despised the celebrants. The legend which was interpreted by Stoic and Keoplatonist as full of physical or metaphysical meanings/^ had also elements of human interest which appealed to the masses, always eager for emotional excitement. The love of the Great Mother for a fair youth, his unfaithfulness, and penitential self-mutilation under the pine-tree ; the passionate mourning for lost love, and then the restoration of the self -made victim, attended by a choir of priests for ever, who had made
^ CLL. z. 1406. Imp. Yesp. tern- "^ Tertidl. ^po^. 25 ; D. Cass. Izzi 88.
plum M. M. terrae motu coulapsnm ^ C.LL, yi. 501 (p. Chr. 388) ; 509,
restituit 511, 510, 500.
a Ih, ii 179 (108 p. Ohr.) ; cf. Or. » R^viUe, p. 60 ; Ov. Fatti, iv. 251,
Henz, 5839. Cum Trqjam Aeneas Italos portaret in agros,
• C.LL, iiL 1100, 1448. Bat dea aacriferas paene aecuta »tes.
* Ih. X. 1696 (Naples, p. CJhr. 184). " Ov. l.e, 298.
^ Or, Hem, 2822. ^ Ang. De Oiv. Iki, yI S ; yiL 25 ;
^ Goehler, p. 15. Jul. Or, v. p. 161 D.
550 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iv
the same cruel sacrifice^ — all this, so alien to old Boman religious sentiment, triumphed over it in the end by novelty and tragic interest. The l^end was developed into a drama, which, at the vernal festival of the goddess, was produced with striking, if not artistic, effect On the first day the Dendrophori bore the sacred tree, wreathed with violets, to the temple. There was then a pause for a day, coid, on the third, the priests, with frantic gestures and dishevelled hair, abandoned themselves to the wildest mourning, lacerating their arms and shoulders with wounds, from which the blood flowed in torrents. Severe fasting accompanied these self-inflicted tortures. Then came a complete change of sensation. On the day called Hilaria the votaries gave themselves up to ecstasies of joy, to celebrate the restoration of Attis. On the last day of the festival a solemn procession took its way to the brook Almon, to bathe the goddess in its waters.^ The sacred stone, brought originally from her home in Asia, and the most sacred symbol of the worship, wrapped in robes, was borne upon a car with chants and music, and that gross, unabashed naturalism which so often shocks and surprises us in pagan ritual till we trace it to its source.
The government long treated the cult of Cybele as a foreign worship.' The title of its great festival is Greek. Yet before the close of the Bepublic, Romans are found enrolled in its priesthoods and sacred colleges, and long lists of these official votaries can be gathered from the inscriptions of the imperial period. The archigallus, or high priest, appears often on the Italian and provincial monuments. He is found at Merida, Capua, Ostia, and Lyons, in fTumidia and Portugal^ He must have performed his part at many a taurobolium, crowned with laurel wreaths, wearing his mitre and ear-rings and armlets, with the image of Attis on his breast.'^ The names of the ordinary priests abound, from the freedman of the house of Augustus to the great nobles of the reign of Theodosius and Honorius.* The priesthood was sometimes held for life, or for a long term of years.
* There were many yariations of the * C/.X. x, 8810 ; viiL 8208 ; xiL myth ; v, Goehler, pp. 2, 8 ; Foucart 1782 ; ii. 6260.
J R^ville, p. 64 ; Preller, p. 485. ^081 ; Goehler. p. 40. ^
• Fowler, Horn, Festivals, p. 70 ; cf, * '^
Foucart, Assoc RsL p. 88, for similar ' Goehler, p. 12 ; CLL, vL 611, treatment at Athens. 504, 500.
CHAP. IV MAGNA MATER 661
A priest at Salonae in Dalmatia had punctually perfonned the sacred ofiBces for seventeen years.^ Women were naturally admitted to the priesthood of a cult whose central interest was a woman's love and grie£ Sometimes they are lowly freed- women with Greek names, sometimes they bear the proudest names in the Boman aristocracy.^ The Dendrophori, who on festive days bore the sacred tree, formed a religious college, and their record appears on many monuments of Italian and pro- vincial towns — Como,08tia,and Oumae,Gaeserea (Afr.),Valentia, and Lyons.^ Other coU^es were the Cannophori and Oemo- phori, the keepers of the mystic symbols.^ The chanters, drummers, and cymbal players were indispensable at great cere- monial scenes, such as the taurobolium,^ and were arranged in graded ranks. Of a lower degree were the vergers and apparitors, who watched over the chapels of the goddess.^ And, lastly, there were the simple worshippers, who also formed themselves into guilds, with all the usual officers of such corporations. This cult, like so many others, existed not only for ceremonial rite, but for fellowship and social exhilaration, and, through its many gradations of religious privilege, it must have drawn vast numbers into the sacred service in the times of the Empire.
But the pages of Apuleius, and other authorities, show us that, beside the official clergy and collegiate members, there were, as happens to all popular religions, a mass of unlicensed camp followers and mere disreputable vagrants, who used the name of the Great Mother to exploit the ignorant devotion and religious excitability of the rustic folk. The romance of Apuleius, as Dr. Mahafiy has suggested, is probably derived from earlier sources, and dressed up to titillate the prurient tastes of a degraded society.^ Yet its pictures of country life in Thessaly, although they may not be always locally accurate, can hardly be purely imaginative. The scenes may not be always Thessalian, but that they are in the main true pictures of country life in the Antonine age may be proved from other authorities. Apuleius was too careful an artist to sever himself
1 0,1. L, iii. 2920 ; xii 1567. * Goehler, p. 46.
3 lb, X. 6074 ; vi. 602, 608 ; Or, » c,LL, xii. 1782.
Henz, 7200 (Acte), 2830. 1902, 2871, » nr H^ M2n MAi
2319, 2825 ; CLL. xii. 4822, 4826. ^' ^^^' ^^^ '^^*-
» Or. Hem, 7886, 2322, 6081, 4109, ' Mahaflfy, The Greek World under
7197 ; C./.L. vUi. 9401. Soman Sway, p. 296 tqq.
562 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iy
altogether from the actual life of his time. And what a picture it is I The air positively thrills with daemonic terror and power. Witches and lewd sorceresses abound; the solitary inn has its weird seductions ; the lonely country cottage has its tragedy of lawless love or of chaste devotion to the dead. Brigands in mountain fastnesses divide their far-gathered spoil, and hold debate on plans of future lawless adventure. Mountain solitudes, and lonely villages or castles among the woods, are aroused by the yelping hounds, who start the boar from his lair, while the faithless traitor places his friend at its mercy. We meet the travelling cheese merchant, and the noble exile on his way to Zacynthus. We watch the raid on the banker's house at Thebes, and the peasants setting their dogs on the passing traveller; the insolence of the wandering legionary; the horrors of the slave prison, with its wasted, starved, and branded forms ; the amours of buxom wives, and the comic con- cealment or discovery of lovers, in the maimer of Boccaccio. It is only too certain that the vileness and superstition which Apuleius has depicted may easily find a parallel on the Boman stage, or in the pages of Martial.
In all this social panorama, romantic, amusing, or disgusting, there is no more repulsive, and probably no truer scene than that in which the wandering priests of the Syrian goddess appear. That deity, like many others of Eastern origin, was often identified with the Great Mother. Apuleius probably confounded them ; the rites of their worships were often the same, and the picture in Apuleius may be taken to represent the orgies of many a wandering troop of professed devotees of the Great Mother in the age of the Antorunes.^ The leader is an old eunuch, with wild straggling locks — a man of the foulest morals, carrying about with him an image of the goddess, and levying alms from the superstition of the rustica He is attended by a crew worthy of him, wretches defiled with aU the worst vices of the ancient world, and shamelessly parading their degradation. But they combine a shrewd eye to business with this wild licence. They know all the arts to catoh the fancy of the mob of clowns, whose grey dull lives and inbred superstition make them eager for any display which will intoxicate them with the novelty of a violent sensation. These
^ R^ville, RA, wnUr den Sev. p. 65 ; Apul. Met. riii. 24 {v. Hildenbiund'a notat).
CHAP. IV MAGNA MATER 663
people are on that level where lust and the passion for blood and suffering readily league themselves with religious excite- ment After a night of moral horrors, the foul brotherhood go forth in various costume to win the largesses of the country- sida With painted cheeks and robes of white or yellow, crossed with purple stripes, their arms bared to the shoulder, and carrying swords or axes, they dance along wildly to the sound of the fluta^ With obscene gesticulation and dis- cordant shrieks they madly bite their arms or lacerate them with knives. One of the band, as if seized with special inspiration, heaving and panting under the foul afflatus, shrieks out the confession of some sin against the holy rites, and claims the penalty from his own hands.^ With hard knotted scourge he belabours himself, while the blood flows in torrents. At last the cruel frenzy exhausts itself, and obtains its reward in the offerings of the spectators. Fine flour and cheese, milk and wine, coins of copper and silver, are eagerly showered upon the impostors, and as eagerly gathered in.^ Surprised in frightful orgies of vice, the scoundrels have at last to retreat before the outraged moral sense of the villagers. They decamp during the night, and on the morrow once more find comfortable quarters in the house of a leading citizen who is devoted to the service of the gods, and blind to the imposture of their professing ministers.^
The episode in Apuleius suggests some curious questions as to the moral effect of these emotional cults. That in their early stages they- had no elevating moral influence, — nay, that their votaries might combine a strict conformity to rite with great looseness of life, — is only too certain. The Delias and Gynthias of the poets, who kept the fasts of Isis, were assuredly not models of virtue. The assumption of the tonsure and linen habit by a debauchee like Commodus does not reassure us. Yet princes of high character in the second and the third centuries lent the countenance of imperial power to the worships of the East.'^ And the Mother of the (rods foimd her last and most gallant defenders among great nobles of high repute and sincere pagan piety in the last years of
1 ApuL Mei, viii. c 27 (680) ; cf. * /6. c. 30 (689).
Ang. Ve Civ. Dei, IL 4. * C.LL. z. 1406 ; Lamprid. Alex.
» Apul. McL viii. c. 28 (688). Sev. c. 87.
» lb. c 28 (685).
654 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book nr
heathenism in the West It was a strange transformatioa Tet the problem is not perhaps insoluble. A religion may deteriorate as its authority over society becomes xskOt^ assured with age. But, in times of moral renovation, and in the &oe of powerful spiritual rivalries, a religion may purge itself of the impurities of youth. Religious syBtems may also be elevated by the growing moral refinement of the society to which they minister. It is only thus that we can explain tiie undoubted fact that the Phrygian and Egyptian worships, originally tainted with the grossness of naturalism, became vehicles of a warm religious emotion, and provided a stimulus to a higher life. The idealism of humanity, by a strange alchemy, can marvellously transform the most unpromisiDg materials. And be would make a grave mistake who should treat the Isis and Osiris, the Mater Deum or the Attis, of the reign of Augustus as representing the same ideals in the reign of Gratian. But these Eastern cults contained a germ, even in their earliest days, of their great future development and power. The old religion of Latium, along with much that was sound and grave and fortifying to character, was also hard and cold and ceremonial It could mould and consecrate a militant and conquering state ; it did little to satisfy the craving for moral regeneration or communion with a Higher Power. It could not appease the sense of error and firadlty by ghostly comfort and sacramental absolution. It was, more- over, wanting in that warmth of interest and sympathy, linking the human and Divine, which has helped to make Christianity the religion of Western civilisation, and which in a feeble adum- bration made the paganism of the East a momentary rival of the Church. These Eastern cults, often originating in gross symbolism of the alternations and recurring processes of nature,^ often arousing a dangerous excitability and an un- regulated emotion, yet contained the germ of a religious spirit far more akin to ours than the old austere Latin creed. A divine death and restoration, the alternation of joy and sorrow at a divine event, instinct with human interest, calming expiation and cleansing from the sins which burdened the conscience, — above all, the hope of a coming life, stamped ob the imagination by symbol and spectacle, — these were the
^ Firm. Matem. Ih Err, Prof, Bel. c. 2, 8.
CHAP. IV MAGNA MATER 556
elements which, operating on imperious religions yearnings, gave a fresh life to paganism, and prepared or deferred the victory of the Church. The religion of the Great Mother seems at first sight to offer the poorest promise of any moral message or spiritual support It expressed at first the feelings of rude rustics at the recurring mortality and resurrection of material life in the order of the seasons. The element of human feelii^ which it contained was grossly expressed in bloody rites of mutilation. This cult was often defiled and disgraced by a crew of effeminate and lustful impostors. Yet the Thes- salian villagers in Apuleius, who chased these vagabonds from their fields, evidently expected something better from them. They despised the foul hypocrites, but they did not cease to believe in their religion. The spiritual instinct of humanity triumphed, as it has so often done, over the vices of a his- torical system, extracted the good in it, rejected the evil, and made it an organ of some sort of spiritual life. Thus the Great Mother became the Mother of all, enthroned beside the Father of gods and men. She wears the chaste honours of the Virgin Goddess. Attis and her love for Attis are similarly trans- formed. In the syncretism of the age, which strove to gather up all the forces of heathenism and make them converge towards a spiritual unity, Magna Mater and Attis leagued their forces with the conquering Mithra.^ In the taurobolium there was developed a ritual, in which, coarse and material- istic as it was, paganism made, in however imperfect form, its nearest approach to the religion of the Gross.
The greatest and most impressive rite in the worship of Cybele was the taurobolium. There was none which so excited the suspicion and indignation of the Christian apologists, from TertuUian to Prudentius, because in its ceremony of the cleansing blood, and in its supposed effects in moral regenera- tion and remission of sins, it seemed invented by the ingenuity of daemons to be a travesty of the sacrifice on Calvary.^ It is
^ R^yille, p. 66 ; Gk>6hler, p. 29 ; * TertnlL Lt Praeaerip, HaereL 40 ;
Cumont, Mon, figtvHs de MUhra^ Finn. Matern.D^J^^. iVq^./ie/t^. c.27,
In trod. p. 883 ; Or. 2329, 2330, 1900 ; neminem apnt idola profusos sanguia
O.LL, vi 497, 600, 511 ; cf. ib, z. mnnit . . . pollnit aanguis iste, non
1596, where the tauroboUnm U con- xedimit. . . . Tanribolinm ^nid rel
neoted with Venus Coelesta (gic) \ criobolium scelerata te sangamis labs
Preller, p. 486. perfondit I S. Panlin. lioL Poevn,
UlL 112-117.
666 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iv
possible that the last champions of the ancient cults may have had some such defiant purpose when they inBcribed, id the record of their cleansing, the words " in ademum renahu." But in its origin there can be no doubt that the rite was purely heathen. Its appearance in the Phrygian ceremonial is comparatively late. The worship of Magna Mater was essentially an orgiastic cult, and theologically arid. But the syncretism of the second and third centuries came to its support And the worships of Persia, Syria, and Phrygia were ready to coalesce, and to borrow from one another symbols and doctrines which gave satisfaction to the spiritual wants of the time. The taurobolium, with its ideas of cleansing and immortality, passed in the Antonine age from the worship of Anaitis of Gappadocia to the worship of Magna Mater, and gave the Great Mother a new hold upon the religious consdons- ness. In the earlier votive tablets the name of the rite is tauropolium. Anaitis had been identified with the Artemis Tauropolus of Brauron, whose legend, by popular etymology, came to be identified, as Milesian exploration spread in tJie Euxine, with the cult of the cruel goddess of the Tauric Ghersonese.^ And by another etymological freak and tie change of a letter, we arrive at the bull -slaughtering rite of the later Empire. Whether the taurobolium ever became part of the service of Mithra is a disputed point' Certainly the syncretistic tendency of the age, the fact that the most popular Mithraist symbol was the slaying of the mystic boll, and the record of the taurobolium on so many inscriptions dedicated to Mithra, would prepare us for the conclusion that the rite was in the end common to the Persian and the Phrygian deities. Whatever may be the truth on this point, the two worships, in the last ages of heathenism in the West, were close allies. Attis tended more and more to become a solar deity in the age which culminated in the sun-worship of Juliau.^ Heliolatry, the last refuge of monotheism in heathendom, which refused to accept the religion of GralQee, swept all the great worships of strong vitality into its system,
^ Cumont, Introd. pp. 286, 883 ; n. 5 ; R^ville, lUL imter dm <S^ pi
Herodot iv. 108 ; Eur. Iph. T. 1455 ; 08, takes an opposite view. Strab. V. 8, § 12, p. 240.
3 Cumont, p. 884 ; Gasquet, CulU ds * Donsbach, Die raUmlidke FMm-
Mithra, p. 75 ; Cumont, Introd. p. 884, tung des Miihraadienstea, pp. 8» 9.
CHAP. IV MAGNA MATER 667
softened their differences, accentuated their similarities, by every effort of fancy, false science, or reckless etymology, and in the end, " Sol invictus " and Mithra were left masters of the field. But Magna Mater, however originally unworthy, shared in the victory. If she could lend the support of an accredited clergy, recognised for ages by the State, and the impressive rite of the bloody baptism, Mithra, on the other hand, had a moral and spiritual message, an assurance of a future life, and an enthralling force of mystic and sacramental communion, which made his alliance even more valuable. The Great Mother, indeed, admitted women to the ranks of her clergy, while the rites of Mithra probably excluded them.^ And thus a Fabia Aconia Paulina, while her husband, Yettius Agorius Praetextatus, could inscribe himself " pater patrum," had no Mithraist grade which she could place beside her consecration to Hecate and the Eleusinian goddesses.^ But the pair were united in the sacrament of the taurobolium. And the Great Mother probably never had purer or sincerer devotees.
When the taurobolium was first introduced into the West is uncertain.' The earliest monument belongs to A.D. 134 in the reign of Hadrian, when the ceremony seems to be connected with the Celestial Venus. The most famous inscription, which connects the rite with the Great Mother, is of the year 160 A.D., when one L. Aemilius Carpus, an Augustalis, and a member of the college of the Dendrophori at Lyons, had the ceremony performed " for the safety '* of Antoninus Pius and the imperial house.^ The rite was celebrated at the command of the goddess, or on the inspired advice of the priest.^ It took place generally in early spring, and was often prolonged over three or four days.* It was a costly rite, and the expense was sometimes borne by the community, who made an offertory for the purpose.^ The ceremony was superintended by the xwiri, and attended by a great concourse of the people, with the magistrates at their
^ This la rendered doabtftil by Veneris Caelestae (ne).
Porphyr. Ih Abstvn. !▼. 16, Cn roirt * Or.2382; Goehler, p. 65; of. C./.X.
ftiv fUT^oms r(aw a^u)> 6prylwp iiAarat viiL 8203.
X^orraf icoXeiV (e^c&^curci'). rh.t Zk yvwaucat ' Or. 2827, ex jossa ipsins; CLL,
^o/jraf (altered by Felicianns to Xcaiiraf); xii. 1782, ex Tsticinatione Arohigalli ;
cf Gasqnet, p. 08. ef. xii. 4321, 4323.
« CJ.L. VI. 1778, 9. « CJX. xii. 1782.
s Ooehler, p. 55 ; CLL, x. 1596 ; ^ Ih, xii 4321 {Oipe eoUata) ; at
(PateoU, p. Chr. 134 ; taorobol. private expense, xii. 1568.
558 THE REVIVAL OB PAGANISM booiliv
head. It is needless to describe again the scene, so well known from the verses of Prudentius, in which the consecrated ball is with solemn forms slaughtered on a high-raised platform, and bathes with the streams of his blood the votary placed in a trench below.^ The rite was believed to impart some sort of strength and purification, the efifect of which lasted for twen^ years, when the sacrament was often renewed. It was, as we have seen, sometimes performed " with intention," for the reign- ing emperor and his house,^ and furnishes another example of the manner in which religion was employed to buttress the power of the Caesars. A considerable number of monuments in Italy and the provinces commemorate, in a phrase perhaps borrowed from the Church, the gratitude of one " born again to eternal life.'' It is probable that the coarse ritual often expressed only an external and materialistic conception of religious influence. On the other hand, following upon, or closely connected with initiation into the mysteries of Mithra, it may easily have become a symbol of moral and spiritual truth, or at any rate a record of moral aspiration.
For, indeed, in the syncretism and monotheistic drift of the age, the more powerful worships lost the hardness of their original lines and tended to absorption and assimilation. There was little strife or repulsion among these cults; they borrowed freely legends and ritual practice from one another ; even characteristic insignia were interchanged. The legend and tone of the Cybele worship naturally linked her with others sprung from the same region, such as the Syrian goddess, Celestial Venus, and Bellona.^ Fanaticism, self-mutilation, expiation by blood, were the conmion bond between theuL The fierce goddess of Cappadocia, who had visited Sulla in a dream, was probably first introduced to Soman devotion in his time. Her dark -robed priests and priestesses were familiitr figures in the Augustan age, gashing themselves like the Galli of Magna Mater, catching the blood in shields, and dashing it over their train of followers who believed in its powers of expiation. But Magna Mater, as her name promises, assumed a milder character, and was identified sometimes with Maia,
1 PerisUph, X. 1011 ; cf. Duruy, v. • Goehler, p. 34 ; R^yille, pt 86 •
p. 743. PreUer, p. 488 ; Cumont, iDtrod. p.
» C.I.L, xii. 1811, 261, 1822, 4382 ; 388. Or, 2332.
CHAP. IV MAGNA MATER 669
Ops, and Minerva; sometimes with Demeter, Bona Dea, and Fauna, as Attis was identified with Hercules.^ In the last age the great goddess became the universal Mother, full of tender- ness and grace, and giving peace through her cleansing rites. Hers is, along with the cults of Isis and Mithra, which will next claim our attention, an example of the process of Divine evolution, by which, in the painful progress of humanity, the crude efforts of religious symbolism are purged and elevated. It is an example of the way in which the human spirit, refus- ing to break with its past, sometimes succeeds, if only for a time, in putting new wine into old bottles.
^ Goehler, p. 29.
CHAPTEK V
ISI8 Am> 8SRAPI8
The worship of Isis and Serapis, reckoning from the day when it established itself in the port of Athens, had a reign of more than seven centuries over the peoples of Europe. Its influence in the western provinces of the Empire and in the capital maj be roughly said to cover a period of 600 years. It was not, indeed, the old native worship of the valley of the Nile which won such an empire over cultivated intellects from Chaeronea to the Thames. The ancient Egyptian worship underwent vast transformations in the crucible of all creeds at Alexandria. It was captured and utilised for political purposes by the Ptolemies.^ It was linked with the most spiritual forces of Hellenic piety at Eleusis and Delphi ; ^ it was transformed by the subtle syncretism of later Greek philosophy ; and, through the secretaries of embassies, and the Egyptian slaves and merchants who poured into the ports of southern Italy in the second century B.C., it stole or forced itself into the chapels of great houses at Bome, till, in the end, emperors were proud to receive its tonsure, to walk in the processions, and to build and adorn I^yptian temples.'
The Isiac worship had conquered the Greek world before it became a power in Italy. In the fourth century B.C. traders from the Nile had their temple of Isis at the Peiraeus ; ^ in the third century the worship had been admitted within the walls of Athens.^ About the same time the goddess had found a
^ Lafaye, CfuUe des dvvmiUs d*Alex- devoted to Osiris."
a/ndrUf p. 15 ; Plat De Is. et Osir. o. * Lunprid. Com, AfU. c. 9 ; Spwt.
28. Sev. cl7; R^yille, Jid. vnUr dem StWi
" Pint De Is, et Osir. o. 85, ad- p. 68.
dressed to Clea, who was high in the ^ Foncart, Assoc BsKgieuses^ p. 83.
worship of Dionysus, and " hereditarily " Lafaye, pp. 27-82 ; Pama. i. 18, § 4.
500
CHAP. V IS/S AND SERAPIS 561
home at Ceos, and Delos, at Smyrna and Halicarnassus, and on the coasts of Thrace.^ She was a familiar deity at Orchomenus and Ghaeronea for generations before Plutaich found in her legends a congenial field for the exposition of his concordat between philosophy and myth. Nor need we wonder at his choice of the Egyptian cults. For the Isis and Osiris of Greek and Italian lands were very different objects of devotion &om the gods who bore those names in Egyptian legend.^ From the seventh century b.c. Greeks from the Asiatic coast had been securely settled at the mouth of the Nile.^ Greek mercenaries had served in the Egyptian armies in the southern deserts; and Greek half-breeds had long amused and cajoled travellers from Miletus or Halicamassus, as interpreters and guides to the scenes of immemorial interest. When Herodotus visited the country, the identity of Greek and Egyptian gods was a long accepted fact^ From the fifth century B.c. the Egyptian Trinity of Isis, Osiris, and Horus had found counterparts in Demeter, Dionysus, and Apollo. The campaign of the Athenian fleet in 460 probably hastened and confirmed the process of syncretism,' and crowds of travellers, steeped in Orphic and Pythagorean mysticism, returned from the valley of the Nile to spread the doctrine of a common &ith. After the foundation of Alexandria the theory became a propaganda. The first Ptolemy strove to unite the two races under his sway by an eclecticism of which Alexandria was the focus for seven centuries. He found skilful allies in Manetho, the Egyptian priest who had written a treatise on the inner meaning of the myths, and in Timotheus, a scion of the Eumolpidae of Eleusis.^ The Orphic and Dionysiac mysticism was leagued with the Isiac worship. The legend of Egypt was recast A new deity was introduced, who was destined to have a great future in all lands under the Roman sway. The origin of Serapis is still a mystery ^ and the latest critic may have to acquiesce in the confused or
' Lala^e, p. 88. c. 7, matrem sidemm, parentem tem-
' V. Plot ne 1$, ei Otir, o. 68, t6 rijs pomm, orbisqne totiiiB dominam
a^Kfyprfs : o. 88, o^nat 'hriSct aiafia 'ppf * Herodot ii. 164.
ixown KoX wofdtmwtp, o6 wdaoM, dXX* ^6 ^ Ih, 166 ; cf. Plew, De Sarcipide,
NccXot irtpabti avepftabnti' : cf. o. 82 ; p. 23 sqq.
0. 66, "Offtpiw ^ i(f)C^, T^ 8^ *l*n9 cirf ' Thac L 104.
^o8ox^i rdr di *Qp» in dvorAcff/ia : * Lafaje, p. 16 eqq.
cf. Herodot ii. 166 ; ApoL Md. xi. "^ Plew, De Sarajnae, p. 10 iqq.
2 O
668 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
balanced judgment of Tacitus.^ Egyptian archaeologistB claimed him as indigenous at Bhacotis or Memphis, and construed his name as a compound of Osiris and that of his earthly incarnation, the bull Apis.^ The more popular tale was that the first Ptolemy, after repeated visions of the night, sent envoys to bring him &om Sinope, where he was identified with Pluto, god of the under world. Other traditions con- nected >^iTn with Seleuda in Cappadocia, or with Babylon.* It may be that a false etymology, confounding a hill near Memphis with the name of Sinope, was the source of the tale in Tacitus.^ However this may be, SerapiB takes the place of Osiris ; they never appear together in inscriptions. The infant Horus received the Greek sounding name Harpoorates, and Serapis, Isis, and Harpoorates became the Egyptian Trinity for Graeco-Boman Society. Anubis, the minister of the Trinity, was easily identified with Hermes, '' the conductor of bouIb " in Greek legend.
Syncretism and mysticism were great forces at Eleusis, firom which Ptolemy's adviser Timotheus cama And there all interest centred in the future life, and in preparation for it by sacerdotal ritual and moral discipline. The Orphic and Pythagorean mysticism which traced itself to Egypt or the remoter East, returned to its sources, to aid in moulding the cults of Egypt into a worship for the world. A crowd of ingenious theologians set to work, by means of physical ex- planation, wild etymology, and fanciful analogies, to complete the syncretism. And the final results of their efforts, preserved in the famous treatise of Plutarch on Isis, is a trinitarian monotheism, with an original dualism of the good and evil principles.^ But the idea of God, although limited in one sense by the recognition of a co-ordinate evil power, tends on the other to become more aU-embracing. Serapis is constantlj linked with Jupiter and Sol Invictus in the inscriptiona^ Li the orations of Aristides he becomes the centre of the univena^ Isis of the " myriad names '' tends to absorb all other deities,
1 Tac. Hia, iv. 84. ? Aristid. Or, Sac^ viiL 6S» i^
' Flew, De Sarapide, p. 16 ; Preller, ra/Uaf Ar rod pittalfiov jtarA rtth' b
p. 478. ' Plew, J)e ikirapide, p. 6. iucalvt dwarra ircpceiXiy^^rai vt^djtof
^ Lafaye, p. 17. ... 6 3^ &aw€p Kopv^tum wi^rw
* Pint. De Is, el Orir, c 46, 49. ^^f 'al Hpara #x<<* Ct Bmuninit,
* Or. 1890 aqq. ; CLL. yiii. 1006 ; Arittides alt Xqfrdsentant <Ur Sotk iii. 4660, 8. ' lUuL p. 90 iqq.
CHAF. V IS/S AND SERAPIS fi68
and was addressed by her votaries as " Thou who art alL" ^ The Isis of the dream of Lucius in Apuleius is the universal mother, creator of all things, queen of the world of shades, first of the inhabitants of heaven, in whom all gods have their unchanging type.^ She is also pre-eminently the power who can cleanse and comfort, and impart the hope of the life ever- lasting.
The Isiac worship arrived in Italy probably through the ports of Campania. Puteoli, in particular, was the great entrepdt for the trade with Alexandria. Foreign merchants, sailors, and slaves were arriving there every day, and, in the cen- tury between 204 and 100 B.C., more than ten embassies passed between the Ptolemies and the Boman Senate, with a crowd of secretaries and servants attached to them.* There was probably a temple of Serapis at Puteoli as early as 150 B.O., and the old temple of Isis at Pompeii, which was thrown down by the earthquake of 63 A.D., may probably be referred to the year 105 B.c.^ But the erection of temples must have been preceded by a period of less foimal and more obscure worship, and we may perhaps conclude that Isis had established herself in Southern Italy, at all events early in the second century B.c. Thus, although it was generations before the worship won its way, in the face of fierce persecution, to an assured place at Bome, its first appearance coincides with the decay of the old religion, the religious excitement in the beginning of the second century B.C., and the immense popular craving for a more emotional form of worship.
The years at the end of the third and the beginning of the second century b.g. were in Italy years of strange religious excitement In 204 the great goddess was brought from Pessinus.^ In 186 the decree for the suppression of the Bacchanalian scandal was passed.^ Magna Graecia and Etruria were the first points assailed by the invasion of the orgiastic rite& But they soon crept into the capital, with results which alarmed and shocked old Boman sentiment At first, an appearance of asceticism disguised the danger. But the rites soon gave an opportimity for the wildest licence and for
^ Or, 1871, tibi qoae es omnia. * Liy. xziz. 10 ; Qoehler, De McUrii
' ApoL Met, xi 7. Magnae CtUtUt p. 7.
* Lafaye, p. 48.
* Id. p. 40 ; Man, PompeU, p. 168. * Liv. zzxiz. 19.
66i THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book nr
political intrigue. 7000 men and women were found to be implicated, in one way or another, in the movement.^ Within five years after the great scandal, the apociyphal books of Numa were unearthed in the grounds of Cn. Terentios on the Janiculum. The forgery was soon detected, and they were burnt publicly in the Comitium by the praetor L. Petilius.' But it was a suspicious circumstance that the rolls were of Egyptian papyrus, which had been till then unknown to the Boman world, and that they contained the dogmas of a Pythagorean lore which was equally strange. It is almost certain that, in the same years in which the Dionysiac fanaticism arrived at Ostia, the Egyptian cults had been brought by merchants and sailors to Puteoli. Osiris and Dionysus bad long been identified by the Alexandrian theologians ; both were the patrons of mystic rites which, in their form and essence, had much in common, and the Pythagorean system, combining so many influences of philosophy and religion in the East and West, was the natural sponsor of the new worships. It was perhaps some eclectic Alexandrian, half Platonist, half Buddhist, devoted to the Isiac worship, yet ready to connect it with the Dionysiac legends of Delphi, Cithaeron, and Eleusis, who penned the secret scroUs, and buried them in the gardeu on the Janiculum. The movement was setting in which, so often repulsed by the force of government and conservative feeling, was destined to have enormous influence over the last three centuries of paganism in the West.
It has been plausibly suggested that the ease and complete- ness with which the Bacchanalian movement was suppressed in 186 B.C. was due to the diversion of religious interest to the Egyptian mysteries. The cult of Isis had indeed very various attractions for difierent minds. But for the masses, slaves, freedmen, and poor working people, its great fascination lay in the pomp of its ritual, and the passionate emotion aroused by the mourning for the dead Osiris, and his joyful restoration. It is this aspect of the worship which is assailed and ridiculed by the Christian apologists of the reign of Alexander Sevems and of the reign of Gonstantine.* The goddess, one of whose
^ Preller^ Myth, Horn, p. 473. * TertuU. Adv. Mare, L 18 ; Fizm
« Plin. If, N, xuL 27 ; Liv. xl. Mat. De Err, Prqf, Mel. 2, | 7, cm
29 ; Moinms. Rom. HiU, ii p. 402 ; planj^itis fruges terrme et cnactntii
Lafiiye, p. 41. tugetis aemina t
CHAP. V ISIS AND SERAPIS 606
special functions was the care of mothers in childbirth, appealed especially to female sensibility. As in the cult of Magna Mater, women had a prominent place in her services and pro- cessions, and records of these sacred dignities appear on the monuments of great Boman ladies down to the end of the Western Empire. The history of the Isiac cult at Bome from Sulla to Nero is really the history of a great popular religious movement in conflict with a reactionary conservatism, of cosmopolitan feeling arrayed against old Boman sentiment
It is significant of the popularity of Isis that the reactionary Sulla, who restored the election of chief pontiff to the sacred college, was forced to recognise the Isiac guild of the Pasto- phori in 80 B.c.^ Four times in the decade 58-48 B.C., the fierce struggle was renewed between the government and those who wished to place Isis beside the ancient gods; and in the year 50 B.C. the consul, when unable to find a work- man to lay hands upon her shrine, had to unrobe and use the axe himself.* The victory of conservatism was only temporary and apparent. Within five years from the renewed fierce demolition of 48 B.a,^ the white robe and tonsure and the mask of Anubis must have been a common sight in the streets, when the aedile M. Volusius, one of those proscribed by the triumvirs, was able to make his escape easily in this disguise.^ The influence of Cleopatra over Julius Caesar overcame his own prejudices and probably hastened the triumph of the popular cult. The triumvirs had to conciliate public feeling by erecting a temple of Isis in 42 B.C.' Priestesses and devotees of Isis are henceforth found among the freed- women of great houses and the mistresses of men of letters of the Augustan age.^ And, although the reaction following upon the battle of Actium, in which the gods of Latium and the Nile were arrayed against one another,^ banished Isis for a time beyond the pomoerium,® the devotion of the masses to
1 Apnl. MeL xi. o. 80, CoUegii ^ Lafajre, p. 47 ; Yal Mix. vii 8, 8 ; TctastiBsiini et sab illis SuUae tempori- cf. App. B. 0, vr, 47.
^^'t^^ ^La ^ j^ 1^* ' Mi » D. Case. xHii. 27 ; xItU. 16.
prohibitosCapftolioVarrocommemorat p*,™^.r I' ^'^ ^'*'"*- i. 8, 28 ;
eommqne araa a senatu dejectas non- iT^pert. i^ 88.
niai per vim popnlarium restrnctaa, ' -^^^ ^^ ^^8.
Yal. Max. 13,4 ;cf.Lewald,Z>0P0resrr. ' D. Gaaa. liii 2, r& ^ Ifpd r&
Bd. ap. Bom, p. 10. Klyinrria obit ict^fyiro dnt roG rw/iiy-
* D. Cass. xUi. 26. pLov ; cf. liv. 6.
566 THE RE VIVAL OF PA GANJSAf book i?
her seems never to have slackened, and her tooBured, white stoled priests were to be seen everywhere. In the reign of Tiberius a serious blow fell on the Eastern worships^ According to Josephus, a great lady named Paulina, was, wUh the collusion of the priest, seduced in an Isiac temple by a libertine lover in the guise of Anubis, and the crime was sternly punished by the emperor.^ Tacitus and Suetonitis seem to be ignorant of this particular scandal, but they record the wholesale banishment to Sardinia of persons of the freed- men class, who were infected with Judaic or Egyptian superstition. In the grotto of Gagliari there is to be seen the record of an obscure romance and tragedy which may have been connected with this persecution. Atilia Pomptilla, who bore also the significant name of Benedicta, in some great calamity had followed her husband Cassius Philippus into exile. Their union had lasted for two - and - forty years when the husband was stricken with disease in that deadly climate. like another Alcestis, Atilia by her vows and devotion offered her life for hi& The husband repaid the debt in these inscriptions, and the pair lie united in deaUi under the sculptured serpent of the goddess whom they probably worshipped.*
Thenceforth under the emperors Isis met with but little opposition. Claudius struck hard at the Jewish and Druidic rites, but on the other hand he was ready to transport thoee of Eleusis to Bome.^ He was probably equally tolerant to the rites of Egypt. And in his reign dedications were made to Isis by freedmen of great consular houses.^ Nero despised all religions except that of the Syrian goddess; yet Isis had probably little to fear from a prince who had been touched by the charm and mystery of the East, and who at the last would have accepted the prefecture of Egypt.^ Otho was, however, the first Eoman emperor who openly took part in the Elgyptian rites.^ The Flavians had all come under the spell of IBaisteni superstition. Vespasian had had a solitary vigil in the
> Lafaye, p. 55, discredits the tale ^ C./.X. vL 858.
of the seduction, which is given by . ^ > oa # a ^ .r
Josephus alone, B. Jud, xviii. 3 ; cf. . * ti^' ^?"*- ^T* ^.? ' ^- 8°^*: ^^
Tt^,AnrL ii. 85 ; Suet Tib. 36. *^' 47, vana agitant, an vel Aegypti
■ 0,LL, X. 2, 7668 sqq. praefecturam concedi sibi oraret, etc.
* Suet Claud, 25 ; cf. D. Cass. Iz. 6. * Suet Otho, 12.
CHAP. V IS/S AND SERAPIS 567
temple of Serapis ; in obedience to a dream from the god he had consented to perform miracles of healing.^ In the fierce civil strife of 69 A.D., when the Capitol was stormed and burnt bj the Yitellians, the service of Isis was actually going on, and Domitian, disguised in her sacred vestments, escaped among the crowd of priests and acolytes.^ He repaid the debt by rebuilding the temple of Isis in the Campus Martins, in 92 AJ)., on a magnificent scale.* The sarcasms of Juvenal on the " shaven, linen-clad herd," and the pious austerities of female worshippers of Isis, reveal the powerful hold which the goddess had obtained in his day, even on the frivolous and self- indulgent. Hadrian, of course, had the gods of the Nile in the Canopus of his cosmopolitan villa at Tibur.^ Commodus walked in procession with shaven head and an image of Anubis in his arms.^ The triumph of Isis in the Antonine age was complete. The Serapeum at Alexandria was to the Egyptian cult what the Temple was to the religion of Israel.^ And the world- wide trade and far-spreading influence of what was then the second city in the Empire might have given a wide diffusion even to a religion less adapted to satisfy the spirijiual wants of the tima Slaves and freedmen were always the most ardent adherents and apostles of foreign rites. Names of persons of this class appear on many monuments as holders of Isiac ofi&ce or liberal benefactors. A little brotherhood of household slaves at Yalentia in Spain were united in the worship.^ Petty traders from Alexandria swarmed in the ports of the Mediterranean, and especially in those of Campania, and near the Nolan gate of Pompeii the humble tombs of a little colony of these emigrants have been discovered.* The sailors and officers of the com fleets from Africa also helped to spread the fame of Isis and Osiris. In the reign of Septimius Severus, their chief officer, C. Valerius Serenus, was neocorus of Serapis.* Alexandria also sent forth a crowd of artists, philosophers, and savants to the West Several men of Egyptian origin filled high places in the imperial household,
^ Suet. Vetp, iy. y. yii. ; Tac. HisL * Lamprid. Oommod, 9.
^ T;c Hut. UL 74; cf. S«et. DamU. i. \ T^\''^'^- **^ ''""•
' Ufaye, p. 61, n. 8. , f-^'^- "• ^■
* Boumer, Prom. Arehatol. p. 288 ; ' I*f»ye. P- 157.
Bpart. JTadr. c. 26. * lb. p. 168.
668 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book nr
as librarians or secretaries in the first and second oenturies. Chaeremon, who had been librarian at Alexandria, and who had composed a theological treatise on Isis and Osiris, became Nero's tutor.^ Ghaeremon's pupil, Dionysins, was librarian and imperial secretary in the reign of Trajan. And Julius Vestinus, who held these offices under Hadrian, is described in an inscription as chief pontiff of Egypt and Alexandria, — a combination of dignities which probetbly enabled him to throw his powerful protection around the Isiac rites at Rome.^ An influence so securely seated on the Palatine was sure to extend to the remotest parts of the Empire. If Isis could defy all the force of the Sepublican Gk>yenunent, what might she not do when emperors were enrolled in her priest- hood, and imperial ministers, in correspondenoe with every prefecture from Britain to the Euphrates, were steeped in her mystic lore ?
Already in Nero's reign, Lucan could speak of Isis and Osiris as not only welcomed in the shrines of Bome, but as deities of all the world.^ Plutarch and Lucian, from veiy different points of view, are witnesses to the same world-wide movement. The judgment will be confirmed by even a casual inspection of the religious records of the inscriptions. Although Isis and Serapis were not peculiarly soldiers' gods, like Mithra and Bellona, yet they had many votaries among the legions on distant frontiers. A legate of the Legion Tertia Augusta, who was probably of Egyptian birth, introduced the rites into the camp of Lambaesis, and a temple to Isis and Serapis was built by the labour of many pious hands among his soldiers.^ Serapis appears often on the African monuments, sometimes leagued or identified with Jupiter or Pluto.*^ In Dacia and Pannonia the cults of Egypt were probably not as popular as that of Mithra, but they have left traces in all the great centres of population.^ In several inscriptions^ Isis is called
^ Lafaye, p. 167. ^ CLL. yiii. 2630 ; of. Oagnftt,
' C./.&. 6900, 'A/>xM/)Ci'AXe|arff/)eftif VArmM Bom, d^Afr. ^ 42S. See
iral kiyirrrov tAj9^ iccU ^irtdrdT^ rov other dedications by offioen in Or.
MoiMTc^ov jroU M rQ9 iv *?iifiV fi^^^ ffenz, 6836, 7.
(hfKQif . . . irurroktt toO a^oO a&n- * CI.L, viiL 2629, 1002, 4, 5.
Kpdropot: of. Mac^, Sudane, pp. 92, 116. * /(. ilL 881, 2, 1428, 1590, 1S4S,
' Lucan, Phan. viiL 831, nos in 4016 ; Or. ffenz. 6888.
templa tuam Romana aocepimus Isin ; ^ C7./.JL ilL 4809 ; Or, JBmm, 20Sfi,
ix. 168, jam nnmen gontibne Isin. 5888.
CHAP. V IS/S AND SERAPIS 669
by a native name such as Noreia, and we find on others the instructive blending of the strata of four mythologies. Tacitus thought he had discovered the counterpart of Isis in the forests of G^rmany.^ She is certainly found in Holland, and at Cologne.^ OflBcers of the sixth Legion worshipped her at York.* French antiquaries have followed the traces of the Egyptian gods in nearly all the old places of importance in their own country, at Fr^jus, Nimes, and Aries, at Lyons, Clermont, and Soissons.^ Shrines of Isis have been explored in Switzerland and at the German spas.^ The scenes which were so common at Rome or Pompeii or Corinth, the procession of shaven, white-robed priests and acolytes, marching to the sound of chants and barbaric music, with the sacred images and symbols of a wor- ship which had been cradled on the Nile ages before the time of Bomulus, and transmuted by the eclectic subtlety of Platonic theologians into a cosmopolitan religion, were reproduced in remote villages on the edge of the Sahara and the Atlantic, in the valleys of the Alps or the Yorkshire dales.
What was the secret of this power and fascination in the religion of a race whose cult of the dog and cat had so often moved the ridicule of the satirist and comic poet ? No single answer can be given to that question. The great power of Isis "of myriad names" was that, transfigured by Greek influences, she appealed to many orders of intellect, and satisfied many religious needs or fancies. To the philosopher her legends furnished abundant material for the conciliation of religion and pseudo-science, for the translation of myth into ancient cosmic theory, or for the absorption of troublesome mythologies into a system which perhaps tended more than any other, except that of Mithra, to the Platonic idea of the unity of God. The mystic who dreamt of an ecstasy of divine conmiunion, in which the limits of sense and personality might be left behind in a vague rapture of imaginative emotion, found in the spectacle of her inner shrine a strange power far surpassing the most transporting efiects of Eleusis. Women especially saw in the divine mother and mourner a glorified
^ Tac. Qtmti, 9. at Kimes v. O.LL, xii. 8058.
« Or. ffenz. 1897. » Or. Hem. 467 ; cf. Tac Hid. 1 67,
' Jb. 6836. in modnm monicipii exstructiu Ioohb,
^ Lafaye, p. 162. For an interesting amoeno salabrinm aqnarum usa fte-
dedication for the support of the worship qnens.
670 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book n
type of their sex, in all its troubles and its tenderness, such as their daughters in coming ages were destined to find in the Virgin Mother.^ The ascetic impulse, which has seldom been far from the deepest religious feeling, derived comfort and the sense of atonement in penitential abstinence and preparation for the holy mysteries. The common mass, who are affected chiefly by the externals of a religion, had their wants amply gratified in the pomp and solemnity of morning sacrifice and vespers, in those many-coloured processions, such as that which bore in spring-time the sacred vessel to the shore, with the sound of hymn and litany.^ And in an age when men were eveiy- where banding themselves together in clubs and collies for mutual help and comfort, the sacred guilds of Isis had evidently an immense influence. That evil, as in nearly all heathen worships, often lurked under her solemn forms cannot be denied, though there was also groundless calumny.* Yet there must have been some strange power in a religion which could for a moment lift a sensualist imagination like that of Apuleius almost to the height and purity of Eckhart and Tauler/
The triumph of Isis and Scrapie in the Western world is an instructive episode in the history of religion. It is, like that of Mithra, a curious example of the union of con- servative feeling with a purifying and transforming influence of the growing moral sense. A religion has a double strength and fascination which has a venerable past behind it. The ancient symbolism may be the creation of an age of gross conceptions of the Divine, it may be even grotesque and repulsive, at first sight, to the more refined spiritual sense of an advanced moral culture. Yet the religious instinct will always strive to maintain its continuity with the past, however it may transfigure the legacy of ruder ages. Just as Christian theologians long found anticipations of the Gk>8pel among patriarchs and warrior kings of Israel, so pagan theologians like Plutarch or Aristides could discover in the cults of E^ypt all their highest cosmic theories, and satisfaction for all their spiritual wants.* With unwavering faith, Plutarch and his
> Lafaye, p. 160 ; R^ville, Rd, urUet * Lafaye, p. 160, 1.
den Sev. p. 68 ; (7./.X. U. 8386, Isis ^ Met, xi. c. 24.
paellaris. > Pint Dels.et Osir, o. 78 ; AristvL
* Apul. MeL xL c 11. Or. Sac viiL 62, 68.
CHAP. V ISIS AND SERAPIS 571
kind believed that under all the coarse mythic fancy of early ages there was veiled a profound insight into the secrets of nature and the spiritual needs of humanity. The land of the Nile, with its charm of immemorial antiquity, was long believed to have been the cradle of all that was best and deepest in the philosophic or religious thought of Hellas. The gods of the classic pantheon were identified with the gods of Egypt.^ Pythagoras and the Orphic mystics had derived their inspira- tion from the same source.^ The conquests of Alexander and the foundation of Alexandria had drawn to a focus the philosophical or the religious ideas of East and West, of India, Palestine, Persia, and Greece. At Alexandria were blended and transformed all the philosophies and mythologies by the subtle dialectic of Greece. The animal cult of Egypt, indeed, was alwajrs a stumbling-block to Greek and Boman.* It moved the contempt and ridicule of comedian and satirist.^ It was an easy mark for the sneers of the crowd. Yet even the divinised dog or ibis could find skilful, if not convinced, defenders among the Greek eclectics, who lent all the forces of Hellenic ingenuity to the cause of antiquarianism in religion.^ Their native mythology was not without traces of zoolatry. Their own god of healing, who became so popular in all lands, was always connected in art and legend with the serpent. The serpent of the Acropolis, which daily ate the holy wafer, was the immemorial companion of the tutelary goddess of Athens.^ Had not Zeus, in his many amours, found an easy access to the fair victims of his love in animal forms? The Divine virtues are only faintly imaged in animals which have their uses in the world. If all religion is only symbolism, why should not the multiform beneficence of the unseen Powers be expressed in the form of creatures who give their service and companionship to man, as fitly as in lifeless bronze or marble ?
But although men might try to reconcile theology even to a worship of animal forms, it was by very different spiritual influences that Isis and Serapis won the devotion of the
» Herodot iL c. 60. D. Chrys. Or. xii. § 68.
" 76. c. 81 ; Iambi. Dt PyUiag, Fit * Juv. xv. 8 ; cf. Cic De Nat, Deor.
I 151, of. § 14 ; Porph. Pythag. § 6 ; iii. 16 ; T'uscui, v. 27. Plut De Is, et Osir, c. 10. * Plut D€ Is, et Osir, cc. 72-74.
• Philostr. ApoUon, Tyan, vL 19 ; • Heitxlot viii. c. 41.
572 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
rustics of remote villages in Spain and Britain. The dog- headed Anubis might perhaps be borne in processional The forms of sacred animals might be portrayed, along with those of lo and Andromeda^ on the frescoes of Hercnlaneum or Pompeii' But the monuments of the Western provinces are, as a rule, singularly free from the grossness of early Egyptian zoolatiy.' And there is hardly a hint of it in the famous picture of the initiation of Lucius in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius. In that fascinating scene, Isis is the universal mother. Nature, queen of the worlds of light and darkness, the eternal type of all lesser divinities. And on inscriptions she appears as the Power who "is all in alL"* Whatever her special functions may be, goddess of the spring, or of the sailor on the sea, guardian of women in the pangs of motherhood, the '^ Queen of peace," ^ guide and saviour of souls in the passage to the world beyond the tomb, she remains the Supreme Power, invoked by many names, with virtues and graces as various as her names. And Serapis, in the later theology, is not the president of any provincial territory in the universe. He is not the lord of sea or earth or air only ; he is lord of all the elements, the dispenser of all good, the master of human life. It is thus that Aristides hails him after his rescue from the perils of the sea.^ But although Serapis in many a monument is enthroned beside Jupiter, Queen Isis is also supreme in the world both of the living and the dead.
Yet, although there is a very decided tendency to mono- theism in the Alexandrian religion, a tendency which appealed strongly to minds like Plutarch, it did not succeed in altogether breaking with polytheism and its attendant superstitiona The attempted alliance of religion and philosophy was far from complete. Philosophy, indeed, had substituted abstract theory for the poetry of legend. It struggled hard to assert the essential unity of the Divine nature. And Plutarch, in his treatise on Isis, declares that God is one and the same in all lands under whatever names He may be worshipped."^ But the
^ ApaL Met, xL o. 11, attoUena oanis * On a Daoian inscriptioii, CJM
oeiricea ardnas Anubis ; cf. Jay. vL iii. 1590, PUundae BeginM.
584 ; Plut. De /«. c. 44 ; Tertall. « Banmgart, Ael, Arittidu Bnr&-
Apol 6 ; Ad Not. ii 8. sent, der Soph. BheL de$ moeit Jakr.
^ Man, Pampeiit p. 175. p. 91 ; cl Hadrian's letter to SeiTianiu^
» Lafaye, p. 106, 7. Vopisc. ViL Saturn, c 8.
♦ Or. 1871. ' Plut De 1$. c. 66, 79.
CHAP. V IS/S AND SERAPJS 673
treatise shows at the same time how vague and unsettled still was the theology of Alexandria, and how hard it found the task of wedding Platonism to the haunting tradition of old idolatry. Physics, metaphysics, etymology, are all employed with infinite ingenuity to recover the secret meaning which it is assumed that ancient wisdom had veiled under the forms of legend. But arbitrary fancy plays far too large a part in these random guesses, and system there is none, to bridge the gulf between the Platonist eclectic and the superstitious masses. Isis worship was in practice linked with all the reigning super- stitions, with divination, magic, astrology, oneiromancy. Manetho, who was one of the founders of the worship of Serapis, wrote a treatise for the Greek world on the influence of the stars on human destiny.^ Egyptian astrologists were always in great demand. The emperors Otho and M. Aurelius carried them in their train.^ Many Bomsm ladies in sickness would not take food or medicine till the safe hour had been determined by inspecting the Petosiris.^ The Isiac devotee was an enthusiastic believer in dreams sent by his favourite deities. On many inscriptions the record may be read of these warnings of the night^ In the syncretism of the time, Serapis came to be identified with the Greek god of healing, and patients sleeping in Egyptian temples received in dreams inspired prescriptions for their maladiea^ Sometimes the deity vouchsafed to confer miraculous powers of cure on a worshipper. The sceptical good sense of Vespasian was persuaded by medical courtiers at Alexandria to try the efifect of his touch on the blind and paralytic, who had a divine monition to seek the aid of the emperor.^ The cultivated Aristides had a firm faith in these heaven-sent messages He even believed that Serapis could call back the dead to life.^
Yet Aristides, in his prose hymn to Serapis, gives us a glimpse of the better side of that religion. After all, the superstitions which clustered round it were the universal
1 Lftfaye, p. 101. » Cic De Dw. i. 58, 132 ; Diod.
* Tac Hist. i. 23 ; D. Cass. IxzL 8, i 25 ; Aristid. Or, Sacr. iiL p. 819 Kol ydp TOL \brfOt ix^i *Apvowpi» rufa (Jebb).
MdTo. A/7tJrrio. cwl^a ry MdpKv « Tac fiirf. iv. 81, monita Sempidis,
» Juv. vi. 580. ®*^-
* Or. 1882, ex visu ; CI.L. vi. 346, ' La&ye, p. 104 ; Aristid. Or, Sacr. 572 ; V. 484. viii. 55.
574 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book nr
beliefs of the ag^^j^revalent among the most cultiyated and the most ignorant The question for the modem student ii whether these Alexandrian worships provided real spiriti]El sustenance for their devotees. And, in spite of many appear- ances to the contrary, the impartial inquirer must come to the conclusion that the cult of the Egyptian deities, through its inner monotheism, its ideal of ascetic purity, its vision of a great judgment and a life to come, was a real advance on the popular religion of old Greece and Home. Isis and Serapis, along with Mithra, were preparing the Western world for the religion which was to appease the long travail of humanity by a more perfect vision of the Divina It is impossible for a modern man to realise the emotion which might be excited by a symbolism like that of Demeter, or Mithra, or Isis, with its roots in a gross heathen past. But no reader of Apuleius, Plutarch, or Philostratus should fail to realise the surging spiritual energy which, in the second and third centuries^ was seeking for expression and appeasement It struck into strange devious tracks, and often was deluded by phantasms of old superstition glorified by a new spirit But let us remember the enduring strength of hereditary piety and ancient associa- tion, and, under its influence, the magical skill of the religious consciousness to maintain the link between widely sev^ned generations, by purifjdng the groesness of the past and transforming things absurd and offensive into consecrated vehicles of high spiritual sentiment. No one, who has read in Apuleius the initiation of Lucius in the Isiac mysteries, can doubt that the effect on the votary was profound and elevating. Pious artistic skill was not wanting to heighten emotion in Isis worship, as it is not disdained in our Christian churches. But the prayer of thanksgiving offered by Lucius might, mutatis mtUandis, be uttered by a new convert at a camp-meeting, or a Breton peasant after her first communion. It is the devout expression of the deep elementary religious feelings of awe and gratitude, humility and joy, boundless hope and trust In the same tone, Aristides sings his prose canticle to Serapis. There is not a memory of the brute gods of the Nile. The Alexandrian god is now the equal or counterpart of Zeus, the lord of life and death, who cares for mortal men, who comforts, relieves, sustains. He ia
CHAP. V ISIS AND SERAPIS 575
indeed a most awful power, yet one full of loving-kindness, tenderness, and mercy.^ In Plutarch we reach perhaps an even more spiritual height Osiris, who in old legend represented the Nile, or the coarse fructifying powers of nature, passes into the Eternal Love and Beauty, pure, passionless, remote from any region of change or death, unapproachable in His ethereal splendour, save, as in moments of inspired musing, we may faintly touch Him as in a dream.
In the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, the goddess who appears in a vision to Lucius promises that, when his mortal course is run, he shall find her illumining the Stygian gloom. And, next to the maternal love with which she embraced her votaries in this life, the great attraction of her cult was the promise of a blessed future, through sacramental grace, which she offered for the world to coma Serapis, too, is from the beginning a god of the under world, a '^ guide of souls," as he is also their judge at the Great Assize.^ The Orphic lore, the mysteries of the Eleusinian goddesses and Dionysus, had for ages taught a dim doctrine of immortality, under the veil of legend, through the scenic effects of their dramatic mysteries. They first revealed to the Greek race that the life to come was the true life, for which the present was only a purgatorial preparation. They taught, in whatever rude fashion, that future beatitude could only be secured by a purification from the stains of time.^ The doctrine may have been drawn from Egypt, and Egypt once more gave it fresh meaning and force. The Alexandrian worship came with a deeper faith and more impressive ritual, with dreams and monitory visions, with a mystic lore, and the ascetic preparation for the holy mysteries, with the final scene in the inner sanctuary, when the votary seemed borne far beyond the limits of space and time into ethereal distances.^ The soul might, indeed, have to pass through many bodies and mortal lives before it reached the life eternal But the motto of the Isiac faith, inscribed on many tombs, was cu^v^^e*, " be of good courage,"
^ Aristid. Or, Soar. viiL 54, ^iXar- ' Rohde, /%eA«, ii. p. 126 ; cf. i. 286 ;
$p<air&raTot ydp OeQv xal ^pepdn-aros Lobeck, ^^^pA. L p. 239; Hardie,X«e-
adr&s, irrX. tures an Classical Subjects, pp. 56, 57.
' lb, viii. 54, awT^p airbs koX The Orphici laid more streaa on the
^fn/xoiro/Airbs, Aywf elf ^Qt Kcd wdXty moral aspect of immortality than the
dtxbfuifot kt\. ; Flew, De Sarapide, priests of Eleueis did. p. 80. ^ ApuL MeL iL o. 22.
676 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
" may Osiris give the water of refreshment" ^ Everywhere the lotus, image of immortality, in its calix opening at every dawn, appears on symbols of the worship. And Harpo- crates, the god who has triumphed over death, appears as the child issuing from the mystic flower. The Soman practice of burning the dead might seem to separate for ever the fate of the body from the spirit, although it is really a question of more or less rapid resolution of the mortal frame into its original elements. But, as we have seen, the man of the early Empire became more and more anxious to preserve undisturbed the '' handful of white dust " rescued from the pyre, and would invoke the wrath of Isis against the desecrator.' The great object of many of the collies was to secure their humble members a niche in the colwrnbarivmH The Alexandrine faith id immortality, by the grace of Isis and Serapis, probably did not inquire too curiously into the manner of the resurrection*
Undoubtedly another secret of the popularity of the Egyptian worships lay in their impressive ritual, the separation of their clergy from the world, and in the comradeship of the guilds in which their votaries were enrolled. Apuleius has left us, in the initiation of Lucius at Cenchreae, and again at Borne, a priceless picture of the Isiac rituaL Every- thing in the ceremonial tends to kindle pious enthusiasm. Sophocles and Pindar had extolled the blessedness of those who had seen the mystic vision.^ The experience of Lucius would seem to confirm the testimony of the Greek poets. When the goddess has promised him deliverance from brutish form, and pledged him to strict obedience, Lucius is inspired with the utmost ardour to join in " the holy warfara" He takes up his abode in the sacied precincts, he b^s to be admitted to full communion. But the venerable pontiff requires him to await the sign of the divine wilL Lucius continues in fasting and prayer till the sign at last comes; when it comes he hastens to the morning sacrifice. The scrolls, covered with symbols of ancient Egypt, are brought in, and then, before a crowd of the faithful, he is plunged in the sacred font. Betuming to the temple, as he lies prostrate
1 G,LQ. 6562, dofiy cot, 6 'Oirtpit r6 on rpis ^coc
ifvxp^ tiupi cf. Flew, De Sarap, p. 81. jrctroi fipon^ ot radra 9€/>x^/rr«f rA«
a Or. 1879. fiSKua* H 'AOw.
» Pind.iV.187(Chri«t);Soph. A-.768- Of. 0,C. 1061.
CHAP. V ISIS AND SERAPIS 677
before the image of the goddess in prayer^ he has whispered to him "the unutterable words." Ten days more are spent in strictest retreat and abstinence from pleasures of the flesh ; and then came the crowning rite, the solemn vigil in the inner sanctuary. There, as at Eleusis, a vivid drama of a divine death and resurrection probably passed before his eyes, in flashing radiance and awful visions, amid gloom and the tones of weird music. But the tale of what he saw and heard could never be fully unfolded to mortal ear.
There indeed are some sordid and suspicious traits in the history of this worship. As in the case of the taurobolium,^ the mysteries of Isis and Serapis could not be enjoyed without a considerable outlay. And Lucius found a difficulty in meet- ing the expense.^ But, whether in heathendom or Christen- dom, a regular priesthood and an elaborate ritual cannot be supported without the ofTerings of the faithful. There has probably never been a religion in which the charge of venality has not been levelled against the priests. But Lucius finds here no stumbling-block. No material offering can repay the goodness and love of the goddess. He feels towards her not only reverence and gratitude, but the love of a son to a Divine mother. Ascetic isolation has produced the natural result of imaginative ecstasy and mystic exaltation. The long, quiet hours of rapt devotion before the sacred figure in the stiUness of the shrine, the spectral visions of the supreme hour of revelation, made a profound impression on a soul which was deeply tainted by other visions of old-world sin.
The daily ritual of Isis, which seems to have been as regular and complicated as that of the Catholic Church, pro- duced an immense effect on the Boman mind. Every day there were two solemn offices, at which white-robed, tonsured priests, with acolytes and assistants of every degree, officiated.' The morning litany and sacrifice was an impressive service. The crowd of worshippers thronged the space before the chapel at the early dawn. The priest, ascendii^ by a hidden stair, drew apart the veil of the sanctuary,* and offei-ed the holy image
^ CIX. xii. 4821, ex stipe ooUata. * TibnlL L 8, 81, biaqae die, leeo-
' ApuL MeL xL c 28 (818), yeste lata oomas, tibi dioere laades Inaignis
ipsa mea quamvis parvula distracta turba debeat in Pharia.
snfficientem corrasi snmmolum ; cf. ^ ApuL MeL xL c. 20 (795), velis
TertoU. Apol, 18. candentibns rednotii.
2 p
578 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book i?
to their adoration. He then made the round of the altars, reciting the litany, and sprinkling the holy water ** from the secret spring." At two o'clock in the afternoon the passers by could hear from the temple in the Campus Martius the chant of vespers.^ A fresco of Herculaneum gives us a picture of the service. It is the adoration of the holy water, representing in symbol the fructifying and deathless power of Osiris. A priest, standing before the holy place, raises breast high a sacred urn for the adoration of the crowd. The sacrifice k smoking on the altar, and two choirs are chanting to the accompaniment of the seistron and the flute.^ Another fresco from Herculaneum exhibits a bearded, dark-skinned figure, crowned with the lotus, in the attitude of dancing before a throng of spectators to the sound of musia It is plausibly conjectured that we have here a pantomimic representation of the passion of Osiris and its joyful dose.' There was much solemn pomp and striking scenic effect in this public ceremonial But it is clear from Apuleius, that an important part of worship was also long silent meditation before the imi^ of the goddess. The poets speak of devotees seated thus before the altar, and in the temple at Pompeii a bench has bera found which, from its position, was probably occupied by such silent worshippers.^
The great festivals of the Egyptian worship were the blessing of the sacred vessel on the fifth of March, and the celebration of the quest and finding of Osiris in November. The anniversary of the death and rising again of the god was strictly observed by large numbers, especially among women. Pagan and Christian writers have alike ridiculed the theatrical grief and joy for a god so often found, so often lost^^ The death of Osiris at the hands of Typhon, the rending of the divine form, and the dispersion of the lacerated remains, were passionately lamented in sympathy with the mourning Isia With effusive grief the devotees beat their breasts and lacer- ated their arms, and followed in eager search. When on the
^ Mart X. 48, 1, nnnoiat octavam * Lafaye, p. 126 ; Plat. Ihl9.H Om.
Phariae saa tarba javencae. o. 89, M fiv^f 'A&^ dfana^^^ai r^
* Man, PtmipHi, pp. 171, 172. "Oaipip XfyoMnr, ktX : Jut. wm, 29 ;
* La&ye, p. 115 ; Caial, Na 222. tL 584 ; Ov. Meiam. ix. 092^ nimqiiain-
* Mao, p. 171 ; Apul. Met, xL c. 17 qoe satis qnaesitiis Osiris ; Lnoaii, niL (791), intnitans deae speoimen |»ri8tino8 SiBl, et qnem ta plangens hominem oasus meos recordabar ; Hart li 14, 8. testaris Osirim ; Mik FeL a 21.
CHAP. V ISIS AND SERAPIS 579
third day the god had been found and restored, the joyful event was hailed with extravagant gladness, and celebrated by a banquet of the initiated. For some of these holy days the rubrics prescribed a long preparation of fasting and ascetic restraint But that a genered strictness of life was not required of the Isiac votary, at least under the early Empire, may be inferred from the fact that the frail Cynthias and Delias in Propertius and Tibullus were among the most regular in ritual observance.^ The festival of the holy vessel of Isis, which marked the opening of navigation, and received the benediction of the goddess, was, in the early Empire, observed with solenm pomp and enthusiasm by the coast towns of the Mediterranean. A brilliantly vivid description of such a scene at Cenchreae has been left by Apuleius. It was a great popular carnival, in which a long procession, masquerad- ing in the most fantastic and various costumes, conducted the sacred ship to the shore. Women in white robes scattered flowers and perfumes along the way. A throng of both sexes bore torches and tapers, to symbolise the reign of the Mother of the stars. The music of flute and pipe meanwhile filled the air with sacred symphonies, and a band of youths in snow-white vestments chanted a hjrmn. Wave upon wave came the throng of those who had been admitted to full communion, all clad in linen, and the men marked with the tonsure. They were followed by the priests, each bearing some symbol of the many powers and virtues of the goddess, the boat-shaped lamp, the " altars of succour," the palm of gold, the wand of Mercury. In a pix were borne the holy mysteries, and, last of all, the most vener- able symbol, a small urn of shining gold and adorned in subtle workmanship with figures of Egyptian legend.' This holy vase, containing the water of the sacred river, which was an emanation from Osiris,^ closed the procession. Arrived at the margin of the sea, the chief priest consecrated the sacred vessel with solemn form and litany, and named it with the holy nama Adorned with gold and citrus wood and pictures of old legend, it spread its white sails to the breeze, and bore
1 Oy. Am, L 8, 74 ; iiL 9, 80 ; Prop. R^ville, Rtl, unUr den Sev. p. 56. ii 88, 8 ; TibalL L 8, 28. * Plat De 1$. et Onr. c 88, KcTXor
■ ApoL Met, XL c 11 (774-78) ; *OffLpidot dvoppafyf . . . fx^ueu
680 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
into the distance the vows and offerings of the faithful for the safety of those upon the deep.
The oriental religions of the imperial period were dis- tinguished from the native religion of Latium by the possession of a numerous and highly organised priesthood, and an intensely sacerdotal spirit.^ In an age of growing religiom faith, this characteristic gave them enormous power. The priest became a necessary medium of intercourse with God It is also one of the many traits in the later paganism, which prepared and softened the transition to the reign of the mediaeval Church. It would be tedious and unprofit- able to enumerate the various grades of the Isiac priesthood. There were high priests of conspicuous dignity, who were also called prophetcLc? But ordinary priests oould per- form many of their functions.' There were interpreters of dreams, dressers and keepers of the sacred wardrobe of the goddess,^ whose duties must have been onerous, if we may judge from the list of robes and jewels and sacred fumitoie preserved in inscriptions or recovered from the ruins of Isiac shrines.^ It has been remarked that the roaming Visigoths in southern Gaul must have had a rare spoil if they had the fortune to light on one of the great temples of Isis. The scribe of the Pastophori, in Apuleius, is also an important officer. He sunmions the sacred convocation, and reoites the *' bidding prayer " for the £mperor and all subjects, in their several places and stations.^ Music took a large part in the ritual; there was hymn-singing to the sound of flutes, harp, and cymbal; and the chanters and paeanists of Seraps formed an order by themselves.^ The prayer which Lucins offers to the goddess, in Apuleius, has been arranged as a metrical litany.' Women often appear in inscriptions and in our texts as priestesses, and had a prominent place in all solemn rituaL^ And it is evident that, with all its sacer- dotalism, the worship gave full recognition to devout wor-
1 B^Wlle, p. 54 ; Lafaye, p. 130 sqq. ^ CLL, ziL 8061, Ornatrix &oi
* 0J.0. 6006; Apnl. M^L ii a 28 NemaaaL
(159), propheta primarioa, zi. c. 17 ' Lafaye, p. 185.
(788), saoerdos mazimoa. Or, Hem, ' ApoL M^ zL a 17 (789).
2805,0. Raf-Yolusianas pater ierofanta ' i&. c. 9 (772), dicati Serspi MM-
profata laidos ; 1878, ^^^^ ; CLL, z. oinas.
6445 ; ziL 410. * Lafaye, p. 18S, n. 4.
* Lafave, p. 188. * Or. Smm, 2855, 68S5, S809.
CHAP. V ISIS AND SERAPIS 681
shippers of every degree and sex. All who are devoted to the service have their place and function. The initiated might even wear the tonsure in the ordinary lay life. To do this, indeed, needed some courage, in the face of Boman ridicule. But the religious were, from the earliest times in Greece and Italy, associated for mutual support in sacred guilds, desig- nated by various names, Isiaci or Pastophori or Anubiaci In the third century B.G., such societies are found in Ceos and Peiraeus.^ On the walls of Pompeii they have left their appeals to the electors to vote on behalf of candidates for the aedileship.^ They were organised on the usual lines of the ancient colleges, divided into decuries, with a director and a treasurer, a " father " or a '' mother," or a patron at their head.' The Isiac guilds must have had a powerful influence in the diffusion of the religion of Alexandria. But they also were probably one cause of the suspicion so long enter- tained for that worship by the Bepublican government, and they only asserted their full strength in the second century, when the colleges in general received the tacit sanction of the emperors. That the emperors felt little fear of these foreign sacred corporations became clear when an emperor actually took the tonsure of Isis.^
The Isiac system was energetic and self-assertive, but it can hardly be called dangerous or revolutionary. It threw many of the old gods into the shade, but its syncretism also found a place for many of them. Its inner monotheism, after the fashion of those days, had open arms of charity for all the ancient gods. One of the priests of Isis might be called lacchagogus or Mithra ; ^ statues of Dionysus and Venus and Priapus stood in the court of the Isium at Pompeii^ The Isis of Apuleius proclaims her identity with nearly all the great powers of classical l^end, and gathers them into hersell But Isis identifies only to conquer and absorb. And her priesthood formed an aggressive and powerful caste. The sacerdotal colleges of the Latin religion were never, except in
^ YoxkGKrty Assoc, Beliffieuse8t ^,117 \ 6029, 2318, mater sacroram; CLL, Inscr, 66, 240. vi. 2277 ; Or. 2808, patrono Saor.
« Mau, p. 478, On. Helv. Sabinum ^".^ J ^P?j- ^^ ^^ ^0 (817).
aed. Isiaci rogant I Y'^?^iyJ^'^^^^JL^
^ ^ Apnl. Met. xi. o. 22 (800).
' Foncart, pp. 25-80 ; Or, ffenat, ^ Lalaye, pp. 189, 190 ; Man, p. 169.
588 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iv
the case of the Vestals, separated from ordinary life. The highest pontificate was held by busy laymen, by consols or emperors or great soldiers. After the performance of his pait in some great rite, the Boman priest returned to his ci?ic place and duties. And in Greece, in the third and second centuries B.a, even the Isiac priesthood was held only for a year, or even for a month; and the sacred processions at one time needed the authorisation of the local council at Samos.^ But when we come to the days of Apoleius, all this is chauged. The chief priest at Cenchreae is evidently a great ecclesiastic, bearing the sacred Eastern name of Mithra.^ He has given up ordinary civic life, and has probably abandoned his Greek name to take a new name " in religion." Every day two solemn services at least have to be performed in the temple, besides the private direction of souls, which had evidently become a regular part of the priestly functions. Attached to the great temples, and close to the altar, there is a "clergy house" where the mimsters are lodged. It is called the Pasto- phorion, and its chambers have been traced in the debris of the temple at Pompeii^ One of these presbyteries was the scene of the seduction which convulsed the religious world in the reign of Tiberius, and which sent so many pious exiles to the solitudes of Sardinia The ministers of Lsis and Scrapie are marked off by the tonsure and the Isiac habits which meet us in the pages of poets from Tibullus to Juvenal/ and in the frescoes of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The abstinence, which was required as a preparation for communion in ordinary votaries, was a lifelong obligation on the priest The use of woollen garments, of wine, pork, fish, and certain vegetables, was absolutely forbidden to them.' Chastity was essential in the celebrant of the holy mysteriee, and even TertuUian holds up the priests of lsis as a reproachful example of continence to professing followers of Christ The priest- hood is no longer a secondary concern; it absorbs a man's
* Lafave, p. 149. » Lafayo, pp. 151 , 186 ; Mao, FvmatH,
• Apul. MtL XL c 22 (800), Mithram p. 174.
ilium snum sacerdotem praecipuam 4 TibulL i. 3, 80; Mart xiL 29;
diTmo quodam stellarum consortio ut j^^. ^ 526 ; siet OtKo, 12.
aiebat mini ooqjuDctum, sacrorum '
ministrnm deceniit ^ Plut Z>0 /<. c 4, 8, 32.
CHAP. V IS/S AND SERAPJS 683
whole life, sets him apart within the sanctuary as the dispenser of sacred privileges, with the awful power of revealing the mystery of eternity, and preparing souls to meet the great ordeaL
It does not need much imagination to understand the fascination of Isis and Serapis for a people who had outgrown a severe and sober, but an uninspiring faith. They came to the West at the crisis of a great spiritual and political revolution, with the charm of foreign mystery and the immemorial antiquity of a land whose annals ran back to ages long before Bome and Athens were even villages. But with antique charm, the religion combined the moral and spiritual ideas of generations which had outgrown the gross symbolism of Nature worship. The annual festivals might preserve the memory of the myth, which in its grossness and brutal tragedy once pictured the fructifying influence of the mysterious river on the lands which awaited his visitations, or the waning force of vegetative power and solar warmth. But Serapis, the new god of the Ptolemies, became the lord of life and death, the guide and saviour of souls, the great judge of all in the other world, an awful power, yet more inclined to mercy than to judgment.^ And Isis rose to equally boundless sway, and one of greater tenderness. Powers above and powers below alike wait on her will : she treads Tartarus under her feet, and yet she embraces all, and specially the weak and miserable, in the arms of her charity.^ Above all, she has the secret of the unseen world, and can lighten for her worshipper the Stygian gloonL But the Isiac, like the Orphic revelation, while it gave a blessed promise for the life to come, attached grave conditions to the pledga In this brief time of proba- tion, the soul must prepare itself under ghostly guidance for the great trial. Sacrament and mystery lent their aid to fortify the worshipper in the face of death, but, to derive their fuU virtue, he must exercise himself in temperance, abjure the pleasures of the senses, and purify himself for the vision of Grod.' The sacred ritual of the Egyptian might captivate the senses and imagination by its pomp and music, its steaming altars, and many-coloured symbolism. But in the stillness of the sanctuary the worshipper was traiaed to find his moments
^ Aristid. Or. Sacr, xiii. p. 64. ' Apnl. MeL zL c. 24. • lb.
584 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISAf book it
of purest and most exalted devotion in silent meditation before the Queen of heaven and the shades. The lonely the weak, and the desolate found in the holy guilds succour and consolation, with a place in the ritual of her solemn seasons, which bound each to each in the love of a Divine Mother.
CHAPTER VI
THB RBLIGION OF MITHRA
Of all the oriental religions which attracted the devotion of the West in the last three centuries of the Empire, that of Mithra was the most powerful It is also the system which for various reasons has the greatest interest for the modem student. It is perhaps the highest and most striking example of the last efforts of paganism to reconcile itself to the great moral and spiritual movement which was setting steadily, and with growing momentum, towards purer conceptions of God, of man's relations to Him, and of the life to coma It is also the greatest effort of syncretism to absorb, without extinguishing, the gods of the classic pantheon in a cult which was almost monotheistic, to transform old forms of nature worship and cosmic symbolism into a system which should provide at once some form of moral discipline and real satisfaction for spiritual wants. In this effort, Mithraism was not so much impeded by a heritage of coarse legend as the worships of Pessinus and Alexandria. It was indeed sprung from the same order of religious thought as they. It could never detach itself from its source as a cult of the powers of natura^ But the worship of the Sun, with which Mithra was inseparably con- nected, was the purest and most natural form of devotion, if elemental powers were to be worsliipped at all And heathen- dom tended more and more under the Empire to fix its devotion on the source of all light and life. The Sun was to Plato the highest material symbol of the Infinite Oood. Neo- Pythagoreanism and Neo-Platonism regarded him as the sacred
^ Camont, ManumerUa RtlaiifB aux AfysUrea de MUhra^ Intr. pp. 809, 810.
585
586 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
image of the power beyond human ken.^ '' Before religion," it has been said, '' had reached the point of proclaiming that God must be sought in the realm of the ideal and the absolute, outside the world of sense, the one rational and scientific cult, was that of the Sun."^ Heliolatry also harmonised with absolutism in the State, as the old Persian kings and their imitators, the emperors of the third century, clearly perceived. The great temple of the Sun, which Aurelian, the son of a priestess of the deity, founded in the Campus Martins, with its high pontiffs and stately ritual, did honour not only to the great lord of the heavenly spheres, but to the monarch who was the august image of his power upon earth and who was endued with his special grace.^ The power of Mithra in the fourth century lay in the fact that, while it was tender and tolerant to the old national worships, and never broke with the inner spirit of heathenism, it created an all-embracing system which rose above all national barriers, which satisfied the philosophic thought of the age in its mysticism, and gave comfort and a hope of immortality through its sacraments.
Mithra was one of the most ancient and venerable objects of pagan devotion, as he was one of the last to be dethroned. In faint outline he can be traced to the cradle of the Aryan race.^ In the Vedas he is a god of light, and, as the god of truth, who hates all falsehood, he has the germ of that moral character which grew into a great force in the last age of his worship in the West. In the Avestas, the sacred books of the religion of Iran, which, however late their redaction, still en- shrine a very ancient creed, Mithra has the same well-defined personality. He is the radiant god who seems to emerge from the rocky summits of eastern mountains at dawn, who careers through heaven with a team of four white horses ; y^ he is not sun or moon or any star, but a spirit of light, ever wakeful, watching with a thousand eyes, whom nothing can escape and nothing deceiva^ And so, while he gives warmth and increase to the earth, and health and wealth to men, he is also from the beginning a moral power. He confers vnsdom
* ZeUor, PAi7. der Grieeh, iii. 2, p. Eine MUhraaUwrgU, p. 197. 101 ; cf. Macrob. Sat, i. 17 ; Philoetr. * Flav. Yop. Aurdiam, c Z»^ S9.
ApolL Tyan. ii. 88 ; yi. 10, § 1 ; M. * Cumont, Intr. p. 228 aq . ; Gm>
Anrel. xi. 27. quot, Le OuUe de Mithra, p. 16 aq.
' Onmont, Intr. p. 386 ; Dieterich, ^ Cninont, Intr. p. 225.
CHAP. VI THE RELIGION OF MITHRA 587
and honour and a clear conscience and concord. He wages a truceless war with the evil powers of darkness, and guards his faithful soldiers against the craft of the enemy. He is the friend and consoler of the poor ; he is the mediator between earth and heaven ; he is the lord of the world to come.^ But his place in the Zoroastrian hierarchy was not always equally high. At one time he was only one of the tfozcUas, who were created by the supreme Ormuzd.^ But Mithra has still the attributes of guardian and saviour; he is approached with sacrifice, libation, ablution, and litany, as in the latest days of his power in the West. And again a higher place is given to him ; he is the vicegerent of the remote, ineffable Ormuzd, the mediator through whom the supreme power crushes evil demons, and wages war with Ahriman ; he is invoked in the same prayers side by side with the Supreme. The Great Elings, especially the later, regard Mithra as their special guardian, swear by him in their most solemn oaths,^ and call upon him in the hour of battle. If he was the god of the humble and afiUcted, he was also the god of the prince and warrior noble, and so we shall find him at the end.
The Persian conquest of Babylon had lasting effects on the religion of Mithra. There he encountered a sacerdotal system which had its roots in an immemorial civilisation. The conquerors, as so often happens, were to some extent subdued by the vanquished.^ Syncretism set in; the deities of the two races were reconciled and identified. The magical arts and the astrolatry of the valley of the Euphrates imposed themselves on the purer Mazdean faith, and never relaxed their hold, although they failed to check its development as a moral system. Ormuzd was confounded with Bel, Mithra with Shamash or the Sun -god. The astral and solar lore, the faith in mystic numbers, which had been cultivated in Babylonia through many generations, took its place in the theology of Mithra, and they have left their mark in many a chapel on the Danube and the Bhine. Yet Mithra, identified with the Sun at Babylon, was never absorbed in the cult of the solar deity in the West* On many of the later
^ Oasqnet, d. 20. * Cumont, Intr. p. 281 ; Oasquet, p.
' Onmont, Intr. p. 226 sqq. 21 sqq.
• Xon. Cfurop, viL 6, 68 ; Oecon, iv. • Donsbach, Die rdwnliche Ferbrei-
688 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM hook xv
inscriptions Mithra and the Sun are mentioned side by side as equals and allies. Tet the connection of Mithra with Babylon is never forgotten either by Greeks or Somans. Claudian connects him with the mysteries of BeL^ The priest who, with many weird rites, in a waste sunless spot beside the Tigris, conducts Menippus to the underworld, wears the dress of Media, and bears the name Mithrobarzanes.^
With the destruction of the Persian empire and the diffusion of Magian influence in Asia Minor, the worship arrived at its last stage before entering on the conquest of the West. The monarchs of Pontus, Armenia, Cappadocia, and Com- magene, who claimed descent from the Achaemenids, were politic or enthusiastic votaries of the religious traditions of Iran.' While they reverenced Ormuzd and Anaitis, Mithra was their special patron, as he was to Artaxerxes.^ Mithra's name appears constantly in the names of royal houses, such as Mithradates and Mithrobarzanes. The inscription on the tomb of Antiochus of Commagene, who boasted of his descent from Darius the son of Hystaspes, records the endowment of solemn Persian rites, and combines the names of Ormuzd and Zeus, of Apollo and Mithra.^ In the submergence of national barriers which followed the fall of the Persian monarchy, and under the influence of Greek philosophy, that process of syncretism began in Asia Minor which was destined to produce such momentous results in tlie third and fourth centuries. But the Mazdean faith, strong in its associations with the ancient sources of spiritual enlightenment in the East, never succumbed to the western paganism. The classical gods might be admitted to the Mazdean heaven; Zeus might be confounded with Ormuzd ; Anaitis might find an analogue in Artemis Tauro- polus. But the ancient name of Mithra was never profaned in the liturgy by any translation.^ It was chiefly perhaps in Phrygia and Lydia that alien worships produced a lasting effect in modifying the Persian theology. The pure morality of the Mithraist creed might seem to have little in common with the orgies of the devotees of Attis and the Great Mother. But religious sentiment has a miraculous power both to
1 Dt Laud, Stilich, i. 62. « v, Comont, inaor. OrienL i. 2, 8.
' Luc Menippus, ca 6-9. » Id. In$cr, Cfr§tqus$, i
' Cimiont, Intr. p. 282. * Oumont, Intr. p. 286.
CHAP. VI THE REUGION OF MITHRA 68»
reject and to transmute. The costume and Phrygian cap of Attis appear on all the monuments of Mithra to the end. And, although it is a subject of debate, the taurobolium, that baptism of blood which was the most impressive rite of the later paganism, was, in all probability, early borrowed by Mithra from the ritual of Phrygia.^ The pine, the emblem of immortality, which is so prominent in the scenes of mourning for Attis,^ also has a place in the sculptured remains of the Persian chapeLs. And the title Menotyrannus, a title of Attis, which is given to the Persian god on many slabs, recalls his passage through the same region.^ But Greek art had a more powerful and enduring effect on the future of Mithra than any of these accretions. Probably the ancient Persian faith recoiled from any material image of its divine powers,^ although here also Assyria may have corrupted its purity. But when Hellenic imagination began to play around the Mazdean gods^ the result was certain. The victorious Mithra was clothed with human form, and his legend was fixed for ever by some nameless Pergamene artist, who drew his inspiration from the " steer-slaying Victory " of Athens.^ The group in which the youthful hero, his mantle blown back by the wind, with a Phrygian cap upon his head, kneels on the shoulder of the bull, as he buries his poniard in its throat, was for four centuries reproduced in countless chapels from the mouth of the Danube to the Solway. That symbolic scene, conveying so many meanings in its hieratic rigidity, became to the pioua Mithraist what the image of the Divine Figure on the Cross has been for so many centuries to the devout Catholic.
The revelation of the spread of Mithra worship in the Boman Empire is one of the greatest triumphs of modem archaeology. Only faint notices of the cult are found in Herodotus, Xenophon, and Strabo.^ Quintus Curtius knew the Persian god as the soldier's special patron, inspiring courage in battle.^ From the verses in the Thebaid of Statius we
^ Gasqaet, pp. 81 and 75 ; R^ville, * Strab. xy. 8, § 18 (732), m/Nrcu
Bel. unter den Sev, p. 98 ; Goehler, toIvvw dydhfiara ijHv Kfd fiw/io^ o^
De Matris Mojg, Cfultu, p. 55 ; bat cf. IdpCorrcu . . . Tifiu><ri ii kcU 'HXiov 6y
Oamont, Intr. pp. 884-5. jraXoCat M/tfpar, rrX.
9 n..„„«4. r» oi ' Oumont, Intr. pp. 181, 287.
Gasqnet. p. 81. . jj^^ '. igl fxen. C^rop. viL,
' 0,LL. yL 508, 511 ; cf. Cnmont, 5, 58 ; Strab. l,c Intr. p. 285. ' Q. Curt. i?. 18, § 48.
690 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book nr
may conclude that he knew something of the service in Mithra's grottoes, and that he had seen the figure of the " bull slaying " god.^ Plutarch knows Mithra as the mediator between Ormuzd and Ahriman.' Lucian had probably seen the rites in Im native Samosata; he knew the figure with the candys and tiara, and, from the sneer at the god's ignorance of Greek, he may perhaps have heard the old li^izdean litany.* But he had probably little notion of the hold which Mithra had already obtained on the farthest regions of the West Still less had he any prevision of his great destiny in the third and fourth centuries. Literature, down to the Antonine age, teaches us little of the character and strength of the worship. Without votive inscriptions and the many ruins of his chapels, along with the indignant, yet anxious, invective of the Christian apologists, we should never have known how near the Persian god came to justifying his title of the " Unconquered."
It is impossible to fix the precise date when the worship of Mithra first crossed the Aegean* The silence of inscriptions must not indeed be taken as proving that he had no devotees in Italy before the Flavian age. A famous passage in Plutarch's life of Pompey would seem to refer the first appearance of the worship in the West to the conquest of the pirates of Cilicia by Pompey, in 70 b.c.* A religion of the alien and the slave may well have been long domiciled in Italy before it attracted general notice. And there may have been humble worshippers of Mithra at Bome or Puteoli even in the days of Julius Caesar. The Mithraist inscription of the time of Tiberius is now admitted to be a forgery.' But from his reign may probably be dated the first serious inroads of the cult Under Tiberius, Cappadocia was incoiporated in the Empire, and Pontus under Nero; Commagene, the home of Jupiter Dolichenus, who was a firm ally of Mithra, was finally absorbed in the reign of Vespasian.^ The official organisation of these districts, and the constant intercourse ^tablished between central Asia Minor and the capital, must have opened many channels for the importation of new forma
^ SUt TMb, i 717 ; of. Gamont, ^ Plat Pomp. o. 24.
TeaUi, p. 47. ' Or. Eenz. 5844.
' Plut De 1$. €t (kir, c. 46. ' Cnmont, Intr. p. 248, n. 8 ; Tbc
* Lao. Dear, Condi, a 9 ; Men/ippiu, Aim, ii. 42 ; D. 0ms. l?iL 17 ; Suet,
«. 6 sqq. ; Jup, Trag. o. 8. Veap, a 8.
CHAP. VI THE RELIGION OF MITHRA 691
of devotion from the East. Almost in the very year m which Statius was pemiing his verses about Mithra in the Thebaid, a freedman of the Flavian house erected a tablet to the god on the Esquiline/ and soldiers of the East carried his mysteries to the camps on the Danube. The 15th Legion, which had fought under Corbulo against the Parthians, and taken part in the conquest of Palestine in 70 A.D., in the first years of the reign of Vespasian, established the worship of Mithra at Gamuntum in Pannonia, which became henceforth the sacred city of Mithra in the West.* In 102 A.D. a marble group was dedicated by the slave of a praetorian prefect of Trajan.' It is probable that at Ostia we have records of the cult from the year 162.^ The Mithraeum, found under the church of S. Clement at Bome, has yielded an inscription of the last years of Antoninus Pius. That emperor erected a temple to Mithra at Ostia.^ Bome and Ostia were probably the earliest points in Italy invaded by the Persian worship. All the conditions were favourable to an early and rapid propagation of the cult in the capital of the world. Soldiers from the East would be serving in the garrison, or settled after their release from service. Eastern slaves swarmed in all the great houses, including that of the emperor. A large proportion of the dedications are made by men of servile origin, and the very name of the dedicator would often be enough to indicate his nationality. More than 100 in- scriptions, more than 75 pieces of Mithraist sculpture, with the ruins of many chapels of the god, attest his powerful influence at Bome.^ Ostia which, since the reconstruction of Trajan, had overshadowed Puteoli, was hospitable to all alien rites.^ The port had at least four temples of Mithra in the second century, and it is significant of the alliance between the two worahips, that a Mithraeum there was built close to a shrine of the Great Mother,' and that members of the college of the Den- drophori sometimes made offerings and dedications to Mithra.*
^ CLL. vi 782. On the date of the s lUville, p. 81.
Thebaid, cf. Teuffel, Bom. LU. § 816, - ^ x t *- ot^ ^^
jj^ 3 * ^ » I e Cnmont, Intr. p. 274, n. 6.
' Gmnont, Intr. p. 258 ; of. Tac ^ /(. p. 275 ; Donsbach, pp. 15-17.
^M7./1'4: 718, A.D. 102. • ^''-*' P- 2«. ^^•-'^■V- M8-
* Gomont, Intr. p. 265, Jruer. No. * Id. Jiuer. ; CLL, vi. 510 ; Or,
138. ffenz, 6040.
592 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
The remains at Ostia disclose some other indications of the prevailing syncretism. The Boman Sylvanus has a niche in one Mithraeum, and, in another, Saturn and Jupiter, Mars, Mercury and Venus, are figured beside the purely Eastern symbols of the planets and the signs of the zodiac.^
The inner secret of that rapid propaganda we shall never fully know. But we can discover with tolerable certainty the kind of people who carried the gospel of Mithra to the most remote parts of the western world. The soldiers were his most zealous missionaries.^ Drafted from Cappadocia or Commagene, and quartered, far from his home, in a camp on the Danube or in the Black Forest, the legionary clung to the worship of his native East, and was eager to admit his comrades to fellowship in its rites. The appearance of Mithraism in certain places can be traced directly to the quartering of a legion which had been recruited from the countries which were the original home of the worship. Officers of eastern birth on promotion passed into other corps, and extended the influence of the East.* Centurions retiring from active service became apostles of the movement in the places where they settled. Syrian merchants, who were still found at Orleans in the time of the Merovingians, with all the fanaticism of their race popularised their native worships in the ports of Italy, (raul, along the coasts of the Adriatic, and among the centres of commerce on the Danube or the Rhine.* The civil servants of the emperor, clerks and com- missaries of every degree, procurators and agents of great estates, who were often men of servile origin, have left many traces of their zeal in spreading the Persian worship both throughout Italy and in countries north of the Alps.' The slave class probably did as much for the glory of Mithra as any other.^ It was largely drawn from CapjMkdocia, Pontus, and Phrygia, those regions where the religion of Mithra had taken deep root before it passed into Europe. And, like the Christian, the religion of Mithra was, at the outset of its career, a religion of the poor and humbla It was only in the second century that it achieved the conquest of the court and the educated classes. It was probably through slaves that
^ Doosbach, p. 17. ^ Oumont, Intr. p. 263.
* Camont, Intr. p. 246 so. " G,LL. iiL 8960, 4797, 5620, 4S02 ;
* Ih, p. 258, XL 8 ; cf. Or. Bern, 5855, vL 721.
1916, 1917, 1922. • Cumont, Intr. p. 265.
CHAP. VI THE RELIGION OF MITHRA 593
it found its way into remote comers of Apulia, Lucania, or Etruria.^
The stages in the spread of the Mithraist rites throughout Italy cannot be clearly traced. But in the second century the cult was established not only in Campania, Capreae, and Ischia, but in lonely country places in Southern Italy.^ It had spread to a circle of towns around Bome — Lanuvium, Alba, Velitrae, Labici, and Praeneste.* Bome by traders, imperial officers or slaves, it followed the line of the great roads to the north. Thus we can trace its march along the Via Cassia through Etruria, at Volsinii, Arretium, and Florence.* It arrived at Pisa probably by sea. Along the Flaminian Way, it may be followed through Interamna, Spoletiimi, and Sentiuum to Bononia. At Nersae, in the Aequian territory, the cult must have been of some antiquity in 172 A.D.* For, in that year the treasurer of the town, a man probably of the slave class, restored a chapel which had fallen into ruins. The roll of the patrons of a Mithraist society at Sentinum has come down to us, with the names of slaves or freedmen among its members.^ In Gallia Cisalpina the traces of Mithra are less frequent Milan, already growing to its great destiny in the fourth century, and Aquileia, are the chief seats of the Persian cult. Aquileia has yielded a large number of inscriptions. From its situation at the mouth of the Po, as the great entrepdt for the trade between the Adriatic and the Danubian provinces, it must have powerfully stimulated the diffusion of the worship."^ It is curious, however, that the passes of the Alps have yielded richer booty to the investigator in this field than the plains of Lombardy. In the mountain valleys lead- ing to Bhaetia and Noricum, as well as in those above the Italian lakes, many relics of this far-spreading religion have been given to the light.^ A temple of Mithra has been discovered near Trent, in the valley of the Adige. In the Tyrol and Carinthia sacred grottoes, buried among woods and rocks, have disclosed bas-reliefs, sculptured with the traditionary figures of
^ Cf.Oamont,/7uer.l60,8agari8actor;. * Donsbach, p. 19. of. the list of the Cnltorea Mithrae, > C/.X. ix. 4109, 4110.
C.LL, xi 6787. • lb, xL 6787.
* Gamont, Intr. p. 268 ; Donsbach, ^ Donsbach, p. 20 ; Cnmont, Intr.
p. 19. p. 266.
' Cumont, Intr. p. 268. * Cumont, Intr. p. 269.
2 Q
694 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book i?
Persian legend. They were probably frequented by the faithful down to the reign of Valentinian,^ Throughout Noricum and Pannonia imperial functionaries or agents of private enterprise, procurators, clerks of the treasury, custom-house officers, or eastern freedmen and slaves, have left many traces of their devotion to the Persian god.* Thus, everywhere along the great roads which radiated from Aquileia to the markets or strong places upon the Danube, the votary of Mithra would find in the days of the Antonines many a shrine, stately or humble, where he could refresh his piety by the way.
The Greek provinces have yielded but few memorials of the worship of Mithra. But, from the mouth of the Danube to the north of England his triumphant march can be traced, with only a break here and there. He follows the line of the rivers or the great roads, through the frontier camps or the centres of Boman commerce. I^mly seated at Tomi and the ports of the Black Sea, Mithra has not left many traces, so far as exploration has gone, in Thrace and Macedonia.' Nor have the Moesias as yet contributed many monuments, although at IVoesmis and Oescus, along the great military road, bas-reliefs and inscriptions have been brought to light^ Next to Pannonia and the territory of the Upper Bhine, Dacia was the province where Mithraism seems to have reached its greatest popularity in Europe.* In the year 107, after six desolating and often doubtful campaigns, Dacia was resettled and organised by Trajan.^ Its depopulated fields were colonised with immense masses of men from all parts of the Boman world. Probably there has seldom been such a eolluvies gerUium assembled. And, among these alien settlers, there were many from Edessa, Palmyra, and those regions of the East where Mithra or his kindred deities had their earliest and most fervent worshippers.^ In the capital of the province, Sarmizegetusa, an excavated Mithraeum has afforded fifty bas-reliefs and inscriptions.* The colony of Apulum can show the remains of at least four temples. And Potaissa and other places, with names strange to English ears, have enriched the museums.
^ Comont, MoTi, 287, 289 ; Inscr. ^ Gumont^ Intr. p. 249 ; Donabach.
408. p. 22.
« aZX. iii 8480, 8479, 4796, 4797, ! ^^^^^^ ^.?.^- P- 260.
gj2l, Jfiutrop. vui. o.
^ Cumont, Intr. p. 247, n. 6. • Donsbach, p. 21. » /d. p. 261, n. 8.
CHAP. VI THE RELIGION OF MITHRA 696
PannoDia abounds with interesting remains of Mithra, not only in the great seats of Boman power on the Danube, but in places far in the interior. And in this province can be distinctly traced not only the progress of the military propa- ganda, but the dates, with approximate accuracy, when the mysteries of Mithra were first introduced.^ Aquincum and Carnuntum were the chief seats of the Persian worship on the Danube. In the former town, the god had at least five chapels in the thiid century. There were at least four in the territory of Carnuntum, one of them being closely connected with that of the allied deity, Jupiter Dolichenus of Com- magene.^ The original votaries of the reign of Vespasian had been contented with a rude grotto, partially formed by the configuration of the rocks, the intervals being filled in with masonry.* This structure in the third century was replaced by a more stately edifice at the expense of a Boman knight.^ There can be little doubt that the spread of Mithraism in Pannonia was chiefly the work of two Legions, the IL Adjutrix and XV. Apollinaris, both largely recruited from Commagene or Cappadocia.^ The bricks of a Mithraeum at Carnuntum beai* the stamp of the 15 th Legion, and the inscriptions contain several dedications by soldiers of the two corps.' The 15th Legion, which was quartered on the Danube in 71 or 72, had fought under Corbulo against the Parthians, and had borne a part in suppressing the Jewish revolt of 70 A.D. We may be sure that the gaps in its ranks were filled by eastern recruits.^ The soldiers of other corps, such as the Legions Xllland XIV,Geminae Martiae, caught the religious enthusiasm, and took part in the erection of buildings and in monumental ofierings.® It was probably through officers, transferred from the Danube, that the worship was introduced into the camp of Lambaesis in Numidia. There is a tablet of the third century to Mithra in that camp, dedicated by a prefect of the 3rd Legion, who was born at Carnuntum.^ In Noricum and Bhaetia, the military propaganda seems to have been less vigorous than in
1 Gamont, Intr. pp. 252, 8. < C./.X. iiL 4418, 4416 ; Donsbach,
2 Id. Jfon. No. 228 ; Intr. p. 258. P- 25.
; Id. U,.. No. 226 ; Intr. p. 268. olIU cl^J^l^Uq- ttl. ^'
* Id. iTMcr. No. 368. 8 Cumont, Mm, No. 225.
* Mommsen, Bxynu Prov, ii p. 68, n. ' C./.JD. viii. 2675 ; Cagnat, p. 189.
696 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
Pannonia. But a comer of the former province was once guarded by a corps from Commagene, which has left traces of its presence in the name of a town on the Danube and in some monuments to Mithra.^ In Bhaetia his remains aie singularly scanty.* But when we come to the Agri Decumaks and the region of the Upper Bhine, we find ourselves in a district once more teeming with relics of Mithra. Not only has this region given to the light the largest number of his chapels/ but the bas-relieCs found in their ruins surpass all others in their dimensions and the completeness of their symbolism. The tauroctonus group of Osterburken is regarded as the masterpiece of Mithraist art in its complex variety and the vivid and masterly skill of the execution.^ Many of the German inscriptions to Mithra are offered by simple citizens. But, from the number dedicated by soldiers also, Cumont may be right in tracing the diffusion of the worship once more to military zeaL It is true, the legions quartered in Germany did not contain any considerable number of recruits from the East. But they were in constant communication with the camps upon the Danube, where oriental influences were strong. It is significant that the earliest inscription to Mithra yet found in Germany, of the year A.D. 148, is that of a centurion of the 8th Legion, which was quartered in Moesia from 47 till 69, and which during that time had firequent com- munications with the East The legion was in 70 removed from Moesia to Upper Germany.* It is probable that, however it was introduced, the worship of Mithra may have found its way into the valley of the Neckar, and even to the Lower Bhine, before the end of the first century. Coins of Trajan have been found in the temple at Friedberg ; ^ a series of coins from Vespasian to M. Aurelius has been recovered firom a temple in the neighbourhood of Cologne.^ From Cologne the line of conquest may be followed to Boulogne, the station of the British fleet. Thence the cult passed easily to London, which, in the time of Tacitus, was a centre of great comnieicial
1 (7./.JD. iii 5650 ; Cumont, Inaer. Donsbach, p. 27.
Ka 416 ; ifon. No. 238 ; of. Donsboch, ^ Cumont, Man, No. 351.
p. 26. * Id. Ifiser. Na 428 ; Intr. p. 256»
* Cumont, Intr. p. 255; Donsbach, n. 2.
p. 27. « Id. Man. No. 248 (p, 359).
* For the number and the sites v, ^ lb. No. 265 (p. 388).
CHAP. VI THE RELIGION OF MITHRA 697
activity.^ The legions probably carried the worship to the great camps of Gaerleon, Chester and York. At all the guard- posts of the great rampart of Hadrian, there were chapels of the eastern god, and the inscriptions show that the officers at this remote outpost of the Empire maintained a warm devotion to the religion of their native East^
The regions of the western world on which Mithra, from whatever causes, seems to have made least impression were Western Gaul, Spain, and North Africa.* Syrian merchants, slaves, or soldiers, had established the worship at Lyons, Aries, and Narbonna But Elusa is the only place in Aquitaine where traces of it have been found. In Spain, the legionaries carried it only to a few remote frontier posts in Asturia or Gallicia.^ The African garrisons, recruited largely from the surrounding country, remained true to their native deities, and the few inscriptions to Mithra at great military strongholds, like Lambesi, are probably due to the devotion of some of the higher officers, who had been transferred to these distant quarters from Syria or the Danube.^
If we try to explain the fascination of this religion of central Asia for western minds, we must seek it partly in its theological system, partly in its ritual and clerical organisa- tion, still more in its clear promise of a life beyond the grave. In these characteristics, Mithraism differed profoundly from Graeco-Boman paganism, and seemed, in the eyes of the Christian apologists, to be a deceptive imitation of the rites and doctrines of the Christian Church. Inspired with the tendency or ambition to gather many races into its fold, Mithraism was a compound of the influences of very different ages, and offered many footholds for the faith or superstition of the lands which it traversed in its march. It drew, from points widely severed in time and place, doctrine or symbolism or rite, from the ancient lands of the Aryan race, from the mountain homes of the Persians, from Babylon- and Phrygia and Commagene, from the philosophy of Greece, and the mythologies of all the peoples among whom it came. Yet it
^ Tac. Ann, 14, 88, Londinium ... ' Id. Intr. p. 259 n.
oopia negotiatonim maxime celebre. ^ 76. p. 260 ; Donsbach, p. 80.
" Cumont, l.c. ; cf. Oagnat, VAmL
' Cumont, Inscr, Nos. 471-490 ; rom, dCAfr, p. 853, on the history and Donsbach, p. 29. composition of the Legio III. Angosta.
608 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iv
never to the end ceased to be a Persian cult. In the Divine Comedy of Lucian, as it may be called, Mithra, even when he is admitted to Olympus, cannot speak in Greek.^ His name is never disguised or translated On many of his inscriptions the names of the old Mazdean pantheon, such as Ahriman, the power of evil, still figure.^ The mystic beasts which are always present in the sacred scene of the tauroctonus, the lion, the dog, the snake, the scorpion, had all a hieratic meaning in Persian theology.* The cave, which was the immemorial sanctuary of the worship, amid all the mystic meanings at- tached to it by later Neo-Platonist speculation, carried the mind back to Zoroastrian symbolism/ The jpetra genetrix, which is figured on so many sacred slabs on the Danube and in Upper Grermany, goes back to the very cradle of the worship.* The young god, emerging from the spires of rock, round which a serpent coils itself, is the first radiance of the upspringing sun, as on high, lonely peaks it flashes and broadens to the dawn. The great elemental powers, sun and moon, ocean, the winds and seasons, are generally grouped around the central piece, in forms borrowed fix)m classic art^ Fire and water are always present; no chapel was without its fountain.^ And the tradition of the astral lore of the Euphrates can be seen in the signs of the zodiac which encompass the sacred scene of mystic sacrifice in the chapels on the Upper Ehine.® The very letters of the name of Mithra, expanded into Meithras, according to S. Jerome, like the mystic word Abraxas, yielded to ingenious calculation the exact number of days in the year.* It is difficult for us to conceive how these frigid astronomical fancies should form a part in a religious system which undoubtedly from the beginning had a profound moral effect on its adherenta Yet it is well to remember that there was a time when the mystery of the stellar spaces, and the grandeur and beneficence of the sun, were the most awful and impressive things in human
1 Luc. Deor. Coneil. c 9. • /J. 261 (p. 866) ; Intr. tx, 92 :
« IMville, p. 87. cf. Herod. L 181.
• Cumont, Intr. p. 190 ; Gasquet, ' Cnmont, Ifon. 246 (p. 848).
p. 70. • Id. Intr. p. 109 ; Man, 246, 247,
^ Oomont, Intr. p. 66 ; Gasquet, 248, 261, 278.
p- 86. * Donsbach, p. 6 ; Gaaquet, p. 24 ;
B Cumont, iTiscr. 441, 444 ; Man. Dieterich, MmraslUurgUf n, 146 :
218, 245, 262. S. Hieron. Ckm. in Amaa, v. 9, 10.
CHAP. VI THE REUGION OF MITHRA 699
experience. The cold scrutiny of the telescope has long since robbed the heavenly orbs of their mystic power over hum€tn destiny. Yet even now, a man who has not been imbued with the influence of modem science, may, on some calm, starlit summer night, travel back in imagination to the dreams of the early star-gazers on the Ganges or the Euphrates, and fancy that, in the far solitary splendour and ordered movement of those eternal fires, which shine so serene and pitiless on this small point in the universe, there may be forces to guide or signs to predict the course of mortal destiny. Nor was it an altogether unworthy dream, which floated before the minds of so many generations, that in those liquid depths of space, where, in the infinite distance, the radiance of widely-severed constellations blends into a luminous haze, might be the eternal abode of spirits who, after their sojourn in the flesh, have purged themselves of earthly taint.^
The relative influence of Babylon and ancient Iran in moulding the theology of Mithraism, has long been a subject of controversy. The opposing schools, represented by Lajard and Windischmann,* have been discredited or reconciled by saner methods of criticism, and wider archaeological knowledge. It is now seen that while Babylonia has left a deep impress on the creed of Mithra, yet the original Aryan or Persian elements still maintained their ascendency. Mithra, in his long journey, came under many influences ; and he absorbed many alien ideas from the cults and art of the many lands through which he travelled. His tolerance, indeed, was one great secret of his power. But, while he absorbed, he assimilated and transmuted. He remained the god of Persia, while he gathered into his creed mystic elements that might appease the spiritual cravings of the western world.^ His system came to represent the best theological expression of the long movement of pagan mysticism, which, beginning with the mythic names of Orpheus and Pythagoras, organised in the classic mysteries, elevated and glorified by the genius of Plato, ended, if it has ended, in the Neo-Platonic movement which offered a last resistance to the Christian church. The central ideas of that
^ Macrob. Scm, Seip, i. 15, § 10 ' Gf. Dieterich, MUhraaUurgie, pp.
tqq. 160, 165, 202 ; Ciunont, Intr. pp. 881,
■ Cumont, Intr. pp. 71, 72. 836.
600 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
theory of life and death were presented to the neophyte in the mysteries of Mithra, and one of the last expounders of the Platonic creed, in the reign of Theodosius, had probably been initiated in one of the last chapels of the worship.^ In that vision of human destiny, of the descent and ascent of the human soul, the old Orphic doctrine is united with the star- lore of the Euphrates. Travelling towards its future prison-house in the flesh, the spirit which leaves the presence of Ormuzd descends by the gate of Cancer, through the spheres of the seven planets, and in each acquires a new faculty appropriate to its earthly state. The Mithraist discipline €tnd sacraments prepare it for the ascent after death When the soul at last leaves its mortal prison^ it has to submit to a great judgment in the presence of Mithra, and if it pass the ordeal, it may then return through the seven spheres, at each stage divesting itself of those passions or earthly powers, which it had taken on for a time in its downward journey.^ Finally, through the remote gate of Capricorn, its sublimated essence will pass back again to ecstatic union with the Supreme. It is thus that the East and West, Orphic mysteries and Chaldaean astrology, combined to satisfy the craving for a moral faith and the vision of another world.
The religion of Mithra probably achieved its highest victory through an ethical theology, typified and made concrete to the average worshipper by an elaborate symbolism in rite and sculptured scen& But it had also a cosmic theology. Mithra, in virtue of his moral power, became in the end the central figure. But in nearly sdl his chapels can be discovered a divine hierarchy, in which, for ages, he did not hold the foremost rank The highest place is given to Infinite Time, without sex or passions, or properly without even a name, although in order to bring him within the vulgar ken, he may be called Cronus or Saturn and imaged in stone as a lion, wrapped in the coils of a snaka' He is the author of life and death ; he carries the keys of heaven, and, in his limitless sway, he is identified with the unbending power of Fata Like other cosmic systems of the East^
^ Gasqoet, p. 104 ; cf. Maorob. Som, ' OnmoDt, Intr. pp. 80S, 809 ; c£.
Sti-p, i 12 ; Macrob. SaJU i. 17 ; cf. Macrobi Som. SHp, l 12.
Lobeok, Aglaoph, ii. 983 ; Rohde, ' Oumont, Intr. p. 294 ; i&. p. 75.
Pigyehey ii. pp. 121, 402. But cf. Gaaquet, p. 41.
CHAP. VI THE RELIGION OF MITHRA 601
the Mazdean explaiued the universe by a succession of emanations from the Infinite First Cause.^ From his own essence, Cronus engendered Earth and Heaven, whom mytho- logers may call Jupiter and Juno, and they in turn give life to Ocean. Jupiter, as in classical mythology, succeeded to the power of Cronus, and gave to the world the Olympian deities, along with Fortune, Themis, and the Fates. In the hemisphere of gloom and evil, another order was engendered by Infinite Time, which is represented by Ahriman, or, in the fancy of more western lands, by Pluto and Hecate. The evil spirits, who are their progeny, like the Titans of Greek legend, have tried to storm Olympus, and been hurled back to the under world.^ There they still retain their power to plague and corrupt the race of men ; but, by means of incantation, and S£u;rifice, their malice may be turned aside. In this daemonology Mitliraism joined hands with the new Platonism, of which Plutarch, as we have seen, was one of the earliest apostles, and the affinity between them continued to the last age of paganism.' But it was in its divinisation of the elemental powers and heavenly bodies that this religion probably obtained its most powerful hold on an age profoundly fatalist and superstitioua The strife of the four elements figures under animal symbolism on innumerable sculptures of the chapels of Mithra, around the image of the buU-slaying God.* The divine fire which sparkles in the stars, and diffuses the warmth of life in animal or plant, blazed perpetually on the altar of the crypt* The sun and moon are seldom missing from these slabs. In the great masterpiece of Mithraic art at Osterburken, the two deities occupy opposite corners of the tablet* The sun-god, with a cloak floating from his right shoulder, is urging his four- horse team up the steep of heaven, and over the car floats Phosphorus, as a naked boy, bearing a torch in each hand. On the opposite side, Selene, crowned with the crescent and erect in her car, is urging her team of oxen downwards towards the gloom. On another piece, also found in the heart of Germany, there is an impressive scene, in which Mithra and the Sun, arrayed in eastern costume, stand side by side over a
^ Cumont, Intr. p. 295. ^ Id. M(m, 251 (p. 865).
« Ih. p. 296. * Id. Intr. p. 297.
' 76. p. 801. « Id. Mon, 246 (p. 849).
602 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iv
huge slaughtered bull. The sun god is handing to Mithra a bunch of grapes, which he receives with a gesture of admiration.^
The most popular, and the least wholesome, element, which Mithraism borrowed from Babylon, was the belief in planetary influence. The seven planets became the arbiters of human destiny, and their number acquired a hieratic significance.' The days of the week and the seven principal metals were consecrated to them. The various grades of initiation into the mysteries of Mithra found a correspondence in the intervals of the seven spheres.^ The soul, in descending to its earthly tenement for a season, passes through their successive realms, and assumes appropriate faculties in each, just as, on its release and ascension, it divests itself of them, one by one, as it returns to the region of ethereal purity. But the astral doctrine, introduced into the system of Iran from Chaldaea, was a dangerous addition to the creed. It was a fatal heritage from ages of benumbing superstition, and, while it gave an immense impetus to the progress of the solar cult, it counterbalanced, and, to some extent, neutralised its more spiritual and salutary doctrines.^ A co-ordinate evil power, side by side with the beneficent Creator and Preserver, and his revealer and mediator, a host of daemons, tempting to sin, as well as visiting men with calamity, an iron Fate at the centre of the Universe, whose inevitable decrees are at once indicated and executed by the position and motions of the planets — all this gloomy doctrine lay like a nightmare on the human mind for many ages, and gave birth to all sorts of evil arts to discover or avert or direct the pitiless forces which controlled the fate of man. This is the dark side of Mithra worship, and, in this evil tradition from Babylon, which partially overlaid the purer creed of Persia, we may find some explanation of the strange blending of dark superstition with moral earnestness which characterised the reaction of Julian, the votary of the Sun, and the patron of Maximus.
But, although the deification of the great elemental powers and the mingled charm and terror of astrology gave the religion of Mithra a powerful hold on the West, there were
I Cumont, Mm. 251 (p. 865). * Ouraont, Intr. p. 816 ; of. Gasquat,
* Id. Intr. p. 800 ; Gasqoet, p. pp. 94, 95. 62. ^ Camont, Intr. p. 801.
CHAP. VI THE REUGION OF MITHRA 603
other and nobler elements in his system which cannot escape the candid enquirer. The old unmoral, external paganism no longer satisfied the spiritual wants of all men in the second century. It is true the day will probably never come when the religion of many will not begin and end in solemn, stately rite, consecrated to the imagination by ancient use, and captivating the sense by scrupulously ordered ceremonial. The ritualist and the puritan conception of worship will probably always exist side by side, for they represent two opposite conceptions of religion which can never entirely blend. And certainly in the days of M. Aurelius the placid satisfaction in a sumptuous sacrifice, at which every word of the ancient litany was rendered to the letter, was still profoundly felt by many, even by the philosophic emperor himself. But there were other ideas in the air. Men heard from wandering preachers that (rod required other offerings than the " blood of bidls and the ashes of a heifer," that the true worship was in the sacrifice of a purified spirit.^ Flatonist and Pythagorean, even when they might reverently handle the ancient symbolism of ritual, were teaching that communion with the Infinite Father was only possible to a soid emancipated from the tyranny of sense. Moreover, as we have seen, the new Platonism was striving to create some mediatorial power between the world of sense and the Infinite Spirit, transcending all old materialistic fancies of the Divine.^ This Platonic daemonology, indeed, from the Christian point of view, was a very crude and imperfect attempt to bridge the gulf. And it had the graver fault that it was really a revival of the old mythology. Yet it was also an attempted reformation. It was an effort to introduce a moral influence into paganism. It was an effort to substitute for physical and naturalistic conceptions a moral theory of the government of the world. That was surely an immense advance in religious history, and foreshadowed the great revolution which was to launch the western world on a new spiritual career. The hosts of sister spirits, whom Maximus of Tyre imagines as surrounding and sustaining the life of men, involved in the darkness €tnd sorrow of time, are
^ Cf. Denis, Idies Morales^ etc. ii. p. Max. Tyr. Diss, viii. ; xiv. § 7, 8 ;
248 aq. ; cf. BuTgmanii, Sen€ca*s Theo- xvL § 9. logie, p. 87; Sen. Ep, 95, 50; 31,
§ 11 ; Philottr. ApolL Tyan, v. 25 ; ' v. supra, p. 426.
604 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM bookit
a conception strange to the old paganism. And the need of mediatorial sympathy, of a sympathetic link, however alight, with the dim, awful Power, ever receding into more remote and mysterious distances, was also connected with the need of some assurance, or fainter hope, of a life beyond the tomb. To that hope the old classical paganism afforded only slight and shadowy nutriment Yet, from hundreds of sepulchral in- scriptions the yearning, often darkened by a doubt, appeals with pathetic force. Apart, in fiEtct, from the crowd of mere antiquarian formalists and lovers of spectacle, there were, we believe, a great mass who longed for some channel through which they might have the faintest touch of sympathy with the Infinite Spirit ; for some promise, however veiled in enigmatic symbolism, that this poor, puxzling, ineffectual life should not dose impotently at death.
In all the Mazdean pantheon, it has been remarked, Mithra was the only divine figure that profoundly affected the religious imagination of Europe. Who can dare at this distance to pierce the mystery ? But we may conjecture that the ascend- ency is partly due to his place as mediator in the Persian hierarchy, partly to the legends, emblazoned on so many slabs, of his miraculous and Herculean triumphs ; but still more to the moral and sacramental support^ and the sure hope of immortal life which he offered to his fedthful worshippers. Mitlira came as a deliverer from powers of evil and as a mediator between man and the remote Ormozd. He bears the latter office in a double sense. In the cosmic system, as lord of light, he is also lord of the space between the heavenly ether and the mists of earth. As a solar deity, he is the central point among the planetary orbs.^ In the ubiquitous group of the slaughtered bull, Mithra stands between the two Dadophori, Cautes and Cautopates, who form ¥rith him a sort of Trinity, and are said to be incarnations of hiuL* One of these figures in Mithraic sculpture always bears a torch erect, the other a torch turned downwards to the eartL They may have a double significance. They may figure the ascending light of dawn, and the last radiance of day as it sinks below the horizon. They may be taken to image the growth of solar strength to its midsummer triumphs, and its slow decline towards fading
1 Cumont, Intr. p. 803. ' /i. ppi S07, 90S.
CHAP. VI THE REUGION OF MITHRA 605
autumn and the cold of winter. Or again, they may shadow forth the wider and more momentous processes of universal death and resurgent life. But Mithra also became a mediator in the moral sense, standing between Ormuzd and Ahriman, the powers of good and evil, as Plutarch conceives him.^ He is the ever victorious champion, who defies and overthrows the malignant demons that beset the life of man ; who, above all, gives the victory over the last foe of humanity.
The legend of Mithra in hymn or litany is almost entirely lost But antiquarian ingenuity and cultivated sympathy have plausibly recovered some of its meanings from the many sculptural remains of his chapels. On the great monuments of Yirunum, Mauls, Neuenheim, and Osterburken, can be seen the successive scenes of the hero's career. They begin with his miraculous birth from the " mother rock," which was familiar to Justin Martyr, S. Jerome, and many of the Fathers.' The dedications petrae genetrid abound along the Danube, and the sacred stone was an object of adoration in many chapels.* A youthful form, his head crowned with a Phrygian cap, a dagger in one hand, and a torch in the other, is pictured emerging from an opening rock, around which sometimes a serpent is coiled. Shepherds from the neighbouring mountain gaze in wonder at the divine birth, and presently come nearer to adore the youthful hero, and offer him the firstlings of their flocks and fields.^ And again, a naked boy is seen screening himself from the violence of the wind in the shelter of a fig tree ; he eats of its fruit and makes himself a garment from the leaves.^ In another scene, the sacred figure appears in full eastern costume, armed with a bow from which he launches an arrow against a rock rising in front of him.^ From the spot where the arrow strikes the stone, a fountain gushes forth, and the water is eagerly caught in his upturned palms by a form kneeling below. Then follow the famous scenes of the chase and slaughter of the mystic bulL At first the beast is seen borne in a skifiT over an expanse of waters. Soon afterwards
^ Plat De Is, et Orir. c 46. Jtfbn. 199, 207.
* Firm. Matern. o. 20, alterint * Id. Intr. p. 160.
profani sacramenti nenam est tfc6f * lb. f. 162; M<m, 204.
UviTpatt eta Of. S. Hieron. Adv. Jov. ^ Id. Intr. p. 161.
L S 7 ; JuBt Mart. Dial. e. Tryph. • lb. p. 165 ; Man. 204 (p. 818), 286
c 70 ; Pmd. Cathem. t. 9 ; Comont, (p. 888).
e06 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
he is grazing quietly in a meadow, when Mithia comes upoD the scene. In one monument the hero is canying the boll upon his shoulders ; in others he is borne upon the animal's back, grasping it by the horns. Or again, the bull is seen in full career with the hero's arms thrown around his neck. At last the bull succumbs to his rider's courage, and is dragged by the hind-1^, which are drawn over his captor's shoulders, into a cavern where the famous slaughter was enacted.^ 'Ae young god, his mantle floating on the wind, kneels on the shoulder of the fallen beast, draws back its head with his left hand, whUe with the other he buries his dagger in its neck.* Below this scene are invariably sculptured the scorpion, the faithful dog, and the serpent lapping the flowing blood. The two Dadophori, silent representatives of the worlds of light and gloom, one on each side, are always calm watchers of the mystic scene. But the destruction of the bull was not a mere spectacle of death. It was followed by a miracle of fresh springing life and fertility, and, here and there, on the slabs are seen ears of com shooting from the tail of the dying beast, or young plants and flowers springing up around.* His blood gives birth to the vine which yields the sacred juice consecrated in the mysteries. Thus, in spite of the scorpion and the serpent, symbols of the evil powers, who seek to wither and sterilise the sources of vitality, life is ever rising again from the body of death.^
Mithra's mysterious reconciliation with the Sun is figured in other groups.^ Mithra, as usual, in eastern costume, has, kneeling before him, a youthful figure either naked or lightly dad. The god touches the head of the suppliant with some mysterious symbol, and the subject of the rite raises his hands in prayer. The mystic symbol is removed, and Mithra sets a radiant crown on the suppliant's head. This reconciliation of the two deities is a favourite subject In the sculpture of Osterburken, they ratify their pact with solemn gestures before an altar. Their restored harmony is commemorated in even
^ Camont, Intr. p. 167 sq. ; M(m, ' Cnmont, Intr. p. 186 m. ; Uok,
^263, 192, 204, 221. 104, 246.
^ Gftsquet, p. 70.
' See the finest extant specimen from * Cnmont, Ifoft. 191 (p. 812); 203 Osterburken ; Cnmont, ifbn. 246 ; of. (p. 817) ; 242 (p. 842) ; 246 (p. S50) ; i;he one at Heddemheim, Mon, 261. Intr. p. 172.
CHAP. VI THE RELIGION OF MITHRA 607
more solemn fashioiL In one monument the two are reclining on a couch at a solemn agape, with a table before them bearing the sacred bread, which is marked with the cross, and both are in the act of raising the cup in their right hands.^
The legend of Mithra, thus faintly and doubtfully recon- structed from the sacred sculptures, in the absence of express tradition, must probably for ever remain somewhat of an enigma. It has been, since the third century, the battle- ground of ingenious interpreters. To enumerate and discuss these theories, many of them now discredited by archaeo- logical research, is far beyond the scope of this work. It is clear that from the early Chaldaean magi, who, to some extent, imposed their system on Iranian legend, down to the Neo-Flatonists^ the god and his attendants were treated as the symbols of cosmic theory. The birth from the rock was the light of dawn breaking over serrated crests of eastern hills.' The cave, which was always piously per- petuated in the latest Mithraist architecture^ was the solid vault of heaven, and the openings pierced in its roof were the stars shining through the celestial dome.^ The fountain which rose in every chapel, the fire on the altar, the animals surrounding the bull, represent the powers of nature in their changes and conflict The young archer, causing water to spring from the rock by a shot from his bow, marks the miraculous cessation of prehistoric dearth, as the bull leaping from a skiff perhaps commemorates a primaeval deluge. The slaying of the bull, the central scene of all, may go back to the exploits of the heroic pioneers of settled life, a Hercules or a Theseus, who tamed the savage wilderness to the uses of man. It had many meanings to different ages. To one occupied with the processes of nature, it may have symbolised the withering of the vegetative freshness of the world in mid- summer heats, yet with a promise of a coming spring. To another it may liave meant a victory over evil spirits and powers of darkness.^ Or it may, in the last days, have been the prototype of that sacramental cleansing which gave assur- ance of inmiortal life, and which seemed to the Fathers the mockery of a Diviner Sacrifica
• > Oamont, Intr. p. 175. » Ih, p. 89.
3 R^ville, p. 88. « Gasqaet, p. 77.
e08 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book i?
There can be no doubt that Mithra and his exploits, iu response to a great need, came to have a moral and spiritual meaning. From the earliest times, he is the mediator between good and evil powers; ever young, vigorous, and victorious in his struggles, the champion of truth and purity, the protector of the weak, the ever vigilant foe of the hosts of daemons who swarm round the life of man, the conqueror of death. His religion, in spite of its astrology, was not one of fatalist reverie; it was a religion of struggle and combat. In this aspect it was congenial to the virile Roman temperament, and, above all, to the temperament of the Soman soldier, at once the most superstitious and the most strenuous of men.^ Who can tell what inspiration the young heroic figure, wearing an air of triumphant vigour even on the rudest slabs,^ may have breathed into a worn old veteran, who kept ceaseless watch against the Germans in some lonely post on the Danube, when he spent a brief hour iu the splendour of the brilliantly lighted crypt, and joined in the old Mazdeao litany ? Before him was the sacred group of the Tauroctonus, full of so many meanings to many lands and ages, but which, to his eyes, probably shed the light of victory over the perilous combats of time, and gave assurance of a larger hope. Suddenly, by the touch of an unseen hand, the plaque re- volved,* and he had before him the solemn agape of the two deities in which they celebrated the peaceful close of their mystic conflict. And he went away, assured that his hero god was now enthroned on high, and watching over his faithful soldiers upon earth.^ At the same time, he had seen around him the sacred symbols or images of all the great forces of nature, and of the fires of heaven which, in their motions and their efQuences, could bring bane or happiness to men below. In the chapels of Mithra, all nature became divine and sacred, the bubbling spring, the fire on the cottage hearth, the wind that levelled the pine tree or bore the sailor on his voyage, the great eternal lights that brought seed-time and harvest and parted day from night, the ever-weUing vital force in opening leaf and springing corn -ear, and birth of young creatures, triumphing in regular round over the
1 Gosqaet, p. 108. * Ih. 251 (p. 864).
* Cumont, M<m, 81, 85, 48. ^ Id. Intr. pp. 808, 809.
CHAP. VI THE REUGION OF MITHRA 60ft
malignant forces which seem for a time to threaten decay and corruption. The " Unconquered Mithra " is thus the god of light and hope in this world and the next^
The ancient world was craving for a promise of immortality. ^ Mithraism strove to nurse the hope, but, like the contem- poraneous Flatonism and the more ancient Orphic lore, it linked it with moral responsibility and grave consequences. Votaries were taught that the soul descended by graduated fall from the Most High to dwell for a season in the prison of the flesh.' After death there is a great judgment, to decide the future destiny of each soul, according to the life which had been led on earth.* Spirits which have defiled themselves during life are dragged down by Ahriman and his evil angels, and may be consigned to torture, or may sink into endless debasement The pure, who have been fortified by the holy mysteries, will mount upwards through the seven spheres, at each stage parting with some of their lower elements, till, at last, the subtilised essential spirit reaches the empyrean, and is received by Mithra into the eternal light
But the conflict between good and evil, even on this earth, will not last for ever. There will be a second coming of Mithra, "^ which is to be presaged by great plagues. The dead will arise from their tombs to meet him. The mystic bull will again be slain, and his blood, mingled with the juice of the sacred Haoma, will be drunk by the just, and impart to them the gift of eternal life.^ Fire from heaven will finaUy devour all that is eviL Thus the slaughter of the bull, which is the image of the succession of decay and fructifying power in physical nature, is also the symbol and guarantee of a final victory over evil and death. And, typifying such lofty and consolatory truths, it naturally met the eye of the worshipper in every chapel. It was also natural that the taurobolium, which was originally a rite of the Great Mother, should be absorbed, like so many alien rites and ideas, by the religion which was the great triumph of syncretism. The baptism of blood was, indeed, a formal cleansing from impurity of the flesh ; but it was also cleansing in a higher sensa The inscrip-
^ Camont, Intr. p. 297. ' /(. p. 808 sqq.
s Dieterioh, Miikrnalitwr^ p. 197 ; « /ft. p. 810.
Oomont, Intr. p. 809.
2b
eiO THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book nr
tions of the fourth century, which commemorate the blessing of the holy rite, often close with the words in (utemum rentUus} How far the phrase expressed a moral resorrectioii, how far it records the sure hope of another life, we cannot presume to say. Whether borrowed from Christian aoorces or not, it breathes an aspiration strangely different from the tone of old Roman religion, even at its best There may have been a good deal of ritualism in the cleansing of Mithra. Yet Mithra was, from the beginning, a distinctly moral power, . and his worship was apparently untainted by the licence which made other heathen worships schools of cruelty and lust His connection, indeed, with some of them, must at times have led his votaries into more than doubtful company ; Sabazius and Magna Mater were dangerous allies.' Yet, on the whole, it has been concluded that Mithraism was a gospel of truth and purity, although the purity was often a matter of merely cere- monial purification and abstinence.
The day is £Eur distant when the mass of men will be capable of the austere mystic vision, which relies little on external ceremonies of worship. Certainly the last ages of paganism in the West were not ripe for any such reserved spiritusdity. And the religions which captivated the ages that preceded the triumph of the Catholic Church, while they strove to satisfy the deeper needs of the spirit, were more intensely sacerdotal, and more highly organised than the old religions of Greece and Eoma Probably no small part of their strength lay in sacramental mystery, and an occult sacred lore which was the monopoly of a class set apart from the world.^ Our knowledge of the Mithraic priesthood Ib unfortunately scanty, and the ancient liturgy has perished.^ But inscriptions mention an ordo sacerdotum ; and Tertullian speaks of a '' high pontiff of Mithra " and of holy virgins and persons vowed to continence in his service.' The priestly fimctions were certainly more constant and exacting than those of the old priestly colleges of Greece and Boma There were
» IWville. p. 160 ; cf. C.LL, vL 610 ; 678-9, n. 1. Or, Hen3k2Zb2, * Cumont, Intr. pp. 299, 823.
; cf. Die
* Or. Henz, 6042 ; Gasqnet, p. 112, « lb. p. 818 ; cf. Dieterich, JiMru*-
on the inscription of Vincentius, priest liturgie, pp. 26, 20.
of Sabazius, who was buried by the side ^ Tort. Jk Praucrip. Haerei. o. 40 ;
of Aurelius, a priest of Mithra ; cf. cf. C.IX. tL 2161, Ordo aacerdotam
CHAP. VI THE RELIGION OF MITHRA 611
solemn sacraments and complicated rites of initiation to be performed. Thi*ee times a day, at dawn, noon, and evening, the litany to the San was recited.^ Daily sacrifice was ofiei^ed at the altars of various gods, with chanting and music The climax of the solemn office was probably marked by the sounding of a bell.^ And turning on a pivot, the sacred slab in the apse displayed, for the adoration of the ftiithful, the scene of the holy feast of Mithra and the Sun after their reconciliation. The seventh day of the week was sacred to the Sun, the sixteenth of each month to Mithra, and the 25th of December, as marking the sun's entrance on a new course of triumph, was the great festival of Mithra's sacred year.'
Initiation in the mysteries, after many rites of cleansing and trial, was the crowning privilege of the Mithraist believer. The gradation of spiritual rank, and the secrecy which bound the votaries to one another in a sacred freemasonry, were a certain source of power. S. Jerome alone has preserved for us the seven grades through which the neophyte rose to full communion. They were Corax, Cryphius, Miles, Leo, Perses, Heliodromus, and Pater.* What their origin was who shall say ? They may correspond to the seven planets, and mark the various stages of the descent of the soul into flesh, and its rise again to the presence of God. According to Porphyry, the first three stages were merely preliminary to complete initiation. Only the lions were fiill and real communicants,^ and the title Leo certainly appears oftenest on inscriptions. The dignity Pater Patrum, or Pater Patratus, was much coveted, and conferred a real authority over the brethren, with an official title to their reverence.* The admission to each suc- cessive grade was accompanied by symbolic ceremonies, as when the Miles put aside the crown twice tendered to him, saying that Mithra was his only crown.^ The veil of the Cryphius, and the Phrygian bonnet of the Perses, have a significance or a history which needs no comment. Admission
^ Cumont, Intr. p. 825. pp. 91, 2 ; 96 ; Cumont, Intr. p. 815;
^ 76. p. 825 ; cf. Lafaye, Div. tUville, p. 97. d^Alexandrie, p. 138 ; flutes and bells ' De Abstin. iv. 16. Porplmy eon-
have been found among debris of nects the degrees vrith ideas of me tern-
chapels. Cum. lion, 258 (p. 880) ; Intr. psychosis, r^ Koiy6n^a iyiup t^ rp6t
n, 68. tA fya alviTT^fjuevoij ktX.
« Gasquet, p. 125. • Gasquet, p. 101 ; R^viUe, p. 97.
* 8. Hieron. £p. 107, f 2 ; Qaaquet, '! Tert De Corona, xt.
618
THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM
I?
to full communion was preceded by austerities and ordeals wliich were made the subject of exaggeration and slander. The neophyte, blindfold and bound, was obliged to pass through flama It was said that he had to take part in a simulated murder with a blood -dripping sword. On the sculpture of Heddemheim a figure is seen standing deep in snow. These ceremonies probably went back to the scenes and ages in which mutilations in honour of Bellona and Magna Mater took their rise. They may also have been a lesson, or a test of apathy and moral courage.^ But the tales of murder and torture connected with these rites have probably no better foundation than similar slanders about the early Christian mysteries.'
The votaries of Mithra, like those of Isis and other eastem deities, formed themsdves into guilds which were organised on the model of ordinary sodalities and colleges. As funerary societies, or under the shelter of Magna Mater, they escaped persecution. They had their roll of members, their council of decurions, their masters and curators.* And, like the secular colleges, they depended to a great extent, for the erection of chapels and the endowment of their services, on the generosity of their wealthier members and patrons.^ One man might give the site of a chapel, another a marble altar ; a poor slave might contribute out of his 'ptadium a lamp or little image to adorn the walls of the crypt*^
One undoubted cause of the success of Mithra in the West was the spirit of fraternity and charity which was fostered in his guilds. The hopeless obscurity and depression of the plebeian and servile classes had some alleviation in companies where, for the moment, the poor and lowly-bom found himself on an equality with his social superiors. Plebeians and the slaves had a great part in the propagation of the eastem worships, and especially that of the God of light.^ In his
^ Oomont, Intr. p. 822.
^ Lamprid. C7om9?uN2iw^ntc9,8acTa Mithriaca homicidio vero poUait, cum illic ali()aid ad spedem timoria, vel did ▼el fingi aoleat ; Gasqnet, p. 90.
* Cnmont, Intr. p. 826. For the oiganisation of the societies of Magna Mater v. Foncart, AnociaJtwnB mUu gieu$e$j p. 20 aqq. Ct C.LL. ri. 717 ;
TL 784 ; TL 8728 ; ziy. 286 ; Or. A 6042 (Sentinum).
^ Or, Ifenz. 6042 ; on the doubt, how- ever, as to the meaning of painmi in this inscription v, Benz, note; and Onmont, Intr. p. 827, n. 4.
* Cumont, Le,
* lb. p. 264. Of. dediofttioiia bj aUyes or liberti, Inscr, 67, 246. 176. 68, 410, 47, 178, 202. -^ ^
CHAP. VI THE REUGION OF MITHRA 618
mysteries and guilds the highest dignities were open to them.^ Moreover, from the size of the chapels it is clear that the congregations were generally small, so that the members of lower social importance were not lost in a crowd.' Growing numbers were accommodated, not by enlarging, but by multi- plying the shrines.
In the sacraments of Mithra, Tertullian and other Apolo- gists perceived a diabolic parody of the usages of the GhurcL* The accqptio of the neophytes, the sacramentum, in which they were pledged to secrecy and holy service, the sign or brand made on the brow of the Miles, the ablutions or baptism with holy water, as in the rites of Isis, whatever their origin, could not fail, in an age of death-struggle for supremacy, to arouse the suspicions and fears of the champions of the Church.^ Finally, the consecrated bread and mingled water and wine, which were only offered to the higher grades, may well have seemed the last and worst profanation of the most solemn Christian rita The draught from the mystic cup, originally the juice of Haoma, was supposed to have super- natural effects. It imparted not only health and prosperity and wisdom, but also the power to conquer the spirits of evil and darkness, and a secret virtue which might elude the grasp of death.*
The temples in which these rites took place repeated for ages the same original type. Mithra and his cave are inseparable ideas, and the name spelaeum, antrum, or specus, remained to the end the regular designation of his chapels.^ In country places, grottoes or recesses on the side of a rocky hill might supply a natural oratory of the ancient type.^ But, in the centre of great towns, the skill of the architect had to simulate the rude structure of the original cavern. Entering through an open portico, the worshipper found himself in an ante- chapel, through which he passed into another chamber which was called the apparatorivm, where the priests and neophytes arrayed themselves in their robes or masques before the holy
1 Ot Or. Henz, 6042 ; Oomont, Intr. * Gasqnet, pp. Sl, 82 ; Oomont, Intr. p. 827, n. 4. p. 820.
«ForthedimenMon8ofoiieatEome • Jugt Mart, c 78; Porphyr. D$
V. Qumont^M^ i^iL^?^io ^*^ ^V^ ^ ^ 5 TertalL A Oar.
» Tert. De Pr. HaereL o^Q. ^^q^ gj^^^ ^^ 57 107^
* Gasquet, p. 84 ; Ciunont, Intr. ' ^ '
p. 818. ^ Onmont, Intr. p. 67 ; Hon, 287.
614 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
rites.^ Thence they descended by staiis to the level of the cave-Uke crypt, which was the true sanctuary. On each side there ran a bench of stone, on which was ranged the company of the initiated.^ The central aisle led up to the apse, against the walls of which was set the sculptured scene of the slaying of the bull, surrounded by the symbolic figures and emblems of Ghaldaean star-lore, with altars in front' This was the holiest place, and, from some remains, it would seem to have been railed in, like the chancel of one of our churches.^ The neophyte, as he approached, must have been impressed by a dazzling scene. On either side the congregation knelt in prayer. Countless lamps shed their brilliant light on the forms of ancient Hellenic gods, or on the images of the mighty powers of earth or ether ^ — above all, on the sacred scene which was the memorial of the might of the " unconquered." The ancient rhythmic litany was chanted to the sound of music; the lights came and went in startling alternations of splendour and gloom. The draught of the sacred cup seemed to ravish the sense. And the votary, as in the Isiac vision in Apuleios, for a moment seemed borne beyond the bounds of space and time into mystic distances.^
The Persian cult owed much of its success to imperial and aristocratic favour. The last pagan emperor of the West, the last generation of the pagan aristocracy, were devotees of the Sun-god. It is a curious thing that even under the early Empire Mithraism seems never to have suffered from the suspicion and persecution with which other alien worships had to contend.^ Its close league with the cult of the Great Mother, which, since the second century B.a, had been an established institution, may have saved Mithra from of&cial mistrust He also emerged into prominence in the age in which imperial jealousy of guilds and colleges was visibly relaxing its pre- cautions.® A more satisfying explanation may perhaps be found in the sympathy of the Flavian dynasty* and the
^ Camont, Intr. p. 69. Gf. C.l,L, Mithraeum, Camont, Ifon. 250 (p. 862).
iiL 1096, cryptam cum porticibus et For the classical ffoda, of. M<m. 221
apparatorio et exedra, etc ; iii 3960. (p. 826), 236, 246 (p. 849).
^ Comont, Intr. p. 61 ; v. the sketch ' ApuL IM. xi. c 22.
of the Mithraeum under the Church of ^ Oumont, Intr. p. 279 sqq.
8. Clement, at Rome, Cumont, Hon. 19. * v. supra, p. 254.
» Id. Mati, 19. • Suet. Fwp. iv. v. yii ; Til. v. ;
* Id. Intr. j>. 64. DomiL i. xIf. ; of. Renan, Lt% Aoam/gile$^
' Twenty-six lamps were found in one p. 226 sq. ; VAuMvriti^ p. 491.
CHAP. VI THE RELIGION OF MITHRA 616
princes of the third century for the religious ideas of the East, and in the manifest support which heUolatry lent to growing absolutism and the worship of the Caesars.
The apotheosis of the emperors began even in the time of the first Catesar, who rose to the highest divine honours before his death. But it was long a fluctuating and hesitating creed. The provinces, and particularly the cities of Asia Minor/ were more eager to decree temples and divine honours to the lord of the world than even the common people of Italy. The superstitious masses and the soldiery, indeed, were equal to any enthusiasm of flattery and superstition. But the culti- vated upper class, in spite of the effusive compliance of court poets,* having but little belief in any Divine Powers, were not likely to yield an easy faith to the godhead of a Claudius or a Nero.* The emperors themselves, belonging to this class, and often sharing its fastidious scepticism, for a time judiciously restrained a too exuberant devotion to their person.^ The influence of Herod may have filled the lunatic imagination of Caligula with dreams of an eastern despotism and the super- human dignity of kings.* Nero, who had visions of a new monarchy with its seat on eastern hills, may have rejoiced in being adored by Tiridates as the equal of Mithra.^ But the politic Augustus, while he permitted the foundation of temples and priesUy orders in his honour throughout the provinces, and even in Italian towns, along with the divinity of Bome, obstinately refused to have shrines erected to him in the capital^ Tiberius pursued the same policy, which was con- genial to his cold, realistic temperament Vespasian, although eastern superstition had a certain charm for him, jested on his death-bed about his own claims to divinity.' It was reserved for his son Domitian to be the first emperor who claimed the salutation of " Dominus et Deus " in his lifetime.^ The best of the early emperors aspired to full divine honours only when their career on earth had dosed.
^ D. Caas. xliii. 14; Tao. Awn. iv. 15 ; ' D. Cms. Iziii 6, f^9m rp6t 9t r^
* Mart iz. 4. m0pa».
* Sen. Lud, De Morte Clavd. o. 12 ; ' Snet Aug. lii. ; D. Oaaa. li. 20 ; cf. Boissier, Bel. Bom. i p. 198. Ixrii. IS ; Boiasier, Bel, Bom. L p. 168.
^ Snet. Aug. c lii. ' Id. Viip. c xxiiL vae, inqni^ pnto,
* Id. (kUig. c xzii. ; Meriv. yi. pp. deiia fio.
4-9. • Id. D(mU. c. xiii.
616 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book i?
Many historic causes made their posthumoiis eleTatioQ to divine rank seem not unnaturaL The cult of the Manes, or good spirits of departed friends and ancestors^ prepared the Boman mind to adore the memory of the father of the Stata The l^ndary kings of the Latin race — Satomus^ Faunus, Picas, Latinos — were worshipped as Li indyfeUs]^ Bomolus had vanished in a tempest and been carried up to heaven to join the company of the gods. The hero-worship of the Greeks, which raised to semi-divine state after death those who had done great deeds of service to mankind, who had founded cities, or manifested splendid gifts of mind or body, influenced the imagination of a people who had long sat at the feet of Greece. Greek cities raised altars to Bome and to Boman generals who had enslaved them.^ When the Senate decreed divine honours to a dead emperor, he became divus, not deua, at least to the cultivated class, and divtis is a title which even modem sentiment might accord to men who have bome a great and shining part in a world-wide system of administration. The Spartan women were said to call great warriors, men who won their admiration by gallantry, ** divina" * To the masses the dead emperor no doubt became a veritable god, as the image of M. Aurelius two centuries after his death was found among the penates of every pious family in the West^ But the philosophic man of the world might also honestly accept the im- perial apotheosis by the decree of the Senate, in the sense that another figure had been added to the rare company of those who have been lifted by fortune or merit Ceu: above their fellows, and have filled a great space in the life of humanity. People, who for generations erected shrines to the minion of Hadrian, might easily believe in the claims of the Antonine emperors to a place among the gods.
The influence of Egypt and Persia lent its force to stimulate native and original tendencies to king-worship, and to develop the principate of Augustus into the theocratic despotism of Aurelian and Diocletian* The eastern peoples were always eager to lavish on the emperors the adoration which they had been used to offer to their native princes. The ancient
* Virg. 0€org. L 498 ; Warde Fowlar, 47 ; Thuc. T. 11. JhnL FettivaU, p. 268. * Plato, Jimia, 99 ]>.
« Plat Flamin. c. 16 ; of. Herod, v. « OapitoL M. AwnL e. 18.
CHAP. VI THE REUGION OF MITHRA 617
Pharaohs had been levered as incarnations of the deity and gods upon earth.^ The Ptolemies inherited and utilised so useful a superstition. These ideas spread into Italy with the diffusion of the Isiac cult among the upper class, and through the influence of travellers and envoys who kept up a fruitful intercourse between Alexandria and Rome. But Egypt went rather too far for the western mind in its apotheosis of kings.' A more potent and congenial influence came from the lands of the remoter East The Persians prostrated them- selves before their monarchs, but they did not actually adore them as gods. They reverenced the daemon, or, in Roman phrase, the ^ genius Caesaris," without worshipping the monarch himself.* The king was supposed to be enlightened, inspired^ and guarded by a heavenly grace ; his brow was crowned by a divine aureola Yet he was not the equal of God. But the majesty and fortune of kings was something divine and super- natural ; they reigned by special grace and had a divine protec- tion. The dynasties who succeeded to the great heritage of the East exploited these ideas to the full, and the most solemn oath was by the Fortune of the Eling.^ The superstition of Chaldaea, which connected all human destiny with the orbs of heaven, exercised a profound influence for many centuries both in the East and West And the Sun, the monarch of the heavens, often identified with Mithra, was regarded as the special patron of kings, enduing them with irresistible power, and guarding their lofty destiny. These ideas spread easily from Pontus and Commagene into the western world. In eastern cities, Caligula and Nero had altars raised to them as solar deities,^ and Tiridates offered to Nero the adoration due to Mithra.^ The enigmatical goddess Fortuna, who seems to have had early associations with the Sun,^ gained fresh strength from the ideas of the divinised destiny of eastern monarchs. According to Plutarch, Tyche left the regions of Assyria and Persia to make her home on the Palatina' The
^ BoiBaier, RiL jRdm. L 125 ; Cumont, ' D. Oaas. IxiiL 5, taX fX^or «-p6t 9t
Intr. p. 283 sqq. rdr iiihiw B%h»^ wpocKwri^ataif 9t Can koX rhf
• Amm. Marc. xv. 1, 8. VHBpo»,
» Athen. vi. 252, rpdT«^lr xoperl^tt ' ^- *'o^l«r, Brnnan FesttvaU, p.
X^plf iroA«tr«r r^ SalM^i ry ^.W«,. ,'^^^ De IM. Earn. ir. fOr^ «
* Camont, Intr. p. 286. r&xn KaraXiwoOaa Uifxrat koI *Airavploin ' Ih. p. 290, n. 2. . . . Tfp M JXaXarly wpofftpxofiirtit ktIl
618 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book i?
republican ''Forfcune of the Boman People" naturally passed into the '' Forttma Augusti/' which appears on the imperial coins from the reign of Vespasian. In the age of the Antonines, the image of the goddess in gold always stood in the prince's bed-chamber, and was transferred at the hoar of his death to his successor.^ With the reign of Commodas, who was himself initiated both in the Isiac and Mithraic mysteries, begins the temporary triumph of the oriental cults, which was to reach its height in the reign of Julian. The absence of full materials for the history of the third century,' a century crowded with great events, and pregnant with great spiritual movements, should perhaps impose greater caution in tracing the develop- ment of imperial power than some writers have always observed. Tet there can be little doubt that the monarchy of the West tended to become a theocratic despotism, and that Persian Sun- worship had a large share in this development. There was always a sober sense in the West which rebelled against the oriental apotheosis of the prince.* Yet the iterated adulation, so often recorded faithfully in the Augustan History, reveals an extraordinary abasement of the upper class before the person of the emperor.' The emperors never, indeed, claimed like the Sassanids to be " brothers or sons of the Sun and Moon." ^ But in their official style and insignia there were many approaches to the divine claims of the monarchs of the East. The title irwidiia, sacred to Mithra and the Sun, was assumed by Gommodus, and borne by his successors.* The still more imposing title of " eternal," spring- ing from the same origin, came into vogue in the third century, and appears in the edicts of the last shadowy emperors of the fifth. From the reign of Nero, the imperial crown with darting rays, symbolised the solar ancestry of the prince. GktUienus used to go forth crowned in this manner, and with gold dust in his hair, and raised a colossal statue of himself in the garb of the Sun.^ The coins of Aurelian, who built the great temple of the Sun from the spoils of Palmyra, bear the legend " deo et domino nato." ^ The West probably never took
^ Capitol. AnL P, c. 12. pattnntar Solis fntres et Lunaa « Of. Vop. Prob. c. i. § 8. • D. Cue. Ixxii 15. 6.
> Cf. Amm. Marc xy. 1, 8. * Treb. Poll OaiUetu 16, IS, erinilKU
^ Amm. Marc. zxiiL 6, 5, onde reges aiiis auri scobem aspersit* ete. ejnadem gentia pimetamidi appellari se ' Oomonti Intr. p. 291, il 5.
CHAP. VI THE RELIGION OF MITHRA 619
these assumptions so literally as the East. But metaphor and imagery tended to become a real faith. The centre of the great religion which was to be the last stronghold of paganism, was the prototype of the emperor in the starry world, and his protector on earth. And the solar grace which surrounded the prince found an easy explanation in the mystic philosophy of the soul's descent which had been absorbed by Mithraism. In coming to earth from the empyrean, the future lord of the world received a special gift of grace and power from the great luminary which is the source of light and lifa The religion of the Sun thus tended to become a great spiritual support of an absolutism which was more and more modelling itself on the royalty of the East. The cult of the Sun, which was established in such splendour in 273 a.d. by Aurelian, must have had a great effect in preparing for the oriental claims of monarchy from the reign of Diocletian. Thirty years after the foundation of the stately shrine on the Esquiline, and only twenty years before the conversion of Constantino, all the princes of the imperial house, Jovii Herculii, Augusti, Gaesares, as an inscription tells, united to restore a temple of Mithra at Camuntum, his holy city on the Danube.^ But the days of Mithra as the god of kings were numbered. After the establishment of the Christian Empire, he had a brief illusory triumph in the reign of Julian, and again in the short-lived effort of reaction led by Eugenius and Nicomachus Flavianus, which had a tragic close in the battle on the Frigidus. Yet his mystic theology was the theme of debate among Boman nobles, trained in the philosophy of Alexandria, long after his last chapels had been buried in ruins ; and his worship lingered in secluded valleys of the Alps or the Yosges into the fifth century.* The theocratic claim of monarchy, to which Mithra lent his support for so many generations, was destined, in its symbols and phrases, to have a long reign.
M. Benan has hazarded the opinion that, if the Christian Church had been stricken with some mortal weakness, Mithra- ism might have become the religion of the western world. And, indeed, its marvellously rapid diffusion in Italy and the
^ Oumont, InKT, No. 867. p. 848. The Mitbraeum of Sarreborc
seems to have been frequented tili ^ Macrob. SaL i. 17 ; Cninont, Intr. 895 a.p.
620 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM took it
provinces along the Danube and the Rhine, in the second aod third centuries, might well have inspired the hope of such a splendid destiny. Although it was primarily a kingly and military creed, it appealed in the end to all classes, by many various attractions. Springing from remote r^ons of the East, it seemed instinctively to seize the opportunity offered by a marvellous political unity, along with anardiy in morals and religion, to satisfy the imperious needs of a world eager for spiritual light and hope, but distracted among the endless claimants for its devotion. Philosophy had long tried and was still trying to find a spiritual synthesis, and to draw from old mytholo^es a support for life and conduct. Might not religion succeed where philosophy had failed ? Or rather, might not religion gather up into itself the forces of philosophy, and transmute and glorify them in a great concrete symbol ? Might not the claims of the past be harmonised with the higher intuitions of a more instructed age, and the countless cults embraced within the circuit of the Soman power be reconciled with the supreme reverence for one central divine figure, as the hberties of an Alpine canton, like those of a great city of Asia, were sheltered under the unchallenged supremacy of Some? Mithra made the effort, and for the time he succeeded. In his progress to what seemed an almost assured victory, he swept into his orbit the Greek and Latin and Phrygian gods — nay, even the gods of Celtic cantons.^ They all found a place in his crypts, beside his own sacred image and the Persian deities of lus original home. Their altars were ranged around his chapels, and were duly visited by his priests. Yet, though the Persian deity might seem very cosmopolitan and Uberal in his indulgence to parochial devotion, he never abated his own lofty claims, and he never forgot his ancestry. While he might ally himself with Magna Mater and Jupiter Dolichenus, he coldly repulsed any association with Isis and Serapis, who were his rivals for oecumenical sway. The old hostility between the worships of Persia and Egypt was only softened in the internecine conflict of both with a more powerful foe. It is only in the last stone records that a votary of Mithra is found combining a devotion to Isis.^ The claims of the Sun-god to spiritual primacy are
* Camont, Intr. p. 882, n. 8. was perhaps P]ra«t Uibu in 8S5 oi
> CLL. vi 504, 846 ; 0. VoloBiAiiiis Comal in 814.
CHAP. VI THE REUGION OF MITHRA 621
expounded in the orations of Julian and the dissertations of Fraetextatus in the Saturnalia of Macrobiua Monotheism in the pagan world was not, indeed, a new thing. It goes back to the philosophers of Ionia and £lea, to Aeschylus and Plato. Nor was syncretism unknown to earlier ages. The Greeks of the days of Herodotus identified the gods of Egypt with their own, as Julius Caesar and Tacitus identified Gallic and German deities with those of the Boman pantheon.^ But the mono- theistic syncretism of Mithra was a broader and more sweeping movement. Local and national gods represented single aspects of nature. Mithra was seated at the centre on whicli all nature depends. If nature-worship was to justify itself in the eyes of philosophic reason, men must rise to the adoration of the Sun-ldng, the head of a great hierarchy of divine forces, by means of which he acts and diffuses his inexhaustible energy throughout the universe. And such is the claim made for him by Fraetextatus, in the Satv/maiia of Macrobius, who was a high adept in the mysteries of Mithra.
But tJie world needed more than a great physical force to assuage its cravings ; it demanded a moral (rod. Who could raise before the eyes of men a moral ideal, and support them in striving to attain it ; One Who could guide and comfort in the struggles of life, and in the darkness of its close. Who could prepare the trembling soiil for the great ordeal, in which the deeds done in the body are sifted on the verge of the eternal world. In fulfil- ling his part, Mithra could rely on his own early character as a god of truth and righteousness, a mediator between the powers of good and evil : he had also the experience of the classic mysteries, stretching back to the legendary Orpheus, which, in whatever crude, shadowy symbolism, had taught for ten centuries the doctrine of a moral sequence between this life and the next The descent of the soiil into gross material form, and its possible ascent again, if duly fortified, to ethereal worlds, was common to Mithra and the Orphic and Pythagorean systems. Such a system on one side sad and pessimist, on another was full of the energy of hope. And Mithraism combined the two. It was a religion of strenuous effort and warfare, with the prospect of high rewards in some far-off eternal life.
^ Herod, ii 48, M ; Caee. B.O, yL 17 ; Tao. Germ. o. 9.
ess THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book it
It is little wonder that the Fathers, from the second century, saw in Mithra the most formidable foe of Christ. Indeed, the resemblances between the two religions, some of them super- ficial, others of a deeper kind, were very striking. How far some of these were due to a common stock of ideas in East and West, how far they were the result of conscious borrowing and mutual imitation, seems to be an insoluble problenu The most learned student of the cult of Mithra is the most cautions in his conclusions on the subject^ On the one hand, the two religions, in outlying regions of the Empire, long followed different lines of dispersion. Christianity from its origin in the religion of Israel, spread at first among the cities on the Mediterranean, chiefly where there were colonies of Jews.' On the other hand, outside Italy, Mithraism, which was propagated by soldiers and imperial officers, followed the line of the camps and centres of commerce chiefly along the great rivers of the northern frontier. Yet at Ostia and Home and elsewhere, the two eastern religions must have been early brought face to face. In the syncretism of that age, the age of Gnosticism, rites and doctrines passed easily from one system to another. Mithra certainly absorbed much from kindred worships of Asia Minor, from Hellenic mysteries, and from Alexandrian philosophy. It is equally certain that the Church did not disdain a policy of accommodation, along with the consecration of altars of Christ in the old shrines of paganism. The cult of local heroes was transferred to saints and martyrs. Converts found it hard to part with consecrated phrases and forms of devotioD, and might address Jesus in epithets sacred to the Sun. Some Christians in the fifth centmy still scduted the rising sun with a prayer.'
Futile attempts have been made to find parallels to Biblical narrative or symbolism in the faint and faded legend of Mithra recovered from his monuments, the miraculous birth, the sacred rock, the adoration of the shepherds, the grotto, — above all, in the mystic sacrifice of the bull, which seemed to oc- cupy the same space in Mithraic devotion as the Sacrifice on Calvary. But one great weakness of Mithraism lay precisely here — that, in place of the narrative of a Divine life, instinct
' Ooxnont, Iiitr. pp. 841, 2. * /6. p. 339.
' /6. p. 841 ; of. Gftaqnet, p. 118 aqq.
CHAP. VI THE RELIGION OF MITHRA 623
with human sympathy, it had only to ofiTer the cold symbolism of a cosmic legend. In their ofiBces and sacramental system the two religions had a more real affinity. Mithra had his baptism and confirmation of new disciples, his ablutions, ascetic preparation for the sacred mysteries, and holy feasts of the con- secrated bread and wine, where the mystic draught gave purity and life to soul and body, and was the passport to a life in God. The sacerdotal and liturgical character of his worship, with its striking symbolism, using to the fuU the emotional effects of lights and music and sacred pomp, offered to souls, who were ripe for a diviner faith, some of that magical charm which was to be exerted over so many ages by the Catholic Church. There are,however, deeper and more fundamental resemblances between the faiths of Mithra and of Christ, and it was to these that the Persian cult owed its great superiority to classical mythology and the official Soman paganism. It responded to a great spiritual movement, of which it is one great object of this book to show the sweep and direction. Formal devotion and ascetic discipline were linked with lofty doctrines as to the origin of the human spirit and an immortal destiny, depending on conduct, as well as sacramental grace, through Mithra the mediator. While the vulgar may have rested in the external charm and power of the worship, there were others who drank in a more spiritual creed expounded to us by one of the last Neo-Platonic votaries of the Sun-Grod. It told of a fall of the soul into the duress of the body, for a brief period of probation, of a resurrection and great judgment, of a final ascent and beatitude in the life in God, or of endless exile from His presence.^
And yet the two systems were separated by an impassable gulf, and Mithra had associations which could not save him from the fate of Jupiter and Demeter, of Hecate and Isis. It is true that his fate was hastened by hostile forces and causes external to religion. Many of his shrines in the Danubian provinces, and along the upper Bhine, were desolated and buried in ruins by the hordes of invaders in the third century.' And in the fourth century, the fiercest assaults of the Christian Empire were directed against the worship which was thought to be the patron of magic arts, and a device of the Evil One to travesty and defy the Beligion of the
^ Hacrob. Sofn^ Sdp, i. 18. ' Otimont, Intr. p. 344.
6S4 THE RE VIVAL OF FA GANISM book it
Cross.^ But material force, however fiercely and decsisively exerted, although it hastened the doom of the Persian god, only anticipated an inevitable defeat
A certain severity in Mithraism, which marked it off honour- ably from other worships of the East, also weakened it as a popular and enduring force. The absence of the feminine charm in its legend, while it saved it firom the sensual taint of other heathen systems, deprived it of a fascination for the softer and more emotional side of human natura' Although women may, perhaps, have not been altogether excluded from his mysteries,' still Mithra did not welcome them with the warm sympathy which gave Demeter and Magna Mater and Isis so firm a hold on the imagination of women for many generations. The Mater Dolorosa has in aU ages been an enthralling power. The legend of the Tauroctonns was a religion for strenuous men. And even its symbolism, with all its strange speD, seems to lack depth and warmth for human nature as a whole. It would indeed be rash to set limits to the power of pious sentiment to transfigure and vivify the most unspiritual materials. And the slaughtered bull in the apse of every chapel of Mithra may have aroused in the end visions and mystic emotion which had passed far beyond the sphere of astral symbolism.
Yet such spiritual interpretation of ancient myth is onlj for the few, who find in a worship what they bring. For the gross masses, the symbolism of natural processes, however majestic, could never have won that marvellous power which has made a single Divine, yet human, life the inexhaustible source of spiritual strength for all the future. With all his heroic effort to make himself a moral and spiritual force, Mithra remained inextricably linked with the nature-worships of the past. And, with such associations, even the God of light could not be lord of the spiritual future of humanity. Mithraism, with all its strange moral force, with all its charm of antiquity and sacramental rite, with aU its charity and tolerance, had within it the germs of a sure mortality. In its tolerance lay precisely its great weakness. The Christian Church might, in S. Augustine's phrase, " spoil the Egyptians,** it might borrow
> S. Hieron. Ep, 107 (Ad Laetam). * Cnmont, Intr. ^829; P6rpbTr. Jk
' Gosquet, p. 184. Abdin. ir. 86 ; ot Gaaqii0t| p. 98.
CHAP. VI THE REUGION OF MITHRA 626
and adapt rites and symbols from pagan temples, or ideas from Greek philosophy.* But in borrowing, it transfigured them. In all that was essential, the Church would hold no truce with paganism. ''Break the idols and consecrate the temples" was the motto of the great Pontiffl But Mithra was ready to shelter the idols under his purer faith. The images of Jupiter and Venus, of Mars and Hecate, of the local deities of Dacia and Upper Germany, find a place in his chapels beside the antique symbols of the Persian faith.' And thus, in spite of a lofty moral mysticism, Mithra was loaded with the heritage of the heathen past. A man admitted to his highest ministry might also worship at the old altars of Greece and Eome*. The last hierophant of Eleusis was a high-priest of Mithra.^ Human nature and religious sentiment are so complex that men of the sincere monotheistic faith of Symmachus, Praetextatus, and Macrobius, have left the almost boastful record of an all-embracing laxity of tolerance on their tombs.^ On many of these slabs you may read that the man who has been a " father " in the mysteries of Mithra, who has been '' born again " in the taurobolium, is also a priest of Hecate, the goddess of dark arts and baleful spirits of the night.^ Through the astral fatalism of Babylon, Mithra was inseparably connected with the darkest superstitions of East or West,* which covered all sorts of secret crime and perfidy, which lent themselves to seduction, conspiracy, and murder, which involved the denial of a moral Providence of the world. Many a pious devotee of Mithra and Hecate would have recoiled, as much as we do, from the last results of his superstition. Such people probably wished only to gain another ally in facing the terrors of the unseen world. Yet there can be little doubt that the majestic supremacy of Mithra, through its old connection with Babylon, sheltered some of the most degrading impostures of superstition.
So rooted is religious sentiment in reverence for the past, for what our fathers have loved and venerated, that men will long tolerate, or even wistfully cherish, sacred forms and ideas which their moral sense has outgrown. Down to the last years
* Hatch, Stbbert Lectures^ pp. 49, ' Gasquet, p. 137.
186, 292. * CLL, vL 500, 604, 611, 1779.
° Maury, La Magie^ p. 64. " Cumont, Intr. p. 884. * Ih. p. 146.
2 S
626 THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM book iv
of the fourth century, the Persian worship was defended with defiant zeal by membera of the proudest Soman houses. Id their philosophic gatherings in the reign of Honorius, they found in Sun-worship the sum and climax of the pagan devotion of the past^ Many a pious old priest of Mithra, in the reign of Gratian, was probably filled with wonder and sorrow when he saw a Gracchus and his retinue break into the sanctuary and tear down the venerable symbols from the wall of the apse,' He deemed himself the prophet of a pure immemorial faith, as pure as that of Galilee. He was probably a man of irreproachable morals, with even a certain ascetic sanctity, unspotted by the world. He treasured the secret lore of the mysterious East, which sped the departing soul with the last comforting sacraments on its flight to ethereal worlds. But be could not see, or he could not regret, that every day when he said his liturgy, as he made the round of the altars, he was lending the authority of a purer faith to other worships which had affrighted or debauched and enervated the Boman world for forty generations. He could not see that the attempt to wed a high spiritual ideal with nature- worship was doomed to fEiilure. The masses around him remained in their grossness and dark- ness. And on that very day, it may be, one of his aristocratic disciples, high in the ranks of Mithra's sacred guilds, was attending a priestly college which was charged with the guardianship of gross and savage rites running back to Evander, or he was consulting a Jewish witch, or a Babylonian diviner, on the meaning of some sinister omen, or he may have been sending down into the arena^ with cold proud satisfaction, a band of gallant fighters from the Thames or the Danube, to butcher one another for the pleasure of the rabble of Bome. Mithra, the Unconquered, the god of many lands and dynasties from the dawn of history, was a fascinating power. But, at his best, he belonged to the order which was vanishing.
1 Macrob. Sal. L 17, § 4. * S. Hieronu Bp. 107, § 2.
INDEX
Abascantns, secretary ab episttdist career
oU described in the Sihae, 110 Ada diumOf regular arrival oi^ in the
provinces, 205 ; reader of, 95 Acte, mistress of Nero, cares for his
burial, 115 Aelian of Praeneste, account of his work on Providence, 456 ; immense credulity, and hatred of rationalism, i6. ; the pious cock of Tanagra, 457 ; last dream of Philemon, ib.
Africa, the development of its city life, organiuition of Thamugadi, 202 ; of Lambesi, 208 ; amphitheatres in, 201 ; and bishoprics, ib. ; little touched by Mithraism, 597
Agrippina, mother of Nero, memoirs by, used by Tacitus, 80 ; sits on the tribu- nal with Claudius, 81 ; shade propitiated by Nero, 491
Albinus, P. Caeonius, restores a temple at Thamugadi, 202
Alcantara, the bridge of^ 220
Alexander of Abonoteichos, oracle on the Marcomannic war, 451, 476 ; physical and mental gifts of, 473 sq. ; skilful charlatanry, 474 sq. ; war with the Epicureans, 476 ; Lucian's treatment of, 477 ; establishes new Mysteries, 476 sq.
Alexandria, roses from, for Nero's dinners, 32 ; singing boys from, at Trimalchio's dinner, 180 sq. ; character of its popu- lace, 874 ; IMon Chrysostom rebukes their passion for games, ib. ; a great focus of religious feeling 897 ; and eclecticism, 561
Animal -worship, excites ridicule, 571 ; philosophy justified it, i6., 395 ; little noticed in Apuleius, 572
Annaeus Serenus, Seneca's De TranqmUi- (ate addressed to, character of, 319
Antinous, death and apotheosis of, 450, 477, 478
Antium, temple of Fortuna Primigenia at, 456
Antoninus Pius, builds a temple to Juno
Sospita of Lanuvium, 538 ; to Mithra at Ostia, 591 ; his country pleasures at Lorium, 537; flattered by the Arval Brothers, 542 ; Magna Mater on his coins, 549 ; taurobolium for, in 160, ib,, 557 Apollonius of Tyana, involved in political conspiracy, 40 ; a great preacher, effect of his sermons, 347 ; early life, Pytha- gorean asceticism, Sun-worship, and catholic ritualism, 399 ; reconciled myth with a purer faith, 400 ; visits all the oracles, 472 ; his ideas of a future state, 518 sqq. Apotheoflis, in the Antonine age, 886, 537 ; of Antinous, 477 ; of Peregrinus, 478 ; of M. Aurelius, tb. ; of the Emperors, its history, 615 sqq. Apuleius, sensual imagination and mysti- cism of, 389 ; weird scenes of miracle in Thessaly, 483 ; lofty conception of Gk>d, 889 ; description of the revehi of the wandering priests of the Syrian goddess, 551 sqq. ; of other scenes in Thessaly, 552 ; conception of Isis in the Meta- morphoses, 568 ; mystic raptures, 570, 574, 576 Aqnileia, a great seat of Mithraism, 593 Arideliones, the, life of, described, 12, 174 Aiistides, P. Aeliua, picture of the Roman Empire in, 199 ; general security, 205 ; journey from Mysia to Bome^ 206, 464 ; early history and travels, 457 ; loug ill -health and resort to temples of healing, 458 sqq. ; his rhetorical train- ing affected his religious attitude, 458 sq. ; diseases of, lasting for thirteen years, 463 ; his ordeals and vitality, 465 ; visited by the gods, 466 ; recovers his rhetorical power, ib. ; mingled vanity and piety of, 467 Aristotle, influence of, on Plutarch, 412 ; on Seneca, 814 ; on Maximus of Tyre, 421 Army, the, honesty and courage in, 49 ; ccutra gtativa grow into towns, 207 ; Septlmius Severus allows the soldier
627
628
ROMAN SOCIETY
to live with his family, 208; how pensioiiB proTided for, 283 ; military colleges, their objects, 288 ; the worship of liithra propagated by, 591 ; the legions which were most actiTO, 595, 596
Arrins Antoninus, grandfather of Ant. Pius, Greek Terses of, 166
Art, pretence of taste for, 181, 178 ; in- fluence of, in religion discussed by Dion Chrysostom, 882 ; decay of, lamented by Petronins, 125
Artemidorus, work on Dreams by, 468 ; immense industry, collections, and faith in the science, ib, ; contempt for im- postors, 469 ; quasi-scientifio method, ib, ; its absurdities, 470
Arvales Fratres, the College of, reyiyed by Augustus, 584 ; early history, meet- ings and ritual of, 540 sq. ; servility to the Emperors, 541
Asclepius, immense popularity of his worship, 459, 589 ; temples of, and their routine and organisation, 460 ; new oracle of, at Abonoteichos, 474
Asiaticus, freedman of Vitellius, history of; 206
Astrology, influence of, intheearly empire, a political danger, 45, 447 ; astrologers banished by Claudius, Vitellius, and Vespasian, 45, 448 ; a Greek trade, 98 ; Augustus bums books of, 446 ; Tiberius believes in, 448 ; Otho, 45, 448; Titus, 449; and M. Aurelius 450 ; Domitian, ib. ; Hadrian ib, ; in Mithraism, 593, 602
Attis, legend of, 549 ; becomes a solar deity, 556
Augury, decay of, 445 ; abuse of, 532
Augustales, the, Trimalchio one of; 186 ; importance, organisation, social rank, and insignia in municipal towns, 216, 217 ; generosity of; as patrons of colleges, 275
Augustine, S., defends the Cynics of his time, 852 ; contempt for rites of Magna Mater, 547 ; on Varro's theology, 417, 531 n. ; on the cult of martyrs, 488 ; on Plato, 523
Augustus, his disguised power, 41 ; de- stroys 2000 books of divination, 446 ; his horoscope cast, 447 ; his religious restoration, and its motive, 583 ; atti- tude to foreign religions, 538 ; restores ateraple of Magna Mater, 548 ; cautious acceptance of divine honours, 615
Aurelian, his temple of the Sun, 586 ; outbreak of the workmen of the Mint in his reign, 255 ; legend deo et domino nato on his coins, 618 ; effect of his Sun-worship on the development of imperial power, 619
Aurelius, M., slight interest of, in specu- lation, 889 ; his tutors of varioui schools, 848 ; as a boy reeites the Salian litany, 385 ; his gospel of re- nunciation, 898 sq. ; his conliarmitj, 894 ; employs diviners, 450 ; relations of, with Galen, 506 ; viewa of; about immortaUty, 507 ; hia Stoic ideal of life, 509 ; his sadness and its eansei, 510 ; one of the Salii in bis 8th year, 535 ; his religious conservatism, 537 ; images of, in every fiamily in the West, 616
Balbilla, Greek verses by, 80
Birth, respect for, in Juvenal, 69 ; in D. Caasius, Snetcmiua, and Pliny, 70 ; manufacture of genealogies, in Vit ApoUonius of Tyana, and 8. Jerome, ib, ; Herodes Atticos traced his desooxt fh>m the Aeacidae, 225 ; Tiberius on, 70
Bithynia, civic mismanagement in, 220 ; literary distinction of; 872
Boeotia, the oracles of; 471
Brescia, high moral tone of^ 147
Caems, concubine of Vespasian, influence and intrigues of, 52, 115
Caligula, wild schemes and profbaion of. 32 ; his cruelty and insolence to Sena- tors, 51 ; depraving example, 73 ; con- sults the oracle of Fortune at Antiom, 472 ; apparitions at his burial, 490 ; claims of divinity, 615
Calpumia, Pliny's wife, character ot and his love for her, 188, 189 ; literary taste of, 80
Oanabae legicmiSf at Lambesi, 208
Canusium, Album of, 210 ; Herodes Atticus gave an aqueduct to, 225
Captation, a regular profession, 72 ; re- sult of plebeiiui poverty and aristocratic vice, 96 ; at Croton, in Petronius, 127 ; Regulus a captator, 156
Camuntum, in Pumonia, a seat of Mithraism firom 70 ajk, 591 ; its temples, 595 ; temple restored s^ by the imperial house, in the fourth cen- tury, 619
Centumviral court, the, picture of; in Pliny's Letters, 154 sqq. ; he welcomes young aristocrats to, 187
Chaeremon, Alexandrian librariiua, wrote a treatise on Iris, 568
Charity, and munificence, provision fbr poor children by lYajan and later Emperors, 192, 198 ; private benevo- lence exemplified by Pliny, 193 ; his benefactions, 198 sqq. ; other examples in the inscriptions, 198, 224; the Stertinii, 224 ; Dion Ghrysostom and
INDEX
e29
his father, 225 ; Herodes Atticas, enormons benefactions of^ ib, ; mnni- ficence of the Emperors, Vespaaimn, Titna, Hadrian, 227, 228; private examples from inscriptions, 228, 229 ; ideals of the uses of wealth, 282 ; men ruin themselves by generosity, 24ff
Cicero, admired by Pliny, 158 ; on augury, 445 ; on Beneficence, 190 ; on superstition, 443 ; on legend, 495 ; on Delphi, 471 ; on immortality, 488
City lire, splendour of, in the Antonine age, 4 ; weariness of life in the capital, 1 74 ; growth of^ in Gaul, Spain, Dacia, and Asia, 200 sqq.
Claudian, connects Mithra with Bel, 588 ; contempt for Greeks, 90
Claudius, recruits the Senate firom the provinces, 71, 72 ; Hellenism of, 89 ; his encouragement of trade, 264 ; his effort to revive the art of augury, 445 ; banishes the astrologers, 448 ; con- servative in religion, 586 ; persecutes the Jewish and Druidic religions, 566
Claudius Etruscus, career of, and duties as minister, 109
Clea, a priestess of Osiris at Delphi, 424
Client, the, in Juvenal, 98, 94 ; change of the relation under the Empire, ib, ; the relation in the colleges, 273
Clients, position in the time of Juvenal, 93 sq. ; and Martial, 61
Clodius, P., uses the colleges, 254
Colleges, the, plebeian class in towns, 251 ; pride of free artisan class, 253 ; early history of OoUegifi, 2b4 ; danger from, 255 ; restrained by law, ib. ; an irresistible movement, 256 ; wish for pious burial, 257; evidence on, from inscriptions, 258 ; funerary colleges authorised, 259 ; consequences of the concession, 260 ; College of Diana and Antinous, its organisation, fees, etc 260 sqq. ; College of Aesculapius and Hygia, its regulations, 262 ; colleges founded on religion, 263 ; indastrial colleges, great faur at Cremona, 264 ; wandering traders, cdUtgia peregri- norum, 265 ; colleges at Lyons, Ostia, Aries, etc 265 sq. ; objects of associa- tion, 266 sqq. ; favoured by masters, 267 ; colleges moulded on the model of the city, names of officers, etc. 269 gradation of rank in, its object, 270 how the tchola was provided, 271 associations gather round it, gifts made to it, 272; College of Silvanus at Philippi, ib. ; patrons of, and their raiaon cTitre, 273 ; colleges and their patrons of very different rank, 274 ; election of a patron, t&. ; colleges founded to
guard a tomb, 276 ; provisions for permanent observances, 277 ; college feasts and sportylae^ 277 sq. ; regula- tions for decorum in, fines, 279 ; the college a family, in which the slave is an equal, 281 ; were colleges eleemo- synary institutions T 282; military col- leges of Lambesi, their organisation and objects, 283 sqq. ; extinction of a college, 285
Commodus, takes the tonsure of Isia and walks in an Isiac procession, 553 ; assumes the Mithriac title of Inviettu, 618
Como, Pliny's estates at, 145 ; his gifts to, 194 ; a suicide at, 184 ; hoiiorairvum of its curia, 209
Conversion, Seneca on, 34 ; result of the preaching of ApoUonius, 847 ; con- version of Polemon, i&. ; of D. Chry- scstom, 368 ; in Plutarch, 413
Corellius Rufas, suicide of^ 184
Cornelia, wife of Pompey, culture of, 80
Cotta, M. AureliuB, liberality o^ to a freedman, 119
Country life, growing love of, 174 ; Roman country seats, their sites and architecture, 176 ; extent and grounds, 178 ; routine of life, 179 ; purchase and management of estates, 180 ; charm of the country in Roman litera- ture, 197 ; yet contempt for it, 199 ; moral tone of, 2, 144, 147
Cremona, great fair at, 263 ; sack ot, 264 ; colleges of youth at, 265 ; muni- ficence of its citizens, 225
Curatores, heard of first in the reign of Trajan, 222 ; control of municipal finance by, 248
Curia, the, composition of, illustrated by the roll of Canusium, 210 ; numbers, and qualification o^ 214 ; its fate, 248
Cynics, the, met a general demand for moral guidance, 340 ; description of, in Dion Chrysostom, 849 ; and in the literature of the age, 350 n. ; the Cynic in Lucian's Banquet, ib. ; attrac- tions of the life of; 351 ; gross charges against ; S. Augustine's testimony, 352 ; causes of prejudice against, »6. ; death of Peregrinus as treated by Lucian, 355 ; affinity ot, with Christian asceticism, 355, 861 ; evidently a great popular force, 358 ; a one-sided Stoicism, 359 ; Cynic ideal, 359 aq. ; attitude to the Empire, 362 sq. ; and to popular religion, 363 ; cultivated Cynics, 364 sqq.
Dacia, organisation and town life of, 201 ; worship of Magna Mater in, 549 ; of Isis, 568 ; settlement of, by Tngan, a
630
ROMAN SOCIETY
8e«t of Mithraism, 594 ; of the worship of Isis and Magna Mater, 649. 668
Daemons, conception of, in Plutarch and MazimnB of Tyre, 426 ; history of, in Greek literature from Hesiod, 427 ; use of the idea by Platonists, 425 \ Xenoorates first taught the existence of eTil daemons, 481 sq. ; employed by Plutarch to rehabiliUte myth, 432 ; believed in by the Fathers, 488 ; a cause of oracular inspiration, 487 ; mortality of, 426 ; daemon of Socrates, 488 ; daemon a higher self, 489 ; daemonology an attempt to bridge the gulf between man and the Infinite Spirit, 603
Dea Dia, worship of^ 640
Delation, history and causes of, 85 ; dela- tors of every rank, t6. ; attractions of, wealth gained by, 86 ; Regulus a de- lator, 87, 155 ; SUius Italicus, 164 ; under Domitian, 86
Delphi, temple of 0:jirisat, 424 ; Plutarch's loTe of, 408, 485 ; decay of, in first century, 484 ; revival of, 485 ; why oracles were given in prose, 486 ; sources of its inspiration, 437 ; Nero's violence to, 472 ; Hadrian tested, ib,
Demetrius, the Cynic, life of, 861 ; a culti- vated ascetic, 862 ; knew ApoUonius of Tyana, i&. ; attitude to the Empire, beards Nero and Vespasian, yJb.
Demonaz, attitude to popalar religion, 368 ; origin, education, and phUosophio tone of, 364 ; fashion of his life and teaching, 865 ; epigrams and sarcasms, 365 sq. ; his personal magneUsm, and reverence for him after his death, 866
Dendrophori, dedications by, to Magna Mater, 549 ; in the inscriptions, 551 ; at Lyons, 557
Dion Chrysostom, view of the Cynics, 349 ; early history, exile, conversion, and preaching of, 867 sq. ; orations of, 368 ; simple philosophy, and view of the time, 869, 870 ; warning to Tarsus, 870 ; sermon at Olbia, 871 sq. ; picture of city life in Asia Minor, its vices and jealousies, 372 sqq. ; gospel of social charity, 878 ; scorn for the Alexandrian character, 874 ; his prose idyll on virtuous rural life in Euboea, 375 sq. ; view of prostitution and slavery, 376 ; ideal of monarchy, parable of the Two Peaks, 877 sqq. ; oration at Olyropia, 379 sq. ; suggested by Olympian Zeus of Pheidias, 380 ; Dion's discussion on natural theology and anthropomor- phism, 881 ; maikes Pheidias defend representation of the Infinite in human form, 382 ; his Zeus a moral ideal and spiritual power, 888
Domitian, delators under, 35 ; his belief in astrology. 45 ; secret of his reign, 62 ; value of the authorities on, 52 a. ; good traits in his character, 53 ; his encoungsment of literature and poUtiesl merit, ib, ; his Hellenism, 89 ; a monl reformer, 54, 74 ; causes of his on- popularitj, 54 ; eontndictioDS in hit character, 65 ; replenishes the treasury by confiscation^ 56 ; his terror at the end, 66, 67, 460 ; his fkinereal banquet, 57 ; founds a quinquennial competi- tion in literature, 171 ; his superstitioD. 450 ; a oonsenratiTe in religion, 636 ; celebrated the Quinquatria of Minerra,
688 ; his victories, 642 ; escaped from the capital in the ▼estments of Lbs is 69 A. D., 667 ; buOt a temple to Isis, «». ; first called Dosmsscs e< Dmu^ 615
Dreams, in temples of healing; 460 ; dream-oracles, 461 ; prescriptions in, 468, 464 ; treatise of Artemidoms on, 467 sqq. ; his faith in, 468 ; his ab- BurditiM, 470 ; Plinj on, 462, 490
Education, Vespasian endows, 148; in- fiuence of Qnintilian on, 149 ; Hinj helps to endow a school at Como, 193 ; culture in Asia Minor, S72 ; amoog Areedmen, 181, 184
Empire, the, its temptations, 31 ; the influence of the l^peror's example illustrated, 81 ; how waste led to cruelty and confiscation, 88 ; the secret of the imperial terror, virious theories, 87; the ideal of the Empire, 89, 48 ; con- stant danger fh>m pretenders, 40, 41, 44 ; the fiction of Augustus, the Em- peror's real power, 41 ; checks upon it, 42 ; its tolerance of municipal liberty, 208
Entellus, gardens 01^112
Epicharis, fireedwoman, refttses to betray the Pisonian conspirators, 47
Epictetus, his ideal of the Cynic philo- sopher, 869 ; men the soldiers of God, 893 ; gospel of renunciation in, ib, n. 6; onauguryand divination, 465; early history of, 508 ; attitude to belief in immortality, 504 ; reference to female Platonists, 80 ; preaching of gratitude and resignation, 898
Epicurus, Seneca quotes, and defiends to Ludlius, 806 ; Aelian anathematises, 466 ; Epicureans at Abonoteichos op< pose Alexander, 476 ; orders banquets to his shade, 456 ; influence o^ in last age of Republic, 680
Epidaums, temple of Asclepius at, 462,
689 ; social life of the patients, 463 Equites, in provincial towns, 215 ; freed-
men raised to the rank of, 118 ; Juvenal's
INDEX
(531
contempt for, 70 ; general low estimate of, 118 ; displace freedmen as imperial secretaries, 107 ; employment by Vitel- lius, Domitian, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pins, i6.
Espionage, under the Empire, 34 ; under Domitian, 66
Euboea, D. Chrysostom's description of rural life in, 876
Euhemerus, translated by Ennios, 680 ; Plutarch on, 426
Euphrates, Pliny's sketch of, 161 ; suicide of, 866
Evil, Plutarch's theory of; 430
ExtraTagance, of Nero, 20, 32 ; of Domi- tian, 66, 66 ; of Vitellius, 82 ; of Caligula, 82 ; under the Republic, 67
Fannia, widow of Helvidius Prisons, Pliny's admiration for, 162
Fiuaiice, profusion of Caligula, 82 ; straits of Domitian, 66 ; economy of Vespasian, 82, 148 ; Nero's waste and plunder, 20 sq. ; Nerva's retrenchment, 82 ; waste of Vitellius, 32 ; finance of pro- vincial towns, 220, 248
Fortuna August!, 618
Freedmen, the, their rise a great move- ment, 100 ; prejudice against, 101 sqq. ; why it was natural, 103 ; contempt of literary men for vulgar wealth, 104 ; yet the rise of the freedmen a promising movement, 106 ; rise of, in the im- perial household, 106 ; become great ministers, 107 ; replaced graduaUy by Equites, 107 ; early jfreedmen ministers worthy of their place, 108 ; career of Claudius Etruscus and Abascantus, 109 sqq. ; of Nardssus and Pallas, 110, 111 ; how their wealth was gained, 112, 129 ; their politic splendour, 112 ; romantic career of a freedman, 113 ; yet freedmen despised and ostracised, i&. ; sometimes made great marriages, 114 ; doubtful position of women of this class, 114 ; yet some had great influence, 116 ; Panthea, mistress of L. Varus, picture of; by Lucian, id. ; lower freedmen in the im- perial service, 116 ; transition from slavery to freedom, how freedmen rose, 118-120; grossness and ostenta- tion of their wealthy class, 129 sqq.
Freedom and Necessity, Plutarch's views of, 412 ; Seneca's, 811
Galas, on the law of Colleges, 264 Gktlen, early history and training of, 606 ; eclecticism of, tft.; views of immortality, %h, ; relations with M. Aurelius, 606 Oenii, invented for every corporation and
scene in Roman life, 886 ; tales o^ in Britain and on the Indian Ocean, 420, 426 ; wide-spread cult of, 479 sq.
Gladiators, municipal shows of, in Pet- ronius, 184; Tngan provides 10,000 on his Dacian triumph, 234 ; protests against, by Seneca and Demonaz, 286 ; schools of, 236, 241 ; shows began in Campania, i6. ; school of, at Pompeii, 237 ; notices in. the inscriptions, 288 ; enthusiasm for, t6. ; shows in remote places, 239 ; after battle of Bedriacum, 240 ; less popular in Greece, except at Corinth, 241 ; various cost of, 241 ; classes who furnished gladiators, at- tractions of the profession, 242 sq. ; organisation of a school ; a college of gladiators, 243
Gkxl, new conceptions of, 6 ; in Seneca, 806 ; God of the Stoics, varying con- ceptions of, 807 ; demand for a moral God, 389 ; Stoicism fades into Plato- nism, 391 ; the Stoic god has no claim to worship, ib, ; vague higher con- ceptions of, 896, 608 ; a transcendent Deity, 897 ; PluUrch's highest idea of, 418 ; man's relation to, according to Maximus of Tyre, 421 ; relation of, to daemons, 426 sqq.
Hadrian, letter of, to Scrvianus, 397 ; tests the omniscience of Delphi, 436 ; dabbled in astrology, and otiier dark arts, 460, 603 ; his love of travel, 603 ; his faint belief in immortality, 603 ; a sceptic, 686 ; the Canopus of, at his villa atTibur, 667 ; conspiracy against, 41 ; character of, 603
Hellenism, various aspects of, reaction against, fh)m the times of the elder Cato, %% ; Hellenism of early Em- perors, 88, 89 ; Roman prejudice against Greeks, 90 ; why Greeks suc- ceeded under the Empire, 91 ; Greek grammaticif 91 ; Greeks as doctors, 92 ; Greek parasites, 98 ; love of Greek in Pliny's days, 166 sq.
Helvidius Prisons, violence of; 40 ; flouts Vespasian, ib,
Herculaneum, temple of Magna Mater at, 548 ; frescoes of; illustrating the worship of Isis, 678
Herodes Atticus, gifts of; to many com- munities, 226 sqq. ; friend of Demonax and Plutarch, 864, 408 ; on the uses of wealth, 232 ; claimed descent from the Aeacidae, 226
Herodotus, identifies Greek and Egyptian deities, 661 ; on Mithra, 689
Hesiod, on daemons, 427
Holconii, the, of Pompeii, public honours, and benefactions of, 223
632
ROMAN SOCIETY
Horace, loTe of the country, and memories of Mount Vnltor in, 196, 198 ; jonmey to Brundidnm, 206 ; on beneficence, 190
Hortensiaa, Q^ luzory of; 71 ; poverty of Mb descendants, ib,
Icelns, raised to rank by Qalba, 107 ; jonmey of; to Spain, 206
Immortality, ideas ot depend on ideas of Gk>d, 484 ; ^ We know not what we shall be," 485 ; faith in the Manes, 486 ; evidence of epitaphs on, 487 eqq. ; Lemures, 488 sq. ; the Mundtu, 489 ; mingled elements in Virgil's Ixifemo, 491 sqq. ; Roman longing for post- humons sympathy, 488 ; Orphic and Pythagorean influences on Virgil, 494 ; evidence of inscriptions on belief in, 496 sqq. ; Epicurean negation of, 498 sq. ; philosophic opinion on, 449 sqq. ; Lucretius and Julius Oaesar on, 600, 501 ; attitude of Epictetus, 504 ; Ghtlen's ideas o^ 505 sq. ; M. Aurelius on, 507 sqq. ; Seneca on, 514 sq. ; A.pollonius of Tyana on, 518 sq. ; Plutarch on, 521 sqq. ; Platonic imagery of the future world, and its influence on Plutarch, 528 sq. ; belief in, fostered by Isiac worship, 575, 588 ; and by Mithraism, 609
Inns, poor and disreputable, 207
Isis, prescriptions of, in dreams, 461 ; transformation of her worship by the Ptolemies, 560 ; at the Peiraeus, ib, ; influence of Greek settlers in Egyptj and of Greek mysticism, 561, 563 sq. ; lofty conception of, in Apuleius, 563 ; date of her introduction in Italy, ib. ; power over women, 565 ; repeated persecution of her worshippers, first century, B.a, 565 ; in the reign of Tiberius, 566 ; favoured by Otho and the Flavians, 567 ; Domitian builds a temple to, in 92 a.d., classes who propagated the worship of, 567 sq. ; spread through all Western Europe, 568 sq. ; secret of her fascination, 569 ; highest conception of; 572 ; a real spiritual power, 574 ; gives the hope of immortality, 575 ; impressive ritual of; 576 ; daily offices, 577 sq. ; her rites in frescoes of Heroulaneum, 578 ; great festivals of, the procession to the shore described, 578 sq. ; her priesthood, including women, 580, 582 ; sacred guilds, Isiaci, Pastophori, etc., 581 ; syncretism of her worship^ lb, ; her priesthood a separate caste, their presbyteries, and ascetic life, 582
Jerome, S., account of the grades of initia-
tion in liffithrriwn bj, 611 ; gei&ealcgies in, 70
Jews, growing influence of; in the first century A.D. ; especiaUj under the Flavian dynasty, 88 ; spread of Jewish observances, 84 ; foster inperstiticn, 84
Julian, his hatred of Oenomaas of Gadars, 364
Jvmentarii, at the gates of towns, S06
Juvenal, his views of society com- pared with Tacitns, 68 ; social rank and early training of, 59 ; ezperienceas a dient, ib, ; bitterness o^ 60 ; datesof his Satires^ 60 ; he and Martial have a common stock of salgeets, 60, 61 ; plebeian pride,and old Boman pr^udioe, combined with the moral feeling of a later age, 63; attitade to r^igion, 64 ; extravagant pessimism ; his ideal in the past, 65 ; great movements of society described by, and sometimes misonder- stood, 69 ; decay of the noble class described by, 69 ; contempt for new men, 70 ; signs of aristocratic poverty, 72 ; his ideal of senatorial dignity, 74 ; treatment of women in the Sixth Satire, its faults, 76 ; condemns mere eccen- tricities and even laudable tastes, 77 ; distrusts growing culture of women. 79, 80 ; fighting a lost b^tle, 81 ; scorn for women's devotion to easters cults, 82 ; pessimism about women had some justification, 84 sqq. ; his judg- ments must be taken with some reserve, 87 ; indignation at the invasion of the Greeks, 88 ; humiliation of the client, 93 ; general poverty, 95 ; the cry of the poor, and Rcunan contempt for industry and trade, 98 ; Juvenal compared with Pliny, as a painter of society, 141
Lambaesis, the camp at, how it grew into a munidpiitm, 208 ; military colleges at, 283 ; temple of Isis at, 668 ; worship of Mithra at, 595
Lanuvium, college at, 260
Lemuria, the, described, 489
libraries, restocked with Mss. by Domi- tian, 53 ; Trimalchio's Greek and Latin libraries, 131 ; rapid production of books, 156
Literature, in the Ajitonine age, 8 ; in Pliny's days, 157 ; literary amateurs abound, ib. ; Pliny's poetry, 159 ; love of Cicero, 158 ; the plague of readings, 160, 172 ; decadence o^ 163, 173 ; Silius Italicus, 164 sq. ; composition in Greek, 166 ; ntiniusCapito^ ahistorian, 167 ; devotion to poetry, ainl its causes, influence of the Augustan tradition.
INDEX
68S
169 ; fashion of the archaic style, 170 ; Domitian founds a literary competition, its influence, 171 ; literary men gener- ally bom in provincial places, 196 ; Demonaz rebukes literary archaism, 867
IdTy, on decay of augury, 445 ; on the Bacchanalian scandal, 563 ; on the apocrypha] books of Numa, 564
Lucan, on the worship of Isis, 568 ; be- trays his mother, his death, 471 ; style o^ referred to in the Saiirietm of Petronius, 123
Lucian, his war against the Cynics, 837 ; yet sometimes approaches their view of life, 837 sq.; the Charm of, 388; the HermotivMU ot^ witnesses to a moral movement, 841 sqq. ; the Cynic in his Bongue^, and ^K^tMf, 850 ; his treat- ment of the chjuracter of Peregrinus, 354 sqq. ; visit to Olympia at the time of the Cynic's suicide, 355 ; how he regarded it, and watched the growth ot a myth^ 357 sq. ; description of the new oracle of Abonoteichos, 474 sqq. ; ridicule of superstition in the PkUo- pseudes, 490 ; reference to Mithra, 590
Lucretius, on immortality, 500, 501 ; on Magna Mater, 547
Luxury, Juvenal's view of^ 65 ; Roman luxury in Republican times, 67 ; luxury a relative term, 68 ; luxury of the Roman villa, chiefly in marbles, 177 ; the luxury of trayelling^ progresses of Nero, 206
Maecenas, counsels of, to Augustus in Dion Cassius, 446, 533 ; Trimalchio, af^^eed- man of, 128 n.
Magna Mater, brought from Pessinus, 204 B.O., 548 ; no Roman priest of^ for 100 years, t5.; growing popularity oi^ at Rome, in Spain and Dacia, 549 ; legend of, lb. ; her festival in spring, 550 ; her priests in the inscriptions, 550 sq. ; her sacred colleges, 551 ; her disreput- able followers in Apuleius, ib, sqq. ; her worship transmuted, 554 ; the taurobolium and its history, 556 ; alliance of, with Mithra, and Attis, 556 sq. ; women admitted to sacred rank, 557 ; identified vrith Maia, Demeter, Bona Dea, etc., 559
Mi^^y* ^^® ^^^ ^^1 under the Empire, 83
Malaga, inscriptions of, 209
Manetho, treatise of^ on myths, 561 ; assists the first Ptolemy In recasting Isiac worship, ib.
Marcian, on Colleges, 255
Martial, deals with Uie same social sub- jects as JuYenal, 61 ; hisgraphic picture of the age, 61, 62 ; better side o^ love of |
country life, picture of the farm of Faostinus, love of Hlbilis, 62 ; on Regulus, 156 ; on literary amateurs, 157; onSiliusItalicus,158; relations oi^ vrith Pliny, 158 ; regret for the capital, 198
Maximus of Tyre, character of his Dis- courses, 349 ; conciliation of anthropo- morphism with a higher vision of God by, 895 ; ethical theory of, 421 ; daemonology of, 429 ; fortified by tales of apparitions, 491 ; influenced by Aristotle, 421
Medicine, profession of^ filled by Greeks, 92 ; great physicians, Antonius Musa, the Stertinii, etc., ib. ; sneers against, ib. ; public physicians in municipal towns, 219 ; income and munificence of the Stertinii, 224 ; science of, in the second century, superstitious elements, 459 ; how blended with real skill, 462 ; skilled physicians in temples of Asde- pius, 465
Medixtuiieus, title of, still preserved in Oscan tovms, 203
Minucius Felix, quoted, 545 ; on the festivals of Isis, 578 n. ; on daemons, 48S
Miracles, Origen and Celsus on, 481 ; universal belief in, 482 ; miracles in temples of Serapis, 573 ; Vespasian consents to work, ib,
Mithra, growing power of, 886 ; the taurobolium a part of his worship, 556 ; alliance of, with Magna Mater and Attis, ib. 589 sq. ; in the Vedas and Avestas, 586 ; in theZoroastrian system, 587 ; the God of kings, ib. ; influence of Babylon on the worship of, 587 ; influence of syncretism in Asia Minor on, 588 ; the taurobolium probably borrowed, ib. ; origin of the Tauroctonus group, date of the introduction of the cult into Europe, 590 ; Plutarch's statement in the Life of Pompey, ib. ; worship of, in the Flavian age, ib. ; syncret- ism of, 592 ; worship of, propagated by soldiers, civil servants, etc., ib, ; stages of its diffusion through Italy, 593; and north of the Alps, 594; progress of the worship along the Danube, 594 sqq. ; legions which pro- pagated it in Pannonia, 595 ; remains of^ in Upper (Germany, 596 ; in England, 597 ; in Gaul, ib. ; its many attractions, ib, ; Persian symbolism, 598 ; Baby- lonian elements in, astrology, 598, 602, sq. ; relative influence of Iran and Biabylon, different views of, 599 ; influ- ence of Platonisra and Pythagoreanism on, 600 ; doctrine of the soul's descent, ib, ; cosmic theory, doctrine of emana- tion, and deification of elemental powers,
634
ROMAN SOCIETY
601 iqq. ; Mithra as mediator In two senses, 604 tq. ; the Dadophori, ih.^ 606 ; the legend recovered firom monu- ments, 605 ; the petra genetrix, ib, ; symbolism of the slanghtoed bull, 606 ; agape of Mithra and Son, 607 ; various interpretations of the legend, 607; Mithraism a religion of combat, 608 ; its consolations, ib, ; its eschatology, 609 ; effect of the taurobolinm, d. ; ritual and sacraments ot 610 ; daily uflSces, and festivals of, 611 ; seven grades of the initiated, 611 ; ordeals oi^ 612 ; guilds of, 612 ; rites regarded as a diabolic parody of the Church, 618 ; description of the chapels of, ib. sq. ; how Mithraism escaped pefsecution, 614 ; how it fostered theocratic ideas at Rome, 617 sqq. ; a great imperial cult, 619 ; last days of, ib, ; worship of, a great effort of syncretism, 620 ; moral and mystic strength of, 621 ; relationsto Christianity, 622 ; similarities between them, 623 ; weaknesses of Mithraism, 624 ; inseparably involved with Nature- worship, 626
Monarchy, Seneca's conception oi^ 16 ; hereditary succession and adoption, 27 ; ideal of; in Dion Chrysostom, 877, sqq. ; apotheosis o^ in third century, 615 sqq. ; attitude of Tacitus to, 21
Morals, divorced from politics and specu- lation, 290 sq. ; became a religion in Seneca, 305 ; relation of precept and dogma, ib. ; freedom and necessity, 311 ; the faU of man, 812 ; Plutarch's theory of, 410 sqq.
Municipal life, picture of, in Petronius, 1 33 sqq. ; rapid organisation of; in Spain, Gaul, Dacia, etc, inmiense growth of towns, 200 ; Baden in 69 a.d., 201 ; Thamugadi in Numidia, 202 ; policy of government towards provincisl towns, 208 ; drift towards uniformity of civic organisation, influence of the capital, 204 ; how towns were formed, 207 ; development from ccutra statiwit 207, sq. ; soldiers allowed to live with their families in the third century, 208 ; municipal town aristocratic in consti- tution, 209, 231 ; Album Oanuni, 210 ; the fionestioret, ib. ; popular election the rule in the first century, 211 ; magistracies, 212 ; their burdens, signs of decay, 212 ; powers of the duumvirs, 218 ; the Curia, its numbers, qualifica- tion, and privileges, 214, 215 ; local EquiteSf 215; Augustales, their import- ance, organisation, insignia, etc., 216, 217 ; municipal finance, 218 ; public charges, food, education, medical at- tendance^ 219 ; public works, 220 ;
finances, and maladministration oi Bithynian towns in Trajau s reign, 220, 221 ; municipal life of Pompeii, 222, sqq. ; generous gifts to towns, 22S, 225 ; examples f!ix>xn the inscriptioBi, 226 sqq. ; public feasts on a great scale, 229 ; gifts of money accoMi^ to social rank, 280 ; tone of town lift, 281 ; pleasures of; 233 ; gladiatoriil shows, 286 sqq. ; how the coDunonitr rewarded bene&ctora, 244 sq. ; muni- cipal meanness, 245, decaying loc^ patriotism, 246 ; Plutarch on, 247 : growing centralisation and IntariiBraDoe, 248 ; shadows of the end, 249 Mnsonius, his ideal of chastity, 77 ; con- demns the Sophists, 344 ; exile ot under Nero ; character of his teaching ; preaches to the soldiery in 69 a.!)., 348
Nature, love of, in Viig^l, 197 : in Pliny, 174 ; in Martial, ib., 62, 198
Nero, hereditary taint ot 17 ; not without some good qualities, 17 ; conld inspire affection, 18 ; hisdevotion to art, and its evil results, 19 ; a cupitor tnervif AtZtusi, 20 ; his waste leads to cruel oppressioo, 20, 21 ; examples of wild proftisioD, 82 ; his supentition, 46, 536 ; com- pelled by the mob to recall Octavis, 49 ; popular indignation at his appear- ance on the stage, 74 ; the ** Noctes Neronis," 75 ; his phil-Hellenism, 89 ; silences Delphi, 434 ; belief in astrology, 448 ; propitiates his mother's shade, 491 ; flattery oi; by tha Arval Brothers, 542 ; worshipped by Tiridates, 617 ; violence to Delphi, 472
Nerva, retrenchments of, 32 ; first pro- vided for poor children, 192
Nicomedia, D. Chrysostom on its publie vices, 378
Numa, apocryphal books of; 564
Octavia, divorced on faJm charge, and recalled by Nero at the bidding of the mob, 49
Oenomaus of Gadara, rf^jection of myth and oracles by, 868 ; theory of oracles, 864 ; Julian's denunciation of, t&
Olbia, D. Chrysostom's visit to, 371 sq.
Oracles, decay of, 484 ; revival of, 886 ; theory of their inspiration, 437 sqq. ; and of their cessation, 487, 471 ; that of Abonoteichos defers to the older, 472 ; many oracles not silenced till the reign of Constantine, 478 ; how an oracle was worked, 474 ; oracles in Boeotia,471
Orphic mysticism, the, 427 ; influence of; on Yixgil, 494 ; on Mithraism, 600 ; on belief in immortality, 516
INDEX
635
Osterbiirken, remains of Mithra worship at, 596 I
Ostia, colleges at, 215 ; cult of Mithra at, 591 ; temple of Magna Mater at, ih,
Otho, eztravagance of, 82 ; his belief in astrology, 45, 448 ; devotion of soldiers to, 50 ; his end, 449 ; flattered by the Arral Brotherhood, 541 ; the first Emperor who took part in Isiac wor- ship, 566
Ovid, his ideal of womanhood, 77, 142 ; shocked by the inflnence of the theatre on women, 86 ; attitude to religion, 532
Pallas, power and insolence of, receives the adulation of the Senate, his wealth, and his end. 111
Panaetius and the Scipionio circle, 293 ; modification of Stoicism by, 408 ; aban> dons belief in immortality, 500 ; rejects divination, 530 ; little sympathy with popular religion, 531
Fanthea, mistress of L. Verus, charms of, described by Lucian, 115
Paphlagonia, superstition of, 474
Pastophori of IsIb, the, recognised by Sulla, 565 ; scribe of, 570
Peregrinus, early history of, connection with the Christians, and self-immola- tion, 854 ; Ludan's attacks on his character, 854 ; assumes that the motive of Peregrinus was notoriety, 356 ; Peregrinus influenced by eastern mjTsticism, 855 ; character of, in Aulus Gellias, 358
Pessimism, of Seneca, 10, 11, 14, 808, 818 ; of Tacitus, 80, 46 ; Juvenal, 65 ; M. Aurelius, 804, 885 ; of the Greek poets, 416
Petronius, shared inthe"NoctesNeronis," 75 ; various opinions as to the date and object of his iSa^iricon, 120 ; motive of the work, 122 ; the Pet- ronius of Tacitus, his character and his end; the jSSo^meon only a fragment, 124 ; not without a higher moral tone, 125 ; originality of Petronius, 126 ; the scene and the characters, 127
Philosophy, power of^ in government, 6 ; Stoic opposition in the first century, 89, 151 sqq. ; was it ever a dangerous force ? 40 ; new ideals of humanity, 63 ; elevating influence of, 190 ; change in tiie conception of, in the first century, 289; practical interest in, predominant, causes of the change, 839, 290 sq. ; eclecticism and scepticism in, i^., 408, 412 ; necessity for moral reform, 292 ; private direction of souls, 298 ; direc- tors in great houses, 294 ; the philo-
sopher a generis humani ptiedagoguSf 299 ; modifications of Stoicism in Seneca, 814 sqq., 806 ; "nulla virtus sine philosophia," 841 ; eclecticism, 848 ; the Cynic opposition, 862 sq. ; edecticiBm of Dion Chrysostom, 868 sq. ; need of a philosophic th6odicde, 884 ; effort o^ to rehabilitate myth, 482
Pheidias, the Olympian Zeus of, 880 ; his defence of anthropomorphism in D. Chrysostom, 882
Pisa, disturbance at elections in, 212
Piso, the conspiracy o^ 47 sq.
Platonism, few adherents of, in the first century, 408 ; affected Panaetius, <b. ; and Seneca, 808 ; and Plutarch, 409 ; its daemonology, 480 ; encouraged be- lief in immoortality, 501 ; visionary power of the great Master, 628 ; influ- ence on Mithraism, 600
Plebeian life, picture of, in Petronius, 182 sqq. ; in the inscriptions, 252 sq. , 271
Pliny, the elder, on Roman luxury, 67, 68 ; care of his nephew, 145 ; life, character, and prodigious industry of, 146 ; scorn for popidar religion, 585 ; sup^vtitionof, 451 ; rejection of immor- tality, 502 ; on town life in Spain and Gaul, 201 sq. ; description of baths of Posides, 112 ; on the Stertinii, 224
Pliny, the younger, ideal of the princi- pato in the PanegyriCt 48 ; compared with Juvenal as a painter of society, 141 ; idealised his circle, 142, 185 ; his blameless aristocrats, 144 ; early life oF, influence of Quintilian on, 149 ; student friends, 150 ; admiration of the Stoic circle, 151 ; military service, and en- trance on forensic work, 153 sq. ; the Centumviral court, 154 sq. ; sketch of Regulus, 155 sqq. ; passion for fame, 157; literary amateurs, 157; befriends Martial, 158 ; admiration for Cicero, and for Greece, 158 ; his loose verses, 159 ; ideas of oratory, 160 ; value of his Letters, 161, 168; imitated in fourth century, ifr. ; their principle of arrangement, and date, 1 62 ; his devotion to literature, 164 ; admiration for Tacitus, t&. ; his jndgmentof Silius Itali- cus, ib, ; theory of life, 165 ; literary coteries, Greek verse -writing, 166 ; writers of history, 167 ; literary com- petitions, 171 ; the plague of recita- tions ; Pliny gives readings himself, and punctuiJIy attends them : his wi\- mate of their value, 173 ; weariness of the capital and love of the country, 174 ; not a sportsman, 175 ; pictures of Roman country seats, 175 { routine of oountry life, 179 ; management of
636
ROMAN SOCIETY
rural estates, 180 ; Pliny's kindness to slaves and dependents, 181 ; view of suicide, 183 ; Corellins Bnfns, 184 ; Pliny's belief in the solidarity of rank, and the duty of mutoal support, 186 ; his superstition, 452, 490 ; delight in helping young men of the upper class, 187 ; love for Calpumia, and ideal of girlhood, 188, 189 ; laRt glimpse of Pliny and CSalpumia,189 ; he represents the finest moral tone of the age, 190 ; his many benefactions and their amount, 193, 224 Plutarch, on the duties of municipal life, 247 ; early history of, 401 ; Mends o^ at Rome, 402 ; love of Chaeronea, and Delphi, 403 ; visits to other parts of Greece, 403 ; table talk o^ 404 ; his historic power, 406 ; ethical motive in, predominant, 405 ; admiration for Plato, 409 ; eclecticism, t&. ; attacks Stoic psychology, 410 ; adopts some Aristo- telian principles, 412 ; yet has many Stoic elements, 414 ; his treatment of Fate and free-will, 412 ; ideal of moral teaching, 413 ; conception of theology, 417 ; idea of Gtod, 418 ; of matter and evil, 419 ; treatment of myth and religious symbol, 423 ; daemonology, 430 sqq. ; used to rehabilitate myth, 482 ; interest in Delphi, 485 sqq. ; theory of inspiration, 439 ; on the future state, 496 sq. ; on comfort in the Mysteries, 516 ; Consolation to his wife on the death of their daughter,
520 sq. ; arguments for immortality,
521 sqq. ; visions of the future world, 523 sqq. ; reference to Mithra as a mediator, 590; on the first appearance of Mithraism in Europe, 590 ; tales of ghosts at Cbaeronea, 490
Politta, wife of Rubellius Plautus, courage
and devotion of, 49 Polybius, freedman minister of Claudius,
life of; described by Seneca, 108 Polybius, the historian, his attitude to
Roman religion, 531 Pompeii, situation and various industries
of, 223 ; family of the Holconii,
Eumachia, their gifts to the town, 228 ;
amphitheatre and temple of Isis at, 224,
563 ; election placards at, 211 ; tombs
of Alexandrian traders at, 567 ; colleges
of ** late sleepers " and **late drinkers"
at, 265 Pontifex Mazimus, the, 534 ; office held
by the Emperors, its power, 535 Poppaea, her sympathy with Judaism,
83 Post, the public, organisation of, 206 ;
Pliny's use of, for Calpumia, 189 Poverty, contempt for, 104 ; common in
Juvenal's time^ 94*; D. Cfhrysoetom on,
375 Ptayer, an effort of adoration, 394 ; a
colloquy with Gk>d, 420 Preachers, the philosophic, ApolIoniiUk
847; Mosonius, 848; Mazimus of Tyiv,
849 ; Dion Chrysostom, 870 sqq. Prudentiua, description of the tanroboltam
by, 558 Public works, mismanagement of, in
Bithynia, 220 sq. ; curator ot ib. ;
undertaken by private persons, evince
of inscriptions on, 225 sq. Pythogoreanism, not extinct in the fiist
century B.O., 898 ; daemonology of^
428 ; influence of, on Virgil, 493 sq. ;
on Seneca, 515 ; ccmnecUon with the
Mysteries, 516 ; spiritoal influence oi,
517 ; influence on the mjrthology d.
Egypt, 562 ; and on Mithraism, 600
Qnintilian, career ol^ as a teacher, and high moral influence, 149 ; treats im- mortality as an open qaestiou, 502
Readings, the plague ot in Juvenal 59, 95 ; in Pliny, 160, 178 ; in Martial, 61
Regulus, M. Aquilius, career of, as delator, 87 ; as pleader, his wealth, and ec- centricities, 155, 166
Religion, old Roman, decay of, from the se!cond Punic War, 529.' its causes, 580 ; attitude to^ of Varro, Panaetiiu, Polybius, 531; Augustan restoration of, 533 ; conservative influenoe of the chief pontificate, 535 ; early emperors con- tinue the Augustan policy, 586 ; rever- ence for the oldest Latin deities in the inscriptions, 588 ; Jupiter, 543 ; Hercules, SCvanus, and the Nymph>, 589; revival of the Arval Brotherhood, 540 sqq. ; feeling of the educated to, 544 ; real strnigth of, 545 ; la^t champions of, in the fourth century, 546 ; its formalism compared with the eastern worships, 554
Scepticism, from the second Punic War, 530 ; the scepticism of the elder Pliny, Seneca, Juvenal, etc, 535 Seleucus, an astrologer of Otho, 448 Senate, the^ prestige and ancient claims of, 38 ; hated and feared by bad princes, 88, 39 ; respect for, under good Em- perors, 89 ; theoretical pMition o( under the Empire, 41, 42 ; Pliny's Pcmegyric throws light on, 44 ; moral degradation of, shown in 69 a.d., 50 poverty of many great houses, 51, 71 insults heaped on, by Emperors, 51 reduction of its numbers by massacre
INDEX
637
etc., 71 ; great fkiniliea pensioned by Emperon, 71 ; Senators compelled to act and fight as gladiators, 73, 74 ; scorn of, for f^dSoien, IIS ; frivolity of, in Pliny's time, 185 ; senatorial life in the coontry, 174 sqq.
Seneca, his experience of the tyranny, 7, 8 ; sad close of his life, 9 ; Imowledge of character, how acquired, 9 ; conception of the state of nature, and pessimism of, 10, 11, 14, 804, 813 ; ghasUy pictore of high society, 11 ; of slavery, 12, 829 ; his terrors, 13 ; attitude to philo- sophic xevolntionaiies, 16 ; conception of imperial power, 16 ; ideal of female character and capacity, 188 ; anticipates the movement of the Antonine age, 190; as a spiritual director, 294; his undoubted power, 295 ; his ex- perience prepared him for the work, 296 sqq. ; his court-life and wealth, f6. ; contrasts in, 297 ; calumnies agidnst, 298 ; conception of the great office of philosophy, 299 ; attitude to liberal studies, 300 ; treatment of Physics, the moral effects and lessons of the study, 301 sqq. ; in- tense earnestness o^ 804 ; defends and quotes Epicurus, 306 ; yet often a Stoic dogmatist, i&. ; con- ception of God, 807, 890 ; influenced by Platonism, 308 ; his psychology, 808 sq. ; necessity and conversion, 311 ; the fall of man, 812 ; Aristotelian elements in, 814 sq. ; humility of, 316 ; his disciples of the upper class, 317 ; on philosophic retreat, 818 ; his precepts for moral growth, 320 sqq. ; death a mere bugbear, 822 ; attitude to myth, ih, ; on public duty, 325 ; on the social instinct, kindness, forgiveness, etc, 327 ; his ideal of womanhood, 329 ; Seneca and Thomas k Eempis, 331 ; his view of immortality approaches the Cliristian, 5, 18 sqq. ; Pythagorean influences on, 515
Sentinum, college of Mithra at, 593
Serapis, his temple of healing at Canopus, 461 ; his origin, various theories of, 561 sq. ; linked with Jupiter in the inscriptions, 562 ; lofty conception of, in Aristides, 572, 574 ; miracles in his temples, 573 ; a guide and judge of souls, 575 ; his boundless sway, 583
Sidonius Apollinaris, imitation of Pliny's Letters in, 162 sq. ; refers to Sulpicia, 80 ; to Petronius, 121
Silius Italicus, Pliny's estimate ot 164 ; career and tastes of, 165; a connoisseur, 177 ; suicide of, 184
Slavery, moral and political effects of, according to Seneca, 12 ; courage of
Octavia's slave girls, 48 ; transition from slavery to freedom, 116 sq. ; kindly feeling, 117, 257 ; manumission, how obtained, 118 ; growing j:)ecu/»u«» of trusted slaves, 118 ; tie between patron and freedman, 119 ; duties and generosity of patrons, f&. ; rise of the freedmen, ih. ; Pliny's kindness to slaves, 181 ; harsh masters and their perils, 182 ; slave class dwindling; 252 ; slaves in the colleges, 281
Society, circuit, 13 ; gossip, 33 ; extrava- gant luxury, 66 ; respect for birth and manufacture of geuMlogies, 69, 70 ; poverty and mendicancy of great houses, 71, 72 ; wider interests among women, 78 ; culture of Boman women from Cornelia to Serena, wife of Stilicho, 80 ; dangerous temptations of women's life, 85 sq. ; genc^ poverty under the Empire, 94 sq. ; mean trades more lucrative than cultivated professions, 95 ; society materialised, ih, ; contempt for poverty, 97 ; grossnessof frvedmen, 182 sqq. ; a sounder class in the worst days, 148 ; wholesome force of Boman tnulition, and country life, 144 ; old- fashioned retreats of virtue, 147 ; love of country life, 174 ; suicide, 183 ; wedded life of Calpumia and Pliny, 188 sq. ; new moral ideals in Seneca, Juvenal, and Pliny, 190 ; duties of wealth, 191 ; public spirit of the age, 193 ; rage for amusement, 234 sqq. ; municipfd gratitude and meanness, 245 ; need of association in clubs, etc> 256 sqq. ; immense force of the move- ment, 266 sqq. ; ennui and self-aban- donment of upper class, 804, 319 sq. ; need for popidar evangelism, how the Cynics supplied it, 835, 860
Socrates, theories of his daemon, 438
Sophists, the, influence o^ 4 ; frivolous subjects and showy style ol^ condemned by philosophers, 344; Plutarch's opinion of. 418
Sotion, trains Seneca in Pythagorean asceticism, 296
Spain, growth of towns in, 200 ; journey of Icelus in, to reach Galba, 206 ; little affected by Mithraism, 597 ; worship of Isis in, 567
Spectacles, the. Senators descend into the arena, 73 ; women present at, mingling with men at the Circus, 86 obscenities of the theatre, ih. ; number of days in the year given to, 234 scene in Flavian Amphitheatre, 235
Spurinna, Vestricius, a verse- writer, 166 his orderly life a type, 175
Statins, his sketdies of Uie great imperial freedmen, 109 sqq. ; of the villas of
038
ROMAN SOCIETY
ManlioB Vopiscua, and Pollins Felix, 176 ; reference to Mithra in the Tht- baid, 589 sq.
Stoicism, the God of, 807 ; gospel of, in Seneca, 809 sq. ; fireedom and neces- sity, 811; weakness of its moral theory, 818 ; instantaneous conversion, ib. ; no intermediate states of character, ib, ; modifications of, 814 ; relation to Cynicism, 828, 859 ; competing tendencies in, 824; the two cities, Zeno on civic duty, 325 ; the brother- hood of man, 828 ; the religion of Stoicism breaks down, 391, 512 ; later Stoic mysticism, 892 ; influence of Panaetius, 408, 580; its theory of human nature assailed by Plutarch, 410 sq. ; older Stoic belief in a limited immortality, 500 ; ideal of life in M. Aurelius, 509 ; Stoic attitude to augury, etc., 530
Strabo, on oracles and augury, 471 ; on the temple of Serapis at Canopus, 461
Suetonius, career of, 168 ; Pliny's friend- ship for, %b» ; a dilatory author, 168 ; superstition of, 452, 585 ; secretary of Hadrian, 169
Suffetes, title of, preserved in Africa under the Empire, 203
Suicide, Pliuy's view of, 188 ; suicide of Euphrates, 856 ; Stoic view of, 856 ; suicide of Peregrinus, 857 ; of Silius Italicus, 184 ; of Corellius Rufus, 184 ; Hadrian's wish for, 856 ; a suicide on Lake Como, 184
SuUa, recognises the Isiac cult in 80 B.C., 565
Sulpicia, verses of, mentioned by Martial and Sidonius, 80
Sun-worship, the highest form of nature- worship, 585 sq. ; Aurelian's temple, 586 ; Mithra identified with the Sun at Babylon, 587 ; influence of, in foster- ing theocratic ideas in the Empire, 617 sq.
Superstition.tales of, at Trimalchio's table, 131, 136 ; of Begulus, 156 ; of Sue- tonius aud Pliny, 168 ; various concep- tions of, 448 ; Plutarch on, 443 sq. ; astrology, 446 sqq. ; superstition of the Emperors, 447 sqq. ; of the great writers of the age, 451 sqq. ; its con- nection with medicine in the temples, 459 ; dream-orades, 461 ; Aristides has visits finom the gods, 466 ; super- stition of Butilianus and the Roman nobles in the reign of M. Aurelius, 475 ; rampant in Paphlagonia, 476 sq. ; cult of Genii, 479 ; universal be- lief in miracles, 482 ; apparitions in the Philopseudes of Lucian, 490 ; en- couraged by Mithraism, 602
Symmachus, religious conservatism of,
546 ; Letters of; 161
Syncretism, in Aristidea, 388 ; in Apuleios, ib. ; in Plutarch, 424 ; of the oriental worships, 558 ; in the worship of Isis, 581 ; and of Serapis, 588 ; Mithnusm the greatest effort of, 585, 592 ; st Babylon, 587 ; in Asia Minor, 588
Tacitus, his attitude to the tyranny of the early Caesars, 21 ; early history and experience of, 22 ; various views of; 23 ; the key to his tone as a historian, 24 ; a moralist, rather than a politician, 25, 26 ; views of the future, 26, 27 ; belief in birth and traditions, 28 ; early training, and ideal of family life, 28, 29 ; admiration for Agrioola, 29 ; his experience had affected his ideas of human natura and of the Divine govern- ment, 30 ; gloomy view of the time, 46 ; wavering attitude to superstition, 453, 585 ; faint hope of immortality, 502 ; account of Serapis, 562 Tarsus, D. Chrysostom on its vices, 870 Taurobolium, the, enthralling power of,
547 ; first glimpse of; 549 ; offered for Ant Pius in 160, ib. ; suspected by the Fathers, 555 ; history of, 556 ; Anaitis and Artemis Tauropolus, ib. ; question whether it became part of the worship of Mithra, ib., 609 ; its cere- monial and cost, 557 sq. ; its meaning and effects, 609
Tertullian, his tale of a priest of Cybde, 549 ; on the taurobolium, 555 ; holds up priests of Isis as an example, 582 ; his view of the sacraments of Ifithra, 613
Theagones, pupil of Peregrinus, 851; lectures in Bomc^ ib.
Theatre, the, a great oorruptor, 86
Thespesius of Soli, his vision of the un- seen world, 524
Thrasea, his character, compared with P&etus and Helvidius Prisons, 152
Thrasyllus, an astrologer of Tiberius, 448
Tiberius, conservatism of, in religion, 536 ; little sympathy with Hellenism, SS ; cost of his glaidiators, 241 ; belief in astrology, 448 ; tried the lottery at Padua, 472 ; persecutes the eastern cults, 566 ; treatment of descendants of Hortensius, 71 ; his mot on birth, 70
Timorchus, his visit to the other world, 526 sq.
Titinius Capito, writes a history of the victims of the Terror, 167
Titus, his love of the East and super- stition, 449 ; visit to shrine of the Paphian Venus, 472
Trade, great &ir at Cremona, 264 ;
INDEX
639
wandering traders, tbeir colleges, ib, ; immense development of, 258, 265 ; Juvenal's contempt for, 98 ; encourage- ment of^ by Claudius, 264
Tngan, provision o^ for poor children, 192 ; his friendship with Dion Chry- sostom, 869 sq. ; vows of the Arval Brotherhood for, 542 ; Pliny's Poim- gyric on, 48
Travel, became general, 205 ; example of Hadrian, i&. ; easy and luxurious, id. ; facilities of posting, 206 ; speed o^ by land and sea, 206 ; passion for change of scene, 380 sqq. ; travels of Aristides, 464 ; of Dion Chrysostom, 868
Trimalchio, the, of Petronius, sketches his own career, 129 ; his estates, ib, ; description of, ib, ; surprises of his dinner, 130 ; his libraries and his ignorance, 181 ; treatment of his wife, 137 ; gives an order for his monument, 186
Trophonius, the oracle of, 461
Ummidia Quadratilla, character in Pliny's Letters, 185 ; builds a temple and amphitheatre for Casinum, 224
Yarro, theology of, 417, 581 sq. ; on Magna Mater, 547 ; Saturae Meuippeae of, 126
Veleia, Ublet of, 192
Verginius, Bufus, guardian of Pliny, 145
Vespasian, accession o^ a moral revolu- tion, 1 ; his economies, 82, 227 ; tolerance of the Stoic opposition by, 40 ; treatment of astrologers, 45 ; de&med by men of the Neronian circle, 52 ; Hellenism of, 89 ; love of old associa- tions, 148 ; his immense task ; com- bined economy and liberality, 148 ; banishes the astrologers, yet believes in them, 449 ; consults the oracle on Mount Carmel, 472 ; conservative in religion, 586 ; restores the shrine of Ma^ia Mater at Herculaneum, 548 ; consents to work miracles at Alexandria, 578
Vestinus, Atticus, suicide o^ under Nero, 48
Vestinus, Julius, chief pontiff of I^ypt, a secretary of Hadrian, 568
Virgil, immense popularity of, his verses in the Graffiti of PompeiC 170 ; pictures of rural scenery by, 197 ; SarUa Ktr- ffilianae consulted by Hadrian, 450 ; Inferno of, its discordant conceptions, 491 sqq. ; recitation of the Aeneid at Trimalchio's table, 181
VitelliuB, cruelty and ghastly end of, 240 ; superstition of, 449 ; profiision of, 82 ; treatment of his freedman, Asiaticns, 206 ; employs EquUet as imperial secretaries, 107 ; his horo- scope, 449
Women, high ideal of^ iu the first cen- tury, 77 ; growth of wider interests in, 78; supOTstition among, i&. ; emancipa- tion of, began long before the Empire, 79 ; vices o^ in the time of the elder Cato, i6. ; Roman ideal otf lasted to the end, Q), ; cultivated women from Cornelia \A Serena, 80 ; growing influ- ence of; in public life, 81 ; "Mothers of the camp, patnmae^*' Owria muZi- erum at Lanuvium, 81 ; attractions of eastern cults for, 82 ; Roman girls care- fully guarded till marriage, when their perils began, 84 ; temptations of Roman matrons, ib. ; dangers of the Circus, theatre, and gladiatorial shows, 86 manners in the freedwomen class, 185 good women of Pliny's circle, 145 others of doubtful character, 185 Calpumia, wife of Pliny ; their ideal married life, 188 sq. ; beautiful char- acter of a girl, 189 ; ideal of; in Seneca, 829 ; light women keep fssts of Isis, 553, 565, 570 ; female worshippers of Magna Mater, 557
Xenocrates, on bad daemons, 481, 488 Xenophanes, on legend, 544
Zoticus, freedman of Elagabalus, sources of his wealth, 112
THE END
PrinUdby R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh,
•» •—
CCIJ .jlNCi-
i
k%l^ 053
"CK
i
|
1 ■ '^^ |
||
|
1 3 |
2044 037 |
-^
|
DATE DUE |
|
•■*"
DEMCO, INC. 38-2931
'•' ^su*.jn- ^..iwimt: