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KtliUnl by I*. lu ULI.MAN
Elementary Latin
By B. L. UiiLMAN and NORMAN 10. HnnuY
New Elementary Latin
By B. L. UI.LMAN and NOKMAN K, I/KNUY
Second Latin Book, Revised Edition
By B. L. ULLMAN and NOUMAN 10. HMNRY
Third Latin Book
By B. L. Ur.LMAN, NOUMAN 10. HtoNnr, and Dou-
KAN<7K B. WlIITB
Progress Tests in Latin
By B. L. ULLMAN and A. W.
Easy Latin Plays
.By LILLIAN B. LAWLMR
Rome and the Romans
BY GRANT K
ROME AND THE ROMANS
A Survey and Interpretation
BY
GRANT SHOWERMAN, PH.D.
PROFEbSOK OF CLASSICS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, MADISON, AUSCONSIN
DIRECTOR OF THE SUMMER SESSION, THE AMERICAN' ACADEMY IN ROME
HONORARY DOCTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PADUA.
CAVALIERE DELLA CORONA D'lTALIA
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
COFYRIQHT, 1931,
BY THE MACMII/LAN COMPANY
All rights reserved — no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the publisher,
except by a reviewer who wishes to quote
brief passages in connection with a review
written for inclusion in magazine or
newspaper.
Set up and electrotyped. School Kditlon published December, 793 r
May Printing, 1958
JPnnted in the United States of A manca
f erafc lilla dies u~b commii-fceraujr in aevo
TO THE READER
The following survey and interpretation of a great
ancient civilization is meant especially for students of
the literature and history of Rome. It is not, however,
a textbook only. Rome and the Romans is addressed to
all readers desiring acquaintance with the people whose
character and institutions are at the foundations of our
modern culture. Its purpose is humanistic. It aims to
assemble, not all facts, but significant facts; to present
information which will add not only to knowledge but to tha
meaning of life ; to make learning readable and reasonable.
CONTENTS
PART L ROME AND ITS MEANING
ETERNAL ROME 3
CHAPTER
I. ITALY TO-DAY . 4
II. ROME TO-DAY 9
III. THE RISE OP ANCIENT ROME 14
IV. THE RISE OF THE ROMAN STATE '21
V. ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN TIMES .... 29
PART II. THE ROMAN
THE ROMAN 43
VI. THE CITY IN WHICH HE LIVED 45
VII. How HE LOOKED 56
VIII. THE SOCIETY IN WHICH HE MOVED .... 65
IX. THE HOUSE IN WHICH HE LIVED 76
X, His CHILDHOOD AND EARLY TRAINING .... 89
XL His LATER TRAINING 100
XII. THE WOMEN OP His FAMILY 112
XIII. WHAT HE ATE AND DRANK 124
XIV. How HE SPENT THE DAY 137
PART III. LIVING ROME
LIVING ROME 151
XV. THE ROMAN CAREER 154
XVI. THE SENATOR 166
•XVII. THE VOTER 174
XVIII. THE LAWYER 181
XIX. THE TEACHER 194
XX. LETTERS AND THE ARTS ....... 203
CHAPTER
XXL THE DOCTOR
XXII. THE MONEY-MAKER ....
XXIII. THE COMMON MAN ....
XXIV. THE FARMER
XXV. ROMAN PORTRAITS ....
XXVI. THE WORSHIPER ....
XXVII. ROMAN HOLIDAYS ....
XXVIIL THE THEATER
XXIX. THE RACES
XXX. THE GLADIATORS ....
XXXI. THE BATHS
XXXII. IN LIGHTER VEIN ....
XXXIII. SATIRE AND ITS TARGETS .
XXXIV. A DINNER WITH THE NEWLY RICH .
XXXV. THE CRIMINAL
XXXVI. THE ROMAN DEAD ....
PART IV. GREATER ROME
PAQJM
216
225
234
251
26?
280
299
308
320
333
352
366
383
395
405
418
GREATER ROME 437
XXXVII. THE SPREAD OF ROMAN CIVILIZATION ... 438
XXXVIII. THE ARMY 453
XXXIX. MARE NOSTRUM 469
XL. BY LAND AND SEA 485
XLL THE ROMAN LAW 503
XLII. ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER 523
SLIII. ROMAN SPAIN 545
XLIV. ON THE NORTHERN BORDER 557
XLV. THE COMING OF CHRISTIANITY 572
XLVI. ETERNAL ROME 583
CHBONOLOGY 589
BOOKS 593
ANNOTATIONS 597
, 611
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author expresses his indebtedness and thanks to the
Oilman and Henry Latin Books for many illustrations;
to Professor Rostovtzeff for the use of two from his Rome;
to Mr. James Loeb for approval of numerous quotations
from the Loeb Classical Library ; to Charles Scribner;s Sons
for permission to quote Professor Abbott's translation of
two Latin inscriptions; to Professors Harold Bennett and
W. H. Page of the University of Wisconsin for criticism
of the chapters on the Senator and the Roman Law ; and tc
Director Gorham Phillips Stevens of the American Academy
in Rome for counsel and aid. The author desires to express
special obligation to Professor B. L. Ullman, his editor.
To the many works in the field of Roman life and letters to
which he has resorted for information or confirmation, and
to the commercial photographs employed in illustration,
the reader will find reference in the appropriate places*
MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
Wome, Showing Tomb of Hadrian. From Buhlmann and
Von Wagner, Das Alte Rom .... Frontispiece
PAGB
America to Rome 5
The National Capitol at Washington. Author's Photograph 6
Italy, (in color) between 8-9
Rome To-day. Alinari Photograph 10
Modern Rome 12
Earliest Latium 15
Walls of the Palatine City, of Servius Tullius, and of Aurelian 17
The Wall of Aurelian. Author's Photograph ... 19
The Early Roman State 22
Italia 24
A Page from the Codex Palatinus of Virgil. Vatican Library 31
The Great Hall of Pennsylvania Terminal in New York.
By courtesy of McKim, Mead, and White ... 33
The Mississippi State Capitol at Jackson. Author's Photo-
graph 34
Santa Maria in Cosmedin. Alinari Photograph ... 37
The East End of the Roman Forum Restored. Becchetti,
Rome 46
The Streets and Highways of Rome. Adapted ... 48
Rome in A.D. 64. From Tucker 51
A Restoration of Rome as Seen from the Capitoline Hill.
From Buhlmann and Von Wagner, Das Atie Rom . . 54
An Unidentified Roman. Lateran Museum, Rome.
Anderson Photograph .57
A Roman Lady. Capitoline Museum, Rome. Anderson
Photograph 58
Roman Shoes. From Curie, A Roman Frontier Post . . 59
Two Unidentified Romans and a Dacian. Dacian and So-
called Sulla, Vatican Museum; the third, Lateran
Museum. Anderson Photographs 61
The Procession on the Altar of Peace. Uffizi Gallery,
Florence. Ullman and Henry, New Ekmentary Latin . 66
An Unidentified Roman. National Museum, Rome.
Anderson Photograph 68
Marble Statues in the Naples Museum. Brogi Photograph 73
Plan of a Pompeian House. Adapted from Mau and Kelsey,
Pompeii, Its Life and Art 77
A Mosaic from Pompeii. Naples Museum. Brogi Photograph 79
Bronze Lamps and Candelabra from Pompeii. Naples
Museum. Brogi Photograph 82
The Peristyle of the House of the Vettii in Pompeii. Brogi
Photograph 83
Pompeian House Interior Restored. Ullman and Henry,
New Ekmentary Latin 85
The Street of the House of Diana in Ostia. Anderson Photo-
graph 87
A Four-Year-Old Boy. Barracco Museum, Rome. Alinari
Photograph 90
A Mother and Son. Capitoline Museum, Rome. Anderson
Photograph 93
Childhood Scenes on a Sarcophagus. Kircherian Museum,
Rome. Alinari Photograph 97
Bust of Homer from Herculaneum. Naples Museum.
Brogi Photograph 102
Bust of a Greek Personage. Naples Museum. Alinari
Photograph 105
Greek and Roman Portrait Busts in the Naples Museum.
Naples Museum. Brogi Photograph . . . .109
Two Roman Girls, National Museum, Rome. Anderson
Photographs 113
A Roman Girl. Capitoline Museum, Rome. Anderson
Photograph J14
MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS xv
PAQ>
A Wedding Scene. National Museum, Rome, Anderson
Photograph 116
Personal Adornment in Gold. Naples Museum. Brogi
Photograph 119
Two Roman Ladies. National Museum and Vatican
Museum, Rome. Anderson Photographs . . . 121
The Garden PJain of Assisi. Anderson Photograph , .125
Products Found in Pompeii. Naples Museum. Alinari
Photograph 127
An Ancient Meat Market. Dresden. Ullman and Henry,
New Elementary Latin 128
A Loaf of Bread from Pompeii. Ullman and Henry, Second
Latin Book 130
A Pompeian Triclinium, Ullman and Henry, New Elemen-
tary Latin 132
Cupids in a Wine Cellar. House of the Vettii, Pompeii.
Alinari Photograph 134
Remains of Imperial Palaces on the Palatine. Author's
Photograph 138
The Peristyle of the House of the ALmorini Dorati, or Gilded
Loves, in Pompeii. Esposito Photograph . . . 140
Diagram of Water Clock 143
An Unidentified Roman on a Formal Occasion. Lateran
Museum, Rome. Anderson Photograph .... 156
The Forum Restored as Seen from the Rostra. Tognelti,
Rome 160
A Gathering of Senators. FroiT "Julius Caesar" . . 167
The Curia, or Senate House, To-day. Ullman and Henry,
Third Latin Book 169
Rome from the Temple of Juno on the CapitoL From
Btihlmann and Von Wagner, Das AUe Rom . . . 171
The Forum of the Republic. Ullman and Henry. Third
Latin Book 175
The Roman Forum To-day. Alinari Photograph . . 179
The South Side of the Forum Restored. Tognetti, Rome . 183
A Plan of the Fonun under the Empire. Ullman and Henry,
Third Latin Book 187
Scene on One of Two Marble Balustrades in the Forum.
Anderson Photograph 190
Tablet and Styluses. From Curie, A Roman Frontier Post . 196
Paquius Proculus of Pompeii and Wife. Naples Museum . 198
A Roman Boy Being Taken to School. Ullman and Henry,
New Elementary Latin 200
Thalia, Muse of Comedy. Vatican Museum. Anderson
Photograph 204
A Lady with Stylus and Tablets. Naples Museum. Brogi
Photograph 207
A Tragic Mask. National Museum, Rome. Anderson
Photograph 208
The Temple of Juno Moneta on the Capitoline Hill in an
Artist's Restoration. From Buhlmann and Von Wagner,
DasAUeRom 211
Altar Fragment Found in Rome. National Museum, Rome.
Anderson Photograph 213
Aeneas Wounded. Naples Museum. Brogi Photograph . 218
Surgical Instruments from Pompeii. Naples Museum.
Brogi Photograph 220
Hippocrates, the First Great Greek Physician. Capitoline
Museum. Alinari Photograph 221
Coins of the Late Republic and Early Empire. British
Museum. From Rostovtzeff, A History of the Ancient
World, Rome 226
Lucius Caecilius Jucundus. Naples Museum. Brogi
Photograph 228
Foruin and Capitol Restored. Ullman and Henry, New
Elementary Latin 232
Ancient Writing Materials. Ullman and Henry, Third
Latin Book .235
The Tomb Relief of the JEIateiii. Lateran Museum, Rome.
Anderson Photograph . 237
MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGM
Oven and Mills. Pompeii. Brogi Photograph . . . 239
A Cloth Sale. Uffizi Gallery, Florence. From Rostovtzeff,
A History of the Ancient World 240
Loading a Grain Ship. Ullman and Henry, New Elementary
Latin 242
A Merchant's Tombstone. Naples Museum . . . 244
Blacksmith's Tools. From Curie, A Roman Frontier Post . 246
Cupids as Fullers. House of the Vettii, Pompeii. Alinari
Photograph 247
Cupids as Goldsmiths. House of the Vettii, Pompeii.
Alinari Photograph 249
The Church of Saint Francis and the Plain of Assisi.
Anderson Photograph 252
Campanile and Landscape at San Severino. Author's
Photograph 255
An Olive Crusher and a Hand-Mill for Grain. Pompeii.
Alinari Photograph 262
Plowing in Modern Italy. Photograph by Henry C. Atyeo 264
A Modern Plow near Rome. Author's Photograph . . 266
Marcus Tullius Cicero. Vatican Museum. Anderson
Photograph 268
Gaius Julius Caesar. Naples Museum. Brogi Photograph 272
An Unidentified Roman. Naples Museum. Brogi Photograph 274
The Youthful Marcus Aurelius 276
Marcus Aurelius in Triumphal Procession. Palace of the
Conservators, Rome. Anderson Photograph . . . 278
A Vestal Virgin. National Museum, Rome. Anderson
Photograph 281
The Temple of the Great Mother of the Gods on the Palatine
Hill. Photograph by Charles O'Connor . . . .283
Marcus Aurelius Worships before the Temple of Jupiter on
the Capitol. Palace of the Conservators, Rome.
Anderson Photograph 284
A Roman Sacrifice. Vatican Museum, Rome. Anderson
Photograph 287
MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
A Boy Society Honors Diana. Vatican Library, Rome.
Anderson Photograph ....... 289
An Early Round Temple in Rome. Ullman and Henry,
Third La*™ Book ........ 293
On the Alban Mount. Author's Photograph . . . 295
A Novel View of Saint Peter's. Author's Photograph . 297
A Tragic Mask from the Villa of Hadrian. National
Museum, Home. Anderson Photograph .... 299
Cupids & a Chariot Race. Pompeii. Brogi Photograph 301
An Aedile Giving the Signal at the Games. Palace of the
Conservators, Rome. Alinari Photograph , . . 304
The Theater of Marcellus in Rome. Anderson Photograph 310
A Comic Actor and His Masks. Lateran Museum, Rome.
Anderson Photograph ....... 312
A Roman Theater at Merida in Spain. Author's Photo-
graph .......... 317
Plan of the Circus Maximus. Adapted from Platner,
Topography and Monuments ...... 322
The Head of a Circus Driver. National Museum, Rome.
Anderson Photograph ....... 324
A Chariot and His Horse. National Museum, Rome.
Alinari Photograph ........ 327
Restoration ol a Scene at the Races. From a Painting by
Forti, Borne ......... 330 ,
A Charioteer with the Palm of Victory. Vatican Museum,
Rome. Anderson Photograph ...... 331
The Colosseum, Alinari Photograph ..... 334
Gladiatorial Armor. Naples Museum. Brogi Photograph . 339
A Representation of the Venatio ...... 341
The Interior of the Colosseum To-day. Alinari Photograph 343
The Amphitheater at Verona. Author's Photograph . . 347
Plan of the Baths of Diocletian. Adapted from Platner,
Topogr&phy wd Monuments ...... 353
The Caldarium of the Stabian Baths in Pompoii. Brogi
Photograph ......... 356
MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS xix
PAGE
A Restoration of the Interior of Caracalla's Baths. Ullman
and Henry, New Elementary Latin 358
A Fragment of the Baths of Diocletian, Author's Photograph 359
Bath Ruins at Carthage. Author's Photograph . . . 361
A Restoration of the Lower Campus Martius from the
Capitoline Hill. From Buhlmann and Von Wagner,
DasAlteRom 367
The Gardens of Ancient Rome. Adapted from Lanciani,
The Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome . . . 369
A Modern Roman Public Garden. Author's Photograph . 371
Children's Games in a Sarcophagus Relief, Vatican
Museum, Rome. Anderson Photograph .... 373
Wild Boar and Dogs. Naples Museum. Brogi Photograph 375
Boxers with the Caestus, or Gloves. Lateran Museum,
Rome. Anderson Photograph 376
The Emperor Vespasian. Capitoline Museum, Rome.
Anderson Photograph . 380
Marble Portraits of Romans. Naples Museum. Brogi
Photograph 385
Portraits of Roman Women. National Museum, Rome.
Anderson Photograph 388
Crumbling Rome. Author's Photograph . . . .391
Marble Portraits of Romans. Naples Museum. Brogi
Photograph 396
The Peristyle of a Pompeian House. From a painting by
Bazzani. Gramstorff Brothers, Inc., Maiden, Mass. . 399
Spartacus in Prison. From "Spartacus" .... 407
The Tullianum. Alinari Photograph 414
A Roman Lying in State. Lateran Museum, Rome . . . 419
The Appian Way about Three Miles from Rome. Anderson
Photograph 422
The Forum Restored as Seen from the Temple of Julius
Caesar. Tognetti, Rome 425
The Tombstone of Minicia Marcella. National Museum,
Rome. Author's Photograph 429
XX MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
FAQS
The Cremation and Apotheosis of the Empress Sabina.
Capitoline Museum, Rome. Anderson Photograph . . 432
The Roman Empire about A.D. 64 439
The Emperor Trajan and His Lictors. Lateran Museum,
Rome. Anderson Photograph 441
The Emperor Marcus AureUus Receiving the Northern
Barbarians in Submission. Palace of the Conservators,
Rome. Anderson Photograph 444
A Roman Aqueduct in Spain. Author's Photograph . . 447
The Roman Bridge over the Guadiana at Merida in Spain.
Author's Photograph 450
The Emperor and the Genius of Rome. Palace of the
Conservators, Rome. Anderson Photograph . . . 454
Roman Cavalry. Ullman and Henry, Second Latin*Book . 457
Caesar's Defenses at Alesia. Ullman and Henry, Second
Latin Book 460
The Statue of Vercingetorix at Alesia. Author's Photograph 461
A Military Roll. Vatican Museum, Rome. Anderson
Photograph 463
A Model of Ancient Roman Artillery. Ullman and Henry,
Second Latin Book 465
The Roman Empire at Its Greatest Extent . . . 472-473
A Bireme. Vatican Museum, Rome. Anderson Photograph 476
Mosaic at Ostia Showing a Port. Anderson Photograph . 478
A Trireme. From "Ben Hur" 482
The Sacred Way in Rome. Author's Photograph . . 48?
The Appian Way Two Miles from Rome. Photograph by
Mrs. W. G. Phelps 489
A Mosaic on the Floor of Baths in Ostia. Anderson Photo-
graph 492
The Roman Empire in the Time of Constantino I . . 495
The Emperor and Empress on the Road. From a Painting
by Forti, Rome 497
A Roman Galley. From "Ben Hur" 500
A Basilica Interior. Ullman and Henry, Third Latin Book 505
MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS xxi
PAGS
Plan of the Forum, A.D. 64. From Tucker, Life in the
Roman World of Nero and St. Paul 510
The Emperor Antoninus Pius. Vatican Museum. Ander-
son Photograph 514
Imperium Romanum. (in color) . . . between 514-515
A Restoration of the Quirinal Region. From Buhlmann and
Von Wagner, Das AUe Rom 521
Roman Africa 524
Roman Temple at Tebessa. Author's Photograph . . 527
Sidi Okba. Author's Photograph 529
The Byrsa, or Citadel, of Carthage. Author's Photograph 532
The Temple of Dea Caelestis, or Tanit, at Dougga.
Author's Photograph 535
The Ruins of Timgad. Author's Photograph . . . 541
The Amphitheater at Carthage. Author's Photograph . 543
Hispania .......... 546
The Aqueduct at Segovia. Author's Photograph . . 549
The Amphitheater at Italica. Author's Photograph . . 553
The Harbor at Cadiz, the Ancient Gades. Author's Photograph 555
Restored Bridge and Gate of the Saalburg. Ullman and
Henry, New Elementary Latin 558
Restored Tower of the Saalburg. Ullman and Henry,
Second Latin Book 560
Roman Britain 563
Altar Found in Scotland. From Curie, A Roman Frontier Post 564
The Roman Wall in Britain. From Haverfield, The Roman
Occupation of Britain 568
Christian Inscriptions from the Catacombs of Saint Calixtus.
National Museum, Rome. Alinari Photograph . . 573
A Sculptured Christian Sarcophagus. Lateran Museum,
Rome. Anderson Photograph 576
A Relief from a Christian Sarcophagus. Lateran Museum,
Rome. Anderson Photograph 579
Rome from the Palatine. Author's Photograph . . . 580
Rome from the American Academy 585
SALYE MAGNA PARENS SATT7RNIA TELLUS
VIBGHI,, Georgia n, 17i
PBIMA URBES HTTEB DIVOM DOMUS AUBEA ROMA
AUSONIITS, Ordo Urbium tfobiliwn 1
XfcOHVEE -AJST-0 ITS
ROME AND THE ROMANS
ETERNAL ROME
As far back as the time of Virgil, whose birth took place
two thousand years ago, men spoke of Rome as the Eternal
City. The world still uses the phrase, and the person is
rarely met who does not know that it means the city of Rome.
"The Eternal City" is not only an attractive phrase, but
a truthful one. There has never been a time since its found-
ing when Rome was not a living city, and since the Roman
State first spread beyond the bounds of Italy there has never
been a time when Rome was not important to the world.
Nor does its importance wane to-day. Rome in the
twentieth century is a living, growing, vigorous, ambitious
capital, the capital of a great nation as well as the capita.1
of a world-wide church.
A city which has endured for upwards of three thousand
years, which for over two thousand years has been a promi-
nent figure in the affairs of men, and which for twenty cen-
turies has been called Eternal, is not like other cities. We
owe it to our intelligence as citizens of the modem world to
understand the Meaning of Rome.
ITALY TO-DAY
The most direct way of beginning the study of Rome'y
meaning is to see the land of Italy and the city of Rome as
they are to-day. We shall be in a great company if we do
this. One million strangers entered Italy in 1925 from every
quarter of the world, and among them were hundreds of
thousands from the Americas.
The distance from Chicago to New York is about nine
hundred miles ; from New York to a French port, such as
Cherbourg, the distance is about three thousand miles;
and from Cherbourg through Paris, Dijon, Modane, Turin,
Genoa, and Pisa to Rome, about nine hundred and fifty
miles. The distance from Chicago to Rome is thus about
five thousand miles. As both cities are approximately 42°
north latitude, Rome is directly east of Chicago. We think
of Italy and Rome as southern because of their warmth and
because in English literature we read of them as in the south.
The route from any part of America to Italy is marked by
much that is related to Italian lands. There are Italian-
Americans in almost every city, and many public buildings,
including the great State Capitols, owe their character to
Italian or ancient Roman architecture. The same is even
more true in France, where there are also actual ruins of an-
cient Roman times. Between Paris and Dijon, for example,
are the remains of Alesia, high on a hill, the last refuge of
Vercingetorix from Caesar. A great statue of the Gallic
'.eader is visible from the train.
6
ROME AND ITS MEANING
The Kingdom of Italy, of which Rome has been the capital
since July 2, 1871, and into which one descends pleasantly
by electric train through the eight-mile tunnel of the Mont
Cenis route at Modane, consists principally of the mainland
of Italy and the islands of Sicily and Sardinia. Its area,
119,000 square miles, is about that of Nevada, about two
THE NATIONAL CAPITOL AT "WASHINGTON
I The dome owes its character to St. Paul's in London, which derives from St.
Peter's in Rome, which in turn derives from ancient Rome.
and one half times that of New York, and more than twice
that of Wisconsin. Sicily and Sardinia are each about ten
thousand square miles, the size of Vermont. The Apennines
form the great backbone of the peninsula, yet Italy is agri-
cultural, and rich in grains, fruits, oil, and wine — "the
garden of the world," in Byron's well-known phrase. The
Piave, the Brenta, the Adige, the Po, the Arno, the Tiber,
. ITALY TO-D/-Y 9
and the Volturno are the principal streams ; there are beauti-
ful lakes in the neighborhood of Rome and on the northern
border ; and there are fine harbors at Genoa, Spezia, Naples,
Messina, Palermo, Taranto, Bari, Ancona, Venice, and
Trieste. Italy has extensive colonial possessions in Africa,
including Tripolitania. •>]
The government of Italy is a constitutional monarchy.
The reigning sovereign is Victor Emmanuel III, who suc-
ceeded Humbert in 1900, who in 1878 succeeded Victor Em-
manuel II of Savoy and Sardinia, the first king of Italy.
The Kingdom of Italy came into being in 1860, when Sicily
and South Italy, conquered by Giuseppe Garibaldi, were
annexed to the kingdom of Victor Emmanuel in the north
of Italy. In 1870, the States of the Church, occupying
Central Italy and Rome and thus dividing North from
South, were also annexed, and the temporal dominion of the
Church restricted to the Vatican quarter of Rome, which on
February 11, 1929, became the Vatican State. In 1918, as
a result of the World War, the Austrian portions of Italy
south of the Alps about Trieste and Trent, and the port of
Zara on the east shore of the Adriatic, were added. Italy
now has a population of about forty millions.
The active conduct of government in Italy is in the hands
of the cabinet or council, whose head is president of the
council, or prime minister. The prime minister since 1922
is Benito Mussolini, The law-making bodies are the cham-
ber of deputies, about five hundred representatives chosen
by vote of the people, and the senate, composed of an un-
restricted number appointed for life because of distinction
in various important callings. The kingdom is divided
into ninety-two provinces, including the new provinces in
Trent and the Trieste region, and the province of Zara.
Italy proper contains seventy-nine, the remainder, except
8 ROME AND ITS MEANING
Zara, being in Sicily and Sardinia. All are under the
jurisdiction of an equal number of prefects and provincial
councils, each with its seat in nhe provincial capital. The
provinces, or counties, are further divided, the smallest unit
being the commune. There are more than eight thousand
communes, each likewise with a council and under the
authority of a sindaco. Since October, 1922, when the
Fascist! under their organizer Mussolini took over authority>
the working of the Italian constitution has been of necessity
irregular, but is gradually approaching the normal. The
Fascisti rose to prominence in 1919 as a much-needed pro-
test against the laxities and disloyalties that followed the
war.
Besides the provinces, there are other divisions of Italy
whose names are much used. Every reader is familiar with
Tuscany, Lombardy, Piedmont, Venetia, the Marches,
Romagna, TJmbria, and Calabria. These, and as many
more, represent the old-time dukedoms and principalities
whose union made possible the present kingdom. Many cu
them, like Campania, Latium, and Umbria, were known
by the same names in the times of Caesar, Cicero, and VirgiL
The Italian language as variously spoken in them results in
the many dialects of Italy. The Piedmontese find it diffi-
cult to talk with the Neapolitans, the Calabrians with the
Venetians; though the language written and spoken in
Florence is the standard and is universal with educated
ROME TO-DAY
The capital of United Italy, at first in Turin, where the
first parliament met in 1861, was fixed at Florence in 1864,
and in 1871 was transferred to Rome, which had fallen
before the national army on the twentieth of September,
1870. It was one of the greatest testimonials to the power
still exercised by the name of Rome that not only Italy but
the sentiment of the world in general demanded the location
of the modern capital in the seat of the ancient.
Rome to-day is approached by rail through Turin, Genoa,
and Pisa from the northwest; through Como, Milan, and
Florence from the north; through the mountains from
Ancona and the east coast, and by two routes from Naples
and the south, the older inland, and the newer the short line
along the west coast. It lies on the Tiber seventeen miles
from the sea, in the midst of a rolling plain called the Cam-
pagna, which includes in general the flat parts of ancient
Latium. The .Qampagna is about forty miles wide from the
sea to its north^ancl-east boundary, the Apennines, and is
twice as long fro^n 'nortiwest to southeast, with limits not
so definite.
At twenty-flye miles to the north of Rome the train from
Florence passes Mount Soracte, made famous by Horace.
The train from the Adriatic and the east, as it leaves the
Apennines eighteen miles from Rome, passes througji Tivoli,
Horace's ancient Tibur, where the "headlong Auio," prae-
ceps Anio, plunges its three hundred feet down from the
ROME TO-DAY 11
mountains into the plain. The train from Naples, twenty
miles before reaching Rome, skirts the Alban Mount, which
rises out of the plain three thousand feet and forms the most
striking feature in the Roman landscape.
The city of Rome to-day has a population of more than
nine hundred thousand. The Rome of ancient times may
have contained above a million. The area occupied by the
modern city approximates a circle with a diameter of four
miles. The ancient city was somewhat less in extent, but
more thickly populated. The great wall of Aurelian, built
in its first form by Aurelian, emperor, A.D. 270-276, still
stands, and is eleven miles in circumference, inclosing an
area a little over three miles in diameter. The city of to-
day extends far beyond it in many directions, but only the
northern half of the city inside the wall is densely populated ;
the southern half is occupied by great areas containing only
ruins and excavations, and by smaller areas containing
modern houses.
We may think of the modern city as consisting of four
parts. First, there are the vast spaces of ruin and empti-
ness and partial occupation that compose the southern por-
tion. These include the Roman Forum and tiie Palatine
Hill, maintained by the Government as national reserves,
the Colosseum, and many other ancient monuments.
Second, there is the newer part within the walls, mostly in
the north and northeast and belonging to the early decades
of the past sixty years. The railway terminus, dating from
1870, is in this part, on the broad plateau of the Quirinal
and the Esquiline. Third, there is the older part, from one
to four centuries old, extending from the Capitoline Hill
and the Tiber Island on the south to the Porta del Popolo
on the north and including the entire Campus Martius, with
Traistevere and the Borgo across the river. Fourth, there
ROME TO-DAY 13
are the newest quarters, mostly outside the wall of Aurelian,
and all belonging to the past thirty years. These new por-
tions include the Prati, near the Mausoleum of Hadrian to
the north of Saint Peter's, the area outside the northeastern
gates, and the district about the Porta San Paolo to the
south. The population of the city has tripled in sixty
years, and is constantly increasing.
Rome to-day is neither a great commercial city nor an
industrial center nor a port, though it is a railway center.
Its manufactures are few, and chiefly in the arts and crafts.
Its trade is mainly of the slighter sort that ministers to the
daily and occasional needs of a large permanent population
increased by countless travelers. Rome is the national
capital ; it is the capital of the Roman Catholic Church ; it
contains the ruins of the capital of the ancient world ; it is
in Italy,
"The garden of the world, the home
Of all Art yields and Nature can decree."
Its greatest industry is th^ care of the stranger within the
gates — of those who come from the ends of Italy to manage
the multitudinous affairs of State and Church, and of those
who come from the ends of the earth to see the world's most
famous city.
Ill
THE RISE OF ANCIENT ROME
There was a time when Rome was not, and when the
Seven Hills rose uninhabited out of a leafy and grassy wilder-
ness. There was a time before that when there were >no
Seven Hills, but all the Campagna region was under the sea,
and the mouths of the Tiber and the Anio were among the
hills at the foot of the Apennines.
The Roman Campagna is a volcanic region. The living
craters of Aetna and Vesuvius, and the dead craters of the
Roman neighborhood, are the signs of a long line of weak-
ness in the earth's crust. While a broad bay still rested
over the future site of Rome, so geology tells us, upheavals
and eruptions covered and elevated the bed of the sea until
the land appeared above the waters. The surface thus
formed was then furrowed by the abundantly flowing streams
of geologic times and further modified by the volcanic rise
of the Alban Mountains in its midst until the landscape
was formed which we know to-day.
Into this rolling, hummocky plain of primitive times
came the first dwellers in the Roman region. They were
the wandering cave-men of the Old Stone Age, and they lived
their scant and straggling life many thousands of years
before Rome began. After them came the men of the Late
Stone Age, a part of the wave that came over the Alps from
France or up from Sicily and the south, and after these a
wave from over the Alps, a part of the migrant movement
that earlier peopled Greece with the Doric race.
14
16 ROME AND ITS MEANING
This later wave was of Indo-European stock, and it
blended with the Mediterranean race upon which it came
as it spread throughout the Italian land. Its men were
probably the first to settle on the Seven Hills beside the
Tiber, a thousand years or more before the time of Livy and
Virgil, who could only try, as we are trying, to see in imagina-
tion the earliest men of Rome.
The story of the rise and growth of the ancient city will
best be told by setting down the various phases through
which it passed. Seven may be mentioned here, in most of
which Rome has a definite boundary marked by a wall.
First, there was the Palatine City. The earliest form of
Rome came into existence when the strongest of the shepherd
settlements which had already been made on the little heights
along the Tiber by the race from over the Alps assumed a
leadership, improved its defenses by building a wall of
stone about its hill, and became known as Roma, the River
City. This city was on the Palatine, the most inviting and
most convenient of the hills. It was about one hundred
and fifty feet above the Tiber level, had an area of forty
acres, and was about a quarter of a mile square.
Second, the Septimontium. This form of the city in-
cluded the Palatine and the skirts of the Caelian Hill to the
east and of the Esquiline to the northeast. The five dis-
tricts or precincts which now were added to the two precincts
of the Palatine had probably hitherto been separate villages.
It is likely that the added portions also were fortified, but
with less substantial walls than those of the Palatine.
Third, the City of the Four Regions. The four regions,
or wards, reached farther over the Caelian and the Esquiline,
taking in the Oppian and Cispian, which were spurs of the
Esquiline, and included also two new hills, the Quirinal and
die Viminal. The names of the regions were Palatina,
18 ROME AND ITS MEANING
Suburana, Esquilina, and Collina. The Collina, or Hill
Region, consisted of the Quirinal and Viminal, which the
Romans always called colles, hills, while they called the other
hills monies. It is doubtful whether this form of the city
was walled at every point.
Fourth, the City of Servius. The Servian City is named
from Servius Tullius, the sixth king of Rome. It reached
out to the south and took in the Aventine ; to the north it
included the remaining area of the Esquiline and Viminal
and Quirinal ; and to the west it added the Capitoline. The
wall which inclosed it is still to be seen in about thirty frag-
ments, some of them quite imposing. The most remarkable
are near the railway station and at the south of the Aventine.
Fifth, the City of the Republic. By this is meant the
city as it grew during the five centuries from the expulsion
of the Tarquins in 509 B..C. to the time of Augustus and the
Empire. There was no walling of Rome during this period,
unless it is true, as has been suspected, that the defense
called the Servian Wall belongs to the fourth century instead
of the sixth when Servius reigned. The Roman State had
by this time pushed its boundaries so widely into the outside
world that the capital was far from danger. The city of
Cato, who lived from 234 to 149 before Christ, had grown
beyond its now useless walls, and numbered upward of half
a million.
Sixth, the City of Augustus, or the City of the Fourteen
Regions. This was the City of the Republic set in order,
increased, and beautified. It was divided into fourteen
wards, one of which was beyond the Tiber; it was well
watered, perhaps fairly well lighted, and well policed, and
was rapidly changing from brick to marble. The old wall
of Servius was hard to find among the buildings of a city
which had long since grown over and bevond it, and the lejral
THE RISE OF ANCIENT ROME
19
city 1imit; extended more than once in the five hundred
years of the Republic, was pierced at thirty-seven points
by as many roads to Rome, and inclosed a city ten miles in
circumference.
4»'«,
;" ••/'>"•'< '
V ' ' ^-. •' / •
•H'--v ^ v'\ ' Vft-'/:V •''''>-'"i\-'.
. ',-f^V.
r .* ,4- -.,..._; '^iv
--'v-
THE WALL OF ATJRELIAN
The greater part still exists. Here it borders the Protestant Cemetery, in which
are the tombs of Keats and Shelley.
Seventh, the City of Aurelian, In alarm at the threats
of invasion from beyond the Alps, Aurelian and Probus in
A.D. 272-276 reared the mighty wall which bears the former's
name and still exists. In brick and concrete twelve feet
thick, rising sometimes to sixty feet, with loopholed gal-
leries, and with parapet crowned in the course of its eleven
miles by nearly four hundred towers, it was the last wall to
girdle the city in ancient times.
20 ROME AND ITS MEANING
It would be interesting to continue with other phases of
the city — the sinking Pagan city that fell a prey to Alaric
in A.D. 410 ; the Christian city rising in its midst ; the ruined
and empty Rome of the Middle Ages ; the city of the Renais-
sance and Raphael, spreading from Saint Peter's into the
Campus Martius at the bend of the Tiber, and surrounded
by spacious fields made picturesque by ancient monuments ;
and the city of the pope-monarchs which had to yield when
Italy knocked at the gates. Here, however, it is ancient
Rome with which we are concerned.
In speaking of the city's earliest forms, the chronicler can
use no dates at all, and very few names. There is little
that is definite in the story of Rome before the Republic.
That there were kings, and many of them, there is no doubt,
and it is certain that the Etruscans at one time were its
rulers for a hundred years or more. That the city began
and grew in some such way as we have described, there is
also no doubt. It has been agreed to speak of the founding
of Rome as taking place on the twenty-first of April, 753 B.C.,
and the date is celebrated every year in Rome, and has been
celebrated from time to time since ancient days. It has
been agreed to speak of the last king's reign as ending in
509 B.C. These dates, and all the other dates and names
and events of the Rome of the Kings, belong to legend
rather than history ; but there is no harm in supposing that
legend here is a substantial indication of the truth. Of
recent years, the tendency has been to see in the tales of
Livy and Virgil something more than the story-telling of
patriot and poet.
IV
THE RISE OF THE ROMAN STATE
It is our wont to speak of Rome as a conquering state,
and to think of its expansion into the empire that ruled the
ancient world as due to the calculating and selfish use of
power. Conquest by force of arms, however, is only one oi
the many ways by which an empire comes to pass. There
are also the interests of trade, the appeal of convenience or
economy in administration, the feeling for language or reli-
gion, the desire for cooperation or the need of protection, or
even mere sentiment begotten by some trifling incident
that catches the fancy and stirs the hearts of men. All
these, as well as the passion for power, may be the causes
of a state's expansion.
Yet we may go even deeper, and think of the Roman
State as a product of nature. In part, at least, it grew as
any plant or other living organism grows, because of the
irresistible urge of life whose law is growth.
The first expansions of Rome took place when the little
communities on the neighboring hills were united with the
Palatine City. We have seen the original city become the
Septimontium, and the Septimontium expand into the City
of Four Regions. It is likely that the annexations then
involved were the peaceable arrangements of men who
recognized the common interest.
This, however, is the expansion of the city, and it is the
State which now concerns us. There was a period during
which the territory covered by the city was identical with
21
THE RISE OF THE ROMAN STATE 23
the total area of the State ; but this was very brief. The
city soon established its formal rule over the neighboring
pastures and tilth, and the real expansion of the Roman
State had begun.
When Rome emerges from the legendary time of the kings
in 509 B.C. as the Republic, its territory still is very small.
The Etruscans across the Tiber hem it in from west and
north, to north and east the still unfriendly Sabines and
Aequians and Hernicans are only some twenty or thirty
miles away, and to east and south the Latins are still masters
of themselves. The Roman State consists of lands perhaps
twenty-five miles by ten, bounded clearly by the Tiber and
the sea, and less precisely by the mountain limits of the
plain. In the Latin League of the year 500 B.C., the Latins,
the nearest kin of Rome, have not yet admitted to their
fellowship the city on the Tiber.
The expansion of Rome, however, is not long delayed,
and, once begun, it has a sure and rapid progress. By
493 B.C., Rome is a member of the League. In 487 B.C. she
breaks the Hernican power, and in 486 B.C. the Hernicans
are with her against the Volscians and Aequians to their
south and north. By 431 B.C. these two nations no longer
oppose her, and she is the leader, if not the ruler, of
all the peoples east of the Tiber to the Apennines and
south of Mount Soracte to the sea. Her lands form a tri-
angular territory some forty miles along the Tiber by
seventy-five along the sea and about the same along the
mountains. It is a territory whose bounds are set by
nature and whose peoples have much in common.
The next expansion is into lands across the Tiber. The
Etruscans who once controlled Rome are finally made less
dangeroi^.hpr tha-f^U of Veil in the ten-year siege that ended
in 396 B.C. The final and unsuccessful stand of Etruria in
26 ROME AND ITS MEANING
became a Roman province with the taking of Corinth in
146 B.C., the year in which Carthage finally was destroyed
and the north of Africa annexed. At this time the sway
of Rome, though not in every part consolidated, extended
from Spain to Syria and from the Rhone Valley to the coasts
of Africa. The Mediterranean was a Roman sea, but not
yet cleared of perils from pirates and the fleets of less
irregular foes of Rome.
It was not until Augustus' time that this vast territory,
with areas later added, was firmly knit together within the
boundary which remained so long the definite limit of the
civilized world. At the end of the Emperor's reign, in
A.D. 14, the Empire's limit was marked on the north by the
English Channel, the Rhine, the Danube, and the Black
Sea, and was uncertain only as the eagles advanced beyond
the Rhine. On the south, the Sahara was the bound, with
the Nile Valley at its eastern end. On the west was the
ocean, and on the east a line that never could quite be
counted on, from the eastern end of the Black Sea to Syria
on the south, and thus to Egypt, with allied states like
Palmyra to mediate between Rome and the distant Arme-
nians and Parthians in the north and the restless desert
peoples in the south. The boundary of the Augustan Em-
pire was practically the permanent limit of the Romaic
State for nearly five hundred years. It was altered once,
when Claudius conquered Britain, for whose protection
Hadrian and Antoninus built th/3 walls on the Scottish
border which are still to be seen; again, when Trajan in
A.D. 106 annexed what is now Roumania, then called Dacia ;
and lastly, when the Euphrates was made more surely the
eastern border. Aside from these changes, the line between
Rome and barbarism was constant until the weakening of
the fourth and fifth centuries resulted in its obliteration a?
THE RISE OF THE ROMAN STATE 27
the outside world came over the bounds to conquer and be
blended with the older civilization.
The rise of the Roman State should not be thought of
as merely the growth of a military power. During the thou-
sand years or more of its experience as a rising and ruling
state, its conflicts of arms with the enemy abroad were not
its only or even its greatest struggles. While the struggle
to advance the borders and to maintain the integrity of the
State was going on along the far-flung battle lines of the Re-
public and Empire, another struggle was going on in the
Roman Forum and in the. Roman senate house. In this
struggle it was not the right of the State to further territory
that constituted the spoils of war, but the right of the citizen
to further liberty.
The struggle was long and obstinate, and not without
its victories. Here are some of the rights conceded only
after long contention and frequent violence : the right of
the people to be ruled by elected officeholders; the right
to the control of the officeholders by means of tribunes
with veto power ; the right themselves to hold the various
offices of quaestor, aedile, praetor, and consul ; the right of
Ihe plebeian to marry into the patrician class ; the right to
limit the amount of land to be owned by the rich man ; the
right to share in the ownership of the land ; the right to a
reward from the conquered lands at the end of military
service; the rigjit to state support in the distribution of'
grain.
It took two hundred and fifty years for the common people
of Rome to finish the series of struggles for the right of
holding office by seating their first pontifex maximus. The
question of land limitation against the rich and land privilege
in favor of the poor runs through five hundred years of
Roman history, and cost the lives of many noble men. The
28 ROME AND ITS MEANING
struggle between the orders was long and bitter, but from It
the world came off with profit. The lessons of the Roman
Republic were not forgotten in the Empire. They passed
into the world's greatest code of law, and into the modem
code of civic morality.
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN TIMES
Now that we have become acquainted with Rome to-day
as the capital of the United Kingdom of Italy and Sicily,
and have seen the origin and growth of ancient Rome and
the Roman State of which it was the center, and have
thus constructed a setting for Eternal Rome, let us return
to the statement with which we began, that Rome is differ-
ent from other cities, and that wa owe it to ourselves
to understand what makes it so. Let us look more closely
into the relation between ancient Rome and our own
times.
To state at once and briefly this relation, the civilization
in which we live is descended from that of ancient Rome.
Our life to-day is a continuation of the life of the ancient
Romans. The blood ancestry of America is to be found in
various nations of Europe and other parts of the world,
but our culture traces back to Rome. American civiliza-
tion is essentially English. The present character of Eng-
land's culture is due to the coming of the Normans in 1066,
the date of the Battle of Hastings. The Norman culture
grew out of the French, and the French resulted from Julius
Caesar's conquest of Gaul in 58 B.C. to 49 B.C. The stream
of history flows from Italy to France, from France to Eng-
land, from England to America. It has flowed to us through
other channels also — through France directly without pass-
ing to England, through Spain, through Holland, through
Germany, and from Italy straight across the ocean ; but
29
30 ROME AND ITS MEANING
our language and our ways of thinking and acting have come
to us in largest part on the current that flowed from English
shores. We are Anglo-Romans, or Anglo-Latins. The
civilization of the United States and Canada is really Latip,
and only less unmixed than that of the Latin races.
But this claim will seem better founded if we look at our
modern culture in detail. What are some of the factors
that go to make up the cultural environment which makes
it possible for us to enjoy the life, liberty, and pursuit of
happiness which we call our inalienable rights, and what in
each case is our debt to ancient Rome?
First, there is language. About sixty per cent of the
words in the English tongue are descended, through Norman-
French, modern French, Italian, and Spanish, and directly,
from the Latin. You cannot read with the same precise
understanding, and you cannot speak or write with the same-
intimate, accurate, refined, and rich command of English,
unless you know the language which lies at its foundation.
Nor is, it true that the Latin part of English consists only
of long, stately, and unnecessary words, and that simple
Anglo-Saxon would and should suffice. Try sometime to
write or speak without using pen or pin, date, fate, rate, or
state, class or glass, face, space, grace, or case, cause or clause,
form or grade or foci or grand, or a hundred other words of
one syllable which are Latin ; or try to get on without the
host of Latin words in two syllables, like honor, glory, music,
money, language. Try to write a paragraph or to talk a
quarter of an hour without using words of Latin origin at
all. English is the richest of the world's languages, and it
is the richest because it is a composite of many languages,
but chiefly of Latin and Anglo-Saxon, with all the resource-
fulness in clarity, precision, rhythm, harmony, variety,
fitness, and freshness that belongs to a tongue abounding ir
ANCIENT ROME AND MODEEN TIMES 31
words and phrases of identical meaning but different in
origin and character.
1NC1!£50UIC11QSCAU1D1CAM\ISAAW)U5-
lUVMniAMUVJUIUAMfUVIUMYUCM-
mMUIAVf MIIDtGiANiMAUNAlCJU-
OMM15UN WAMOU5iaOCXMl I5tyf NIT AI0110-
A PAGE FBOM TEE CODEX PALATiNTrs OF VIRGIL
. 'ne 67 of Eclogue IX and lines 1-21 of Eclogue X. This manuscript, in the
Vatican Library, is about 1500 years old.
Second, there is literature. We may dismiss this briefly
3y saying that English and American literature as a whole
s very imperfectly read by those who are unacquainted
32 ROME AND ITS MEANING
with the Latin language and literature and with Roman
history. Milton, Spenser, Grey, Dryden, Byron, Thackeray,
and Shakespeare himself, abound in contacts with Roman
and Italian letters. To remove from English literature all
allusions, inspirations, and imitations due to ancient Rome
would be to wreck it quite as badly as the language we speak
would be wrecked if all its Latin words were canceled.
Third, there is the field of art. Our sculpture shows at
a glance its origin in Italy, Rome, and Greece. The paint-
ing of the Italian Renaissance, from which all modern paint-
ing took its lessons, is rich with Roman subject matter and
shows direct descent from the Roman Empire through the
mosaics and manuscript illuminations of Byzantine and
medieval times, and through the pictures on the walls of
the catacombs and earliest churches. Our architecture
shows on every street how much we owe to ancient Rome.
Our great capitol buildings, our banks and railroad stations,
our university halls and our libraries, with their pillars and
arcades and domes and vaults and coffered ceilings, all lead
us back to Italy and Rome. There is hardly a dome in
America which is not to be traced either through the capitol
at Washington and Saint Paul's in London to Saint Peter'p
in Rome and thus to ancient Rome, or to Saint Peter's
directly and thus more quickly to ancient Rome. If you
live in a city of any size, you are never far from the visible
influence of Rome.
Fourth, there is law. The Roman State was the world's
great laboratory of law. The thousand years and more
from the time the Romans emerge into history at the be-
ginning of the Republic to the times of Justinian after the
fall of the Western Empire represent the experience of a
great race in the search for justice. That experience, ex-
pressed in the great Code of Justinian, which was completed
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN TIMES
S3
-ox A.D. 528^534, was Rome's greatest contribution to the
world. Romar law is in operation still in Italy, in France,
in Spain and Latin America, in Louisiana, Porto Rico, and
the Philippines, and in the government of the
THE GEBJAT HALL OF PENNSYLVANIA TERMINAL IN NEW YCIIK
The coffered vaulting, the great columns, the arches and mouldings, and the sizo
make it similar to the Baths of Caracalla or the Basilica of Constantino, whose ruin*
in Rome have been the inspiration of many modern buildings.
Catholic Church- Even in the United States at large, in
the British Empire, and in the Mohammedan countries, to
which its descent was less direct, its influence is profound.
With the migrations of the Latin and British peoples and .
34
ROME AND ITS MEANING
with the spread of the Church, Roman law has touched every
part of the world.
Fifth, there is religion. The Christian faith, spreading
at first from Palestine to the cities of Asia Minor and Gieece,
emerges into the light at Rome in Nero's reign, and soon has
THE MISSISSIPPI STATBJ CAPITOL AT JACKSON
This and fifteen other State Capitol domes, with the National Capitol Dome,
trace back through Saint Paul's in London to Saint Peter's in Renaissance Rome,
dad thus to ancient Rome.
its greatest center there. From Romans of every class,
tired of the vanities and the selfishness and hardness of the
old society, the new religion gathered its faithful ; from the
Roman house, basilica, and temple, it received the sugges-
tions resulting in the architecture of its places of meeting ;
and into the vast framework of the Roman Empire the new
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN TIMES 35
Jife of Christian civilization gradually grew, to take the
place of the old when Pagan civilization declined. "That
ihe working of unspeakable grace might be spread throughout
the whole world/7 wrote Leo the Great, Pope from A.D. 440
to A.D. 461, "Divine Providence prepared the Roman
Empire."
Sixth, there is morality. The morals of our own day are
the morals of ancient Rome. We owe their preservation
and their currency to three things. First, the morality of
pagan times passed into the Christian code of ethics. The
enlightened ideas of Cicero in De Offiaiis were also the teach-
ing of the Church. Second, Roman law itself was the em-
bodiment of ancient ideas of right conduct, and brought
them with it into modern law. Third, the Roman ideal of
character has reached us in the history and literature that
for countless generations have had a large place in the edu-
cation of the ruling classes. Roman ideals of manhood and
womanhood, of fatherhood and motherhood, of honor, faith,
and patriotism, of loyalty and devotion, of personal bravery,
of resoluteness and endurance, of purity and incorruptibil-
ity, have entered into the fiber of human character through
the centuries.
The analysis of our modern civilization thus shows that
we are still living in large part the life of ancient Rome.
The civilization of to-day is not the work of to-day alone
but an inheritance from the times when Rome was the
Mother-city of the world. It is more than that; it is an
inheritance from the total human past, for Rome herself
transmitted to the nations of the modern world not only
her own experience but that of the civilizations preceding
her. Egypt, Chaldaea, Assyria, Greece, the nearer East,
and Carthage, and ruder Germany, Gaul, and Spain, gave
as well as received when they came under the sway of
36 ROME AND ITS MEANING
Roman arms and institutions. Rome was the heir of the
ages. She became possessed of what the world had to give,
lived it into her experience, set her seal upon it, conserved
it, and bequeathed it to the medieval and modern world.
She is the connecting link between her forerunners, be-
ginning with Egypt, "the eldest daughter of civilization,"
and her descendants, ending with the twentieth century in
the Americas.
"She gathered together the precious metal of ancient civilization,
fused and coined it anew, and put it once more into circulation.
She was the lens which received, condensed, and transmitted the
rays of human experience. She was the bridge to which all the
ways of the old pagan times converged, and from which diverged
all the ways of Christian times. She was the channel into which
the streams of ancient civilization flowed together to mingle their
waters before being swept on to divide and subdivide into the
currents of modern civilization. The legacy of preceding ages,
administered and increased by her, became the heritage of ageb
succeeding. Whatever in the culture of our own day is held dear
— in art, literature, learning, in juristic or religious institutions —
is traceable first to Italy of the Renaissance, and then to ancient
Rome, where it either came into being or was adapted to the needs
of practical experience. The generations of to-day are still sub-
jects of the empire of Rome. Her line is gone out through all the
earth and her words to the end of the world."
There is a building in modern Rome which stands as a
symbol of what we have said. It is the Church of Santg
Maria in Cosmedin, south of the Capitoline Hill and near the
Tiber. It is a church in use to-day like any other church,
and, by the uneducated or unobservant, might easily be
thought a building of to-day. If it is looked at carefully,
however, we soon become aware that its roof and stucco
veneer are all of the exterior that make it modern. Its
charming campanile belongs to the twelfth century; its
SANTA MARIA -N COSMEDIN
campanile is of the twelfth century, and the church is built into and over an
ancient edifice, probably a temple of Ceres.
38 ROME AND ITS MEANING
walls beneath the stucco are likewise medieval ; the pillars
of its portico and the lintels of its doors are ancient Roman.
If we enter into the calm spaces of its interior, we soon see
that the organ, the hangings at door and window, the chairs
in use at the Mass being said in the chapel at one side, the
finish of the walls, and the ceiling, are the only modern parts.
The mosaic of variegated marbles on whose exquisite pattern
we tread is of the twelfth century, and the marble which
was cut to make it came from the ruins of ancient Roman
buildings. The columns that make the aisles are pillars
from ancient temples or porticoes. The walls whose finish
gives them a modern look are really medieval, and imbedded
in them at intervals are the ancient Roman columns that
belonged to the building into and over which the church was
reared. This is not all. Under the floor of the church are
the rugged walls of some structure belonging to times before
the temple or portico, just as the temple or portico belongr
to times before the church. If we hearken to the Mass,
we know indeed that its message is for the confirmation and
the inspiration and the consolation of the people of to-day ;
but its language is the tongue of ancient Rome and its mes-
sage unchanged by the passing of nearly twenty centuries
The structure of modern culture is like the structure oi
Santa Maria in Cosmedin. The untaught and the un-
reflecting accept it without thought as the creation of recent
times, and even deny its dependence upon antiquity ; and
yet, were all that is ancient in its substance taken from it,
the structure would collapse in terrible and hopeless ruin.
Such is the meaning of ancient Rome to modern times.
Ancient Rome is not a remote and unrelated time and place.
The ancient Romans are our ancestors in the direct line. To
be acquainted with them is to know our family history and.
to receive its legacies and inspirations. To study the
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN TIMES 39
guage, literature, and history of ancient Rome is to contrib-
ute not only to the formation of intellectual habit and to our
understanding of the language we speak and write, but to
our appreciation of the meaning of human life.
"Whatever men may babble about modern education,"
wrote the Dutch novelist, Maarten Maartens, "two influ-
ences, incomparable and consistent, confer on the human
mind a free-masonry of refinement — the study of the
classics, and the appreciation of Italy."
PART n
THE ROMAN
THE ROMAN
Thus far we have been occupied in contemplating the
fact of Rome's existence, its long participation in the affairs
of men, the nature of the land in which it stood and stands,
the manner of its birth and rise to power, the growth
of the State of which it was the capital, and the de-
scent of its language, literature, art, law, religion, and
morality through the ages and into the life of men to-day.
We grouped these studies under the heading, Rome and Its
Meaning.
The study of ancient Rome is at the same time an obliga-
tion and a pleasure. It is an obligation because we are more
intelligent as men and citizens if we know what our fore-
runners have done and what their achievements have to do
with life to-day. It is a pleasure because to meet our kins-
men in culture a long way off and in a distant time is an ex-
perience rich in human interest. Let us therefore enter
actively upon a study of the ancient city and its life.
The best plan for our purpose will be to make acquaintance
with the Roman. Let us first of all know him as a person.
Against the background of the physical Rome in which he
lived, let us try to see him as he looked on the street, let us
become acquainted with the social structure in which he
moved, let us enter his house and see how he lived, look on
at his nurture and education, become acquainted with the
woman who bore h™ and the woman he married, accept
his invitation to dinner and share in what he ate and drank,
and take some account of how he spent his time. All this
will place distinctly before us the man and woman whose
43
44 THE ROMAN
lives went into the making of the culture to which our own
is so much in debt.
When we have been thus introduced to the Roman, we
shall be prepared to go with him into the scenes of business
and pleasure which made up his life as a citizen of the Roman
State and its capital city, and to become acquainted in
detail with the life of the Roman people.
THE CITY IN WHICH HE LIVED 47
latter part of the first century, as numbering at least a
million.
There was no wall to inclose the city of Augustus. The
wall called Servian had long since been obscured by the
crowded buildings of an expanding capital, and was mostly
inside the city limit. The limit or line that legally inclosed
the Augustan city was nearly a circle about ten miles in cir-
cumference. At some forty points the line was broken by
entrances at which the city tax on produce from without
was levied — a manner of taxation employed by the cities of
modern Italy up to its abolition in 1930. At points where
the line was pierced by one of the great roads that came to
the city from afar, doubtless the passage was marked by an
archway or a gate. If it was a street or road of less impor-
tance, the barrier was perhaps less formal.
Yet the city straggled beyond even this ten-mile line.
Julius Caesar's law providing that every owner for one mile
beyond the gates should keep in repair the road that fronted
his house was clearly evidence of much expansion in many
directions, like that of Eome to-day.
All roads led to the gates of Rome, and through them to
the Roman Forum or near it. Here was the heart of the
city and the Empire, and here, to mark the fact, was the
Milliarium Aureum, the Golden Milestone, erected by Augus-
tus, a column sheathed in gilded bronze on which were en-
graved the names of the chief cities of the Roman world
and their distances from the capital.
The streets that led away to become the great roads out-
side the city were like the spokes of a wheel. From the hill
of the Capitol near the head of the Forum, there shot like an
arrow to the north the Via Lata, which outside the city be-
came the Via Flaminia and made for the Adriatic at Ari-
Up the near-by depression between Quirinal and
48
THE ROMAN
Viminal ran the street called Vicus Longus, which emerged
from the old Colline Gate of the Servian Wall and as it left
the Augustan limit ran straight ahead toward Nomentum,
or turned to the left and made for the Via Salaria, the Tiber
Valley, and the upper Sabine country. Leaving the Forum
TUB STREETS AND HIGHWAYS OF ROME
. This map shows the Wall of Aurelian, A.D. 272-276, but the streets of the city were
more or less constant through the centuries. The Circus Maximus is seen along the
Via Appia, the Circus of Caligula across the Tiber. The Colosseum is also indicated.
and the polling-place on the Via Lata.
as the Argiletum, the Clivus Suburanus bent to the east ana
went out at the Esquiline Gate as the Via Tiburtina, bound
for Tibur and the mountain country eighteen miles away.
Due east, the Via Praenestina, continuing the Via Labicana
inside the limits, made for Gabii and Praeneste, modern
THE CITY IN WHICH HE LIVED 49
Palestrina, on the mountain side, while the Labicana
branched to the south in its own name. To the south-
east, through the Servian Porta Capena and out along the
level crest of a prehistoric lava stream, with sightly pros-
'pects, ran the most famous of Roman roads, the Appia,
Regina Viarum, Queen of Ways, over the slopes of the Alban
Mount and on to Tarracina, Capua, Beneventum, and
Bmndisium. The Via Latina, branching from it to the left,
ran to the high divide in the Alban Hills past Tusculum,
descending to the gap between Volscians and Apennines on
the way to Campania. The Via Ostiensis on the left bank
of the Tiber and the Via Portuensis on the right connected
the city with the Tiber mouth. The Via Aurelia began at
the Aemilian Bridge near the Forum Boarium, mounted
the Janiculum, and led west and north into Etruria and on to
Pisa and other coast cities. The Via Cornelia, farther north,
ran west from the Tiber across the space later occupied by
the piazza and church of Saint Peter.
Besides these longer streets that radiated from the city's
center and were continued to form the network of highways
that carried the goods and men of the Empire to distant parts
of Italy and the world, there were the shorter streets that
terminated at the city's bound ; there were the streets that
crossed from one thoroughfare to another or branched at
lesser angles ; there were the smaller streets that ran their
narrow and irregular courses like canals through the masses
of tall tenements in the denser parts of the city; and there
were the alleys and little back streets belonging to every
large town. There were broadenings of streets in places ;
there were the amplifications where porticoes bordered the
way, with the shops that were sheltered by them; there
were the market areas ; there were the more splendid spaces
for public business ; and there were the gardens or parks.
50 THE ROMAN
It will be helpful here to set down the various names oi
the Roman thoroughfares and spaces. The via was usually
the great road continued in the city ; it may be called the
avenue. The vicus was the ordinary street, large or small.
The clivus was the vicus as it made one of the many ascents
in the rolling city. Plateia was the borrowed Greek word
denoting a broad passage or square — the later piazza, plaza,
place, Platz, place. The porticus was the marble colonnade
or arcade as it bordered an ample street and protected the
walker from sun and rain, or it was the colonnade of four
sides inclosing a market place, a theater and its space, or a
temple and its area. The/orum was a larger space devoted
to trade or to the public business, and in the latter case
contained or was bordered by state buildings and orna-
mental architecture. The main public square of any city
in the West was likely to be called the forum, and the little
towns that were nothing but markets were often called fora,
as Forum Appi on the Appian Way.
The city, ten miles in circumference and three or more in
diameter, that was crisscrossed and slashed and broken by
these avenues and streets and alleys and porticoes and public
squares was notable for variety.
It was varied, first, in density of population and buildings.
The more thickly inhabited quarters were the Aventine and
Caelian and southern Esquiline, with their slopes and inter-
vening valleys, the district about the Capitoline reaching
to the Tiber and south to the Aventine, and the depressions
and slopes between the Quirinal and Viminal and Esquiline.
The Palatine had always been a residence quarter, and with
Augustus became the imperial quarter. The Capitoline
tfas the seat of the two great temples of Juno and Jupiter,
with a public square between them like the Piazza Campi-
doglio of to-day. The Forum was monumental and ornate
52 THE ROMAN
with senate, basilicas, temples, and honorary columns and
statues. The Campus Martius was a place of magnificent
distances and of buildings in the grand style. The high
parts of the Quirinal and Viminal and Esquiline were oc-
cupied by the wealthy, and houses and palaces were inter-
spersed with villas and gardens, public and private. The
Janiculum towered above a popular but not yet crowded re-
gion called Transtiberim, the Trastevere of to-day.
The city was varied, next, in elevation. The spacious
area of the Campus Martius, alluvial in origin, was as flat
as a floor. The Forum, and the Velabrum leading south
from it, lay at times deep in the shade of the buildings that
towered above them on the steep and lofty Capitoline and
Palatine. The central hills were 150 feet above the sea, the
broader Caelian and Aventine about the same, and the long
reaches of Esquiline and Viminal and Quirinal were about
200. The Janiculum, 292 feet, was the highest ground in
Rome. The city rose and fell with a grand rolling of hill
and valley that was only here and there abrupt.
That Rome was varied in its thoroughfares, we have
already seen. It was varied also in its buildings. There
were the temples of the Capitol rising against the sky, and
two or three hundred others, large and small, scattered
throughout the city, most of them in the Greek columnar
style. There were the palaces of emperors and aristocrats
on the Palatine, with unnumbered others on the hills to
north and east. There were the Julian and Aemilian basili-
cas in the Forum, with the Rostra and the senate, and the
arches of Augustus and Tiberius. There were the theaters
of Pompey, Marcellus, and Balbus about the Capitoline.
There was the Circus Maximus between the Palatine and
the Aventine, and the Circus Flaminius near Pompey'e
Theater. There were the Forum of Julius Caesar and the
THE CITY IN WHICH HE LIVED 55
"They have embellished the city with numerous and splendid
objects. Pompey, Divus Caesar, and Augustus, with his children,
friends, wife, and sister, have surpassed all others in their zeal and
munificence in these decorations. The greater number of these
may be seen in the Campus Martius, which to the beauties of
nature adds those of art. The size of the plain is marvellous,
permitting chariot races and other feats of horsemanship without
impediment, and multitudes to exercise themselves at ball, in
the circus, and the palaestra. The structures which surround it,
the turf covered with herbage all the year round, the summits of
the hills beyond the Tiber, extending from its banks with pano-
ramic effect, present a spectacle which the eye abandons with re-
gret. Near to this plain is another surrounded with columns,
sacred groves, three theaters, an amphitheater, and superb temples
in close contiguity to each other ; and so magnificent, that it would
seem idle to describe the rest of the city after it. For this cause
the Romans, esteeming it as the most sacred place, have there
erected funeral monuments to the most illustrious persons of either
sex. The most remarkable of these is that designated as the
Mausoleum, which consists of a mound of earth raised upon a high
foundation of white marble, situated near the river, and covered
to the top with evergreen shrubs. Upon the summit is a bronze
statue of Augustus Caesar, and beneath the mound are the ashes
of himself, his relatives, and friends. Behind is a large grove con-
taining charming promenades. In the center of the plain, is the
spot where this prince was reduced to ashes ; it is surrounded with
a double enclosure, one of marble, the other of iron, and planted
within with poplars. If from hence you proceed to visit the
ancient Forum, which is equally filled with basilicas, porticoes,
and temples, you will there behold the Capitol, the Palatine, with
the noble works which adorn them, and the piazza of Livia, each
successive place causing you speedily to forget what you have
before seen. Such is Rome."
VII
HOW HE LOOKED
Now that we have seen the city in which the Roman
moved, it is time to look more attentively at the Roman
himself. This will make necessary the study, first, oi
Roman dress.
The normal costume of the Romans consisted of toga,
tunic, and shoes for men, and of stole, tunic, and shoes for
women. Besides these, there were the occasional wraps or
mantles for men called lacerna, paenula, and synthesis, and
for women the palla. For the head there were various hoods
and caps and hats and capes, but none of them in general
use. Of course there was ornament, and there were styles
of wearing hair and beard. It will be our business now to
comment briefly first on these better-known features in the
d^ess of men and women, and then on the variations due to
material, station, calling, and place.
The tunic, tunica. This was worn by all classes and both
sexes. It was the simplest of garments, having short sleeves
and reaching to the knee or below. Sometimes it was worn
with a girdle. The tunic of the women was very much like
that of the men, but sometimes had longer sleeves. For both
sexes it was the usual dress inside the house, and it was the
usual dress of workers everywhere. Under it was worn a
garment like short drawers or trunks, and women sometimes
wore also a broad band of leather somewhat like the corset.
The toga. The toga was the characteristic garment of
the Roman male citizen, and for a thousand years the sign
HOW HE LOOKED
57
of his civic standing. It could not be worn by a foreigner.
It was the formal dress of the citizen on the street, at the
public function, and when he was borne to his last rest.. It
was made of an elongated piece of goods, perhaps ten or
twelve by fifteen feet, normally
of wool in the natural white, and
of a cut and arrangement still
disputed in spite of the hun-
dreds of examples on surviving
statues. The toga of consuls
and high magistrates in general
had a purple border. Citizens
running for office wore the plain
toga brilliantly whitened, toga
Candida, and were called candi-
datij candidates. Emperors,
and generals on the occasion of
their triumphs, wore the toga
picta, all purple and with gold
embroidery.
To put the toga on, the Ro-
man draped it over the left
shoulder, allowing it to touch
the ground in front at his feet,
then drew its ample length
around his back and under the
right shoulder, and threw it
across the breast and over the
left shoulder so that the end hung down his back. By
reaching under the fold across his breast, the wearer could
partially draw up the portion hanging in front and drape
it over the fold in such a way as to make it fairly secure,
In its simplest form and use, the toga was probably much
AN UNIDENTIFIED ROMAN
The toga is drawn up and hangs in a .
short, fold at the center.
58
THE ROMAN
like a long, rectangular blanket. That it could have been
very different in size and cut and manner of wearing, how-
ever, is indicated by the statues. Anything in dress so
universal and so long in use was surely manageable, but
in the extremes of fashion it must have been a difficult and
expensive garment to wear and to keep in order.
The stola. This
was the woman's
formal garment cor-
responding to the
toga. Another
name, tunica exterior,
suggests its nature.
It was like the ordi-
nary tunic, but am-
pler and more elabo-
rate. From the gir
die, or zona, at the
waist to the top it
was open at the sides,
and the front and
back pieces thus
formed were fastened at the shoulders with buttons or clasps.
When it was drawn up somewhat at the waist and overhung
the zona in *olds, its bottom just touched the ground. It
had borders at bottom and top, and sleeves unless the or«
dinary tunic already had them.
The palla. The palla was the woman's mantle for out of
doors, resembling in general the toga and worn in many
different styles.
The lacema. This was a short and light, sleeveless
mantle or cape, sometimes with a hood, which was worn at
first to protect the toga from rain or dust, and later some-
A ROMAN LADY
She is dxaped in the stola, or tunica exterior, and
palla, and seated in a cushioned chair.
HOW HE LOOKED
59
times took the place of the toga. It was open at the sides
and fastened at the shoulders. The synthesis was a fashion-
able dinner garment of fine material worn over the tunic,
and was an indoor garment exclusively except on the Satur-
nalia holidays. The laena and abolla were cloaks of which
little is known, and the endromis was a dressing gown used
after gymnastics.
ROMAN SHOES
Found in the Homan border fort at Newstead, near the River Tweed not far from
Melrose in Scotland. The two at right and bottom are of especially fine make.
On the streets of Rome on ordinary days, the uncovered
head was the rule. In stormy weather, the outer wrap, or
even the toga, could be drawn up for protection. There
were head coverings of various sorts. The pilleus, a closely
fitting, pointed felt cap for workers in the sun or rain, and
the petasiis, a Greek type of broad-brimmed hat for travelers,
are the best known ; but the usual crowd in Rome and other
cities of southern latitude would have been hatless.
For the feet, there were sandals and shoes. The sandal,
solea, was much like the light leather footwear sometimes
worn by children to-day, was varied in the manner of its
60 THE ROMAN
fastenings, and usually worn only in the house. The shoe,
calceus, was more substantial than the sandal, but was less
convenient than the modern shoe. The tying of the sena-
tor's shoe was managed by means of broad pieces of leather
attached to the soles and crossed and wound over the ankle
and about the leg. For patricians there was a special shoe
having a silver or ivory ornament called the crescent, lunula,
on the outside of the ankle. The shoe of the ordinary man
was more li&e modern footwear. There was rougher gear
for laborers and soldiers, and there were wooden shoes.
The soldier's boot was the caliga; the diminutive, caligula,
was the nickname given to the prince, Little Boots, who
became the Emperor Caligula. Women's sandals and shoes
were different from men's only in their finer material and
more frequent use of color.
For jewelry, the Roman man wore a ring of iron or other
metal, bearing a seal for use on letters and documents, and
for the safeguarding of his cabinets or other places of keeping
valuables. The gold ring was long the special mark of the
equestrian class, but afterward became, like other rings, the
sign merely of the free condition. Women used more jewelry
than men. The museum cases display ornament in every
material and form.
The dress of children, male and female, free and slave,
rich and poor, was almost universally the tunic and short
drawers and the simplest sandals and shoes. The boys
and girls of the upper classes wore the toga praetexla, dis-
tinguished by the purple border — the boy until he reached
manhood, the girl until her marriage.
Perhaps we should consider here as part of dress the care
of beard and hair. Like dress, they had their variations in
style. The shaggy hair and long beards of early times
gave place to barbered heads and clean-shaven faces, but
HOW HE LOOKED
61
there were returns to the old manner. From the Scipio
who destroyed Carthage in 146 B.C. to the Emperor Trajan,
&.D. 98-117, the busts show beardless men with the hair well
trimmed. Trajan and his circle wore their hair brought
over the forehead. Hadrian and his successors enjoyed
full beards and abundant hair. The Roman woman
wore the long hair that the Apostle Paul declared was "a
Two UNIDENTIFIED ROMANS AND A DACIAN
The bust at the left is sometimes called Sulla.
glory unto her," but in times of luxury she could dye and
torture it or pile it high with the aid of artificial hair. Both
little boys and little girls were lovely with hair that fell to
their shoulders.
Such was Roman dress in its principal features. We
should think of it further as having many variations.
There was the material, for example, varying with time
and place and occupation and rank — silk, an article of
great luxury from China ; cotton, also from the East ; linen,
from Italy and Egypt ; wool in great quantities from Italy
and abroad ; the skins of goats and sheep, worn by many
in the country. There was the quality, coarse or fine accord-
ing to the station of the wearer.
82 THE ROMAN
There was variation in color — the customary white, with
the famous Tyrian purple as its most expensive and its most
striking variation, and the crimson and violet produced in
Italy from a certain shellfish. Purple, worn chiefly in the
borders that distinguished the togas of magistrates and of
boys not yet in the white toga of manhood, and in the broad
and narrow stripes of the tunics of senators and knights, was
the chief dye after Augustus, and almost the only artificial
color before him. There was a great increase in variety and
brightness of color, especially in women's wear.
Again, there were many variations depending upon posi-
tion in the State employ. The wearing of the purple border
and stripe, just mentioned, is an example. Purple was the
distinctive color of the State, and became the imperial color,
There were the variations belonging to class and occupa-
tion — the populace in tunic and the ruling classes in toga ;
the slave in his cheap stuffs and coarse shoes ; the patrician
in his expensive and carefully kept toga and elegant foot-
wear; the countryman in rough homespun; the soldier in
military tunic and boots; the freedman and sailor in the
conical cap ; the respectable middle class in regulation tunic,
toga, and sandals.
There were the variations due to race — the Northern
captive in breeches ; the African in his robe ; the Egyptian,
the Syrian, the Dacian, the Spaniard, each with something
in garment, material, style, or color to betray his outland
origin.
And finally, there were the accessories of costume, such as
umbrellas and parasols, handkerchiefs,, fans, purses, and
gloves and mittens.
Before leaving the subject of costume, there are certain
general characteristics that should be noted. First, the
costumes of men and women were much more alike in Roman
HOW HE LOOKED 63
times than in our own. Secondly, the Roman costume went
with the Roman eagles to the confines of civilization, and the
toga was the symbol of the Roman spirit. Thirdly, the
Roman costume, whatever it owed to Etruscan in early days
and to Greek in the days when art and fashion seized upon
it, appears with the earliest Roman, and endures unchanged
through all the Roman centuries. Just as, amid all the
variations of place and time, there remained a constant pat-
tern of Roman character and conduct, so through all the
diversities brought by rank and calling and race and time,
there endured the Roma toga ; and in the art and ritual of
modern times its influence still persists. And, finally, the
Roman costume as worn by the representative magistrate
or citizen was one of pronounced distinction. The ample
dimensions of the toga, its magnificent descending lines and
sweeping curves, its variety, its massiveness and solidity,
combined to make it a garment in the grand style, the fit
cloaking of the lords and administrators of the World State
and its capital city. Nothing more noble has descended
in the portraiture of men than the dignified and stately
processions of the Augustans on the Altar of Peace.
But dress is not the only factor in Roman personal appear-
ance. We have not yet looked into the actual face of the
Roman whose garments and carriage we have seen. If we
do, we shall notice, first, that he may be of any shade of color
from the ebony of the upper Nile to the rosy fairness of the
Teuton. If we look only at the native of Italy and Rome,
we shall note that his complexion is darker than the average
of our American friends. It will vary from the weathered
and swarthy bronze of the countryman and toiler in the sun
to the soft and shadowed pallor of the worker within doors,
but it will only by exception have the clear skin and blue
3yes of the blond. In the second place, we shaE notice
64 THE ROMAN
that his features vary over the widest range. He may have
the angular eagle-nose which the world calls Roman, but he
is quite as likely to have some other, and we are compelled
to abandon the conception of a typical Roman. The por-
trait busts that stand in scores against the museum walls
are as remarkably individual as any portrait gallery of New
England characters. In all but complexion, an assembly
of elderly Roman faces in Cato's time would not have been
greatly unlike the faces of our Puritan fathers.
On close acquaintance with the Roman authors, we realize
that the personal resemblance noticed in statuary extends
to character as well. The reader of our early American
history will feel at home in the Roman stories of hardships
willingly endured, of disaster bravely met, of devotion to
ancestral faith, of temptation overcome and integrity pre-
served
VIII
THE SOCIETY IN WHICH HE MOVED
The capital city of modern times is the convenient meet-
ing place and seat of government, the creation and not the
creator of the state, the servant and not the mistress of the
state. The ancient state was a city-state, and the capital
was identical with the state in a way not true of capitals
to-day. All voters were enrolled in the voting groups at
Rome, for example, and all who cast the vote were obliged
to do so in the capital. In other words, representative
government was not developed as in modern times.
Rome was not only the capital of the Roman State, but its
beginnings were the beginnings of the State and the growth
of the State was only the expansion of the city. However
great the territory annexed, however great the increase in
the number of citizens, the government continued to be the
constitution of the city of Rome. The four voting tribes of
the city of Servius had reached the maximum of thirty-frve in
241 B.C., but all belonged to Rome and the immediate neigh-
borhood. New voters thereafter were not made into new
groups, but were distributed among the already existing
tribes. Rome was an organic part of the Roman State as the
heart is an organic part of the human body. The blood of
the State was the blood of the city in circulation ; the life
of the State was the life of the city. The Rome of Augustus
was to the Empire what the Emperor was to the citizenry*
It was the Empire in action, as he was the Roman people in
action.
65
66 THE ROMAN
Because Rome was the capital of the Mediterranean
world, the society in which the Roman moved was varied
far beyond the ordinary. Because she was also the heart
that so long had given it life and determined its character,
THE PROCESSION ON THE ALTAS OF PEACE
The Aia Pacts Augustas was dedicated in 9 B.C. in honor of Augustus and Peace
near the Mausoleum of the Emperor. Fragments of its sculpture are preserved in
Rome, Florence, and Paris.
we must expect to find in Roman society a nucleus that was
solid and constant. Let us consider what the social struc-
ture was into which Caesar, Cicero, and Virgil were born.
In the first place, as they were free men, each was born
into one of the curiae, the thirty associations into which the
free population of the State was divided. These associa-
tions, once of importance in religion, politics, and army
affairs, were now only survivals, and need not be considered
further.
In the next place, each was born into or assigned to one
of the thirty-five tribes, tribus, of which four belonged to the
THE SOCIETY IN WHICH HE MOVED 67
sity and went back to earliest times, and the remainder
to the country. The importance of these also was soon to
be in the past, but their important function still was to meet
in their divisions, the centuriae, or centuries, for the elec-
tion of magistrates and for other business involving the cast-
ing of votes.
In the third place, each of the three was born into a gensy
or family. The gens included all who bore a common family
name and traced their descent from a common ancestor.
There were different ranks of the gens, however. There
was the patrician gens, whose dignities and privileges, as
we shall see, set its members apart as the proudest of the
aristocracy ; and there was the ordinary gens, which might
include the smallest and humblest groups of citizens. The
Virgilian gens and the Tullian gens, that is, the family groups
of Virgil and Cicero, were not of patrician rank ; Caesar's
gens, the Julian, was patrician, and traced its origin back to
lulus, or Ascanius, the son of Aeneas, the son of Anchises
and the goddess Venus.
Here should be mentioned the practice of adoption. The
head of a family who feared the dying out of his line, or who
for any other reason wished to include in his family the child
of another, could adopt by due process of law, giving the
adopted his own name, but adding to it in adjective form the
name of the family from which the adopted came. Publius
Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, the younger Scipio who de-
stroyed Carthage in 146 B.C., was by birth an AemUius, the
son of Lucius Aemilius Paulus Macedonicus, victor over the
Macedonians at Pydna in 168 B.C., and was adopted by
Publius Cornelius Scipio, the son of the Scipio Af ricanus who
conquered Hannibal at Zama in 202 B.C. The importance
of adoption as a means of the preservation of old families
js easily seen. It might serve also as a means of giving home
THE ROMAN
and education to the son or daughter of a citizen in straitened
circumstances.
But these groupings of curia, tribe, and gens have more
to do with political classification than with the constitution
of society, though membership in the gens might carry with
it social standing. It will be bet-
ter to adopt some other plan of
analysis.
There are certain classifications
which occur at once. There was
the free man and the non-free;
it is a slave society with which
we have to deal. There were the
few extremely rich and the many
extremely poor ; Rome was a city
in which one fourth the population
received the dole while the wealthy
engaged in the wildest extrava-
gance. There were the aristocrats
and the plebeians, with a middle
class less numerous than is usual
in modern times. There were the
two political groups, the popular
and the conservative, roughly identical with the plebeian
poor and the aristocratic rich. There were the native Ro-
mans and Italians, and the foreign born. There were the
citizens and the noncitizens. There were the constant and
permanent parts of the population and the floating and
transient.
Let us analyze, however, in the more thorough and usual
fashion. According to this, we distinguish in Roman
society the patricians, the knights or equestrians, the
plebeians, the clients, the freedmen, the slaves, and the
ROMAN
THE SOCIETY IN WHICH HE MOVED 69
foreigners or strangers. A paragraph or two for each will
serve to set them before us.
First, patritii, the patricians. The name was probably
derived from the patres, fathers, who were the heads of the
clans appointed by the king of the early State to form his
body of counselors, the Senate. All who could prove
descent from these "fathers" composed the patrician class,
which was thus hereditary. At first in exclusive possession
of all the offices in the State, they were in the course of time
compelled to admit the plebeians to a sharing of them. For
the most important period of the Republic, a comparatively
small number of patrician families furnished the greater part
of the consuls. By Caesar's time, however, patrician exclu-
siveness had arrived at the usual and natural result; the
number of families had dwindled to about fifteen, and
Caesar's policy of creating new ones by decree was adopted.
Besides heredity, decree was the only means of entering the
patrician class.
However, though the patricians were always the flower
of aristocracy, their original importance as active heads of
the State was early lost, and a wider aristocracy, called the
nobilitas, succeeded them — one to which men of capacity,
with less regard to birth, could aspire. From about 312 B.C.,
when the holding of any office in the State had at last become
the right of all free men above the freedman class, entrance
to the new aristocracy, or nobility, depended upon election
to the curule aedileship. This brought with it the right to
display in the state chamber of the house the wax masks
of dead ancestors, the vus imaginum, a right practically
necessary to success in standing for the higher offices of the
praetorship, the consulship, and the censorship. Since elec-
tion to one of the higher offices carried with it the right to
a seat in the Senate, the possession of the "right of images"
70 THE ROMAN
was really the sign of entrance into the nobilitas,the notables,
the wider aristocracy above mentioned. It was composed
almost exclusively of senators and was called the ordo sena-
torius, the senatorial order.
The senatorial order thus really took the place in political
life which had been occupied by the patrician class. The
patricians, fewer now and only a part of the Senate instead
of the whole, retained their social distinction but not their
exclusive power. The senatorial order, composed of the
plebeian by birth as well as the patrician, had not the social
quality of the earlier Senate, but for three centuries was all-
powerful in the State. With the coming of Augustus and the
reforms by which election to the senatorial office became
dependent on the ruler's favor, the Roman Senate began its
career as servant of the emperors.
Second, the equites, the equestrian class, or knights.
The equites were in origin actual horsemen in the army.
By the time of the Gracchi, 133-121 B.C., the equites had
grown into a distinct class which was at the same time finan-
cial, political, and social. It was financial, because entrance
into it depended on the possession of 400,000 sesterces, or
about $20,000, and because its greatest activities were in
financial enterprise. It was political, because it was an
independent body of voters whose favor was much courted
by politicians', and because it used its power to influence
government in favor of moneyed interests. It was social,
because its money raised it out of the plebeian class and made
it the natural, ally of the nobles, who usually with its .aid
controlled the Senate. The equites wore a gold ring and $,
tunic with narrow border, and at the shows had the right to,
seats in the f ourteen rows next to the senatorial zone, which
was nearest thje arena or stage ,'or racecourse, , .
' Third, the plebs, the plebeian'- class. Thi$ was composed
THE SOCIETY IN WHICH HE MOVED 7.
of all the free citizens who were not nobles and who did uot
possess the twenty thousand dollars conferring equestrian
rank. Originally, the plebeians were the dependents of
che patricians, and had no rights of their own. The process
of their winning the various privileges of marriage, property,
and office is a large part in Roman history. ^:
Fourth, the clientes, clients or retainers. Clientes is a
term of two meanings. For earliest Rome, it meant merely
those who were free but not members of the patrician class
and consequently not citizens. They were attached in a
more or less formal and thoroughly honorable manner to the
patricians, who were called their patrons, patroni, protec-
tors ; and received certain benefits for which they made a
return by being in general at the service of their patrons.
The clients of the time of Augustus and later were of a
different kind. They are known to us from the Roman
satirists as the crowds of mean-spirited men who every
morning thronged about the doors of the arrogant and ambi-
tious rich to receive the dole of food or money, in return for
which they escorted and applauded and in other conspicu-
ous or noisy ways supported their benefactors.
Fifth, the freedmen called liberti with reference to former
owners and libertini as a social class. Many continued as
clients their relations with former masters, and thus came
gradually to perfect independence. A freedman became a
citizen in the act of liberation from slavery; but did not at
once acquire full rights. With his sons, he was barred from
the equestrian order and from office, and was subject to dis-
criraination in other respects. ^1, „,-;•
Sixth, the servi, slaves. The slaves were a great mass
at the lowest step of the social ascent. Besides the
increase due to the union of 'slaves within their class
irregular relations with the free, the chief
72 THE ROMAN
supply were the capture of tribes or towns in the great wara
of the Republic, or the insurrections and border troubles of
the Empire, and the traffic of the slave hunter. Pompey
and Caesar are said to have disposed of more than a million
slaves from Asia and Gaul. The slaves of early Rome were
captives from the Italian races, and principally employed
on the land. In Augustus' time the homes of the rich were
filled with slaves from many parts of the world, and all the
coarse work of the Roman world, together with much of the
professional and expert, was performed by them.
• The slave could emerge from his condition by manumis-
siou due to a master's gratitude for special service, or to
purchase by the slave himself from his own savings. He
then became a libertus, and his master ceased to be dominus,
master, usually becoming pabronus and remaining so until the
freedman had acquired fuller civic rights. Marcus Cicero's
private secretary, Tiro, whose system of shorthand was
called Notae Tironianae, the Tironian Notes, was a freedman,
and Quintus Cicero also liberated an especially capable slave
named Statius. Tiro was known after his liberation as
Marcus Tullius Tiro.
The keeping of slaves was not unattended by danger,
both to owners and to the State. Immorality, scheming,
thieving, running away, and murder of the master were
among the slave's offenses ; hard labor at the mill or in the
mines, banishment to the lonely work of the farm, reduction
of rations, flogging, and death in cruel ways, were among his
punishments. There were sometimes slave revolts. In
the disorders from this cause in 134-132 B.C., and again in
104-101 B.C., there were hundreds and even thousands of
executions in Italy, and in Sicily it required whole armies to
quell the desperate uprisings against the lords of the plantar
tions ; cities were occupied and besieged, and great loss of
THE SOCIETY IN WHICH HE MOVED
73
life occurred on both sides. The insurrection of the gladia-
tors under Spartacus, in 73-71 B.C., involved upwards of
forty thousand slaves in South Italy, and their defeat was
followed by the crucifixion, at intervals along the road from
Capua to Rome, of six thousand recaptured slaves.
If we mention, seventhly and finally, the hospites, the
guests or strangers who might be present from outside the
citizenship and bounds of the Roman State, and who in case
MARBLE STATUES IN THE NAPLES MUSEUM
At the left is Marcus Holoonius Rufus, duumvir of Pompeii and rebuilder of the
Great Theater.
of permanent or long-continued residence were likely to
become clients of the more dignified sort, or even citi-
zens, we shall have accounted for all parts composing
the structure of the Roman population. About it as
a whole it will not be unprofitable to make a few observa-
tions.
First, Roman society was composed of classes whose
limits, compared with American society, were definite and
fixed. It mattered a great deal whether one was on one side
of the line or the other, both as to one's rights and as to the
74 THE
esteem in which one was held. For centuries before Julius
Caesar, the patrician families formed a close corporation
into which admission except by birth was impossible, and
when Caesar created others, it was by a decree amounting
to social revolution. Cicero by his election to the quaestor-
ship acquired the right to sit in the Senate and thus passed
from the equestrian to the senatorial order, and soon became
consul ; but the former consuls and the patrician senators
did not welcome Him to their society without reserve, and he
was known as a novus homo, a new man. On the other hand,
there were offices to which patricians could not be elevated.
Before Clodius, the enemy of Cicero, could be tribune of the
people and thus bring about the orator's banishment, he had
to be formally transferred from the patrician to the plebeian
status. The prosperous plebeian could become an egues
only after his fortune reached the requisite four hundred
thousand sesterces. The f reedman at his manumission from
slavery was not yet, either before the law or in the eyes of his
neighbors, an equal of the freeborn. Horace makes a point
of being an ingenuus, that is, of having been born after rather
than before bis father's manumission.
Yet it should be said that Eoman society was after all
not wholly inelastic. Men did frequently pass from class to
class, and usually because of special capacities. Cicero
himself is one of Rome's best examples of native ability
winning recognition. Of equestrian and obscure provincial
origin, he held every office in the round of the Roman public
service. Horace was the son of a man who had come into
the world a slave, and his recognition by the Augustan circle
as poet and friend was a testimony to the possibilities of
social elevation on the basis of talent and personal excellence.
Even the slave, who, together with the work he performed,
was held in contempt, could rise if possessed, of talent or
THE SOCIETY IN WHICH HE MOVED 75
industry, as was proved by the numbers of freedmen who
thronged the streets and business places of the city.
Again, Roman society was not stationary, but in con-
tinual process of change. The population of the city was
increased by the coming of foreigners, slave and free, to fill
the lower ranks. Foreigners of the best class were naturalized
by action of the people in assembly ; slaves became freed-
men; freedmen became citizens of full rights; plebeians
rose to the equestrian and senatorial orders ; and the higher
orders were depleted by failure, death, and the decay of
families. The Romans by Augustan times had been modified
in many respects, but chiefly in blood.
In spite of every change, however, the ancient ideals of
blood and character persisted, and had their effect in notable
men and times. Almost in the midst of revolution, Augus-
tus took active measures to foster the old-style faith and
morals. He had the women of his household spin the wool
in the manner of the olden times. His diet was spare and
simple, and he slept in the same room for forty years. Stern
toward the members of his family, he was to some extent
austere with himself. Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aure-
lius, a hundred and fifty years later, exemplified with greater
success the Roman type. Maxentius, after another century
and a half, names a son Romulus, erects a monument to the
Founders of the City, and in his losing struggle with Con-
stantine has his main support in the aristocratic or old Roman
party. The last of all the emperors, Romulus Augustulus,
bears a name that harks back to founders' days. The
two most bitter of Roman prejudices, the feeling against
the foreigner as represented by Juvenal, and against the
Christians as manifested by the persecutions, were enter-
tained most deeply by those who cherished most the ancient
ideals of character and conduct.
IX
THE HOUSE IN WHICH HE LIVED
The ancient house, like the modern, varied according to
country, climate, city, period, and the taste and condition
of the individual. We shall concern ourselves with the house
of the Roman in Italy in the first Christian century.
The house of this time with which we are most familiar
is the Pompeian house. The ashes and light stones from
Vesuvius which rained down upon the city in the famous
eruption of A.D. 79 and buried it twenty feet deep have
preserved for us the richest of all our sources of knowledge
of the ancient house and its life. At Pompeii, then, we shall
best begin a study of the house.
The houses of Pompeii were entered directly from the
sidewalk. The door, ostium} in the case of the simplest
houses, opened immediately into the main hall of i;he house,
the atrium. In case the front of the house was occupied
by shops, the door led to the atrium by means of a narrow
entry passage, at one side of which there sometimes was a
room occupied by the janitor.
The atrium was a rectangular chamber in the middle of
whose floor was a shallow square basin called the impluvium,
into which, from an opening of like dimensions above it
called the con^pluvium, the water from rains fell after running
down the tile roofing that sloped inward on the four sides.
The roof was supported at the lower corners of the com-
pluvium either by four beams crossing one another, in which
case it was called a Tuscan atrium, or by pillar* rising from
76
THE HOUSE IN WHICH HE LIVED
77
the corners of the impluvium, when it was called a tetrastyle
atrium. The use of more than four columns made it a
Corinthian atrium. When the roof sloped outward instead
of inward, the atrium was called displuviatum. In rare
cases the atrium was entirely covered.
h
til
^
Rooms A,a J .
shop !_. j_ j. j .
—I \J/ ' '
Portico
Room
8-PASSAGE 2
i i j 2 Tablinum
>-- A
1 Impluvium
2 Sloping roof
above atrium
jST T FLEr Er T
PLAN OF A POMPEIAN HOUSE
This house has two dining rooms, and its peristyle is irregular in having rooms
only on one side. The shops had windows and doors on the street which were
closed at night by means of strong shutters.
The atrium was thus a spacious hall partly open to the
sky, varied by sunshine and shadow in clear weather, and on
wet days and nights by the patter of the rain in the implu-
vium as it fell straight through the open space or came
streaming down the tile. About it were the various living
and sleeping chambers, and facing one another across the
end that was farther from the street were the aloe, or wings,
in one or both of which the man of family who possessed the
"right of images" kept the waxen masks, the inscriptions,
and the diagram of the family descent.
At the farther side of the atrium, between the alae and
facing the ostium, was the tablinum, an ample room raised
78 THE ROMAN
slightly above the floor of the atrium, from which it was only
informally separated by a balustrade or hangings. Here
the master of the house kept the strong box or area, in which
were his money and accounts of various sorts. Here he
could receive his business associates, his clients, or his
friends; or, by drawing the curtains, could shut out the
world while he read and wrote, or passed the heated hours of
the day.
Back of the tablinum, and separated from it again by hang-
ings or by a wall with folding doors, was the peristyle, peri-
stylium. At the simplest, this was a small space planted
with flowers and shrubbery; at its richest, an elaborately
landscape-gardened area fronted on all four sides by a
colonnade supporting an inward-sloping roof of tile. From
the colonnade, doors opened into the rooms of slaves 01
members of the family, and into the dining room and the
kitchen. Above it were the rooms of the second story,
occupied in a similar way.
The house thus described was the abode of a citizen of
moderate means and good standing in Pompeian society.
If we go in the direction of the poorer and less conspicuous,
we shall find a one-story dwelling in the humbler quarters
of the town consisting of the atrium, a sleeping room or two,
and kitchen, with little else. If we go still farther, we shall
find ourselves in the simple one-room house of the poorest.
In the direction of greater wealth will be more pompous
establishments in the style of Pansa's house, with shops
fronting the street on three sides to insulate the life of the
household from its noises, with many chambers about both
atrium and peristyle for a household numerous in family
and slaves, with a second story containing many chambers
perhaps for rent, and with veranda and garden back of
an elaborate peristyle. Such a bouse would be some 200
THE HOUSE IN WHICH HE LIVED
79
by 100 feet, with rich and colorful finishings and furni-
ture.
To give reality to,the house, we must think of the material
that composed and made it habitable. Let us consider now
the nature of its floors and walls, the furniture that garnished
its rooms, the movable ornament that gave it variety, and
the means by which
it was lighted,
heated, and supplied
with water.
The walls of the
house were usually
of the mixture of
mortar and broken
stone or tile called
concrete, surfaced
with brick or a stone
equivalent. Where
they fronted the
street or inclosed a
room, they were
finished with stucco
and tinted. The
tinting of the f agade
was frequently made more brilliant by actual paintings, or
on occasion was varied by the exhortations of the candidate
for office; for example, M. Marium aedilem facite, virum
bonum, oro vos — "Elect Marcus Marius aedile, he's a good
man, I beg you." The fagade might also be of plain gray
stone without ornament.
The door, single or double, sometimes with a knocker,
swung on a post or posts. The floors of entrance and
atrium and various other rooms were of cement finished with
A MOSAIC naoM POMPEII
The oat is killing a quail. Below are ducks, lotus
buds, fishes, and shells.
80 THE ROMAN
mosaic. The mosaic varied from the mere relief of the
cement pavement by the simplest and scantiest patterns
in bits of enameled tile or cut stone to the brilliant pic-
tures, elegantly bordered, which enriched the houses of the
wealthy. The celebrated mosaic of Darius and Alexander in
the Battle of Issus, found in the House of the Faun and now
in the Museum at Naples, is 8 by 16 feet and contains some
1,700,000 pieces.
The walls inside the house were finished with the best
quality of stucco and tinted in the deepest tones, the reds
and yellows predominating. Pompeian red is a recognized
color. Never without some manner of line or tracery to re-
lieve it, the wall was frequently beautified by the use of
bands or friezes, which might be enlivened with figures or
scenes, like the famous Cupids at work and play in the House
of the Vettii, or by the paintings, large and small, which
are preserved in such numbers in the Naples museum or on
thf walls as they were found. The paintings of Pompeii
now known are nearly four thousand. The use of delicate
colored relief in stucco was also not infrequent.
The pillars of atrium and peristyle, their architraves, and
the beams that crossed each other and formed the coffered
or paneled ceilings and roofs of atrium, room, and peristyle,
should be imagined in deepest colors and white and gold.
Such splendor was found, of course, only in the houses of
the wealthier.
Tt must not be forgotten that for its attractiveness the
house depended much on movables. Among articles of
furniture, there was the chair in many forms, of wood or
marble or iron or bronze, with perhaps a deep-red cushion.
There was the bench of metal or wood or marble against the
wall of the atrium, or in the garden area. There was the
table, varied in form and value, in atrium, tablinum, and
THE HOUSE IN WHICH HE LIVED 81
dining room and kitchen. One famous table of citrus wood
in Cicero's house cost its owner the equivalent of twenty
thousand dollars, its material being the rare African citrus,
whose knots and roots were cut and fitted together with great
skill so as to display the wonderful markings for which the
wood was noted. The cross section of a tree might also be
used. There were the lounges, with arms and back and
pillows and cushions. There were the beds, with mattresses
of straw or wool or feathers, supported by ornamental legs
and frames or resting on masonry, sometimes in small re-
cesses, sometimes in the second story. There was the
triclinium, the dining table of the rich, sometimes three
sloping banks of masonry on which the diners reclined while
being served from the central table inclosed by them, some-
times three movable couches of wood or fancy metal. There
were cabinets for books, and wardrobes for the hanging of
clothes.
These articles, largely objects of daily use, varied in value
and beauty according to the taste and means of the master
and mistress of the house. We may imagine other objects
less permanent and less utilitarian. There were the hang-
ings that no doubt graced the walls at times as well as the
openings of chamber and passageway. There were the
vases of many shapes and sizes, of clay or bronze, that fur-
nished pleasing relief to floor or wall. There were the tall
candelabra of bronze or marble placed at convenient stations
throughout the main chambers. There were the ornamental
lamps of bronze suspended from architrave or ceiling in
atrium and chamber.
The lighting of the ancient house was done by means of
lamps with one or more wicks, fed with the oil of the olive
or animal fat. They were of iron, bronze, and terra cotta,
and of many beautiful and fantastic forms. Their serene
THE HOUSE IN WHICH HE LIVED
83
flames, singly and in clusters, were golden in the deep dark-
ness of a house that had no windows in the lower rooms and
no communication with light except from the stars and
moon as they shone through the open roof. The slender
candelabra on which to set or hang the lamp one carried
were often of the rarest beauty.
THE PERISTYLE OF THE HOUSE or THE VETTH IN POMPEII
The roof is restored, the ancient plants replaced, and the ornamental sculp-
ture reerected.
The house as f, rule was heated only by the rays of the sun.
The atrium in winter received the light when the sun was
high ; the peristyle afforded in parts a sunny promenade ;
there was in some houses a solarium, or sun room, and there
were houses with winter dining room to alternate with the
shaded one for summer use. Aside from the small pockets
84 THE ROMAN
of charcoal alight at mealtime in the kitchen, if any house
was heated by artificial means it was by the brazier with
its bed of glowing coals. In rare instances, the warmth
came from a furnace whose heat circulated under a floor
supported on little pillars of masonry, and through flat pipes
that rose behind the plaster of the wall. At best, the house
in the colder and suyless days of winter was not a com-
fortable place, and action in the out-of-doors must have
been the citizen's escape from chill in the day, and early
bed his escape at night. In the summer months, with
awning above the impluvium, its twilight recesses were a
charming refuge from the fervid sun of the South.
For water, the poorer houses depended on the woman
with water pot on head who went to the nearest corner sup-
plied with the always running jets belonging to the city
system. In the richer houses, lead pipes in quite the modern
fashion entered and supplied the kitchen, the bath, and the
various fountains in peristyle or atrium.
To be complete, we should mention that the keeping of
time was managed by the use of sundial and water clock.
It is clear that the former would hardly serve on a sunless
day; and neither indicated the time with the precision of
the modern clock.
Such was the Pompeian type of house. It had many
things in common with the modern house, but many things
in great contrast.
The Pompeian house looked inward and not out upon the
street. It had few windows, which were mostly in the upper
story, but was more freely open to the air and made more
use of the sun. It employed very little wood, whether in
wall, roof, floor, or furnishings. Its wall paper was wall
painting, its Persian rugs were mosaic pictures. , It had no
large mirrors on its walls, no ticking clocks, no gas or electric
POMPEIAN HOUSE INTERIOR RESTORED
Showing an atrium in the Tuscan style, with compluvium, impluvium, tablinum
and furniture, peristyle, and shrine.
86 THE ROMAN
light, no radiators or registers, no furnaces or kitchen ranges,
no refrigerators, no rocking-chairs, no shelves of books in the
modern fashion.
But the Pompeian house had its advantages. Secluded
from the sight and sound of the busy street, spacious and
airy, with vista including columns and light and shadow,
varied with ornamental furnishings, warm with tinted walls
and paintings and mosaic pavements, softened by the
colored stuffs of cushions, rugs, and hangings, at its best it
made a beautiful and stately home. In the better months
of the year, its ample and varied spaces and airy freshness
made it the ideal retreat, the dwelling in perfect harmony
with climate. In the mild Italian winter, sheltered from the
winds and inviting the sun into atrium and peristyle, it had
a resourcefulness that went far toward tempering the cold
and damp, which besides were felt less keenly by a people
bearing them as a matter of course.
The Pompeian house, however, must not be taken to rep-
resent the houses of Rome. Pompeii was a southern Italian
city sharing the culture of Magna Graecia, it was in even a
milder clime than Rome, it was a provincial city, and it wa&
a small city and uncrowded. Rome was a hundred and fifty
miles farther north and fifteen miles farther inland ; it was
a city which in its early centuries of little contact with the
world had grown into ways of its own, and it was a great
capital in which building space was expensive.
No doubt there were in Rome some houses of the Pom-
peian sort. In a city which included and welcomed the ways
of all the world, and in which so much was to be seen and
heard that came from Greek lands, it would be strange if the
Greek house also were not found. The one-story or two-
story type of house, however, could hardly have existed in
the heart of a city where space was in great demand, and
THE HOUSE IN WHICH HE LIVED
87
where the Augustan limit of seventy feet proves that
buildings approximated the height of the modern Roman
apartment houses and palaces; and it probably did not
exist in numbers, even in the less crowded parts of the city.
We shall be much
nearer the tr nth if we
think of the houses
of ancient Rome
as resembling the
houses of modern
Rome; that is, as
buildings four or five
stories high con-
structed about a
court, with inside
rooms looking on the
court and outside
rooms looking on
the street, and with
corridors running
between the two the
length of the wings.
The excavations at
Ostia are a proof
that this is the rea-
sonable view. In
Ostia's more densely
built portions, the houses are several stories high and
composed of apartments grouped about a court which is large
enough to contain a fountain or well and to furnish light to
the inner rooms. In some cases the court is more generous
and becomes a garden. In the less crowded quarters of the
town there are examples in the Pompeian style. Sincte Ostia
THE STREET OF THE HOUSE OF DIANA IN OSTIA
The picture shows two stories and the character
of brick construction. A small relief of Diana found
in the house gave it the name.
90
THE ROMAN
In case of rejection, the child was taken away and exposed.
This points back to the primitive time when the infant
might actually be left to die, after the manner of the Spartan
State. In the time which we are studying, it meant that the
child was left where it would be found either by a chance
comer or by sorce cne who had a definite use for it, or ever.
by some one known
to have compassion.
There were people
who reared found-
lings as slaves, and
trained them in var
rious occupations
that gave them value
in the market.
Sometimes, in after
life, the slave was
recognized by a now
repentant father or
mother through pos-
session of some ring or trinket left on the child at exposure.
To-day, the foundling in Rome or elsewhere is likely to be
cared for by some form of Christian charity. It is not un-
likely that there was something similar in ancient Rome;
the alimentationes of Nerva's time are an example.
If, as was usual, the child was taken up by the father and
thus accepted, on the ninth day the family and friends met
together in a happy gathering, a ceremony of purification
and sacrifice took place, and little presents were given
the child. Among these was a string of playthings in various
odd shapes, called crepundia, rattles, which were also to ward
off the evil eye, known as fasdnatio. The father's gift was
the bulla, a locket of gold suspended around the neck by a
A FOUB- YEAR-OLD BOY
Found in the Villa Livia at Prima Porta, seven
miles north of Rome, where was found also the fa-
mous statue of Augustus in the Vatican
HIS CHILDHOOD AM) EARLY TRAINING 91
chain and containing some article or writing also directed
against witchcraft or the evil eye. The bulla was worn
until the boy became formally a citizen, and until the girl
was married.
The ninth day was the dies Imtricus, the day of purifica-
tion, and was marked also by the giving of the name. The
Roman name was usually composed of three parts, prae-
nomeny nomen, cognomen, as in Marcus Tullius Cicero,
Publius Cornelius Scipio. We have already seen how the
addition of Aemilianus to the latter name signified adoption
from the Aemilian gens.
The nomen was the name of the gens, the greater family
including all who bore the name Cornelius, for example, and
who traced their descent from a common ancestor Cornelius.
The cognomen signified a branch of the family; Publius
Cornelius Scipio belonged to the Scipio branch of the Corne-
lian gens. The praenomen was the individual name given
by the father on the dies lustricus. Cicero was thus a mem-
ber of the Cicero branch of the Tullian gens who was given
the name Marcus, as his brother received the name Quintus.
It was usual for the eldest son to receive the father's prae-
nomen. Among the best-known praenomina were Gaius,
Gnaeus, Lucius, Marcus, Publius, Quintus, Titus ; the total
number was small, being in Cicero's time only eighteen.
The above seven were abbreviated by the initial except
Gaius and Gnaeus, written C and Cn. Some of the promi-
nent nomina were Cornelius, Julius, Sempronius, Valerius,
Claudius, Aemilius. The cognomina, as in Marcus Tullius
Cicero, Gaius Julius Caesar, Publius Vergilius Maro, Tibe-
rius Claudius Nero, appear in great variety, and sometimes
suggest an origin in racial or personal peculiarity. The
name Sabinus signified that the first of that line was a Sabine ;
Benignus was good-tempered. The cognomen Cicero was
92 THE ROMAN
thought to have been given first to some Tullius who either
made a fortune from the deer, a variety of pea, or bore a
wart that resembled it.
An extended and official form of the Roman's name might
include the name of his father, the tribe in which he was
enrolled as a voter, and an adjective denoting that he had
distinguished himself as governor or general in some prov-
ince or in the taking of some city. Supposing Cicero to
have had the name Marcus Tullius Marci Filius Palatina,
Tribu Cicero Asiaticus, we find in it that he was the son of
Marcus, that he was enrolled in the Palatine tribe or divi-
sion of citizens, and that he distinguished himself as a serv-
ant of the State in Asia. We have seen that the elder
Scipio was called Africanus, and that Aemilius Paulus was
known as Macedonicus; Scipio the Younger received the
name Numantinus from his capture of Numantia, in Spain,
in 133 B.C.
The first instruction of the child in the family of the old
Roman type was given by the mother and father. The
Romans were proud of their own instruction of sons and
daughters in the ways of useful members of the family and
the State. The mother was with her children constantly,
and the son, as soon as years permitted, was much in his
father's company. In the richer homes of the city, by
Cicero's time, there were nurses and attendants, usually
slaves of the household, and the bond uniting parents and
" children was relaxed ; but on the whole we must think of
the Romans as more than usually intimate with their children
and more than usually wise in their use of this close relation
in the forming of character as well as in practical instruction.
For the formal instruction not given by parents or rela-
tives, there were the elementary teachers of reading, writing;
and numbers. They might be slaves belonging to the house
HIS CHILDHOOD AND EARLST TRAINING 93
and instructing within it the children of their master, some-
times with the children of other households included for the
sake of convenience and economy. They might be teachers
conducting schools which were open to all children on pay-
ment of a monthly fee. "Com-
ing on the Ides with the eight
coppers to settle their account,"
is Horace's reference to the
schoolboys of Venusia, whom he
describes also as "carrying tablet
and pencil cases on the left arm."
"With her small tablets in her
hand, and her satchel on her arm,"
is the picture of Virginia in
Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome
as she goes home from school
through the Roman Forum.
The apparatus of instruction
in the primary school consisted
of the wax tablet and the sty-
lus, corresponding to the old slate
and pencil or the present paper
and pencil of America; papyrus A MOTHER AND SON
and pen for the more Careful Perhaps Agrippina and Nero.
work ; the roll or book containing
the poetry or prose in use; and the abacus, a counting
board of a sort still known and used in parts of the world,
by which reckonings in the higher numbers could be made.
The fingers also were used in counting, with other parts of
the body, but in a system too difficult to be recovered com-
pletely, though it was still in use in the Middle Ages.
The teachers in the primary work were the litterator and
94 THE ROMAN
the calculator, the "letter man" and the "pebble man";
the pebbles by this time meaning the calculi of the abacus
or the counters used without it. There was much memory
work, particularly the learning of the Twelve Tables, Rome's
earliest written laws, and of precepts of the sort given by
Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard's Almanac, called sen-
tentiae. Sometimes, in the effort to make instruction pleas-
ant, they used devices not unknown to-day — "as coaxing
teachers give pastries to children so that they will learn their
elements," writes Horace. Sometimes they were persua-
sive in other ways; Horace mentions also one OrUlius
plagosus, a teacher known for his whippings. Quintilian, a
famous educator of whom Pliny was a pupil about A.D. 75,
writes earnestly in disapproval of physical punishment, on
the ground that it destroys a boy's self-respect and is un-
worthy of a free man and a Roman.
It is likely that the Roman school was noisy. The chil-
dren studied aloud, the schoolroom was frequently in open
air and in the din of the city, and the teacher consequently
raised his voice. In an epigram of Martial a schoolmaster
is addressed as "thundering with savage voice and beatings,"
making a noise worse than the metal worker forging a statue,
and shouting louder than the outcries in the amphitheater at
a gladiator fight. This is epigram and satire, however, and in
the ordinary school it was the studying aloud that was heard.
" What have you against us, you school-teaching villain,
Detested by girls and by boys,
That before crested cocks break the silence,
Your blows raise that horrible noise?
" When a bronze-worker's putting a lawyer on horseback,
The blow on the anvil's less loud ;
Milder yells in the great Colosseum
The victor receives from his crowd.
HIS CHILDHOOD AND EARLY TRAINING 95
te We next door wish to doze — during some of the night hours ;
Entire lack of sleep makes us ill.
Let 'em out ; what they pay you for bawling
We'll pay if you'll only keep still."
The schoolmaster in this epigram is spoken of as beginning
Ms vociferous day "before crested cocks break the silence,"
and keeping the neighbors from their night's sleep. Juvenal,
in the same generation, refers to boys sitting in school at an
hour when no smith and no wool-carder would be at work,
and to Horace and Virgil, that is, their school readers, be-
grimed and discolored by the sooty light of as many lamps as
there were boys. No doubt the hours of school in the Roman
cities were very early, but it should be remembered that in the
rainy Italian winter months the darkness lasts far into the
morning. In Rome to-day children are often taken to school
when the streets are not yet in full day.
In an epigram to another harsh schoolmaster, Martial
scolds about keeping the boys at work in the heat of summer.
"The glaring days are hot with the flaming Lion, and glow-
mg July is baking the parched harvest fields. Put away
your whips of Scythian leather with their rough lashes, and
your gloomy rods and your schoolmaster scepters, and let
them sleep till the Ides of October ; if your boys keep well
in the summer, they are learning enough." Here again are
the words of the satirist, but it is likely that as little senti-
ment was wasted in the matter of summer heat as in that of
early rising. There were no long summer vacations in Rome,
but the frequency and length of holiday interruptions during
the year made up for this. There were probably as many
as a hundred holidays — Saturnalia, Lupercalia, Parilia,
etc. — and it is likely that the Roman boy had as many free
days as the modern boy, even counting the Saturdays and
Sundays.
96 THE ROMAN
As we have been dealing with contrasts between ancient
and modern, let us note here the greatest of all contrasts,
namely, that the ancients had no school system supported
like ours by the State and carefully organized to take the
pupil from grade to grade and school to school from infancy
to manhood, with the first years made compulsory. We
need not suppose, however, that any father ambitious for
his son was denied the privilege of securing practical instruc-
tion, for the earlier years of school were inexpensive, and
setting up a school was the simplest matter. The great
difference lay rather in the fact that education was neither
compulsory nor urged upon all as it is in our own country
to-day. Education was not the universal ideal, either in
theory or in practice, that it is in most occidental countries
in modern times. If anyone had proposed to Cato or Cicero
or Augustus the compulsory education of every boy and
girl in every station of life in all paras of the Roman realm
for the primary years, not to say the years beyond, he might
have been answered: "Why? It is not every man or
woman that needs to be educated. Those in business and
those in charge of public affairs should of course have com-
mand of the .Knowledge to make them competent and in-
telligent, and education for them may be left, as it always
has been left, to the interest and ambition of individual,
family, and class. The education of all would be a burden
to the State, a hardship to the poor, an impossibility in the
sparsely settled mountain districts, and a doubtful benefit
either to the masses themselves, who would never exercise
their knowledge, or to the Government. What the State
wants on the part of the many is strength of arm, skill of
hand, industry, and obedience, rather than a knowledge of
which they make no practical use."
Because this ideal represents on the whole the thought
BOS CHILDHOOD AND EARLY TRAINING
97
of the average Roman of either upper or lower class through
the centuries that brought and continued the greatness of
Rome, let us conclude this chapter here at the end of the
primary and practical stage of education, which constituted
the only education in anything like general use, and reserve
the higher stages for separate treatment as belonging to the
few.
^tftitttn^
CHILDHOOD SCENES ON A SARCOPHAGUS
The little boy is seen in several scenes, under the fig tree playing with a goose and
a toy, and riding with his parents. The figure of the winged angel seems to prove
this a Christian sarcophagus.
First, however, let us read two expressions of opinion
which will help us appreciate the spirit of the Roman in the
training of his children.
The one is from Tacitus, in whose Dialogue on Orators a
speaker is recalling the virtues of earlier days.
"For in other days a man's son, born of a chaste mother, was
brought up not in the chamber of a hired nurse but in the loving
embrace of his mother, whose praise before all else was that she
guarded the home and devoted herself to her children ; or, some
elderly woman relative would be chosen, to whose tried and ap-
proved character all the children of the same household could be
entrusted, and in whose presence nothing was allowed that might
98 THE ROMAN
seem unworthy in speech or improper in act. And not only their
studies and school tasks, but their relaxations and their play,
were watched over by their mother with a kind of holy reverence.
In this way we are told that Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi,
and Aurelia, Caesar's mother, and Atia, the mother of Augustus,
attended in person the bringing up of their sons and made noble
men of them. This was a training whose strictness resulted in
natures which were pure and without blemish and undistorted by
any sort of defect, so that each one of them was ready straightway
with all his powers to seize upon the honorable branches of study,
and so that, whether he had inclined toward the army or to law or
eloquence, he pursued that alone and mastered it completely.
But in these days of ours the child is handed over at birth to some,
worthless Greek servant girl, to whom are added one or two slaves
picked out of the lot, often the cheapest and those unfit for any
serious service. With the stories and superstitions of such as
these are the fresh and tender minds imbued, and nobody in the
whole household has a thought for what he says or does in the
presence of his child master."
It was about this same time that Juvenal wrote the
famous line, Maxima debetur puero reverentia — "the great-
est respect is due to the child."
The other passage is Mommsen's r6sum6 of Plutarch's
characterization of Marcus Porcius Cato the Censor in the
home.
"The old general was present in person, whenever it was pos-
sible, at the washing and swaddling of his children. He watched
with reverential care over their childlike innocence, he assures
us that he was as careful lest he should utter an unbecoming word
in presence of his children as if he had been in presence of the Ves-
tal Virgins, and that he never before the eyes of his daughters
embraced their mother, except when she had become alarmed
during a thunderstorm. The education of the son was perhaps the
noblest portion of his varied and variously honorable activity.
True to his maxim, that a ruddy-cheeked boy was worth more than
a pale one, the old soldier in person initiated his son into all bodily
exercises, and taught him to wrestle, to ride, to swim, to box, and
HIS CHILDHOOD AND EARLY TRAINING 99
to endure heat and cold. But he felt very justly that the time had
gone by when it sufficed for a Roman to be a good farmer and
soldier ; and he felt also that it could not but have an injurious
influence on the mind of his boy, if he should subsequently learn
that the teacher, who had rebuked and punished him and had won
his reverence, was a mere slave. Therefore he in person taught the
boy what a Roman was wont to learn, to read and write and know
the law of the land ; and even in his later years he worked his way
so far into the general culture of the Hellenes, that he was able to
deliver to his son in his native tongue whatever in that culture he
deemed to be of use to a Roman."
XI
HIS LATER TRAINING
j?Jot even the first stage in Roman education, as we have
, was the lot of every child. The part of it received in
school instruction was far from being universal, and it is but
natural to suppose that the part depending on the parents7
interest was in many cases neglected.
We have seen also that, for the great majority of those
who were provided for in school or at home, the training
thus received was their only preparation for life except the
living of life itself. The number of those whose elementary
training was followed by formal instruction in higher
branches was by comparison very scant. The falling ofi
was much greater than that of to-day between the primary
and the advanced.
The teacher of Roman youth in the second stage of Roman
education was the grammaticus. As might be expected from
the name, the training in this stage had largely to do with
language. Its materials were the content of Greek and Ro-
man books, and its exercises were concerned with the mas-
tery of their content and with the use of the spoken and
written word.
The school of the grammaticus was a natural step in the
advance of enlightenment in a growing civilization which
had begun with a little city-state of shepherds and farmers*
When the Romans received in surrender the city of Taren-*
turn in 272 B.C. and became the undisputed masters of
Greek Italy, and when in 265 B.C. they crossed the Strait ot!
100
HIS LATER TRAINING 101
Messina into Sicily and incurred the enmity of Carthage,
they entered upon a course which in less than a hundred
years was to bring them into contact with the culture of all
the Mediterranean world and to open their eyes to their
own lack of the cultural graces. Many a Roman soldier
during these years saw for the first time the cities of the older
civilization, and many a Roman officer and envoy returned
to the younger and ruggeder city on the Tiber with vivid
recollections of an urban life brilliant with the architecture
and sculpture and painting and drama of a long-established
culture.
It was to this intercourse with Greek lands through the
army, through commerce, through the Greek-speaking slaves
who began to be common in Rome, through the Greek ad-
venturers after fortune in the rising western city, that the
amplification of fche Roman ideal of education was due.
The leading spirits in the movement were the elder Scipio
who vanquished Hannibal, the younger Scipio who destroyed
the city of Hannibal, and the friends who with them are
remembered by history as the Scipionic Circle. The ex-
ample they set was not without consequences. In time,
Greek came to be in a limited way the fashion. The nurse-
maids of antiquity were likely to be Greek, as in certain
modern countries they are likely to be French.
The first new schools were modeled in both language and
content upon the schools of Greek lands. Their nucleus was
Greek poetry, and especially Homer. The Iliad and the
Odyssey were studied not only for their language and con-
tent, but were made the vehicle for instruction in geography,
mythology, and morality, and for practice in composition
and declamation. Like the humanities of to-day, this study
of great literature in ancient times was either full of intel-
lectual and spiritual richness or barren and unproductive,
102
THE ROMAN
according as the teacher was well equipped and resourceful
or unimaginative and arid.
The grammar schools in Greek were not alone. The
grammar school in Latin also came into being. Having at
first no Latin literature to form desirable subject matter, it
adapted the Greek. Livius Androni-
cus, a Greek boy who was brought to
Rome a slave from Tarentum after its
capture by the Romans in 272 B.C.,
and who became a teacher and literary
craftsman, made a Latin translation
of the Odyssey in the old Saturniai>
verse native to the Latins and ofteii
likened to the English nursery meter,
•
"The queen was in the parlor, eating bread
and honey."
The first verse of the Odyssey came
out something like,
"0 Muse, sing me the hero, Ulysses wise
and crafty."
By the time of Cicero, the plays of
Terence, Plautus, and the tragic writers
were added to the resources of the Latin
grammaticus, and soon Virgil and Horace and Livy were to
contribute still greater riches. With his country's heroic
past now celebrated in epic, lyric, and history, the Roman
boy of Augustan times in the grammar school had a wealth
of inspiring matter in his own tongue as well as in Greek.
The variety of study possible in the use of literature alone
is suggested by a sentence of Cicero in his work On the Orator,
where he enumerates among the operations of the grammar
ticus in teaching, "the thorough treatment of the poets, the
BUST OF HOMER FROM
HBRCULANBUM
This conception of the
poet as bearded, old, and
blind has prevailed since
at least the fourth century
before Christ.
HIS LATER TRAINING 103
mastering of history, the interpretation of words, and a cer-
tain style in utterance." The possibilities of Roman his-
tory in the matter of character development are suggested
by the work of Valerius Maximus, in which the lives of great
Romans and stories from Roman history are made to illus-
trate the ideals of courage, endurance, abstinence, self-
control, dutiful behavior toward parents, and friendship.
The ministry of the poet to humanization in general is no-
where more richly expressed than by Horace in the first
Epistle of the second book :
"The poet forms the tender and hesitating speech of the child:
sven now he diverts his ear from impure talk, and presently also
moulds his sentiments by means of friendly precept ; a corrector
of harshness, envy, and anger. He tells of noble deeds, he edifies
the oncoming years with well-known examples, he consoles the
helpless and afflicted.1'
The end of the grammar period we have been considering
must have coincided in many cases with the formal entrance
of the Roman boy into citizenship. This important event
took place at about the age of sixteen, though the age might
vary, and it was usually the occasion for a celebration lasting
the entire day. The day chosen was the 17th of March
called Liberalia, the feast of Liber, a deity of ancient Italian
origin. Its events began early in the morning with a sacri-
fice to the household gods and the dedication to them of the
now discarded bulla and purple-bordered toga of boyhood.
The main feature of the day was the putting on of the plain
white toga of manhood called toga virilis or toga pura. The
family and friends then went in procession to the Forum and
the appropriate office, presumably the Tabularium, or regis-
try building, where the new citizen's name was added to
the list of Romans with full rights. This formality accom-
104 1HE ROMAN
plished, the procession continued up the Capitoline Hill to
leave an offering at the shrine of Liber.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, the son of the orator, assumed the
toga of manhood thus on the Liberalia in the year 49 B.C. at
the age of sixteen, just as the struggle between Caesar and
the Senate was beginning whose complications led to the
tragic end of the father. The record of the event is pre-
served in two letters to Atticus. In the first, written at
Formiae on March 11, while Caesar was blockading Pompev
in Brundisium, Cicero says :
"I shall follow your advice and not retire to Aipinum at this
time, although I wanted to give the toga pura to my Cicero there,
and could have left this for Caesar as my excuse. But perhaps he
will see offense in the very fact that I am not doing it rather at
Rome."
The second is dated April 1, two weeks after Pompey had
e&caped from Caesar and crossed the Adriatic :
"Since Rome is no longer ours, I chose to give the toga pura
to my Cicero at Arpinum, and our townsmen were much pleased
by it. Yet all of them, and men wherever I go, I find gloomy and
dejected.''
The nephew of Cicero, Quintus Cicero Junior, also received
the toga virilis at sixteen. He was at the time with his
uncle Marcus Cicero, Governor of Cilicia, who wrote to
Atticus about January 1, 50 B.C. : "I am asked to give the
toga pura to your sister's son Quintus on my arrival at
Laodicea." Virgil and the young Augustus were enrolled
as Roman citizens at seventeen and fifteen, the former on
October 15, the latter on October 18. The younger Antony
was enrolled at fourteen. There were examples of the tran-
sition made as early as the twelfth year, and as late as the
nineteenth.
HIS LATER TRAINING
105
The toga virilis and entrance into citizenship remind us
of our modern "coming of age77 at twenty-one. If we
reflect that the event took place frequently on the 17th of
March at the opening of spring, that it was under the
patronage of Liber, an ancient god of growth, and that it
symbolized the State's approval of the boy as a member of
the civic communion, we may compare
it also with modern Confirmation.
The next stage in Roman education
is usually called the school of rhetoric.
The students here were still fewer and
more select. It was attended only by
those whose ambition was to become
orators, which meant those who aimed
at the public career and its round of
offices, ending in the consulship and
the highest dignity in the State. It
was of Greek origin ; its teachers were
the accomplished masters of composi-
tion and declamation who abounded
in Athens and the cities of Asia Minor ;
its instruction was in both Greek and
Latin ; and its whole concern was with the written and oral
word, theoretical as well as practical, but mainly practical.
Its two great devices were the writing of speeches put in the
mouths of real or fancied persons, and the debate on some
famous act or policy in history. It was not unusual for the
ambitious young man to employ the rhetor in private, and
the exceptionally talented were encouraged to finish their
education in oratory by going to the best Greek teachers of
eloquence on their own soil.
The importance of speech in the mind of the Roman can
hardly be imagined in our day of careless enunciation and
BUST OF A GEEEK
PERSONAGE
Perhaps Sophocles.
106 THE ROMAN
contempt for "rhetoric," a great art which we confuse with
high-flown public speaking and "fine writing." We should
remember that Rome to the time of Augustus was a State
whose policy, and often f ortunes, were determined by the
able public speaker, that there were no printed newspapers,
and that there was comparatively little publication; that
the Senate, perhaps the world's most dignified assembly,
was a body of several hundreds of men who were critical of
speech as well as ideas; that the many-headed Populus
Romanus in assembly was a hard body to dominate ; and,
not least, that much of the public speaking in Rome was in
the open air or in large chambers, and required the expert
management of voice.
The artificialities of training in rhetoric were of course
pronounced, and did not escape the shafts of the satirist.
Its themes especially were worn threadbare. "I too/'
writes Juvenal, "have urged upon Sulla to enjoy deep sleep
as a private citizen." "Go your mad way and hurry over
the terrible Alps," he says to Hannibal, "that you may
please boys as a subject for declamation." Again, he repre-
sents the professor of rhetoric as complaining of the dull
student whose miserable head is filled with the deliberations
of Hannibal after the battle of Cannae, "whether he shall
march on Rome, or, made cautious by the lightnings of a
thunderstorm, he shall wheel his cohorts about all dripping
from the tempest. Name any price you please and take it
at once — what am I to give, for his father to hear the
dunce as many times as I have heard him?"
On the other hand, the variety and richness of an orator's
education when carried out in ideal fashion may be judged
from the words of Tacitus as he writes of Cicero :
"Not content with the teachers that fell to his lot in abundance
at Rome, he ranged over Greece also, and Asia, in order to make
HIS LATER TRAINING 107
his own the entire variety of all branches of knowledge. For it is
true that in the works of Cicero you may find proof that he did
not lack in the knowledge of geometry, or of music, or of grammar,
or, in a word, of any liberal branch of learning. He was a man
who knew the subtleties of dialectic, the usefulness of ethics, the
movements of nature and their causes. The truth of the matter,
my dear friends, is this, that out of much learning in a great many
subjects, and out of a universal knowledge, wells forth in its rich-
ness that wonderful eloquence of his."
The equipment of Cicero here described is really beyond
the ordinary school of the rhetor, but no doubt represents
the spirit of the best masters in the preparation of the orator
for his work in life.
With our consideration of the training in rhetoric, we have
really passed to the field of specialization, or professional
preparation. There were no doubt some students in the
schools of rhetoric whose purpose was only the general im-
provement of their faculties for whatever life they were to
lead; but by far the greater number contemplated their
studies as leading definitely toward the courts, or the school-
room, or officeholding under the State.
In the matter of the professions in general, it is to be noted
that in ancient Rome there were no colleges of law, medicine,
engineering, and the like. The rhetorical schools were the
nearest to the modern professional college, but even they
were hardly the same. The Roman equivalent was the
practical custom of tirocinium^ apprenticeship. The young
student of the law was loosely attached to some jurist of
renown, went with him into court, sat with him as he gave
advice, and perhaps was allowed to assist him in minor
matters.
"After assuming the toga of manhood," says Cicero in the
Essay on Friendship, "I was taken by my father to Quintus
Sca»vola, and, as long as I cotild and he allowed it, I never left
108 THE ROMAN
the bid man's side. Many wise discussions of his, and many
brief and neatly turned utterances, I stored away in memory,
and was eager through his wisdom to make myself more capable.
After his death, I attached myself to Scaevola the Pontifex."
Caelius and Trebatius in later years were associated in
the same manner with Cicero. In other professions, and
in Roman occupations in general, especially in the arts and
crafts, the same method of preparation was customary.
In conclusion, let us look briefly at a phase of education
denied to all but the very few who gave quite special promise
or who had more than average means. This was study
abroad, the equivalent of study in European lands by young
Americans.
The most renowned of cities in the ancient world was
Athens — in Milton's phrase, "Athens the eye of Greece,
mother of arts and eloquence." When Augustus ruled at
Rome, its most glorious period was already four hundred
years in the past, but it was still the intellectual capital of
the far-flung Hellenic culture. Cicero, at the age of twenty-
six, spent six months there, studying under its famous mas-
ters of eloquence. Horace was studying there in 44 B.C.
when the news came that Caesar was assassinated. Marcus
Cicero Junior was sent there at the age of twenty and cost
his father no little money and anxiety. An account of this
university student's career will be a fitting end to our study
"in higher education.
Young Marcus is already in the famous city in March,
45 B.C., when Ms father writes to Atticus, his banker and life-
time friend, asking hi™ to propose to the young man to
keep within the thirty-five hundred dollars or so that came
from certain rentals in Rome, and adding that he would
wager other young men would not spend more. In August,
Atticus reproached Cicero with having made his son's allow-
HIS LATER TRAINING
ance too generous for the boy's good, and the father replied
that, whatever young Marcus' record, it would be disgrace-
ful to himself to have him hampered by lack of funds during
the first year. In the spring of the next year, one of the uni-
versity officials wrote Cicero in a manner so little reassuring
GREEK AND ROMAN PORTRAIT BUSTS IN THH NAPLES MUSEUM
The third from the left in the upper row is Socrates ; the fourth in the lower,
perhaps Hannibal.
that he thought of going to Athens to see for himself. In
May, 44 B.C., two months after Caesar's assassination, young
Marcus wants to go on a visit to Asia with Trebonius, one
of the conspirators, and to take with him Cratippus, his
professor of philosophy. Trebonius intercedes for him.
Requests for money continue, and finally Marcus is ordered
to get rid of Gorgias, a tutor distinguished quite as much
for immorality as for rhetoric. In August, he writes to his
father's private secretary, Tiro, a letter whose contents are
110 THE ROMAN
meant much more for Tiro's employer than for Tiro him-
self.
A glimpse into Marcus Junior's letter tells much about
conditions in the University of Athens as well as about its
writer. Among other things, we note the tutorial relationship
between student and instructor. After telling in superla-
tives how very, very glad he was to get his dearest and
kindest father's letter, and how his happiness was made com-
plete by Tiro's own most delightful letter, he continues :
"I don't doubt that the reports you hear about me are pleasing
and welcome, my dearest Tiro, and I promise you I'll do my best
to have this good opinion which is being formed of me increased
more and more as time goes on. So what you promise about your
being the trumpeter of the esteem in which I am held, you can
do with all assurance ; for so much regret and torment have the
mistakes of my youth brought me that not only does my soul
shrink from the things I have done, but my ears also abhor their
very mention. . . .
"Since therefore you were pained by me, now I assure you that
your pleasure will be doubled by me. You will be glad to know
that with Cratippus I am on very intimate terms — more a son
than a pupil ; for not only do I enjoy his lectures, but I am greatly
attracted by his genial ways. I am with him whole days and often
part of the night, for I am able to prevail on him often to have
dinner with me. . , . What shall I say of Bruttius, whom I
never allow to leave me — a man of simple and austere life with
whom it is a great delight to associate, because we do not bar
humor from our literary studies and daily philosophical discus-
sions. I have engaged lodgings for him next door, and am support-
ing as well as I can from my scant means his needy condition.
Besides, I have begun declamation in Greek with Cassius, but in
Latin I want to have my exercises with Bruttius. I have as
intimate friends and daily companions the fellows Cratippus
brought with him from Mitylene, clever men whom he thinks very
well of. I see a great deal also of Epicrates, the leader of the
Athenians, and Leonides, and others like them.
HIS LATER TRAINING 111
"So much, then, for things about myself. Yes, and as to your
writing about Gorgias — well, he was good in my daily declama-
tion, but I have subordinated everything to being obedient to my
father's directions ; and he has written expressly for me to let him
go immediately. I didn't want to argue the case for fear too much
interest on my part would start some suspicion in him ; and then
this too occurred to me, that it was a serious thing for me to set up
my own judgment against my father's. Nevertheless, your inter*
est and good advice are very acceptable. . . ."
xn
THE WOMEN OF HIS FAMILY
To the average cultivated person, mention of the
woman calls up thoughts of dignity, nobility, common sense,
and strength. It calls up also the names of women remem-
bered for these qualities, like Lucretia, Cornelia, Porcia.
The women of Rome, like the men, were of many characters
and conditions. They were bond and free, native and of
alien blood, rich and poor. Like the men, too, they changed
as the State grew older, larger, more powerful, and wealthier.
The type we shall, make the basis of our study will be the
daughter, wife, sister, mother of the citizen in the times be-
fore the less worthy type began to be prominent.
The little Roman girl was given her name on the eighth day
after birth, one day earlier than her brother. The range of
names available for her was even less than that in use for
him, but probably more of hers are still employed to-day.
The names of women do not yield so easily as men's names to
classification or analysis, and were used with less formality
and strictness. We may distinguish various types, however.
There were those like Cornelia, Caecilia, Valeria, Tullia,
Julia, Terentia, Livia, Aurelia, Calpurnia, and Claudia,
which were only the father's nomen, or gentile name, in
feminine form. There were those like Lucia, Publia, Gala,
Attica, and Paulla, which were the feminine form of the
father's praenomen or cognomen. There were some which
indicated order in birth or importance, as Secunda, Maxima.
There were diminutives, like Tulliola and Secundilla, formed
112
THE WOMEN OF HIS FAMILY
113
from Tullia and Secunda, and there were diminutives formed
from the father's name, as Agrippina, Messalina, Faustina.
The three-part name in use for men was not customary
with women. One name usually sufficed, and when there
were two, the second was likely to be the possessive of the
father's cognomen, as Tullia Ciceronis.
Two ROMAN GIRLS
The one at the light may be Minatia Polla. The other is seen in two views.
Up to about the age of six, the care and education and
dress of the girl were little different from the boy's. During
the years that followed, the difference was greater. As the
girl's destiny was marriage and the keeping of a home, her
attendance in the schools was shorter than her brother's, and
the portion of her education that consisted of training in the
duties of the home was greater. Whether in city or country,
we must imagine her the companion and intimate of her
mother, learning to spin the wool into thread and to weave
the thread into the garments of the household, to sew, to
provide for the table, or, if the household was well-to-do, to
direct the work of the slaves. In the more cultivated homes,
114
THE ROMAN
no doubt some of her time went into accomplishments, such
as embroidery and other fancy work.
The time the Roman girl could spend in the studies of the
school was further limited by the shortness of the time before
she arrived at the age of
marriage. This could be
as early as twelve, but the
usual age was probably
la^er by several years.
The women of Mediter-
ranean lands are likely,
other things equal, to
marry at an earlier age
than their northern sis-
ters.
It should be noted,
first, that the Roman girl
brought a dowry, the
Latin word for which, dos3
has passed into French as
dot, and, humorously, into
English as "dot." The
dowry might be either
A ROMAN GEBL money or belongings,
and was furnished by
the father or other head of the family ; or, in case of inde-
pendence, by the bride herself. The engagement was often
made a solemn ceremony, with the formal dialogue which has
been preserved :
"'Dost thou promise Gaia, thy daughter, to my son in
marriage?'
" 'The blessing of the gods rest upon it, I promise.'
" 'The blessing of the gods rest upon it ! "'
, THE WOMEN OF HIS FAMILY 115
A ring was usual, worn on the third finger of the left hand,
and the girl might also give some present in return.
For the marriage itself, only two acts were necessary : the
formal consent of both parties, and the joining of hands in
the presence of witnesses. No priest was necessary, and no
official of the State. The wedding in a good family, however,
was celebrated with many formal acts.
On the evening before her wedding, the bride had dedi-
cated to the Lares her bulla and the bordered toga of her
girlhood; and clothed herself, for the sake of good omen, in
the tunic of one piece which was to be worn at the ceremony.
In the morning her mother, no doubt attended by all the
women of the household, arranged her hair in the traditional
wedding fashion by dividing it with a spear point into six
strands, a bit of symbolism with obscure meaning. She also
fastened about the tunic a band in a manner called the knot
of Hercules, this deity being a guardian of marriage and a
patron of good fortune: and draped her in the flamrneum,
the bridal veil, so called from its flame color. Its cloudlike
nature was no doubt responsible for the verb nubere, related
to nubes, a cloud, and meaning to take the veil, or to marry.
Thus costumed, and adorned with ribbons, jewelry, and a
crown of flowers, the bride met the bridegroom, who had
come to the house door in toga and chaplet, escorted by a
wedding party of relatives and friends. After the omens of
the sacrificial sheep had been reported favorable, she entered
with him into the atrium, where the ceremonial clasping of
right hands took place before ten witnesses and the wedding
company. The matron who stood between them and some-
what behind to join their hands was the pronuba. The
promise of the bride corresponding to our "in sickness and in
health, etc., till death do us part," was Ubi tu Gains, ego
Gaia — "Wheresoever thou Gaius, I Gaia." Our " Dost thou
116
THE ROMAN
take this woman to be thy wedded wife?" etc., was repre-
sented in another form of marriage by the questions, "Dost
thou will to be my pater familias t" " Dost thou will to be
my mater familias ? "
In the aristocratic wedding, the wedded pair next took
seats at the left of the altar on the skin of the sacrificial
sheep, while the Pontifex Maximus and the Priest of Jupiter,
attended by an acolyte, made an offering to Jupiter and a
A WEDDING SCENE
The bride and groom clasp hands over the symbol of an altar, the pronuba, in this
case Juno, standing behind them. The remaining figures are probably deities, e.g.
at the right are various gods of agriculture.
prayer to Juno, patroness of married life, and to the time-
honored deities of the fields and their fruits whose blessing
would bring a thriving family. At this formal ending, the
whole assembly crowded about the new man and wife with
congratulations, or felicitations, expressed by Felidter! —
"with best wishes for happiness I"
There was of course the wedding feast ; and, finally, after
its termination at the end of the day, the procession escorting
the bride to her new home. This procession, called deductio,
was an invariable feature of the wedding in high life, and
served as well as the clasping of hands for the formal act
required by the law.
THE WOMEN OP HIS FAMILY 117
The bridal progress was a spectacle of never failing inter-
est to the neighbors and general public. The bride, sepa-
rated by the groom from her mother with pretended force,
found already marshaled in front of the house the various
members of the procession, and heard the strains of the
hymeneal song. Preceded by a boy with a whitethorn torch,
she started on her way At her side and holding her by the
hand, were two other boys, all three in purple-bordered white,
and behind came first an attendant bearing the distaff and
spindle that symbolized the character of the Roman matron ;
then, carrying the holy emblems, the acolyte who had served
at the altar ; and, finally, all the wedding party. The curi-
ous crowd, according to custom, cried out Talassio! though
no one knew its meaning, shouted good-humored jests that
sometimes reddened the bride's cheeks, and scrambled for
the nuts, reminding us of rice, which the bridegroom scat-
tered as he walked.
At the portal of her new home, the bride wound its posts
with the symbolic wool, touched the door with oil and fat
with a prayer for a life of plenty, as a precaution against the
bad omen of a slip of the foot was lifted over the threshold,
recited the formula, Ubi tu Gains, ego Gaia — " wherever thou
Gaius, I Gaia" — and was met in the atrium by the bride-
groom, who presented her with the fire and water that
symbolized the home and their life together. The bride
lighted the waiting hearth with the whitethorn torch, and
threw it, like the modern wedding bouquet, among the eager
guests, to be carried off by the nimblest as t» token of good
luck. After a prayer by the bride, the pronuba conducted
her to the lectus genialis, the couch which from that time on
was to stand in the atrium as the symbol of union.
We have been witnessing what might be called the wed-
ding in high life, like the modern aristocratic church wedding.
118 THE ROMAN
It was called confarreatio, from the sacrificial cake made of
far, a certain kind of flour, and was the most formal, most
aristocratic, and most ancient form of marriage. Its origin
went back to times when the patricians constituted the
State, were its only citizens, and married only within their
own rank.
As the civic body grew larger and more complex, however,
two other forms of marriage developed in answer to need.
One was coemptio, or purchase, a ceremony distinguished by
the pretended sale of the bride for a symbolic coin which was
placed in actual scales. Another, called tmts, use or practice,
was based upon living together for one year. Both usus and
coemptio were plebeian, and arose in times when the patri-
cian marriage was the only form of citizen union. The
details leading to the agreement of usus marriage, the terms
of the period, and the formal acts at the end which gave the
pact a final authority, all are lost to us ; but, in the absence
of complaint or comment, we may suppose that this most
universal form of marriage was attended by obligations and
safeguards which made it regular and of good repute, and
that it was attended on occasion by ceremonies which made
it as much an event in its own circles as the patrician mar-
riage was in high society. Wedding celebrations of this kind
may be compared with our home and civil weddings.
It has been noted that in early times only the patricians
were citizens, and only the patrician marriage was recog-
nized as legal by the State. When, toward the end of the
Monarchy, the plebeians were made citizens, their marriages
too were recognized as legal. It was not until 445 B.C., how-
ever, that marriage was legal between plebeian and patrician.
By this time there were many plebeian families whose
wealth and culture made i/hem in everything but rank the
equals or even superiors of the patricians, and the " mixed
THE WOMEN OF HIS FAMILY 119
marriage" was not only legal but in many cases socially
acceptable.
There were other mixed marriages. The union of a citizen
with a noncitizen was legal, but the children were citizens
only in case the father was a citizen. Again, in case of union
between a citizen and a person from some race or community
PERSONAL ADORNMENT IN GOLD
Chains, necklaces, ear-rings, brooches, and two bullas.
not having the right of marriage with Roman citizens, the
act was legal, but the children were not citizens unless their
father was.
A word should be said about property rights and about
divorce. In the original confarreate marriage, the wife
passed "into the hand" of the husband, and his rights over
her and her property were the same as in the case of his sons
and daughters, except the right over life. In the marriage
called usus, the wife might pass into the hand in the same
absolute manner, or she might marry, retaining membership
120 THE ROMAN
and the usual property rights in her f ather's family. To do
this, it was necessary for her each year to spend a period of
three nights away from her husband. In the coemptio or
purchase marriage, the other form of plebeian union, the
passing into the hand was retained, an imitation of the con-
farreate union which may have been meant to carry social
distinction. As time went on, however, marriage came to
be more and more frequent without passing into the hand,
and consequently without surrender of property rights to
the husband.
This gradual but effective breaking of custom was both
an accompaniment and a cause of the increase of freedom
in Roman society. When the simple and strenuous period
of early Rome had passed, and above all when the Punic
Wars and the annexation of many provinces had brought
the expansion of wealth and the increase of worldliness that
went with racial and social experience, the absolute de-
pendence of the wife on the old marital relation became
distasteful first, and afterward unendurable. Economic
and social freedom occupied more and more the minds of
women, until by the time of Augustus divorces and illicit
relations were so frequent as hardly to be scandalous. The
Roman divorce was hindered legally only by the obligation
on the part of the man to restore the dowry. The attitude
of the family and the social circle no doubt served to restrain
and to regulate, but at best the marriage relation, even in
Cicero's time, was far from the dignity and constancy of the
ideal union.
But it is not the purpose of this chapter to rehearse the
scandals of the new-woman movement of ancient Rome.
Let us not recount the usual stories of independence, arro-
gance, extravagance, ostentation, and abandonment, of
mothers who refuse to rear their children, of women who
THE WOMEN OP HIS FAMILY
121
count the years by husbands instead of by consuls, of
noblewomen defiantly throwing away their names, of
princesses who disgrace their fathers, of empresses who
betray and poison their husbands ; remembering in charity
that Slander, like Death, loves a shining mark, and may be
trusted to do injus-
tice even to the bad.
There is no doubt
as to a weakening
of character in both
the women and the
men of the late Re-
public and early
Empire. There is
no doubt also that
its causes had long
been coming with
the change of Rome
from the little rus-
tic State in Central
Italy to the State
that included the Mediterranean world — with the in-
crease in the number of woman slaves in the house and in
entertainment circles, and the increase in all the immorali-
ties that cluster about the institution of slavery ; with the
increase in the foreign class and in all the fluidities and
irresponsibilities that belong to the alien and adventurous ;
with the increase in wealth and its possibilities as the means
of defying opinion and authority ; with the growth of a high
society that set aside the principles and laws that governed
the ordinary citizen. All this operated not only to encourage
relaxation of the moral bond in men, whose life by nature is
less restrained, but gradually to loosen the bonds of women,.
Two ROMAN LADIES
The lady on thd right is Faustina, wife of Antoninus
Pius.
122 THE ROMAN
who by reason of the limited field of woman's life are the
more conservative sex.
Let us rather conclude by remembering that Roman
womanhood included very many more than the few so
fiercely assailed by the satirists, and that throughout the
centuries of Rome's existence the ideal of the mother and
wife and sister and daughter of the olden times was an ever
present and living influence, constantly appearing in the
flesh.
"Purity, loyalty, affection, the sense of duty, a yield-
ing nature, and whatever qualities God has implanted
in women" — is one of the many tributes to the Roman
woman surviving in epitaphs.
"You were a faithful wife to me, and an obedient one,"
records another ; "you were kind and gracious, sociable and
friendly; you were ever busied with your spinning; you
observed the religious rites of your household and your
State, and allowed no foreign cults or degraded magic ; you
did not dress ostentatiously, nor seek to make a display in
your household arrangements."
These are the sincere expressions that spring from the
emotion of fresh bereavement, and their sincerity is con-
firmed by the less personal and more judicial record of the
poet and historian. This is the manner in which the Roman
Empire thought of the mothers of its early days, and this is
the manner in which for fifteen centuries the later world has
thought of the Roman woman.
BUT; pernaps in our admiration for the loftier virtues of the
Roman matron we have not realized as we should that the
faithfulness and devotion which made her a blessing to her
household were prompted by a heart that glowed with
affection. Let the verses of two Romans far separated in
time afford us a glimpse of the truth.
THE WOMEN OF HIS FAMILY 123
Statius, an admirer of Virgil who died at fifty-five in
A.D. 96, thus addressed his wife Claudia :
"May that kind Power
Who joined our hands when in thy beauty's flower
Still, when the blooming years of life decline,
Prolong the blessing, and preserve thee mine. . . .
I saw thee, what thou art, when late I stood
On the dark verge of the Lethaean flood.
When, glazed in death, I closed my quivering eyes,
Relenting fate restored me to thy sighs.
Thou wert alone the cause ; the Power above
Feared thy despair and melted to thy love."
Ausonius, born A.D. 310 in Bordeaux and reared there,
writes in a simpler strain to the wife whom he married at
twenty-four when she was eighteen, and who died at twenty-
seven. They have been married less than nine years when
he composes the touching lines :
"Be life what it has been, and let us hold,
Dear wife, the names we each gave each of old ;
And let not time work change upon us two,
I still your boy, and still my sweetheart you.
What though I outlive Nestor? and what though
You in your turn a Sibyl's years should know?
Ne'er let us know old age or late or soon ;
Count not the years, but take of each its boon."
At seventy, after nearly twoscore years, still lonely with'
out her, he addresses her again, feeling the loss as if it were
fresh.
"Others in their sorrows are comforted by time; these wounds
of mine are only deepened by the long years. . . . My hurt is
made the worse by the voiceless and silent house, in which there
is no one for me to tell of my griefs or pleasures."
XIII
WHAT HE ATE AND DRANK
The same soil was under and about the feet of the ancient
Roman as lies about the modern Roman; the same blue
sky in summer and shifting clouds in winter were over his
head; the same waters washed his shores and carried his
ships ; he had the same physical needs and the same desires.
To know for the most part what the common man ate and
drank and how he lived, we have only to look upon modern
Italy and the modern Roman. In reality there are many
differences, but they depend less upon foods themselves than
upon the manner of their use. Some of the differences most
striking to us are due to the excesses of the rich which are
made so prominent by the ancient writers of satire and
epigram.
One of the two great feeders of the modern Roman is the
land of Italy. It produces the wheat that makes his various
forms of bread, his macaroni, and his pastries; there are
other cereals, principally Indian corn and rice, but wheat is
the chief, and in it the kingdom is nearly self-supporting.
It produces the fruits that, each in its season, appear upon
his table : the apples and oranges of winter, the strawberries
and the cherries of late spring, the peaches and pears and
apricots and melons and plums of summer, the figs and
grapes of autumn. It sends him in autumn and winter the
chestnut, to be roasted or boiled or made a dessert ; and the
hazelnut and almond, to be used alone or in confections. It
yields the olive and its oil, one of the richest contributions to
124
WHAT HE ATE AND DRANK
127
the "golden apples of the Hesperides" of the ancient tales
are a proof that the orange was not at home in Italy. Among
vegetables, we must not think of potatoes and the tomato in
ancient Rome. Among meats, beef should be mentioned as
not so generally used as in modern times. Among dairy prod-
PRODUCTS FOUND IN POMI m
Below, barley and St. John's bread or beans ; above, perhaps rice and peas.
ucts, butter was little used and the oil of the olive was univer-
sal, as it is to-day. The place of sugar was taken by honey.
These are the chief differences as to the great body of the
people. An enumeration of the luxuries brought in from
other lands for the rich might add to the number of differ-
ences, but our impression would remain that ancient and
modern food and drink, so far as the staples are concerned,
are very much alike.
128
THE ROMAN
The meals of the Romans, like our own, varied with time,
place, occupation, rank, and wealth. The ways of the
Empire differed from those of the early Republic ; the ways
of the city were different from those of the country, the ways
of the East from those of the West ; those of the artisan and
the laborer from those of banker and lawyer; those of the
plebeian poor from thoss cf the aristocrat and the rich.
AN ANCIENT MEAT MARKET
A customer or the proprietress with tablets, various cuts on the rack,
cleaver, scales, butcher preparing a cut on the chopping block, receptacle for
scraps.
There are four names for the Roman meals, and they cor-
respond to our breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper. lento-
culum, breakfast, is a word rarely met in Latin literature,
and it disappeared with ancient Rome. Prandium, lunch,
and cena, dinner, are very frequent, and survive in Italian
pranzo and cena with the same meanings. Vesperna, supper,
has also disappeared.
In the earliest times, when city and country were still
a unit and classes were not pronounced, the universal custom
was breakfast in early morning, light or substantial accord-
ing to occupation, dinner at mid-day, and supper when the
WHAT HE ATE AND DRANK 129
day was over. This was the natural sequence for a people
leading an active life afield and in the open air of the city,
and in the country it continued and still continues. In the
city, the natural sequence soon came to be breakfast, the
merest taste of something light ; lunch, a fairly substantial
meal ; and dinner, the chief repast of the day.
These different sequences of Roman meals are exactly our
own. Breakfast, dinner, and supper was the sequence for
all in early American history, and remains so still for most of
our country people. The order in the city, though by no
means universal, is breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
With the average Roman of the city as the type, let us
consider each meal of his day.
Breakfast for the ancient Roman in the city will consist of
a roll or piece of bread, with a glass of water or wine. Of
course he will have no coffee, tea, or cocoa. He will take his
breakfast as soon as he rises, which will be at an earlier or
later hour according to occupation. The bakers and the
delivery boys and the laborers will be up at dawn, and will
eat more substantially. The lawyers, senators, and the
rich, with those in the professional and commercial callings
in general, will rise later.
The Roman's lunch, in the middle of the day, consisted of
bread, a substantial dish of eggs or meat, a vegetable or
salad, a fruit, with perhaps cheese. He drank wine or milk.
The Roman dinner, at the end of the day's activities, was
what might be expected after the light breakfast and simple
luncheon above described. It was usually of three parts.
First, there was the gu^tus, or antecena, which the French
would call hors-d'oeuvres, the Italians antipasti, and Ameri-
cans the appetizer. This might be set on in great variety,
for the diner to choose from: eggs, salt fish, lettuce,
radishes, etc., with a mild wine, sometimes sweetened with
130
THE ROMAN
honey and called mulsum. Second, there was the main
service, or cena, consisting of several successive plates or
courses, including probably one of fish, one of meat, and one
of vegetables. With the cena, ordinary wine was drunk,
with water added, as is the universal custom also in modern
Rome. Third and last, came the dessert, called secunda
mensa. The possibilities for
this were cakes of various
kinds, pastries in general,
apples and other fruits, and
nuts, with wines appropriate
to sweets. There were no
cigars or cigarettes.
A simple dinner menu in
Juvenal, about A.D. 100, is
composed of: (1) asparagus
and eggs; (2) kid and
chicken ; (3) fruits. Martial,
about the same time, has
one made up of : (1) lettuce, onions, fish, and slices of egg ;
(2) sausages, cereal, cauliflower, bacon and beans ; (3) pears,
chestnuts, olives, toasted peas, green beans. It was so cus-
tomary for eggs to appear in the gustus, and apples in
the secunda mensa, that "from egg to apples" came to be
the Roman way of saying "from start to finish."
The composition of Roman food and drink and the ways
of Roman meals as given in this account will sound to most
readers strangely sensible. We are so accustomed to being
told of the scandalous luxuries and excesses of the Roman
rich man — his nightingales' tongues, roast peacocks, and
outlandish fish preparations — that we forget the sober and
well-conducted people that lived about him and really were
the people of Rome. The high life' of the city belongs in a
A LOAF OF BREAD FROM POMPEII
The baker's stamp is on it.
WHAT HE ATE AND DRANK 131
chapter to come, in which the life of Rome will be presented
as seen by the satirist. In this chapter the object of our
study is not the exceptional but the ordinary in the ancient
Roman's life.
Where did the Roman eat his meals ? In the earlier days,
in the atrium, the large and only living room. In the
country, and in every city house that had a garden in its rear,
the table would have been set, for a large part of the year,
in the open air, sometimes under the sky, sometimes under
a leading roof of wood or tile, sometimes under a trellis and
vine. On the country estates and in the villages, many an
evening would have found the family sitting in front of the
house. It must not be forgotten that Italy is a Mediter-
ranean country, that from May to October the warmth and
sunshine prevail, and that through all these months there is
almost never a drop of rain on Rome and the Campagna.
The fact of climate should be remembered also for the
times when Rome had become the great capital and the
Roman house had become an establishment with atrium and
peristyle surrounded by many rooms, and with kitchen and
dining room elaborately equipped and occupying space of
their own. Many a restaurant in Rome to-day has its
tables actually on the sidewalk for at least six months in the
year. In the palace or on the street, the ancients no doubt
made like use of the air and sun.
At least as early as the third century B.C., when Magna
Graecia, or southern Italy, was annexed to the Roman State
and brought its customs to the capital, the Roman dining
room began to be called by the Greek name triclinium. The
word, composed of "three" and "couch," describes the
ancient equivalent of our dining table and chairs, and is
applied also to the room containing them. It consisted of
three broad, inclined couches about three feet high and ten
132
THE ROMAN
feet tang, arranged about three sides of a table of rather small
dimensions in such a manner as to leave a fourth side entirely
free. The entire room, in the house of Pansa in Pompeii, was
25 by 33 feet ; but this was very large. The usual dining room
was little larger than the triclinium itself. The couches were
A POMPEIAN TRICLINIUM
It is of masonry, with serving table and dinner ware. The lectus sum-
mus and lectus imus, at right and left, are joined by the leotus medius. On
cither side of the angle made by the imus and the medius reclined the host
and the guest of honor, the latter on the medius.
of course comfortably mattressed, and draped according to
the standing of the family. The triclinium might be movar
ble, and in this case it consisted of three frames which, as
restored in the Naples Museum, make us think of bedsteads.
When permanent, it was composed of three solid and con-
tinuous banks of masonry, with round or square table built
ii* the same way, as seen among the ruins of Pompeii. A rich
WHAT HE ATE AND DRANK 133
man's house might contain both a winter triclinium, built
where it could catch the sun, and a summer triclinium,
placed in a shady part of the house, or even on the second
floor.
The triclinium, as the name indicates, was a dining table
at which the diners reclined. The approved number of
diners was nine. More than this number was too many;
less than three, too few. "The number of guests," says
Cicero's friend Varro, "should begin with the number of the
Graces and go as far as the Muses ; that is, it should begin
with three and end at nine."
The diners reclined upon the left elbow, three on a couch,
facing the table, which sometimes filled all the space be-
tween the couches and served the same purpose as the modern
table, and sometimes was only a serving table about which
the slave could move as he ministered to the diners' needs.
No cloth covered it? and it was often a beautiful and expen-
sive piece of furniture.
Much of the food was served already prepared. The
diner used spoons of various kinds, but no forks, and the
knife but little. The fingers were much more freely used
than now, but it need not be supposed that table manners
were marked by less taste. Among the various features of
the table service, which had its delicate earthenware and its
richer and rarer bronze and silver and gold service, were
certain constant things, such as the goblets and pitchers and
mixing bowls for wine, the bread trays, and the salinum.
The salinum was an ornamental container for the mingled
meal and salt which was sprinkled on the family altar fire Ity
the master of the house at a certain stage of the dinner,
something after the manner of grace at table. In its most
pretentious form, it was of silver and an heirloom. This is
the kind which Horace has in mind when he describes the
134
THE ROMAN
happy man as one whose easy slumbers are not broken by
fear or sordid greed, and "on whose simple table gleams the
salinum." This seems to mean that even the poor possessed
the silver salinum as a matter of pride. The ordinary salt
container went by the same name.
The places at the Roman dinner were according to rank,
or to the preference of the host. The couches or wings of
the triclinium were known as the highest, middle, and lowest
CUPIDS IN A WINE CBLLAB
The rustic dealer is handing the gentleman customer a sample ; the careful and
anxious process of drawing it from the large amphora is seen at the right. From a
wall painting in the house of the Vettii, Pompeii.
— kctus summits, lectus medius, lectus imus. The imus was
occupied by the host and his family or by the humbler
guests ; the medius and summus by the guests of greater
distinction. Each couch too had its summus, medius, and
imus, or first, second, and third places. The host reclined at
number one of the imus, and the guest of honor at his left on
number three of the medius, a place called lectus consularis
from its reservation for a consul whenever one was present.
One triclinium in Pompeii is provided with a children's seat
or bench, at the end of the imus.
WHAT HE ATE AND DRANK 135
Reclining at dinner, especially when the dinner was a social
function, was probably universal in the city, and in the more
pretentious houses in the country. It will be better to
imagine the breakfast as an affair of little or no formality,
and the lunch also as likely to be informal ; and to think of
the simpler households, and of the wealthier much of the-
time, as eating their meals in the sitting posture and in the
free and easy manner that might be expected in the intimate
life of the family.
An entertaining paragraph from Varro, the friend of
Cicero just mentioned, will form a fit conclusion for our visit
to the Roman dining room. The passage has been pre-
served for us by Aulus Gellius, the gentleman who lived in
Athens and wrote for the benefit of his grandsons a mis-
cellany called Nights in Attica.
"''There is a most delightful book in Marcus Varro's Menippean
Satires entitled 'You Don't Know What Late Evening May
Bring.' In it he discourses on the proper number of dinner guests
and on the service of the dinner itself. He further says that the
number of diners should begin from the number of the Graces and
go as far as the number of the Muses ; that is, start from three
and end at nine, so that when they are fewest they shall not be
fewer than three, and when most, not more than nine. There
should not be many, he says, because a crowded company in
general makes confusion; at Rome standing, at Athens sitting,
and nowhere reclining.
"The dinner itself, he says next, consists of four things, and
can be regarded as fulfilling its purpose in every respect only if it
gathers together a company of choice spirits, if the place is suit-
able, if the time is suitable, and if the service is not neglected.
Further, he says, the guests chosen should neither be loquacious in
their conversation nor dumb, because the place for eloquence is
in the forum and before the jury seats, and silence belongs, not at
a dinner party, but in a sleeping room. And so he recommends
that the subjects of conversation should not be anxious and worn-
136 THE ROMAN
some thing*, but pleasant and inviting matters, themes that im-
prove and at the same time lead us delightfully on, so that our
wit may gain in attractiveness and charm. This will of course be
the result, he says, if we talk about the sort of things that have
to do with our common experiences in living, matters that we have
no time to discuss while occupied by public affairs and business.
"Further, as to the one who gives the dinner, he says, it is not
so important that he be splendid as that he avoid anything mean ;
and not everything should be set before the guests, but rather such
things as are wholesome and will be liked. He does not omit also
to give us advice about the dessert and its nature."
XIV
HOW HE SPENT THE DAY
The world's greatest epigrammatist, Martial, a native of
Spain, who came to Rome in Nero's time at the age of twenty-
three and lived there for nearly forty years, describes in one
epigram the main features of the Roman day of his time.
The epigram was written sometime between A.D. 84 and 96>
the limits of Domitian's reign, and was addressed to Euphe-
mus, the steward of the imperial palace, who was to present
a book of the poet's epigrams to the Emperor as he enjoyed
bis wine at dessert. The day with which it deals is therefore
seventy years after the death of Augustus, and is concerned
with high life ; but the day in general was much the same in
Rome throughout the first century of the Empire, and the
day in this short poem will therefore serve as background for
comments on the Roman's manner of spending his time. It
should be kept in mind, however, that with him the hour,
hora, meant one twelfth of the daylight or one twelfth of the
dark.
"The first hour and the second," writes Martial, "are given to
those who pay the morning call. The third hour exercises the
pleaders of cases until they are hoarse. To the fifth, Rome pro-
longs her various tasks. The sixth hour is rest for the tired ; the
seventh will be its end. The eighth to the ninth suffices for the
sleek gymnasium. The ninth sends the diner to crush the high
mattresses. The tenth, Euphemus, is the right hour for my little
books, when your care watches over the ambrosial feast, and good
Caesar relaxes with heavenly nectar as he holds the sparing goblet
in his mighty hand. At that time admit my trifles ; my Thalia
fears with bold step to approach Jove in the morning hours."
137
138
THE ROMAN
It is not easy to translate the hours of Martial precisely
into modern equivalents, but he seems to divide the day in
this manner : (1) During the hours ending at 7 and 8, the
clients call to pay their respects and receive the dole, with
orders for the day ; (2) at 9, the business of the courts is
under way ; (3) the general business of the city goes on up to
REMAINS OF IMPERIAL PALACES ON THE PALATINE
The garden-like enclosure may go back to Doxnitian, the patron of Martial.
the 11 o'clock hour and through it ; (4) at 12 coroes the noon
hour, with lunch and siesta, and the one o'clock hour ends it,
or, perhaps, serves to wind up the day's business ; (5) the
two o'clock and three o'clock hours are for exercise and bath ;
(6) the three o'clock hour brings the time for dining out.
As Martial's purpose in this epigram is not the accurate
analysis of a day but an exhortation to Euphemus to choose
the most favorable hour at which to hand the poet's verses
HOW HE SPENT THE DAY 139
to the Emperor, it is not surprising that the divisions of the
day are not distinct, and that its activities are not given in
great detail. What he says in substance is : "The Emperor
and the important people of the city are occupied until noon
with the reception of clients, court duties, and other affairs.
At the noon hour they are tired and want to rest. After that,
they are finishing the day's business and doing their daily
exercise and dressing for dinner. Nobody would be in the
mood to hear verses at any of these hours. Wait until the
Emperor and his friends are through with the day's affairs
and sitting over their wine, and then present my book." The
day here described is the day of the emperor, the high official,
the aristocrat, the rich professional, and the commercial
class.
The day of the middle-class man and of the lower classes
exclusive of clients would have differed from that of the
upper class in more than one respect. The early morning
reception of clients played no part in it, and work took its
place. Dining out was less frequent. With all the lower
class, and with most of the middle class, the labors of the day
did not cease with the seventh hour, but continued after the
siesta until the setting of the sun.
The day of an average household of the middle class may
be imagined somewhat as follows. It began at the rising
of the sun, with slaves or servants already cleaning the
floors. After a very light breakfast, which each took as was
convenient, the children were accompanied to school, the
master of the house went off to shop, office, or forum until
noon, and the mistress directed or performed the tasks of the
house, among them being a visit to the market for the day's
provisions. At noon there was a light lunch at table in
atrium, dining room, or peristyle, followed by quiet for an
hour or two. The business or work of the afternoon was
140
THE ROMAN
then resumed. At the proper hour the mistress or a servant
went after the children and brought them home. A walk to
the park, or a shopping expedition, or fancy work in the
house occupied another hour, after which the remainder of
the day was given to preparations in kitchen and dining
THE PERISTYLE OF THE HOUSE OF THE AMOBINI DOBATI, OR GILDED
LOVES, IN POMPEII
The tiled roofing is a restoration, and the shrubbery is a reproduction of tfia
ancient. Medallion-like ornaments are suspended in the porticoes. The houdo is
named from little medallions of Cupids in gold foil found in the first room on the right
room for dinner, private or with guests. The children were
put to bed early, and the father perhaps went out for a social
hour at a wineshop. At the end of the evening, the street
door was locked and barred, the little lamps that rested on
the candelabra were taken up to light the way to bed, and the
atrium left in darkness.
HOW HE SPENT THE DAY 141
This is the barest account of the Roman day, for our
purpose up to this point is to realize only the general charac-
ter of Roman daily life. In later chapters, we shall con-
sider in greater detail the various occupations that made up
the total of the city's work, and study also the diversions
that were so large a part of its life. Let it be enough now to
say that the work of the Roman citizenry was manifold, and
that the round of the month and year was varied and light-
ened by many amusements — the play, the races, the
swordsmen in the arena, the animal hunt, the juggler and
mountebank in the street and parks, the Campus Martius
and its games, the Tiber and its boating and swimming,
the simple and natural amusements of the house, including
the dinner itself, which occupied a larger place in ancient
times than it does to-day.
It will bring the general character of the day into clearer
relief if we employ again the method of contrast. There are
several respects in which the Romans differed sharply from us.
First, their keeping of time was less precise than ours.
So far as we can tell, there was no mechanical device for the
keeping of time available to the public until 263 B.C., when
a sundial was brought to Rome from Sicily, and with it the
day of twelve equal parts as hours. There is mention of one
thirty years before this, but it was at the Temple of Quirinus
and probably not of general service. Up to the year 263 B.C.,
the measuring of time and the keeping of appointments
must have depended upon the position of sun and moon, the
casting of shadows, and perhaps other means unknown to us.
Sunrise, sunset, and noon were the only certain points in the
day. The amount of inconvenience and waste that had to be
endured may easily be imagined. If the day was overcast,
the meeting of obligations depending upon time must have
been very uncertain.
142 THE JEIOMAN
The sundial itself is a very imperfect help. It is useless
on cloudy days, it will not serve by night, it is not readily
portable, it will function only in the latitude for which it was
designed, and even there it is but a clumsy and inaccurate
means. The sundial brought from Catina, now Catania, in
Sicily, though not correct for Rome, was used for ninety-nine
years before a second dial was made, in 164 B.C., to suit the
Roman latitude. Both were still in place on pillars behind
the Rostra in the time of Cicero. Strange as it seems to us,
the division of the day into twelve hours was not practiced
at Rome before the sundial was introduced.
The sundial no doubt remained for some time compara-
tively rare, the few that were to be consulted being stationed
near the administrative buildings, and corresponding to our
clock on the city hall. Cicero in the defense of Quinctius
pleads that his client "has always lived roughly and without
regard for looks; has been of a gloomy and retiring dis-
position ; has not spent his time at the Sundial nor in the
Campus, nor in dining out."
A second step, and one of great importance, was the intro-
duction to public use, in 159 B.C., of the water clock. This
was a cylindrical container from which water was allowed
to flow, and which was so graduated that the level of its
contents, as they slowly fell, indicated the hour and even
fractions of the hour. It might be of glass and transparent,
or of metal, with the use of a cord and floating cork to regu-
late an indicator which moved up the graduated line. The
"winding" of such a clock consisted in filling it with water
at sunrise or sunset or noon, when the time was certain;
and its repairing consisted in the accurate regulation of the
flow that drained it. Its great advantage over the sundial
was that it functioned day and night, and on cloudy days
as well as clear.
HOW HE SPENT THE DAY
143
Yet the water clock too was very imperfect compared with
the clock of our times. Only on the March and September
equinoxes are the days and nights of equal length, and the
March 2O
March 20
SUNRISE
3rdHOUR
6th HOUR
9thHOUR
SUNSET OR
12th HOUR
9th HOUR
SUNSET OR
!2*hHOUR
DIAGRAM OP WATER CLOCK
Filled at sunrise on the dates indicated to the points where horizontal and vertical
lines intersect, as the water lowered by dropping away the clock showed the 3rd,
6th, 9th, and 12th hour of daylight, and by the use of additional horizontal lines
could show other hours and fractions. By the addition of vertical lines it could be
made to function on the other dates. By graduating the upper half it could be
filled at sunset and become a 24-hour clock. Note that on March and September
equinoxes the lines for day and night are of equal length, and that for every other
day they are unequal. Their division into twelve parts consequently resulted in
hours of equal length day and night only on the equinoxes. In summer months the
twelve night hours were very short, and the twelve day hours very long.
twelve divisions or hours of equal length by day and by
night. On all other days the light and the dark are of
unequal length, and consequently their twelve equal parts
144 THE ROMAN
are variations from the equinoctial hours. The earliest
sunrise in Roman latitude is at 4.27 in summer and the latest
at 7.33 in winter, and the length of daylight varies from 15
hours and 6 minutes on June 25 to 8 hours and 54 minutes on
December 23 ; thus the hours vary from about 75 minutes
in summer to 45 in winter. It is clear that if a water clock
were made and operated for accuracy, it would have to be
equipped with one graduated line for the two equinoxes,
and with a separate line for every other day in the year, and
that the amount of water supplied it would also vary. The
water clock here described should not be confused with the
water clock of the court and public assembly, which was
a simple device like an hourglass used to limit the length of
speeches and not to measure time as time.
With the introduction of sundial and water clock, and the
more accurate calculation of time, it may be imagined that
there was a great increase in public and private efficiency.
This is proved by the very fact that sundials at length came
into universal use. They have been discovered in every part
of the Roman Empire, even to its very borders at the Sahara
and at the limit of the northern wilderness. They were used
in the more pretentious houses as well as in public. The
distribution of the water clock, which was less durable and
has left fewer remains, was no doubt even more general in
the home if not in public life. The makers of water clocks
were a regular artisan class, and their product continued in
use far into the Middle Ages.
Universal as were the clock and dial, however, they were
mostly stationary and always inconvenient. There were
many who never troubled with them except as they were
compelled by the law, which in some transactions involving
time, as the use of water by the hour in irrigation, pre-
scribed their use. Such persons went on in ordinary life
HOW HE SPENT THE DAY 145
regulating their movements by the use of sunrise ; mane, or
the first two hours; ad meridiem, or forenoon; noon; de
meridie, or afternoon ; suprema, or late afternoon up to sun-
set ; and other more or less vague terms. In earlier times
there were no doubt many who prided themselves on doing
without the innovation, and others who half in earnest cursed
the day it came to Rome with its bothersome precision.
Says a parasite in one of . the comedy fragments of Cicero's
time:
"May the gods destroy the man that first discovered hours, yes,
and the man that first set up the sundial here, and took the day
apart and smashed it for miserable me into little pieces. In the
old days when I was a boy, a man's stomach was his sundial, and
by a long way the best and truest of all your timepieces ; at any
time you felt that way, it told you to eat, except when there
was nothing. Now, even when there is something, you don't eat
unless the sun agrees to it. Yes, sir, the town these days is filled
full of sundials, and most of the people in it are dragging around
dried up with hunger."
The Roman day was thus very different from our own in
the manner of its keeping time. It is hardly possible that
this does not connote a great difference in the speed as well
as the precision of doing business, and in the general tone of
the city's life during the daylight hours. One would hardly
have found the rapid nervous movement on the street or
in the office that is the case to-day in America, or even
in southern Europe. If besides we remember the Italian
warmth of a great part of the year, we must imagine ancient
Rome, even at its busiest, as leisurely and calm compared
with the modern city. On summer noondays, indeed, the
streets were almost silent and deserted.
A second difference between the Roman and the modern
was the habit of early rising and early retiring. This was
due entirely in the beginning, and indeed in great part i™
146 THE ROMAN
later times, to nature. By nightfall the early Roman, both
in city and country, was tired out by the physical work of
long daylight hours. Li addition, his house had the rudest
facilities for lighting, and there was little incentive for him
to make the evening long. The later Roman, in the more
purely urban life of Republic and Empire, was still without
the brilliant street illumination and the convenient house
lighting that have made the modern city more lively by
night than by day, and the modern home attractive for both
work and play far into the night. For those who have lived
a fireless winter season in modern Rome, it need not be
argued that the dampness and chill of the airy Roman house
on the evenings of the colder months encouraged an early
going to bed.
A third difference was due likewise to the lack of light.
The public amusements of the city — theater, amphitheater,
races — were all daytime shows. The Roman consequently
did not feel so strongly the urge to spend the evening out.
The most common of evening diversions, and about the only
one of which we are conscious in Roman literature, was the
dinner, and this was prolonged and frequent only in the life
of high society.
On the whole, the Roman day seems to have differed from
the day in our own large cities in six respects : (1) in its lack
of precision in the keeping of time ; (2) in the closer cor-
respondence of its waking hours with the daylight and its
sleeping hours with the dark; (3) in its longer midday
interval of rest ; (4) in its poorer lighting of street and house
at night ; (5) in the use of the daylight hours for amuse-
ments; (6) in the prominence of dinner as the evening
diversion, and the lack of other night attractions.
It will be noticed that these differences depend chiefly
upon the presence of a wanner climate and the absence of gafl
HOW HE SPENT THE DAY 147
and electric illumination, and only in minor degree on
differences in character and ideas. The life of Rome was no
doubt busy and crowded and noisy enough, and had its
artificialities in plenty ; but it was much more in harmony
with nature than the life to which the increase of the world's
population, with residence in colder climates and with
modern inventions, has condemned the great capitals of
to-day.
PART III
LIVING ROME
LIVING ROME
Our study of Rome and the Romans began with a visit to
modern Italy and its capital. We found the Italian land-
scape unchanged and the city of Rome still sitting on the
Seven Hills, with gigantic remnants of the ancient city rising
in the midst of the modern. We went back to geological
times, when vomiting volcano and surging sea and the
mightily running river created the plain of Latium and
fashioned it for habitation. We saw the first men settle by
the Tiber, and traced the growth and changes of the city on
its banks down through the ages and on to modern times.
We saw how the Roman State grew strong and expanded
from the Monarchy in Latium into the Republic that spread
over Italy and about the Mediterranean, and into the
Empire that made the Mediterranean a Roman lake and
ruled the Western world. We saw how after the fall of the
Roman Empire the sway of Rome continued — in language,
in literature, in the arts, in law, in religion, in morality ; so
that the civilization of to-day is still the civilization of
ancient Rome.
This was our setting for the Roman himself. Upon this
stage and against this background of modern and ancient
Italy and Rome and their importance in the affairs of the
world to-day we placed the ancient Roman in person. We
reconstructed the city of his time ; saw how he was dressed
and how he carried himself, and what the society was in
which he moved ; entered the house in which he lived ; wit-
nessed his rearing from babyhood, and his training up to the
time of his entrance into manhood and the work of his world ;
151
152 LIVING ROME
were introduced to his mother, sister, wife, and daughter,
and were made to realize the splendid contributions of the
Roman woman to her own and after times ; saw what he ate
and drank, and took part with him in the life of his home ;
and followed him in the round of the day from dawn to the
setting of the sun. In all this, our purpose was to see the
Roman as an individual figure.
We have thus completed the stage setting and introduced
the principal one of the dramatis personae. In plainer
words, we have made ourselves acquainted with the general
appearance and general character of Rome and the Romans,
and are now prepared for the special study of Roman life.
It will therefore be our purpose, in the chapters of the
present section of our study, to follow the Roman of the
upper classes in his career as the servant of the State y as
the professional man, and to follow the common man to his
daily work in the many skilled and unskilled occupations by
which he gained his livelihood ; not forgetting the country
and its life, so long at the base of the virtue and strength of
earlier Rome. Having thus reviewed the careers of high
and low, we shall try to give them color and vividness by
telling the stories of representative Roman lives. In order
the better to understand the meaning of life to the Roman,
we shall make the much more difficult attempt to enter into
his religious consciousness and to share his interpretations of
the human lot. His diversions also will contribute to the
appreciation of his inner being : the theater, the circus, the
amphitheater, the baths, and the unorganized and simpler
pastimes with which he garnished his existence. We shall
find that he was a lively person and enjoyed the comic
aspects of his environment. We shall note the follies and
excesses that made him the target of bitterest satire on the
part of his fellows. We shall not omit his excesses and
LIVING ROME 153
crimes and the part they played. We shall see him on his
last bed of sickness, and follow in the train that conducts the
mortal remnant to its last resting place.
The sum of these studies wiii be the collective life of the
sity. Their result will be an appreciation of the human
qualities of Living Rome.
XV
THE ROMAN CAREER
The great career in Rome was the career of the public
man. It was the service of the State in the highest and most
expert duties of the citizen. In its usual form it meant a
period of some ten years in military service and lesser civil
offices, and then the offices of quaestor, aedile, praetor, and
consul. The consulship was the shining goal of Roman
ambition. By the time the citizen reached it, he was forty-
three at least, and a man much tested in the ways of the
world.
The Roman career with its long, varied, and comprehensive
experience was evolutionary, and thus the product of nature.
The first form of the Roman State was tribal, and its chief
was legislator, executive, judge, and priest all in one and
might have said with greater right than the modern monarch,
L'6tat9 c'est moi — the State, it is I ! With the growth of
numbers, however, came the increase of duties and the
sharing and delegation of their execution. The chief or
king could not continue to be a specialist in every activity
of the State. The council of fathers who advised him soon
became the Senate that helped him make the laws. He had
the prefect of the city to take his place during absences,
the quaestors and duumvirs to arrest and try the criminal,
and the tribune to command his cavalry- When the Re-
public took the place of the Monarchy, the powers originally
in the king alone were still more widely distributed. There*
were the Senate and assemblies to create the laws, the con-
154
THE ROMAN CAREER 155
,?uls bo act as judges and executives and to serve as leaders
of the people and the army, the quaestors to attend to the
city and State finances, and the dictator to give unity to
effort in times of stress. Later, as the State's affairs became
more complicated, the tribune was added to safeguard the
common people's rights, the censor to act as corrector of
public acts and morals, the praetor to conduct the courts,
and the aedile to supervise the city's public functions and
improvements.
The one-man State had thus evolved into the complex
State with many offices. The Roman career, including as it
did these offices, was the product of evolution quite as much
as the Roman State.
The Roman who ran this career may himself be called a
natural product. Each one of the offices of which the career
consisted called for special abilities and was a special experi-
ence ; the public man might, and frequently did, in his climb
to the topmost round of the ladder, hold aU of them ; and it
is easy to see that they conferred as well as required an
unusual equipment of character and capacity.
But the Roman career was not created by nature alone.
It was encouraged also by law. The succession of the
offices which naturally led to the highest honor and useful-
ness in the State came in the course of time to be so customary
that at last it was formalized. The Lex Villia Annalis of the
year 180 B.C., named from its author Lucius Villius the
tribune, provided that the offices usually held and the order
in which they were usually held should thenceforth be the
rule as well as the practice. From that date, chiefly as a
result of the law but also in obedience to custom quite as
strong as law, a definite order in the round of offices possible
in the public career was established. By the end of the
Republic, this round or succession of offices had so developed
156
LIVING ROME
as to include the following possibilities: tribune of the
soldiers, member of the board of twenty-six, quaestor,
tribune of the people, curule or plebeian aedile, censor,
master of the cavalry, praetor, interrex, consul, censor,
dictator ; but it must not be
supposed that anyone man's
career comprised them all, or
that this order never varied.
As the dictator, the mas-
ter of the cavalry, and the
interrex were emergency
offices, and the plebeian
aedile and the tribune of
the people were chosen ex-
clusively from the plebs,
and as the censorship was
of little or no importance in
the last century of the Re-
public, the round of offices,
or legal cursus honorum,
may be simplified to in-
clude the tribune of the
soldiers, the board of
twenty-six, the quaestor,
the curule aedile, the prae-
tor, and the consul. It is
doubtful whether even the first two of these were obligatory
before Augustus ; at any rate Cicero, so far as we know, be-
gan the career with the quaestorship. In the year 81 B.C.,
additional legislation by Sulla had the effect of confirming an
age limit, so that the quaestorship was not held before the
age of thirty-one, the praetorship not before forty, and the
consulship not before forty-three. Further, this legislation
AN UNIDENTIFIED ROMAN ON A FOR-
MAL OCCASION
He has a roll or book in the left hand.
THE ROMAN CAREER 157
provided that between the successive offices two years should
elapse, and that between two holdings of the same office
ten years must intervene. The variations from this prac-
tice in the time of the Empire need not detain us at this
point.
Let us now consider one by one the duties of the various
offices in the cursus honorum. This will not only help us to
appreciate the Roman career in its meaning to the Roman,
but will indirectly describe the constitution of the Roman
State.
First, the military tribunate. The requirement of service
as officer in the army meant, of course, a period of at least
several years in the military service, and was an expression of
the Roman belief in soldierly capacity as a necessary quali-
fication for the public man. At first appointed by the
consuls, after 362 B.C. the tribunimilitum were elected by the
people, but their duties, which were purely military, remained
the same. From 207 B.C., their number for some time was
twenty-four, which provided six each for the four legions
then constituting the levy. When more were needed, they
were appointed by the consuls, who were the commanding
officers and had the right. By the time of Cicero, the require-
ment of the military tribunate became simply ten years'
service in the field or ten years' readiness to answer to the
call, and it was possible to qualify with no actual service and
with little training.
Second, the commission of twenty-six. The necessary
qualification here was the holding for one year of one office
from among a group of six. These six offices were places on
six boards or commissions whose total membership amounted
to twenty-six. They were: (1) the police commission of
three for the arrest, trial, and punishment of criminals;
(2) the commission of ten for the judgment of certain cases ;
158 LIVING ROMJU
(3) the commission of four in charge of the courts in Capua,
Cumae, and other towns; (4) the commission of three in
charge of the mint ; (5) the commission of four for the clean-
ing of the streets inside the city ; (6) the commission of two
for the cleaning of streets outside the city. These officers
were all elected by the people. They might precede or
follow the office of tribune in the cursus honorum. Augustus
abolished the third and sixth groups, consolidated the others
into a single body, and made the office the required first step
in the cursus honorum.
Third, the quaestorship. The duties of this office were
mainly the receipt and disbursement of the State's moneys,
the care of the public records, and the oversight of details in
the State's contracts. Besides the urban quaestors who had
these duties, there were the military and provincial quaes-
tors, who acted as quartermasters and paymasters, and the
Italian quaestors, whose duties were performed at certain
centers in Italy, one having charge of the grain supply at
Ostia. The number of these officers increased from four in
421 B.C. to forty in 45 B.C. From the year 81 B.C., the date
of Sulla's reform, they were entitled at the end of their
tenure to a seat in the Senate. Cicero in 74 B.C. was there-
fore one of twenty new senators. As the number of ad-
ditions each year was large enough to keep the Senate full, it
was a body composed entirely of ex-magistrates.
Fourth, the curule aedileship. The curule or patrician
aedileship was established in 366 B.C. to balance the plebeian
aedileship which had existed from the early years of the
Republic. Both were boards of two, and had similar duties
— the superintendence of public places and buildings, such
as the streets, baths, and temples; the care of the grain
supply, with inspection of measures, weights, and foods,
and fixing of prices ; and the oversight of the games. The
THE ROMAN CAREER 161
making sacrifices in the name of the State, and taking
auspices. Away from Rome, the consuls were commanders-
in-chief in case of war, and, unless employed in different
fields, commanded each one day at a time. After 80 B.C.,
their commands were limited to Italy. They represented
the State in treaties and other business, and received and
presented foreign envoys to the Senate. They were some-
times given absolute power for the time being by decree of
the Senate suspending the ordinary rights of the citizens.
At the end of their tenure they became provincial governors.
Such was the round of public service through which the
successful Roman usually went. Most of the offices in it
were voted by the people in elections held by the comitia
centuriata, the assembly by centuries; that is, the three
hundred and seventy-three groups in which the voters were
enrolled, each group casting one vote for its entire member-
ship. Elections were held in an inclosure in the Campus
Martius, and the voter wrote the name of his candidate and
cast the ballot in secret.
As we have seen, there were other offices also open to the
public man. In the first place, if he was of the plebeian
class, he could be chosen one of the ten tribunes of the people.
This office was created early in the Republic for the pro-
tection of the individual citizen, especially the plebeian,
from the injustice of the patrician magistrate and the upper
class in general. The tribune could block the action of any
magistrate at any time by simply interposing his veto, could
punish even with death a disobedient magistrate, and was
free from arrest or punishment. This sacrosanctity of
person and right of intercession gave him the most extraor-
dinary power of obstructing Government measures, and
made of the tribunate a storm center of Roman civic life.
Again, whether plebeian or patrician, the Roman in the
152 LIVING ROME
public career was eligible to the censorship, and so might be
commissioned with the assessment of property, the super-
vision of the State's finances, and the revision of the Senate's
membership. The censorship in its best days was a powerful
restraint upon civic morals, but with the growth of the State
in numbers and complexity was unable to maintain the con-
trol it exercised in earlier and simpler days.
Finally, in times of emergency the Roman career might
include the offices of interrex, dictator, and master of the
cavalry. The interrex was a senator appointed for five days
when the State, on account of death or other cause, was left,
without consuls. His chief duty was to hold the elections
for new consuls. In case no choice was made in the five
days of his term, he appointed a second interrex. The
dictator was appointed by the consuls, first authorized by
popular vote, for a maximum of six months. The dictator V
powers were absolute. The master of the cavalry was ap
pointed by him as second in command. Both these essen •
tially military offices had ceased to be customary after the
Second Punic War, and were little employed until Caesar's
time.
There were other offices to which the Roman might be
called in his career — that of envoy, Ugatus, for example, or
judge on some commission for drafting laws or trying cases*
The mention of every possibility would involve us in too
much detail. Let us rather try to appreciate the career in
its total character.
The Roman career is paralleled in some respects by the
national career in our American life. The American who
aspires to the highest office in the land is usually a practi-
tioner of law, and as a rule moves toward the goal of liis
ambition by a fairly definite path. He begins with training
in the law school or law office, and looks for distinction first
THE ROMAN CAREER 163
In local affairs. He may be elected to municipal office as
attorney or judge or mayor, or to county office as district
attorney, or to a place in the State legislature as member of
the Assembly or senator. He develops a skill in public
address and in otherwise winning the good will of men.
After service in the legislature, he is elected member of
Congress ; after that, perhaps governor. From the gover-
norship, he is likely to be elevated to the national Senate ;
and the natural ambition of the senator is the presidency of
the United States. This is one line of advancement. An-
other line, more purely legal, and with a different goal, is
from the lawyer's office to the place of municipal, county,
or State's attorney, from one of these to the bench as mu-
nicipal or circuit judge, from this to the supreme court of
the State, and from the State to the national supreme court.
The American and the Roman careers, however, are far
from being identical. The Roman State was a city-state,
and the public men of the Roman Republic were the rulers
of a city which was the ruler of a world. They were not sent
from elsewhere to Rome as a convenient meeting place, as
our public men are sent to Washington, to remain there for
a period of two or six years in representing the voters who
elected them, and then to return to privacy or the conduct of
local affairs ; but were born and bred in Rome or its neigh-
borhood, were reared in the shadow of the Senate, were
educated with the State career never out of mind, and wit-
nessed and felt the great moments of public excitement.
They advanced by difficult steps in the midst of passionate
competition, and were selected by blood and class and
fortune as well as by native ability and the art of handling
men. They received no salaries as such . When the highest
distinction had been reached in the consulship, they did
not retire, but went on to other service in the city or were
164 LIVING ROME
employed abroad in the governing of provinces, and in
either case remained for life members of the Senate.
We must not think of the Roman career, however, as
always exemplified by men of heroic figure. The Roman
State was a democracy, the offices within its gitt were nearly
all elective, and the game of politics intruded then as now
in the dignified affairs of statesmanship. There were the
intrigues and the corruptions of the election campaign.
There were enmities between classes as bitter as any between
capital and labor to-day. There was incompetence raised
to high places by blood or wealth. There was ignorance
placed in power by the votes of the multitude. There were
the rich rewards of provincial offices to tempt the greedy.
There was the strain upon the State and upon the public man
of meeting the new conditions of expanding empire. There
was the unwieldiness of a Senate of three hundred, and there
were the dangers of the divided rule of consuls and the
abused power of the tribunate. There was the impotence of
the censorship before the rising flood of immorality and
extravagance that came with conquest, wealth, and immi-
gration. There was the drain of war and luxury on the best
blood of Italy. There was the weakening and the breaking
of the Constitution, and its reconstruction in the Empire.
There was the change from the responsible citizenship that
made the Roman Republic great in character to the auto-
cratic rule that made the Roman Empire efficient.
But we are concerned here with the Roman whose char-
acter and achievement lay at the base of Roman greatness
in the day of Cato, in the stress of the Punic Wars, and in the
earlier days of Rome's advance to the leadership of Italy —
the Roman who rose above the faults of common humanity
and the times, and ran with patience and success the race
that was set before him from the toga of manhood to the
THE ROMAN CAREER 165
Consulship of middle age and the wise counseling of later life.
The man thus born and bred and honored was a highly
developed product. He was lawyer, soldier, orator, justice,
legislator, administrator, and member for life of a body of
three hundred men all of whom were ex-magistrates like
himself, and most of whom were his equals in native capacity
and knowledge of the world. In the breadth of his education
nnd the breadth of his experience, he was one of civilization's
best specimens of the man.
XVI
THE SENATOR
The Senate, according to Livy» w&s the creation of Romu-
lus. After many men from the neighboring peoples had cast
in their lot with the growing State by the Tiber and the king
fc began to be satisfied now so far as strength was concerned,
he next provided for counsel to support that strength. He
created a hundred senators, whether because that number
was sufficient, or because there were only a hundred who
could be created 'fathers.' At any rate they were called
fathers from the distinction, and their descendants were
called patricians."
The view of Livy that the Senate owed its institution and
the senators their appointment to the king is not the only
view. There are those who think that the Senate came into
being naturally and without the intervention of authority
through the counselings together of the men at the heads of
the families or clans making up the community ; and that
it afterwards developed into the body called senatus whose
membership consisted of one senex, or man of mature age anc1
wisdom, representing each clan, chosen perhaps by the king
perhaps by the clan represented.
Whatever its origin, and whatever its earliest number, the
Senate came eventually to have a normal membership of
three hundred, to be composed of elderly men of proved
capabilities, and to command in so high a degree the respect
and obedience of the people and their elected officials as to be
practically identical with the State. This is true in spite oi
166
THE SENATOR 167
the fact that the Senate, constitutionally, was never in its
history other thai* an advisory council. Its decrees, sena-
ius consulta, had the force of law only because the inherent
authority of character had established an unbreakable
tradition of obedience.
A GATHEBING OP SENATOBS
(From "Julius Caesar")
The Senate underwent many changes in the course of it",
long existence. At first composed of only one hundred, or at
least some not very large number, the enrollment was soon
extended, perhaps in the time of the kings. At first entirely
patrician, early in the Republic it admitted plebeian mem-
bers, and we are told by Cicero that the Ovinian Law, toward
the end of the fourth century, made eligible ex omni ordine
optimum quemque, the best men from every class. At first
168 LIVING ROME
chosen for eminent qualities without formal regard to the
holding of office, as their number increased they were ap-
pointed more and more because of conspicuous discharge of
duty in a public capacity, until they became practically a
body of higher ex-magistrates. By the time of Cicero's
entrance into public life any citizen elected quaestor acquired
by the act the right to a seat in the Senate at the end of his
year of office, and held it for life unless disqualified at the
revision of the roll called census.
Among the effects of these extensions of eligibility was
naturally the increase of membership. In Cicero's youth
the number increased under Sulla from three to about four
hundred, and under Caesar it rose to nine hundred, to be
reduced by Augustus to six hundred. Another effect was
the lowering of the age limit, which was reduced to about
thirty years because the quaestorship conferring the seat
was reached at about that age. In Imperial times the limit
became twenty-five. A third effect was that the patricians
became fewer, both in reality and in proportion. Finally,
the senatorial order arose, to form the wider aristocracy
including not only patrician blood but plebeian blood that
proved itself worthy by achievement in leadership.
There were two ways by which the membership" of the
Senate was lessened : by death and by action of the censors.
There were three ways by which it was increased : by election
of new magistrates, by regular action of the censors, and by
special action of the dictator, The increases under Sulla
and Caesar were dictatorial in character, and actuated by
political interest. An addition to the roll by appointment-
was called adlectio.
From the institution of the censorship, about 443 B.C.,
the revision of the Senate roll occiirred regularly once every
lustrum, or five years. This was only one of the censorial
THE SENATOR
169
duties, but it was one of the most important. The pro-
cedure of the censors in making the revision was : (1) the
election of the princeps senate for the next lustrum, up to
209 B.C. the oldest ex-censor, but later any ex-censor ; (2) the
striking out of the names of the deceased, the disqualified,
ind the unfit, including the
legally or morally delin-
quent ; (3) the filling of the
vacancies, in earlier times
by selection from the lists
of former dictators, censors,
consuls, praetors, aediles,
and quaestors, in later times
by enrolling newly elected
quaestors ; (4) the listing of
members in these categories,
from Sulla on, each accord-
ing to official seniority, so
that for "asking opinions'7
in Senate meetings there
was a definite roll and a
definite order of preced-
ence; (5) the reading of the
new list from the Rostra,
or, under the Empire, its
publication.
As the offices through
which the senatorial seat at various periods was approached
were won by popular election, the Senate may be said to
have represented the choice of the people. The citizens
voting for Cicero as quaestor, for example, were conscious
that his election would carry with it after his year of service
a lifelong seat in the Senate. *•
THE CURIA, OB SENATE HOUSE, TO-DAY
This is the Senate House built about A.D.
300, later converted into the Church of
Saint Hadrian. When the Forum level
had been raised by the debris of the ruined
city, the church floor was raised and a
new door built. The dark niches in the
lower part of the facade contained the
bones of monks interred in mediaeval
times.
170 LIVING ROME
When the senator came to take his seat, he had the right
to the lotus claws, or broad purple stripe woven into the
tunic from the neck downward to the bottom, to the red
sandal with its peculiar buckle and straps, and to a reserved
place ,at public entertainments. On the other hand, he was
forbidden to engage in ordinary trade or to have Govern-
ment contracts. His entrance into the ordo senatorius,
unlike the rise to the equestrian rank, was not conditioned
in the Republic upon financial standing ; though Augustus
inaugurated a senatorial property qualification of a million
sesterces, about $50,000, contributing the sum in case the
appointee did not possess it.
The meetings of the Senate, as befitted an advisory body,
were at call, usually on the Calends or Ides unless the comitia
were being held, and normally in the Curia Hostilia at the
northwest corner of the Forum. The exception to this was
in the month of February, when daily meetings were pre-
scribed by law. The presiding officer and the issuer of the
call in Ciceronian times was regularly one of the consuls. In
a seat facing the door of entrance and also the assembly of
senators, who seem not to have been assigned special places,
after he had opened the session with sacrifice and inspection
of the victim, the consul proceeded to the business for which
the call had been issued, and which had been stated in the
call ; though he might previously make announcement of any
appropriate news or communications received. The relatio,
or presentation of the business, having been finished, he
awaited the pleasure of the Senate.
In order to ascertain the Senate's wishes and bring them
to the desired conclusion in a decree, the presiding officer
began with the princeps senatus, at the head of the list, and
addressed to him the formula, "Die, M. TulK, quid censes —
Speak, Marcus Tullius, what is your opinion?" continuing
THE SENATOR 173
seasoned age, of capacity tried and proved by experience,
and with lifelong tenure ; called upon to meet the emergen-
cies of a constantly expanding State and a constantly chang-
ing society — /in its best days the great council was rich in
the wisdom which was the product of earnest and capable
living, made cumulative by the consistency and continuity
and permanence of its character. When Livy declares of it
that "he who said it was composed of kings had the true
impression of its appearance," he describes the dignified and
grave exterior which was the fit expression of that character!]
Nor need we think that the ideal thus described has nothing
to do with the times of Cicero. Whatever the failings of the
Senate in its later day, its greatest orator himself and many
of the senatorial friends who stood with him were the
worthy successors, whether in capacity or in character, of
the Catos and the Curii and the Decii by whom they never
ceased to be inspired.
XVII
THE VOTER
Cicero was a member of the Senate from 74 B.C., the year
after his quaestorship in Sicily, to his death in 43 B.C., a
period of thirty-one years beginning with the end of his
thirty-second, when the conclusion of his quaestorial duties
entitled him to a seat in the great deliberative council.
Though the senatorship was not directly an elective office,
it was due to the votes of the people who had made him
quaestor. It will therefore be of interest to study the elec-
tion methods of ancient Rome.
The voters' assembly at which Cicero's election to the
quaestorship took place was the comitia tributa, the assembly
of the 35 tribes. There were two other popular assemblies,
the comitia curiata, the assembly of the original 30 curiae or
divisions of the patricians, which had ceased to have any
great importance, and the comitia centuriata, the assembly of
373 centuriae, divisions originally meaning a hundred men
but later merely the number made convenient by the total
roll of citizens entitled to vote. Both the comitia tributa
and the comitia centuriata had certain law-making and
court powers as well as the electoral function. Their
difference in electoral jurisdiction lay in the fact that the
centuriate assembly elected the consuls, praetors, and other
major magistrates, and the tribal assembly the plebeian
aediles, the quaestors, the commissioners of the mint, the
street superintendents, and the many other minor office-
holders.
174
THE VOTER
175
The election procedure at both assemblies was much the
same. First, the consuls and Senate determined beforehand
the date on one of the hundred and ninety days not forbidden
by religious provision, and within a fixed period in the sum-
mer. Next, at least seventeen days before the election,
a herald proclaimed the coming event, which was to take
THE FORUM OP THE REPUBLIC
The time is before 46 B.C., in which year Julius Caesar's basilica re-
placed the Tabernae Veteres and the Basilica Sempronia. The shops,
tabernae, on both sides show how ordinary trade filled the Forum in ear-
lier times.
place early in the morning, usually in the Campus Martius.
Thirdly, if the auspices taken before dawn on the day
appointed were favorable, criers and trumpeters gave the
final call to assemble, and the voters came together and
grouped themselves by tribes or centuries as the case re-
quired, each body taking its position in the proper section of
the voting inclosures called the Saepta. The Saepta Julia,
planned by Julius Caesar for the centuriate assembly and
176 LIVING ROME
erected by Augustus, was meant by the Dictator to be a
marble inclosure surrounded by a mile of portico, and was
probably so constructed. A voting precinct called the
Ovile, or sheep-pen, preceded it. The comitia tributa met in
the Forum. Fourthly, after the religious preliminary con-
sisting of a sacrifice, the presiding officer, normally the con-
sul or other magistrate who had issued the election call, read
to the voters the list of candidates. In Cicero's time, the
number of quaestors to be elected was twenty, which
Caesar was to increase to forty.
The next step in the process was the casting of the vote.
This was done in the tribal assembly by each of the thirty-
five tribes as a unit, and in the centuriate assembly by each
century as a unit. In either case the division determined
its vote by ballot in the section assigned it in the Saepta,
each voter writing or pricking on a blank tablet the name of
his choice and depositing it in the tista, or urn, under the eye
of the election official. When the vote of one tribe, chosen
by lot to be the first, had thus been determined and had been
declared, the remaining tribes went through the same
process all at the same time, and the results were announced
in an order determined by lot. The number of voters
present in each tribe depended upon the interest of the
individual and, in the case of the citizen living in a distant
part of Italy, upon his willingness to sacrifice time and money
in a journey to the capital.
The election of Cicero to the consulship, which occurred
in July twelve years after his elevation to the quaestorship,
took place at the comitia centuriata in the Campus Martius.
At this election the voters were grouped by centuries in the
smallest inclosures of the Ovile or Saepta, one century was
chosen by lot to cast as a unit the first vote, and the remain-
ing centuries followed. As in the tribal assembly, the voters
THE \OTER 177
filed through a narrow passage, each leaving in the urn a
tablet on which he had written or pricked his choice, to be
taken out and counted by diribitores, the enumerators, who
handed the result to the magistrate presiding.
Cicero's campaign for the consulship began at least a year
in advance. In July, 65 B.C., he is already writing Atticus
concerning the prospects of his candidature. He names
a half dozen possible competitors, one of whom is Catiline,
and declares his intention of beginning to "lay hold of/1
prensare, or canvass, on July 17, the date for the elections of
that year. Catiline will be in the race, he says humorously,
if the sun does not give light at noonday, referring to the fact
that Catiline was facing trial for extortion and was sure to
be convicted and therefore disqualified from running.
The game of politics in the days of Cicero was much the
same as it is in our own. The words prensatio, laying hold
of or soliciting, and ambitio, going about, are themselves
indicative of the manner of running for office, but a much
more eloquent testimony as to the art of getting votes is
preserved for us in the Commentary on Running for Office,
thought to have been addressed by Quintus Cicero to his
brother Marcus early in the year 64 B.C. A few extracts
from it will suffice to show how little the methods of the
office-seeker change as the centuries pass.
"Think what State you belong to, what office it is you are run-
ning for, who you are. Let hardly a day pass without rehearsing
to yourself as you go down to the Forum : 'I am a New Man ; it
is the consulship I am aiming at ; this is Rome/ The newness of
your name [a novus homo was a man not of patrician birth who had
risen at least to the aedileship] you will counterbalance in largest
part by your fame as an orator. That gift has always brought
with it great consideration. A man considered fit to be the patron
of ex-consuls cannot be regarded as unfit for the consulship. Since
therefore you will have this reputation to begin with, and since
178 LIVING ROME
whatever you are you owe to this, see that when you speak you
come prepared for it as if in every case the matter at issue were
your own ability. . . .
"And so see to it that you make yourself solid with all the cen-
turies by many various friendly connections In the first place,
what anyone can sse, win over the senators and the equites and the
active and influential men of all the other classes. There are a
great many enterprising men in the city, and many freedmen of
influence and energy in public life whom as far as possible through
your own efforts and those of your mutual friends you must make
your backers. Do your best; seek them cut, win them over,
show that you are appreciative of their great f aver to you. In the
next place, have regard to the city as a whole, to all the guilds, the
precincts, the neighborhoods. If you can win over to your friend-
ship the leaders of these groups ycu will easily get the support of
all the rest through them. After this, see that you have all Italy
in mind and memory, laid out and listed so that there will bo no
city or colony or prefecture cr place in the whole country left by
ycu without its assurance of the necessary support. Go through
them thoroughly and search out the men in every locality ; get
acquainted with them, solicit them, make them solid for you, see
that in their own neighborhoods they canvass for you and become,
so to speak, candidates in your behalf. They will want ycu as
their friend if they see that their friendship is sought after by
you. . . .
"These remarks occurred to my mind concerning those two
morning reflections which I spoke of when I said you must go down
to the Forum every day rehearsing to yourself : ' I am a New Man ;
it is the consulship I a.™ aiming at/ The third remains : 'this is
Rome/ a city made up of the coming together of nations, a city of
many traps, much trickery, and many vices of all kinds. You
will have to put up with arrogance, with insult, with ill will, with
haughtiness, with hatred and attack, on the part of many, many
persons. I can see that it will require great good judgment and
skill for one meeting with so much that is greatly offensive on the
part of men of all sorts to avoid collision, to avoid scandal, to
avoid secret attack, to be the one man accommodating himself to
so great a variety of character, expression, and feeling.
"Keep on therefore, I say it again and again, in the course you
£"8
180 LIVING ROME
have begun. Excel in eloquence ; by this men at Rome are both
held and won, and kept from attempts to hinder and to harm.
And since our commonwealth is most especially vicious in this
respect, namely that it is wont to allow bribery to make it forget
worth and standing, see to it that in this you take good account
of yourself ; that is, that you realize that you are one able to strike
into your competitors the greatest fear of the risk of a prosecution.
Let them understand that they are being observed and watched
by you ; they will have a great fear not only of your diligence, and
the authority and power of your eloquence, but surely also of the
devotion of the equestrian order to you."
Trials for ambitus, bribery, were frequent in Cicero's time ;
his own defense of Murena was in such a case. A law
against public solicitation of votes was passed as early as
432 B.C. In 181 B.C., a law provided that those convicted
of ambitus should be barred for ten years from running for
office. Within Cicero's lifetime at least four laws against
the offense were enacted. The parties to bribery, besides
the candidate and the voter, were the interpres, who made the
bargain, the sequester, who held the money, and the divisor,
who delivered it. Other technical names in political matters
are nomenclator, a slave or hireling who prompted the candi-
date as to the names of the persons he canvassed or met;
candidatusj so called from the white toga which signified
to the public the candidate's ambition; petitor and com-
petitor, also meaning candidates ; optimates and nobiles, the
conservative or senatorial party, and populares, the popular
or democratic party.
XVIII
THE LAWYER
The great Roman profession, as we have seen, was the
career of public service. We have seen, too, that it em-
braced a wide range of qualifications and called for the dis-
charge of duties in many different fields. The Roman whose
career culminated in the consulship and perhaps continued
in the censorship was lawyer, soldier, parliamentarian,
justice, legislator, administrator, and probably had also a
special knowledge of religion as connected with affairs of
the State.
It is apparent that in antiquity as well as to-day the law-
yer's calling was closely identified with the public career.
The duties of the praetor in Rome could hardly be adminis-
tered by one not bred in the law, though the office was less
technical and more like that of a presiding officer than is the
judge's office to-day. The duties of consul and of governor
in the province were likewise best administered by those
familiar with the law.
The law in antiquity, however, was much more exclu-
sively in the hands of public men than is the case to-day.
The technical lawyer of the modern kind, or the specialist
in a single field, could hardly be said to exist in Cicero's
time. Of what we call the practice of law, outside the circle
of public men who already held or were running for the
offices of the Roman career, there is little evidence. The
great scholars in the law up to Cioero's time, as well as the
greatest figures in the Roman courts, were also men who
tsi
182 LIVIXG ROME
actively conducted the State's affairs. Quintus Mucius
Scaevola, author of special treatises on wills, contracts,
etc., and one of the founders of legal science as it exists to-
day, held all the offices in the cursus hononun, was prae-
torian governor of a province in 98 B.C., consul in 95 B.C.,
and aii orator of repute. The Scaevolas were the leading
family of their time in knowledge of the law, and most of
their members were prominent in the public service. Servius
Sulpicius, the friend of Cicero who wrote the beautiful letter
of consolation after the death of Cicero's daughter Tullia,
was the author of a special work on dowries and of two books
on the praetorian edicts, and one of the deepest scholars
of law, and yet had held all the offices in the cursus honorum,
had been governor of Achaea, or Greece, and contracted
his last illness while on an embassy from the State to Antony.
Like the public career itself, the prominence of the Roman
public man in the courts of law was the product of evolu-
tion. When the Roman State was in its early days, the
patricians were the governing class. They were the source
of the law, its interpreters, and, through the king and his
officials, its executors. The rights they exercised as the
only citizens were accompanied by responsibilities to the
gentes and noncitizen dependents who looked to them for
protection. The powerful who made and knew the law
were in humanity and honor bound to help the ignorant and
weak. Even into historical times and down to the days of
Cicero, when the exclusive rights of the patricians had long
since been shared by the general body of citizens, the ideal
responsibilities of the governing class to the commoner sur-
vived. The law of Cincius, passed in 204 B.C., forbade the
lawyer to accept a fee for his services. Nothing of course
could prevent grateful clients rewarding their lawyers by
political support, and there were no doubt many evasions of
THE LAWYER 185
later, Sulla established special courts on acts partaking of
the nature of treason, on forgery, on corrupt election prac-
tices, and on the embezzlement of public moneys. Such
courts, and the location of branch courts in Italy with repre-
sentatives of the praetors at Rome to sit in judgment, made
necessary the increase of the number of praetors, who in
Sulla's time were eight, and in Augustus' reign were sixteen.
Besides the praetors, or judges, there were the indices,
the juries. The iudices were from the first a feature of the
praetor's trials, and had originated long before the creation
of the praetor's office. The establishment of the special
courts naturally carried with it the providing of juries for
them. In the case of the court on extortion, from the time
of Gaius Gracchus the equites were privileged to form the
jury. Sulla, recognizing the tendency of the equites to be
severe with senatorial offenders and lenient with their own
class, gave the seats on these juries to members of the Senate,
who in their turn were lenient or severe according to sym-
pathy- The law of Aurelius Gotta, in 70 B.C., attempted
a juster arrangement by giving the jury rights to senatoi^
equites, and tribunes of the treasury. Thereafter, the juries
were drawn from a list made up by the urban praetor, which
Cicero tells us consisted of nine hundred citizens. The
number is thought to be too low; the court on extortion
alone had had a list of four hundred and fifty. The names
were kept by the praetor in a book called the album.
In the number of jurors chosen to act in various trials,
there was great variation. Cicero's mention of the number
ranges from 50 to 75. The method of empaneling or select-
ing a jury also varied, but its general outlines may be seen
in the provision of the Acilian law on extortion, 122 B.C.,
which specified that the prosecutor should choose from the
album of 450 jurors 100 names, and that the defendant-
186 LIVING ROME
should then strike out 50, leaving the remaining 50 to sit
on the case. This is essentially the method of the modern
jury court.
A strikingly different method was employed by Pompey
when he was sole consul and in charge of the political trials.
In the trial of Milo, he summoned the entire 360 who were
on the list of the court on assaults. The 360 heard the trial
up to the last day, when 81 were chosen to hear the pleas
of the opposing lawyers, and the remaining 279 discharged.
Each side then challenged or struck off 15, leaving 51 to
render the verdict. This was Pompey's way of preventing
bribery ; the uncertainty as to the final composition of the
jury would baffle the attempt to buy them up.
The prosecuting lawyer was regularly the person who
brought the charge. In some cases the magistrate himself
had brought the charge and was both judge and prosecutor,
Any citizen could bring suit, and many a citizen, like Cato,
brought suits as a means of becoming prominent, as weD
as from civic motives. The accused could conduct his own
case or have ? patronus act for him, and there might be
friends called in as advisers, the advocati, or advocates.
The conduct of the Roman trial, like that of the modern
trial, included the tes^mony of witnesses, the speeches
of lawyers, and the cross-examination of witnesses, with
great liberty permitted the lawyer in his questioning. The
rules of evidence in general, in comparison with American
and English procedure, were exceedingly lax. The familia*
modern objection to an attorney's questions as "incom-
petent, irrelevant, and immaterial," was wholly lacking.
The modern rules excluding "facts irrelevant to the fact,
in issue, as being connected with it only by resemblance,"
"hearsay," "opinion," and "character," had no parallel
in the Roman court. The issue of a trial in Cicero's day
THE LAWYER
187
seems to have depended almost as much upon the repu-
tations of the parties as upon the facts deduced from tes-
timony. All sorts of sensational appeals were allowed,
including the going about of the accused in the toga of
mourning and the presence of imploring relatives and
friends at the trial. The evidence of slaves was taken
under torture.
A PLAN OF THE FOBTJM UNDER THE EMPIRE
The two great basilicas show how the law business centered in the Forum.
At the end of the testimony of witnesses and the speeches
of the lawyers, the jurors were asked individually whether
or not they were ready to vote. Those who thought the
court should adjourn and the case be further argued were
then dismissed, providing they were not more than one third
of the total, and the remaining two thirds, without a judge's
charge and, so far as we can tell, without discussion or con-
sultation, delivered the verdict by secret ballot. Each
had received a two-sided wax tablet four inches square, on
188 LIVING ROME
which was traced an A, for absolvo, "I acquit," and a C,
for condemno, "I convict." This tablet, with one or the
other letter erased, he dropped into an urn in full sight of
the court, and in such manner that all might see the erasure
but not the unerased letter, and thus know that he really
voted. Finally, a juror chosen by lot extracted the tablets
and read the letter on each one. A majority determined
the verdict.
This was the manner of the verdict as provided in the
Acilian Law of 122 B.C., which governed the court on extor-
tion, whose jurisdiction was over criminal eases. The man-
ner of procedure in civil cases or in later times may have
been modified, but it was in substance as above described
when Cicero frequented the courts.
Elsewhere we shall treat of the various kinds of offenders
who appeared before the Roman courts, and of the penalties
they had to suffer. It should be mentioned here, however,
that a great difference between ancient Roman and modern
American courts is to be seen in the matter of appeal. When
the ancient party to a suit was convicted or otherwise lost
his case, there was no such thing as another trial in a higher
court ; when the case was adjudged, that was the end so far
as the courts were concerned.
This does not mean, however, that the losing party was
always punished. There were methods of interference which
were often effective in rescuing the accused from trial, or,
if not from trial, from the execution of sentence after trial.
In the first place, a higher magistrate could prohibit a mag-
istrate of lower rank from proceeding with a trial. The
dictator, consul, or tribune of the people could forbid the
jurisdiction of the praetor. In the second place, there wae
the veto power belonging to higher and to equal magistrates
against the execution of sentence. This right of intercessio,
THE LAWYER 189
intercession, might be exercised personally by the magis-
trate after the accused had made an appeal in person. The
officer most frequently exercising such power was the tribune
of the people. It could be employed at any point in a trial
or when the trial was over and the accused was facing the
actual imposition of the penalty.
The jury trials in the regular praetors' courts and in the
permanent special courts were not the only trials in which
the decision depended upon the votes of a body of citizens.
The tribunes could and frequently did impeach generals
and other public servants and call them to trial before the
people met in the centuriate assembly. It was this kind
of trial which resulted in Cicero's banishment in 58 B.C.
We need next to imagine the place where the courts were
held. The Roman climate was mild, and the Roman prac-
tice allowed the spectator free access to trials. The busi-
ness of the courts was for long in the open air in the Comi-
tium, an area in front of the senate house, and in the Forum,
on which the Comitium fronted. Here, sometimes large
and permanent, sometimes smaller and temporary, and even
portable, was the tribunal, a platform on which the praetor
or other magistrate presiding took his seat in the curule
chair denoting authority, while beside him and in front on
seats or benches were his assistants and the jurors. The
Tribunal Aurelium in the Forum is mentioned several times
by Cicero. It was a permanent structure, and was ap-
proached by steps. In front of the tribunal, standing or
sitting, were the parties to the suit and their witnesses and
friends, with patrons and advocates if they did not conduct
their own case. Standing about in a semicircle were the
spectators attracted by the case, who were called the corona,
the crown, or garland.
As time went on, great halls called basilicae occupied the
190 LIVING ROME
borders of the Forum — the Basilica Porcia, erected by
Marcus Porcius Cato in 184 B.C., the Aemilia in 179 B.C.,
the Sempronia in 170 B.C., the Opimia about 121 B.C., the
Julia in 46 B.C. These buildings usually consisted of a
great central hall or auditorium, which could be divided
into separate areas for use by several courts sitting at one
time, surrounded by arcaded porticoes opening on to the
Forum or street, so that entrance and egress were easy, and
seeing and hearing from outside not impossible.
ON ONE OP Two MABBLE BALUSTRADES IN THE FORUM
At the left, the emperor addresses the citizens from the Rostra ; at the right, from
a tribunal he extends an act of benevolence to some class represented by a in other
and child. A fig tree and a statue of Marsyas which stood in the Forum are seen at
the right, and the background shows the Aemilian Basilica, one of the great law
buildings, on the north side of the Forum.
Besides the open-air tribunals and the basilica, there
were other places used on occasion for legal business. The
fate of the accused in the conspiracy of Catiline was decided
by the Senate at a meeting that chanced to be held in the
Temple of Concord at the west end of the Forum. On the
day of Caesar's death, he was listening to petitions in a part
of the buildings connected with Pompey's Theater in the
Campus Martius. Neither of these events, however, was a
trial. The emperors had their private court rooms, usually
in the palace.
Some glimpses of actual court scenes are afforded by Pliny
the Younger, a great admirer of Cicero who practiced law
THE LAWYER 191
j.bout A.D. 100, in the reign of Trajan. The court before
which he appears is the centumviral court, normally con-
sisting of one hundred and five jurors, sitting in the Julian
Basilica on civil cases involving property rights.
" I had gone down to the Basilica Julia," Pliny writes, "to
hear those to whom on the next sitting three days afterward
E should have to answer. The jurors were in their seats, the
decemvirs had come, the advocates were ranged face to face. A
long silence, and finally a messenger from the praetor. The cen-
tumvirs are dismissed, the day is left free ; to my joy, for I am
never so well prepared that I am not glad of a postponement.
The cause of the delay was the praetor Nepos. He had posted a
short edict, giving notice to prosecutors and defendants that he
was going to enforce the contents of the Senate's resolution. The
resolution was attached to his edict : all persons having business
with the court must take oath before beginning action, that they
had not given, promised, or provided for any fee to any person on
account of services as advocate. In these words and a thousand
others, it was forbidden to buy or to sell such services. After cases
were concluded, however, a money gift of ten thousand sesterces
was to be allowed."
Pliny calls the centumviral court his arena — " especially
in my arena, that is, before the centumviri."
"Recently when I was to speak before the centumviri," he
writes in another letter, "there was no way for me to get to my
place except through the tribunal and the jury itself ; so great a
crowd occupied every other space. More than, this, a certain
distinguished young man who had got his tunics torn, as sometimes
happens in a crowd, stood there covered by his toga only, and
seven hours at that ; for I talked that long, with great effort and
greater advantage."
The centumviral court did not always consist of the orig-
inal one hundred and five members; and it sat in some
cases as a whole, and at other times was divided into four
panels. " There were a hundred and eighty jurors sitting,"
192 LIVING ROME
writes Pliny of the case of Attia Viriola, a lady unjustly
disinherited by an eighty-year-old father who had married
a second time; "for the four panels combined amounted
to that. There was a huge array of advocates on both sides,
the public benches were crowded, and in addition to this a
dense corona of bystanders extending around the vast court
room in a circle which was many deep. More than this,
the platform of the tribunal was packed, and even from the
galleries of the basilica women as well as men were leaning
over with a great anxiety to hear, which was difficult, and
to see, which was easy."
A court room scene not quite so suggestive of respecta-
bility is presented by Cicero in the letter to Atticus which
describes the trial of Clodius on the charge of having attended
in disguise a religious meeting, exclusively for women, in
61 B.C.
" But if you want to know what the trial was like," he writes,
**it had an outcome which is incredible. For, after the challenging
was finished in the midst of the loudest clamoring — because the
prosecutor like an upright censor rejected all the worst characters
and the defendant like a kindly trainer of gladiators removed all
the reputable people — as soon as the jurors were in their seats
decent people began to have decided misgivings. There never was
a more disgraceful lot sitting in a gambling resort — senators with
befouled names, knights without a cent, and tribunes of the doubt-
ful sort. Yet there were a few honest people among them, those
that he was unable to get rid of by his challenge ; and they sat
there sad and sorrowful in company not of their own sort, feeling
painfully their contact with baseness. . . . There wasn't a man
who didn't think of Clodius as convicted a thousand times rather
than merely accused. And when I was brought on as a witness
and his supporters began to hoot, I think you have heard how the
jury all rose together, how they gathered around me to offer their
throats to him in defense of my life. . . . Nobody thought that
Clodius would appear and answer. 'Tell me now, 0 Muses, how
THE LAWYER 193
then first fell the fire.' You know Calvus. ... In two days-
with one slave, and an ex-gladiator at that, he fixed the whol&
business. He called them to him, he promised, he gave security,
he paid cash down. . . . Well, even with honest men all with-
drawing and with the Forum full of slaves, there were still twenty-
five jurymen brave enough in the face of the greatest risk to prefer
death to letting everything go wrong ; and there were thirty-one
who were moved more by hunger than by honor. Catulus saw
one of them and asked him : 'Why did you ask us to give you a
guard? Was it because you were afraid the money would be
taken away from you?' There you have, as briefly as I can tell
it, the kind of trial it was and the reason for the acquittal."
XIX
THE TEACHER
When we speak of the learned professions to-day, it is
usually with the lawyer, the teacher, the doctor, and the
clergyman in mind. The same four existed in ancient Romet
and the differences between ancient and modern are of much
the same character in all four.
We have seen that the Roman lawyer up to the time ot
Cicero was not a highly specialized product, but a man of
experience and skill in practical public affairs, and that even
those who went deeply into law and wrote scientific treatises
on it were consuls and governors as well as praetors. Of the
three other professions, it may be said that at least those
of education and the priesthood were like the practice of
law under the Republic in being closely connected with the
duties of citizenship and in not being developed into spe-
cialized and separate callings. The pontif ex, the flamen, and
the augur were officers of the State like consuls and praetors,
and in most cases had won their places in the religious serv-
ice because of distinction in political or military life. The
education of the Roman boy and girl through all the early
period was of the scantiest and most practical kind and given
by father or mother or some one in the house ; and in later
times, when the teacher was so common that education, at
least in the first stages, was within the reach of practically
all citizens, a great part of it still was dependent upon
the contact of the young with the practical affairs of theii
fathers and mothers and with public affairs observed in
194
THE TEACHER 195
company with them. The doctor's calling was more dis-
tinct.
The teacher in the lower schools of ancient Rome can
hardly be called a person of standing. He was frequently
a slave or the son of a slave, and at best an ill-paid citizen.
We have pictures of him on the walls of Pompeii as he plies
the switch in his open-air school under a public portico.
Horace, as we have noticed, saw the little boys of Venusia
on the way to their lessons with the teacher's pittance of
eight coppers for the Ides in their book-bags, and made the
name of one teacher, Orbilius, memorable by attaching to
it the adjective plagosus, the wielder of the whip. He tells
us also of the doctores blandi, the teachers who use cookies
to make the children willing to learn their A-B-C's. Juvenal,
a century later, speaks of "drawing back the hand under
the ferule." No doubt there were many faithful and in-
spiring teachers, and many people who appreciated the
potential and the actual nobility of the calling, but on the
whole the teacher in the primary schools was a humble if
not a servile member of the community. When Horace
eloquently describes the effect of poetry on the young, there
is no suggestion of the teacher as the medium of that effect.
The teacher in the grammar school was a person of greater
consequence. His pupils were select and farther advanced,
and he was no doubt frequently the master of a private
school enjoying a reputation for character and effective-
ness. It was to secure instruction of this type that Horace
and Cicero were at an early age taken by their fathers to
Rome; "that I might be taught the same things as any
knight's or senator's son," Horace says.
More fortunate still were the teachers of the select few
who studied philosophy and rhetoric in preparation for the
career of the public man. These were Greeks and Roman?
196
LIVING ROME
of reputation, who were much sought out and well rewarded.
At their best, they enjoyed a fame that extended throughout
the Roman State. In Greek cities, above all in Athens,
there were many of them, and Cicero in his sojourn in the
East in 80-79 B.C. sought out the principal ones and studied
TABLET AND STYLUSES
Found in the Roman border fort at Newstead, near the River Tweed not far from
Melrose in Scotland. The tablet, about 5i X 2J inches, is one of two wings which
folded together and enclosed the writing on the wax.
under them. With some of them he had already studied
in Rome. Three of them mentioned by hi™ as being in
Rome were Diodotus the Stoic, who lived many years in
Cicero's own home and died there in 59 B.C. ; Philo the Aca-
demic, who was a refugee from the Mithridatic War ; and
Molo of Rhodes, an envoy to the capital. Philo and Molo
both were teachers of Cicero at Rome in 88 B.C., when he
THE TEACHER 197
was eighteen years old, and Molo again nine years later in
Rhodes. Molo was also Caesar's teacher soon afterward.
The well-known Archias was not so great a man, but from
Cicero's words in his praise it is easily seen that Archias
was a type of the capable educator in liberal arts.
In spite of their ability and fame, however, the Greek
teachers in higher education were more or less the humble
objects of patronage on the part of wealthy and influential
Romans. Not everyone believed in the training they repre-
sented, and the great mass of the Roman people distrusted
Greek culture and despised the Greek character. Few
Roman teachers were able or cared to vie with them in their
field. The persons from whom Cicero acquires his special
knowledge and inspiration in Roman subjects are not pro-
fessional Roman educators, but public orators and officials
to whom he is attached in a sort of apprenticeship or whom
he follows about and observes in their daily public achieve-
ment : the two wise and learned Scaevolas, the finished and
elegant Crassus, the unpolished but forceful Antonius. The
only professional educator of note furnished by Rome was
Quintilian.
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Spaniard from the
banks of the river Ebro in Spain, born A.D. 35. He was
sent to Rome for his education, returned at the agt of twenty
to practice law and teach rhetoric in his native town of
Calagurris, and went back at thirty-three to Rome, where,
after about twenty years as teacher and lawyer, he wrote The
Training of the Orator, a very sensible, solid, and high-minded
work in twelve books, published about A.D. 95, when its
author was sixty, Quinfcilian was the first appointee to
the professorship in Latin rhetoric established by Vespasian
when the already famous teacher and orator was about
thirty-five. He was a great admirer of Cicero, and it is to
198
LIVING ROME
be noted also that he was teacher and lawyer in one, and
was thus another illustration of the union of public and
professional life in
Rome.
Quintilian's ideal
of education for the
orator is a process
beginning in the
home, continuing in
school and beyond
school in life, and
based on the broad-
est general culture.
A few short quota-
tions will contribute
to an understanding
of both Quintilian
himself and the
^ -> ^ thoughts of his time
PAQUIUS PROCXTLUS OF POMPEII AND WIFE ~L
The lady has folding tablets and a stylus ; Paquius, On education. We
a roll-book or volumen. This is a wall-painting. are told that at this
time a good teacher
of oratory received about $100 per year from each pupil.
A primary teacher had something like $3 from each pupil,
and a grammaticus about $20. That there were wide differ-
ences in masters and schools and methods, is easily seen from
Quintilian's work.
THE LANGUAGES
"I prefer that a boy should begin with Greek, because Latin,
being in general use, will be picked up by him whether we will or
no ; while the fact that Latin learning is derived from Greek is a
further reason for his being first instructed in the latter. . . . The
THE TEACHER 199
study of Latin ought therefore to follow at no great distance and
in a short time proceed side by side with Greek. The result will be
that, as soon as we begin to give equal attention to both languages,
neither will prove a hindrance to the other."
THE AGE OF BEGINNING
"Some hold that boys should not be taught to read till they are
seven years old, that being the earliest age at which they can
derive profit from instruction and endure the strain of learning
Those, however, who hold that a child's mind should not be allowed
to lie fallow for a moment are wiser. . . . Why should we despise
the profit to be derived before the age of seven, small though it be?
For though the knowledge absorbed in the previous years may be
but little, yet the boy will be learning something more advanced
during that year, in which he would otherwise have been occupied
with something more elementary."
THE VERY YOUNG
" I am not, however, so blind to differences of age as to think
that the very young should be forced on prematurely or given real
work to do. Above all things we must take care that the child,
who is not yet old enough to love his studies, does not come to hate
them and dread the bitterness which he has once tasted, even when
the years of infancy are left behind. His studies must be made an
amusement : he must be questioned and praised and taught to
rejoice when he has done well ; sometimes too, when he refuses
instruction, it should be given to some other to excite his envy ; at
times also he must be engaged in competition and should be allowed
to believe himself successful more often than not, while he should
be encouraged to do his best by such rewards as may appeal to his
tender years."
EDUCATION AND MORALS
"I would urge that the lines which he is set to copy should not
ejqpress thoughts of no significance, but convey some sound moral
lesson.- He will remember such aphorisms even when he is an old
200
LIVING ROME
man, and the impression made upon his unformed mind will con-
tribute to the formation of his character. He may also be enter-
tained by learning the sayings of famous men and above all selec-
tions from the poets, poetry being more attractive to children."
A ROMAJN- BOY BEING TAKEN TO SCHOOL
He wears the toga praetexta. The slave paedagogus, in tunic and sandals,
carries his tablets.
PRIVATE OR PUBLIC SCHOOL
"But the time has come for the boy to grow up little by little, to
leave the nursery and tackle his studies in good earnest. This
therefore is the place to discuss the question as to whether it is
better to have him educated privately at home or hand him over
to some large school and those whom I may call public instructors.
The latter course has, I know, won the approval of most eminent
authorities and of those who have formed the national character
of the most famous states. It would, however, be folly to shut our
eyes to the fact that there are some who disagree with this prefer-
THE TEACHER 201
*
•ence for public education owing to a certain prejudice in favor of
private tuition. These persons seem to be guided in the main by
two principles. In the interests of morality they would avoid the
society of a number of human beings at an age that is specially
liable to acquire serious faults : I only wish I could deny the truth
of the view that such education has often been the cause of the
most discreditable actions. Secondly, they hold that whoever is
to be the boy's teacher, he will devote his time more generously
to one pupil than if he has to divide it among several. . . . But
morals may be corrupted at home as well. There are numerous
instances of both, as there are also of the preservation of a good
reputation under either circumstance. . . . There is nothing to
prevent the principle of 'one teacher, one boy' being combined
with school education. And even if such a combination should
prove impossible, I should still prefer the broad daylight of a re-
spectable school to the solitude and obscurity of a private educa-
tion."
STRAIN AND RELAXATION
"All our pupils will require some relaxation, not merely because
there is nothing in this world that can stand continued strain and
even unthinking and inanimate objects are unable to maintain
their strength, unless given intervals of rest, but because study
depends on the good will of the student, a quality that cannot be
secured by compulsion. ... I approve of play in the young ; it
is a sign of a lively disposition ; nor will you ever lead me to believe
that a boy who is gloomy and in a continual state of depression is
ever likely to show alertness of mind in hi& work."
FLOGGING
"I disapprove of flogging, although it is the regular custom and
meets with the acquiescence of Chrysippus, because in the first
place it is a disgraceful form of punishment and fit only for slaves,
and is in any case an insult, as you will realize if you imagine its
infliction at a later age. Secondly, if a boy is so insensible to
instruction that reproof is useless, he will, like the worst type of
202 LIVING ROME
•
slave, merely become hardened to blows. Finally, there will be
absolutely no need of such punishment if the master is a thorough
disciplinarian."
READING
"In this connection there is much that can only be taught in
actual practice, as for instance when the boy should take breath,
at what point he should introduce a pause into a line, where the
sense ends or begins, when the voice should be raised or lowered,
what modulation should be given to each phrase, and when he
should increase or slacken speed, or speak with greater or less
energy. In this portion of my work I will give but one golden
rule : to do all these things, he must understand what he reads.
But above all his reading must be manly, combining dignity and
charm ; it must be different from the reading of prose, for poetry
is song and poets claim to be singers. But this fact does not jus-
tify degeneration into sing-song or the effeminate modulations now
in vogue : there is an excellent saying on this point attributed tc
Gaius Caesar while he was still a boy : * If you are singing, you sing
badly; if you are reading, you sing.'"
APPI^USB IN SCHOOL
"I strongly disapprove of the prevailing practice of allowing
boys to stand up or leap from the seats in the expression of their
applause. Young men, even when they are listening to others,
should be temperate in manifesting their approval. If this be
insisted upon, the pupil will depend on his instructor's verdict
and will take his approval as a guarantee that he has spoken well.
The audience no less than the speaker should therefore keep their
eyes fixed on their teacher's face, since thus they will learn to dis-
tinguish between what is praiseworthy and what is not : for just
as writing gives facility, so listening begets the critical faculty.
But in the schools of to-day we see boys stooping forward ready
to spring to their feet : at the close of each period they not merely
rise, but rush forward with shouts of unseemly enthusiasm. Such
compliments are mutual and the success of a declamation consists
in this kind of applause."
XX
LETTERS AND THE ARTS
We have just taken account of the profession of teaching,
and in former chapters we described the education of chil-
dren and the advanced training of older boys and of young
men destined for public life. This gave us some insight
into the mental habit of the Romans, but only as it was con-
nected with formal instruction in the schools and under
tutors. If we are to make a truthful estimate of their intel-
lectual life, we must know more concerning the occupation
of their minds in the leisure hours of adult life. What did
the Romans read, and what place in their lives did the fine
arts occupy?
Compared with most modern nations of Europe and
America, the masses of ancient Rome read little. Educa-
tion was not universal, there was no printing press, publi-
cation was greatly limited, and the condensed, periodic,
artificial language of literary and professional Latin was even
farther removed from common speech and understanding
than the serious literature of to-day is from the matter of
cheap journalism. Horace, Lucretius, and Livy, and even
Virgil and Cicero, for the ordinary man, were hard reading.
On the other hand, the Romans who did use books were of
the serious sort who read with conscious appreciation.
Let us look for a moment at what they read. Up to
240 B.C., when Livius Andronicus, a former slave brought
captive to Rome from Magna Graecia after the fall of Ta-
rentum in 272 B.C., translated the Odyssey into the Latin
203
204
LIVING ROME
language for purposes of school instruction, there was practi-
cally no Latin literature. The Twelve Tables, dating from
about 450 B.C., and some of the speeches of Appius Claudius
the Blind, consul in 307 B.C.,
are all that the historian of
literature takes account of,
and they were hardly de-
serving of the name of art.
When Cicero and Caesar
were young men, Latin lit-
erature was therefore less
than two hundred years old.
What there was for them to
read for purposes of study
or diversion consisted of
something like this : in epic,
the Odyssey in the rugged
Latin of Livius Andronicus,
the Punic War of Naevius,
and the famous Annals of
Rome of Ennius ; in drama,
the adaptations and imita-
tions of Greek tragedy by
Livius, Ennius, Naevius,
Pacuvius, and Accius, and
of Greek comedy by Caecil-
ius Statius, Plautus, and
Terence ; in satire, the mis-
cellanies of Ennius and the social and political attacks
of Lucilius ; in oratory, the speeches of Appius Claudius,
Cato the Censor, and others; in history, the poetic
exploitations of Ennius and Naevius, the Origins of Cato,
and the works of several writers on the Punic Wars ; in
THALIA, MUSE OF COMEDY
The tympanum, pipe, and vine leaves
in the hair, are symbolic of Dionysus, or
Bacchus, in whose honor drama was pro*
duced.
LETTERS AND THE ARTS 205
the didactic, Gate's On Agriculture; in jurisprudence, a
number of commentaries marking the beginnings of scientific
study of the law. It will be seen by this, first, that Roman
literature was greatly indebted to Greece, a fact which would
be more noticeable if form as well as subject were considered ;
second, that aside from the drama, which was a public
spectacle supplied by the State in the grand style, this litera-
ture, whatever its form, sprang from the life of the Roman
people ; and, third, that it was a practical literature, lack-
ing almost entirely the lighter contribution of the lyric,
and concerning itself largely with the interests of the State.
To supplement this not very abundant national literature,
there was available, for those who were fired by intellectual
or professional ambition, the rich legacy of Greek litera-
ture. From the time of the Scipios, about the middle of
the second century B.C., the ideal education included in-
struction in both tongues and a finishing in Greece. There
was a Greek library in Rome under Augustus, and another
under Trajan.
By the time of Cicero's death, Roman literature had been
enriched by the lyrics of Catullus, the great poem of Lu-
cretius On Nature, the Commentaries of Caesar, the ency-
clopaedic learning of Varro, the legal treatises of Mucius
Scaevola and Servius Sulpicius, and the wide variety of
Cicero's own magnificent contribution. In a few years the
Eclogues or Pastorals of Virgil were added, bringing to his
practical countrymen the fresh and delightful experience
of the poetry of Theocritus, the Greek whose Idylls, pub-
lished two hundred years before Virgil's time, are the world's
most famous short poems on the life of the country. By
the time the menace of Antony and the East was removed
at the battle of Actium in 31 B.C., Virgil's Georgics were
near completion, and Horace was known for satire and some-
206 LmXG ROME
what for lyric. In five years Livy at the age of thirty-
three was to begin the great History of Rome, the appear-
ance of whose parts from time to time brought fame to him
and crystallized the ideal of Roman character in the
minds of his own and future generations. The Aeneid
was given to the world soon after its author's death in
19 B.C.
The deaths of Virgil and Horace in 19 B.C. and 8 B.C., of
Maecenas and Augustus in 8 B.C. and A.D. 14, and of Livy
in A.D. 17, close the account of the great Augustan writers
and the chief patrons of Augustan letters. Ovid's ver-
satility and ease in the Metamorphoses, the Amores, and the
Heroides, the exquisite love poetry in elegiacs by Tibullus
and Propertius, and even the less fortunate product of others
in a court circle where it was the fashion to write, deserved
the fame they won, but these authors are not to be ranked
with the great names of Cicero, Caesar, Virgil, Horace, and
Livy, at whose mention the world is reminded, not of the
anxieties and conceits and graces of the young poet about
town, but of the Roman State and of the Roman character
that lay at its foundations.
The century after Augustus' death added much to litera-
ture. There were the two Senecas, the elder who wrote
on rhetoric, the younger who contributed philosophical
essays, the Moral Epistles, and a number of tragedies which
in the Renaissance served as the link between ancient and
modern serious drama. There were the historian Tacitus,
and Quintilian the professor of rhetoric, and the satirist
Juvenal, and the epigrammatist Martial, and the ency-
clopaedist Pliny the Elder, whose Natural History is a mine
of information of all sorts, and the letter-writing Pliny the
Younger, who emulated Cicero, and the picaresque novelist
or satirist Petronius, and Lucan the poet of Pharsalia, and
LETTERS AND THE ARTS
207
Silius Italicus and Statius, the ambitious authors of tedious
epic.
No doubt there were works of less permanent nature in
circulation, but there was nothing remotely resembling the
flood of books and magazines and journals that inundates
the reader of the twentieth century. There were libraries
from Augustus on,
and twenty-nine are
known in the period
from his time to
Hadrian. The li-
brary at Timgad in
Roman Africa is es-
timated at twenty
thousand books.
This is little, how-
ever, compared with
modern times.
What survives of
Roman literature
corresponds to the
serious and solid lit-
erature of modern
times which we call
standard or classic, and was read, as the classics to-day
are read, only by the fit and few whose intellectual and
moral equipment enabled them to read and enjoy. The
striking differences between the two reading publics are,
first, that the few who composed the ancient public suffered
less from the distractions of too many books, and, second,
that the great mass of the lower reading public was lack-
ing altogether. As regards publication, it may be added
that public readings by authors, so frequent as to invite the
A LADY WITH STYLUS AND TABLETS
Painted on a wall in Herculaneum, She has gold
ear-rings.
208
LIVING ROME
satirist's attack, were in part a substitute for the issuing of
books.
Regarded as material for liberal training in the school
and for liberal culture on the part of the adult serious reader,
the literary product of Rome during the two centuries from
Cicero's youth to the deaths of Pliny, Tacitus, and Juvenal
in the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian compares on the whole
net unfavorably with that cf similar periods in the histories
of other peoples. It rivaled
Greek oratory in Cicero,
and Greek history in Livy
and Tacitus. It surpassed
Greek satire in Horace and
Juvenal, and furnished the
world's greatest epigram-
matist in Martial and
greatest letter-writer in
Cicero. It did as well in
the lyric and epic as Greece
of the fifth and fourth cen-
turies. If we miss the sup-
ATBAGICMASK ^^ an(J eage Qf ^
Found in the ViUa of Hadrian, fifteen miles « , , .,
from Rome. Greek tongue, there is com-
pensation in the precision,
dignity, vigor, and sonorousness of a language that was
the fit instrument for the lords of a world. If the philos-
ophy of Plato, the criticism and science of Aristotle, the
epic of Homer, and the Athenian drama found nothing Ro-
man to rival them, it was because their richness was too
great for rivalry and could inspire only its transfer from
tongue to tongue.
Much has been said of Roman lack of originality in letters
and the arts. The drama indeed was especially indebted
LETTERS AND THE ARTS 209
to the Greek stage. Greek plays were imitated, adapted,
and even translated, as French or Italian plays have been
for the English and American stages. They were great
plays, they were of the great past of a great race, they lent
themselves to the purposes of the Roman aedile to produce
on state occasions an impressive piece of tragic pageantry
or a polished comedy of intrigue. The timely, the local,
the realistic, belonged no more to State theater representa-
tions in the grand style than the jazz piece to a symphony
concert. At the most, the slighter forms of drama, if used
at all out of their proper place in unofficial shows, were cur-
tain raisers to the higher forms of art. Yet no one thought
of the Greek play in Latin as plagiarism, or blamed it as
unoriginal. Quite the contrary, the use of Greek litera-
ture for Roman purpose conferred distinction on the user.
To know both tongues and use them, to be versed in Greek
literature, had long been the ideal before the times from
Augustus to Marcus Aurelius made it the fashion. The
men who could make Greek letters accessible to their fellow
countrymen were benefactors to be thanked for their clever-
ness. The first men to do it claimed the credit of pioneers.
Cicero, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid write with the assurance,
and sometimes the assertion, that their use of the form and
substance of Greek literature will bring them everlasting
fame.
In other fields than the drama, the debt of Roman litera-
ture is not so direct and so overwhelming, though to deny
it in general would be like denying the general dependence
of American letters upon European. But the declaration
that Roman letters are indebted to the Greek must not mis-
lead us into the too common view that Roman literature is
not an expression of Roman life and Roman character.
Those who argue best that the Georgics and Eclogues and
210 LIVING ROME
Aeneid of Virgil and the Odes of Horace are only "pale reflec-
tions" of Hesiod, Theocritus, and Homer, and of the Greek
lyric poets, are the mechanical scholars who are patient in
the finding of sources and parallels, have had no experience
of Italy, and are unaccustomed to read an author as a whole.
With such critics it is hard to argue. To the reader who
has carried his authors in Italy or read them after his return,
it never occurs to think of Latin literature as anything but
the expression of Roman and Italian experience. What-
ever the borrowings of Cicero in De Amicitia and De Seneo
tute, in both of them the reader feels that the friendship
and the old age are Cicero's own and are charged with the
authority of his sixty-two years of living. Whatever the
form of Horace's Odes, they are warm with Italy and Roman
life.
But let us pass to the arts. The art most constantly
present to the Roman eye was architecture. Here again,
reminders of the Greek were everywhere. The temple,
the basilica, the baths, the portico or colonnade, the theater,
the amphitheater, the circus, the inclosure or group called
forum, the triumphal arch, the honorary column, the palace,
the administrative building, all displayed in varying degree
the column and architrave and the moldings and other
ornaments belonging to the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian
styles of building.
Of the various buildings in Graeco-Roman architecture,
the temple was least removed in character from the Greek.
The other buildings were likely to be Greek only in their
decorative aspects, and even there made abundant use of
the semicircular arch. The great facade of the Colosseum
is an example ; the three Greek orders are used on it purely
as ornament — a modified Doric on the first zone or story,
the Ionic on the second, the Corinthian on the third, and a
LETTERS AND THE ARTS
213
art in Ancient Rome as it became in the Renaissance. Its
subjects ranged from street scenes and ordinary life to tales
from Homer and Greek tragedy. Mosaic, usually for floor
decoration, with its birds and beasts and fruits and flowers,
sometimes rose to great excellence, as in the battle scene of
ALTAB FBAGMBNT FOUND IN ROME
The branches of the plane, or sycamore, are a marvel of realistic beauty.
Alexander and Darius. The elder Pliny's mention of doves
reproduced so faithfully as to show their reflection in the
water is verified in Pompeian mosaic.
Sculpture was of greater importance. Two kinds of
demand called forth its production. The rich and ambitious
capital had either seized or acquired by purchase much
of the art of Greece, and its presence inspired the order of
many copies, adaptations, and imitations of famous Greek
works for the adornment of gentlemen's villas and houses,
214 LIVING ROME
and for the public buildings and gardens. Much of this
product was poor, and little of it was original ; yet, though
it does not flatter the artist's invention or skill, it is an evi-
dence that the Romans appreciated the value of art. In
the second place, there was the demand of consuls and em-
perors and others among the great or the pretentious for
portrait busts and statues, and for pictorial sculpture in
relief to commemorate their exploits in war and peace. The
reliefs on the arches of Titus and Constantine, the columns
of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, the balustrades in the
Forum, and the museums filled with portrait sculptures,
many of them belonging to the world's best art, are examples
of this. The excellence of Roman art in the historical relief
and in portraiture can hardly be overstated. Sculpture
again is a demonstration of the close connection of Roman
art with life, and especially the public life.
Such in the main were the arts and the literature which
graced the strenuous living of the Roman people. Per-
haps the art of the garden, public and private, now called
landscape architecture, should be included. It was no
doubt as important in ancient as in Renaissance Italy.
Music seems hardly to have existed as an independent art.
Most references to music in ancient times relate it to the
flute or pipes in religious ceremonial or to accompaniment
in dramatic representation, or to the shell or lyre in con-
nection with lyric poetry, or to the horn and trumpet in
wao:. The great singing and instrumental music of Italy
were still many centuries away.
The Romans aie often called a matter-of-fact and inar-
tistic people, with the implication that they were also with-
out taste. This is not quite just. Rome from Augustus
on was a monumental and magnificent city with a wealth of
statuary brought from the East or executed in the capital.
LETTEBS AND THE ARTS 215
For two centuries at least it had had its coteries of Hellen-
ists, and for two centuries more the Greek tongue was the
mark of intellectual distinction. No doubt there were
great numbers of Romans who did not give a thought to art,
and much or most of the art in the city was the work of
Greek minds and hands ; but this does not prove a national
want of appreciation. The society that made its capital
a city of architectural splendors and a vast museum of the
arts, that produced the faultless urbanity of the Augustan
literary and intellectual circles, that recorded in Livy its
appreciation of the noble traits of men, and that evolved
the Ciceronian prose and the Virgilian verse, is not lightly
to be charged wUJ) want of culture.
XXI
THE DOCTOR
The Roman physician, like the Roman teacher, was
likely to be a Greek or of Greek descent, and was frequently
a freedman or even a slave. When Cicero says, as he writes
of the various callings, "Those fields of knowledge in which
either there is a greater intelligence or from which the bene-
fit sought is out of the ordinary, as medicine and archi-
tecture, are honorable for those to whose rank they belong,"
he is probably not thinking of patricians or equestrians, or
even of plebeians of Roman blood, but of a profession largely
filled by foreigners of the freedman class.
The elder Pliny, quoting an earlier writer, states that the
first physician to come to Rome was Archagathus, an emi-
grant from the Peloponnesus in 219 B.C. who was given
Roman citizenship and an office purchased at the State's
expense. This was seventy-two years after the religion of
Aesculapius, the god of healing and the patron of physicians,
was brought to Rome and located on the Tiber Island, an
event which no doubt marked an active beginning of inter-
est in Greek medical skill. The office of Archagathus seems
to have been a surgeon's clinic : "They say he was a sur-
geon and that his coining was at first much liked, but that
soon his cruelty with the knife and cautery gave him the
name of butcher, and brought the art and all doctors into
bad repute."
The Greeks were never popular in Rome, and Archa-
gathus probably suffered for his nationality as well as for
the indifference to other people's pain with which he was
charged. Old Cato liked the doctors no better than the
216
THE DOCTOR 219
Musa was one, and the wine-cure doctors. There were
male doctors and female doctors ; there were doctors main-
tained in the larger houses, there were court doctors. There
were doctors for slaves, for gladiators in training, and for
soldiers' barracks and the army. There were doctors who
received the enormous salary of $30,000 a year ; there were
communal doctors in the smaller towns who received very
little ; and there were quack doctors.
The practice of medicine in Rome by the ignorant and
unskilled was an easy matter. There were no medical
colleges giving diplomas, no examining boards, no licenses.
"There is no penalty for their ignorance,57 says Pliny*
"They learn at our risk and get their experience by the death
of their patients, and a doctor can kill a man with entire
freedom from punishment." Medical education was by
apprenticeship; the learner helped the doctor in his office
or clinic and accompanied him on his rounds, and in due
time was either taken into partnership or given permis-
sion to practice independently. "I was feeling low/' writes
Martial in an epigram addressed to Doctor Symmachus,
"but you came straightway to me with a hundred of your
students. A hundred hands chill with the North wind felt
my pulse. I didn't have the fever before, Symmachus,
but I have it now." The drug business also was more or
less unregulated; there were sellers of medicine, but no
scientific pharmacies, and the doctor kept his own stock of
drugs. If there are abuses in our day of careful regulation,
It is hardly to be supposed that there were not greater abuses
in Rome, with the profession largely made up of the servile
and the foreign, who had less to lose and more to gain than
the reputable Roman.
We should not be too hasty, however, in concluding that
medicine was in irresponsible and incompetent hands. The
220
LIVING ROME
Greeks had a long experience in medicine and surgery behind
them. There were probably in Alexandria and other enter-
prising cities superior facilities for a really scientific prepara-
tion ; there were medical treatises for the basis of study — and
apprenticeship is after all a very practical and very effective
SUBGICAL INSTRUMENTS FBOM POMPEII
Nippers, forceps, dilators, catheter, tenaculum. Below, from the right : clyster
pipe, for injections ; scissors ; cannula, or drain ; bleeding-cups ; spathoxnele, for
preparing applications.
method which still exists in the use of clinic and interne-
ship for the training of the young physician. It should not
be forgotten, too, that what may be called the standard
diseases and the standard remedies were known and treated
in simple and practical fashion from the earliest times, and
have always remained substantially the same. Most of
all, we should not forget the wonderfully complete equip-
THE DOCTOR
221
ments of ancient surgical instruments — forceps, needles,
scalpels, knives, lancets, catheters, sounds — which have
been found, and which have astonished modern surgeons
by their identity with those in use to-day. Among these
collections, one is of Pompeian origin and preserved in the
museum at Naples, and an-
other was found near ancient
Vindonissa, a Roman legionary
post of the second century af-
ter Christ in Switzerland, in
the remains of a permanent
military hospital belonging to
the post. Besides the ruins,
the instruments, and various
little boxes containing drugs,
an inscription was found, "To
Tiberius Claudius Hymnus,
physician of the Twenty-first
Legion, and to Claudia Quieta
(his wife)," placed by his pa-
tron, Atticus.
Dentistry was not the uni-
versal thing it is to-day in
America, nor even the less uni-
versal thing it is in Europe, but gold work of some sort was
known in Rome at a very early date. This is indicated by
a fragment of the tenth of the Twelve Tables, dating about
449 B.C., mentioning "teeth joined to or with gold."
Considering the prominence of the Greeks in medicine
and surgery in Rome, it is not going too far to assume that
Hippocrates of the island of Cos, about 460-360 B.C., called
the father of Greek medicine and esteemed by Plato and
Aristotle in Athens, was a great influence in Roman medi-
HlPPOCBATES, THE FlBST GREAT
GBEEK PHYSICIAN
The Oath of Hippocrates is still taken
by graduating medical students.
222 UMNO ROME
cine. The physician's oath as preserved in Hippocrates'
work on medicine is still administered in our own time to
the graduating classes of colleges of medicine, and was no
doubt a part of the formality of admitting the apprentice
student to practice in Rome- An attentive reading of it
will suggest much as to the practice as well as the ethics o?
the Roman physician.
THE OATH
"I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Health, by
Panacea and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my wit-
nesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment,
this oath and this indenture. To hold my teacher in this art-
equal to my own parents ; to make him partner in my livelihood ;
when he is in need of money to share mine with him. ; to consider
his family as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they
want to learn it, without fee or indenture ; to impart precept, oral
instruction, and all other instruction to my own sons, the sons of
my teacher, and to indentured pupils who have taken the physi-
cian's oath, but to nobody else. I will use treatment to help the
sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view
to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a poison to
anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.
Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.
" But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will
not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone, but I
will give place to such as are craftsmen therein. Into whatsoever
houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from
all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the
bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall
see or hear in the course of my profession as well as outside my
profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not
be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things to
be holy secrets.
"Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain for-
ever reputation among all men for my life and for my art ; but i*
I trarisgress it and forswear myself,. may the opposite befall ma"
THE DOCTOR 223
One or two extracts from the same work will show us
tne physician actually at work.
"I urge you not to be too unkind, but to consider carefully your
patient's superabundance or means. Sometimes give your serv-
ices for nothing, calling to mind a previous benefaction or present
satisfaction. And if there be an opportunity of serving one who is
a stranger in financial straits, give full assistance to all such. For
where there is love of man, there is also love of the art. For some
patients, though conscious that their condition is perilous, recover
their health simply through their contentment with the goodness
of the physician."
"The dignity of a physician requires that he should look healthy,
and as plump as nature intended him to be ; for the common crowd
consider those who are not of this excellent bodily condition
to be unable to take care of others. . . . The prudent man
must also be careful of certain moral considerations — not only to
be silent, but also of a great regularity of life, since thereby his
reputation will be greatly enhanced ; he must be a gentleman in
sharacter, and being this he must be grave and kind to all. For
an overforward obtrusiveness is despised, even though it may be
very useful. ... In appearance, let him be of a serious but not
harsh countenance ; for harshness is taken to mean arrogance and
unkindness, while a man of uncontrolled laughter and excessive
gaiety is considered vulgar, and vulgarity especially must be
avoided."
"Such, then, should the physician be, both in body and in soul."
Finally, the ancients were already using the jokes about
the doctor which are so familiar to-day. Here is one of
ours: "What profession do you follow?" "The medical;
I'm an undertaker. " This is not so very different from one
of Martial's epigrams :
"An undertaker now is Brown,
Doctor no more;
His work is really still
What 'twas before."
224 LIVING ROME
And here is another from Martial :
"Though he bathed with us yesterday, dined with us, too,
And was quite in the pink of condition,
Ancus died this A.M., — of a dream that he'd asked
Hermocrates to be his physician."
XXII
THE MONEY-MAKER
The money of the ancient Roman was a coin system whose
unit was the as, a copper piece worth about two cents.
The next higher coin was the silver sestertius, between four
and five cents ; the next, the silver quinarius, between eight
and ten cents ; the next, the denariits, also silver, between
sixteen and twenty cents. The aureus, of gold, had a value
of between four and five dollars. Roughly speaking, the
coins of Rome corresponded to our nickel, ten-cent piece,
quarter, and five-dollar gold piece. The sestertius was the
unit in ordinary calculations ; in large transactions the
reckoning was by thousands of sesterces. The purchasing
power of Roman money could vary with time and circum-
stance.
The original money of the Romans was their cattle, as
the word pecunia, from pecus, testifies. Their original
coin, at first mere crude metal and then stamped, was the
unwieldy copper as weighing a pound, whose bulk was gradu-
ally reduced until at the end of the Second Punic War in
203 B.C. it weighed an ounce, and finally half an ounce.
The coinage of silver in Rome began in 269 B.C., the mint
being located in the temple of Juno Moneta on the Capitoline
Hill. The word "Moneta," used as an epithet of Juno
and perhaps referring to some fancied warning or admonish-
ment from the goddess, soon began to mean the mint, and
then the coin or money which was the product of the mint.
The word has descended to our times as Italian moneta,
French rn&nnaie, and English money. The coinage of gold,
225
COINS OF THE LATE REPUBLIC AND EARLY EMPIRE
Coin e was struck by Mark Antony about 37 B.C. ; coin / by
Augustus about A.D. 6. Both are autei, gold; the latter is in-
scribed, Caesar Augustus, piyi F[ilius] Pater Patriae. Coin g is
a denarius of Trajan, about A.D. 107, with thp River Danube on
the reverse. Cdins t, jv k are of Tiberius and Nero."
THE MONEY-MAKER 227
first occurring in the war with Hannibal, and introduced
as a war measure, was discontinued soon after, but resumed
by the time of Augustus. The Roman supply of silver was
principally from the Spanish mines near Nova Carthago,
now Cartagena, where forty thousand miners were em-
ployed as early as Polybius, the Greek historian of Rome,
210-128 B.C. Gold came from the Tagus in Spain and the
Pactolus in Asia Minor ; copper from Etruria and various
more distant sources.
The word "moneta" also meant sometimes the stamp or
die which was used in the process of coinage. The Roman
coins of all metals and all periods which fill the museum cases
of every land are stamped with the figures of gods and god-
desses, the features of consuls, generals, and emperors,
and with the monuments they erected, and are a wonderful
means for the study of the Roman past. The issuing of
money until 15 B.C. was controlled by the Senate. At that
date the emperor assumed charge of the mintage in silver
and gold and relieved the Senate of all but the coinage in
copper. The duties of actual minting were at first in charge
of special boards and later of the tres viri monetales, the com-
mission of three on the mint.
The dealings of Roman business in the last centuries of
the Republic brought contacts with the money systems of
many different states. Conquest, the movement of troops,
provincial administration, the interchanges of trade, the
importation of the grain supply, the slave traffic, and the
increase of travel set money into circulation and frequently
took it far from home. No port or other city of size was with-
out its thriving money-changers to convert the stranger's
or the returning citizen's foreign coin into the local cur-
rency. No city of importance was without its money-
tenders and bankers to accommodate the borrower and to
228
LIVING ROME
issue bills of exchange or letters of credit to those with busi-
ness abroad. Deposits bearing interest were received and
funds were subject to check. By the time of the Empire,
the financial life of Rome was on a scale and of a character
surprisingly like that of
modern times. There was
even a panic in A.D. 33,
which the Emperor Tiberius
allayed by the distribution
of four million dollars of
State funds among the
banks.
The man who was ready
to be changer, lender,
buyer and seller on com-
mission, and in general to
play the part of the modern
banker, was the argentarius,
the money-man, from ar gen-
turn, silver. Another name
for the money-broker, which
was applied also to the
tester of metal before it
went into coinage, was the
nummularius, from num-
, a con. The name for one who was more exclusively a
lender was /Generator, from foenus, interest. When Cicero
borrowed to buy his mansion on the Palatine, he found it easy
to get money at six per cent, and said he was regarded as
good security because of his successful consulship of the
year before. This was less than the usual rate, which wa&
twelve per cent. Much higher rates of interest are heard
of, but under unusual conditions.
LTJCITTS CAECHJUS JTJCUNDUB
Jucundus was an auctioneer. This
bronze portrait was found in his house
in Pompeii, where was found also a box
which contained 127 tablets recording
accounts of his sales.
THE MONEY-MAKER 229
If we inquire into the active financial life of Rome, we
find that, aside from the ordinary mercantile operations
natural to the business of a city, the money transactions
were largely in the hands of the equestrian order ; that is,
those citizens not of senatorial rank who possessed four hun-
dred thousand sesterces, about $20,000. These men were
the active money-making class from the time when their
order was formed by Gaius Gracchus in 123 B.C. Besides
banking and commercial business, they undertook State
contracts, such as the importation of grain for the city, the
provisioning of the army, the construction of public build-
ings and aqueducts, and the raising of the taxes.
It is in connection with the taxes that we hear most fre-
quently of the financial career of the equestrian order. The
Uoman State did not collect its taxes through the office of
a State treasury department, but sold to the highest bidder
the contract for collecting the amounts due in the provinces
or territories assessed. If the successful bidder did not, in
the fear of not getting the contract, bid too high, he was
able to collect from the people a sum large enough to satisfy
the government claim and to give hi™ a large profit. The
persons who served as actual tax-collectors, the publicani,
were much disliked ; those who would reproach Jesus called
hi™ "a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publi-
cans and sinners." Sometimes the bidder or bidders —
for the agent was frequently a business firm or a stock com-
pany— overreached themselves by contracting at too large
a sum, and on realizing their mistake applied to the Senate
for a cancellation of the contract.
Since the support of the equites as a class was much valued
by the senatorial or conservative party, requests like these
for special favors might be embarrassing. Cicero writes to
Atticus in December. 61 B.C. :
230 LIVING ROME
"Yes, another fine proposal from the equites that is just about
the limit — and I not only tolerated but even actively stood for
it ! Those who had the contract for Asia from the censors com-
plained in the Senate that in their eagerness they had gone too far
and agreed to impossible terms, and asked for a cancellation. I
was the foremost among their champions, or rather the second ;
for Crassus was the one who put them up to be bold enough to
make the demand. An unpleasant business — a shameless pro-
posal, and a confession of lack of judgment. There was the great-
est danger of their being wholly alienated from the Senate if they
did not get what they wanted."
Crassus, who stood behind the equites on this occasion,
belonged to their order and was one of the wealthiest men
of the time, and it is not unlikely that he was financially
interested in the company or companies appearing before
the Senate as above described. The city was probably full
of investors on a smaller scale.
The importation of grain for Rome and other cities watt
another constant opportunity. The days when the penin-
sula sufficed for itself were past, even in Cicero's time ; in
75 B.C. his duties as quaestor in Sicily included the sending
of wheat cargoes to Rome. Over a century later, Tacitus
writes: "Once Italy exported supplies to the legions in
distant provinces, and it does not suffer now from unpro-
ductiveness. But we draw rather on Africa and Egypt,
and the life of the Roman people is allowed to depend on
ships and chances at sea."
Other opportunities for investment are illustrated by the
career of Atticus, the friend of Cicero. Besides extensive
lending to Cicero and his friends and to various Greek cities,
he engaged in publishing and in the training of gladiators.
So far in our account there is nothing in the business life
of Rome that is unfamiliar to modern times in America,
unless it is the restriction of financial operations so largely
THE MONEY-1VIAKER 231
to one order in society. The money connections of the
patricians and the senatorial class who were not patrician
were of a different sort. The theory of Roman society was
that men of good family and senators were not engaged
in money-making but in the service of the State. We have
seen that the offices in the public career carried with them
no salaries, and that services to the citizenry in general
were gratuitous. This was a matter of tradition from the
earlier times when the chief men of the gentes found all
their occupation in the management of public affairs and
of their own estates. Tradition was strengthened by law.
Livy, for example, tells of the unpopularity of the consul
Flaminius "because of a new law [about 220 B.C.] which
Quintus Claudius, tribune of the people, had carried in
opposition to the Senate, with Flaminius as the one sena-
tor supporting him ; a law forbidding the possession by any
senator or any senator's son of a sea-going ship of more than
three hundred amphorae capacity [about seven and a half
tons]. This was regarded as enough for the carrying ot
produce from the land ; all money-making was looked upon
as unbecoming to senators." We have already noted the
Lex Cincia de Muneribus of 204 B.C. prohibiting the accept-
ance of payment or gifts for service in the courts.
It must not be supposed, however, that either tradition
or the law kept senators and patricians from financial con-
tagion. In the first place, it is hardly possible that the Cin-
cian Law was not in numerous instances evaded. There
were various ways in which the genuinely grateful citizen
who had means could discharge the obligation he felt toward
the man of rank or family who had helped him through a
difficult business in the courts. There was legacy; there
was the throwing of business opportunity in his protector's
way; there was support in the next elections; and there
KUlVLb
might be an actual payment kept secret. In all but the
last mentioned, it could be claimed that the letter of the
law was not violated; and as time went on and the city
became crowded, and the great families found their fortunes
<$* • '-•'•• -
tt Yr
FOBUM AND CAPITOL RESTOBED
At the left: Temple of Vesta, Temple of Castor and Pollux, Imperial
Palace (in background) ; center : Temple of Julius Caesar, Arch of Au-
gustus, Basilica Julia ; right : Arch of Tiberius, Temple of Vespasian, Tem-
ple of Saturn, Temple of Jupiter (on hill). Back of the Temple of Vespa-
sian is the Tabularium.
on the decline, and more and more of the governing class
were men of scant means, it could be claimed that to observe
scrupulously the spirit of the law as well as the letter was
to attempt the impossible and to be unjust.
Cicero affords an example. From all we can know, on
his entrance upon the public career the orator was a man
of moderate fortune. He was always in debt, yet apparently
always able to indulge the most expensive tastes. To ex-
plain how he could buy a house for one hundred and seventy-
THE MONEY-MAKER 233
five thousand dollars, support a son in Athens at three thou-
sand dollars a year, own half a dozen country places, and
lead a life to correspond, is difficult unless it is assumed that
his constant activities in public life met with some reward.
In England, a modern aristocratic country, the fiction of no
charge by the barrister is maintained, while every client
expects to pay a fee and is not left uncertain as to its amount.
In the second place, the owning of landed property was
neither forbidden nor of ill repute. This also was a tra-
dition from the earlier and simpler day. The estates out-
side the city grew larger and came into fewer hands after
the importation of grain reduced the profit of ordinary farm-
ing. Cattle, wine, oil, and fruits took the place of grain,
and an equipment of slave labor the place of the numerous
small farmers.
In the third place, the public career led in the majority
of cases to the provinces, where by fair means or otherwise
the fortunes of the propraetor or proconsul and the numer-
ous friends or relatives under his patronage found ample
means for increase. We hear much about extortion and other
abuses, but it need not be supposed that there were not also
honorable means of profiting by the governorship. Every
successive increase of Roman dominion opened up new
fields for investment, and the governor and his adminis-
trative train were first on the ground. Even at home in
the capital, there was the opportunity to participate in
provincial enterprises by investment.
We may conclude therefore that, directly and indirectly,
the nonsalaried and noncommercial nobility as well as the
equestrian financiers were able to share in the worldly ad-
vantages of the constantly expanding State.
XXIII
THE COMMON MAN
We have followed the public man in the career of service
to the State as Chilian and soldier, and have followed him
also in his service to the individual citizen in the capacity of
lawyer or advocate. We have seen the activities of some-
what humbler men in teaching and medicine, the activities
of the equestrian class in commerce, contracts, and financial
adventure in general, and the participation of the aristo-
cratic class in money-making by way of investment, specula-
tion, and exploitation of the provinces.
These careers, political, legal, financial, pedagogical, and
medical, correspond in general to the professions of to-day,
though we have seen that the callings of teacher and doctor
were of less distinction than they are in modern times. Let
us now pass to the other occupations that went to make up
the life of the ancient city, mentioning first those which we
usually associate with the intellectual or professional call-
ings, and afterward the more common sort which depend
upon skill of hand or upon mere labor.
The employees in and about the government offices will
make a good beginning. There were, first of all, the scrtbae,
the scribes. This class included the secretaries of individ-
uals, commissions, the courts, and the Senate, the numer-
ous ordinary and expert accountants, and in general all
those usually meant by the term "clerk." Horace was for
a time clerk in the State treasury. Cicero had a private
secretary named Tiro, an expert in shorthand, as has been
234
THE COMMON MAX
235
noted. Besides the army of clerks, as great in ancient times
as now, there might have been found every morning in ante-
chambers and offices of the Government a great number of
attendants : the janitors and ushers, who let the visitors
In and out, ran errandj, and facilitated in general the busi-
ANCIENT WBITING MATERIALS
Wax tablets, styluses, ink-well, and fragment of pottery with Greek spelling
exercise.
ness of their superiors; the lictors, who accompanied the
magistrates, carrying the fasces symbolic of authority;
and the various messengers. A collective name for this
little world of clerks and attendants was apparitores.
As having business with this class, the stationers and
booksellers may be noticed here. The material for sale
by the stationer was the- paper made from the papyrus
plant and called charta, manufactured in large quantities
236 LIVING ROME
by cutting the stalk into strips, moistening, pressing, and
finishing; pens made of reeds and split at the point like
the old-fashioned quill pen; wax tablets consisting of
wooden frames with coating of wax; styluses with point
for writing in the wax and blunt end for smoothing out or
erasing; black ink for ordinary use and red for headings
and ornamental features ; ink-wells ; and pen or stylus cases.
In the bookseller's shop were the rolls of papyrus which
constituted the volumes, volumina, or books. The Sosii
Brothers, in the Argiletum, a street leading from the north
side of the Forum near the Senate, were the sellers of
Horace's works.
There were also the publishers of books. Atticus, the
friend of Cicero, included among his many activities the
publishing business. The place of printing press was taken
by the copyist, perhaps a trained slave, who repeated the
author's work in as many copies as were desired. In the
case of a firm publishing many books, there would be a
large force of these copyists. The use of a number of dicta-
tors, each in a room with a hundred copyists, could bring
out a large edition with little delay; or the transcription
could be done individually. Cicero writes Atticus in June,
60 B.C., about the work he had written in Greek on his own
consulship, "If you like the book, see that it is to be had at
Athens and the other cities of Greece." In 45 B.C., after
changing the Academica from two books to four and making
otijer changes, he writes Atticus, who had already had the
work copied in part: "You will not let yourself be dis-
turbed by the loss from having had copied the parts of the
Academica in your hands. In the new form the work will
be more distinguished, briefer, and better. "
In the field which we should call the fine arts, that is,
painting, sculpture, architecture, and the finer handicrafts,
THE COMMON MAN
there were of course many at work. They were in most
part of Greek origin, were artisans rather than artists, and
left no names of the first class. Architecture was the great-
est of the arts em-
ployed by Rome.
The public and pri-
vate building of Au-
gustan times, when
Rome was changing
from brick to marble,
brought commissions
to many experts and
work to many arti-
sans. The number
of men employed in
building, painting,
molding and chisel-
ing, pottery, and in
the general beautifi-
cation of the city
during its prosperous
and growing days,
must have been very -j^ TOMB RELIEF OF THE HATEBH
great . The sculpture shows a crane, whose ropes and pul-
Even in mUSic, an le** were operated by the large tread-wheel. The
7 . building is a tomb in two stories, the lower for
art OI leSS promi- burial ^a the upper for use as a chapel. On a
in antiquity couct above reclines perhaps a lady of the Hateriaa
. , . gens who is interred in the tomb. The crane may
It nOW enjoys, be the sign that the Haterii were contractors.
there were many
teachers and performers. There were the flute-players at-
tached to the theaters, where the plays had parts which
were accompanied, and to religion, at whose sacrifices they
contributed to the ritual, and in whose processions they
238 LIVING HOME
formed a part. There were the players of stringed instru-
ments, such as the lyre and the harp, who accompanied the
recitation of the ode or the choral parts of the tragic drama.
There were the trumpeters and cornetists of the army and
of public functions. There were teachers not only for the
training of these musicians but for such young people as
included music in their education, whether instrumental or
vocal.
Again, the busir?ss of amusement furnished occupation
to many. There were the actors and attendants at the
theater; the gladiators and trainers and keepers of the
beasts in connection with the amphitheater; the grooms
and jockeys and attendants at the races in the circus ; and
the employees at the baths, which were already an institu-
tion in Augustus' time.
There were the occupations connected with the eating
and drinking of a million people. There were the carters
who brought the produce from country or warehouse to the
vegetable market, the cattle market, the fish market, and
other centers of sale. There were the dealers in the markets,
and the shopkeepers. There were the drinking places and
the restaurants. There was the baker, who was usually
his own miller, and bought the wheat, ground it in the stone
mill turned by donkey or slave, made the flour into dough.,
and baked it in the big oven resembling our Dutch oven,
all in his one place of business. The tomb of the bake*
Marcus Vergilius Eurysaces, at the Porta Maggiore, is
built of kneading jars and decorated with a frieze displaying
all the operations of his business : the purchase of the grain,
the grinding of the flour, the mixing of the dough, its
preparation for the oven, the baking of it, the sale of the
bread.
There were the occupations tha.t furnished and cared for
THE COMMON MAN
239
the dress and ornament of the citizenry. There were the
spinners, with distaff- and spindle, such as may be seen in
the humbler homes of Italy to-day, and there were the
weavers, with loom and warp and web and shuttle, equip-
ment likewise still employed. Both were to be found in
OVEN AND MILLS
A miller and baker's establishment in Pompeii. The mills of lava rock, turned by
slave or donkey power, flank the brick and concrete oven, in which fuel was burned
until the heat was sufficient, when the fire was raked out and the loaves put in.
the household, and worked also in factories or shops. There
were the dyers, the fullers or laundrymen, the tailors, the
hatters, the shoemakers. "Let the shoemaker stick to his
last," was a Roman saying — ne sutor supra arepidam.
There were the barbers, and the makers and setters of razors, •
brushes, and combs. There were the jewelers who made
240
LIVING ROME
and sold the rings, brooches, necklaces, bracelets, and dia-
dems that beautified the rich, and the cheap and flashy
ornament worn by the poorer. The little stores and shops
of the ancient city were multitudinous. When the wooden
and iron shutters were put up or drawn at close of day, and
A CLOTH SALE
Two flalemne-n are displaying a piece of goods in a portico on the market place,
before two gentlemen with slaves.
when they were taken down in the morning, it was a noisy
process, and the street underwent a great change in appear-
ance.
There were the handicrafts. There were the carpenter
and the mason and the decorator and mosaicist, to execute
the plans of the architect. There were the cabinetmaker
and the lampmaker and the potter and the worker in bronze
to furnish and light the house.
THE COMMON MAN 241
There were the marble workers, who sawed and cut the
beautiful material of which public buildings and many
private houses were made or with which they were veneered.
There were many kinds of marble, from distant quarries,
some of them in beautiful tints — the ruddy, deep-toned,
mottled africano, and the gold-and-purple giallo antico,
or Numidian antique yellow, both from Africa; the pea-
cock marble from Phrygia; the black from Euboea, the
island north of Athens; the pure white Pentelic from the
famous mountain near Athens, and the sparkling white
from the island of Paros ; the marble of Luna from near
Pisa, where there are still great quarries that ship to far parts
of the world; the granites and porphyries of Egypt. A
treatise on Roman marbles records more than two hundred
varieties. Marble working is a craft much practiced in
Italy to-day. The marble of Luna is now called Car-
rara.
There were the clay workers, who made the brick and tile
that went into the vast bulk of Roman building. The
largest clay pits were across the Tiber beyond where Saint
Peter's now stands, and are still in use on the same exten-
sive scale. In earlier times bricks were dried in the sun ; by
the time of Augustus they were dried in kilns. Many were
stamped with the name of the owner, the maker, or the
reigning emperor, and thus give much evidence to the
archaeologist and historian. The ordinary brick wall was
composed cf only a surface of bricks, usually three-cornered,
the interior cf the wall being concrete, a mixture of broken
stone and old tile with mortar made from lime and a crumbly
material brought from pits in the Campagna.
There were the workers, slave or free, employed by the
great contractors in the erection of buildings — the carriers
and tenders, the operators of the great) derricks and rope-
242
LIVING ROME
and-pulley devices pictured on the tomb of the Haterii
Brothers in the Lateran Museum. The simpler tools have
changed little, but machinery has developed enormously.
One great difference between ancient and modern building
employment is in the greater number of hand laborers in
antiquity and in the use of slaves.
LOADING A GRAB* SHIP
From a painting in Ostia. The ship is named Isis Gezniniana, and has
on board the captain (magister}, Farnaces; the owner, Arascantus; a steve-
dore emptying a sack; another stevedore with hand upraised ; and a filth
person. It has two steering oars.
There were the people who carried the wares of the great
city; the boatmen who came from Ostia up the Tiber,
the loaders and unloaders at the wharves and warehouses
by the Aventine, the draymen and pushcarters who dis-
tributed to the retail trade the cargoes from across the seas
and the produce from Italian farm and garden. There
were the cabmen and the chairmen and the muleteers and
donkey drivers.
Nor should the men be forgotten who kept the streets
in condition and safe. There were the pavers and the
cleaners, and there were the police, -called vigiles, who in-
cluded also the firemen. In the time of Augustus there
THE COMMON MAN 243
were some seven thousand five hundred police, a number
comparable to the nine thousand of London.
Finally, there was the household service: the janitor,
the hall porter, the chambermaid, the lady's maid, the chil-
dren's attendant or paedagogw, the steward, the cook, the
gardener.
If to the aristocratic and other distinguished callings
described in earlier chapters we add the more ordinary-
callings just considered, we are able to realize the variety
of occupations and men that went to make up Living Rome.
It remains to compare once more the ancient with the
modern.
In the first place, a great share of the city's business
was done by slaves and freedmen. From the common
drudgery of the streets to the care of a consul's or an em-
peror's household, there were few occupations in which the
slave and the recently emancipated were not found. The
professions of medicine and teaching and the fine arts were
largely in the hands of men who had been slaves and who
were still in the semi-independent position of the freedman
who looked to his former master for protection and pat-
ronage. It was only the governing class that was wholly
composed of the freeborn and citizens, and in many in-
stances the freedman or the slave was so influential with
master or patron as to be substantially in control. The
result of such surrender of the professions and arts to men of
servile origin was a lack of respect for the professional call-
ings themselves which must have impaired their effect and
retarded their progress.
In the second place, it is to be noted that the work of
ancient Rome was done, not by machines, but by pairs of
hands. The tasks that were done and the goods that were
supplied were performed and supplied by the individual.
244
LIVING ROME
This had two effects. One was that the Dumber of eon-
tacts and the intimacy of man with man were greater. The
city was full of small tradesmen and small artisans and
special workers. From the shoemaker to the surgeon,
learning was by apprentice-
ship, and even in prepara-
tion for law and public life
there was something very
like apprenticeship. The
other effect was that the
pace of life, however quick
and nervous it seemed to
a Juvenal, a Martial, or a
Horace, was far more lei-
surely than is the case in our
age of mass manufacturing,
mass training, rapid trans-
it, and instantaneous com-
munication. Yet neither
slowness nor the human
contact was peculiar to
Rome or to Roman times.
It is not more than a hun-
dred years since the use
of the apprentice was di-
minished by the advent of
the machine, and there are
still nooks where the chain store and the factory and the
professional and technical college do not function.
In the third place, the work of the ancient world was
not only minute, but the workers were minutely organized.
For every occupation, from the unskilled to the highly skilled
and intellectual^ the collegium, or guild, was the usual thing.
A MERCHANT'S TOMBSTONE
The inscription reads : Marcus Antonius
Trophimus, of the Augusta! priesthood,
dealer in mantles at Puteoli and Naples,
erected this monument to himself and to
Julia Irene, his wife of rarest character,
and to Antonia Jucundina, their daughter,
and to their freedmen and freedwomen and
their descendants, and to Julia Euphemia
and her descendants.
THE COMMON MAN 245
There is nothing more interesting in the life of Rome
than the guilds, the collegia. When history begins, there
are already eight of them in existence : the fullers, the cob-
blers, the carpenters, the goldsmiths, the coppersmiths, the
dyers, the potters, and the flute-blowers. The number
multiplied until in the Empire it probably would have been
difficult to find a worker unattached to one of them. There
were the porters, the masons, the eastanet-players, the pas-
tille-makers, the ragmen, the flask-makers, the bridle-
makers, the cab drivers, the coopers, the stonecutters, the
purple-dealers, the woolcombers, the plumbers, the pei-
fume-sellers, the fruiterers, the pearl-dealers, the auctioneers,
the leather-dealers, the bakers, the clothmakers, the wood-
makers, the armorers, the artillerymen, the boatmen, the
sailors, the ass drivers, the muleteers, the hornblowers,
the porters, the pavers, the saltfish-dealers, the gladiators,
the household slaves, the grocers, the tanners, the inn-
keepers, the pallbearers, the hunters. Even the professions,
such as medicine and the stage, had their guilds. There
were the physicians, the actors, the oculists. There were
guilds of various nationalities, of soldiers. For Rome alone,
there are twenty-five hundred inscriptions known which
indicate more than a hundred guilds, and there are inscrip-
tions showing guilds in four hundred and seventy-five towns
elsewhere. The bulk of this evidence belongs to times later
than Caesar, Cicero, and Virgil, but conditions were different
only in degree, and not greatly different even in that.
The mention of these numerous guilds in t&e field of labor,
variously referred to as colleges, clubs, associations, corpo-
rations, or unions, naturally suggests the methods and
purposes of organized labor in modern times. We should
be wrong, however, if we concluded that the ancient guilds
existed for the sake of a "labor" party or for the spreading
BLACKSMITH'S TOOLS
Found in the Roman border fort at Newstead, near the River Tweed not far from
Melrose in Scotland. The tongs are 16 and 18 inches long ; the hammers, 11 inches.
No. 10 is an anvil, no. 7 a punch for Tn«.fri>g holes in hot metal.
THE COMMON MAN 247
of a " labor" gospel. There was a quarrel in 43 B.C. be-
tween the union and nonunion pallbearers, but beyond
this the question of the open shop in ancient Rome does
not appear. The withdrawals of the plebeians to the Sacred
Mount outside the city and to the Aventine in the early
Republic were in the nature of general strikes, but their
purpose was the winning of civic rights rather than the im-
provement of labor conditions. There is evidence of an
outbreak of the workers in the mint and the death of seven
thousand people in the disorder, but this is an isolated occur-
rence dating from the time of Aurelian, A.D. 270-276, and
could hardly have been a strike in the usual sense.
CUPIDS AS FULLERS
From left to right: treading the new-made cloth in water, to remove ril t-nJ
cleanser ; carding or combing to bring out the nap, which was sheared dou n ; in-
spection ; folding. From a wall painting in the house of the Vettii, Pompeii.
It is possible that in the earlier times of the Republic
the guilds were an attempt at exclusiveness and trade pro-
tection, but their great purpose at all times, so far as may be
judged, was the very natural one of human solidarity. The
members of the guild met and ate and drank together, ex-
changed ideas, perhaps on occasion did something to im-
prove the conditions of their calling, agreed on mutual
support in certain matters, and in general felt the glow of
sympathetic fellowship. There were officers elected; we
hear of patres, tribuni, fratres, sorores, magistri, curatores,
praefecti, titles which suggest imitation of a city gov-
ernment. No doubt the flatteries of self that were felt
250 LIVING ROME
so that there was no one in the city to furnish music at the sacri-
fices. The Senate, constrained by respect for religion, despatched
envoys to Tibur to arrange for the men's being returned to the
Romans. The citizens of Tibur, having good-naturedly promised
the favor, summoned the players to their council chamber and
urged them to return to Rome ; but, finding that they could not
be prevailed upon, adopted a plan of dealing with them which was
quite consistent with human nature. Choosing a holiday, they
invited them variously to various houses on the pretext of wanting
music for the banquets of the day, filled them with wine, of which
their class is very fond, threw them in their drunken sleep into
wagons, and carried them off to Rome. They did not come to theu
senses until the wagons had been left in the Forum and the dawr»
overtook them still in their drunken state."
XXIV
THE FARMER
In our account of the many occupations having to do with
the life and living of Rome, no mention has been made of the
country Roman ; and yet the farmer, the gardener, the fruit
grower, and the shepherd of Latium were for the early cen-
turies at the very base of the city's sustenance and comfort.
It is true, of course, that the farmer does not live in the
city; and it is true also that Rome by the time of Cicero
was a city of over half a million surrounded by acres whose
produce was but a trifle in the feeding and clothing of its
citizens. The acres which supported it had for a long time
been far away — at first in Italian fields beyond the moun-
tains that circled the Latin plain j then, in Sardinia and
Sicily ; still later, in Africa and Spain and Gaul and Egypt.
But there had been a time when the lands that lay about
the capital were intimately connected with the city and
shared its life, and when to think of the State was to think
of the landed properties and their owners outside the gates
as well as of the teeming streets of the city.
The Roman State in origin was a commonwealth of
shepherds and farmers, and it was not until it was well on
in the conquest of the outside world that it ceased to retain
a rustic character, and ceased to have what might be called
a peasant aristocracy. Nor would it be right to suppose that
even in the days of the emperors, when the active cultivation
of the Campagna was long in the past and its acres given up
to the large estate and the rich man's villas, there was no
251
252
LIVING ROME
connection between the city and the country. The landed
estate never ceased to be held in esteem as the least sordid
and the most dignified of the forms of holding property.
Whatever the fate of the Campagna as an agricultural area,
THE CHUECH OF SAINT FAANCIS AND THE PLAIN OP Assist
The precise nature of planting garden, vineyard, and orchard is to be noted.
Italy herself was as much the garden of the world in the time
of Virgil and Horace as it was in the time of Byron and is
to-day.
Partly, then, because the bond between Rome and the soil
has always been close, but especially because of their intimate
union in the earlier times of the Roman Republic, to include
THE FARMER 253
the fanner among the men of Living Rome is not only appro-
priate but necessary.
The memory of those earlier times was vivid still in Cicero's
day. " The senators in those days lived in the fields/7 he
has old Cato say, in De Senectute; " because Lucius Quinc-
this Cincinnatus was at the plow when the message came
that he had been elected dictator. . . . Curius and the other
elders used to be summoned to meetings of the Senate from
their villas, and that is why those who served the summons
were called viatores. ... It was when Curius was sitting
at his fireside that the Samnites offering him a great sum of
gold were repulsed."
The words in which Cato is made to express in the same
essay his love of life on the soil will make a fitting introduction
to the ancient fanner's life :
" Could old age be called pitiable in these men, who found joy in
the cultivation of their acres? Really, ta my thinking, one could
hardly conceive of an old age happier than this, not only in the
service it renders, because the tillage of the soil is beneficial to all
mankind, but also in the delight of which I have spoken, and in
the fulness and abundance of everything necessary to the life of
men and the worship of the gods. . . . For the capable and careful
owner always has his wine cellar and oil cellar and granary as full
as can be ; the whole farmhouse is richly supplied, and abounds
in pork, kid, lamb, fowl, milk, cheese, and honey. And then there
is the garden, which the farmer calls his second meat supply ; and
all these things I mention are made more savory still by bird snar-
ing and hunting in unoccupied hours. Why should I go on to
speak of the green meadows or the rows of trees or the beauty of
the vineyard and the olive grove?"
To these words could be added the praise of Virgil for the
f ruitf ulness of his native land :
ttr
'There is no cessation. The year is always rich either in the
fruits of the orchard, or in the increase of the flocks, or in sheaves
254 LIVING ROME
of corn, the gift of Ceres ; it burdens the plowed fields with in-
crease and exceeds the bounds of the granary. . . . The Sicyo-
nian olive is bruised in the mill, the swine come home glad from
their acorns, the wood yields its fruitage of arbute berries ; and
autumn lays her varied fruitage at his feet, and aloft on the sunny
rocks the gentle grape is ripening for the vintage."
"But fruitful vines, and the fat olive's freight,
And harvests heavy with their fruitful weight,
Adorn our fields ; and on the cheerful green
The grazing flocks and lowing herds are seen. . . .
Perpetual spring our happy climate sees,
Twice breed the cattle, and twice bear the trees,
And summer suns recede by slow degrees."
Horace and Tibullus are as much in love with Italy as
Virgil. " Golden Plenty from a full horn is pouring forth
her fruits upon Italy," is Horace's description of the year as
he writes to Iccius. What more charming picture of the
countryside is there than his second Epode f
"And so he either weds the tall poplars with the fullgrown trail-
ers of the vine, or in the secluded vale looks forth upon his wander-
ing flocks, or prunes away with his hook the useless branches and
grafts more fruitful ones in their places, or stores away in the fresh
jars the honey pressed from the comb, or shears his helpless sheep.
Or, when Autumn rears from the fields her head decorous with
mellow fruits, how happy he is as he takes from the tree the grafted
pear, and from the vine the grape cluster vying with the purple ! "
But the beauty and fruitf ulness of Italy require no proof.
Let us pass from poetry to the practical, and attempt to look
upon the land as it produces, and upon the fanner at his
work.
In modern Italy there are three methods of managing the
land. In North Italy, in the great plain of the Po, the farms
approximate in size the American farms of a hundred acres
to a quarter section, and are either rented or owned by the
THE FARMER
255
farmer living on the estate. In South Italy and Sicily, the
land is in large holdings owned by absentee landlords and
much neglected. In Central Italy the average holding is
about forty acres, and is rented for so long a time as prac-
tically to amount to ownership, in the system called
mezzadria, or halving ; the tenant receiving half of everything
CAMPANILE AND LANDSCAPE AT SAN SEVERING
This picturesque village is on the east side of the Apennines near Ancona.
produced. The farm of Central Italy is not so large but that
its work will all be done by the tenant and his wife and chil-
dren, with occasional exchange of work with neighbors. In
France the system is called m&uyer.
The ancient fanner as he appears in the pleasant pictures
of the poets, and also as he is seen in the more sober pages
of Cato's On Agriculture, or of Varro's On Farming, or of
256 LIVING ROME
Columella's twelve books, the tenth of which is in verse, has
much to remind us of modern Italy, and, above all, of Central
Italy. Let us look at him and his affairs in Cato's page.
It will tell us indirectly as well as directly much about the
[Roman husbandman.
The farm of a hundred iugera, or about sixty-six acres,
says Cato, should consist of a good vineyard, a garden that
can be irrigated, an osier bed, an olive orchard, a meadow,
a grain field, a bit of woodland, an orchard, and an acorn
grove. It should have buildings well constructed, large oil
cellars and wine vats, and plenty of casks to provide storage
in case of the need to wait for better prices. There should
be elms along the road and by the hedges. The wood will
come bandy, and the leaves may be stripped for the oxen and
sheep. The vines must be wedded to the trees.
The size of this estate and its variety of products are
strongly suggestive of the Tuscan farm of to-day. The
wedding of the vine to the elm which Cato recommends is a
charming figure, just as appropriate now as two hundred
years before Christ. Who ever forgets his journeyings in
Italy through fields in which rectangles of garden and golden
grain stretch endlessly between rows of fronded elms fes-
tooned from tree to tree with swinging green vines already
heavy with promise?
And here is the olive farm of a hundred and sixty acres,
which is fitted out with overseer, housekeeper, five field
hands, three ox drivers, one ass driver, and one shepherd ;
and with three yoke of oxen, three asses with paniers for
carrying manure, an ass for the mill, and a hundred sheep.
The overseer must be the first up and the last to bed, and the
housekeeper must be no gossip or gadabout, but keep the
house and hearth well swept, and have plenty of chickens
and eggs and preserves. The slaves are to have meal,
JbAKJVUUR 257
bread, figs, olives, wine, pickles and vinegar, salt, and cloth-
ing in specified quantities. A peck of salt is enough for
the year.
"If an ox begins to ail, give him right away one hen's egg raw;
make him swallow it whole. The day after, pound up the head of
a leek with a half pint of wine and make him drink it. Pound up
standing on your feet and give from a wooden container, and have
the ox himself and the one who gives the dose be on their feet.
You must be fasting when you give it, and the ox when he takes
it. ...
"Make your threshing-floor this way. Dig out the place where
you are going to make it. Afterward, sprinkle it with olive
dregs and let the ground soak well. Afterward, pulverize well
the lumps. Then level off and tamp down with beaters. After-
ward, sprinkle again and let dry. If you do it this fashion, ants will
not damage it nor grass grow up in it. ...
"If you have a dislocation, you can cure it with this charm.
Pake a green reed four or five feet long, cut it in two and have two
persons hold the parts to your hip bones. Begin to chant, daries-
dardaries-astataries-disBunapiter [a nonsense rhythm], and at the
same time try until they come together. . . . Wave a knife above
them. When they have come together and the one touches the
other, take the knife in your hand and cut the pieces to right and
left, bind them on the dislocation or fracture, and it will be cured.
But repeat every day this incantation, or the following in place of
it, hua^haua^-huat, ista-pista-sista, dannabo-dannawtra. ..."
Here is Cato's recipe for cheese cake. Mash up two
pounds of cheese, pour in a pound of corn meal, or a: half
pound of flour, and mix well with the cheese. Add an egg,
and beat it well. Pat into a cake, place on leaves under a
dish on a hot hearthstone, and bake slowly.
The care of oxen and wagons, the harvest of the olive and
the Tnglririg of the oil, the vintage, and the treatment of
slaves, axe other themes in the simply and roughly written
258 LIVING ROME
treatise of Cato. Its homely wisdom, its intensely practical
spirit, its mixture of common sense and superstition, repre-
sent well the character of the small fanner in Italy, ancient
and modern. His knowledge and practice do not depend on
books or institutions of learning, but on the experience
handed down from generation to generation on the same
acres.
The basis of Cato's experience was his own estate on the
slopes of the Alban Hills near Tusculum. The town of
Monte Porzio Catone, where
"Up rose the golden morning
Over the Porcian height,"
in Macaulay's Lay, whether the name means anything or not
as to place, is not distant from his holding. Olive, vine, and
garden are rich on the rounded hillsides, and the more level
fields of the Campagna floor are near. The farming of Cato
was that of Central Italy.
The manner of such farming changed little during the
centuries. Two farmers' calendars of the later Empire
giving the data for each month would have served as well
in the time of Cato, except for the different number of days
they give certain months. If the truth were known, they
would probably be found the direct descendants of almanacs
in the Censor's day. They axe bronze cubes, containing
three months in three columns on each vertical side, with the
signs of the zodiac heading the columns. Below the sign for
each month are the numerical data regarding days and hours,
the names of the sign and the patron deity, the special farm
activities of the season, and the appropriate religious observ-
ance. The month of January in the Menologium Rusticum
Colottanum, for example, reads :
THE FARJV1ER 259
MONTH
JANUARY
DAYS XXXI
NONES ON THE FIFTH
THE DAY, HOURS NINE AND ONE HALF
THE NIGHT, HOURS FOURTEEN
THE SUN
IN CAPRICORN
TUTELAGE
OF JUNO
STAKES
ARE SHARPENED
WILLOWS
REEDS
ARE CUT
SACRIFICE
TO THE GODS
OF THE HEARTH
But the modest estate of the rigid old patriot was not
the only sort. There were also the great plantations a:id
ranches in other parts of Italy and in the provinces where
lands were ampler. Flavius Vopiscus, a writer of much
later times, tells of an estate with 500 slaves, 2,000 cattle,
1,000 horses, 10,000 sheep, and 15,000 goats. Pliny, in the
first century, mentions one with 4,117 slaves, 3,600 yoke of
oxen, and 257,000 other beasts. These were great contrasts
with the farms of Cato's neighborhood, or the Sabine Farm
of Horace, which the poet says " sent its five good fathers to
Varia," meaning the five overseers or tenants in charge;
or the home of Martial's country friend so appreciatively
described a hundred years after Horace :
"In every corner grain is stacked,
Old wines in fragrant jars are packed :
About the farmyard gabbling gander
And spangled peacock freely wander :
With pheasant and flamingo prowl
Partridge and speckled guinea-fowl :
Pigeon and waxen turtle-dove
Rustle their wings in cotes above.
260 LIVING ROME
The farm-wife's apron draws a rout
Of greedy porkers round about ;
And eagerly the tender lamb
Waits the filled udder of its dam.
With plenteous logs the hearth is bright,
The household Gods glow in the light,
And baby slaves are sprawling round.
No town-bred idlers here are found."
It would be interesting to follow up in Marcus Terentius
Varro's On Farming the various activities already described
by Cato but not at length. Varro makes us better ac-
quainted with the details of equipment and operation ; with
the seasons, and the work best adapted to each ; with plant-
ing, cultivating, harvest, and garnering ; with the technique
of livestock breeding, and of bees, and of domestic and wild
fowl. Much might be said also of the vicissitudes of the soil
and its tillers from the days of the peasant aristocrat, whose
last example of note was Cato, through the times of large
estates which Pliny the Elder called the ruin of Italy, to the
later centuries when the tillage of the soil was a serfdom,
large parts of the country were malarial, and the miseries
and unsafety of the Dark Ages were approaching.
But Italy and agriculture are everlasting, and through all
the centuries and in all the authors we should find the eternal
verities of life in the unchanging country. Let us rather be
content with a few paragraphs on the most characteristic
products of the ancient Italian farm.
First, there was the grain, principally wheat. In spite of
what is usually said of the importation of grain and the
cheapening of Italian wheat, it is unlikely that the Italian
f aimer did not grow wheat for his own need and for the
neighboring market. In its production, we must imagine
the same processes which are to be seen to-day in the little
villages and plains of Italy. The plowing was done with the
THE FARMER 261
ox, and the plow made of a beam from the woodlands. The
reaping was done with the sickle, and all the household went
to the field, with perhaps the neighbors. The threshing was
done with the flail, or with horses or oxen trampling the grain
on the circular threshing floor. " Thou shalt not muzzle the
mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn." The trampling
or flailing done, the mingled straw and chaff and wheat were
tossed in the wind with the winnowing fan until the grain was
ready for the sack and the granary. "Whose fan is in his
hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather
the wheat into his garner ; but the chaff he will burn with
fire unquenchable."
In the second place, there were the fruits and the vege-
tables, always easy to grow in Italy, and with no foreign
market to fear. In Roman times there were no express
trains and refrigerator cars for the transportation of perish-
ables to another country.
But the richest resources of the peninsula were the olive,
the grape, and the products of meadow and pasture. The
change from small to large estates had no effect on these,
unless it was to encourage them.
The olive, not native to Italy, was introduced from Greece.
It was prepared in brine or vinegar in various ways, but its
great use was for oil — oil as food, oil as fuel in lamps, oil as
the basis of unguent and perfume. Gathered by picking late
in autumn, the berries were allowed to mellow for a few days
in heaps, and then crushed in the olive miTT of hard, rough
stones revolved by donkey power. The pulp thus formed
was then pressed, the oil allowed to settle in the jars that
caught it, and ladled off into other jars for sale or storage.
The modern yield of oil in Italy is upward of fifty million
gallons a year, from over five million acres, or about one
fifteenth the peninsula, and is one of the chief exports. The
262 LIVING ROME
groves are found on many a mountain side which would
hardly serve another purpose. In ancient times, the invader
in time of war was always a threat to the olive orchard
because its laying waste meant the loss of income for many
years.
AN OLIVE CRUSHER AND A HAND-MILL FOR GRAIN
The crusher was revolved by hand, and ground the pulp and the stones together.
The grape, like the olive, was introduced from Greece at
an early time. It was eaten as fresh fruit and dried as the
raisin, but chiefly used in the form of wine. In the early
Republic, when Italy was producing a full grain supply, the
demand for wine had to be met in part by importation from
southern Italy and Greece, but by A.B. 81 there were so
many vineyards that a limit to their planting was set because
THE FARMER 263
of agricultural needs. The varieties most mentioned in Latin
authors are the Formian, the Falernian, the Massic, and the
Caecuban, all produced on the west coast about a hundred
miles south of Rome. A century after Horace's birth, there
were eighty-five wines, and the Italian product was sent to
distant countries. To-day the annual yield of wine is about
three quarters of a billion gallons, and wine is an export of
great consequence. About one seventh of Italy is planted
with the vine.
The vineyard could be either on the southward-facing hill-
side or in the plain. For support, there were the elms, kept
fairly small by trimming back, and prevented, by the same
means and by stripping of the leaves, from intercepting too
much sunshine; and there was the trellis made of cane.
Both methods are still in use. The vineyards that cover the
dopes of the Alban Hills like a great green garment consist
of endless rows of vines rearing themselves to catch the sun
on cane arrangements that look like stacked muskets. The
branches clamber from stack to stack on other cane laid
horizontally. With either method, the ground must be
frequently worked.
The vintage, in late September or October, was a busy and
a genial season. The grapes were gathered, in the case of the
elms by the aid of ladders, and carried in baskets and carts to
the treading vat, where bare feet crushed them to a juicy
mass. The press received them next, operated either with
windlass turned by levers or with the use of wedges driven by
mallets. The juice, drained into great terra cotta jars that
held a hundred gallons and were half embedded in the floor of
the storeroom, was left uncovered for several days until
fermentation was complete, and then, after final expert treat-
ment, sealed in the proper amphorae and stored foi the
trade.
264
LIVING ROME
One more permanent feature in the life of Italy must be
mentioned — its animals: the sheep, the cattle, and the
goats, that furnished the wool, the leather, the mutton and
beef and kid, the milk, and the cheeses that no doubt existed
in as many varieties then as they do now. Nothing in Italy
to-day is more striking than the beautiful cattle with im-
mensely spreading horns, black muzzle, great liquid eyes.
PLOWING IN MODERN ITALY
and silvery-gray or white flanks. They were there at least
in the time of Trajan, who is said to have brought them from
Pannonia, and perhaps they were the albi greges of Virgil, the
white herds of the Clitumnus. If the gods must have their
sacrifice, no nobler victim can be imagined. The poet
Carducci found in the ox the inspiration for a magnificent
sonnet:
"I love thee, pious ox ; a gentle feeling
Of vigor and of peace thou giv'st my heart.
How solemn, like a monument, thou art !
Over wide fertile fields thy calm gaze stealing,
THE FARMER 266
Unto the yoke with grave contentment kneeling,
To man's quick work thou dost thy strength impart.
He shouts and goads, and answering thy smart,
Thou turn'st on him thy patient eyes appealing.
"From thy broad nostrils, black and wet, arise
Thy breath's soft fumes, and on the still air swells,
Like happy hymn, thy lowing's mellow strain.
In the grave sweetness of thy tranquil eyes
Of emerald, broad and still, reflected dwells
All the divine green silence of the plain."
Nowhere better than in the unchanging country can one
feel the permanence of human affairs and the nearness of
ancient Roman days. The Tuscany of to-day is the Etruria
of yesterday. The life of Virgil's Georgics is the life of the
Italian countryside to-day. Let us listen to an Italian-
born essayist, Charles W. Leninoi.
"To me the Georgics are not ancient literature; they are the
record of my boyhood and youth. . . . Turn, now, and look.
Two huge, snow-white oxen, their spreading horns garlanded with
red tassels, are bending to the creaking plow, breathing mightily.
Stooping over the plow-handle, a brown-clad figure struggles after,
with uneven steps, in the lengthening furrow. Behind him, an old
man, white of hair and beard, with sweeping gesture and steady
stride, scatters the grain from the basket on his arm. Oh, do you
not know, as you look, that you are in Virgil's country? Do you
not remember?
'In the birth-tide of spring, when melt from the moun-
tains the ice and the snow,
And the crumbling clods are breaking down as the west
winds blow,
Then let the bull begin to groan at the plow deep thrust
as he strains.7
Do you not remember? Come and see; nothing has changed.
"The old man smiles gravely as we approach ; the young plow-
man straightens up, and w'th a rough grace pulls off hi? battered
266
LIVING ROME
hat. Look, it is the same wooden plow as of old. . . . ' Questo
e 1'aratro,3 says the old man, smiling. c Questo & il timone. Questo,
la stiva. Quellif I bovi, sono.' To be sure. Hoc est aratrum.
Hie est temo. Haec stiva. Illi boves sunt. We know them all, I
warrant you. Plow and pole and handle and oxen ; we know them
all. When was it — yesterday, that Virgil described them to
us? ...
* «".
'• • '*''>
IL '..»>. -v '^ •
A MODERN PLOW NEAB HOME
The simple plow sometimes found where little ground is cultivated. It is prac-
tically the same as that described in Virgil's Oeorgics.
"Still as of old, a red moon is of evil omen ; still the new moon
betokens rainy weather when it clasps the old moon in its arms ;
tiie countryman still rejoices when the stars shine clear and sharp.
Unquestioning faith in what tradition teaches — that is the plow-
man's credo ; that, the reaper's. Science may smile, but when
the moon is waning, the sower sows no grain. . . . They have no
doubts ; their philosophy is immemorial tradition. As Cato and
Virgil cultivated their fields, so do they cultivate theirs."
XXV
ROMAN PORTRAITS
We have surveyed the chief occupations that went to make
up the total of Living Rome. By way of summary, and for
the purpose of lending reality to our survey, it will be of
advantage now to contemplate the lives and characters of a
number of actual Romans. Let us look briefly at Cicero, the
public man and orator ; at Caesar, the soldier and statesman ;
at Horace and Virgil, poets from the South and North ; and
at Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher at the head of the State.
Marcus Tullius Cicero was born on January 3, 106 B.C.,
in a charming valley of the Apennines about seventy-five
miles to the southeast of Rome. The Cicero home was afc
the point where the little Fibrenus flowed into the Liris, a
swift stream that to-day turns many mills. Three miles
away, and high on the rocks, was Arpinum, then as to-day the
chief city of the neighborhood. Much running water, fre-
quent rains, a mild climate, and the sheltered location, make
the valley a paradise of foliage and flowers.
Marcus Tullius Cicero the father and Marcus Tullius
Cicero the grandfather complete the Cicero ancestry so far
as known, and Marcus Tullius Cicero the orator's son will
bring the line to an end. The name Tullius suggests a jet of
water ; the name of Cicero, as we have seen, a chickpea, or a
facial blemish resembling one. The family belongs to the
equestrian order, the modest home is an older house
improved, the father is not robust and is devoted to letters.
Helvia, the mother, is of respected family and a thrifty house-
207
268
LIVING ROME
hold mistress. The people of Arpinum have been Roman
citizens since 188 B.C. The near-by town of Sora is the
birthplace of heroes : of Regulus, who kept his word and re-
turned to Carthage to die; of Decius, who rode into the
battle and voluntarily sacrificed his life to bring victory to the
Roman army; of Marius, a
distant connection of the
Ciceros, who drove back the
Teutons and Cimbri when
Cicero was five years old.
Of the little boy Cicero
nothing is known. He may
be imagined about the house
with his father and mother or
at a neighboring school, learn-
ing the usual things. At ten
or twelve, he may be imagined
in Rome, perhaps at the house
of an uncle, Aculeo. He has
been brought to the capital
to receive in more stimulating
surroundings the best educa-
tion possible. It includes Greek as well as his native tongue,
and its aim is cultural as well as practical, but La the back-
ground of it all is the practical ambition of turning it to
account in the career that leads to the consulship. About
him in the streets and in the Forum, in the courts and on
the Capitol, in the houses of his uncle and his father's friends,
the eager young student sees the prominent men of Rome
— foremost among them the urbane Crassus and the direct
and vigorous Antonius, both about forty-five and at the
height of their fame as pleaders.
After taking the toga of manhood, the sixteen-year-old
MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO
ROMAN PORTRAITS 269
Cicero was introduced by his father to Quintus Mucius
Scaevola, the most learned lawyer of the time, at whose con-
sultations, decisions, and discussions he never missed an
opportunity to be present. This Scaevola was an augur, and
on his death in about 88 B.C. Cicero began to follow Scaevola
the Pontif ex Maximus in the same manner. In this year he
also studied under Molo of Rhodes, a famous teacher of
oratory who was visiting Rome. Philo of Athens and
Diodotus the Stoic were other teachers of his youth.
In the midst of these studies, the war between Rome and
the Italian subjects demanding citizenship broke out, and
Cicero spent the year 89 B.C. in the field. It may be supposed
that this experience broadened and deepened his character
and by the quickening of the manly faculties more than
compensated for loss of time from study.
The civil war between Marius and Sulla from 88-83 B.C.,
and the dictatorship of Sulla from 83-78 B.C., kept Rome in a
state of uncertainty, but Cicero's preparation did not halt.
In 81 B.C., at the age of twenty-five, he delivered in a civil
case the first of his orations which has been preserved. In
80 B.C., he won the case for Roscius, falsely charged by a
prot6g6 of Sulla with murder. This won him a reputation
for courage, besides recognition as an orator, but also alarmed
his friends, who warned him of Sulla's displeasure. Partly as
a measure of caution, partly because of physical weakness,
but mostly for the sake of further study and training, Cicero
left Rome for the East. First spending six months at
Athens in study with Antiochus the philosopher, he visited
and received instruction from all the teachers of repute in
the province of Asia, and concluded the tour by studying
again with Molo of Rhodes, who had instructed him in
Rome.
After his return to Rome in 77 B.C. at the age of twenty-
270 LIVING ROME
nine, with his formal education completed, Cicero married
Terentia. Sulla was dead, and the State, for the time at
least, at peace. The young orator began actively to realize
his ambitions. He was quaestor in 75 B.C. in the western
half of Sicily, was prompt in his handling of the grain supply
to Rome, and won the confidence of the Sicilians. Return-
ing to Rome in 74 B.C., he took the seat in the Senate to which
the year of the quaestorship entitled him, and went on with
his career in the courts, winning among others the case for
the Sicilians against Verres, the unscrupulous praetor of
Syracuse from 73-70 B.C. In 69 B.C. he held the aedileship.
In 66 B.C. he held the praetorship, and in 65 B.C. might have
been, had he not preferred his life and calling in Rome, the
governor of a province and a rich man. In 63 B.C. he at-
tained to the consulship, the highest office in the cursus
honorum.
Natural talent and character, aided somewhat by the need
of the senatorial party for a safe and able candidate, had
brought Cicero to the peak of his ambition. The triumph
was the greater because he was the second novus homo in the
consulship for three generations ; that is, he was the second
man not of patrician blood in three generations to hold the
consulship. Marius was the first, winning by reason of mili-
tary genius what Cicero won through genius as an orator
and through personal quality.
The remaining twenty years of Cicero's life were uncer-
tain, varied, and trying. The execution of the conspirators
in 63 B.C. resulted in his exile in 58 B.C., a blow that caused
him the intensest suffering. He was elected augur in 52 B.C.,
was governor of Cilicia in 51 B.C. with a record for just and
capable administration, was placed in charge of Campania
by Pompey in 49 B.C. when Caesar marched on Rome, and
for the last year of his life was the leader of the Senate and
ROMAN PORTRAITS 271
the defenders of the old regime. His great ambition to keep
the senatorial and equestrian orders united as the ideal party,
his ability as lawyer and orator, and his sense of justice, made
him throughout an influential factor in every effort to pre-
serve the Republic.
A strenuous political life, however, did not claim all of
Cicero's time and interest. He continued his active life as
advocate. Above all, he continued the intellectual and
literary life. His letters fill two large and closely printed
volumes, a golden treasury of information and of the senti-
ment of the times. He transmitted in his essays the phi-
losophy of the Greeks whom he admired. He wrote f oui
books on ethics, which are among the world's most enlight-
ened utterances on conduct. He wrote the immortal essays
On Old Age and On Friendship. He left several works or
rhetoric and the orators, and the treatises On the Republic
and On the Laws. All these, with the Orations, form a body
not only of eloquence but of information which would be
difficult to match in the life of any mart in history. In the
end, on December 7 of the year 43 B.C., at the age of sixty-
three, he was deprived of life by the agents of Mark Antony,
the ma.n against whom he had stood as the leader of the
Government in its last days.
The life of Cicero is exceptional in many respects : in his
rise from the position of an ordinary provincial to the consul-
ship and augurship ; in the ideal nature of the preparation
for his life work; in his comparative independence of mili-
tary connections ; in the disinterested character of his pro-
vincial administration ; in the general purity of his life and
motives; in his vivid and lifelong intellectual curiosity; in
his genius as master of the spoken and written word. Yet all
this is a matter of degree, and does not prevent our seeing
in him an illustration of the general content of the Roman
2V2
LIVIXG ROME
public career : in education, in the holding of the ofPces of
the cursus, in the connection with law and hie courts, in
oratory, in provincial service, in the soldier's experience, in
devotion to the life of the State.
With Cicero's life as background, the career of Caesar may-
be surveyed in fewer words. Born in Rome, of patrician
blood and cf prominent fam-
ily, he is without the handi-
caps of Cicero. If we accept
with Mommsen the date of his
birch as 102 B.C., he assumed
the manly toga at fifteen and
was married at sixteen to
Cornelia, daughter of Sulla's
enemy, Cinna. At twenty,
ordered to divorce her, in de-
fiance he flees into Samnium,
but is later allowed to come
back. At twenty-one, he
joins the army in the East,
and at twenty-two is deco-
rated with the civic crown
for saving a citizen's life.
At twenty-four, he is with Servilius Isauricus against the
Mediterranean pirates. On the news of Sulla's death in 78
B.C., he returns to Rome. He loses his first cases at law,
goes to Rhodes for training by Molo, on the way has an ad-
venture with the pirates, who first capture him and then are
captured by him, and is back in Rome in 74 B.C., at the age
of twenty-eight. In 70 B.C. he probably is concerned with
the political defeat of the senatorial party which was formed
by Sulla. In 69 B.C. he is elected quaestor, and in 68 B.C.,
at thirty-four, discharges the duties of that office in Spain,
GAIUS JULIUS CAESAB
ROMAN PORTRAITS 273
In 65 B.C. he is aedile and spends upwards of $800,000, on
one occasion providing 320 pairs of gladiators for a people's
entertainment. In 63 B.C. he is made pontifex maximus and
takes part in the deliberations on the case of the conspirators ;
in 62 B.C. he is praetor, and in 61 B.C. governor of Spain ; and
in 60 B.C. is elected consul, giving up a triumph in order to
run for the office, which he holds in 59 B.C. For the next
ten years he is in Gaul. In 49 B.C. he begins the civil war
which results in the death of Pompey, the defeat of the sena-
torial armies in the East, in Africa, and in Spain, and on
March 15 of the year 44 B.C., in the midst of reforms and
plans for further conquest, is slain at a meeting of the Senate.
This is the career in which the military element pre-
dominates. Let us now survey two lives of the quieter type.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus was born in Venusia, in the
southeastern part of Italy, on December 8, 65 B.C. His
father, once a slave, had been freed before Horace's birth,
and was engaged in a humble calling. From Venusia, where
there was only the little school attended by the sons of the
centurions in the garrison, and their like, he took his son
to Rome for an education that should be the equal of that
enjoyed by sons of the equites and senators. He went
farther, and sent Horace at the age of twenty to Athens,
where he began his studies in the usual courses of philosophy,
mathematics, etc. In the midst of these studies, however,
came the news of Caesar's assassination, and, not long
after, Brutus himself arrived and began to interest young
Romans in the cause of the liberators.
Horace joined the patriot army, was made tribune, fought
in the defeat at Philippi in 42 B.C., and in the course of time
found himself in Rome with property confiscated and no pros-
pect in the world. He was given a place as clerk in the
treasury, attracted attention by his talent for writing, gob
274
LIVING ROME
acquainted with Virgil and Varius, and was introduced by
them to Augustus' friend and counselor, Maecenas, who
gave him at the age of thirty-two the Sabine Farm, thirty
miles from Rome in the high and secluded valley of the
Digentia. He began to write poems at about twenty-four,
and his first volume of Satires, published at thirty, was soon
followed by a second book of
Satires and the Epodes. At
forty-two he published three
books of Odes, at forty-five a
book of Epistles, at fifty-two
a fourth book of Odes, and at
fifty-five a second book of
Epistles. On November 27th
of the year 8 B.C. he died, and
was buried on the Esquiline
Hill.
Horace was not patrician,
and belonged neither to sena-
torial nor to equestrian order.
His was a life with no ambi-
tion for oratory, no running
This bust is labelled Pompeius Mag- f or office, no soldiering except
nus, but August Mau thought it repre- by accident, no straining after
sentedQuintusHoratiusHaccus. ^^ ^ ^ ^^ ^^
Yet it was a life of much experience and many contacts — of
country village beginnings, of excellent education, of study
abroad, of army experience in a lost cause, of bureaucratic
occupation, of acquaintance with the best men of the Au-
gustan State.
Virgil, too, was of plebeian rank, and born far away from
Rome, at Andes, probably near modern Pietole, three miles
from Mantua, on October 15, 70 B.C.: but his father, a
AN UNIDENTIFIED ROMAN
ROMAN PORTRAITS 275
common laborer or a potter who married his employer's
daughter and made his home in the country, sent his son to
school in Cremona at the age of twelve, to Milan at the age
of sixteen, and finally to Rome. Virgil was thus later than
Horace in his arrival at the capital, and richer in provincial
and country experience. His studies in Rome were chiefly
rhetorical, the usual preparation for the civic career, at which
he aimed. A dubious account names his teacher as Epidius,
and calls Epidius also the teacher of Octavius, the future
emperor. In his twenty-first year, it is possible that the
poet was enrolled in Caesar's army, whose strength was
drawn largely from Cisalpine Gaul, where Virgil had lived.
When Virgil came to enter on his chosen profession as
advocate, he appeared in court once, lost his case, and gave
up the ambition for public life. Leaving Rome at about the
age of twenty-two, he went to study with Siro, an Epicurean
philosopher of repute, at Naples, where he had as friends
three distinguished young men, Plotius Tucca, Varius, and
Quintilius Varus. He spent little time after this in the
capital, preferring the region about Naples, where most of
his writing was done. When the confiscations of land took
place after the battle of Philippi, his property in the Mantuan
region was taken to be given the veterans of Antony. An
appeal to Caesar not only brought a restoration of his land,
but led to intimacies with the young Augustus and his
friends. Maecenas became his patron, and in 38 B.C. on
Virgil's introduction became the patron of Horace also.
Relieved, like Horace, of the cares of earning a livelihood,
Virgil devoted himself to the poetry which had already been
his passion for ten years or more, and which Augustus and
Maecenas were shrewd enough to see would be an asset in
their work of reconstructing the Roman State. He had
written from early youth, but his genius did not mature early
276
LIVING ROME
By the time he published the Eclogues, or Bucolics, which
established his reputation, he was thirty-three. These ten
pastorals were imitations of Theocritus, who lived three
centuries before, but full of the charm of Italy. At the age
of forty, he had completed the Georgics, four books filled
with praise of Italy and the love of nature. For the next
eleven years he was occupied
with the Aeneid, which was
still unfinished when he be-
came ill on a visit to Greece
and died in Brundisium on
the way home.
Virgil was buried at Naples,
in or near which he had lived
for more than twenty years.
He was tall and dark, of a
rustic look, delicate in health,
diffident and retiring, and
slow of speech. The Aeneid,
with which he was not satis-
fied and which he wished de-
stroyed, was placed by the
Emperor in the hands of
Varius and Tucca, and published in 17 B.C., two years after
his death, substantially as he left it.
The last portrait will afford a contrast. Marcus Aurelius
Antoninus, born in Rome on April 26, A.D. 121, was the son
of the praetor Annius Verus, and the nephew and adopted
son of the Emperor Antoninus Pius. Surrounded by relar
tives and teachers of excellent character, he had an ideal rear-
ing and education. Herodes Atticus and Cornelius Fronto
taught hi™ rhetoric, a distinguished jurist taught him law,
and among his teachers of philosophy were Sextus of Chae-
THE YOUTHFUL MARCUS AURELIUS
ROMAN PORTRAITS 277
roneia, grandson of Plutarch, and Junius Rusticus, his adviser
when he came to the throne. For these and for others, the
Emperor in his Meditations thanks the gods. He was an
earnest student and a hard worker, abstemious and self-
denying, even to the damage of his health. He was at home
with arms and in the law. At twenty-five he married
Faustina, the daughter of Antoninus Pius, and at forty, in
A.D. 161, he became emperor.
The reign of Marcus Aurelius was marked by the Parthian
War in A.D. 165 ; by a great pestilence which spread over the
west of Europe ; by Teutonic attempts to break into the
Empire in A.D. 174 ; by the revolt of a general, Avidius Cas-
sius, in A.D. 175 ; by persecution of the Christians at Lyons in
France in A.D. 176, and by the war with the Northerners
which ended in their defeat in A.D. 179 and in the Emperor's
death at fif ty-nine years in A.D. 180 from an illness contracted
the year before. The wars at the northern frontier he led in
person, and he died in camp* He was a faithful son and
husband, and a loyal pupil. Many of the letters between
hi™ and his favorite teacher survive. One of them will be of
interest.
"Hail, my sweetest of masters," he writes Fronto. "We are
well. I slept somewhat late owing to my slight cold, which seems
now to have subsided. So from five A.M. till nine I spent the time
partly in reading some of Cato's Agriculture and partly in writing
not quite such wretched stuff, by heavens, as yesterday. Then,
after paying my respects to my father, I relieved my throat, I will
not say by gargling — though the word 'gargarisso' is, I believe,
found in Novius and elsewhere — but by swallowing honey water
as far as the gullet and ejecting it again. After easing my throat
I went off to my father and attended him at a sacrifice. Then we
went to luncheon. What do you think I ate ? A wee bit of bread,
though I saw others devouring beans, onions, and herrings full of
roe. We then worked hard at grape-gathering, and had a good
278
LIVING ROME
sweat, and were merry and, as the poet says, 'still left some clus-
ters hanging high as gleanings of the vintage.' After six o'clock
we came home. I did but little work and that to no purpose.
Then I had a long
chat with my little
mother as she sat on
the bed."
Marcus Aurelius
adopted the Stoic
philosophy, and put
it into practice in
the spirit of a reli-
gion.
"Of human life the
time is a point, and
the substance is in a
flux, and the percep-
tion dull, and the
composition of the
whole body subject
to putrefaction, and
the soul a whirl, and
fortune hard to di-
vine, and fame a thing
devoid of judgment.
And, to say all in a
word, everything
which belongs to the
body is a stream, and
what belongs to the
soul is a dream and
vapor, and life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after-
fame is oblivion. What then is that which is able to conduct a
man? One thing and only one, philosophy."
The dead Emperor was hon Dred by deification, and in a
way became a saint. Many kept by them his statue or bustj
MABCTTS AUKHJLIUS IN TRIUMPHAL, PROCESSION
A Victory hovers above him, and a trumpeter goes
before.
ROMAN PORTRAITS 279
and in the time of Capitolinus, his biographer of long after-
ward, it stood among their household deities.
The many surviving portraits of the philosopher statesman,
in statue, bust, and relief, of which the most famous is the
equestrian statue on the Piazza Campidoglio in Rome, pre-
sent the Emperor with full beard and plentiful hair, and with
grave, dignified, and serene countenance in keeping with the
character of the Meditations.
XXVI
THE WORSHIPER
It is time something was said about the religion of the
Roman. To know of his environment, person, and occupa-
tions is not enough ; we need to know of his thoughts and
behavior before the mystery of life. This is a difficult
matter ; the inner life of men is always the last thing in their
composition to be appreciated.
The religion of the Roman when it first comes into sight
has already been greatly influenced by contact with other
religions. Before that time, he was like other men of imper-
fect culture ; he saw and felt spirits everywhere : in the beasts
of the field, in the trees and stones, in the wind and thunder,
in all the objects, animate and inanimate, with which he
was surrounded. To keep his relations with them right,
to turn aside their wrath or to win their favor, he devised
special words or acts. This is the stage of belief called
As his experience grew, however, his vision also grew.
He became familiar with what was nearer at hand ; only that
which was more remote from contact retained its mystery.
The number of spirits which especially concerned him be-
came smaller. From *mi-miam he passed to polytheism, the
faith in a number of distinct gods. He worshiped Faunus
and Fauna, the protectors of his animals in field and wood,
Janus was the god of all beginnings and of the turn of the
yearly season. Jovis was in the sunshine, the rain, the
lightning, the thunder. Vesta was in his hearth and home.
280
THE WORSHIPER
281
Census protected his horses, and Saturn the seeding and the
harvest.
But some of these are deities little heard of in historic
times. Before the Romans prayed to Jupiter and Juno and
other gods familiar to Virgil and
Cicero, further development
was necessary.
As the Roman absorbed the
races near him and came into
close relations with Volscian,
Etruscan, and Samnite, and
finally brougjht both them and
the Greek of southern Italy
and Sicily under his sway, con-
tact with other men and other
religions broadened his outlook,
and modified his acts of wor-
ship. From the simple poly-
theism of the fields and the
open air of Latium, he passed
to the polytheism of the older
and more thoughtful Greeks. From deities without form
or shape and altars in grove and pasture, he passed to
the temples and images of Etruscan «nd Hellenic gods.
The image of Diana in the temple on the Aventine in King
Servius' time was the first statue of deity worshiped by the
Romans. With the reign of the Etruscan kings, the gods
of Etruria also entered Latium. By 217 B.C., all the Greek
gods and goddesses had been brought to Rome and had
blended with the native deities. The Greek gods received
the Roman names, and Greek ideas and ceremonial were
modified by Roman thought and practice. Zeus and Hera
became Jupiter and Juno; Poseidon and Athena became
A VESTAL VIRGIN
282 LIVING ROME
Neptune and Minerva; Ares and Aphrodite, Mars and
Venus ; Apollo and Artemis, Apollo and Diana ; Hephaestus
and Hestia, Vulcan and Vesta; Hermes and Demeter,
Mercury and Ceres.
These are the gods who appear in the pages of Cicero and
Virgil and Horace and in the statuary descended to us from
Greek and Roman times. It must not be thought, however,
that they were the only gods of the Roman people. They
were indeed the representative deities of the State, the most
frequently heard of, the most impressive to look on, and the
most cosmopolitan ; they were the world deities of Roman
civilization. But in thinking of religion as a force in the
life of Rome, we must remember the faith of the individual at
the hearth and as he went about his ordinary living. In the
homes on the farm and in the villages of Latium and Central
Italy, in the old-fashioned homes of the capital itself, there
were still in Augustan times the gods of early Rome : Vesta
and the Penates, protectors of the family; Faunus, pro-
tector of the flocks ; Saturn, god of the planted crops ; and
many another of the kindly guardians from times when the
gods of Olympus were yet unknown.
Nor were the Graeco-Roman and the old-fashioned Italian
faiths the only ones. There were also the gods, not yet re-
garded quite with favor, of the many foreign groups that had
come to be a part of the great city. There was the Great
Mother, for the Orientals ; there was Isis, for the Egyptians ;
there was Mithras, for the Persians. There were philos-
ophers who interpreted the gods in new ways to suit them-
selves. There were astrologers and fortune-tellers for the
superstitious.
It will not be possible to follow out in detail either ths
beliefs or practices of Roman religion. Let us attempt onl ?
to understand its general character.
THE WOBSHIPER
283
First of all, the religion of the Roman world was not the
same in all places and in all times. It varied according to
city and country and race, and it changed from century to
THE TEMPLE OP THE GREAT MOTHER OP THE GODS ON THE PALATINE HILL
Its high foundations are covered by a grove of flex trees. Augustus restored
the temple, which was about 100 X 50 feet. The fragments are of volcanic rock
called peperino, and were coated with stucco to make them appear marble.
century. The Latin tribes, the Etruscans, the Umbrians
and Samnites, and the Greeks had modified it, the Egyptians
and Orientals were a growing influence in the city of
284
LIVING ROME
Augustus' time, and the Christians were soon to come with
the greatest leaven of all.
In the next place, it was a religion which was formally a
part of the State.
It would be wrong
to speak of religion
and the Roman
State as an alliance
between two sepa-
rate things, for re-
ligion was a func-
tion or department
of the State. The
temples and priests,
the sacrifices and
expiations, the va-
rious processions,
and the celebrations
of holidays were un-
der the control and
at the expense of
Government. This
is not said of per-
sonal and private
worship, of course,
which might be car-
ried on at any time
or place. The tem-
ples were open to
everyone, and every-
one was free to erect
his own altar or shrine and to sacrifice in the manner he chose.
Third, it was a religion represented by many places of
MARCUS ATTHELIUB WORSHIPS BEFORE THE TEM-
PLE or JUPITER ON THE CAPITOL
An acolyte holds the incense casket, the Emperor
sprinkles from it on to the altar fire supported by
the tripod, an attendant plays the pipe, and the sac-
rificial animal and the popa (the priest with the axe)
wait.
THE WORSHIPER 286
worship, and by many reminders to the eye. In Rome there
were some three hundred temples, nearly the number of
churches there to-day, and Augustus was the restorer of
eighty of them. They were stately edifices with colonnades,
vivid with tinting and flashing with metal ornament. The
priests at their altars were robed in gorgeous vestments,
and the solemn processions moving through the street and
forum were among the great spectacles of the city. There
were also the smaller places of worship. There were thou-
sands of little shrines and separate altars in the city, by the
side of the country road, and on the farms. The flowers and
candles and kneeling devotees so frequent in Italy to-day
all had their equivalent in ancient times, and the priest at the
altar in the open air was a much more frequent sight.
Fourthly, it was a religion highly organized and with a
multitude of functionaries. At its head was the college of
pontifices, an ancient body self-elected and holding office for
life, headed by the pontif ex maximus. It exercised author-
ity over sacred observances in general, such as interpretation
of portents and decisions regarding festivals of prayer or
sacrifices in expiation. There were the flamens, or priests
officiating at sacrifices, of whom the flamen of Jupiter was the
most prominent. There were the Vestal Virgins, a sister-
hood of six chosen in girlhood by the pontif ex maximus, in
charge of the worship of Vesta, deity of the hearth and sym-
bol of the inner life of the State. There were the Fratres
Arvales, a brotherhood of priests who prayed for the fruitful-
ness of the fields ; the Luperci, protectors of the flocks and
herds; and the Salii, custodians of the sacred shield, who
appeared in procession every March, leaping and clashing
their armor. There was the college of augurs, experts in the
lore of signs from Jupiter. There were the quindecimvirs,
fihe board of fifteen in chaise of cults introduced from abroad,
286 LIVING ROME
with special oversight of the Sibylline Books and the worship
of Apollo. There were the septemvirs, the seven in charge
of feasts in honor of the gods.
As might be expected from the number of its temples and
priests and from the number of its gods, it was a religion of
many festivals. To mention only a few, there were the Ludi
Romani, a season of two weeks in September, sacred to
Jupiter ; the Saturnalia, in December, in honor of Saturn ;
the Lupercalia, February 15, to prosper the flocks; the
Cerealia, April 19, for the grain and wine spirits.
In the fifth place, the religion of the Romans was one of
numerous formal details and of great strictness in their
observation. Every movement at the altar, every phrase,
and every syllable must be preserved in all exactness ; an
omission robbed the ceremony of all effect, and might bring
down upon the priest or the State the wrath of the offended
god. The Salic priests in Cicero's time repeated at the altar
formulae which they scarcely understood themselves, so
ancient was the wording of the rite. The flamen of Jupiter
was not allowed to mount a horse, to have a knot in any
part of his dress, to wear a ring unless it was broken, or to
take an oath.
Sixthly, it was a religion of signs and portents and omens
and auguries and visions and dreams. Its theory was that
deity had its way of manifesting itself to mortals, if mortals
could only understand. In public and private, no citizen
entered upon an undertaking with confidence unless he had
taken the auspiceb, Lhat is, performed a sacrifice and noted
the signs in the victim, or otherwise made formal observa-
tions, and found that the gods were not against hi?nT The
Roman priesthood had treasured up from earliest times the
lore of the fligjit and the notes of birds, the eating and drink-
ing of the sacred chickens, the markings and movements 01
THE WORSHIPER 287
Che sacrificial victim's entrails, the behavior of the lightning,
the interpretation of dreams, the signification of the unusual
in nature. Cicero's treatise On Divination is a discussion of
methods in learning the will of the gods. Especially in times
of trouble, such as war or the plague, some strange dream
A ROMAN SACRIFICE
The priest pours incense on the altar flame, the priestess assists with a bowl of
incense, and the popa, or holy executioner, with sacrificial axe, brings up the victim.
The Roman priest kept the head covered during sacrifice.
or freak of nature or fancied vision in the sky might call for
consultation of the Sibylline Books, or a season of prayer and
purification, or the introduction of a new cult. Such things
as these were of less authority in the days of Cicero and
Caesar than in earlier times, and were kept up rather because
of long custom and popular belief than because intelligent
men believed in them; yet Caesar's colleague in the con-
sulship, Bibulus, could still keep measures from coming to
288 LIVING ROME
the vote by resorting to the ancient procedure of " watching
the sky." Caesar himself at last put Bibulus and the ob-
structionists aside, but with people less enlightened and
resolute, and in the backward places of the Roman realms,
the lore of superstition and the blind observance of tradition
never ceased.
Seventhly, it was a religion of material sacrifice. It has
even been said, though not with entire truth, that it was a
religion of bargaining and devoid of spiritual value. The
worshiper prayed for a material benefit, and promised a
material payment. The flowers and fruits were laid on the
altar, the libation of wine was poured, the lamb or kid or ox
was slaughtered, and the gods received a share of the feast.
The general departing for the wars, the trader setting sail with
laden argosy, the pontifex in behalf of the State, promised
the gods a gift of gold, a lordly victim, or a definite per
cent of the spoil or gain. If the person promising fulfilled his
part of the contract, the deity was bound to grant him his
desire. There was no demand for belief or faith, no sub-
scription to creed ; the scrupulously correct performance of
ritual was all that was required. It may be objected also
that the slaughter of helpless victims at the altar, the sight of
blood, and the reek of burning flesh must have been revolting
to the senses of many Romans, as their mere mention is to
us. It was a religion of uncleanly practices.
That the Roman's faith was entirely without spiritual
aspiration or spiritual communion is in the nature of things
hardly possible. The spiritual experiences of the ancients
may not have been so common as those of modern times, and
they surely were not so frequently set forth in literature,
but they existed, even as without being spoken of and unsus-
pected they exist in many a modern life. If this is not true,
how could such a passage be written as that in Minucius
THE WORSHIPER
289
Felix? " In communion with and filled with the divine, our
priests foresee that which is to come, give warnings against
danger, healing to the sick, hope to those who are cast down,
help to the unfortunate, solace to those in calamity, relief in
time of trouble."
A BOY SOCIETY HONORS DIANA
Four boys burn candles before the goddess, who stands with quiver in hand on
a pillar between two torches. Four others, who carry baskets of fruit and stand-
ards tipped with busts and supporting grape clusters, are being marshalled for a
orocession. The painting was found in Ostia.
Yet the charge of formalism is doubtless in a measure
Justified. All religions, when reduced to system and estab-
lished, soon suffer from it. The official religion of the Roman
State remained for centuries unchanged in much of what
appeared to the eye, and its forms were stereotyped and
mechanical. It owed its security in part to the very fact
that it was old and fixed by the practice of generation after
290 LIVING ROME
generation, that its temples had a venerable past, that its
priests in their ministry were impressive with the sanction of
time, that its colorful and stately processions were rich with
mystic symbols of other ages and another world.
Eighthly, it was a conservative religion. Here again, it.
was like religion in general, which is always slow to change,
and, like religions employing many forms and much cere-
mony, it was especially slow to change. It had not only the
conservatism of inertness, but was conservative consciously
and with a purpose. Its priests, its patrons, the magistrates,
the elder citizens, the aristocratic families of the old Roman
blood, the stolid folk of the unchanging country, with the
many whose temperament unaided by reason set them
against all change, formed a great body whose argument for
a thousand years was always the same. The State was
founded and has risen to greatness under the protection of
the gods, they insisted. Its fortunes have been due to
obedience, its misfortunes to disobedience or mistake. Our
temples, our priests, our ancient ceremonies, represent tho
long experience of our sires and grandsires in the search after
knowledge of the relations between the human and the divine.
To cast all this aside, or to relax in the strictness of our
observances, would be to bring ruin upon the State and aU
its members. For the sake of respect for tradition, for the
sake of patriotism, and for the sake of safety, let us follow
in the steps of our ancestors.
" Thou shalt continue to atone for the sins of thy fathers,
O Roman," says Horace, as he surveys the ruins of the Roman
State which Augustus is trying to rebuild, " until thou shalt
have reerected the falling shrines of the gods and replaced the
images foul with blackening smoke. It is because thou art
obedient to the gods that thou art set over men. To tins
refer every beginning ; to this, every end. It is neglect cf
THE WORSHIPER 291
the gods that has brought many woes on mournful Hesperia."
Four hundred years later, the same sentiment is on the lips
of Symmachus, the gentleman and patriot of the city soon to
be entered by Alaric : " If long existence confers authority
upon religions, the faith of so many generations is worthy of
preservation, and we ought to follow our fathers as they with
such good results followed theirs."
Ninthly, the Roman religion was one which included many
varieties and degrees of faith. We have seen that with the
growth of the Roman State the religion of the Greeks was
blended with the native faith, and that the religions of Egypt
and Asia followed. Not only were various religions brought
together to form one body under the State, but the individual
citizens might vary in their interpretations and beliefs. This
is a condition which must exist when religion has grown into
a system with much conservatism and formalism. There
were the extreme conservatives who took religion literally
and frowned on every departure from the rule. There were
the timid who were cowed by tales of priests about the after
life in the lower world. There were those who saw in the
old tales a deeper and spiritual meaning; Jupiter was the
sky, Juno the earth, the fruits of the earth their children, etc.
There were the Stoics, who found the old religion insufficient
but would not abandon it, and based upon it an enlightened
system of belief and conduct. There were those who found
in Isis and Mithras the satisfaction they did not feel in Apollo
and Minerva. There were those who were faithful to forms
but felt no moral restraint, and behaved as they pleased.
There were those who did not believe, but looked upon re-
ligion as a necessary instrument in the affairs of men ; like the
modern political philosophers who say that if the people had
no religion we should have to invent one. There were the
skeptics who denied all reality in religion. There were the
292 LIVING ROME
superstitious who regulated themselves by inessentials, and
whose lives were full of little suspicions and dreads. Reli-
gion was not the same thing to all people in ancient Rome,
as it is not in any country or church to-day.
It will make clearer the place of religion in the Roman con-
sciousness if we consider the attitude of various individuals
toward the divine.
Caesar, as we have seen, in his consulship broke away from
the long-standing regard of the public man for augury. His
whole career was in the same spirit. " No regard for religion
of any sort ever frightened him out of an undertaking or even
made him hesitate/' Suetonius says. He had held the office
of pontifex maximus three years before the consulship, but
the fact had nothing to do with religion as we conceive it.
Caesar was a free liver and spendthrift, and stood for the
office because it would help him into favor and out of debt.
His regard for religion was the regard of the practical man for
an instrument" to use in his own advantage or that of the
State.
In Cicero may be seen better the attitude of the average
public man toward religion. The names of the gods are often
on his tongue, and he never speaks or acts with disrespect
of them ; but he also gives no evidence of the prayerful spirit
or of participation in the acts of worship, though this is not
necessarily proof of the lack of loyalty to religion. His belief
in the immortality of a better world is grounded, not in faith,
but in reason; if indeed it does not depend entirely upon
Plato's doctrines always fascinating to him. His inspiration
is philosophy rather than religion. The Stoic teaching has
the greater attraction for him, and he never misses the oppor-
tunity of disapproving the Epicurean, but he does not sub-
scribe without reserve to any system. Had you asked him
his thoughts upon religion, he would very probably have said
THE WORSHIPER
293
that it was a proper and necessary thing in the life of the
State, that it would be a waste of time to debate its usefulness
either there or in the life of the individual citizen, and that the
individual citizen's duty was to continue in the ways of his
ancestors. If he had gone on to discuss, it would have been
as a philosopher and spectator rather than as a worshiper.
AN EABLY ROUND TEMPLE IN ROME
This is one of four temples excavated since 1924 in the south portion
of the Campus Martius. They were worshiped in by the Romans of Han-
nibal's time and earlier.
If we look into the religious beliefs of Horace and Virgil
and Lucretius, we shall find three types. Horace is the spec-
tator, Lucretius the aggressive and passionate skeptic, and
Virgil the religious by temperament.
Horace calls himself an Epicurean, but in a humorous
manner which indicates no very deep conviction. The
morality which he preaches, and for the most part lives, is
294 LIVING ROME
Stoic. His poems addressed to Apollo, Minerva, Venus, and
Diana, and his references to deity in general, are those of a
man who acquiesces in religion, does not debate it, has no
passion for it, but admires the virtues of devotion and up-
rightness, and enters into sympathy with the worshiper.
His ode to Faunus is an exquisitely clear portrayal of the
simple and familiar faith of the country :
"Oh, wont the flying nymphs to woo,
Good Faunus, through my sunny farm
Pass gently, gently pass, nor do
My younglings harm.
"Each year, thou know'st, a kid must die
For thee ; nor lacks the wine's full stream
To Venus' mate, the bowl ; and high
The altars steam.
"Sure as December's nones appear,
All o'er the grass the cattle play;
The village, with the lazy steer,
Keeps holiday.
"Wolves rove among the fearless sheep ;
The woods for thee their foliage strow;
The delver loves on earth to leap,
His ancient foe."
The ode to Phidyle, another picture of the country, suggests
the moral and spiritual elevation of which the Roman re-
ligion was capable. Were not our communication with the
mind and heart of the common people of Roman times so
badly broken, we might be told of unsuspected riches.
"But raise thy hands, 0 rustic Phidyle,
Under the new-born moon outstretched to heaven;
Only do thou thy household gods appease
With greedy pig or fruit of this year's trees
Or incense given :
THE WORSHIPER
'Then shall the wind that bringeth pestilence
Blast not the fertile vine, thy tender crops
No blighting rust, thy gentle nurslings fear
No sickly season when the Autumn sere
Its apple drops.
295
ON THE ALBAN MOUNT
Vlonte Cavo, 3,200 feet, is here seen from Tusculum. The scenes in Horace's
poem to Rustic Phidyle were probably in the Alban Hills.
"The victim grazing on the snowy height
Of Algidus, in oak and ilex glade,
Or fattening on grassy Alban plain,
Marked for the altar, with his blood shall stain
The pontiff's blade.
"Thee it availeth naught with sacrifice
Of many a yearling lamb to make thy plea
Unto thy gods, thy little gods, if thou
But crownest them with fragile myrtle bough
And rosemary.
296 LIVING ROME
" Lay but a spotless hand upon the altar,
No costly gift enhancing its appeal,
And it shall calm thy little hearth-gods' ire
With simple salt that crackles in the fire,
And holy meal."
Lucretius also is the declared Epicurean, but one who ie
filled with the passion of the reformer. The gods have no
concern for men, is his vehement message ; they are created
beings like men, in nothing different save their deathlessness
and unconcern. With man, and all other existing things,
they are the blind creations of a primeval, whirling, colliding
chaos of atoms. There is no immortality ; the soul is made
of atoms and mortal like all else, and the everlasting sleep of
death is the end of soul as well as body. There is no after
life of either misery or blessedness. Temples and priests,
altars and offerings and prayers, the tales of another life —
all are false and unreal ; and the chief cause of the miseries of
man is the belief in them that brings fear into his heart.
Death is not an evil ; it is only the beginning of never ending
repose. Epicurus is the savior of mankind from the enslav-
ing fears of the religious life and the dread of death.
Virgil represents the religious temperament, and Roman
religion at its best. Taught by Epicurean masters, an ad-
mirer of Lucretius' On Nature, he knows the physical doc-
trines of Epicurus, but in mind and soul he is too generous to
be confined by any sect. He feels the tragedy of death,
whether in Dido and Euryalus, or in the cattle of the field 01
the birds of the air. He feels the mystery of life, and the
presence of the infinite unknown in all the spaces of heaven
and earth and sea and in all their creatures. He admires
devotion to friends, to family, and to State, and reveres the
old and the established practices of the Roman worshiper.
Religion with him is not a mere convention ; he associates
THE WORSHIPER
297
morality with it. He feels that the good man will be rewarded
and the bad punished, on earth and in another world. He
feels that Rome and the Roman citizen have a destiny, and
that this world and its affairs were ordered by a divine plan.
A NOVEL VIEW OF SAINT PETER'S
This is taken from the rear, looking toward the city.
He feels the solemnity of the human being consciously an
instrument in the divine hand.
Rome is called the Holy City, and rightly so. It did not
first become the Holy City, however, with the advent of
Christianity ; it was the holy city of paganism before it was
the holy city of Christianity. Camillus is made by Livy to
say in 390 B.C., when it has been proposed to move the capital
298 LIVING ROME
to Veil : " We have a city founded and established by the
will of the gods through signs. There is no spot in it not full
of religious associations and the presence of gods. The
places, no less than the days, for sacrificial observances are
fixed. All these gods, public and private, are you going to
desert, my fellow citizens? " Saliust calls the Romans
religiosissimi martales. Cicero writes that in religious
matters his countrymen are superior to other peoples, and
that they have overcome all the nations of the world because
they have realized that the world is directed and governed
by the will of the gods.
XXVII
ROMAN HOLIDAYS
There are two reasons why the subject of religion should
be followed by the subject of holidays. In the first place,
the public holidays of Rome were almost all associated
with religion. A holiday was a holy day. In the second
place, the manner in which men
and nations employ their free
time is, next to religion itself,
the best indication of their
character. Further, the sub-
ject of amusements is soon to
claim our attention, and amuse-
ments depend largely upon
holidays. It was on the days
or series of days in honor of
the gods called ludi, — plays,
sports, or games — that the
drama, the races, and the glad-
iatorial exhibitions took place
which are the best-known en-
tertainment of the Roman
populace.
The association of religion and amusement came about
in a natural way. When the Romans in the primitive little
city on the Palatine and in the rustic communities under its
sway met together around their common altars to honor
and propitiate the deity for whom the day was set aside,
,,299
A TRAGIC MASK PBOM THE VILLA
OF HADRIAN
Such masks are the common orna-
ment of theaters to-day.
300 LIVING ROME
no legal business could be transacted, and work of every
kind was suspended. The prayer and sacrifice concluded,
the remainder of the day was given up to rest and merry-
making. In the country, there were the dance and the
simple trials of strength and skill that always belong to rustic
gatherings and always remain the same. In the city, these
simple beginnings soon developed into formal entertainment.
As the city grew to be a great capital, the entertainment
came to be an end in itself, and assumed enormous dimen-
sions.
The chief public holidays during the middle years of
Cicero's life were the Ludi Megalenses, April 4-10, in honor
of the Great Mother of the Gods, seven days; the Ludi
Cereales, April 12-19, in honor of Ceres, the grain goddess,
eight days ; the Floralia, April 28-May 3, in honor of Flora
dnd the flowers and fertility, five days ; the Ludi Apollinares,
July 6-13, in honor of Apollo, eight days ; the Romani or
Magni, September 5-19, in honor of Jupiter, fifteen days ;
•fihe Sullani, or Ludi Yictoriae, October 26-November 1, in-
stituted by Sulla to celebrate his victory, seven days ; the
Plefeeii, November 4-17, founded to conciliate the common
people, fourteen days.
These holidays, all classified as ludi, or festivals of which
public entertainment was the great feature, amounted to
64 days. The functions were in charge of aediles, who
sometimes made them the means of their ambition by con-
tributing heavily from their own money. The number of
days devoted to ludi had increased from 64 to 87 by the reign
of Tiberius, the'luccessor of Augustus ; was 135 in the time
of Marcus Aurelius; and is said to have been 175 in the
middle of the fourth century. Sometimes there were special
ludi ; as after the taking of Jerusalem by Titus in A.D. 70,
when they lasted 100 days, or in A.D. 106, after Trajan's
ROMAN HOLIDAYS 301
conquest of Dacia, when they continued 123 days. These
larger numbers included gladiatorial combats, which were at
first called munera gladiatoria and were not officially ludi.
The ludi, or games, were not the only holidays in the
Roman year. There were other festivals which swelled the
number in Cicero's and Virgil's time to over one hundred.
The name for all holidays was feriae, or dies festi; feriae
being the origin of our word ' 'fair," and dies festa the origin
of Italian festa and French fete. The ludi are thus to be
CUPIDS EJ A CHARIOT RACE
Six trees serve as metae, goal posts. Three scenes are portrayed : the start, an
accident, the victor with palm branch. From a wall painting in the house of the
Vettii, Pompeii.
defined as feriae on which plays and circus races were fea-
tured by the State.
X)f the feriae which were not ludi, the one which appeals
most to the modern is the Saturnalia, many of whose usages
found their way into the Christmas of the Church. Origi-
nally one day only, December 17, but grown by Cicero's
time to seven, the Saturnalia was celebrated by calls on
friends, the giving of presents, including wax candles and
pastry images, and the treatment of slaves as equals. The
Saturnalia was at first a festival of the farm, but in the
city lost its rustic character except that it preserved a public
sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn at the head of the Forum,
which was followed by a banquet ending with cries of To
Saturnalia! by the banqueters. It was a season of unre*
strained merrymaking, during which a great deal of license
was allowed and the slaves especially enjoyed taking liber-
302 LIVING ROME
ties with their masters. The seventh of Horace's second
book of Satires is a scolding given the poet by his slave Davus,
who has followed his master to the country on the Saturnalia.
There were many other holidays marked by religious
observances and general amusements. There was the Paga-
nalia, January 24-26, in honor of Ceres and Tellus [Earth],
the patrons of the seed sown in autumn and to be sown in
spring. There was the LupercaUg, February 15, with a
sacrifice of goats and a dog at the Lupercal cave beside the
Palatine, where Romulus and Remus had been found by the
she-wolf. Its main feature was the sacred race about the
hill by two noble youths who as they ran struck all women
standing near with strips of hide taken from the victim-
The scene in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is historical as
to substance :
Caesar. Calpurnia !
Calpurnia. Here, my lord.
Caesar. Stand you directly in Antonius' way,
When he doth run his course. Antonius !
Antonius. Caesar, my lord?
Caesar. Forget not, in your speed, Antonius,
To touch Calpurnia ; for our elders say,
The barren, touched in this holy chase,
Shake off their sterile curse.
On the Parentalia, February 13-21, all Rome visited its
dead with flowers and offerings of wine and honey and milTr,
in a sort of family communion. On the first of March, the
day of Mars, once the Roman New Year, the twenty-four
priests called Salii went leaping and dancing in procession
through the streets. On the Liberalia, March 17, the Roman
boy put on the toga of manhood.
The Parilia, April 21, in honor of Pales, the goddess of
pastures and flocks, was celebrated in the city also as the
ROMAN HOLIDAYS 303
birthday of Rome. On the 29th of May was the Ambarva-
lia, with its procession of all the people around the fields,
and the sacrifice of a pig, a sheep, and an ox for the purifica-
tion of the crops and animals — a celebration still surviving
in another form in the Christian Church. The Vestalia,
June 9, was in honor of the goddess of the hearth, whose
worship originated in the time when the primitive village
maintained a common fire from which at need the hearths
could be renewed, and when the daughters of the chieftain
were in charge of it.
The feriae in July were old-fashioned, and their origin
obscure even to the ancients. On August 19 was the Vinalia
Rustica, when perhaps the Flainen of Jupiter plucked the
first fruits of the vineyard and offered prayer and sacrifice
for the coining vintage. In September the fifteen days of
the Ludi Romani were almost the only feriae. On the
Fontinalia, October 13, the wells and springs were decorated
with garlands of flowers.
November was another month with few feriae besides the
ludi. The Ides of every month were sacred ta; Jupiter, the
Calends to Juno ; the Ides being the 13th exc^fc in March,
May, July, and October, when the date was. the 15th, and
the Calends being the first. Every ninth day, the nundinae,
was market day, and the farmers came to town, but it is
uncertain whether these days were feriae.
Not even these are all the festival days without ludi which
are known ; but if they are added to the sixty-four days of
the ludi, the impression is quite strong that the Roman year
had a great number of holidays. This is the fact, but not
to the degree that might be thought. In the first place,
many of the festivals of which we have evidence in the sur-
viving calendars were either little noticed or practically
obsolete. In the second place, it should be remembered
304
LIVING ROME
that there was no Sunday in pagan Rome. If we add to our
fifty-two Sundays the various national and State holidays,
we shall have about sixty days on which business is not trans-
acted, as against the more
than a hundred in the Romo
of Cicero. If we count the
Saturday afternoons taken
by the banks and profes«
sional classes, it will increases
the free days by twenty-six.
In Europe the total is even
greater. In the third place,
the Roman feriae were not
always observed by absten-
tion from labor and business.
Writers on farm affairs, in-
cluding Virgil and Cato, tell
us that to work at certain
tasks on festival days is not
an offense against either
human or divine law — "to
lead the water into the fields,
to fence the grainfield about,
to lay snares for the birds, to
burn the brambles, to bathe
the flock in the health-giving
stream." If this was true
of the country, in the city
many a festival went by with little effect on the day's
business.
We may conclude this account of the holidays by saying
something about the Roman calendar. The Roman year
for a long time began with March, the month of Mars, pro-
AN AEDILB GIVING THE SIGNAL AT
THE GAMES
He has a scepter as a symbol of au-
thority in the left hand, and a handker-
chief or cloth ML the right.
ROMAN HOLIDAYS 305
cecting deity of a race of warriors, whose birthday was on
the first of the month. This is why the months which for us
are ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth — September, Octo-
ber, November, December — bear the Roman names of
"seventh month," "eighth month," "ninth month," and
"tenth month"; and why July and August, before Julius
Caesar and Augustus, were Quinctilis and Sextilis, "fifth
month" and "sixth month/7 It is supposed that the change
to January 1 as the official first day of the year took place
in 153 B.C. It was on this date that the consuls began to
enter upon their duties on the first of January instead of on
the first of March.
In the year 46 B.C., another and a more important change
took place. Up to this time, there had always been in the
calendar the difficulty caused by the difference between the
sun's year, which is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 48
seconds, and the year of twelve moons, which is 354 days,
8 hours, 48 minutes, and 35 seconds. If, for example, the
Vinalia Rustica is celebrated on August 19 by the lunar
calendar, it will occur eleven days earlier each time in tho
solai year, and there will be no grapes for the flamen to offer.
The arrangement by which this disagreement was corrected
for several centuries before Caesar's dictatorship consisted
of a four-year cycle, in which a year of 355 days was fol-
lowed by a second of 355 plus 22, a third of 355, and a
fourth of 355 plus 23, the extra periods being inserted after
February 23. This reminds us of our extra day every four
years in February.
Even this device, however, was not perfect, and by
Caesar's time the calendar was badly out of harmony with
the sun and moon. The Dictator's remedy was first to bring
the calendar dates into correct relation with the sun and
moon by prolonging the year 46 to 445 days, and then to
306 LIVING HOME
begin the year 45 with the new system called after its founder
the Julian Calendar, according to which the year consisted
of 365 days, with one day added after the 23d of February
every fourth year. This system, with a correction by Pope
Gregory XIII in A.D. 1582, is in use to-day in America.
Europe, and most of the rest of the world, though tLe
Gregorian feature is not quite universal.
According to Livy, the Roman calendar was first pub-
lished in 304 B.C., in the Forum, "in order that it might be
known when business according to law was possible." Its
publication after Caesar's time, with dates, indications of
festivals, and annotations, was common in Rome and else-
where. There are in existence parts of thirty calendars or
more, fourteen of which were found in or near Rome, and
one of which is practically complete. Most of them are
incised in stone.
Besides their indications of the various holidays of the
Roman year, the calendars aiso set down against each day a
certain mark. There are eight of these marks, of which
three should be mentioned here. These are the letters F, N,
and C, meaning Fastus, Nefastus, and Comitialis. The
Dies Fastus was a day on which business with the civil
authorities, and especially matters in the courts, could be
transacted without offense to the gods. The Dies Nefastus
was the opposite ; on a day marked N no business was legal,
whether because the day was consecrated to the gods or
because by reason of defeat, disaster, or other sinister event
in time past the date was ill-omened. The Dies Comitialis
was one on which it was legal for elections to be held as well
as for business to be transacted.
The number of days in the Julian Calendar marked F
and C, and thus under divine approval for business purposes,
was 239. The remaining 126 were nearly all marked N, and
ROMAN HOLIDAYS 307
in most cases coincided with religious festivals. It should
be added that in some cases the annotations F and C are
found with festival days ; not every religious holiday was
denied to business. The ItaDan elections to-day are held
on Sunday.
XXVIII
THE THEATER
In Rome as well as in Athens, the giving of plays was a
function of the State, was under the sanction of religion, and
occurred on religious holidays. In Athens the patron deity
was Dionysus, the great spectacles in tragedy and comedy
took place at the main festival of the god on the opening of
spring, and three plays at least were presented on a single
day. In Rome under the Republic there were four State
festivals at which literary drama was produced : the Ludi
Megalenses, April 4-10 ; the Ludi Apollinares, July 6-13 ;
the Ludi Romani, September 5-19 ; the Ludi Plebeii, No-
vember 4-17. Plays were given on occasion also at triumphs
and at funeral games. The number of holidays in which the
theater had a part increased until in the late Empire there
were about a hundred. One drama each day was the prac-
tice, beginning in the middle of the day and lasting about
three hours. Before the times of separate theater buildings,
it took place in the Circus or near the temple of its patron
deity, just as the medieval Christian play took place at the
church door. The aediles contracted for the play with a
dominus gregis, master of a troupe, who acquired the right of
the play from its author. Wigs, masks, and the properties
in general were in use. Female parts were usually done by
men, many actors and managers were slaves or freedmen, and
the social standing of the profession was low, though the
best talent commanded the respect of all.
There were in Rome by the last five years of Horace's life
308
THE THEATER 309
three theaters of the first class. The Theater of Pompey,
erected by the great general in 55 B.C. and restored by
Augustus in 32 B.C., perhaps after damage by fire, was the
first pennanent theater in Rome. It was of stone, marble,
and stucco, at the south end of the Campus Martius, and
seated some ten thousand persons. It was part of a build-
ing group including also temples, a portico, and the hall in
which the Senate met on the day of Caesar's assassination —
"And in his mantle muffing up his face,
Even at the base of Pompey's statua,
Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell.'7
The next, theater was dedicated in 13 B.C. by Lucius Corne-
lius Balbus, its builder, a friend of the Emperor, and had
seats for about eight thousand. It stood farther south and
nearer the Tiber, and its ruins are under the present Piazza
dei Cenci and surrounding buildings. The third was also
dedicated in 13 B.C. and named after Marcellus, nephew
and adopted son of Augustus, who died at the age of twenty
in 23 B.C. It also was near the Tiber, not far south of the
Theater of Balbus. After a medieval and modern existence
as fortress and palace of the Pierleoni, Savelli, and Qrsini,
and after recent service in one of its p'arts as residence of
the American Ambassador to Italy, the Theater of Mar-
cellus is now an impressive national monument. It had
some fourteen thousand seats.
The erection of these playhouses all within the last fifty-
five years of the pagan era does not mean that the drama
had not hitherto existed in Rome. Quite the contrary, its
active history began nearly two hundred years before the
building of Pompey's theater. In the year 240 B.C., in
order to celebrate in unusual fashion the close of the twenty-
four years of the first war with Carthage, the aediles com-
310
LIVING ROME
missioned Livius Andronicus, a teacher and writer who had
been brought to Rome as a slave boy in 272 B.C. from Taren-
tum in Magna Graecia, to put on as features of the Ludi
Romani a tragedy and a comedy adapted from the Greek.
The history of the
Roman stage before
Livius, who repre-
sents the literary
drama, is obscure.
According to Livy,
stage representation
began in 364 B.C.
with the introduc-
tion of actors from
Etruria, and Varro
sees the remotest
origins in such com-
munity gatherings
as the Lupercalia,
after the manner of
the -rise of Greek
drama from the
festivals of Diony-
sus.
Livius was among
the captives from
Tarentum, whose
fall meant the passing of Greek Italy under Roman control
and a great impulse to Greek culture in the capital. Livius
and his successors, Ennius, Naevius, Pacuvius, and Accius,
the last of whom died in 86 B.C. and was acquainted with
Cicero, produced a great body of Roman tragedy based on
the Greek plays of Sophocles and Euripides. A similar
THE THEATEB OF MABCELLTJS IN ROME
For centuries it served as fortress and palace and
for many shops. It has recently been disengaged
and made a public monument.
THE THEATER 311
oody of Roman comedy based on Menander, Apollodorus,
Diphilus, Posidippns, and other writers of the New Comedy
in Athens, was produced by Plautus, 254WL84 B.C., Caecilius
Statius, 219-166 B.C., and Terence, 195-159 B.C. America
using the plays of England or France, and England using
the dramatic material of France or Italy, are partial parallels.
The tragedy of the Roman authors of the Republic is
preserved only in fragments, though we have nine tragedies
by Seneca written in Nero's time. The comedy is preserved
in six plays of Terence and twenty-one of Plautus. Both
tragedy and comedy in Rome are of great importance in the
history of drama, because on the one hand the Greek New
Comedy without Plautus and Terence would not be repre-
sented by a single complete play, and on the other hand with-
out Seneca modern tragedy would have missed its chief
inspiration. The history and production of drama has been
a continuous tradition from Athens through Rome to
Renaissance Italy and the capitals of modern literary culture.
It is difficult to explain how Rome could have been inter-
ested enough in drama for two hundred years to produce
the numerous plays just referred to and still not have pro-
vided at least one permanent theater. During all this time
we are to imagine a temporary stage erected, when the date
of the ludi approached, at the foot of the Palatine or other
slope, and the audience standing or sitting in curved rows
on the rising ground. The usual explanation is that the
theater with seats was regarded as a luxury which would
lead the Roman people in the path of decadence trodden
by the Greeks, who were held in contempt as unmanly and
unreliable by their Roman patrons and conquerors. A
permanent theater of stone begun in 154 B.C. was torn down
by order of the Senate, and for a few years at least the people
were forbidden to be seated at the shows. If the reason
312 LIVING ROME
advanced is true, we must imagine the austere ideas of Cato
the Censor, who died in 149 B.C. at the age of eighty-five
after lifelong hatred of Greek fashions, as held by a very
considerable part of Roman society. Yet it is hardly possi-
ble that the scores and hundreds of Roman plays had nothing
back of them but the patronage of a governing few who were
specially interested in Greek drama ; the plays of Plautus
and Terence were read and are referred to as if enjoyed by
the Roman public, and all evidence goes to show that the
drama, in general was in high esteem. We must conclude
that the prejudice against the theater with permanent seats
did not extend to the plays themselves.
The era of the great writers of Roman drama was thus
past before the city's first playhouse was built. Plays were
still being written in the times of Cicero and Augustus, but
none of them has survived, and they seem to have been
written more as a literary fashion than for actual use on the
stage. Cicero's brother Quintus, for example, wrote trage-
dies while serving with Caesar in Gaul, and many of the
Augustan courtiers tried their hands at it. The record of
Quintus Cicero was four plays in sixteen days. That plays
were produced in abundance in the latter part of the first
century before Christ is indicated by the erection of the
three theaters. In by far the larger part, they were
the tragedies and comedies of a century and a half before
— the Sophoclean and Euripidean adaptations made by
Ennius and Pacuvius, above mentioned,
"Presenting Thebes or Pelops' line
Or the tale of Troy divine,"
and the comedies of Plautus and Terence adapted from.
Athenian plays by Menander and others of the fourth cen~
tury B.C.
THE THEATER
313
The productions were not entirely of the old, standard
sort, however. There were some plays containing Roman
subject matter and played in Roman costume and with
Roman scenery. A serious play of this kind was called
praetexta, from the purple-bordered toga of its costume.
A COMIC ACTOR AND His MASKS
This is sometimes called Menander and his favorite, Qlycera.
Romulus, Aeneas, Deeius, are some of the titles. Octavia,
with scene in Nero's time, is the only complete praetexta
surviving. The chief character, Octavia, is the daughter of
the Emperor Claudius, and the bride of Nero, in whose affec-
tion she is supplanted by Poppaea, with the tragic result of
exile. There were also comedies with Roman content called
Jobulae togatae because of the toga, the native costume,
just as the Greek adaptations were called fabuLae palliatae
314 LIVING ROME
from the pallium of the Greek costume. Some of the titles
of the togata were The Lady Lawyer, The Defeated Candidate,
The Divorce. Afranius, the chief writer of the togata, wrote
forty plays. There were mimes, short and scandalous*
plays in which the stock characters were the unfaithful wife,
the deluded husband, and the gay coquette. The Twins,
The Wedding, Lake Avemus, are titles of mimes by Decimus
Laberius, of Caesar's time. Another mime writer of the
time was Publilius Syrus. Sometimes there was the Atellan
Farce, with its broad comic characters, Pappus, Maecus,
Dossennus, and Bucco, like the Punch and Judy characters
who are suspected of descent from them. Pomponius and
Novius are the only authors who raised the Atellana to the
literary level, and some of their titles are The Farmer, The
Village Barber, The Campanians. The Atellana was dis-
placed by the mime, and the mime specialized in gesticula-
tion so successfully that it developed into pantomime.
The stage in the times of Cicero and Horace no doubt
offered a variety of entertainment. We may be sure that
comedy was more welcome to the people than tragedy, and
that the grossness of the mime was attractive to many who
found too quiet the polished urbanity of Terence. We may
be sure, too, that there was much entertainment of a dra-
matic nature which never reached the stages of the great
theaters or the public programs of the ludi. There were
jugglers and acrobats, and the ancient equivalents of the
vaudeville acts.
Even in the presentation of the standard plays there were
often liberties taken for the sake of pleasing the multitude.
Cicero attends the opening plays in Pompey's theater, and
writes a friend : "The sight of so much apparatus on the
stage took away all pleasure, and I have no doubt you were
quite content to miss it. For what delight can one take in
THE THEATER 315
£5ix hundred mules in Clytemnestra, or in three thousand
mixing bowls in The Trojan Horse, or in the various arms and
trappings of infantry and cavalry in some fight? These
things drew the admiration of the people, but would have
given you no pleasure." The Clytemnestra here referred to
is that of Accius, at that time dead thirty years, and The
Trojan Horse is probably a play by Livius Andronicus
written nearly two centuries before.
The liking of the people for dumb shows and noise at
these plays attended by Cicero is to be seen in a passage of
Horace also. He satirizes in his smiling way the untaught
and stolid plebeians in the audience clamoring in the midst
of a play for "a bear, or the boxers, and ready to fight it
out if the equites don't agree ; for the bear and the boxers
are what the dear common folks like."
"But all taste of the equites, too, has left the ear, and is now in
the empty pleasure of the roving eye. For four hours or more the
curtain is kept lowered [the modern 'raised'] while squadrons of
cavalry and companies of infantry fly across the stage. Presently
unhappy kings are dragged past, their hands bound behind them,
chariots career along, and carriages, and wagons, and ships, and
loot of ivory and Corinthian bronze. If Democritus [the laugh-
ing philosopher] were on earth, he would laugh to see a cross
between a camel and p, leopard, or a white elephant, capture the
eyes of the crowd. He would find himself giving more attention
to the audience than to the play itself, as affording more of a
spectacle by far. He might think the author was staging the play
for a deaf ass. For what words can rise above the din of our
theaters? You would think the forests of Garganus roaring in
the storm, or the Tuscan sea, with such noisiness are plays wit-
nessed, with their display of rich and outlandish costumes. The
actor comes on to the stage loaded down with them, and the clap-
ping of hands begins. 'Is he saying anything yet?' 'Not a
thing !' 'Then what is it they are applauding?7 'The gown he
has on, don? in Tarentine violet !'"
316 LIVING ROMF
There were other features of ancient dramatics resembling
the modern. There were favorite actors, of course — the stars.
There was Aesopus in tragedy and Roscius in comedy,
both among Cicero's acquaintances, and both said to have
been his models in gesticulation, and observers in their turn
of the lawyer Hortensius in court. Roscius, who died when
Cicero was forty-four, was defended by the orator in the
speech Pro Roscw Conioedo, and was said by Cicero to be
so perfect in his art that a person excelling in anything was
called a Roscius.
Aesopus had retired before 55 B.C. and was honored by a
recall to the stage on the dedication of Pompey's theater,
but with unfortunate results. "There had returned to the
stage, for the sake of distinction, those who I supposed had
left it as a mark of distinction," Cicero writes his friend
Marius. "Your favorite Aesop was in such a state that
nobody would have objected to his retiring. When he had
begun to take an oath — you know the passage, 'if wittingly
I prove false' — his voice failed him."
The century before, there had been Ambivius Turpio,
the star of Terence's comedies, of whom Cicero in On Old
Age has Cato make a simile : "As the spectator in the first
row enjoys Ambivius Turpio more, though those in the last
row also enjoy him, so perhaps youth because nearer to
pleasures takes keener delight in them, but old age too,
though at a distance, delights as much as need be wished."
Later, in the time of Domitian, there were Demetrius and
Stratocles, famous in comedy, "the former very fine in the
parts of gods, young men, good fathers and slaves, matrons,
and serious old women, and the latter better in the parts of
cross old men, tricky slaves, parasites, panders, and livelier
characters in general. The voice of Demetrius was pleas-
anter, the other's carried better."
THE THEATER
317
There were sometimes jests from the audience at the ex-
pense of the actor. An undersized Hector came on, and
some one called out : "That is Astyanax! Where is Hec-
tor?" A tall actor was greeted with: "Step over! You
A ROMAN THEATER AT MEBIDA IN SPAIN
The architecture and sculpture indicate a fine building of the times of Marcos
Aurelius.
don't need a ladder I" A heavy one was advised, "Be care-
ful of the stage!"
Sometimes the position is reversed, and there are per-
sonalities from the stage. "What ! Are you beginning to
scowl because I said this was going to be a tragedy?" cries
Mercury in the prologue of Plautus' Amphitruo. "I'm a
318 LIVING ROME
god ; I'll see to having it changed." The prologue to the
Captives is quite as familiar. "Do you get this? Very
well, then. Yes, but the fellow away off yonder in the back
says he doesn't. Come along up ! If there isn't a place for
you to sit, there's room outside. Because you're making the
actor go begging. I'm not going to burst myself on your
account, don't think it !"
The Mediterranean basin is dotted with the ruins of
ancient theaters. In or near almost every city of size in
Italy and Sicily, and in the principal ancient Roman centers
of Africa, Spain, and France, the theater is one of the objects
to be visited. Some of the examples even in lands more
Greek than Roman show the construction of Roman times.
The Roman theater differed frona the Greek in having
the orchestra semicircular instead of circular. In other
respects the differences were of little consequence. The
parts of the theater were the scaena, scene, or stage ; the
orchestra, in earliest Greek times the circle in which the
chorus chanted and danced ; and the cavea, or auditorium.
The larger of the two theaters at Pompeii, which may serve
as an example, had two tribunalia, equivalents of the modern
box, above the entrances at right and left of the cavea rows.
Here sat the magistrates, Vestals, or other dignitaries. The
seats in and next to the orchestra, and consequently nearest
the stage, were reserved for the senators in Rome and for
the town councilors in provincial cities. Fourteen rows
were reserved behind these for the equites, according to the
Roscian Law of 67 B.C. The more distant sections vrare
occupied by the common crowd of soldiers, women, minors,
and plebeians in general. The stage at Pompeii was 120
feet long, 24 feet wide, and 5 feet high. The curtain rolled
downward into a deep groove at the beginning of the play,
and upward at its close. For the background, there were
THE THEATER 319
normally two permanent houses with alley between and exits
to right and left. The exit at the right of them was under-
stood to lead into the city ; the one at the left, to the harbor
and foreign countries. There were painted scenes in use,
some like the modern sliding scenes, and some at the sides
on large three-faced prisms which were revolved when a
shift was desired. A ticket or check seems to have been
used for seating. On hot days awnings might be stretched
over all and the air cooled by sprinkling, sometimes even
with perfume.
There was little writing of drama after Augustan times,
and none after Hadrian's. Acting also came to an end, so
far as high-class entertainment was concerned, and the last
centuries of the Roman Empire saw nothing on the stage
but mimes and pantomimes, rope dancers, sleight-of-hand
artists, and the like. The clergy of the Christian Church
were forbidden the theater altogether, and no Christian could
be an actor or marry one of the acting class. The disap-
proval of pagan Rome, expressed up to Nero's time in a law
excluding the actor from civil rights, was continued in
Christian Rome.
Beyond A.D. 533, nothing by way of the stage is traceable
in the West. When the drama appeared again, it was at the
altar of the Church, in the liturgical play which developed
into the mystery play and the Morality. When the interest
in this had opened the way, the old classical drama of Greece
and Rome came back again in the languages of Italy, Spain,
France, England, and Germany, and the modern stage re-
sulted. The study of the drama leads inevitably to Rome,
and from Rome to Greece.
XXIX
THE RACES
The most ancient, the longest continued, and the most
popular of the public amusements of ancient Rome was the
chariot race, which took place in the elongated space curved
at one end and straight at the other called the circus. Livy
assumes that its first occurrence was in the time of Romulus,
who, in order to get wives for his womanless State, "got up
games in honor of Equestrian Neptune, named them Con-
sualia," and invited all the neighboring communities, with
secret instructions to his men to seize their unmarried young
women.
The actual laying out of a circus ground and the organiza-
tion of the races into a yearly festival, the Ludi Circenses,
Livy attributes to Ancus Martius, the fourth king/ * "The
sports/' he says, "were horses and boxers brought' from
Etruria. They became the custom, and then kept their
place as a yearly festival, called variously 'Romani' and
'Magni.'" We may suppose either that the races began
with the holiday gatherings of drovers and farmers at which
they tried the speed of their animals, or that their origin
was in military exercises and displays, or that they were
introduced already developed from Etruria, which was
advanced in its contacts with the East and with Greece.
Up to 364 B.C., when players from Etruria are said to have
given the first dramatic entertainment, the races were the
only amusement provided by the State. The Circus Maxi-
mus, on the long, low, level space between the Palatine and
320
THE RACES 321
the Aventine, from the beginning and throughout was the
largest assembly place in Rome, and with the beginning of
the Christian centuries had a seating capacity of at least
150,000. It was not the only circus. There were also the
Circus Flaminius, erected in 221 B.C. at the south end of the-
Campus Martius near the Capitoline, and visible in large part
up to the sixteenth century, since when it has disappeared
in the buildings of modern Rome; the Circus Vaticanus,
built by Caligula in A.D. 37-41, used by Nero for his notorious
torment of the Christians, and disappearing at the erection
of Saint Peter's ; and the Circus of Maxentius, A.D. 309, a
distance outside the gates on the Appian Way, near the tomb
of Caecilia Metella.
The craze for the races which existed in Nero's time was
still notorious when Ammianus wrote of it in A.D. 359. The
ears of Rutilius Namatianus, as he sails down the Tiber and
away from Rome in A.D. 417, are filled with the echoing cheers
of the multitude for the winning charioteer ; and it is not
until A.D. 549, with the Gothic chieftain Totila's celebration
in the Circus Maximus, that we cease to hear of the races-
Even the Christians yielded at times to the popular enthu-
siasm, and justified themselves by referring to Elijah's going
up by a whirlwind into heaven with a chariot of fire and
horses of fire.
The Circus Maximus was about two thousand feet long
and five hundred feet wide, and its exterior rose in three
stories of marble-veneered arcades. It extended on both
sides to where the slopes of Palatine and Aventine began.
Within the lowest arcade were a long promenade and the
entrance doors and stairways. The east end was somewhat
curved, and its walls impressive with high towers. The vast
interior consisted of three parts : the spina, the track, and
the cavea, or seats.
!
i
1
§
THE RACES 323
The spina was a slender but massive barrier of ornamental
masonry about one thousand feet long with three cones of
gilded bronze, the metae, or goal posts, at either end, and with
seven marble eggs at one end and seven dolphins at the other
for keeping tally on the laps of the race. A famous foun-
tain near the Colosseum was called Meta Sudans, the sweat-
ing goal post, from its shape and the manner in which the
water behaved. On the spina were several shrines and
statues, and an obelisk seventy-eight feet high brought by
Augustus from Heliopolis near Cairo in Egypt, and now
standing in Piazza del Popolo at the north gate of Rome.
The obelisk now at the Lateran Church, one hundred and
five feet high, was placed on the spina of the Circus Maxiinus
by the Emperor Constantius, A.JX 337-361.
The arena, between the spina and the seats, was bounded
at the end where the start was made by the slightly curv-
ing row of carceres, barriers or cells for the chariots as they
stood 'waiting for the signal to go. At the other end the
boundary was the curved line of the seats, pierced by the
Triumphal Gate, through which at the end of the race
the victor splendidly passed. The arena here, as well as in
the amphitheater, got its name from the arena, sand, with
which the ground was strewn.
The immense banks of seats, divided into zones and sec-
tions by means of passageways and stairways, were ap-
proached through numerous vomitoria, discharges connected
with flights of stairs leading from the ground under the
lowest arcade. The space next the track was occupied on
both sides and at the curved end by a massive bank of
masonry supporting a platform divided into sections which
were splendidly fitted up as boxes for the spectators of high-
est rank. On the side of the Palatine, where the imperial
palace rose high above the Circus, was the loggia or balcony
324
LIVING ROME
of the emperor and retinue, so constructed as to be entered
directly from the palace. The seats were marble, at least
in greatest part, and at their top it is likely that a gallery
ran. The end occupied by the starting chambers contained,
above them and the main entrance, a balcony and seats for
the president or giver of the
races, dator ludorum, and his
retinue and friends.
The chariot races were the
great feature of all the principaJ
festivals, though they are mosi
associated with the Ludi
Romani or Magni in Septem-
ber. On the morning of the
races, the eager and excited
crowd streams from every direc-
tion toward the monster build-
ing. The neighborhood is
noisy with vendors of all sorts,
and bookmakers crying their
bets. There is no admission price, for the games are at the
State's expense, and many are in their seats long before the
time set.
When the endless expanse of white seats is alive with color-
ful humanity and the scattered crowd of gesticulating en-
thusiasts that dotted the arena has also disappeared into the
great assemblage, all eyes begin to watch the monumental
entrance way at the east end, and all ears are attentive.
Presently, from the direction of Forum and Sacred Way, the
sound of trumpets is heard. The roar of the talking multi-
tude decreases, the sound grows louder and nearer, and every
eye is focused on the entrance, through which in a moment
march with jaunty step the brightly costumed players of
THE HEAD OF A CIRCUS DBIVEB
THE RACES 325
i
the horn and the pipes. Following them on to the yellow
sand and along before the brilliant boxes filled with color
and life at the foot of the never ending ranks of spectators,
preceded by his twelve lictors, rides in his chariot the consul
who is to preside for the day, a lordly figure in white and
purple and gold with ivory scepter in hand and with golden
garland held above his head by an attendant. Behind the
consul and his retinue come the many four-horse chariots
entered for the races of the day, which sometimes amount to
twenty. The drivers are bright, each in the color of the
faction for which he is driving — red, white, blue, green,
purple, or gold — and the chariots and horses also display
the colors. The factions are the rival companies that fur-
nish the races from great horse-breeding and horse-trading
establishments, and the partisans of the various colors
representing them are frenzied in their applause as the
brilliant parade passes, including images of various deities
on platforms carried by men, with the priests and attendants
belonging to their service.
The procession completes the course amid the yells and
screams and clapping of hands and waving of handkerchiefs
and scarfs, and at its end quickly disbands. In a few mo-
ments the consul is at his post in the balcony above, the
chariots are in the starting stalls below, with attendants at
the barriers that separate the horses from the arena. The
multitude is silent and strained; the consul rises and dis-
plays at arm's length the white signal cloth. In another
second, with all eyes on him, he lets it fall, the barriers drop
or are moved aside, and the chariots plunge forward toward
the track to the right of the spina. The stalls are so situated
that each is equidistant from the point toward which they
plunge, so that the "start" is made from the stalls, is fair,
and is not repeated.
326 LIVING ROME
The Roman circus race had nothing to do with breaking
records of time. As in the pony races of the Palio at Siena
to-day, which are started in the same way by the dropping
of the cable barrier, the sole ambition of the driver was to be
first at the finish. As is the case at Siena, too, everything
on the course was fair. As the chariots career down the
track, each driver as he exhorts and lashes his horses keeps his
eye on the coming turn about the three gilded goal posts
at the end of the spina. If he can come sharply around, all
but touching; them, he will have a great advantage, but he
will do it at the risk of collision, whether he cuts in ahead of
his rivals or they cut in ahead of him. If he fails, his career-
ing and excited horses, the outermost one of which on either
side is only loosely attached, may pile up with the rival teams
in a mass of poles and wheels and men, and plunging, snort-
ing animals, and crush him to death ; or his chariot may
strike another and be overturned and the horses gallop on,
dragging chariot and driver in horrible disaster ; for in order
to drive well he must wear the reins tied fast round his body,
and he may not be quick enough to sever them with the
knife he carries for the purpose.
The fate described is what happened to Orestes in the
tragic race at Delphi, in the Electro, of Sophocles.
"Orestes had passed safely through every round, steadfast in
his steadfast car. At last, slackening his left rein while the horse
was turning, unawares he struck the edge of the pillar ; he broke
the axle-box in twain ; he was thrown over the chariot-rail ; he was
caught in the shapely reins ; and, as he fell on the ground, his colts
were scattered into the middle of the course. But when the
people saw him fallen from the car, a cry of pity went up for the
youth — now dashed to earth, now tossed feet uppermost to the
sky — till the charioteers, with difficulty checking the career of
his horses, loosed him, so covered with blood that no friend who
saw it would have known the hapless corpse."
THE RACES
32?
At the passing of the goal posts — "the goal post shunned
by the glowing wheel,'1 of Horace's first Ode — one of the
marble eggs behind the posts is taken down. At the other
^nd, where the first of the seven laps is completed, one of
the dolphins is taken down. Without this tally, and with
all the rapidity and excite-
ment, there would be no
end of misunderstandings.
When the seventh egg is
down and one dolphin still
in air, the chariots do not
turn as they pass the dol-
phin, but make for the
chalk line straight ahead
near the starting chambers,
and complete the race.
The distance run in the
•jeven laps is less than three
miles. The decision is pro-
claimed, the devotees of the
•Binning driver and color bellow and scream their satisfac-
tion as he rides before them with the palm of victory in his
hand and disappears through the Gate of Triumph. The
horses are taken away to their stables, the course is cleared,
and the next race called.
The successful driver is the darling of his faction and the
populace. His races and in some cases his victories reach
into the thousands, and his winnings into the millions.
Diocles the Spaniard in twenty-four years ran 4,257 races,
won 1,462 victories, and received for them $1 ,800,000. Mar-
cus Aurelius Liber won 3,000 times. Horses as well as drivers
were favorites. Crescens, a Mauretanian driving for the
Blues, won his first victory in the twenty-fourth race on a
A CHARIOTEER AND His HORSE
He is tightly strapped, and has tattooing
on his arms. A mosaio.
birthday of Nerva with the horses Circius, Acceptoi
catus, and Cotynus, and so recorded the facts in an i
tion found at Rome in 1878-
The subject of the races may be concluded with a i
erences from the authors. The rivalry between the £
had not reached its height in Augustan times, whei
were still only three colors, the Reds, the Whites, a
Blues. In Cicero's time only the Reds and Whit*
tended. When Horace makes beautiful use of the <
race as a simile of life's race for wealth, the circus
primarily a sport and a spectacle: "The avariciou
•strains to pass this rival and that (for he finds ever a
rival as he hastes), like the charioteer, who, when th
whirls along the chariots just released from the si
chambers, presses upon the horses that have passed hi
And pays no heed to him he has left behind among t]
in the race."
It is not long after this that speculation, the craze i
colors, and the passion for betting convert the sport
circus into the frenzied institution it remained throi
.the Empire.
"All my time these days," writes Pliny the Younger, **
been spending in the most deligjrtful quiet with my table
books. But you say, 'How could you manage it, in the
Why, the circus games were on, a kind of show that does not j
me in the least. There is nothing new in them, nothing dtf
nothing that does not suffice forever if you have seen il
That is the reason why I wonder the more that so many thoi
of grown up men can have so childish an eagerness agai
again to look on at horses running and men standing in eh
If they were only attracted by speed on the part of the horse
skill on the part of the drivers, there would be some excuse
but the fact is, it is a color they applaud, and a color they
love with, and if in the middle of a race the one color shoul
THE RACES 329
denly be exchanged with the other, the support and applause
would also be transferred, and straightway people would abandon
the horses and drivers whom they were following from far away
and whose names they were shouting. So much influence, so much
Authority is there in a worthless tunic, I will not say in the eyes
of the common crowd, which is cheaper still than the tunic, but in
the eyes of even some persons of character. And when I think
of their sitting there so insatiable in their enthusiasm for so empty
and frigid and hackneyed an entertainment, I take a certain pleas-
ure because a pleasure like this does not take me."
When Amroianiis Marcellinus, a veteran soldier and a
visitor to Rome, writes of the races and the people in A.D,
359, almost three centuries later, neither has changed.
" These men," writes Ammianus of the common people,
"spend their whole lives in drinking, and gambling, and brothels,
and pleasures, and the public spectacles ; and the Circus Maximus
is their temple, their home, their public assembly ; in fact, their
whole hope and desire. And you may see in the Forum, and roads,
and streets, and places of meeting, knots of people collected, quar-
reling violently with one another, and objecting to one another,
and splitting themselves into violent parties. Among whom those
who have lived long, having influence by reason of their age, their
gray hairs and wrinkles, are constantly crying out that the State
cannot stand if in the contest which is about to take place the
skillful charioteer whom some individual backs is not foremost in
the race, and does not dexterously shave the turning post with the
trace-horses. . . . And when the wished-f or day of the equestrian
games dawns, before the sun has risen, they all rush out with head-
long haste, as if with their speed they would outstrip the very
chariots which are going to race ; while, as to the event of the con-
test, they are all torn asunder by opposite wishes, and the greater
part of them, through their anxiety, pass sleepless nights."
Three centimes and a half before this, Ovid, in Augustan
times, was attending the races. In one of the short poems
called Amores, we find hrm in the Circus Maximus waiting
for the day's events to begin. Chance has given the flirta-
THE RACES
331
tious poet a seat beside a nice-looking young lady whom he
immediately begins to cultivate.
" I'm not sitting here because I'm interested in famous horses,"
Ovid says to her, "though I hope the one you bet on will win. I
came to talk with you, and to sit by you. You can look at the races,
and I'll look at you. Why do you edge away from me? It will do
you no good. The line compels us
to sit close together. That's the
advantage of the circus, with its
rules as to space.
"But now the procession is com-
ing. Keep silence all. and attend 1
Now is the time for applause —
the golden procession is coming.
First is Victory, coming along with
wings outspread. Come here, god-
dess, and help my love to win!
Cheer for Neptune, you who put
all your trust in the waves i I
want nothing with the sea; my
native land for me! Cheer for
your Mars, soldier ! I detest arms.
Peace is what I like, and love that
is found in the midst of peace. And
Phoebus — let him be for the au-
gurs, and Phoebe for the huntsmen !
Minerva — let the craftsmen clap
their hands for you ! You that live
in the country, rise to Ceres and
tender Bacchus ! Pollux — for the
boxers ! and Castor — for the rider !
But we — we are for you, lovely
Venus, for you and your Cupids
mighty with the bows! Smile on
my undertakings, O goddess, and change my beloved's mind.
Make her accept my love !
" But your feet are dangling. If you like, you can stick your
toes in the grating. The circus is clear now for the greatest part
A CHABIOTEER WITH THE PALM
OP VICTORY
His body is protected by a casing of
leather.
332 LIVING ROME
of the show, and the praetor has started the four-horse cars from
the even barrier. I see the one you are eager for. He will win if
he has your applause, whoever he is. The very horses seem to
know what you want. 0 dear me, he has circled the post in a wide
curve! What are you doing? The next is hugging close with his
axle and is gaining on you. What are you doing, you wretch !
You will lose my girl the prayer of her heart ! Pull, pull, the left
rein — with all your might! We are standing for a good-for-
nothing! — but call them back, citizens! Toss your togas in
signal from every side ! Look, they are calling them back.
4 'The starting chambers are unbarred again and the gates are
open wide ; the many-colored troop is flying out with reins let
loose. This time, at least, get by them, and get down to work on
the open space !
" The charioteer has got his palm ; my palm is yet to be won.'*
In the scandalous Art of Love also, Ovid includes the races,
and in terms much like those we have just read.
"Thus love in theaters did first improve ;
And theaters are still the scene of love.
Nor shun the chariots, and the courser's race ;
The Circus is no inconvenient place. . . .
But boldly next the fail1 your seat provide ;
Close as you can to hers, and side by side. . . .
Then find occasion to begin discourse ;
Enquire whose chariot this, and whose that horse.
To whatsoever side she is inclined,
Suit all your inclinations to her mind.
But when the statues of the deities,
In chariots rolled, appear before the prize,
"When Venus comes, with deep devotion rise.
If dust be on her lap, or grains of sand,
Brush both away with your officious hand,
x* aone there be, yet brush that nothing thence,
\nd stall to touch her lap make some pretense. . , .
light service takes light minds, for some can tdl
Of favors won by laying cushions well."
XXX
THE GLADIATORS
At mention of the gladiator, no reader or hearer fails to
associate with the word the massive building known since
the Middle Ages as the Colosseum, and called in Roman
times the Amphitheatrum Flavium because it was erected
by Vespasian and his son Titus, the first two emperors of the
Flavian dynasty, whose third and last reigning member was
Domitian.
The Colosseum was opened by Titus in A.D. 80. It was
located in the depression between the Palatine, the Esqui-
line, and the Caelian Hills, and occupied part of the vast
area, a mile square, in which Nero had built the combination
of palaces, porticoes, gardens, baths, and ponds called
Damns Aurea, the Golden House. It was elliptical, about
600 feet by 500 in diameter, and 160 feet high, and its arena
measured 280 by 175 feet. Its capacity was about 50,000.
The first gladiatorial combats in Rome are said by Livy
to have taken place in 264 B.C. They had existed before
this in Etruria and Campania, and their origin is to be sought
in the funeral customs of the early Mediterranean peoples.
Achilles putting Trojan captives to death at the burning of
Patroclus' body as a sacrifice to the soul of his friend, sug-
gests the manner of their beginning. If on such an occasion
the captives, instead of being slain by their captor, were
paired off and permitted to fight for their lives, a triple pur-
pose might be served : the sacrifice to the dead, the addition
333
334
LIVING ROME
of an event to the entertainment of the funeral games, and
the stimulation of the martial spirit on ihe part of the specta-
tors, who were almost wholly members, present, past, and
future, of the army, the most important part of the State.
The gladiatorial exhibitions at Rome ceased after the first
hundred years to have a strict association with funeral games,
THE COLOSSEUM
Mighty as it is, about two-thirds of its bulk has disappeared, much of it in the
building of Saint Peter's.
and became the people's most exciting entertainment —
"that kind of spectacle," says Cicero, "to which every sort
of people crowds in the greatest numbers, and in which the
masses find the greatest delight-" During the last hundred
and fifty years of the Republic, they were given and paid
for by men who for the sake of office or other reason were
THE GLADIATORS 335
seeking the popular favor. Under the Empire they were
one of the emperor's great resources in the conciliation of
the people, whether at Rome or in the provinces. They were
consequently due throughout to private initiative rather
than to the State as such, were given at irregular intervals
rather than on fixed dates, and varied greatty in the number
of days.
At the first exhibition of gladiators, for the funeral games
of Brutus Pera in 264 B.C., there were three pairs, but under
the emperors the number might be hundreds 01 even thou-
sands, in shows lasting for weeks or months. Up to the time
of the Colosseum, the permanent amphitheater of Statilius
Taurus, erected in 30 B.C., was the usual scene of the shows.
Before that, temporary seating in the Forum or elsewhere
was provided in case of need.
The best way to appreciate the character and significance
of the most notorious of ancient Roman sports is to imagine
ourselves attending an afternoon's exhibition. The time
may be supposed to be toward the close of the first century
after Christ, when the gladiatorial combat was at its highest
in skill and popularity.
We have learned of the date of the exhibition and other
details through a general announcement, perhaps painted
in red letters, like the following from a wall in Pompeii :
"Thirty pairs of gladiators furnished by Gnaeus Alleius
Nigidius Maius, Quinquennial Duumvir, together with their
substitutes, will fight at Pompeii November 24, 25, 26.
There will be a hunt. Hurrah for Maius the Quinquennial !
Bravo, Paris!" Maius was a rich man of about A.D. 50,
and Paris perhaps a gladiator. On another wall appears :
"Twenty pairs of gladiators furnished by Decimus Lucretius
Satrius Valens, permanent Priest of Nero, son of the Em-
Deror, and ten pairs of gladiators furnished bv Decirnus
336 LIVING ROME
Lucretius Valens his son, will fight at Pompeii April 8--12.
There will be a regular hunt, and the awnings. Aemilius
Celer wrote this, alone and by the light of the moon." In
the first, the substitutes insuring the show, and the wild-
beast hunt, venatio, are to be noted. In the second, there is
a promise of the great canvas awnings to protect the spec-
tators from the sun. Sometimes there are promised also
spar&iones, sprinklings of saffron water, to modify the heat.
Celer is a professional billposter.
The better to follow the events of the day, we have bought
and are bringing with us a program containing the names of
the ^swordsmen, their mode of fighting, the number of times
they have already fought and won, the name of their patron
or owner, and the name of the personage who gives the
exhibition. From this program we know whether or not to
expect good quality in the fighting, and on it we shall record
the score of the day.
Early in the afternoon we find ourselves in one of the eager
and talkative human currents flowing from every direction
through the various streets that lead to the great building.
As we approach the f agade, we cast a glance of appreciation
on its three stories of travertine arcades, framed in the
Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian styles, and the fourth story,
still of wood and supporting the sockets for the masts to
which the canvas is attached. One of the numerals on our
ticket indicates the numbered arch through which we must
pass into the two corridors running about the interior in
order to reach most conveniently the right one of the many
stairways whose zigzagging flights conduct the crowd to
the vomitoria, the openings through which the interior of the
building is reached. As we suddenly emerge among the
countless lines of seats encircling the arena and reaching far
above us as well as belowt we feel very small. An usher
THE GLADIATORS 337
helps us find our section and place, and rents us a cushion
to temper the hardness of the marble seat.
After getting settled, we begin to take account of what is
before and about us. First, so far below us that we feel
dizzy, is the freshly sanded arena. Back of the strong fence
separating it from the spectators and protecting them
against any possible violence from man or animal in it, is a
platform of masonry twelve feet high supporting many
splendid seats, all of them like thrones and some of them
really thrones. A bronze balustrade borders the side of
the arena. Here we shall presently see the emperor and his
suite, the chief officials of city and State, including senators,
and the many other important personages to be found in a
great capital. These are the "boxes" of ancient times.
Separated from these places by balustrade and aisle rises
a girdle of thirty-six rows of seats, the first fourteen of which
are for the equestrian order and the rest for others distin-
guished by wealth or station. These thirty-six rows are
inclosed by a high wall with doors and windows, back of
which is one of the entrance passages encircling the cavea,
and above which begins the widest girdle of seats, those
for the ordinary crowd. The girdle, including a narrower
girdle at its outer edge for women, whose attendance is not
encouraged, reaches to the inclosing outer wall of the build-
ing at its summit.
Every part of the vast area of seats is rapidly filling.
Vociferous conversation, the shouting of vendors, and the
flapping of the great stretches of canvas fill the place with
a mighty din. The bright light and heat of the day are
tempered by the shade of the canvas.
A blare of trumpets and a cheering announce the arrival
of the imperial party. The emperor, or other person who
gives the entertainment, called the editor, is in his place at
33S LIVING ROME
the most prominent point on the band of seats nearest the
arena. He gives the signal, there is the sound of music in
marching time, and from one of the four gates leading into
the arena comes the procession of those who are to face
death for our pleasure, and who quite possibly will be
4 'Butchered to make a Roman holiday."
As they pass before the emperor, they halt for a moment to
address him with the dramatic morituri te salutant — "the
doomed to die salute thee!" and pass on and out to the
chambers in which they are to await the summons to their
places on the program.
After a short preliminary with blunt weapons to prepare
the performer and the audience for the serious business of
the spectacle, the first pair is announced. Perhaps its two
fighters are Samnites, the original heavy-armed type in
crested helmet and greave for one leg, with oblong shield
and short sword. Perhaps they are the light-armed Thra-
cians, with helmet and small round shield, dagger or very
short curved sword, and greaves for both legs to make up
for the smallness of the shield. Perhaps they are the type
called Gauls or murmillones, also heavy-armed, or the type
in British costume fighting from chariots. Perhaps two
different types are matched, as the Samnite and the Thra-
cian ; or the fight is by several on a side ; or there axe the
novelties, themselves by this time grown familiar: the
retiariusy with trident, net, and dagger, against the secutor,
with shield and sword, whom he tries to envelop and render
helpless in the net, and whom in case of failure he has to
run fmm until he is able to recover the net and cast again ;
or the blindfold with two swords ; or the fighters with the
lasso ; or the dwarf ; or even a woman.
The excitement of the crowd rises to wonderful heights,
THE GLADIATORS
339
and sweeps us away with it again and again. There are some
pairs evenly matched and of extraordinary skill whose dex-
terity and form arouse frenzied cheering. They fight to
the draw, and the crowd rewards them at last by approving
their discharge. A loser suddenly turns what is almost de-
feat into victory, and the applause is deafening. Another,
GLABIATOBIAL ARMOB
Helmet, shoulder-pieces, leg-protectora.
for some real or fancied fault in form or spirit, is disapproved,
and there is a storm of hostile yells that goes far toward
bringing his defeat. When at last he is disabled and face
to face with death, his appeal to the giver of the games or
the emperor for mercy is answered by a wave of the hand,
giving over the right of deciding to the populace, who with
shouts of abuse turn their thumbs down. He stands to the
stroke, collapses on the sand, soaking it with his blood, and
.LI \JL\U KtLVLb
is dragged away through the death-gate. The red spot and
red trail are sanded over afresh, and the next pair called.
The vanquished who has been true to form and fought a
good fight is recommended to mercy by applause and the
waving of handkerchiefs. The spiritless, the unwilling, and
the rebellious have sometimes actually to be driven into
combat. We hear our neighbors behind talking of one who,
while being brought to the amphitheater this very day,
feigned drowsiness, and thus let his head be caught in the
wheel of the cart and his neck be broken. The crowd at the
moment cheers itself hoarse for a favorite ; at another, it
rages with revilement of a craven or some fighter of no ap-
peal ; and at another sinks back in the silence of fatigue or
indifference. At the end of each combat we mark the names
on our program with a V for " Victor," a P for Periit, "Per-
ished,77 or an M for Missus, "Let go." Some spectacles
are sine missione, and then the fight is always to the death.
When the last match between the swordsmen is finished,
there is an interval during which we discuss the events just
witnessed, and relax, while the attendants of the amphi-
theater hurriedly make ready for the venatio, the hunt. In
this, beasts taken captive in distant parts of the Empire are
hoisted in elevators from their dens under the arena, and
suddenly released on its sands to face a human enemy who is
expert with arrow, spear, or sword, or to fight one another.
It may even be that men and women guilty of some crime,
or known to be of the Christian faith, will be made to meet
unarmed the fiercest fl.nfmal«-
By the time the program ip over, the sun is low and the
lessened light under the great canvas shows it. The crowd
as it slowly disperses through the many exits is much less
lively than when it came. Soon the streets of the city are
filled by the streams of those Teturning home, discussing as
THE GLADIATOBS
341
they go the merits and demerits of the dead and the living
who furnished their afternoon's amusement.
The amphitheater was sometimes also the scene of naval
combats, though these fights belonged properly to an arti-
A REPRESENTATION OP THE VENATIO
The scene is in the circus, whose parts the sculptor merely indicates : the emperor
and empress, or sponsors of the games, in their box ; the seven eggs ; a column and
statue on the spina. A swordsman and a spearman are fighting a tiger and a Hon.
A man has been killed.
ficial lake, called naumachia after the name of the battle
itself. Such an exhibition could hardly have taken place
in the Colosseum except before the many rooms, dens, and
passages were constructed under the arena.
Such were the sports of the arena in the capital and in
almost every city of size in the central and western Medi-
342 LIVING ROME
terranean basin. There are notable specimens of the amphi-
theater still to be seen in Verona, Capua, Pompeii, and
Pozzuoli; in Aries, Xlmes, and Bordeaux, in France; at
Cagliari in Sardinia, at Pola and Spalato on the east side of
the Adriatic, at Italica near Seville, in Spain, and at El
Djem in Africa, where the fifth in size of these buildings
overshadows a whole Tunisian village ; to say nothing of
many smaller ruins. The amphitheater in Verona is still
used for concert and drama, and those at Aries and Nlmes
for the bullfight.
When we contemplate the number of the amphitheaters
in the Roman world, and remember the ten thousand gladia-
tors who fought in the exhibitions of Augustus alone, the ten
thousand who fought in four months at Trajan's celebrations
of the conquest of Dacia, and the numerous hardly less ex-
tensive shows that took place in the capital under every
reign until the sport declined and died in the fifth century,
we are compelled to charge ancient Roman society with a
monstrous aggregate of heartless cruelty. However, before
concluding that the amphitheater and its sports were due
simply and only to the lust for bloodshed, we should consider
the gladiatorial combat in all its aspects. Let us summarize.
First, let us recall its origin in the natural hardness of
primitive Mediterranean peoples whose normal condition
was warfare, and who believed in the propitiation of the dead
by the sacrifice of their enemies at the tomb.
Let us recall in the next place that in warring civilizations
hardness as well as courage and skill in the practice of arms
is a virtue, ani that gentleness and compassion are qualities
dangerous to the State. When the gladiatorial combat was
introduced at Rome, the Romans had been a warring race
for five hundred years, and were to continue a waning race
until the times of the Empire and the Pax Roman a, two
THE GLADIATORS
343
hundred and fifty years afterward. The spectacle of men
expert in the use of arms, self-possessed in the moment of
mortal danger, and unflinching before the final stroke, could
easily be regarded as a contribution to the soldierly expert-
THB INTEBIOB OP THE COLOSSEUM TO-DAY
Only a small part of the arena has been left by the excavators, who have exposed
the corridors, chambers, cages, and elevator arrangements below it. The bases of
the imperial and senatorial boxes are seen bordering the arena. They are encircled
by the substructures that supported the other banks of seats.
ness and soldierly spirit of every man of military age and
every youthful legionary-to-be who witnessed it.
In the third place, it is to be remembered that the amphi-
theater served the State at least in part as a means oi
criminal discipline. Many of the fighters were noncitizen
malefactors condemned for the more outrageous crimes, and
344 LIVING ROME
given this chance of redeeming their lives by prowess in
arms or by the appeal of personal quality to the emperor and
the multitude. " Sentenced to the arena" was no doubt a
familiar phrase in the courts of the Roman Empire ; the more
desperate and the more unfit being sent to the lions, and
those of better physical quality to the training schools to
be made ready for combat with their kind.
In the fourth place, there was the element of sportsman-
ship. The captive in war might easily prefer the chance of
victory and freedom to the certainty of sale into lifelong
slavery in the mines or galleys or on the distant plantations.
The man who had won safety and freedom might easily be
attracted by the glamour of applause and by genuine love
for the excitement of the life to continue as fighter or trainer.
The enthusiastic populace admired the good sportsman and
the good fellow, and many a man who was intimate with
sporting circles was drawn by sheer coveting of notoriety
into the gladiatorial career. To be the victor in a hundred
combats, the champion confident against all comers, to feel
the admiration of fifty thousand glowing pairs of eyes, to
hear the applause of fifty thousand straining throats and
fifty thousand pairs of clapping hands, to look up and around
at the waving of fifty thousand fluttering handkerchiefs and
scarfs and togas, to be aware, and perhaps even to be care-
less, of the eager good will of senator and magnate and
emperor, could carry the gladiator as well as the charioteer,
in Horace's phrase, "as lord of the earth to the gods above."
And there were also the humbler but not unappreciated
favors. Cdadus, in Pompeii, is the "glory" and the "sigh"
of the girls, pueUarum decus, suspirium pueUarum; and
Crescens is their adored, puparum dommus. That there
were rewards in money as well as in fame, it is hardly neces-
sary to remark.
THE GLADIATORS 345
But these considerations, while they may explain how the
gladiatorial combat originated, how its introduction among
the Romans could be tolerated, and how it might justify
itself to a degree in the minds of its defenders, do not wholly
account for its lodgment in Roman society as an institution,
and its becoming one of the two greatest holiday amusements
of a world at peace and a State no longer in fear of enemies
or depending upon the skill and valor of the citizen-soldier.
There are two reasons for its growth and permanence which
have nothing to do with religious belief, the military spirit,
or sportsmanship, but which are grounded in its use as an
instrument for other ends.
The first of these reasons was the usefulness of the gladia-
torial combat as a political and personal instrument. By
the time of Cicero and Caesar, it was frequent for men who
stood for office to outbid one another in courting the people
by means of gladiatorial shows. Not only did the gladia-
tors exhibit themselves in the service of their candidate
patron, but accompanied him as a bodyguard, and did not
hesitate to commit disorderly and violent acts in the streets
at his command. The letters of Cicero contain many refer-
ences to the high-handed behavior of the bands of gladiators
and other roughs employed by Clodius and Milo during the
quarrels that resulted in the death of Clodius in 52 B.C.
The Senate was so uneasy because of Caesar's plans for
exhibitions in the campaign for the aedileship in 65 B.C. that
it limited Trim to three hundred and twenty pairs. One
of Cicero's vexations during his governorship in CSlicia was
the insistence of his young friend Caelius Rufus, curule
aedile, on Cicero's shipping him panthers. Patiscus has
sent Curio ten, and Cicero should send Caelius ten times as
many. As for the emperors, good and bad, there was no
limit to their giving of gladiatorial shows, whether for the
346 LIVING RO:ME
sake of personal glory or for the sake of keeping their sub-
jects contented. At the dedication of the Colosseum in
A.D. SO, Titus provided gladiators and five thousand beasts.
In A.D. 249, Philip celebrated the thousandth anniversary ot
Rome by providing a thousand pairs of gladiators, thirty-
two elephants, ten tigers, sixty lions, thirty leopards, ten
hyenas, ten giraffes, twenty wild asses, forty wild horses,
ten zebras, six hippopotami, and one rhinoceros. Probu?
in A.D. 281 provided one hundred each of lions and leopards
from Libya and Syria, three hundred bears, and one hundred
African lionesses.
The second cause for the tenacious hold of the amphi-
theatrical sports was their utilization for commercial pur-
poses. Like many abuses, ancient and modern, they paid.
The day that politicians began to see in him an advantage,
the training and furnishing of the gladiator was already on
the way to becoming an industry. The industry soon had
its contractors, barracks, trainers, agents, and recruiters.
The erection of the first amphitheater, the kindred sports of
the naval battle and the animal hunt, the arrival of the im-
perial regime with its increase in the demand for men and
beasts, the building of the Colosseum, the solicitude of the
ruler for the popular good will, all went toward the firmer
lodgment of the deadly spt>rt in the life of the Empire and
its capital. Its abuses were terrible. They included the
slaughter of the captive and the criminal for the entertain-
ment of an idle multitude already surfeited with blood ; the
wrongful condemnation of the unfortunate and friendless
who were guilty at most of only minor crimes, the impress-
ment of the innocent but helpless, the compulsion of the
slave, all in the desperate search for human material to sup-
ply the demand of the shows and keep them interesting ; the
breeding of cruel indifference to suffering ; the encourage
THE GLADIATORS
347
raent of gambling and of all the triviality and waste and
degradation that associate themselves with a brutal sport :
the corruption of politics ; the arming of a dangerous and
unscrupulous class of men ; and, not least, the glorification
of wrong ideals and the obscuration of the right in thp minds
of the rising generation.
THE AMPHITHEATER AT VERONA
Concerts and opera in the grand style are given here every summer.
Of course there were persons not attracted by the amphi-
theater, and there were those who rose above it. There
was Cicero, who wrote to his friend Marius in Pompeii con-
cerning the sports he missed by being away from Rome:
"Why should I think you regretted missing the athletes, you
who despised the gladiators? . . . And I must tell you,
lastly, about the beast-hunts — two a day for five days ;
348 LIVING ROME
magnificent, no one denies. But what pleasure can it be to
a man of cultivation when either a poor, weak human being
is torn by a most powerful beast, or a splendid beast is run
through with a hunting spear? If these things are to be
seen, after all you have seen them many a time ; and I, whc
was there to see, saw nothing new. Last came the day of the
elephants, by which the ordinary crowd was greatly im-
pressed, but without showing any pleasure. Quite the con-
trary, a certain pity was aroused, a kind of feeling that the
big beast was kin in some way to the human race." Not
only does Cicero here speak of Marius as despising the
gladiators, but shows repeatedly in the Orations by contemp-
tuous allusions to the gladiator that he assumes on the part
of Senate and jury and people the same feeling he entertains
himself.
Yet the fairly human Younger Pliny can praise his friend
Maximus for promising the people of Verona a gladiatorial
exhibition, and can commend the act as a suitable honor to
the memory of his dead wife. The literature of pagan Rome
is practically without protest against the amphitheater.
The average Roman took it for granted, and the remon-
strances of those who did not were ridiculed, or drowned in
counter protest, or went unnoticed. The numbers and the
argument of those who admired the fight as a science and the
spectacle as an art, who wanted excitement as an escape
from the monotony of life, who saw no use in opposing what
seemed the natural and inevitable thing, who profited
directly by contract or indirectly by the trade of the crowd,
who argued that the shows increased the business of the city
and the unity of the Empire, were overwhelming.
It took three centuries and a half of the growth of the
Christian spirit, and almost as long a period of general worldly
decay, to accomplish the extinction of the bloodiest of
THE GLADIATORS 349
sports. The last gladiatorial fight in the Flavian Amphi-
theater in Rome took place in A.D. 404, the last known wild-
beast hunt in A.D. 523. The great building began at that
time the career of ruin by earthquake, natural decay, and
the hand of man which converted it into a quarry for the
building of medieval and Renaissance Rome and left it only
a third of its former self before the sentiment of modern
times was aroused to protect it.
The Colosseum is the ruined and empty monument to an
unlovely phase of the life of ancient Rome. The deadly
swordsmanship that soaked and stained its yellow sands
with crimson no longer ministers to the curiosity, the love of
excitement, and the greed of men. Yet let those who gaze
upon it as belonging wholly to the past reflect upon the many
features the life it represents has in common with the life of
modern times, and upon the mingling of the good and the
evil, the beautiful and the ugly, the logical and the illogical,
that is always present in human behavior. Let them think of
the American national game, its excitements, its accidents,
its scandals, its raging crowds, its heroes and their salaries, its
vested interests. Let them think of the Spanish national
sport, with its golden sands and bright-hued crowd, its
brilliant processions, its dexterity and its art, its perils and
its gallantries, its idolized and princely matadores, its amphi-
theater in every town, its scientific breeding and training
farms, its frenzied applause and its heartless derision, its
cruelty to horses, its Sunday and saint's-day performances,
its heedlessness of protest, its permeation of every mind.
Let them think of the chase and the coursing of hare and
hounds. Let them think of the glittering and flattering
splendors of the cinema palace, its cheap and coarse crowds,
its capable and unscrupulous managers, its boastfully ex-
pensive and coarsening pictures, its pretentions to virtue
350 LIVING ROIME
as educator and moralist, its undisguisable commercialism,
its enthusiastic defenders and its bitter enemies, and the
thousand economic ramifications that invest it with per-
manence. Let them think of student athletics, the million-
dollar stadium, the dependence of the college upon the
winning team, the corruptions and hypocrisies of recruiting
and retaining the champion, the interest of the college in the
gate receipts, the interest of the community in the money-
spending crowd, the tyrannies of training, the farce of the
study requirement for men whose time and strength and
attention are demanded first of all by the game, the general
debauchery of mind and tongue as the time for the contest
approaches, the mob of the old grads returning to see the
team cover itself and Alma Mater with glory, the betting and
the extortion, the frenzied silliness of cheer-leader and
rooter "helping to win the game," the mingling of brawn and
brains in the bruising, crushing, desperate effort to get
through, the jeers and insults and threats and abuse for
referee or player or rooter, the pandemonium of exit, the
"good time" of the evening and night, the apathy and
languor of the days that follow, the assumption that without
it all the college would go to ruin. Let them think, finally,
of pugilism : cf the genius employed in its management and
advertising, of racial and class feeling sweeping over the
country and over other countries, of its gigantic crowds and
its admission charges in the grand style, of its betting, of the
mingled curses and prayers and exhortations yelled at the
ringside, of the delirium of applause at the sight of the suc-
cessful blow and at the sight of blood, of the willingness for
death kself rather than the defeat of the favorite and the
loss of stakes, of the prizes in money and fame that come to
the winner, of the thousands of smaller champions and the
dioaes that center about them, of the promoters who ex-
THE GLADIATORS 351
ploit them, of the wholesale conversion of society to tolera-
tion by the astute advertising of the scientific side of the
"art of self-defense" and the ignoring of its brutal side.
Reflections like these, with the comparisons they suggest,
may quite properly leave us unshaken in the conviction
of the gains humanity has made since the amphitheater
saw its cruel killings, but they will not leave us quite so sure
that the dead and empty ruins are all that survive in modern
society of the ancient life they represent.
XXXI
THE BATHS
There exists to-day no exact equivalent of either the
ancient Roman baths or the ancient Roman custom of the
bath. The word to-day denotes, in the singular, merely an
act of cleanliness ; in the plural, a health resort with springs
having curative properties, or a thermal establishment for
the treatment of the ailing. There are hot baths, sulphur
baths, mud baths, Turkish baths. To think of the Roman
baths, balnea, thermae, in any such way would be to see only
part of the truth.
The description of an ancient example of the baths will
make clear both the building and its uses. Let us take for
the purpose the baths of the Emperor Diocletian, the huge
remnants of which are still to be seen as one comes from the
railway station in the northeast part of Rome. These baths,
opened in A.D. 306 after the abdication of the Emperor, were
the largest in the Roman Empire and the last but one to be
erected in Rome. They differed from the baths in Rome and
Pompeii of three hundred years before in size and appoint-
ments, but not in essential characteristics.
The Baths of Diocletian measured about four hundred and
fifty yards, or a quarter of a mile, on a side. The establish-
ment consisted of an inclosing wall of concrete faced with
brick and probably covered with stucco. At two corners of
this girdle were two large circular chambers with solid brick
walls, flanked each by a rectangular room, and between them
the girdle wall projected in a semicircle. One of the domo-
353
THE BATHS
353
like chambers is now the round church of San Bernardo, and
the other also has a modern use. The limit of the semi-
circle of wall is preserved in the curved f agades of the build-
100
200 Meters
PLAN OP THE BATHS OF DIOCLETIAN
ings fronting the Piazza dell' Esedra. On the remaining
three sides the wall accommodated smaller semicircular and
rectangular rooms.
Inside the inclosure, the bather found himself facing the
building proper, which was surrounded by a spacious
354 LIVING ROME
promenade, and arcaded in two stories in the Ionic and
Corinthian styles. It measured about 300 yards by 175, and
contained the three essential parts of the Roman baths.
These were the frigidarium, or cold bath ; the caldarium, or
hot bath ; and the tepidarium, or tepid bath. The calda-
rium has disappeared ; the central hall, over 200 feet by 80,
has been since Michelangelo's time the transept of Santa
Maria degli Angeli, one of the largest churches of Rome.
The vestibule of the church is the ancient circular tepidariurn
that lay between the central hall and the caldarium.
Besides these three regular chambers, the largest of which
was three hundred feet long, there were the usual dressing
rooms, apodyteria, the open-air porticoes for games and othei
physical exercise, palaestrae, and many smaller chambers for
a variety of uses — libraries of Greek and Latin once housed
in the Forum of Trajan; lecture halls and lounges; ad-
ditional baths and gymnasiums and dressing rooms ; store-
rooms for the usual bath supplies of towels, perfumes,
unguents, and strigils for the removal of oil and sand;
offices for the stewards; rooms for the attendants and
helpers, waiting rooms for the slaves and sedan-chair men ;
refreshment rooms, and perhaps quarters for masseurs and
medical advisers. The large semicircular space now forming
the Piazza dell* Esedra was used as a theater.
The Baths of Diocletian were supplied by the Marcian
Aqueduct, built 400 years before and bringing water from
57 miles away in the Sabine Mountains. Accumulated out-
side the establishment in a capacious reservoir 300 feet long
and 50 wide, the water was distributed through larger an<J
smaller pipes to all the tanks and pools and tubs and jets
with which the chambers were supplied. The cold, hot,
and tepid rooms had tanks at ends .and sides and probablj*
pools in immense round basins of marble and granite sup
THE BATHS 355
ported on bases at convenient places on the pavement.
There were large tanks for plunging, smaller ones for quieter
bathing, many individual baths in the smaller rooms, and
many portable tubs for use on the larger floors. The main
pool in the frigidarium of Caracalla's baths, built ninety
years earlier, was about 80 by 170 feet. The exercise
porticoes were also supplied with convenient plunges.
The air and water varied in temperature in the three main
parts of the building. The caldarium walls were lined with
hot-air ducts of tile behind the stucco and near the surface,
the tepidarium walls were constructed in the same way but
with the ducts set deeper so that the heat was slower, and
the frigidarium was left unheated. The caldarium was
further heated by hot air circulating under the floor, which
was supported by many slender brick pillars.
This slow but even and sensible method of heating is
employed in the American Episcopal Church in Rome and in
one of the churches in Liverpool. Instead of streaming
through registers or rising from radiators to the ceiling, the
heat begins in the pavement and permeates directly the total
volume of air.
The graded heating of the water for the caldarium and the
tepidarium was provided by placing the furnace nearer the
former. In earlier and smaller establishments, the air was
sometimes tempered by a large brazier, such as survives in
Pompeii, though the hanging floor was invented a hundred
years before Christ, and the heating of the walls soon
followed.
The opening of the baths in Rome was fixed in Hadrian's
time at two o'clock, but varied according to period, place,
and circumstance. The manner of their use varied also.
Earlier or later in the day, according to the hour at which his
business left him free, the bather appeared, alone or attended
356
LIVING ROME
by a slave with the necessary towels and other articles. If
he was vigorous and had the serious purpose of keeping fit,
he began in the palaestra with bowling or ball, or other more
or less strenuous exercise; then stripped in the dressing
room and was given a rub with perfumed oil, or, if he had
THE CAXDAMUM or THE STABIAN BATHS IN POMPEII
The little brick pillars by which the floor was supported are seen partly restored
in the foreground. Some of the floor with the pillars entire occupies the back-
ground. Hot air circulated under the floor thus suspended.
stripped for the exercise, was relieved of the dirt and oil by
the use of the strigil ; went into the tepid room for a first
bath; took a sweat and a second bath in the hot room;
finished with a cold plunge and a rub, dressed, and was
ready for other recreation or for dinner. If he had no
settled program, he migfrt make the operation short by
THE BAPHS 357
exercising, using the strigil, rubbing, taking a cold plunge,
and dressing; or might prolong it in any way his fancy
prompted.
Not every patron of the baths came to them for the same
purpose. There were those who came for mere cleanliness,
and there were those who came for the recreation of a tired
body. There were those who came for the relief of ailments,
and those who came as a preparation for dinner. Some
came to enjoy the luxury of being worked over and to see
who else was there. There were some who had appoint-
ments, social or business or literary. Sometimes, according
to the satirists, the poet was there, reciting his verses in the
midst of the defenseless bathers. "How pleasantly the
vaulted space echoes the voice!" he says to himself in
Horace.
Such was the building that housed the ancient Roman
baths, and such was the institution of the baths. Like other
institutions, it was a growth. It began in rustic Latium
with the ordinary custom of country people, a daily washing
of the dirt from hands and face and feet, and at intervals a
wash all over. With the growth of the city and development
of urban tastes, the richer, the cultivated, and the traveled
aot only bathed every day, but made the daily bath the
correct thing socially. The homes of the wealthier included
ever more elaborate baths, and the growth of demand
among the less wealthy of the middle class soon brought into
being the public bath. Its attractions were increased first
by the addition of conveniences to the bath itself, and then
by the addition of hygienic, medical, and athletic features.
The bath became not only a social requisite, but a cure and
a recreation. With the addition of other facilities, such as
lounges, lecture rooms, reading rooms, and porticoes for
games and promenades, it became an amusement and a
358
LIVIXG ROME
luxury. For the classes of highest rank and greatest wealth,
it became the usual preliminary to dining. With the
expansion of the Empire, the general increase of prosperity,
and the rise of standards of living, the numbers of the com-
mon people who used the baths increased throughout the
Roman world, but especially
in the capital. Not only did
contractors build them as an
investment, but the ambi-
tious, the patriotic, the phil-
anthropic, the public-spirited
citizen, and, above all, the
benevolent or anxious em-
perors, provided the means
for their erection; and many
were built at the public ex-
pense. They were rarely
free of charge, but prices were
scaled in such a way that
none but the absolutely pen-
niless were denied the pleas-
ure; and there were times
when some one's generosity
removed the fee entirely.
The number, size, and
splendor of the great bathing
resorts in the city of Rome is an impressive testimonial to
the prominence of the bath in ancient life. The list of the
major establishments includes the baths of Agrippa, opened
in 19 B.C. near the Pantheon ; of Nero, A.D. 64, in the same
neighborhood ; of Titus, A.D. 80, near the Colosseum ; of
Trajan, some time in A.D. 98-117, also near the Colosseum-
of Sura, a friend of Trajan, on the Aventine ; of CommoduiS
A RESTORATION OP THE INTEBIOB
OP CABACALLA'S BATHS
This may represent the tepidariuzn.
Fountains, plunges, pools, and basin?
were conveniently distributed.
THE BATHS
reigned A.D. 180-193, on the Caelian; of Septimius
Serenas, AJ>. 193-211, on the Caelian; of Caracalla, in
A.r>. 216, south of the Palatine; of Alexander Severus, who
in A.D. 228 rebuilt the baths of Xero ; of Decius, in A.D 250,
on the Aventine ; of Diocletian, in A.D. 306, on the farther
A FRAGMENT OP THE BATHS OP DIOCLETIAN
This is the first prominent fragment of ancient Rome to be seen by the visitoi
emerging from the railway station.
Quirinal and Viminal; of Helena, mother of Constantine,
on the farther Esquiline near the present Church of Santa
Ooce ; of Constantine, A.D. 312-337, on the sloping end of
the Quirinal.
Most of these establishments were still in existence, and
many of them in use, when the last was built. The Baths
of Diocletian had a capacity of three thousand ; the Baths
360 LIVING ROME
of Caracalla, sixteen hundred. They were solidly built
in concrete faced with brick, and splendid with stucco and
marble veneering and decoration, with paneled vaultings
and ceilings in gilt and color, polished walls, and brilliant
floors in mosaic. Many were rich in sculptural pieces.
The Farnese Bull and the Farnese Hercules were among the
finds in the ruins of Caracalla's baths; the Laocoon was
discovered in the Baths of Trajan. Both these establish-
ments are still represented bj monster ruins, and many of the
others exist in considerable fragments. Nothing is more
familiar on the many sites of ancient Roman towns in remot-
est parts of Europe and Africa than the great heaps of ruined
concrete walls and vaults, long ago collapsed, that bring us
witness of the most universal and the least vicious luxury of
Roman civilization.
And yet these ruins of major establishments do not repre-
sent the whole truth. We are told that the generosity of
Agrippa in 33 B.C. provided for free bathing in a hundred
and seventy establishments in Rome. These places have
left no name, and there were others like them in every city,
large and small, A nameless village near Pliny's Laurentine
estate had three public baths.
There were also, in places widely scattered over the
Roman world, the curative baths that were visited prin-
cipally by those in search of health — the sulphur baths
still Tised at Bagni, near Tivoli ; the baths at Aquisgranum,
now Aix; at Aquae Aureliae, now Baden-Baden ; at Bath
in England. These do not properly concern us here.
The ancient baths were thus far more than the means of
cleanliness. They were that, but they were also hygienic,
pathological, recreational, athletic, social, intellectual, cul-
tural. They were the ancient city club, Y. M. C. A., golf,
community center, gymnasium, playground, amusement
THE BATHS
361
park, beauty parlor, business men's rendezvous, country
sojourn, and bathing beach. They were warm and comfort-
ing in winter ; in summer they were thronged with seekers
for relief from heat and fatigue. The modern Roman, in the
dog days goes in thirty minutes by huge electric trainloads to
the beach at Ostia, twenty miles away, cools himself in the
sea and toasts himself on the sands, meets friends, indulges
BATH RUINS AT CABTHAGE
One of the many giant remnants of the baths found everywhere in Roman territory,
mildly in the less wholesome diversions of the beach resort,
and returns to his home refreshed if not unf atigued in the
incomparable cool of the Roman summer evening. The
tired business man of ancient Rome was at least two hours
from the sea, but he had the baths at his door.
It remains to enliven our imagination of the Roman bath
by letting a Roman himself discuss the subject. Let us look
362 LIVING ROME
over the philosopher Seneca's shoulder as he writes, not
Daany years before his death in A.I>. 65, to his fnend Lucilius.
Directly and indirectly, he will tell us interesting things.
"Hang me if silence is as necessary as people believe to a man who
has shut himself away to study. Here I am, with all kinds of noises
sounding from every side. I am in lodgings right over a bath.
Imagine for yourself now every manner of noise that can be hate-
ful to the ear. When the more strenuous are going through their
exercises, swinging their hands heavy with weights of lead and
either putting lots of muscle into it or making believe they do, I
can hear their gruntings as they hold in and then let out their
breath, and then their wheezy and labored blowing. And when
it is my luck for the fellow to be one of the lazy sort who is
satisfied with just a nobody's rubbing down, I hear the smack of
the hand as it crashes on to his shoulders, varying in sound accord-
ing as it comes down flat or hollowed. But if one of your ball-
scorers happens along and begins to keep count of the balls, it's
the finishing touch. Then add the tough, and the thief caught
in the act, and the fellow who enjoys the sound of his own voice
in the bath ; and then add to them the fellows who jump into the
tank and hit the water with a mighty splash. Besides these,
whose voices, if nothing else, you can't object to, think of the
hair-plucker continually squeezing out his thin, scratchy voice
in order to get himself noticed, and never stopping his noise ex-
cept when he is jerking the hairs from someone's armpits and
making him, yell instead. And then there is the cake-seller and
his various cries, and the sausage man, and the pastryman, and
the whole tribe of vendors from the cookshops, everyone hawking
his wares in his own particular tune. . . . Yet I swear to you
that this racket bothers me no more than the waves of the sea or a
waterfall."
Again, Seneca writes of a visit to the country estate of
Scipio Africanus at Liternum in Campania, north of Naples.
The name Villa Literno has been given to a station in the
neighborhood on the new line from Borne to Naples via
Formia.
THE BATHS 363
"I am resting at the country house which once belonged to
Scipio Af ricanus himself. ... I have inspected the house, which
is constructed of hewn stone; the wall, which encloses a grove;
the towers also, buttressed out on both sides for the purpose of
defending the house; the well, concealed among buildings and
shrubbery, large enough to keep a whole army supplied ; and the
little bath, buried in darkness according to the old style, for our
ancestors did not think that one could have a hot bath except in
the dark. It was therefore a great pleasure to me to contrast
Scipio's ways with our own. Think, in this tiny recess the 'terror
of Carthage/ to whom Rome owes thanks that she has been cap-
tured but once, used to bathe a body wearied with work in the
fields ! For he was accustomed to keep himself busy and to culti-
vate the soil with his own hands, as the good old Romans were
wont to do. Beneath this dingy roof he stood; and this floor,
mean as it is, bore his weight.
"But who in these days could bear to bathe in such a fashion?
We think ourselves poor and mean if our walls are not resplendent
with large and costly mirrors ; if our marbles from Alexandria are
not set off by mosaics of Numidian stone, if their borders are not
faced over on all sides with difficult patterns, arranged in many
colors like paintings; if our vaulted ceilings are not buried in
glass ; if our swimming pools are not lined with Thasian marble,
once a rare and wonderful sight in any temple — pools into which
we let down our bodies after they have been drained weak by
abundant perspiration; and finally, if the water has not poured
from silver spigots.
"I have SD far been speaking of the ordinary bathing establish-
ments. What shall I say when I come to those of the freedmen?
What a vast number of statues, of columns that support nothing,
but are built for decoration, merely in order to spend money!
And what masses of water that fall crashing from level to level !
We have become so luxurious that we will have nothing but
precious stones to walk upon.
"In this bath of Scipio's there are tiny chinks — you cannot
call them windows — cut out of the stone wall in such a way as
to admit light without weakening the building ; nowadays, how-
ever, people regard baths as fit only for moths if they have not
been so arranged that they receive the sun all day long through
364 LIVING ROME
the widest of windows, if men cannot bathe and get a coat of tan
at the same time, and if they cannot look out from their bath tubs
over stretches of land and sea. So it goes; the establishments
which had drawn crowds and had won admiration when they were
first opened are avoided and put back in the category of vener-
able antiques as soon as luxury has worked out some new device,
to her own ultimate undoing.
"In the early days, however, there were few baths, and they
were not fitted out with any display. For why should men elab-
orately fit out that which costs a penny only, and was invented for
use, not merely for delight? The bathers of those days did not
have water poured over them, nor did it always run fresh as if from
a hot spring ; and they did not believe that it mattered at all how
perfectly pure was the water into which they were to leave their
dirt. t Ye gods, what a pleasure it was to enter those dim baths,
covered with a common sort of roof, knowing that therein your
hero Cato, as aedile, or Fabius Maximus, or one of the Cornelii,
had tempered the water with his own hand ! For this also used
to be the duty of the noblest aediles — to enter these places to
which the populace resorted, and to demand that they be cleaned
and warmed to a heat required by considerations of use and health,
not the heat that men have recently made fashionable, as great
as a conflagration — so much so, indeed, that a slave condemned
for some criminal offense now ought to be bathed alive ! It seems
to me that nowadays there is no difference between 'the bath is
on fire/ and 'the bath is warm.'
"How some persons nowadays condemn Scipio as a boor because
he did not let daylight into his perspiring-room through wide win-
dows, or because he did not roast in the strong sunlight and dawdle
about until he could stew in the hot water ! 'Poor fool/ they say,
* he did not know how to live ! He did not bathe in filtered water ;
it was often turbid, and after heavy rains almost muddy V But
it did not matter much to Scipio if he had to bathe in that way ;
he went there to wash off sweat, not ointment. And how do you
suppose certain persons will answer me? They will say : 'I don't
envy Scipio ; that was truly an exile's life — to put up with baths
like those/ Eriend, if you were wiser, you would know that
Scipio did not bathe every day. It is stated by those who have
reported to us the old-time ways of Borne that the Romans washed
THE BATHS 365
only their arms and legs daily — because those were the members
which gathered dirt in their daily toil — and bathed all over only
once a week. Here someone will retort : 'Yes; pretty dirty fel-
lows they evidently were ! How they must have smelled.* But
they smelled of the camp, the farm, and heroism. Now that
spick-and-span bathing establishments have been devised, men
are really fouler than of yore. What says Horatius Flaccus, when
he wishes to describe a scoundrel, one who is notorious for his
extreme luxury? He says, 'Buccillus smells of perfume ' "
XXXII
IN LIGHTER VEIN
We have been acquainting ourselves with what may be
called Roman amusements in the grand style. The theater,
the circus, the amphitheater, and the baths were four great
public institutions involving vast outlay and patronized bj
the citizenry in masses.
If we were to stop here, we should know less intimately
than is desirable the human side of the ancient Roman.
While all these amusements represent the use he made of his
leisure time, and while the drama and the diversions of the
baths did not quite so completely as amphitheater and
circus force the surrender of his own self to the self of the
crowd, all four were collective or mass amusements, and in
all four the individual was absorbed or at least obscured by
the multitude. If we are to know the Roman personally, we
must follow him away from the excitement of the crowd.
We must see what he does in smaller groups, in his family
and among his friends, and how he acts and what he enjoys
when by himself and choosing for himself. Was he a lively
person ? Would he have been a pleasant person to meet ?
This is a difficult undertaking. The last thing we are able
to appreciate in another race than our own, excepting
religion, is its play of spirit. The Romans are alien to us
not only in race but in space and time. Their painting is
almost entirely lost, and their sculpture is in fragments, and
art, besides, does not usually deal with life in its common
moments. Their literature was not so easily published as
366
370 LIVI>,G ROME
wealthy citizen and emperor, with shrubbery and fountains
and vendors and refreshment stands, and children darting
about in their play while their nurses and mothers sat with
their spinning and knitting. There was the Tiber, along
whose banks it was pleasant to walk, and there was the prom-
enade on the sunny embankment, agger} mentioned by
Horace, once the fortification of Servius Tullius crossing the
Esquiline. There were the pleasures of eating and drinking,
whether on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, or in its
room or little open-air garden, or at home with the family.
There was dining in a mend's garden under huge pine and
white poplar mingling their branches above the grass and
shrubbery and streamlets, or in splendid halls with mosaic
floors and painted walls and coffered ceilings and tall pillars
of the world's richest marbles. There were visits to the
villas or country houses, plain or magnificent according to
the owner's fortune or position. There were genial meetings
of the accidental sort, and all the pleasant contacts of a
people moving in the open air of mild winters and fervid
summers. There were window and balcony to lean from as
you talked with neighbors across the court or alley. You
came upon your friends in the evening sitting at their doors,
or walking in the street or public garden, at the running
water of the fountain or hydrant, filling the big bronze jars
to carry home on their heads, sitting at the games or the
play, riding in their carriages, doing their daily shopping,
hurrying to the baths, going their way to the office and the
day's business. You asked and were asked many times the
news.
Here we have come to a striking difference between
ancient and modern times. The ancient Roman had no
newspaper beyond the scant and scantily circulated acia
diurna, or daily Government news. He had no printing
IX LIGHTER VEIN
371
press, no daily papers, no magazines, no picture news, no
comic journals, no comic strips, no advertising worth the
mention. Books were published, and published in quantity,
but they were not in any targe quantity fiction, they were
not trifling, and they were not written for and not rsad by
I I . ^:
*'«i "fc. ,
tf 'I'
A MODEEN ROMAN PUBLIC GABDEN
The Laghetto of the Villa Borghese. The ancient gardens must be imagined
as equally charming.
the common man, and not by many women and girls.
There was a cultivated class which read and wrote, and the
proportion formed by those who read with real thoroughness
and wrote with distinction was probably greater than in our
own day of quantitative reading and writing ; but outside of
these there was no great population reading for news and
general information, culture, and entertainment. With the
372 LIVING ROME
vast majority, the tongue and the ear, and not the page,
were the medium of communication with the world of fact,
thought, and sentiment. The spoken word was all-impor-
tant in the average life, as indeed it continued to be until
a century ago, when the printed message really began to
reach the masses, and as it continues to a great extent to-day
in lands too poor, too wise, or too distrustful to attempt the
education of the masses-
Let it not be too hastily concluded, however, that the
ancient Roman dependence upon tongue and ear was a total
disadvantage, either for knowledge or happiness. The
Mediterranean lands are open-air countries, invite the con-
tact of man with man, and afford the maximum natural
encouragement of speech in public and private ; the person
who talks and listens much, and hears and expresses again
and again, is likely both to accumulate much practical knowl-
edge and to have many definite ideas ; and it requires nothing
prof ounder than a little observation to be convinced that the
human being is never better entertained than when he is
talking. To the eye at least, and probably in reality, the
happiest part of Rome to-day is the Trastevere, where the
printed page has little to do with life, and all the waking
minutes in the glowing Roman summer not given to work
are spent in walking and sitting and talking in the streets and
squares.
If we inquire next what minor diversions the Roman
engaged in, such as our cards and other social games, we
find little to note. There were the dice, of ivory, stone, or
wood ; there were tali, originally the knuckle or ankle bones
of sheep or goats, but made too of ivory and other material,
which served the children as jaekstones and were used also
like dice ; there were flipping and matching of coins ; there
was gambling by means of these games and others, and there
IN LIGHTER VEIN 373
were the usual more or less unsuccessful attempts of law to
stop it. There were no card parties, though it seems im-
possible that there were no card games ; there were, so far
as can be known, no boy-and-girl or men-and-women parties,
no teas, no smokers, no social dancing of our sort. The
CHILDREN'S GAMES IN A SARCOPHAGUS BELIEF
Three games are shown : at the left, a " marble " game with nuts ; in the center,
two boys strike the holder of a rope until he catches them ; at the right, nuts or
balls are rolled down an incline.
dancing of antiquity, so far as amusement was concerned,
was likely to be either the simple folk-dancing of the villagers
or the professional dancing of the stage. In the latter, no
citizen could participate without loss of respect. With the
richer classes, the formal dinner seems to have occupied the
place of all these ; with the less wealthy and the poor, less
formal dinners and informal family gatherings. With the
middle and lower classes in general, there was no doubt
frequent exchange of visits. The modern Roman fondness
for little dining excursions to simple garden restaurants out-
side the city gates is not unlikely to have existed in ancient
times.
In the realm of physical diversion, the differences are
somewhat less pronounced, and are quite as easily explained.
374 LIVING ROME
The Roman children indeed seem to have been like other
children, though they do not figure largely in Roman
literature, and but slightly in the arts of painting and
sculpture. They had their pets and played with them, such
as dogs, birds, donkeys. The cat seems not to have been
common. They played circus racing, and soldiers, and no
doubt gladiators. They played with jackstones ; they played
leapfrog and blindman's buff; they must have played
school : they must have had dolls and toys, though not much
remains to show it ; they rolled the hoop. They probably
counted out, and they had their sing-songs, such as the one
we suspect that Horace alludes to —
Rex ens si recte fades,
Si non fades non ens.
"King you'll be if you play fair,
Never a king if you don't play fair."
They ran races and wrestled and tumbled and shouted and
screamed to gratify their restless, growing little bodies.
The older brothers and the fathers of the little Romans,
however, engaged in bodily exercise as the result of reason
rather than physical joy or the spirit of sportsmanship. In
the times of the citizen-soldier, being fit for the ranks meant
all the physical exercise a man needed or had time for.
Under the Empire, if he was not of an occupation requiring
physical effort, his physical fitness depended much on his
pride in being master of the manly and soldierly arts, and, if
not on that, on the desire to keep in health. There was the
Campus Martius, the soldiers' field and playground through
the centuries, there was the Tiber, there were tne gardens,
and there were the baths. He could swim in the Tiber, and
in the Campus he could ride, run and jump, throw the spear
and discus, wrestle and box, play handball and three-
IN LIGHTER VEIX
375
cornered catch, and bowl. He could do, and probably did,
most of these by preference in the baths, where it was more
convenient. Possibly some of the gardens were equipped in
a small way. Many went hunting or fishing. The wild
boar was taken by beating the woods with dogs and driving
him into a strong net or killing him with the spear. Babbits
were snared, and birds taken by snares or birdlime. Pliny
the Younger writes of taking his tablets with him on a hunt-
WlLD BOAE AND DOGS
The boar is attempting the side stroke which the tusk made so effective*
ing excursion, and writing as he sat waiting at the net for the
boar to come. Fishhooks are among the interesting finds in
Pompeii.
But we hear of no cross-country runs, no ball with bats, no
football, no championship teams, no Marathons, no records
made or broken, no great meets and glorifications. For
rivalry and great excitements, there were the circus and the
amphitheater, and the boxers with loaded gloves. Athletics
376
LIVING ROME
proper were a means to an end. Cicero in the essay On Old
Age expresses their spirit: "We must have regard for
health; we must engage in moderate exercise; we must
take enough food and drink to replenish our powers, not to
weigh them down. And we must do not only what we can
for the body, but much more for the mind and soul." A
BOXERS WITH THE CAEaTUS, OB GLOVES
rather sensible ideal, and entertained to-day by many people
outside the college atmosphere or beyond the college age.
Yet the difference between ancient Rome and twentieth-
century America as regards athletics is accidental, not
fundamental. If racing and boxing to-day filled as great a
place in our national life as they did in the life of Rome,
athletics with us would take the same modest place as it did
with them.
One more factor in the diversions of the Roman should be
considered. This is the enjoyment he got from his own
thoughts as he went about his occupation or moved among
his fellows or sat apart in contemplation of them. The man
IN LIGHTER VEIN 377
who is not consciously both a spectator and a part of the
comedie humaine, who never notices the absurdities of men's
behavior as they spend themselves in the racing and chasing
and mining and perspiration of their little lives, is in a poor
way for real diversion. It is this bustling type, without
resources in itself and always greatly in the majority, that
has for all time made the more brutal sports and the grosser
entertainments the paying thing. It has also served as a
background to bring into relief the charm of the delicate wit
and humor which mark refinement and -are its most dis-
tinctive quality.
Wit is capacity for the perception of the truth, the power
to see accurately and immediately the relationships of
things. The fit expression of wit must be brief, rapid, and
pleasing. Humor, at least in its most frequent aspect, is
that part of wit which is employed in the perception of the
incongruous, the droll, the absurd, the surprising. The
expression of humor as well as of wit will be neat, but it will
be also leisurely and genial. Without further definition or
distinction, let us try to appreciate the part they piayed in
the lighter vein of Roman life.
First, it must be noted that the humor of the exaggerated,
grotesque, and explosive kind which is known to the world as
American has left scant traces in Roman literature and art.
The farcical absurdities and boisterous expression of Plautus,
in his Braggart Soldier, in the twin Menaechmi, in Amphit-
ruo and Sosia returning home and coming upon themselves
in Jove and Mercury disguised as another Amphitruo and
Sosia ; the social atrocities of the newly rich Trimalchio ;
the Lilliputian pigmies and monkeys and other grotesqueries
on the walls of Pompeii — show that the broad and loud
type, as might be expected, was not unknown ; but we can
hardly believe it thrived as it does with us to-day. It must
378 LIVING ROME
be remembered that the ancient world was less fluid than
ours, that theie were no "columns" and that consequently
the circulation of the comic and the education of the public
in its ways were less pronounced. It should be noted, too,
tliat the Eurcpean humor of to-day is less exuberant than
the American, and because of conditions which were present
also in ancient times. To have our exaggerated willingness to
laugh and to start a laugh requires a well-fed body and a
mind that is free from apprehension and full of confidence ;
and these are possible only when there is plenty of space
for freedom of movement and expansion, and plenty of this
world's goods to win. Europe has not and never had, even
in the times of Roman expansion, so grea; an abundance and
so nearly a universal possession of prosperity.
It is time to illustrate by example the quieter sort of
humor to be found here and there in the ancient Roman page ,
It must be remembered that in transfer from language to
language, or culture to culture, or period to period, the
flavor of bon mot and jest always loses much of the piquancy
it had as it left the lips of its inventor. It is not so much the
substance of what is preserved that is important as the
indication it affords of the philosophic, witty, and genial
strain in character which made life a richer thing,
In a long passage in De Oratore on the employment of wit
and humor by the orator, Cicero relates the anecdote of
Scipio Nasica calling on the poet Ennius.
"Having gone to see the poet Ennius, and being told by the serv-
ant girl as he asked for him at the door that he was not in, Nasica
«aw that she had said so at the bidding of her master, and that
he really was in the house. A few days afterward, when Ennius
had come to Nasica's house and was asking for him from the door-
way, Nasica called out that he was not at home. Then said
Ennius, 'What! don't I recognize your voice?' Whereupon
Nasica: 'Aren't you the shameless man! When I came asking
ii\ LIGHTER VEIN 379
for you, I took your servant girl's word for yoiir not being in, and
won't you take mine when I tell you myself? ' "
In his professional life, Cicero was noted for the quickness
and sharpness of his tongue, and Plutarch says that "by
giving it too free exercise he hurt the feelings of many and
gained the reputation of being malicious." His great
admirer Quintilian also thinks he jested too easily. The
orator himself declares that "in our joking we should suffer
only the light of an upright nature to shine forth"; but
confesses that "for men who are witty and sharp of tongue
it is extremely difficult to hold back the bright sayings that
come into their minds." After his death a collection of his
witticisms in three books was published.
But Quintilian and Plutarch are thinking of the flashing
rapier of Cicero's wit, of his piercing and stinging statements
of unpleasant truth, and not of the genial drolleries which
abound in his letters. He writes Marius, "So if you have
made any appointment with Madame Gout, see that you
put it off to another day." He rallies his young lawyer
friend Trebatius, who is in the wilds of Gaul, where of course
there are no lawyers worth mention : "I gather that our
friend Caesar considers you a very fine lawyer. You ought
to congratulate yourself on having reached a place where
you pass for a man of some capacity. If you had gone
to Britain too, there would surely have been in all that big
island no one more expert than yourself." He has also his
jesting messages for little Attica, his friend's daughter.
To take another type, there is Vespasian, the bluff old
soldier born in the Sabine mountains and become emperor.
"Not only at dinner but on aJI other occasions he was most
affable, and he turned off many matters with a jest. When an
ex-consul called Floras called his attention to the fact that the
proper pronunciation for 'wagons' was plaustra rather than
380
LIVING ROME
plostra, he greeted him next day as 'Flaurus.' On the report of a
deputation that a colossal statue of great cost had been voted him
at public expense, he demanded to have it set up at once, and,
holding out his open hand, said that the base was ready. He did
net cease his jokes even when in
apprehension of death and in ex-
treme danger. And as death drew
near, he said: 'Woe's me!
Methinks I'm turning into a
god."'
Still another t ype is to be seen
in the Younger Pliny, whose
humor is likely to be quite of
the self-conscious and artificial
type, but whose liking for the
country and its solitudes we
enjoy.
"You will laugh," he writes,
after a hunting trip, "and laugh
you may. I, really I myself, your
friend, have taken three wild
boars and mighty fine ones too.
'Yourself?7 you say. Myself;
and yet without altogether giving up my inert and inactive ways.
The way I did was to sit down near the nets, not with hunting
spear or lance at my side, but with pencil and notebook; and
to cogitate and write down my thoughts, so that I should bring
back full tablets even if empty hands. Really, a manner of study
not to be despised. It is wonderful how being bodily active and
moving about arouses the mind. In addition, the wood on every
side and the solitude and the very silence that must be observed
when you engage in the hunt are great stimulations to thought.
Hereafter, when you go out, you may use me as a precedent and
take a notebook with you the same as knapsack and flask. You
will find that Minerva roams the woods quite as much as
Diana."
THE EMPEROR VESPASIAN
The drapery is in colored marble,
hardly in keeping -with the counte-
nance, which is that of a shrewd and
matter-of-fact person.
IX LIGHTER VEIN 381
But it is while with Horace that we feel most deeply con-
vinced of the presence in ancient Rome of many a gentle
spirit that found in itself and in the company of congenial
friends abundant sources of entertainment. He loiters on
the Sacred Way, musing on some trifle and all absorbed in it.
He goes about among humble folk of the city, and asks them
how their business is faring. He sits in the shade of the
vines in his garden with his glass of wine. He stands in the
door of the Sabine villa and gratefully thinks of his happiness.
He mingles with the villagers in their holiday enjoyments.
He sits in the shade behind a crumbling rustic sanctuary and
writes to a friend that his happiness lacks nothing but the
presence of that friend. He likes to look at the landscape,
and he likes to look at life. He sees the absurdities and
inconsistencies of the struggle for happiness. He sees men
enter into real slaveries for the sake of imagined liberties.
He enjoys the matchless humor of the simple little stories
that have proved their worth and his taste by retaining their
charm two thousand years — the country mouse and the
town mouse, the weasel and the greedy fox caught in the bin,
the rustic sitting and waiting for the river to get by. He
knows that worry and fear axe futile, and wastes no time in
rebellion against the inevitable. He realizes that modest
living and liberty are better than the lot of the wealthy who
are never alone and never free. His prayer is not for more
possessions, but for the sound body and sane mind that will
insure the enjoyment of what he has :
"Son of Latona, hear my vow !
Apollo, grant my prayer !
Health to enjoy the blessings sent
From heaven ; * mind unclouded, strong ;
A cheerful heart ; a wise content ;
An honored age ; and song."
382 LIVING ROME
There were others as well as Horace who looked on life in
this way and found it good. They were a minority, but
they not less than the rich who bought their pleasures and
the poor in spirit who looked for theirs to noise aod excite-
toent should be counted as a part of Laving Rome.
XXXIII
SATIRE AND ITS TARGETS
The word satura, later written satira, is Roman, and satire
itself, according to Quintilian, scholar, teacher, critic, and
author, was "entirely our own." When it first comes into
sight, from the pen of Ennius, "the father of Roman poetry,"
it was a pleasant medley or entertainment in varied meters,
and perhaps not different enough from a similar product by
the Greek Menippus to be called original.
Satire at Rome soon began to undergo a development, how-
ever. By the time of Lucilius, about 150 B.C., its pleasant
medley had changed in tone, and included attack by name
on the political enemies of his patrons, the Scipios, and on
other persons, high and low, who represented the vices of the
city in general ; so that Horace says that he
"Assailed the lords and those of humbler birth,
Kind to worth only and the friends of worth."
Horace extended the range of satire to society in general,
made it more unified and less rambling and crude in both
substance and form, and established its character as a
criticism of life, penetrating but genial and tolerant,
Horace's imitator, Persius, A.D. 34-62, less gentle than his
master, increased the sharpness of its tone, and Juvenal,
A.D. 60-140, with his bitter and sweeping denunciation of the
faults of his time, gave to it finally the character by which it
has ever since been known. In its end, if not in its begin-
ning, it was quite truly all Roman.
383
38* LIVING ROME
The development of satire in this manner from mere enter-
tainment and comment on life to scolding condemnation was
at the same time the expression of the development of Roman
society from the comparative simplicity and homogeneity of
an Italian capital to the complexity and sophistication of a
world capital. We have been engaged in describing and
commenting on the main features of this living capital. It
will help our appreciation of its life if we pause to hear what
satire had to say in criticism of it, and thus learn what the
ancient Romans thought of themselves.
Of Ennius, living through the strenuous times of the
Second Punic War and the conquest of the East, it may be
said that he felt no call to satire in the usual sense. Even
had the temper of the poet been of the caustic sort, the
heroisms of Rome and the promise of the expanding State
were too great to leave room for the discouragement and
pessimism that form the basis for satire. With Lucilius,
180-105 B.C., living to see new perils to the State in the rise
of party enmities, it must be suspected that the satirical
indignation was due less to moral concern thau to the per-
sonal feeling of an old soldier loyal to the Scipios against
a city growing radical and unappreciative of its men of worth.
In Horace, we have the more universal though the gentler
critic. Yet, even in Horace's time, men are living in the
light of hope. Rome is now the Eternal, the City of Destiny,
"The great round of the ages is beginning anew." The
world has crashed into fragments, but the Augustans are
gathering them up, and something greater than ever is to be.
The poet, looking to the new r6gime and actively committed
to it, has his moments of impatience and even of pessimism,
when he feels that "the age of our sires, worse than our
grandsires, has begotten us, who will soon bring forth a
generation still more vicious" ; but on the whole his tone
SATIRE AND ITS TARGETS
385
Is that of the man who knows the crimes of mankind but can
hfford to be amused by its follies, and even to plead for
lenient judgment on them. Horace is an essayist rathei
than a satirist, and rightly calls his satires and epistles ser-
manes, "talks," or causenes. The sins he "smilingly tells the
truth77 about are lack of charity, going to extremes, running
f oo hard in the race for wealth, entertaining false ambitions,
r
I*
MAEBLE PORTRAITS OF ROMANS
inconsistency, dining in bad taste, neglecting philosophy and
misjudging values, sacrificing independence, being discon-
tented. The only heinous immorality he attacks at length
and by itself is legacy-hunting, and even here the indignation
of the satirist is tempered for both writer and reader by the
pleasure of skillful parody.
By the time of Juvenal7s writing, however, in the reigns of
tbp; Emperors Trajan, A.D. 98-117, and Hadrian, A.D. 117-138,
though the eternity and the destiny of Rome were believed
in still, belief in the "great round of the ages" and what it
would do had suffered severe shocks. Sane Augustus had
been succeeded by gloomy and suspicious Tiberius, mad
Caligula and silly Claudius had followed, spoiled and willful
Nero had terrorized, three emperors had come and gone by
386 LIVING ROME
violent means in the single year of A.D. 68-69, and wholesome
Vespasian and Titus had given place to tyrannical Domitian.
The evils of personal rule and hereditary succession had been
too clearly demonstrated for men longer to have perfect
faith in autocratic government. The growth in popula-
tion from foreign sources, the dying out of the old families
that had built the State, and the filling of their places
by the newly enriched, the newly free, and the newly
Roman, had changed the blood and lessened the unity of the
clden times. The increase of wealth and the multiplication
of opportunity, together with loss of liberty and removal of
civic obligation, had made easy the growth of selfishness and
vice and slavishness. There were the enormously rich, re-
strained by no ideal and fearful of only the arrogant above
them. There were the hundreds of thousands of idle or
semi-idle fed and amused by the rich and the court, a
degraded yet arrogant mob whose loyalty waxed or waned
with the coming and going of "bread and games." What
wonder that in this weltering age the satirist was not a
Horace looking on amused and unalarmed, but a Juvenal
seeing red with wrath, and waiting only for the death of the
tyrant to liberate his pen?
But let us look at the targets at which Juvenal a,irns his
shafts. There is the wealthy and vulgar upstart who was
le^ently a barber or slave, and now wears Tyrian purple,
* ' whilst on his sweating finger he airs a ring of gold in summer,
unable to endure the weight of a heavier gem." Wealth is
now a deity. And yet, when was avarice more greedy?
Men gamble now, not from purses, but with whole treasure
chests. They will prostitute themselves to the ugliest vices
for money, sacrificing all self-respect. There are the immoral
aad the criminal who owe immunity to the use of bribes.
There are the effeminate and unnatural. There is the
SATIRE AND ITS TARGETS 387
husband who will profit by his wife's disgrace. There are
the gluttons eating and drinking to their ruin. There are the
arrogant indulging in every luxury and every whim, and
the obsequious who sell their liberty for the slightest favor.
There are those who have not only thrown away their
dignity and accept the dole, but will even crowd and cheat at
its distribution. There are those accepting the dinners of
insolent patrons who serve themselves with the best and their
guests with the cheapest. There are the sons of the vener-
able families of Rome degrading with every meanness the
names they bear. There is the forger boldly trusting the
fruits of his crime to give him respectability. There are the
unterrified poisoners and other plotters against life ; in these
days, if one is to be noticed, he must be a criminal in the
grand style. There is the foreigner, above all the hungry
Greek, with his cleverness and hypocritical servility, on
every hand supplanting the natives of Rome.
And there is woman — the woman who spends her hus-
band's money and lives with "him as if she were only his
neighbor ; the adulterous woman, so bold and so numerous
that there is no such thing as purity in the home; the
woman heartlessly cruel to her slaves, who has them whipped
if a curl of her hair is out of place, and during their bloody
flogging sits and reads the day's news ; the woman intoler-
ably wealthy, who never gives a thought to the cost of her
perverted pleasures, as if money were forever welling up
afresh from the exhausted strong-box ; the woman fanatical
over Isis or the Great Mother and enriching their sly and
calculating priests ; the woman gone crazy over the fortune-
tellers, who will not go for a drive or salve a sore eye without
first consulting the horoscope ; the woman who goes in for
music and is forever fingering instruments; the mannish
woman who visits the baths by night, uses the gymnasium,
388
LIVIXG ROME
takes cocktails for her appetite, and eats and drinks herself
sick ; the intellectual woman, who sits down to dinner and
straight begins to discourse on Virgil and Dido, comparing
Homer and the Aeneid, correcting her friends' grammar, and
plying her tongue with such speed and loudness that no
i^fe
^i^W^^pr
PORTRAITS OF ROMAN WOMEN
lawyer or auctioneer, or even another woman, can get in a
word ; the new woman, who rushes about attending men's
meetings and knows what is going on all over the world and
fcells it to everyone she meets at the street corners; the
jroman crazy over beautification, with high heels, bedaubed
face, and tiers and stories piled one upon another on her head.
"She ridiculously puffs out and disfigures her face with much
dough ; she reeks of rich Poppaean cosmetics which stick to the
lips of her unfortunate husband. It is for her lovers that she buys
all the perfumes the slender Indians send to us. In good time she
SATIRE AND ITS TARGETS 389
removes the first coatings, discloses her face, and begins to be
recognizable. Then she bathes her skin in the famous milk from
the she-asses which she would take with her if she were exiled and
sent to the North Pole. But a face plastered over and treated with
all these beauty preparations, shall we call it a face or a sore?"
It is not only the ways of the Romans that irritate Juvenal,
but the ways of the city itself. The famous Third Satire,
whose imitation in his poem London brought Samuel Johnson
into prominence at twenty-nine, is one of the most vivid
bits of realism in literature. Let us look at parts of it in
the attractive old-fashioned translation of William Gifford.
The poet's disgusted friend is bidding farewell to him and to
Rome.
"Grieved though I am to see the man depart,
Who long has shared, and still must share, my heart,
Yet (when I call my better judgment home)
I praise his purpose ; to retire from Rome,
And give, on Cumae's solitary coast,
The Sibyl — one inhabitant to boast !
"Full on the road to Baiae, Cumae lies,
And many a sweet retreat her shore supplies —
Though I prefer ev'n Prochyta's bare strand
To the Subura : — for, what desert land,
What wild, uncultured spot, can more affright,
Than fires, wide blazing through the gloom of night,
Houses, with ceaseless ruin, thundering down,
And all the horrors of this hateful town?
Where poets, while the dog-star glows, rehearse,
To gasping multitudes, their barbarous verse ! . . „
"Umbritius here his sullen silence broke,
And turned on Rome, indignant, as he spoke.
Since virtue droops, he cried, without regard,
And honest toil scarce hopes a poor reward ;
Since every morrow sees my means decay,
And still makes less the little of t>day ;
390 LIVIXG ROME
I go, where Daedalus, as poets sing,
First checked his flight, and closed his weary wing. . .
"But why, my friend, should I at Rome remain?
I cannot teach my stubborn lips to feign ;
Nor, when I hear a great man's verses, smile,
And beg a copy, if I think them vile. . . -
"The nation, by the great, admired, carest,
And hated, shunned by me, above the rest,
No longer, now, restrained by wounded pride,
I haste to show, (nor thou my wa.nnth deride,)
I cannot rule my spleen, and calmly see,
A Grecian capital, in Italy !
Grecian? 0, no ! with this vast sewer compared,
The dregs of Greece are scarcely worth regard :
Long since, the stream that wanton Syria laves
Has disembogued its filLh in Tiber's waves,
Its language, arts ; overwhelmed us with the scum
Of Antioch's streets, its minstrel, harp, and drum. . ,
A flattering, cringing, treacherous, artful race,
Of torrent tongue, and never-blushing face ;
A Protean tribe, one knows not what to call,
Which shifts to every form, and shines in all :
Grammarian, painter, augur, rhetorician,
Rope-dancer, conjurer, fiddler, and physician,
All trades his own, your hungry Greekling counts ;
And bid him mount the sky, — the sky he mounts ! . „
Greece is a theater, where all are players.
For lo ! their patron smiles, — they burst with mirth ;
He weeps7 — they droop, the saddest souls on earth ;
He calls for fire, — they court the mantle's heat ;
"Pis warm, he cries, — and they dissolve in sweat.
Hi-matched I — secure of victory they start,
Who, taught from youth to play a borrowed part,
Can, with a glance, the rising passion trace,
And mould their own, to suit their patron's face ;
At deeds of shame their hands admiring raise,
And mad debauchery's worst excesses praise. . . .
SATIRE AND ITS TARGETS
"Who fears the crash of houses, in retreat?
At simple Gabii, bleak Praeneste's seat,
Vblsinium's craggy heights, embowered in wood,
Or Tibur, beetling o'er prone Anio's flood?
391
CRUMBLING ROME
Part of this modern house suddenly fell away.
which support the rest.
The props may be seen
While half the city here by shores is staid,
And feeble cramps, that lend a treacherous aid :
For thus the stewards patch the riven wall,
Thus prop the mansion, tottering to its fall ;
Then bid the tenant court secure repose,
While the pile nods to every blast that blows.
"O ! may I live where no such fears molest.
No midnight fires burst on my hour of rest !
392 LIVING ROME
For here 'tis terror all ; midst the loud cry
Of * Water ! water ! ' the scared neighbors fly,
With all their haste can seize — the flames aspire,
And the third floor is wrapt in smoke and fire,
While you, unconscious, doze : Up, ho ! and know,
The impetuous blaze which spreads dismay below,
By swift degrees will reach the aerial cell,
Where, crouching, underneath the tiles you dwell,
Where your tame doves their golden couplets rear,
And you could no mischance, but drowning, fear ! . c *
"Flushed with a mass of indigested food,
Which clogs the stomach and inflames the blood,
What crowds, with watching wearied and o'erprest.
Curse the slow hours, and die for want of rest !
For who can hope his languid lids to close,
Where brawling taverns banish all repose?
Sleep, to the rich alone, his visits pays :
And hence the seeds of many a dire disease.
The carts loud rumbling through the narrow way,
The drivers' clamors at each casual stay,
From drowsy Dnisus would his slumber take.
And keep the calves of Proteus broad awake !
"If business call, obsequious crowds divide,
While o'er their heads the rich securely ride,
By tall Illyrians borne, and read, or write,
Or (should the early hour to rest invite),
Close the soft litter, and enjoy the night.
Yet reach they first the goal ; while, by the throng
Elbowed and jostled, scarce we creep along ;
Sharp strokes from poles, tubs, rafters doomed to fed. J
And plastered o'er with mud, from head to heel :
While the rude soldier gores us as he goes,
Or marks, in blood, his progress on our toes.
"See, from the Dole, a vast tumultuous throng,
Each followed by his kitchen, pours along !
SATIRE AND ITS TARGETS 393
Huge pans, which Corbulo could scarce uprear-
With steady neck a puny slave must bear,
And, lest amid the way the flames expire,
Glide nimbly on, and gliding, fan the fire. . . .
"Pass we these fearful dangers, and survey
What other evils threat our nightly way.
And first, behold the mansion's towering size,
Where floors on floors to the tenth story rise ;
Whence heedless garreteers their potsherds throw,
And crush the unwary wretch that walks below !
Clattering the storm descends from heights unknown,,
Ploughs up the street, and wounds the flinty stone !
7Tis madness, dire improvidence of ill,
To sup abroad, before you sign your will ;
Since fate in ambush lies, and marks his prey,
From every wakeful window in the way :
Pray, then, — and count your humble prayer well sped;
If pots be only — emptied on your head.
" The drunken bully, ere his man be slain,
Frets through the night, and courts repose in vain;
And while the thirst of blood his bosom burns,
From side to side, in restless anguish, turns. . . -
There are, who murder as an opiate take,
And only when no brawls await them wake :
Yet even these heroes, flushed with youth and wine.
All contest with the purple robe decline ;
Securely give the lengthened train to pass,
The sun-bright flambeaux, and the lamps of brass.
Me, whom the moon, or candle's paler gleam,
Whose wick I husband to the last extreme,
Guides through the gloom, he braves, devoid of fear.
The prelude to our doughty quarrel hear,
If that be deemed a quarrel, where, heaven knows,
He only gives, and I receive, the blows !
Across my path he strides, and bids me stand i
I bow, obseauious to the dread command ;
394 LIVING ROME
What else remains, where madness, rage, combine
With youth, and strength superior far to mine?
4 Whence come you, rogue?' he cries; ' whose beans to-night
Have stuffed you thus? what cobbler clubbed his mite,
For leeks and sheep's-head porridge ? Dumb ! quite dumb !
Speak, or be kicked. — Yet, once again ! Your home ?
Where shall I find you? At what beggar's stand
(Temple, or bridge) whimpering with outstretched hand? '
"Whether I strive some humble plea to frame,
Or steal in silence by, 'tis just the same ;
I'm beaten first, then dragged in rage away;
Bound to the peace, or punished for the fray ! . . .
"Nor this the worst ; for when deep midnight reigns,
And bolts secure our doors, and massy chains,
When noisy inns a transient silence keep,
And harassed nature woos the balm of sleep,
Then, thieves and murderers ply their dreadful trade ;
With stealthy steps our secret couch invade : —
Roused from the treacherous calm, aghast we start,
And the fleshed sword — is buried in our heart !
Hither from bogs, from rocks, and caves pursued
(The Pontine marsh, and Gallinarian wood,)
The dark assassins flock, as to their home,
And fill with dire alarm the streets of Rome. . . .
"O ! happy were our sires, estranged from crimes ;
And happy, happy, were the good old times;
Which saw, beneath their kings', their tribunes' reign,
One cell the nation's criminals contain!"
Such are the targets of Juvenal's satire. The attentive
reader will see among the follies and vices and crimes which
aroused his indignation many that are still familiar. Re-
flecting on their presence among us, knowing how many of
them on closer acquaintance in their setting are found to
be less terrible than they seemed, he will wisely conclude
that in ancient Roman society also the good and evil were
mingled, and that, much of the evil was less evil than it looks.
XXXIV
A DINNER WITH THE NEWLY RICH
Juvenal angrily lays the lash on offenders of every kind,
and never smiles. The author of the Satyricon} perhaps
the Petronius whose suicide by order of Nero is described
by Tacitus, is a laughing satirist. What remains of its
sixteen books is largely composed of the story of an incred-
ibly absurd dinner given at his home in Cumae by Trimal-
chio, a newly rich and ignorant but self-satisfied freedman.
The whole work was a picaresque novel, or romance of
roguery, in which were related the variegated experiences
of one Agamemnon, a teacher of rhetoric, Giton, a boy,
and two freedmen called Ascyltus and Encolpius, as they
went an adventurous way from Marseilles to Croton in
southern Italy. The following abridgment contains about
one fifth the story of the dinner.
TBIMALCHIO'S DINXBB
"The third day had come. A good dinner was promised. But
we were bruised and sore. Escape was better even than rest. We
were making some melancholy plans for avoiding the coming storm,
when one of Agamemnon's servants came up as we stood hesitat-
ing and said: 'Do you not know at whose house it is to-day?
Trimalchio, a very rich man, who has a clock and a uniformed
trumpeter in his dining room, to keep telling him how much of
his life is lost and gone.' We forgot our troubles and hurried into
our clothes, and told Giton, who till now had been waiting on us
very willingly, to follow us to the baths. We began to take a sfcroD
395
696
LIVING ROME
in evening dress to pass the time, or rather to joke and mix with the
groups of players, when all at once we saw a bald old man in a
reddish shirt playing at ball with some long-haired boys. It was
not the boys that attracted our notice, though they deserved it,
but the old gentleman, who was in his house shoes, busily en-
gaged with a green ball. He never picked it up if it touched the
ground. A slave
stood by with a
bagful and sup-
plied them to the
players. . . .
"At last then
we sat down, and
boys from Alexan-
dria poured water
cooled with snow
over our hands.
Others followed
and knelt down at
MAKBLE POKTBAITS OP ROMANS our feet, and pro-
ceeded with great
skill to pare our hang nails. Even this unpleasant duty did not
silence them, but they kept singing at their work. I wanted to
find out whether the whole household could sing, so I asked for
a drink. A ready slave repeated my order in a chant not less
shrill. They all did the same if they were asked to hand anything.
It was more like an actor's dance than a gentleman's dining room.
But some rich and tasty whets for the appetite were brought on;
for everyone had now sat down except Trimalchio, who had the
first place kept for him in the new style. A donkey in Corin-
thian bronze stood on the side-board, with panniers holding
oEves, white in one side, black in the other. Two dishes hid the
donkey; Trimalcbio's name and their weight in silver was en-
graved on their edges. There were also dormice rolled in honey
and poppy-seed, and supported on little bridges soldered to the
plate. Then there were hot sausages laid on a silver grill, and
under the grill damsons and seeds of pomegranate.
"While we were engaged with these delicacies, Trimalchio was
conducted in to the sound of music, propped on the tiniest of
A DINNER WITH THE NEWLY RICH 397
pillows. A laugh escaped the unwary. His head was shaven and
peered out of- a scarlet cloak, and over the heavy clothes on his
neck he had put on a napkin with a broad stripe and fringes hang-
ing from it all round. On the little finger of his left hand he had
an enormous gilt ring, and on the top joint of the next finger a
smaller ring which appeared to me to be entirely gold, but was
really set all round with iron cut out in little stars. Not content
with this display of wealth, he bared his right arm, where a golden
bracelet shone, and an ivory bangle clasped with a plate of bright
metal. Then he said, as he picked his teeth with a silver quill :
'It was not convenient for me to come to dinner yet, my friends,
but I gave up all my own pleasure ; I did not like to stay away any
longer and keep you waiting. But you will not mind if I finish
my game?7 A boy followed him, with a table of terebinth wood
and crystal pieces, and I noticed the prettiest thing possible.
Instead of black and white counters they used gold and silver coins.
Trimalchio kept passing every kind of remark as he played, and
we were still busy with the hors d'oeuvres, when a tray was brought
in with a basket on it, in which there was a hen made of wood,
spreading out her wings as they do when they are sitting. The
music grew loud : two slaves at once came up and began to hunt
in the straw. Peahen's eggs were pulled out and handed to the
guests. Trimalchio turned his head to look, and said: 'I gave
orders, my friends, that peahen's eggs should be put under a com-
mon hen. And upon my oath I am afraid they are hard-set by
now. But we will try whether they are still fresh enough to suck.'
We took our spoons, half-a-pound in weight at least, and hammered
at the eggs, which were balls of fine meal. I was on the point of
throwing away my portion. I thought a peachick had already
formed. But hearing a practised diner say, 'What treasure have
we here?7 I poked through the shell with my finger, and found a
fat becafioo rolled up in spiced yolk of egg. . . .
"As we drank and admired each luxury in detail, a slave brought
in a silver skeleton, made so that its limbs and spine could be moved
and bent in every direction. He put it down once or twice on the
table so that the supple joints showed several attitudes, and
Trimalchio said appropriately : 'Alas for us poor mortals, all that
poor man is is nothing. So we shall all be, after the world below
takes us away. Let us live then while it goes well with us.'
398 LIVING ROME
"After we had praised this outburst a dish followed, not at all
of the size we expected; but its novelty drew every eye to it.
There was a round plate with the twelve signs of the Zodiac set
in order, and on each one the artist had laid some food fit and
proper to the symbol ; over the Ram rams'-head pease, a piece of
beef on the Bull, kidneys over the Twins, over the Crab a crown,
an African fig over the Lion, a barren sow's paunch over Virgo,
over Libra a pair of scales with a muffin on one side and a cake on
the other, over Scorpio a small sea-fish, over Sagittarius a bull's-
eye, over Capricornus a lobster, over Aquarius a goose, over Pisces
two mullets. In the middle lay a honeycomb on a sod of turf
with the green grass on it. An Egyptian boy took bread round
in a silver chafing-dish. . . .
"Trimalchio himself too ground out a tune from the musical
comedy Asafoetida in a most hideous voice. We came to such
an evil entertainment rather depressed. 'Now,' said Trimalchio,
'let us have dinner. This is sauce for the dinner,' As he spoke,
four dancers ran up in time with the music and took off the top
part of the dish. Then we saw in the well of it fat fowls and sow's
bellies, and in the middle a hare got up with wings to look like
Pegasus. Four figures of Marsyas at the corners of the dish also
caught the eye ; they let a spiced sauce run from their wine-skins
over the fishes, which swam about in a kind of tide-race. We all
took up the clapping which the slaves started, and attacked these
delicacies with hearty laughter. Trimalchio was delighted with
the trick he had played us, and said, 'Now, Carver.' The man
came up at once, and making flourishes in time with the music
pulled the dish to pieces ; you would have said that a gladiator in
a chariot was fighting to the accompaniment of a water-organ.
Still Trimalchio kept on in a soft voice, 'Oh, Carver, Carver/ I
thought this word over and over again must be part of a joke, and
I made bold to ask the man who sat next me this very question.
He had seen performances of this kind more often. 'You see the
fellow who is carving his way through the meat? Well, his name
is Carver. So whenever Trimalchio says the word, you have his
name, and he has his orders. . . . '
"But a clerk quite interrupted his passion for the dance by read-
ing as though from the gazette : ' July the 26th. Thirty boys and
forty girls were horn on Trimalchio's estate at Cumae. Five
THE PBMBTIXE OF A POMPBIAN HOUSE
From a painting by Bazzani.
400 LIVING ROME
T
hundred thousand pecks of wheat were taken up from the thresh-
ing-floor into the barn. Five hundred oxen weie broken in. On
the same date : the slave Mithridates was led to crucifixion for
having damned the soul of our lord Gaius. On the same date:
ten million sesterces which could not be invested were returned to
the reserve. On the same day : there was a fire in our gardens at
Pompeii, which broke out in the house of Nasta, the bailiff/
'Stop/ said Trimalchio, 'when did I buy any gardens at Pompeii ?>
:Last year,' said the clerk, 'so that thsy are not entered in your
accounts yet.' Trimalchio glowed with passion, and said, 'I will
not have any property which is bought in my name entered in my
accounts unless I hear of it within six months/ We now had a
further recitation of police notices, and some foresters' wills, in
which Trimalchio was cut out in a codicil : then the names of bail-
iffs, and of a freedwoman who had been caught with a bathman
and divorced by her husband, a night watchman ; the name of a
porter who had been banished to Baiae ; the name of a steward
who was being prosecuted, and details of an action between some
valets.
" But at last the acrobats came in. A very dull fool stood there
with a ladder and made a boy dance from rung to rung and on the
very top to the music of popular airs, and then made him hop
through burning hoops, and pick up a wine jar with his teeth. No
one was excited by this but Trimalchio, who kept saying that it was
a thankless profession. There were only two things in the world
that he could watch with real pleasure, acrobats and trumpeters;
ail other shows were silly nonsense. . . .
" Trimalchio cheered up at this dispute and said : ' Ah, my
friends, a slave is a man and drank his mother's milk like ourselves,
even if cruel fate has trodden him down. Yes, and if I live they
shall soon taste the water of freedom. In fact I am setting them
all free in my will. I am leaving a property and his good woman
to Philargyms as well, and to Cario a block of buildings, and his
manumission fees, and a bed and bedding. I a.m m airing Fortu-
nata my heir, and I recommend her to all my friends. I am making
all this known so that my slaves may love me now as if I were dead.'
They all began to thank their master for his kindness, when he
turned serious, and had a copy of the will brought in, which he read
aloud from beginning to end, while the slaves moaned and groaned.
A DINNER WITH THE NEWLY RICH 401
Then he looked at Habinnas and said: 'Now tell me, my dear
friend : you will erect a monument as I have directed ? I beg you
earnestly to put up round the feet of my statue my little dog, and
some wreaths, and bottles of perfume, and all the fights of Petrai-
tes, so that your kindness may bring me a life after death ; and I
want the monument to have a frontage of one hundred feet and to
be two hundred feet in depth. For I should like to have all kinds of
fruit growing round my ashes, and plenty of vines. It is quite
wrong for a man to decorate his house while he is alive, and not
to trouble about the house where he must make a longer stay.
So above all things I want added to the inscription, 'This monu-
ment is not to descend to my heir.' I shall certainly take care to
provide in my will against any injury being done to me when I am
dead. I am appointing one of the freedmen to be caretaker of
the tomb and prevent the common people from running up and
defiling it. I beg you to put ships in full sail on the monument,
and me sitting in official robes on my official seat, wearing five gold
rings and distributing coin publicly out of a bag ; you remember
that I gave a free dinner worth two denarii a head. I should
like a dining room table put in too, if you can arrange it. And let
me have the whole people there enjoying themselves. On my
right hand put a statue of dear Fortunata holding a dove, and let
her be leading a little dog with a waistband on ; and my dear little
boy, and big jars sealed with gypsum, so that the wine may not
run out. And have a broken urn carved with a boy weeping over
it. And a sundial in the middle, so that anyone who looks at the
time will read my name whether he likes it or not. And again,
please think carefully whether this inscription seems to you quite
appropriate: 'Here lieth Caius Pompeius Trimalchio, freedman
of Maecenas. The degree of Priest of Augustus was conferred
upon him in his absence. He might have been attendant on any
magistrate in Rome, but refused it. God-fearing, gallant, con-
stant, he started with very little and left thirty millions. He never
listened to a philosopher. Fare thee well, Trimalchio : and thou
too, passer-by.'
"After saying this, Trimalchio began to weep floods of tears.
Fortunata wept, Habinnas wept, and then all the slaves began as
if they had been invited to his funeral, and filled the dining room
with lamentation. . . .
402 LiVIXG ROME
"'Well, as I was just saying, self-denial has brought me into
this fortune- When I came from Asia I was about as tall as this
candle-stick. In fact I used to measure myself by it every day,
and grease my lips from the lamp to grow a moustache the quicker.
Still, I was my master's favorite for fourteen years. No disgrace
in obeying your master's orders. Well, I used to amuse my mis-
tress too. You know what I mean ; I say no more, I am not a
conceited man. Then, as the Gods willed, I became the real
master of the house, and simply had his brains in my pocket. I
need only add that I was joint residuary legatee with Caesar, and
came into an estate fit for a senator. But no one is satisfied with
nothing. I conceived a passion for business. I will not keep you
a moment — I built five ships, got a cargo of wine — which was
worth its weight in gold at the time — and sent them to Rome.
You may think it was a put-up job ; every one was wrecked, truth
and no fairy-tales. Neptune gulped down thirty million in one
day. Do you think I lost heart ? Lord ! no, I no more tasted my
loss than if nothing had happened. I built some more, bigger,
better and more expensive, so that no one could say I was not a
brave man. You know, a huge ship has a certain security about
her. I got another cargo of wine, bacon, beans, perfumes, and
slaves. Fortunata did a noble thing at that time; she sold all
her jewelry and all her clothes, and put a hundred gold pieces into
my hand. They were the leaven of my fortune. What God
wishes soon happens. I made a clear ten million on one voyage.
I at once bought up all the estates which had belonged to my
patron. I built a house, and bought slaves and cattle ; whatever
I touched grew like a honey-comb. When I came to have more
than the whole revenues of my own country, I threw up the game :
I retired from active work and began to finance freedmen. I was
quite unwilling to go on with my work when I was encouraged by
an astrologer who happened to come to our town, a little Greek
called Serapa, who knew the secrets of the Gods. He told me
things that I had forgotten myself; explained everything from
needle and thread upwards ; knew my own inside, and only fell
short of telling me what I had had for dinner the day before. You
we uld have thought he had always lived with ma You remember,
Habinnas? — I believe you were there? ' You fetched your wife
from you know where. You are not lucky in your friends. No
A DINNER WITH THE NEWLY RICH 403
one is ever as grateful to you as you deserve. You are a man of
property. You are nourishing a viper in your bosom/ and, though
I must not tell you this, that even now I had thirty years, four
months, and two days left to live. Moreover I shall soon come into
an estate. My oracle tells me so. If I could only extend my
boundaries to Apulia I should have gone far enough for my life-
time. Meanwhile I built this house while Mercury watched over
me. As you know, it was a tiny place ; now it is a palace. It has
four dining rooms, twenty bedrooms, two marble colonnades, an
upstairs dining room, a bedroom where I sleep myself, this viper's
boudoir, an excellent room for the porter ; there is plenty of spare
room for guests. In fact when Scaurus came he preferred staying
here to anywhere else, and he has a family place by the sea. There
are plenty of other things which I will show you in a minute. Take
my word for it ; if you have a penny, that is what you are worth ;
by what a man hath shall he be reckoned. So your friend who
was once a worm is now a king. Meanwhile, Stichus, bring me
the grave-clothes in which I mean to be carried out. And some
ointment, and a mouthful out of that jar which has to be poured
over my bones.7
"In a moment Stichus had fetched a white winding-sheet and
dress into the dining room and . - . [Trimalchio] asked us to feel
whether they were made of good wool. Then he gave a little
laugh and said: 'Mind neither mouse nor moth corrupts them,
Stichus ; otherwise I will burn you alive. I want to be carried
out in splendor, so that the whole crowd calls down blessings on
me/ He immediately opened a flask and anointed us all and said,
'I hope I shall like this as well in the grave as I dD on earth.'
Besides this he ordered wine to be poured into a bowl, and said,
'Now you must imagine you have been asked to my funeral.'
"The thing was becoming perfectly sickening, when Trimalchio,
now deep in the most vile drunkenness, had a new set of perform-
ers, some trumpeters, brought into the dining room, propped him-
self on a heap of cushions, and stretched himself on his death-bed,
saying: 'Imagine that I am dead. Play something pretty.*
The trumpeters broke into a loud funeral march. One man espe-
cially, a slave of the undertaker, who was the most decent man
in the party, blew such a blast that the whole neighborhood was
loused. The watch, who were patrolling the struts dose bv,
404 LIVING ROME
thought Trimalchio's house was alight, and suddenly burst in the
door and began with water and axes to do their duty in creating a
disturbance. My friends and I seized this most welcome oppor-
tunity, outwitted Agamemnon, and took to our heels as quickly
as if there were a real fire.
" There was no guiding torch to show us the way as we wandered ;
it was now midnight, and the silence gave us no prospect of meet-
ing anyone with a light. Moreover, we were drunk, and our
ignorance of the quarter would have puzzled us even in the day-
time. So after dragging our bleeding feet nearly a whole hour
over the flints and broken pots which lay out in the road, we were
at last put straight by Giton's cleverness. The careful child had
been afraid of losing his way even in broad daylight, and had
marked all the posts and columns with chalk ; these lines shone
through the blackest night, and their brilliant whiteness directed
our lost footsteps. But even when we reached our lodgings our
agitation was not relieved. For our friend, the old woman, had
had a long night swilling with her lodgers, and would not have
noticed if you had set a light to her. We might have had to sleep
on the doorstep if TrimaJchio's courier had not come up in state
with ten carts. After making a noise for a little while he broke
down the house door and let us in by it."
XXXV
THE CRIMINAL
Juvenal's sweeping denunciations of the degenerate pa*
trician, the wasteful rich man, the insolent parvenu, the
servile and unprincipled common crowd, the greedy, lying
foreigner, the unabashed new woman, the groveling court-
ier, the arrogant and irresponsible ruler, the dangerous
characters of the street and the night, are suggestive rather
than descriptive of crime. They are the expression of one
thoroughly disgusted by the behavior of men not so much
because of its violation of law as because of the degradation
and indecency it represents. The forger, the poisoner,
and the adulterer are the chief and almost only offenders
he mentions against the law of the land, and in them he is
attacking the arrogant, the covetous, and the impure rather
than the offender against the State. In Martial, who saw
the same things that Juvenal saw, but as a spectator with-
out indignation and only in search of matter for the epigram,
and in the Satyricon ascribed to Petronius, there is even less
pointing out of actual crime.
If we wish to know what constituted crime in ancient
Rome, the degree of disapproval its various forms aroused,
and what it meant in the character of the Roman people,
we must not depend on the satirists and other literary ob-
servers, but upon the laws that have been preserved, espe-
cially that part of them providing for the compensation and
the punishment of crime. This chapter will be devoted,
405
406 LIVING R03VIE
first, to an enumeration of criminal offenses; second, to
an enumeration of the penalties attaching to them; and
third, to the courts which had jurisdiction over them.
In the first place, offenses were capital or noncapital
as they affected or did not affect the caput, the status of
citizen. Capital crimes were not only those for which
life was forfeited, but all offenses involving punishment
by loss of the freeman's status, of the rights of citizenship,
or of family rights. The degrees of capital punishment
are thus: (1) death; (2) loss of the freeman's status and
consequently citizenship and family rights; (3) loss of
citizenship with loss of family rights but not of liberty;
(4) loss of family rights only.
In the second place, criminal offenses were either viola-
tions of absolute duties, or violations of relative duties;
that is, crimes in which the State or society and not the indi-
vidual was the injured party, or crimes in which the State
and also the individual were injured. Some of these were
capital, some noncapital.
We may now specify the crimes in which the State alone
was the injured party.
There were naturally those offenses which affected the
safety of the State : bearing arms against it, deserting to its
enemy, causing the ambush or surrender of its army, pre-
venting the success of its arms, inciting a friendly state
to make war on it, abetting its enemy by any material means
or by communication and advice. This whole group of
acts, which were against the State's external safety, con-
stituted treason. It was known to imperial times under the
name crimen laesae maiestatis, and earlier as perdu&llio.
A second group consisting in acts of subversion or usur-
pation was directed against the State from within, and
included plotting against or attacking the emperor or ques-
THE CRIMINAL
407
tioning Ms choice of a successor, attempting the life of any
member of the concilium or consistorium, his intimate ad-
visory body, causing any person to take oath for subver-
sion, raising an army or levying war without the emperor's
authority, and conspiring to kill hostages without his au-
thority. This group, like the first, was treason.
Thirdly, there were offenses against the State's tran-
quillity : any seditious gathering or conspiracy, or an armed
SPARTACUS IN PRISON
Frm" Sjmrtaciu"
assembly seizing any public place. Fourthly, there were
offenses against the public force : desertion from the army,
and the instigation to riot or sedition. These two groups
were also treason.
A fifth group consisted in offenses against the adminis-
tration of justice: to conspire for the death of a magis-
trate, to set free one that had pleaded guilty to a criminal
charge, to use force in the prevention of a trial or the influ-
encing of a magistrate, to accept a bribe for accusing or
408 LIVING ROME
not accusing a person of a criminal act, to use false testi-
mony in convicting a person of a crime punishable with
death, wrongfully to give or withhold testimony, to cor-
rupt a judge or cause him to be corrupted, maliciously to
accuse of crime, to conceal crime or by collusion to secure
acquittal of a defendant, to abandon prosecution without
sufficient cause. The first and second of these were treason.
Sixthly, there were the offenses against the public funds :
exacting taxes without authority, counterfeiting or falsify-
ing in any way the coinage of the State, or refusing to accept
it if pure and properly stamped, converting to personal
use the State's money or money held in trust.
A seventh group consisted in offenses by servants of the
State : to refuse to yield authority to a successor, to use
authority in causing the death or scourging or torture of a
Roman citizen pending an appeal, to accept money as a
magistrate for causing a charge of capital crime, to accept
money or other value in violation of public duty, willfully
as juror to judge contrary to an enactment, to betray a
client.
Eighthly, there were offenses in the matter of weights,
measures, and markets. Among these were the selling of
bread by false weights, the attempt at artificial raising of
the prices of provisions, the withholding of goods from the
market to increase their prices.
Ninthly, there were the offenses against decency or morals.
These included adultery and incest.
Finally, there were such offenses in respect of religion
and witchcraft as to play the prophet, to consult with ref-
erence to the emperor's life, to offer sacrifice in the hope of
injury to neighbors, to participate in magic or to possess
books on the subject of magic, to introduce strange worships
likely to cause disturbance.
THE CRIMINAL 409
So much for the crimes in which the State only was the
Injured party; that is, the violation of absolute duties.
Let us now consider those in which the State and also a
specified individual were injured ; that is, those which were
violations of relative duties.
First among these were crimes against the person : parri-
cide, meaning the willful causing of death to ascendant,
brother, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, husband or wife or other
relation by affinity, or patron ; murder, to kill any person,
even a slave, to prepare, sell, or to give poison for the kill-
ing of any person, to go armed with weapons for murder
and theft, or to conspire for murder ; wounds and assaults,
alone or in company; restraint of the person by willful
imprisonment or shutting up, willful concealment, impris-
onment, or purchase of any freeman or freedman against
his consent; libel, its origination or dissemination; at-
tempts on the chastity of women, girls, and boys.
Second among the violations of relative duties were crimes
against rigjits involving things. Here are to be classed the
theft of animals, housebreaking and stealing by night, sneak
thievery, stealing from a burning house or a wrecked vessel ;
robbery, on the highway, with others in the assault of a
house, or by blackmail ; forcible ejectment with arms ; ap-
proval of armed slaves acquiring possession; arson; the
theft or conversion to personal use of sacred or public mov-
ables; the violation of sepulture by removal or spoliation
of the dead or of the tomb in any part.
A third class of offense against relative duties consisted
in the making of fraudulent contracts, compelling by force
the entrance into contract, forging or altering accounts.
Fourthly, there were the crimes involving status : for a
freedman to represent himself as f reeborn ; to falsify in the
matter of a child ; for a wife to be unfaithful to the marriage
410 LIVING ROME
relation ; to tempt a married woman to be unfaithful or to
divorce her husband.
Fifthly, there were the offenses in relation to inheritance ;
to take from an inheritance before the heir's title was con-
firmed ; to forge or tamper with a will, or to open it during
the maker's life.
We are ready now to enumerate the punishments. They
will of course be capital and noncapital.
Capital punishment has already been described as not
confined to death, but as including the loss of freedom,
the forfeiture of citizenship, and the forfeiture of family
rights.
Death, the summum supplicium or extreme penalty, was
by A.D. 222 the punishment for all but the mildest forms of
treason ; under Julius Caesar, framer of the law on treason,
the penalty had been the famous Interdiction from Water
and Fire, a chic excommunication amounting to exile.
Death was the penalty also for the exercise of the magic
arts, for parricide, for murder by persons not of rank, for
the worst offenses against chastity, for repeated robbery,
for serious cases of arson, for violation of the tomb by force
and for removing bodies, for bribery, for causing a citizen
to be killed, beaten, or tortured pending appeal, if done by
persons not of rank, and for cases of forgery by slaves. This
discrimination in favor of rank occurs in many cases.
The manner of the death penalty varied. There was
burying alive for the unchaste Vestal, throwing from the
Tarpeian Rock in early times for false witness, crucifixion,
for slaves only, burning, beheading, facing the wild beasts
in the arena, entering the gladiatorial lists with a chance
of life. Crucifixion and condemnations to the arena were
abolished by Constantine, who encouraged sanctity in the
marriage relation by making death the punishment for
THE CRIMINAL 411
adultery. He also made burning the punishment of counter-
feiters not of rank.
The second capital punishment, deprivation of the free-
man's status, was the consequence of sentence for life to the
mines. The third, forfeiture of citizenship, was the con-
sequence of the water-and-fire interdiction, or outlawry
and banishment, under the Republic, and, under the Em-
pire, of deportation for life to an island or condemnation to
labor for life on the public works. Forfeiture of property
naturally went with both. In the case of the common
people, sentence to the mines was the penalty also for em-
bezzlement, for using potions, for fraudulent contract, for
sacrilege, for highway robbery, and for ordinary violation
of tomb. Sentence for life to the public works might be
pronounced against thievery by night or in the baths, house-
breakers by day, sneak thieves ; deportation to an island,
invented by Augustus to prevent banished men in num-
bers from meeting together, was the sentence for the mildest
forms of treason, for false witness and withholding testi-
mony, for armed violence, for extreme cases of libel and
extreme crimes against chastity, for cases of forgery by
free men, for extreme cases of accepting bribes by public
servants, for prophets returning after a first penalty, and
for persons of rank convicted of the offenses bringing the
death sentence to the common man — for example, false
witness resulting in the conviction of a person charged with
a crime punishable by death, counterfeiting, introduction
of strange and disturbing religion, and conspiring to murder.
The noncapital punishments were: (1) relegation for
a time or for life, meaning banishment to or from a definite
area, or exile without loss of property or citizenship;
(2) corporal punishment, by flogging or beating; (3) im-
prisonment ; (4) fines ; (5) loss of rank, as expulsion from
412 LIVING ROME
the Senate and the senatorial rank in Rome, or from thr«
curia, or local senate, of another city ; (6) suspension from
the exercise of a calling, as the disbarment of an advocate.
Banishment for life or various periods, relegatio, was the
sentence for treason before the Empire made it death. It
was the sentence also for some cases of accepting bribes,
for selling bread with false weights, for artificial raising of
prices, for killing by negligence, for willful imprisonment or
detention, for sneak thievery, for receiving stolen animals,
for stealing from a burning house, for milder cases of rob-
bery on the highway, for armed expulsion of a man from
his land, for alteration of accounts and forging signatures.
For persons of rank, banishment was the sentence for crimes
punishable in the common man by deportation, the mines,
public works, or death. These crimes included alloying
the State's metals, adultery, using potions, theft of live-
stock, appropriation of sacred, public, or devoted property,
fraudulent contract.
Corporal punishment, in the form of beating with rods,
was inflicted for swearing falsely by the emperor's Genius,
for adultery at least in Justinian's time, and for sneak
thievery. Malicious accusation of crime might be punished
with branding of the letter K, until Constantine replaced it
with banishment or degradation from rank.
Imprisonment in the usual sense seems to have had lit-
tle to do with criminal law. "Punishments of this sort,"
writes "Ulpian, a chief contributor to legal science who died
A.D. 228, "are forbidden ; for the prison must be regarded as
a place for the detention of men and not for punishment."
If the prison had the effect of punishment, it was by reason
of the detention in it, as a result of the law's delays and
abuses, of men accused or condemned of crimes and waiting
for trial or execution of sentence. Imprisonment for debt,
THE CRIMINAL 413
which early took the place of enslavement for debt, and was
in its turn abolished by Constantine, was not an act of the
State, but an act of the creditor sanctioned by the State,
and has nothing to do with criminal law.
Fines could be levied on persons of rank who gave potions,
for taking part in ejectment by means not forcible, for caus-
ing the torture of another man's slave, and in earlier times
for kidnaping. In earlier times also the appropriation
of sacred or public property was punished with fourfold
restitution. Cato speaks of thieves being penalized two-
fold and usurers fourfold.
Degradation from rank might follow malicious accusa-
tion of crime or fraudulent contract, and was incidental to
the major crimes. Suspension from professional practice
was of about the same severity as temporary exile.
Before going on to general conclusions regarding the
criminal law, a word should be said about places of deten-
tion in Rome. The visitor to the Tullianum at the head
of the Roman Forum to-day who is familiar with classical
letters also can hardly fail to reflect on the smallness of
this prison of two chambers and the silence of Roman liters
ture as to any other prison in the city. Rome had a million
or more inhabitants, and many criminal offenders. We
recall, for example, Juvenal's reference to the robbers who,
"every time the Pomptine Marshes are made safe by armed
guards, come running into the city for refuge as if to a pre-
serve. At what forge and on what anvil are not heavy
chains being made? So great is the amount of iron con-
sumed for shackles that you are afraid the plowshare will
fail us and the mattock and hoe give out. Happy the gen-
erations of our forefathers, ah, happy the times of old which
under the kings and tribunes saw Rome content with a single
prison I"
414
2JVING ROME
What has been said of imprisonment explains in part.
With the prison used only as a place of detention until the
next step in law was taken — until a trial was called, or
until execution took place, for example ; and with deporta-
tion, banishment, and hard labor in the mines or public
THE TULLIANUM
Calbd also the Mamertine Prison, this was the dungeon into which the con-
spirators were thrown by order of Cicero, in which Jugurtha and Vercingetorix
were confined, and which tradition says received Saints Peter and Paul. The
column at which it is said that the Apostles were bound is inclosed in an iron frame,
the spring from which they baptized their jailors and fellow prisoners is below it,
and a commemorative inscription above.
works taking the place of the modern penalty of imprison-
ment, there could have been no great, long-period, resi-
dential prisons like those of to-day. The Tullianum served
for the convicted awaiting execution — a Jugurtha, the con-
spirators of Catiline, a Vercingetorix ; and the neighboring
prison chambers not viable to-day, with the seven stations
THE CRIMINAL 415
and fourteen substations of the seven thousand men of the
city watch, for those awaiting less tragic fates, and for the
disturbers usual in the streets of a large city.
Such were crime and punishment as reduced to final sys-
tem under the Empire. No thoughtful person needs to be
told that the system was the result of long development.
The simple laws of the first kings, when the monarch in
person or by delegation heard and decided every case whether
civil or criminal, were multiplied and specialized as the State
grew and its life became complex, until their written state-
ment in the Twelve Tables was necessary. The long at-
tempt of the Republic to accomplish justice by popular
ineans was full of trouble. The trial of the accused before
the assembled people, presided over by the praetor or other
magistrate, was inexpert and cumbersome, and its outcome
likely to depend on feeling rather than fact. The Special
Commissions for criminal cases, sitting in small numbers,
knowing more of law, and less the prey of prejudice, were a
partial remedy, and soon led to the Standing Commissions,
each a court for a special crime and having its own consti-
tution and procedure.
But the defects of democratic justice went deep. Even
with these courts, there was much inexpertness, and much
opportunity for prejudice. The praetor and the president,
who was his substitute on occasion, were not necessarily
learned in the law, and the praetor was a politician owing
office to the people. The jurors were at first from the sena-
torial class, then from the equestrian, then from both, then
from the senators again under Sulla's domination. Their
office throughout the Republic was never free from politics.
Trials were at first held in the open air, and then in the
basilica, with the public crowding about and likely to let
its preferences be known. Worst of all was the right of
416 LIVING ROME
the people's tribunes to interfere in cases of the death pen-
alty. By the time of Polybius, 150 B.C., the tribune's aid
to the capital offender had been exercised so often that exile
instead of death was possible for at least all criminals of
rank or prominence. This was due to the thoroughly in-
grained feeling of the tribune that it was his duty to inter-
cede for the individual against the magistrate.
With the coming of the Caesars, a great change took place.
The control of the courts, like every other activity, was cen-
tralized in the emperor. Like the king in the beginning, he
was in person or by delegation the supreme judge as well
as the supreme lawmaker.
To aid the emperor in this function, Augustas in 25 B.C.
created the prefect of the city of Rome, with the cohorts
as instruments of law and order. In time the prefect's
civil jurisdiction extended a hundred miles beyond the city
limits, his criminal jurisdiction, of course with the aid of
delegates, through all Italy. He had the power to banish,
deport, and send to the mines, and heard appeals from all
parts of the Empire, his sentences admitting of no appeal
except to the emperor. The praetorian prefect, in com-
mand of the emperor's life guards, was also important in
criminal matters.
Outside Italy, criminal as well as civil jurisdiction was
given by Augustus to the twelve legates or presidents in
charge of the twelve provinces under Augustus' personal
control, and to the twelve proconsuls in charge of the senar
torial provinces. Both classes of governors were intrusted
with universal and absolute powers, but were responsible
to Rome for their proper exercise.
The enumeration of crimes and punishments contained
in this chapter depends mostly upon the statements of the
in the legal treatises and compilations of the Empire.
THE CRIMINAL 417
It need not be thought, however, that the laws themselves
were greatly different from the laws of the last century of
>he Republic. The law no doubt kept on with its natural
change and natural growth, but laws are conservative. It
was in the administration of the laws that the great change
took place — in its removal from the sphere of politics, in
its concentration in responsible hands, in the expedition of
its processes by personal authority, in the freedom of gov-
ernor and prefect from too strict regard for precedent. The
matter of the law remained much the same. The principal
laws of the Empire touching crime had been formulated
long before they appeared in the Code of Justinian or in the
famous legal writers three hundred years before him. The
Julian Law on Treason, for example, was passed under
Julius Caesar; the Julian Law on Adultery, under Augus-
tus; the Julian Law on Violence either Public or Private,
and the Julian Law on Embezzlement, it is uncertain whether
under Caesar or Augustus ; the Cornelian Law on Assassins,
and the Cornelian Law on Forgery, under Sulla ; the Pom-
peian Law on the Murder of Blood Relations, under Pom-
pey the Great. The Fabian Law on Kidnaping was known
to Cicero; and there were other Julian laws, on Corrupt
Practices in Election, on Extortion by Provincial Gov-
ernors, on Food Prices, on Incomplete Accounts.
The criminal laws of the Empire were therefore substan-
xially those existing under Augustus at the end of the last
century before Christ. Many were the work of Sulla's
reforms before that, and many had been in operation in
their essentials since the Roman State began.
XXXVI
THE ROMAN DEAD
At a death rate of fifteen in a thousand per year, a moder-
ate average in capital cities to-day, in the Rome of one mil-
lion inhabitants there would have been fifteen thousand
Romans carried to their last resting places in the year, and
about forty every day. The fact of death was important in
Living Rome.
The fifteen thousand who died each year included the high
and the low, the slave and the free, the native and the alien,
the old and the young, the woman and the man, the variously
employed, the variously worshiping ; and the evidence oi>
death and the disposal of the dead in literature, inscriptions,
sculpture, tombs, sarcophagi, and bones and ashes embraces
many centuries. Care must be taken not to confuse ore
period with another, or the particular with the general.
Let us begin with the Roman of noble and wealthy family
of Augustan times. The members of the family are about his
bed as he sinks into the dark unknown and leaves to them
only the inert clay so different from his former self. When
the first shock is over, one or all bend over hum and several
times cry out his name. This is the conclamatio, the " crying
out together." It is at the same time an expression of grief
and a formality, and may have begun in primitive times with
the attempt to wake the dead back to life. The nearest of
kin perhaps also kisses him as if to receive into the family
line the last breath, and makes the formal announcement,
" Condamatum e&t — the cry has been raised."
THE ROMAN DEAD
419
The women of the house, or perhaps the professional from
outside with his assistants, now take charge. The eyes that
see no more are closed, the body is bathed, perhaps em-
balmed, then dressed in the toga, the full dress of Roman
A ROMAN LYING IN STATE
The sloping roof shows that the scene is the atrium. TaH funeral torches bum
at the four corners of the bier, and there is a lamp on a candelabrum at either end.
Mourners and attendants surround the dead person; one plays the pipes, and
others beat their breasts and fling the dirge.
times, decorated with all the insignia won in a long and dis-
tinguished career, and placed on the stately funeral couch
in the darkened atrium, feet toward the vestibule and street,
to await the day of carrying forth. Possibly an old custom is
observed, and a coin placed in the mouth as passage money
420 LIVING ROME
across the St yx. Tall candelabra supporting burning censers
are placed at the corners of the couch. The rising and falling
light plays on the rich, deep-hued draperies of the couch, and
on the round wreaths of palm and flowers and ribbons that lie
on the dead and about him. Attendants are by, with watch-
ers, and perhaps even the paid funeral mourners.
At some time before the lying in state, a wax impression
of the face has been taken, the imago. This will occupy its
niche in the family room, one of the two aloe off the rear
corners of the atrium, with all the similar masks of the ances-
tral line, and will be accompanied by its inscription, or titulus,
placing on record the name, parentage, years, offices, and
deeds of the dead. The right of thus displaying imagines
belongs only to those of curule rank. Cicero acquired it on
the day he was elected curule aedile.
Outside, the fact of death is made known by the display
of a branch of cypress or pine at the street door, like the
flowers and ribbons or sprinkled sulphur of to-day. This is
also a safeguard for neighbors and strangers against religious
or social impropriety.
Three to seven days elapse before the funeral. In excep-
tional cases it is conducted by and paid for by the State or
city. Its coming occurrence is cried through the streets in
an ancient formula. When the hour arrives, the dissignator,,
or master of ceremonies, is at hand with his lictors and has
given his instructions. The funeral train begins to move.
The musicians with the solemn notes of their brasses are
first, and perhaps the professional chanters of the dirge.
Dancers and pantomimists follow, impersonating the de-
ceased, sometimes even with jests. Then come the chariots,
scores of them, if not the six hundred at the funeral of
Marcellus, in which are men in the official costumes of the
dead man's long line of ancestors, wearing their death masks.
THE ROMAN DEAD 421
iiow taken from the niches in the afo. The long train of
Consuls, praetors, and generals thus recalled to life, each
preceded by his lictors, is conducting the most recent of the
family line to his place with them in the shadowy nether
world.
Then come the dead man's memorials, after the manner of
a triumph — his horses, his insignia, his trophies, and paint-
ings or tableaux portraying his exploits; and then more
lictors, these with down-pointed fasces, and men with torches,
a remnant of one-time burial by night ; and then, high on
the jolting and rumbling funeral car, or on the shoulders of
the men of his house, the dead himself, uncovered to the sky,
or inclosed but represented by a statue clad in his robes and
mask. About him are the favored slaves, now freedmen,
emancipated in his will, and, following him, the mourning
family, clothed in black, the sons with veiled heads, the
daughters with heads uncovered and hair flowing, the women
without ornament and the men without insignia showing
office or rank, and such of the friends and the public as were
prompted to follow.
The funeral is a great spectacle. On both sides, as the
solemn parade passes, the Roman populace presses to the
line, throngs the steps of the public buildings, and fills every
WBJclsrc and balcony.
The procession slowly threads the long street between the
lines of the tall houses, and emerges into the Forum. The
chariots with their ghostly occupants deploy on its pavement,
and the dead is carried through their midst to the Rostra.
As he lies on its broad platform in the presence of ancient
memorials of the city's greatness, with massive arcaded
facades ajid the tall colonnades of temples looking down
from every side and the Capitol rising far above, his
nearest survivor's voice is raised in the funeral oration, the
422
LIVING ROME
laudatio, a glorification of the dead and his forefathers which
will be preserved in the family archives.
The funeral train forms again, passes through the Arch of
Augustus, winds up the Sacred Way between temples and
THE APPIAN WAT ABOUT THBJGB MILES FROM HOME
The Appia was excavated and cleared by order of Pius IX in 1853. Ruins oi
tombs and monuments are plentiful. Two carabinieri, or country police, are
seen with their mounts.
porticoes, and descends to the street that leads through the
city gate to the Appian Way. In one of the long lines of lotc
that border the Queen of Roads there stands a newly erectec
funeral pyre, perhaps in the form of an altar. Here the pro
cession halts. The dead is placed upon the pyre, with orna
THE ROMANS DEAD 423
ment, arms, or other possessions cherished in life, and tokens
brought by friends and relatives.
When all is ready, the nearest of kin, a beloved friend, or
some civic dignitary, with averted face applies the torch.
The pyre and its burden are speedily enveloped in crackling
flames, are consumed, and sink in a glowing mass. The
embers are quenched with water or wine, a final farewell is
uttered, like another conclamatio, and all return to the city
but the immediate relatives. These remain behind to col-
lect the remnants of the cremated body, to bury formally a
fragment of the body in order to preserve the form of inhu-
mation, to perform ceremonies in consecration of the ground
and in purification of themselves from contact with the dead,
and to partake of a funeral communion in the family tomb-
chapel.
Nine days of mourning follow, on one of which the now
dry ashes are inclosed in an urn of metal or marble and car-
ried by a member of the family, barefooted and ungirdledj
to their final place of rest in the tomb chamber. At the end
of the nine days, a feast to the dead, called sacrum novendiale,
is celebrated at the tomb and a funeral banquet held at the
home. Mourning continues ten months for husbands, wives,
parents, and adult sons and daughters, eight months for other
adult relatives, and in the case of children for as many
months as their years. Memorial festivals of the nature of a
communion are celebrated on February 13-21, the Parentalia
or pagan All-Souls', on the birth or burial anniversary, and
at the ends of March and May, the Violaria and Rosaria,
when violets and roses are profusely distributed, lamps
lighted in the tomb, funeral banquets held, and offerings
made to the Manes, the spirits of the dead.
The funeral of the grandee thus described was not un-
familiar to the Roman people, but it was the exception and
424 LIVING ROME
not the rule. The splendor of its appointments, the dignity
of its participants, the stately progress of the procession, the
magnificent setting of the Forum, the Sacred Way, and the
Appian Way, made it one of the most imposing spectacles
of all time. It is best compared with the funerals of the
princely families of modern Rome, or of Italian royalty,
though its display was probably far greater. Still more im-
posing were the great imperial funerals, whose trains pro-
ceeded from the Forum through the magnificent distances of
the Campus Martius to the Mausoleum of Augustus at its
northern end.
"He was twice eulogized," Suetonius says of Augustus, "in
front of the Temple of Divine Julius by Tiberius and in front
of the Rostra Vetera by Drusus, the son of Tiberius, and was car-
ried on the shoulders of senators to the Campus and there cre-
mated. And a man of praetorian rank came forward to swear
that he had seen the effigy of the cremated rising to the sky. The
remains were gathered up by the ranking men of the equestrian
order, in tunic, ungirdled, and barefoot, and laid away in the
Mausoleum. This building, between the Via Flaminia and the
Tiber bank, he had built in his sixth consulship and at that time
too had opened for the use of the public the groves and walks
lying about it."
Polybius, a century and a half before Augustus' funeral,,
writes vividly of the great Roman funerals as an institution
contributing to Roman character:
"Now not only do Italians in general naturally excel Phoeni-
cians and Africans in bodily strength and personal courage, but
by their institutions also they do much to foster a spirit of braverj*
in the young men. A single instance will suffice to indicate the
pains taken by the State to turn out men who will be ready to en-
dure everything in order to gain a reputation in their country for
valor.
"Whenever any illustrious man dies, he is carried at his funeral
into the Forum to the so-called Rostra, sometimes conspicuous iu
THE ROMAN DEAD 427
grounds, apart and silent, but took the form of a very long
and narrow series of private lots along the highways leading
from the city gates. The lots began at the lines of the road,
and their imposing monuments were almost at its edge.
There was probably no road without tombs near the city, and
frequently they stood also along the country roads or on
estates. The highways most used for cemeteries at Rome
were the Via Flaminia and the Via Salaria on the north, the
Tiburtina and Praenestina on the east, the Latina and Appia
on the south, and the Aurelia and Cornelia on the west. The
most famous of all was the much-traveled Appian Way, which
is still bordered for many miles with almost continuous
fcomb ruins.
The two hundred or more larger tomb remains on the
Appian Way include most of the types of the Roman sepul-
cher. There was the mausoleum, round and probably with
conical summit, whose name and shape were due to the tomb
of Mausolus, the king of Caria, who died about 351 B.a
The tumulus, a conical mound of varying size heaped over
the body or ashes, also a reminder of Asia, was another form:
There was the tomb built above ground, the tomb excavated
in the tufa bed of the Campagna, and the combination
of tomb below and family chamber or chapel above. There
was the columbarium, for ashes of the burial associations
or brotherhoods so frequent in Rome ; and there were the
underground chambers and corridors now called catacombs.
The burial lots of the Appian Way were marked by stones
inscribed with dimensions : e.g. in Jronte p. XVI, in agro
p. XXII, " frontage 16 feet, depth 22 feet." On some
stones and tombs there were added threats, curses, or legal
formulae, to safeguard the area and monuments against
violation. A frequent abbreviation, H M H N S, meant,
ywnumerdum heredem non sequelur — " this monument
428
LIVIXG ROME
shall not follow the heir," and was due to the fear that the
survivors might appropriate the monument for other pur-
poses.
The more pretentious areas were great family lots, for all
the members of a gens, or of the branch of a gens, including
its freedmen and slaves, and
sometimes other clients, and
friends. Such a burial place
might include a large plot of
ground, with an area for the
tomb, a garden behind it, a
crematory, ustrinum, shrines
with statues of the dead,
aediculae, a room for anni-
versary communions, pa-
vilion, well, and custodian's
quarters.
The Roman tomb inscrip-
tions, cut on slabs let into
the front of the monument,
or on stones at the graves of
individuals, or near the re-
mains inside the vault, are
varied in content and ex-
pression. Most of them
contain the name, parent-
age, public offices, and an
accurate statement of the
length of life, without dates of death and birth. An example
is afforded by the epitaph of Minicia, daughter of Fundanus,
whose death is the subject of a letter by Pliny, who says she
was scarce thirteen, and already had all the wisdom of years
and the sedateness of a matron, but joined with youthful
THE TOMBSTONE OF MINICIA
MA&CELLA.
"To the departed spirit of Minicia Mar-
cella, daughter of Fundanus. She lived 12
years, 11 months, 7 days."
The eagle between the rosettes may sym-
bolize the flight of the souL
THE ROMAX DEAD 429
sweetness. Her tombstone is in the National Museum in
Rome : " To the Departed Spirit of Minicia Marcella, Daugh-
ter of Fundanus. She lived 12 years, 11 months, and 7 days."
A portrait bust sometimes accompanied the epitaph, still a
frequent practice in the cemetery at Rome, where photos or
paintings of the dead are also seen on tombstones. Some-
times the inscription was an address to the passer-by from
the departed, as that of one Marcus Caecilius lying by the
Appian Way :
"This monument is erected to Marcus Caecilius.
Stranger, I am pleased that you stop at my resting place.
Good fortune to you, and fare you well ; may you sleep
without care."
Such appeals as this, with the use of portrait sculpture
and the practice of roadside burial, show how keen was the
Roman reluctance to be cut off entirely from the affairs of
the living —
"For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?"
Possibly they show also the instinctive belief in a future
existence.
A frequent form of tomb among the humbler classes, espe-
cially freedmen and the working part of the population, was
the columbarium, so named because its walls inside resembled
a dove-cote. Long, narrow vaults or chambers were either
built above ground or excavated in the tufa, and their walls
made into compact rows of niches a foot or so high and
wide, large enough to receive an urn holding the ashes of one
person, whose name was on the urn or on a little slab below it,
sometimes with his bust placed near. One of these colum-
430 LIVING ROME
baria on the Via Appia was for the freedmen of Augustus
and Livia, and in it were found three hundred tituli, epitaphs.
Such tombs were sometimes the gift of some benevolent
person, and sometimes represented a business man's invest-
ment, but it was more usual for them to be built, or at least
managed, by cooperative funeral guilds, which sold stock,
assessed regular dues, and paid benefits, thus insuring their
members proper entombment. Their administrators divided
and assigned the space by lot, and the holders might in turn
sell their shares. It is interesting to see the Italian word
colombario in use to-day, in the cemetery at Rome, applied
to the rows of coffin cells built for economy of space.
The lot of the ordinary slave and the poorest class of
citizens was less fortunate. Outside the Servian Wall where
it crossed the broad and level area of the Esquiline, there
existed up to Horace's time an old burial ground which might
be called the potter's field of Rome. The poet's patron,
Maecenas, transformed it into gardens. Excavations begun
in 1872 showed that there was an irregular area of a mile or
more, between the present railway terminus and the Lateran
Church, which had served from earliest times as a burial
ground. One of the poems of Horace quite clearly refers to it.
"Hither, of yore, their fellow slave contracted to carry in their
cheap coffins the dead sent forth from their narrow dwellings;
here lay the common sepulcher of the wretched plebs. A thousand
feet frontage, three hundred feet depth, were the limits the stone
gave — the monument not to follow the heirs. To-day you may
dwell on a healthful Esquiline, and take walks on the sunny em-
bankment, where but now your sad gaze rested upon a field ugly
with whitening bones."
The poet's mention of the cheap coffins and the slave hire-
ling, the contrast between the gloomy Esquiline of former
days and the gardens now in its place, and the satiric allusion
THE ROMAN DEAD 431
to the marker as the one monument of a whole city of
wretched poor, " not to follow the heirs/' speak plainly of the
lot of the lowest classes after death. The excavations
brought to light pit graves, thirteen to sixteen feet square
and of great depth, into which we must suppose the bodies
of the criminal and otherwise unfortunate were thrown one
above the other, unburned, and with little ceremony.
Throughout the pagan period, cremation and inhumation
existed side by side, with cremation increasing until it came
to be all but universal. The earliest burial places of Rome
— the lowest stratum on the Esquiline, and the prehistoric
cemetery discovered on the Sacred Way near the Forum
in 1902 — contain both cinerary urns of terra cotta and
coffins made of hollowed logs. The later strata in the Es-
quiline cemetery also contain both. The burial chambers of
the Scipios, who were a branch of the Cornelian gens, on the
Appian Way outside the walls of their time, but within the
later wall of Aurelian, were filled with sarcophagi of stone
containing unburned dead. In many large tombs the heads
of families were laid away in sarcophagi, with the cremated
freedmen and humbler members of the household deposited
about them in the same chamber. Burial without burning,
because the natural and originally cheaper way, was the basic
and popular custom in the early stages of the Roman com-
munity. Even in Augustan times, when cremation had
almost entirely displaced inhumation, it was customary, as a
symbol of earth burial, to inter a small part of the body, the
os resectum, usually a joint of the little finger.
We have reviewed the variations in burial practice due to
differences in class, wealth, belief, taste, and tradition prin-
cipally in the first century of the Empire and in the city of
Rome. There were naturally also variations according to
period. For example, burial by night was a practice of
432
LIVING ROME
earlier times, and was prescribed again by Julian, A.D. 361,
on the ground of inconvenience to the city's traffic caused by
daylight funerals. Again, the burials of the earliest times
were less distant, by
reason of the lesser
circumference of the
city walls ; each suc-
cessive line of de-
fense carrying the
line of tombs far-
ther out because of
the law forbidding
burial within the
city limit. There
was less of both dis-
play and poverty
before the rise of
the Empire, though
laws forbidding ex-
travagance in fu-
nerals were known
from the first cen-
turies of the city.
The use of chambers
and galleries exca-
vatedin the soft tuf &
bed of the Cam-
pagna, long known
on a small scale in the pagan era, grew much more general
after the rise of Christian Rome, developing the great com-
munal burying places of the catacombs. Cremation died
out because of belief in the resurrection, and perhaps also
because it was more expensive.
THE CREMATION AND APOTHEOSIS OF THE
EMPRESS SABINA
From the pyre the soul of the Empress is borne aloft
by the winged Spirit of the After-life. The grieving
Emperor Hadrian looks on, with finger pointed to the
sky. At the foot of the pyre is a figure symbolizing
the Campus Martius, where the cremation took place.
Behind Hadrian is Antoninus, who will succeed him.
THE ROMAX DEAD 433
In other cities of the Empire, especially in the West, burial
practices, like most other customs, were essentially the same
as at Rome. In small towns and villages, no doubt there was
much conservatism, and some customs were retained long
after they had gone out in the capital. All periods in the
history of Roman burial, however, are unified by the belief
of all but the few in the continued existence of the dead and
in his shadowy presence in the life of the family and com-
munity, and by the consequent scrupulous care in proper
burial and in the maintenance of right relations with the
spirits of dead ancestors. The communion of the living
with the dead is by no means unknown to the belief and
feeling of to -day, but to the ancient Roman it was much more
real.
PART IV
GREATER ROME
GREATER ROME
Thus far we have been concerned in the main with a Rome
on the Seven Hills. We have seen the physical setting of
Rome in the Italy of to-day and its capital, modern Rome,
and its cultural setting in the language and letters, law and
religion, arts and ideals, inherited by modern times from
ancient Rome. We have seen the Roman as he looked and
moved at home and on the streets in the round of personal
affairs. We have seen him as he moved in the larger environ-
ment of the varied life of his million neighbors, a part of
Living Rome.
This has been to make acquaintance with Rome the City,
compact and clearly outlined, warm with the energy of
growth and action, distinct in character.
But the Rome we have been describing was not the only
Rome ; or, rather, it was not the whole of Rome. There was
not only Rome the City, Urbs, covering the hills and crossing
the stream and having its bounds ; there was also Rome the
Empire, Orbis, the vast organism of land and sea reaching out
to the oceans and rivers and deserts and barbarian wilderness
which nature seemed to have intended as its limits. This
Rome is not the City, but a civilization thinking the thoughts
and living the life of the City. It may be called Greater
Rome.
XXXVII
THE SPREAD OF ROMAN CIVILIZATION
The rise of the Roman State has already been described :
the annexation of the neighboring hills and tribes, the leader-
ship in Latium, the conquest of the Volscian, the Etruscan,
the Latin, the Samnite, and the Greek of South Italy, the
crossing into Sicily, the Carthaginian wars and the winning
of Sardinia and Corsica, Spain, and northern Africa, the
Macedonian wars and the expansion to the east, the absorp-
tion of Greece and Asia Minor and Egypt, the push into
Gaul and Britain, the invasion of Dacia, the advance to the
Tigris and Euphrates. The world conquered by the citizen-
soldier of the Republic, shaped and set in order by Augustus,
maintained by Tiberius, extended by Claudius and the
Flavians, completed by Trajan, and stabilized by Hadrian,
was bounded on the north by the Black Sea, the Danube and
the German wall and the Rhine, and the British wall from
the Tyne to the Solway, except where it went beyond these
lines to include Dacia and the German provinces ; on the
west it was bounded by the Atlantic ; on the south, from
Tangiers to the Red Sea, by the line of the Atlas Mountains
and the desert ; on the east, by the Arabian Desert and the
Euphrates.
At its longest and widest, the Empire thus bounded was
3,000 miles from west to east, and 2,000 miles from north to
south. It contained 2,500,000 square miles, and a popula-
tion estimated at 100,000,000. The modern population is
about twice that. To reach from Rome the last fort on the
438
440 GREATER ROME
Nile in Nubia meant a journey of forty days. There was no
steam to increase the speed of ships, there were no express
trains, and no electricity and radio to annihilate distance
and time. The population was composed of many races
and colors, spoke many different languages, worshiped
many different gods, and was at many different levels
of culture. Yet the peace and unity of this vast territo-
rial miscellany to-day, compared with the Pax Romana in
the best centuries of the Empire, is as turbulence and dis-
traction.
Let us look, first, into the causes that underlay this bring-
ing together into one household of the peoples of three conti-
nents and the countless islands of the Mediterranean. We
shall then be prepared to appreciate their effects.
To say that the extension of Roman sway was due to mere
lust of conquest and the satisfaction of greed, is the easy
explanation of shallow minds. These are the motives of
deliberate aggression on the part of ambitious military and
political geniuses or on the part of calculating oligarchies.
No Cyrus the Great or Napoleon inflamed the Roman people
with the enthusiasm that sweeps all before it in the world
campaign, and the Roman Senate, always harried by the
opposition, was never an irresponsible coterie of plotters for
its own enrichment. By the time dictator and emperor be-
came the State, the area of the Roman world was practically
determined.
The Empire set in order by Augustus and confirmed by his
successors was already conquered when Augustus came to
the task. It was the work of a people, not of an individual.
The motives of a conquering people, as opposed to a person
or a group, are not single and simple, but multiplex. The
policies of a conquering people are not the conscious and cal-
culating plans of the farsighted genius who overruns and
THE SPREAD OF ROMAN CIVILIZATION
441
unites a world in one lifetime, but the sum of the uncertain-
ties and inconsistencies of the slow-moving centuries.
The Roman people's advance to the domination of the
world was not always the precise and steady march of aa
army well commanded. The needs of the moment, and even*
accident, as well as foresight and design, determined its-
THE EMPEROR TRAJAN AND His LICTOBS
The idealized retinue of the Emperor imitate his manner of wearing the nair.
policies. Rome's first growths in territory were due to alli-
ances for safety's sake which soon resulted in union and
amalgamation in the common interest. The advance of its.
borders, due to this natural cause, created the usual frietiom
and the usual problems of security. The student of national,
expansion to-day does not need to be told that beyond the-
border there is always a zone whose menaces to* safety neces-
sitate its conquest, and whose occupation brings another
border and another zone, until the limit of territory or of "
strength establishes a final boundary. The Roman Republic •
was not secure in Italy until by alliance, pea^eluLannexation,
442 GREATER ROME
conquest provoked by the enemy's threats, and conquest
compelled by actual aggression, its borders had reached the
sea on three sides and the Alps on the fourth. It was not
secure on the sea until it had made the Mediterranean a
Roman lake. It was not secure for great distances beyond
this until it had reached the Atlantic, the Rhine and the
Danube, the Pontus, the Euphrates, the Red Sea, and the
Sahara, and had supplemented the work of nature by erect-
ing the English and Scottish walls and the three hundred and
forty-five miles of palisade across the gap from Rhine to
Danube.
The growth of the Roman power was the growth of a living
organism. It was as inevitable as the expansion of a healthy
plant or animal. When men of Virgil's time began to talk of
Eternal Rome and the Destiny of Rome, they were only
expressing in artificial fashion the feeling that Rome had
conquered the world and was ruling it, not because of the lust
for power or the greed for gain, but because she was the
instrument of a power beyond human control and beyond the
realm of human comprehension. The reverent poet thought
of that power as divine and of another world. Plain-thinking
men, without resort to the other world, thought of it as
Nature.
To say that Roman expansion was the work of nature,
however, and that the Roman people was its instrument, is
not to declare that the lust of conquest and the appetite
for worldly gain did not exist. The Roman was human and
knew temptation, and Nature herself is not kindly toward
those who interfere with the growth of her creatures.
From the first, the Roman possessed the vigorous physique,
the healthy courage, the ready intelligence, and the feeling
for discipline that make the soldier. As he left behind him
the ever lengthening line of successes against his enemies in
THE SPREAD OF ROMAN CIVILIZATION 443
arms, the mastery of the science of war and the consciousness
of power developed his courage into the disciplined confidence
that shrinks at no personal danger and faces odds as a
matter of course. It must not be supposed that this con-
fidence was unaccompanied by pride and that it did not
sometimes impel its possessor to the arrogant and arbitrary
use of arms.
From the beginning, too, the Roman was of a thrifty
nature. The little wars he won in Latium, whether forced
upon him or of his own provoking, brought hi™ his little gains
in land or animals. The wars which made him master of the
Etruscan, Samnite, and Italian Greek opened up to him
the riches of Italy's fields and forests and quarries. With
the control of rich provinces across the mountains and the
sea that soon followed, Roman commerce and Roman invest-
ment, already active before the lands were Roman, assumed
much larger proportions. It must not be supposed that the
gains which were at first the accident of war did not at times
become a contributing cause of war. The opportunities
promised by the annexation of a new province or the acquisi-
tion of a further sphere of influence were a temptation too
great to be always resisted.
Let us think of interests involved. There was the State
and its need for greater revenues. There was the crowded
capital, welcoming the opportunity to send out colonies and
thus to relieve itself of pressure and reduce the list of parasites
receiving the dole. There was the dictator or military hero
in need of lands with which to reward his veterans. There
were the politician and the demagogue wanting material for
promises. There were the contractors and men of capital
looking for new fields for earning and investment. There was
the party or person in power looking for an issue with which
to win favor or divert disaffection. There was the army man
444
GREATER ROME
ambitious for a career or eager for opportunity to test the
latest military engine or idea. There were the general and
his staff and the rank and file, ready for adventure and not
without thought of the spoils of war. Our surprise should
be, not that Roman
character for a time
weakened under the
strain of almost un-
paralleled tempta-
tion that came with
the avalanche of
territory after the
Carthaginian and
Macedonian wars,
but that the Roman
State did not make
conquest a business
for its own sake.
As it was, the
case of aggression
pure and simple and
without excuse was
rare. If we had
the views of Car-
thaginian and
Greek and Gaul and
German and Briton
at the moment of
defeat, no doubt we should be told such cases; but the
Roman would be ready to advance his justification. Roman
citizens and property at the border, he would have said, had
been molested and made to feel unsafe ; trader and traveler
on Roman ships had been taken by pirates in waters not
TEE EMPEROR MARCUS AUBELIUS RECEIVING
THE NORTHERN BARBARIANS m SUBMISSION
THE SPREAD OF ROMAN CIVILIZATION 445
patrolled by the claimants of jurisdiction over them; the
rights of Roman citizens in the offending territory had not
been respected ; a treaty had been violated ; an ally had been
aggrieved or attacked and must be quieted; a petty and
backward or decadent state was hindering the march of
civilization, and Rome was after all performing a service to
the world and the conquered state itself. In short, the
Roman apologist would have demonstrated that what seemed
an arbitrary act of aggression was provoked and inevitable.
The charge of hypocrisy is easily made. When motives
are mixed, as we have seen was the case in Roman conquest,
it is necessary only to emphasize the unworthy motive to the
exclusion of the rest. It is in some respects to the interest
of the United States, for example, to hold the Philippine
Islands ; therefore, it might be argued, the United States is
holding them for selfish reasons, and is the enemy of freedom
and the friend of tyranny.
Without attempting to justify the abuses of Rome's
darlier rule in the provinces, or denying the use at times of
arbitrary measures in both administration and conquest,
let us make a few observations bearing on Roman expansion
in its entirety.
In the first place, the Roman conscience was shocked and
aroused by the fact of abuse in provincial government. The
earliest special standing court established by the Govern-
ment at home, in 149 B.C., was the court on extortions. As
early as 171 B.C., complaints of insolence and avarice on the
part of Roman magistrates in the two Spains were promptly
followed by legal action at Rome, and the measures taken
were collaborative, not autocratic. If there were scandalous
abuses in the provinces, the fact that we know it because of
the prosecutions at home in the earnest attempt to correct
them is not without significance as to the Roman intent.
446 GREATER ROME
In the second place, one of the earliest and one of the most
effective of Augustan reforms was in provincial administra-
tion. The readiness with which it was accomplished must
mean that the previous regime was not so hopelessly corrupt
as is sometimes represented. It must be remembered, too,
that the witness in the case against Rome for maladministra-
tion is Rome itself, and that self-condemnation is not to be
taken at face value.
In the third place, as the decades passed after the enor-
mous conquests following the Second Punic War, and the
conquerors realized the immensity of their task of governing
a world, the feeling of responsibility deepened in them. The
governed must be protected against the governor ; the weak
must be protected against the strong ; the barbarian must
be taught ; the decadent must be recalled to pride ; the law
must equalize rights and duties; life must be made safe,
prosperity increased. No one can read Livy's glowing ac-
counts of Flamininus at the Isthmian Games proclaiming
the freedom of the Greeks, and of Aemilius Paullus visiting
the cities of Greece after the final defeat of their Macedonian
oppressor, and of the Carthaginian envoys declaring that the
Romans had increased their sway almost more by sparing the
vanquished than by conquering them, or Cicero's orations in
behalf of the Sicilians against Verres, the influential politician
exploiting a province, or the letters written by Cicero while
governor of Cilicia, or the odes of Horace reminding the
Roman that he rules the world only because he walks humbly
before the gods, or Virgil's noble lines on the mission of Rome,
without feeling that through all the incapacities and abuses
of the Republic in the provinces there was a conscience at
work in the State and an ideal present and growing.
In the fourth place, the Roman gave as well as took. In
return for total surrender to authority, the conquered nation
THE SPREAD OF ROMAN CIVILIZATION
447
received the civilization of the conqueror. Let us pause at
this point to ask what Romanization meant.
It meant, first, regularization and protection under Roman
authority. The Roman law and Roman system followed
Roman conquest. The lands taken over became the prop-
A ROMAN AQUEDUCT IN SPAIN
This fine construction is a few miles from Tarragona, ancient Tarraco.
erty of the Roman State, and were redistributed to colonists
and former tenants, subject to the land tax which formed the
government's principal source of revenue. The humbler
members of many a community experienced for the first time
the certainties and the justice of enlightened government.
It meant, second, the benefits of an expert language. The
language of the law and the ruling class in all their commu-
nications, oral and written, was Latin. The schools that f ol-
448 GREATER ROME
lowed the Roman standards into the backward lands were
Latin schools. In many communities they were the first
and the only schools, and Latin the first written language in
the community's experience.
Again, Romanization meant the arts. The most distant
outposts of the Empire had an architecture like that of the
capital. The local market place became a little Roman
Forum. The sculpture of provincial towns differed only in
excellence from that of the centers of art. Mosaics and
paintings, wherever found, reflect the art of the capital and
Italy.
Still further, it meant the amusements of the capital. The
ruins of circus, theater, amphitheater, and baths, now indicat-
ing in deserted spots the former presence of a city, are the
signs of luxuries in entertainment reaching, for better and
worse, the one-time abodes of barbarism.
It meant, fifth, connection with the world of enterprise.
The Roman road traversed the provinces, touching the prin-
cipal centers of prosperity. The Roman ship made calls.
The produce of other lands and the news of the world en-
riched and enlivened existence where hitherto monotony
and stagnation had prevailed. The advent of the Roman
military road was like the coming of the railroad and its
creativeness into the life of the American West or the heart
of Africa.
It meant, again, the stimulation from new religious con-
tacts. As Roman altars and temples rose and the Roman im-
mortal gods in their majestic humanity appeared, comparison
with the old went far with many a barbarous tribe to make it
a convert to the other features of Romanization as well.
Seventh, and greatest of all, the coming of Rome meant
sooner or later the rights of the Roman citizen. The rise of
the noncitizen to citizenship, whether from captivity in war,
THE SPREAD OF ROMAN CIVILIZATION 449
or from slavery by purchase, or other alien condition, was a
distinctive feature of Roman society. Beginning in early
times, it increased in ease and frequency until in A.IX 212 all
free men in the Empire were citizens. Roman born or alien,
Italian or non-Italian, they were on equal footing. Rome
and Italy identified themselves with the world they had con-
quered. Unlike most imperial powers of modern times,
Rome was not democratic at home and despotic abroad. The
provincials were gradually Romanized and the Roman and
Italian gradually universalized, until the distinction between
Italian and provincial disappeared. All called themselves
Roman. Virgil could thus become the poet of all who dwelt
within the line that separated culture from barbarism, and
Cicero the model for the written and spoken tongue. What
before was Urbs, was now Orbis.
Finally, with citizenship, if not before, came the Roman
ways of thinking and feeling. Enjoying local and individual
freedom under central authority, and recognizing in Rome
the source and guarantee of his freedom, the Roman, wher-
ever he was and of whatever blood, looked to the city by the
Tiber with loyalty and affection. Reflecting on the vast-
ness, the unity, and the solidarity of the Empire of Rome,
he felt the pride of participation in world rule. Remember-
ing the centuries of Rome's existence, he called her the
Eternal City without question of her continued sway. If an
emperor misruled, or a series of them, it was for the Roman
but an episode. The emperors were for an age, but Rome
for all time — Rome, " Mother of Anns and Justice,"
" Rome, destined to live as long as men shall be," " the city
as everlasting as the Pole," " to whose reign there never shall
be an end."
Such were the changes which constituted Romanization,
They were more thorough or less according to the status of
450
GREATER ROME
the subject people, who varied from the free-spirited and
cultivated Hellene to the ignorant and despot-ridden Egyp-
tian, from the sophisticated, commercial Carthaginian to the
barbarian of the German forests, from the rude Spaniard to
the luxurious Greeks of Asia. There were some who profited
THE ROMAN BRIDGE OVER TEDS GTTADIANA AT MEBEDA IN SPAIN
Parts of the bridge, which is half a mile long, are of later periods. The ancient
name of Merida was Emerita Augusta.
more than others, but there were none who did not benefit
by the Roman feeling for organization and unity — and by
the Roman law. They were more thorough or less in th^
same province or city, according to the status of the indi-
vidual. The official and commercial circles, whether Italian
or native born, represented Rome completely in language,
religion, manner of diversion, and mental habit.
THE SPREAD OF ROMAN CIVILIZATION 451
Persons of the lower classes, who had less incentive to imita-
tion, kept on with their own language, dress, and customs,
and were welcome to do it if they chose. Roman rule in
nonessential matters was wisely elastic. The Roman did
not feel impelled, like many conquerors, to impose a uni-
formity in everything. On obedience, loyalty, and good
behavior he did insist, but imposed no galling conformities
in language, interfered with religion only in case of actual
conflict with the State, and allowed the subject people,
whenever possible, the laws and usages to which they were
born.
In conclusion, if the Roman treatment of the conquered
still is in need of vindication, its result may be indicated in
evidence. The tongue of the conquerors became the tongue
of all the conquered except the Greeks, who had long pos-
sessed superior culture, and the Teutons, far away on the
border. Even Dacia spoke Latin, and the Roumanian
tongue to-day, surrounded by Hungarian, German, Slavic,
and Greek, is a romance tongue, the sister of the French,
Italian, and Spanish that cover so much of the New World
and the Old. The religion of Rome was accepted by them
all, and humanized them into the ready recipients of the
Christian faith in later years. The Roman Peace enveloped
them. There were five hundred towns in Asia without a
garrison. In all Gaul, Lyons was the only military post, with
twelve hundred men to serve for all the regions that for ten
years had resisted the arms of Caesar. The standing army
for the Empire's one hundred millions of population was
about three hundred thousand, in city-camps along the cir-
cumference, and these mostly on the Rhine and Danube, with
but infrequent calls to service as some barbarian foray dis-
turbed the peace. The Roman law had won its way among
them. It made life safer and relations more just. So
452 GREATER ROME
thorough an instrument was it that after its service to the
ancient world it descended to the medieval and the modern
world, and is now the law of Italy, Spain, France, Belgium,
Portugal, and all the Latin-speaking countries elsewhere,
Greece and southeastern Europe, Switzerland, Holland,
Germany, and the Church ; and is rivaled as a world force
only by the English law.
The political, visible empire of Rome in the West passed
out of existence in the fifth century at the coming of the
Northerner. In the East it survived longer in the mingling
of Greece and the Orient as the Byzantine Empire. From
the first consuls of the Republic to the Code of Justinian
more than a thousand years elapsed. The civilization thus
enduring and leaving after it. an inheritance that is living
still was not a civilization based on force and greed alone.
Whatever its faults in detail, as a whole it owed its initial
success and its permanence to character. The Roman people
were not only physically strong and temperamentally reso-
lute, but endowed with the sense of justice and responsibility.
" Empire is retained," according to a maxim quoted by
James Bryce, " by the same arts whereby it was won." The
Empire of Rome from Augustus on, until causes deep-seated
and beyond control had sapped its powers, retained its sub-
jects by the arts of peace. It may not have won its subjects
by the arts of peace alone, but it could not have won them
permanently, as it did, without the arts of peace.
XXXVIII
THE ARMY
The Roman State was founded upon force, though not
upon force alone, and the great instrument that made possible
the advance and the permanence of its borders was the army.
The Roman army, however, must not be thought of merely
as a weapon. Taken throughout the history of Rome, it is
seen to have been the means not only of conquest but of
civilization. This will be made plainer as its uses and char-
acter are described.
First, let us consider the army in its purely military aspect,
and at a time when its organization is fully developed and
practically fixed ; tor, like everything else Roman, the army
also was a product of evolution. The period of the first
emperors will be convenient.
The largest unit of the army was the legion, or division,
consisting at full strength of 6,000 men. The legion was
divided into 10 cohorts of 600 men each, and the cohort into
6 centuries of 100 men each. All were heavy-armed infantry,
except 120 cavalry. After long service in the field, or in
times when recruits were scarce, the legion might have a
much smaller number, and the cohorts and centuries be
correspondingly weak in men. Their commanding officers
were the legatus, lieutenant general ; the tribunus, colonel ;
the centurio, captain. The commander-in-chief in the time
of the Republic was regularly a consul, the two consuls alter-
nating ; or, in case of operations in a province, a proconsul,
such as Caesar in Gaul ; or a dictator, such as Fabius Maxi-
453
454
GREATEE ROME
mus in the Second Punic War or Sulla during his control.
Under the Empire, the commander-in-chief was the emperor.
imperator, who sometimes delegated his powers to the
governor in a prov-
ince, called legatus
pro praetore, prae-
torian legate.
The organization
thus described con-
sisted of Roman
citizens, and was
only half the army.
The other half con-
sisted of the aux-
iliaries, a noncitizen
force of about equal
numbers in the main
under citizen officers,
and so divided that
to the 6,000 of every
legion there were
attached 6,000 aux-
iliaries, in cohorts of
500 to 1,000, with
500 cavalry. The
two together formed
the regular or stand-
ing army as established by Augustus. The chief differences
between them, besides the matter of citizenship, were, first,
that the legionaries were volunteers enlisted in any part of
Roman territory and from any blood, while the auxiliaries
were conscripted from subject races and served in racial or
tribal regiments, thus representing a tribute in men exacted
THE EMPEBOB AND THE GENIUS OF ROME
The Genius presents him with the Symbol of Uni-
versal Power.
THE ARMY 455
of the conquered ; second, that the auxiliaries contained a
greater proportion of cavalry ; third, that in ordinary times
they performed a great deal of frontier police duty; and,
fourth, that for the sake of guarding against revolt they
soon caine to be assigned to service in parts of the Empire
far distant from their native soil. When the army went to
war, each legionary commander had under him about equal
numbers of legionaries and auxiliaries, but the cohorts of the
latter, under tribunes or prefects, had their separate camp.
The regular army of the Augustan reform was the natu-
ral culmination of Roman military experience. When the
primitive Roman State went to war, it was with an army of
able-bodied farmers, cattle men, and villagers led by their
king and his retainers, all of them citizens. If they were the
aggressors, or had the choice, they went forth in March, the
month of Mars, carried on their operations until the rains and
cold of late autumn ended the military season, and passed the
winter in comparative inactivity so far as the field was con-
cerned. With the spread of Roman authority through Italy,
there came the need both of improved military science and
of larger armies.
The need of military science was supplied by the develop-
ment of the legionary system and the strict exclusion from it
of the noneitizen ; every citizen was bred to expertness in
arms and every citizen of able body between 18 and 38 owed
the State his service at the call to arms. It was the legion
composed solidly of the citizen-soldiers of the Republic that
occupied the post of honor and consequently met the brunt
of battle.
The need of larger armies, the greater because of this ex-
posure of the citizen to danger, was met by the use of men
conscripted from the vanquished. When the business of
conquest carried the Roman arms beyond Italy's borders, the
456 GREATER ROME
need of men for operation and occupation increased so much
that not only were more auxiliaries employed, but it was no
longer possible to insist on Italian birth, to say nothing of
Roman, as a qualification for enrollment in the legion. The
citizen from outside Italy was admitted as a private, and in
time as an officer. The noncitizen also, in time, was ac-
cepted, but by the act itself became a citizen.
Long before Caesar's time, the army had lost the civic and
taken on the professional character. Its rank and file
served for pay and enlisted for a term, and its officers made
the army a career. So far had the original identity of the
army and the body of ordinary citizens disappeared that
generals like Caesar, Pompey, Marius, and Sulla raised armies
and paid them almost without action on the part of the
State and employed them sometimes even for private ends.
When Augustus unified the military forces of the State and
made himself commander-in-chief of the standing army oi
legionaries and auxiliaries, the act was a completion of the
process of making military service professional as well as a
beginning of the army's use as a scientific instrument in the
employ of the State.
, The number of men under arms in the Roman State, as
well as their character, varied according to period and con-
ditions. The army that met disaster at Cannae in 216 B.C.
numbered about 80,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry, while
Hannibal's forces were 40,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry.
Caesar's forces in the first campaign in Gaul, 58 B.C., con-
sisted of six legions and 20,000 auxiliaries, and are estimated
at a total of 40,000 to 50,000 men ; in the seventh campaign,
52 B.C., they amounted to about 70,000, consisting of 11
legions and about 30,000 auxiliaries. To the ten existing
legions, Caesar added five in the course of the war, all enrolled
The number of legions under his command rose
THE ARMY
from 6 out of 12 in the first year to 11 out of 15 in the seventh.
Under the Empire, Tacitus tells us that Tiberius had 25
legions, and we know that by the second century the number
had increased to the maximum of 30. If every legion were at
full strength, this would mean a total of 180,000 legionaries,
which, with ui equal number of auxiliaries, makes the total
military establishment amount to 360,000 men. As the
ranks of ancient legion, cohort, and century, however, like
those of the modern division, regiment, and company, were
ROMAN CAVALRY
The plumed helmets, lances, aiid ensign are to be noted.
not always full, it must be remembered that this is an esti-
mate. The average fighting strength of Caesar's legions
in Gaul, for example, is variously estimated at from 3,000 to
5,000 men.
The soldier of the legion wore a uniform consisting of san-
dals with thick soles studded with heavy nails, a leather
tunic or corselet covered with metal hoops or plates and
reaching nearly to the knee, coarse breeches if he served in a
cold Climate, and close-fitting metal helmet. The auxiliary
might keep to the soldier's dress of his native country, but
458 GREATER ROME
usually approximated the legionary in uniform. The officers
of both were no doubt equipped with uniforms of superior
quality.
The weapons with which the Roman conquered the world
were the pike, pilum, a heavy wooden shaft with a long iron
head, the whole measuring about six feet; the javelin;
the spear, hasta, like the pike but lighter ; and the sword,
gladius, about three feet long, two-edged, broad, and straight.
He was protected in battle by the helmet ; the iron plates or
leather of his corselet ; the shield, scutum or parma, of vari-
ous shapes, made of wood with metal or leather covering ;
and sometimes greaves, ocreae. Some of the auxiliaries had
their special, native weapons; the Balearic slingers, for
example, and the Syrian bowmen. The cavalry were armed
with the spear and sword and shield.
The fighting of the Roman was hand to hand. Advancing
steadily until a few hundred feet from the enemy, at the
signal of horn and trumpet sounding the charge the legion
went into the double-quick. Stopping suddenly at a dis-
tance of fifty feet or so, the front ranks of the first line of co-
horts hurled their pikes into the opposing lines and then with
drawn swords followed their missiles with a rush and engaged
the enemy in personal combat. If the battle was not soon
decisive, the front line of cohorts was relieved by the second
line, which advanced through the intervals between the first
and engaged the enemy until relieved in its turn. It was
in these encounters that the effects of the discipline given by
the sixty centurions and six tribunes of the legion were made
manifest.
Fighting of this sort was as direct and effective as a duel ;
in fact, it may be said to have consisted of a great many duels
fought simultaneously. Far more than modern battle since
the time of gunpowder, it was a trial of the endurance and
THE ARMY 459
skill of the individual soldier. If we are inclined to think it
simple, we should remember the scientific nature of the
Roman attack as compared with the mass onset of the Gauls
and Germans, which really was simple, and the elaborate
training that prepared the legionary to hurl the pike with sure
effect, to thrust and parry with the spear and sword, and
to manage the dagger and shield. It was direct fighting,
usually soon over, and usually decisive, but it was not simple.
Even in the slower and less direct operations of the siege,
there was much more actual contact of enemy with enemy
than is true of modern times. The besiegers of camp or
town were within easy sight and sound of the besieged. In-
stead of shelling the walls from miles away, they battered
them with a heavy? swinging, iron-headed beam called aries,
the ram, under cover of a shed or mantlet, vinea, which the
defenders tried to wreck with fire and stones ; or they mined
and sapped, sometimes meeting unexpectedly the enemy
countermining; or they advanced in the testudo or turtle
formation, with shields interlocked over their heads to pro-
tect them from darts, arrows, and rocks until they could use
the ladder or burst through the wall. They built high towers
on wheels or rollers from which to throw weapons, stones, and
fire among the garrison on the parapets before letting down a
bridge and attempting to cross over. They had an artillery
service. There was the ballista, the ancient cannon, with
intensely tightened springs of gut or cord taking the place
of explosive, hurling a stone ball of up to fifty and one hun-
dred pounds weight from five hundred to one thousand feet,
and mounted on a carriage quickly drawn by horses to any
point desired. There was the onager, smaller than the bal-
lista, and, like it, a sling in principle; and the catapulta, a
giant bow which hurled an immense arrow, sometimes
wrapped in blazing material.
460
GREATER ROME
As measures of defense, there was the wall and parapet,
fronted sometimes by river or moat. At Alesia, where
Caesar's lines were drawn about the hills on which the city
stood, and were in turn surrounded by the Gallic army of
relief, the Roman commander's defenses included a double
ditch, a rampart and palisade with twenty-three forts at
intervals, and lines of rough tree branches, trenches, and
small and deep pits set with sharp stakes called stimuli,
CAESAR'S DEFENSES AT ALESIA
From right to left : pits containing sharp stakes ; tree branches imbedded in the
ground, the ancient barbed-wire entanglement; two trenches; palisaded dike
with towers for the defenders.
known to the soldiers as " lilies." These devices were the
barbed-wire entanglements of ancient warfare.
The thoroughness of Caesar's preparations in the eight
miles of Alesia's defenses was hardly exceptional. The Ro-
man commander of his time had the accumulated experi-
ence of centuries to draw on, knew what was the right thing
to do in any given situation, and took no chances. The army
on the march had a special formation as it proceeded through
country whose friendship was doubted, and even for a halt
THE ARMY
461
of a single night constructed a fortified camp, the selection
and laying out of whose site had been done in advance by a
party of scouts and surveyors, so that on arrival the work of
every soldier was ready for him. The daring of generals in
penetrating hostile country and engaging numerically over-
THE STATUE OP VEBCUNGETORIX AT ALESIA
The ancient town, situated beyond the statue on this height, has been par-
tially excavated, and many interesting finds are to be seen in the museum, of
the near-by town of Alise-Ste. Reine. The statue was erected by Napoleon the
Third.
whelming foes was not the taking of chances, but the confi-
dence of the commander in the superiority of his men and
their equipment and in his own mastery of military science.
But the Roman army was not always engaged in marches
and battles and conquest. Even in the conquering times of
the Republic, it performed many duties by way of consolida-
462 GREATER ROME
fcion and civilizing, and in the Empire its activities included
comparatively little actual warfare. With the adoption of a
nonexpansion policy and the fixing of boundaries, the day of
campaigns in the grand style passed. The legions were sta-
tioned far away at the Empire's edge : along the great wall
on the Scottish border, along the Rhine and Danube and the
wall connecting their headwaters, along the border of the
Sahara where the wild tribes surged up from the desert areas,
on the always troubled and wavering boundaries by the
Arabian desert and the Euphrates and Tigris. Vigilance
was always necessary here, and on the northern European
front there were serious problems of defense ; but most of
the time on the border it was the foray rather than war that
troubled the Roman Peace, and in the great body of the
Empire the only wars were those of rival emperors, and even
of these, which were mostly the affair of the Praetorian
Guards at Rome, there was none worth mentioning from
Vespasian to Septimius Severus. From the middle of the
third century there was ever increasing need of the army on
the northern front, until the line against the outer world no
longer could be held, and the Western Empire came to its
end ; but even during these times the service in most places
and for most of the time consisted of garrison duty and
border policing rather than actual warfare, and the soldier's
life was almost that of the civilian.
It was in this semimilitary, semicivil capacity that the
Roman soldier made his greatest contribution to civilization.
Prom the first, the Roman procedure with the conquered
was a mixture of policy and force, with the army for its in-
strument. The garrison on active duty was used for pacific
ends as well as for security ; or, rather, was used in measures
of pacification for the sake of consolidating conquered terri-
tory. Trade, the language, the customs, and the law of
THE ARMY
Rome went with the eagles. The colony composed of veter-
ans became another Rome and a little capital which soon
converted its people into Romans. The permanent border
camps, at first mere outposts to hold the line of defense, soon
became the camp cities whose remains in Britain and at
A MILITARY ROLL
The roll shows the names of men and their home towns, and above them the
number of the cohort, its officer's name, and the consuls of the year. Thus :
Cohort Third, Century of Kanus
Torquatus and Atticus Consuls
Treasurer (fisci curator) L(ucius) Taurius Secundus Parma
Timgad and Lambaesis in Africa and elsewhere show how
much more they were cities than camps.
The soldier in them perhaps never saw important active
service. He enlisted for his twenty years, married a woman
of the neighborhood, reared a family, kept a garden, perhaps
464 GREATER ROME
had business connections. Whether a native Roman or
Italian, or a Roman citizen from elsewhere, he and his com-
rades were the great means of naturalizing the surrounding
districts as Roman. Their language, their manners, their
religion, their law, their ideas, their sentiments, their in-
stitutions, were those of the Roman citizen. Their long resi-
dence and intimate mingling in the life of the community
made Spain, France. England, Roumania, Italy and Sicily,
and Africa for the time of its occupation, into Roman coun-
tries. The legion, like many a modern regiment, retained its
name and in some cases its post for centuries. The Valeria
Victrix, the Alauda, the Tenth, the Spanish, and the
Emperor's Own went on, the places of their dead supplied
)by new recruits, their history enriched by gallant incident,
until their names stood for the history of the army and the
State. The cities of Chester, castra, in England, and Le6n,
legio, in Spain, still testify by the names to their origin in the
camp city of Rome. The Greek-speaJking culture, in lands
already old and established in the arts of war and peace, and
more thickly populated, they did not transform to the same
extent, but even the East was ruled by Roman law, and it
was an Eastern emperor, Justinian, who performed the final
and greatest service of the ancient Roman to modern times
by reducing Roman law to system in the great Code.
Such in outline was the Roman army and its work. To
go more into detail is not possible here. It would halt us
too long to be told what the legionary ate and drank and how
he was provisioned ; to learn of his work as engineer and
scout and in the signal service ; to follow him on the march
with his scientifically ordered columns and baggage train, and
to witness the speed and accuracy with which he built a
bridge and crossed a river, or converted the rough plot of
ground in the wilderness into the camp with every conven-
THE ARMY
465
ience and safety ; to share in imagination his battles, sieges,
fortunes, and to tell of his disastrous chances,
"Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,"
and perhaps even of his " being taken by the insolent foe,"
and, like Othello, sold to slavery ; to participate in the warm
comradeship of camp and campaign which gave his adven-
A MODEL OF ANCIENT ROMAN ABTIUJERY
Stone balls of one to fifty pounds were hurled by this mechanical sling, called
ballista, a distance of 500 to 1000 feet. The arm carrying the sling was drawn
down toward the horses, the stone was placed, and the arm released by trigger.
The bag of sand received the arm as it spent its energy.
tures a zest and relieved routine of dullness ; to feel with him
the joys of promotion and the furlough ; to learn, less pleas-
antly, of the coarseness and roughness and cruelties and tyr-
annies he had to suffer and to inflict in the course of his duties.
We are looking at the Roman army in the laxge as one of the
institutions of the Roman State which for a thousand years
performed its work successfully, and failed only at the end ;
and failed then because it had trained in its own ranks
166 GREATER ROME
oorder nations that swept it back in the day of its old age and
exhaustion. Let us conclude by asking what were the causes
of its thousand years of successful marching and battling,
and settling and keeping settled the affairs of Roman civili-
zation.
The answer to this question will not be that the enemies
whom the Roman army subdued were its inferiors in
physique, or in numbers, or in wealth, or even in experience.
It did indeed meet and subdue inferiors in these respects, but
it met and subdued also armies that surpassed it in them all.
What the Roman army possessed which was not possessed in
equal measure by any of its antagonists may be simply ex-
pressed. It was what the Roman people in general possessed.
It was character as men and discipline as men engaged in the
work of a state. Without these and with every other possible
advantage, there would have been no onward march of either
army or State.
But let us make room for two testimonies from the ancients
themselves — one a Roman four hundred years after Christ,
and one a Greek who wrote almost six centuries before the
Roman.
" In any battle," writes Flavius Vegetius Renatus in a military
treatise, "it is uot so much numbers and untrained valor as expert-
ness and training that bring victory. It is clear that the Roman
people subdued the world simply because of their attention to train-
ing in arms, their camp discipline, and their experience in military
science. What could the Romans with their small number have
done against the Greeks with their multitudes? How could the
short-etatured Roman have dared to face the gigantic German?
It is plain that the Spaniards surpassed our men not only in num-
bers but in stratagem and money. No one ever doubted that we
were inferior to the Greeks in knowledge and wisdom. But where
we have had the advantage over all these things has been in the
skillful picking of the recruit, the instruction of him, so to speak,
THE ARMY 467
in the law of arms, the hardening of him by daily drill, the prepara-
tion of him by practice in the field to meet every situation that
can arise in the line of battle, the taking of stern measures against
the sluggard. For it is knowing the science of war that increases
daring in battle. No one is afraid to do what he is confident he
has learned well."
The other and older testimony is from Polybius, the Greek
historian of Rome and friend of Scipio the Younger, a witness
of the destruction of Carthage, and a resident in Rome about
165-148 B.C.
"Owing to the extreme severity and inevitableness of the
penalty [bastinado by all members of the camp], the night
watches of the Roman army are most scrupulously kept.
While the soldiers are subject to the tribunes, the latter are
subject to the consuls. A tribune, and in the case of the allies a
prefect, has the right of inflicting fines, of demanding sureties, and
of punishing by flogging. The bastinado is also inflicted on those
who steal anything from the camp ; on those who give false evi-
dence ; on young men who have abused their persons ; and finally
on anyone who has been punished thrice for the same fault. These
are the offenses which are punished as crimes, the following being
treated as unmanly acts and disgraceful in a soldier : when a man
boasts falsely to the tribune of his valor in the field in order to gain
distinction ; when any men who have been placed in a covering
force leave the station assigned to them from fear; likewise when
anyone throws away from fear any of his arms in the actual battle.
Therefore the men in covering forces often face certain death, refus-
ing to leave their ranks even when vastly outnumbered, owing to
dread of the punishment they would meet with ; and again in battle
men who have lost a shield or sword or any other arm often throw
themselves into the midst of the enemy, hoping either to recover
the lost object or to escape by death from inevitable disgrace and
the taunts of their relations.
"If the same thing ever happens to large bodies, and if entire
maniples desert their posts when exceedingly hard press _d, the
officers refrain from inflicting the bastinado or the death penalty
on all, but find a solution of the difficulty which is both salutary
468 GREATER ROME
and terror-striking. The tribune assembles the legion, and brings
up those guilty of leaving the ranks, reproaches them sharply, and
finally chooses by lot sometimes five, sometimes eight, sometimes
twenty of the offenders, so adjusting the number thus chosen that
they form as near as possible the tenth part of those guilty of cow-
ardice. Those on whom the lot falls are bastinadoed mercilessly
in the manner above described ; the rest receive rations of barley
instead of wheat and are ordered to encamp outside the camp on
an unprotected spot.
"They also have an admirable method of encouraging the young
soldiers to face danger. After a battle in which some of them have
distinguished themselves, the general calls an assembly of the
troops, and bringing forward those whom he considers to have dis-
played conspicuous valor, first of all speaks in laudatory terms of
the courageous deeds of each and of anything else in their pre-
vious conduct which deserves commendation, and afterwards dis-
tributes the following rewards [various decorations like the modern
distinguished service medal]. . . . The recipients of such gifts,
quite apart from becoming famous in the army and famous too
for the time at their homes, are especially distinguished in religious
processions after their return, as no one is allowed to wear decora-
tions except those on whom these honors for bravery have been
conferred by the consul; and in their houses they hang up the
spoils they won in the most conspicuous places, looking upon them
as tokens and evidences of their valor. Considering all this atten-
tion given to the matter of punishments and rewards in the army
and the importance attached to both, no wonder that the wars in
which the Romans engage end so successfully and brilliantly."
XXXIX
MARE NOSTRUM
We have said little thus far about the vast inland or
"midland" sea called the Mediterranean which is so great
a factor in the story of Rome This is partly because we
have been studying mostly the city of Rome and the people
within its walls, but it is also partly because our habit of
thought regarding this body of water is not quite correct.
We think and speak of the Roman Empire as if it were
to be defined as an aggregation of territories bordering on
the Mediterranean, and do not realize as we should that the
sea itself was a part of the Empire. The Mediterranean
united as well as separated the parts of the Roman territory
that lay on its shores. Roman subjects dwelt on its few
larger islands and its innumerable smaller islands, and made
their homes on the craft that went to and fro upon its bosom ;
it had its population as well as the land.
The sea also had its riches to yield, as well as the land.
It furnished, and still furnishes, a great part of the salt
used in countries far and near. With its fish, it helped to
feed the Roman people. It yielded the shellfish that made
the purple dye of the imperial robes. It furnished the
sponge.
But these were not the only contributions of the sea. It
modified and equalized the climate of all its borders. It
tempered the North wind in winter and in summer sent its
breezes inland to make the heat more endurable. It sent
its evaporations over the land to condense and fall as the
470 GREATER ROME
gentle rain of heaven. It ministered to variety and beauty
in the landscape. Its high shores, clothed in orchard and
vineyard and interrupted by fruitful valleys, its precipitous
mountain borders, its picturesquely smoking marine and
coastal volcanoes, its gleaming islands of limestone and mar-
ble rising steeply out of fathomless depths, its bluest of
waters shimmering in the calm or sparkling with gold or
lacy with curling foam in the gale, its white-winged sail-
ing ships and brown-winged fishing fleets, its lazily wheel-
ing gulls and joyously leaping porpoises — what other sea
is its equal in the brilliance of its charms? And what other
sea is peopled like it with Naiads and Nereids and rising
Proteuses and Tritons blowing their wreathed horns, or con-
ceals in its depth such wonderful caverns and grots and
palaces, or has furnished the settings for an Odyssey or an
Aeneid?
The Mediterranean in historic times is but a fraction of
the great sea which in remote ages extended far eastward
and included the Black and Caspian seas and the plains of
Central Asia ; yet even in its diminished form its extent is
hard to realize. The area of the United States in North
America, exclusive of Alaska, is 3,042,494 square miles;
the area of the Mediterranean is 1,145,830 square miles.
The Mediterranean is thus a little more than one third
the size of our 48 States. It is a little less than one third of
Europe's total area of 3,785,000 square miles. It is equal to
20 Wisconsins, or 24 New Yorks, or 13 Kansases, or 7 Cali-
fornias, or 19 Georgias, or 4 Texases, and is 140 times the
area of Massachusetts. It would contain the area of our
Great Lakes ten times. Italy, the largest peninsula in-
denting it, is one tenth its area, the peninsula of Greece one
forty-sixth ; Sicily, its largest island, one hundredth.
There are four natural divisions composing the Mediter-
MARE NOSTRUM 471
ranean : the Western, bounded by Africa, Spain, France,
Italy, and Sicily; the Sicilian-Ionian, bounded by Sicily,
the southern extremity of Italy, Greece, and Africa; the
Adriatic ; the Eastern, bounded by Greece, Tripoli, Egypt,
and Asia, and including the numerous Greek archipelagoes.
Of these, the Adriatic forms about a twentieth part of the
total area, and the other three something less than one third
each. The niche in the Eastern basin occupied by the
Aegean Sea is four hundred miles from north to south, longer
than Lake Michigan and more than twice as wide.
The life of man in the Mediterranean basin began many
hundred thousand years ago with the westward migrations
from somewhere beyond the eastern end of the sea ; perhaps
from Egypt, perhaps from some point where Europe and
southwestern Asia meet. The routes of the earliest men can
only be conjectured. They probably advanced by both the
southern shore and the northern, but mostly by the southern,
peopling by slow degrees the fertile fringe of Africa between
sea and desert, crossing into Spain, and continuing to north
and east until they met their fellows advancing by the
northern route and thus completed the encircling of the sea.
From the time they began to use tools, that is, from the be-
ginning of the Old Stone Age, it is calculated that a hundred
and twenty-five thousand years have passed. The last part
of this period, about 40,000 B.C. to 12,000 B.C., has been
much studied the past half century in the caves of France
and Spain. The men who lived in these dwellings could
make shapely implements of war and peace, and decorated
these and the walls of their caverns with beautiful drawings.
Their age was called the Reindeer Period because of its most
prominent animal, and came to an end with the fourth
retreat of the glaciers, aboui 14,000 years ago, with which
the present climatic era began.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
ATHS
GREATEST EXTENT
Scale of Mfl<*
(? 1QO 200 400 600
ABBREVIATIONS
A.P. AlpMFooinM
A.M. Alptf UuitiflUft.
territory at the beginning of the 1st Punic war (264 B.C.)
Acquisitions taring the 1st. Punic war (Z38B.C)
uptotheendofthe2mL Puniewuri201B C.)
• * 133 before Chnat
« * the death of Julias Caesar (44B C)
Augustus (14 A.D.)
<••• - - « M«rcusAnrelius(180A.D.)
- - Boundaries of the Roman provinces before Diocletian
Imperial provinces Senatorial provinces
-»— Boundary of the eastand west Roman Empire 395 A-D^ahaded
edging means half-dependent, fl*t shading means incorporated; figures
show the year of acquisition and* hen marked with an a mean A.D
474 GREATER ROME
Not to attempt a further account of the movements
of the earliest men on the Mediterranean shores, let us go on
by saying that at the more or less obscure dawning of his-
tory there was a double migration by the northern and
southern routes. By the northern, from the borders of
Europe and Asia not far from the Caspian Sea, advanced
the Indo-European stock whose westward movement re-
sulted in the Greeks, the Romans, the Celts, and the Teu-
tons ; by the southern, from Phoenicia principally, advanced
the Semitic stock which made Carthage a new and licher
center of power and spread Semitic culture and commerce
along the shores of Africa, across the strait, and up the coast
of Spain.
As the north and south shores met at the Pillars of Her-
cules between Spain and Africa, and as the Mediterranean
at Carthage is almost bridged by Sicily, it was hardly possi-
ble that the two civilizations should not some day collide
The fact that their peoples were of different bloods and na-
tions was enough to make them hostile, and there was in
addition to this a rivalry on the sea.
The rivalry began with the clashing of Greek with Car-
thaginian. Carthage had inherited and developed the com-
mercial and naval power of her mother country, Phoenicia,
and the Greek had become expert on the waters and in the
markets of the West as well as the East. The Aegean
islands, the west coast of the Adriatic, Corcyra, the South
of Italy, the West of Italy as far as Cumae, Marseilles and
its neighborhood, composed a Greater Greece of trade and
colonization ; the north coast of Africa, and southern Spain
with New Carthage as its capital, made a Greater Phoenicia
or Greater Carthage.
For a long time the ships of Indo-European Greek and
Semitic Carthaginian contended in the rivalries of trade with*
MARE NOSTRUM 475
cut appeal to arms. When they did come finally to the test
of arms, it was in the Western sea. When in 600 B.C. the
Greeks founded Massilia, the ancient Marseilles, and later,
when from Massilia they attempted to extend their colonies
and trade control to Spain and Corsica, they came into con-
flict with the Carthaginians and their allies, the Etruscans,
on the sea. In the campaign of Xerxes against the Eastern
Greeks which ended at Salamis in 480 B.C., the Carthaginians
participated by invading Sicily, whose western part had long
been controlled by Carthage as its eastern part had been
controlled by Greece. The battle of the Himera, said to
have been fought on the very day of Salamis, resulted in
the defeat and destruction of the Carthaginian army and
fleet. In 474 B.C. the Etruscan sympathizers with Carthage
were defeated by the Sicilian Greek fleet off Cumae, which
they were besieging. Henceforth, the Carthaginian was
definitely halted in Sicily and confined to southern Spain
and the coast of Africa.
Meanwhile the Roman power was expanding in Italy.
Because its ambitions were compelled to center in the sub-
jugation of the peninsula, it paid little attention to com-
merce on the sea and less to the maintenance of ships of war.
Both the military and the trade problems of Rome up to the
opening of the third century B.C. were concerned mostly
with its neighbors on Italian soil. This does not mean that
it had no interest at all in overseas people or trade, or that
it had not felt the need of naval power. From an early
time, it had used the Tiber and had bartered with the coastal
towns as well as the inland. It had known the imports from
the Myceneans and the Greeks and from farther east. It
had intimate relations with the Greeks of Massilia. There
still survives the substance of a treaty between Rome and
Carthage dating perhaps as early as 500 B.C., and certainly
476
GREATER ROME
not later than 348 B.C., which indicates at least some sharing
by Rome in the traffic of the sea. In 338 B.C. the defeat of
the Latin allies by Rome in the naval battle of Antium
increased the Roman navy by many captured ships. In
311 B.C. the appointment of duoviri navales, two commis-
sioners of the fleet, and in 267 B.C. the institution of foui
A BlBEME
Note the two rows of oars, the animal figurehead, the rostrum or beak, the fore-
castle, and the marines, two of whom are ready to leap for the land.
quaestors of the fleet, to be stationed at Ostia, the port of
Rome, at Gales in Campania, at Ariminum on the east coast,
and at a fourth point not known, are further indications of
the growth of naval ambition at Rome.
Yet all this meant little in comparison with Greek or
Carthaginian commercial and naval power. The treaty with
Carthage prohibited Roman trade in the eastern Mediter-
ranean and on the Atlantic, leaving free only the western
Mediterranean, and not even that without restriction. Such
MARE NOSTRUM
a treaty was possible only because of Roman helplessness.
Occupied with Italian affairs of war and peace, possessing a
small navy, and having great stretches of coast open to at-
tack by the superior navy of Carthage, the Romans had no
choice.
It was only when the Roman set foot across the two miles
of water separating Italy and Sicily that Roman naval
history began in earnest. This was in 265 B.C., when,
in answer to the appeal of the people of Messana, the present
Messina, two Roman legions were sent to their aid in de-
fiance of the wishes of Carthage, by that time strong in
Sicily. This crossing of the straits brought on the First
Punic War, 265-241 B.C. In its fourth year the Romans,
adopting the plan to drive the Carthaginians from Sicily,
in six weeks created a fleet of a hundred ships on the model
of a stranded enemy ship. They lost seventeen of them with
their admiral in a first battle, in the second badly defeated
the Carthaginian fleet, and in a third established the naval
superiority of Rome. These two great victories, at Mylae
in 260 B.C. and at Ecnomus in 256 B.C., were equaled by the
victory at Aegusa in 241 B.C., which ended the war and made
Sicily a Roman island.
From the First Punic War on, the freedom of Rome on the
sea could hardly be questioned. When, with the Second
and Third Punic wars, and the Macedonian wars, the greater
part of the shores also passed under the control of Rome, the
Roman supremacy in naval power was almost wholly un-
challenged, and the Roman navy was looked to as respon-
sible for order and safety on the sea. It took nearly a
hundred years after the destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C.
for Rome properly to meet this obligation.
The Mediterranean was infested by piracy of two kinds.
There was the ordinary piracy of the robber individual or
478
GREATER RCftlE
the robber group or race who stopped a ship and seized its
cargo and held its crew or passengers for ransom, and there
was the piracy consisting of guerilla warfare on the sea
carried on or instigated by the eastern border enemies of
Rome. Of the former, the Balearic pirates in the West
MOSAIC AT OSTIA SHOWING A PORT
Above two dolphins symbolic of the sea are two ships under full sail, each with
two steering-oars, riding in the gale before a lighthouse.
and the Cilicians in the East were notorious ; of the latter,
the numerous raiders in the employ of Mithridates of Pontus,
in Asia Minor, an able trouble maker for the Romans from
105 B.C. to his death in 63 B.C., whose activities reached as
far as Spain, including an attack on Ostia, fifteen miles from
Rome.
The Balearic pirates were effectively halted in their career
by an expedition in 123 B.C. under Metellus, who occupied
MARE NOSTRUM 479
the islands and took measures for their Romanization. The
Cilicians and Mithridates were not so easily managed.
The Cilicians had many ships, conducted a lively trade in
slaves, had important commercial connections, were some-
times employed by the scheming rulers of the East, and met
with a toleration that made them overbold. The activities
of Mithridates, we are told, included the destruction of four
hundred towns in the Mediterranean through the employ-
ment of pirate ships.
The end of all these troubles, and of disorders more local
in origin, came with the Gabinian and Manilian laws of 67
and 66 B.C., conferring on Pompey the supreme command
against piracy wherever found, and also against Mithridates
in his dominions. Cicero's oration for the Manilian Law,
advocating the extension of Pompey's commission to include
the war against Mithridates, not only tells us of Pompey's
great success in clearing the seas, but indicates the state of
the Mediterranean before the expedition.
" Need I tell you that these years the sea has been closed to our
allies," the orator asks, " when your own armies have never crossed
from Brundisium except in the middle of winter? Am I to com-
plain to you that envoys coming to you from foreign lands have
been captured, when envoys of the Roman people have had to be
ransomed? . . . What state before has ever been so slight, what
island so small, that it could not defend for itself its own harbors
and fields and some part of its coast and territory? And yet, by
Hercules, for a period of several years before the Gabinian Law, the
great Roman people, whose name as far back as our memory goes
has never suffered defeat in battles at sea, had lost a great part, yes,
by far the greatest part, not only of its trade advantages but of its
dignity and authority. We, whose forefathers overcame King Anti-
ochus and Perseus on the sea, and in every naval battle vanquished
the Carthaginians, a nation most thoroughly trained and prepared
in the use of the sea, had long been unable to meet the freebooters
in any single place. We, who before had not only kent Italv safe,
480 GREATER ROME
but were able by the strength of our authority to guarantee safety
to all our allies on the remotest shores . . . we, I say, were kept
not only from our provinces and the coasts of Italy and from
the use of our ports, but even from the Appian Way ; and in
times like that the magistrates of the Roman people were not
ashamed to come on to this very platform, though our fathers
left it to us adorned with naval trophies and the spoils of enemy
fleets !
"Immortal gods! Can it be that the unbelievable, the divine
abilities of a single human being could in so brief a space of time
cause so much light to shine upon our State that you, who but a
moment ago looked upon the enemy's fleet before the entrance to
the Tiber, now hear that on this side cf the entrance to the Ocean
not a single ship of the pirates is left? And though you see with
what swiftness these things were accomplished, I must neverthe-
less not pass it by ; for what man, either in his eagerness to perform
a duty or in the pursuit of gain, could ever have visited so many
places and made such long voyages with the rushing speed of this
great campaign on the sea under Pompey's leadership? The sea-
son for navigation had not yet opened when he sailed for Sicily,
reconnoitred Africa, and then came with the fleet to Sardinia.
These three grain resources of the State he furnished with the
strongest garrisons and with naval forces. Next, after ha,ving
returned to Italy, he strengthened the two Spains and Gaul with
garrisons and ships, sent ships likewise to the coast of lUyricuin, to
Aohaia, and to all Greece, and equipped the two seas of Italy with
the greatest sea power and the strongest military protection, while
he himself set out from Brundisium and on the forty-ninth day
annexed all Cilicia to the territory of the Roman people. All
pirates everywhere in part were taken captive and executed, and
in part surrendered themselves to the authority and power of this
one man. He went on ; from the Cretans, in spite of their sending
envoys as far as Pamphylia to beg his clemency, he did not take
away their hope of being allowed to surrender, and levied hostages.
In such wise this great war, lasting so long and diffused so widely
and far, a war from which all nations and races were suffering,
did Gnaeus Pompeius make ready for at the end of winter, under-
take at the beginning of spring, and in midsummer bring to an
end."
MARE NOSTRUM 481
Pompey's 49 days in the East were preceded by an equally
Affective 40 days in the West. The record included the cap-
ture of 377 ships and the burning of 1,300. This was the last
of the Cilician and the Mithridatic marauders, and the first
of an orderly Mediterranean.
Before peace on the waters could be permanent, however,
the naval movements of the civil war between Pompey and
Caesar, between Pompey's son Sextus and Caesar's suc-
cessor Augustus, and between Antony and Augustus, ending
with the battle of Actium in 31 B.C., were necessary. When
Augustus emerges from the conflict of thirteen years between
Julius Caesar's death and Actium, he makes the harbor at
Misenum, west of Naples, and the harbor at Ravenna in
the Northeast the stations of the imperial fleet, with guar-
dian ships elsewhere at convenient points. The Mediter-
ranean for the first time ceases to be a sea separating three
continents, and is a Roman lake — mare nostrum. When
Horace writes,
" Pacatum volitant per mare navitae,"
it is the end of one long story and the beginning of another.
The navy henceforth is a body of marine police, a conven-
ience for the administrators of the Empire, a transport serv-
ice, a carrier or escort of the emperor and his high officials,
and only on occasion the instrument of actual war ; and then
far away in the North Sea, on Rhine and Danube, or in the
Black Sea.
It remains to say something of the unit which composed
the navy and of the navy as a whole. The warship, navis
longa, was propelled by wind and oar, and was classified
according to oarage. There were biremes, triremes, quadri-
remes, quinqueremes, and ships of extra size. The oars
projected through holes probably fitted with leather to
482
GREATER ROME
keep rough water out. The rowers, who were allies, freed-
men, captives, slaves, criminals, or others constrained to a
hard service, sat on benches just inside the hull. The long
prevalent theory of superposed rows or banks of oars,
, =* the upper with longer
r sweep, as in the illus-
tration, is now ques-
tioned. The view is
advanced that the
quadrireme had one
bank of oars with four
men to the oar, the
quinquereme the same
with five, etc. ; and
that the trireme, like
the Venetian galley,
had one man to each
oar, with oarsmen
seated on a level or on
slightly rising levels in
groups of three, and
the men of each group
placed one a little
farther forward and
farther in than another,
so that the oars did not interfere. For speed, six to eight-
miles an hour was a good average, the higher made pos-
sible and easier by one large square sail on the main mast,
sometimes aided by a square sail below and a triangular
above. The ship was steered in quite simple fashion bj
means of two large oars, and had cord or chain cables.
It was armed at the prow with a metal beak, usually c.f
bronze, for the purpose of ramming the enemy ship, tea *-
A TRIREME
The crew are resting on their oars.
(From "Ben Hur")
MARE NOSTRUM 483
ing a hole in its side below the water line, and sinking it.
On the f oredeck was also a tower, from which to throw weap-
ons, the ancient form of the "forecastle." For boarding
purposes, there were poles and ladders, a small boat, and tall
beams with hooks at the end to let fall on the enemy's deck
and hold him.
The trireme resembled the Greek, which had 170 oarsmen
and about 20 sailors and 10 fighting men, a total of 200 ;
but the Roman had upwards of 100 fighting men, and was
no doubt different in size and other respects. A quin-
quereme had about 420 men, including 300 oarsmen. The
trireme was about 24 horsepower, had a tonnage of 75, and
under favoring conditions could make 10 miles an hour.
With painted figurehead of Mars or Neptune, with officers
and men in full uniform and panoply standing at attention,
with the imperial ensign flying, it was no doubt a stirring
sight as the squadron, gay with decorations and proud
with trophies, came up the Tiber from Ostia on the re-
turn from distant seas and swept into the city between
the cheering crowds to put in at the docks by the Campus
Martius.
The size of the navy after the fall of Carthage was deter-
mined by the need of the times, and not by rivalry in time
of peace with powers expected some day to be active enemies.
At Actium, Antony's 500 ships and Cleopatra's 60 were
met by Augustus with 250. Pompey's command against the
East included 500 ships. At Ecnomus in 256 B.C., Polybius
'says the Romans had 330 ships and the Carthaginians 350,
each a total of about 150,000 men as crews and fighters.
In A.D. 16 there were a thousand vessels in the North Sea
and on the Rhine, but not on the footing of actual war. The
total shipping of the imperial fleets was no doubt very great,
yet not so great as might be thought from the number of
4S4 CHEATER ROME
craft in the North. Like the army, the navy, under the
Empire, was on duty chiefly at the border, and the Medi-
terranean squadrons were comparatively small.
Such was Mare Nostrum, and such the naval arm of
XL
BY LAND AND SEA
In our account of the Roman army and of Roman control
over the Mediterranean in the center of the Empire and over
the various waters on its borders, we have considered the
cwo great arms by which the Roman State acquired and held
its dominion. We have been dealing with movement, but
military and navy movement. A better understanding
should be had now of movement in times of peace and in the
ordinary ways of life ; that is, of the travel, commerce, and
verbal communication by which the Empire was knit to-
gether into a coherent and compact whole. This will involve
some attention to Roman roads and their use, to the carrying
trade in men and goods by land and sea, and to the sending
of letters and other messages.
The great arteries of the Roman Empire were the roads.
Their total mileage at the maximum is estimated at 47,000,
of which Gaul, or France, had 13,200, and Sicily a thousand.
They served the same purposes as those accomplished by
the modern railway, and their history resembles that of the
railway lines. They followed the lines of communication
already existing, and replaced the poorly kept and often in-
direct dirt roads and paths by solid, straight, durable, stone
pavements over which men and goods could reach their des-
tinations with greater convenience, safety, and speed. 4s a
usual thing, their construction followed the extension of the
Roman sway, for the double purpose of facilitating commerce
with the newly acquired territory and of providing for the
485
486 GREATER ROME
rapid movement of the army. The Appian Way, for ex-
ample, was paved with stone from Rome to Capua in 312
B.C., twenty-six years after Rome's victory over the Latin
Confederation, whose various members occupied territories
along its line. Later, when the Samnites and South Italy
became Roman, the Appia was extended to Beneventum
and Brundisium.
The Appian Way was the oldest of the improved Roman
roads, and the most celebrated. Its beautiful description
as Regina Viarum, Queen of Highways, occurs in the poet
Statius. It left Rome at a southern gate, traversed the
Campagna on a long bed of basalt which served then, and
still serves, as a quarry for the street-paving material of tho
city, to the slopes of the Alban Mount ; continued along the
base of the Volscian Mountains to the sea at Tarracina :
crept around the cliffs and went on through the mountains
to Beneventum, reaching the Adriatic at Barium, whence it
kept to the coast until its termination at Brundisium.
Another of the great highways was the Via Flaminia,
which began in the Via Lata, the modern Corso, inside the
gates, crossed the Tiber at the Mulvian Bridge, and ter-
minated at Ariminum on the Adriatic. It was begun by
Gaius Flaminius, censor in 220 B.C. and builder also of the
Circus Flaminius, and was finished in 187 B.C. The exten-
sion of it through the plains of North Italy to what are now
Piacenza and Milan was called the Via Aemilia, from M.
Aemilius Lepidus, its builder as far as Placentia, the modern
Piacenza.
The Via Aurelia, climbing the Jamculum, made for the
west coast, which it followed, like the modern railway, to
Pisa, Genoa, and the Rhone Valley in Gaul. The Via Salaria
was the line of communication between Rome and the
Adriatic through the Sabine country and Piceniun. TV
BY LAND AND SEA
487
Tiburtina entered the Apennines at Tibur, modern Tivoli,
.after eighteen miles through the plain of Latium, and con-
tinued as the Via Valeria to the Adriatic, a little south of
Adria, the city which gave the sea its name. The Via
Latina ran inland parallel to the Appia and joined it in
THE SACKED WAY IN ROME
The heavy basaltic blocks, from the quarries near Home, are one to three feet
•Jiick. This is the Via Sacra on which Horace walked : Ibam forte Via Sacra sicut
meus est mos.
Campania. The Via Cassia passed the lake of Bolsena and
can through Clusium and Arretium to Florentia and Luca,
iiear which it joined the Via Aurelia.
These were the main-traveled roads in Italy. There
were other roads from Rome, and of course there were
488 GREATER ROME
branches of the main roads, some of them interprovinciai,
and some only local. Outside of Italy, the chief routes were
continued beyond the Alps in France and Britain and in the
Rhine and Danube country. Beyond the Mediterranean
they continued the paths of the sea into Spain, Africa, Egypt,
Asia, the Black Sea country, Greece, and Dalmatia. All
roads radiated from Rome the capital, the center and heart
of their world, or were feeders to those which did. "AJ]
roads lead to Rome" is not an empty expression.
There is no better way to an appreciation of the part
played by the Roman road than the comparison of it with
the modern railroad.
In the first place, it has already been noticed that the two
main purposes of road construction were tha facilitation of
military movement and the encouragement of trade. Both
are purposes familiar in modern times ; the Simplon road oi
Napoleon, the railways of Germany and France at the border,
the roads of India, are illustrations. We do not forget, cf
course, that in the older countries conquered by Rome, the
roads were already established, and were only taken over and
improved.
In the second place, Rome is to be thought of as a road
center just as Paris and London and Chicago are railroad
centers. Some sixteen roads came into Rome, seven of
which ran to the sea or the Alps, with connections beyond,
and were what might be Called main lines.
Thirdly, the Roman roads represented routes determined
by natural and commercial convenience. They followed
the coast, or the straight line in the plain, or the river valleys
leading to passes in the mountain country, or connected thriv-
ing towns, quite like the modern railroad. Like the railroad,
too, their coining created many a town. They were at the
time the effect and the cause of Roman extension.
BY LAND AND SEA
489
Fourthly, the construction of the Roman road as an en-
gineering enterprise was comparable to railroad building.
The line from point to point was generally straight, and
the stretches of the line were as long as physiography per-
mitted. The Appian Way in its first stretch ran from Rome
to Tarracina on the coast, seventy-five miles. Cuttings,
THE APPIAN WAY Two MILES FROM ROME
The stone margins and pavement are still to be seen in many places, and the road
is bordered for miles by tomb ruins.
viaducts, gradings, and even tunnels are still to be seen on
many of the routes, the evidence of this refusal to deviate.
The roadbed itself was systematically laid. Two parallel
trenches were first dug, ten to fifteen feet apart on main
lines and less on local or cross lines, and the material between
was excavated. In this excavation was laid a triple founda-
tion consisting of a stratum of small broken stones, a stratum
of smaller stones mixed with mortar and firmly tamped, and
490 GREATER ROME
the bed of cement which received the massive blocks of the
actual pavement. The blocks were of limestone from the
mountains or, more frequently, of silex, or basalt, from some
volcanic quarry, and might be either rectangular or po-
lygonal ; the basalt usually being the latter, and carefully
dressed and accurately fitted into a smooth and beautifully
patterned surface. To take care of the drainage, the surface
was slightly rounded and there were runnels at the sides,
with now and then a main or culvert under the road. At
the extreme edges were curbs, and beyond them graveled
paths for walkers.
The features thus described were characteristic of the
normal main road near Rome and in the richer parts of the
Empire. Roads naturally varied with the region traversed
and the spirit of the builder. In the mountains, "the natural
rock would serve partly as foundation ; in the marshes, the
foundation had to be made of piles. At Rome, there was
plenty of basalt, the most durable of stones ; in other places,
the harder kinds of limestone had to serve, or, in districts
of less importance, the leveled earth road or the graveled
surface.
In the fifth place, the Roman roads, like many railroad
systems, were built, administered, and operated by the State.
There are differences to be noted, however.
A first difference is to be seen in the fact that many
Roman roads by their names testify to an origin in the special
concern of individuals. Appius Claudius, Gaius Flaminius,
Aemilius Lepidus, and others after whom main lines or
branches were named, were the pioneer organizers in road-
building enterprise, and probably were responsible for some
part of its cost. Under the Republic, the authority of the
State operated in Italy through a censor, a consul, a local
magistrate, or the general of an army in the field ; in the
BY LAND AND SEA 491
provinces, through the proconsul or propraetor acting as
governor. Under the Empire, the emperor was the source
of authority.
A second difference was that the maintenance of the road,
and in many cases the original cost, was charged, in part or
whole according to period, to the cities or provinces through
which it ran. Under the Republic, the burden fell heavily
on the subject peoples at first, and afterward on both sub-
jects and allies. Under the Empire, it was shifted to the
Government; by the time of Septimius Severus that part
of the traffic which was public had been nationalized and was
maintained at the imperial expense, but local obligations
were still of such weight as to cause bitter complaint. In
the late Empire, when, according to Professor Westermann,
the transport of supplies was assigned to individual private
citizens as a compulsory duty, and "finally became a heredi-
tary obligation upon those engaged in it," the maintenance
of the roads also was probably assigned at least in part.
The method was not unknown in earlier times ; the triumvirs
of 43 B.C., Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus, compelled indi-
vidual senators to repair roads at their own expense.
A third difference to be noted is that the ancient road was
not devoted to a single method or means of traffic. It was
freely used by pedestrians, riders, and drivers, public and
private alike, not limited to paid regular service of one sort.
It was a road, and not a track with a fixed gauge. One rest-
ing by the roadside an hour might have seen a dozen kinds of
vehicles and animals pass. There was the light and nimble,
two-wheeled, two-horsed, open cisium, with one double
seat. There was the raeda, a big, heavy four-wheeler drawn
by two and four horses, for a larger number of passengers.
There were the carpentum, two-wheeled, two-horsed, and
covered, and the pilentum, four-wheeled, heard of as used on
A MOSAIC ON THE FLOOR OF BATHS IN OSTIA
About an ornamental device with four Atlas figures enclosing the center of the
chamber floor are four scenes of mules and their drivers. Four of the animals are
named Pudens, Podagrosus, Potiscus, Barosua. The last two are unhitched and
having their feed. Study the carts, harnesses, drivers, whips, gestures, and the
mules' ears and attitudes.
BY LAND AND SEA 493*
state occasions by the flamens and the Vestals. There
were the plaiistra, dray or work wagons ; the carrus, a big
two-wheeled transport cart ; the petoritum, a baggage carrier.
There was the carruca, a four-wheeled traveling carriage
de luxe in which the passenger could sleep, not heard of before
the first century after Christ. There were the war chariots
and the farmers' carts, and there was the litter or sedan chair,
lectica, in use for short distances in town and carried by
polemen. The beasts that drew these vehicles were horses,
mules, donkeys, and oxen.
Sixthly, to return to comparisons in likeness, the pro-
miscuous use of the ancient highway was accompanied by a
government post service. This, like many other features
of Roman life, existed in an undeveloped form at the time
of the Republic, and was regulated and improved by the
emperors.
To insure the rapid transmission of dispatches there were
stations called mutationes for the change of the horses ridden
by the stratores, saddlemen, or couriers. For the carrying
trade in money and goods of small compass, and for the
passenger and freight traffic, there were stations equipped
with horses and vehicles for change, and with supplies in
general for the road. These places were called mansiones,
waiting places. The employees in them included riders,
drivers, conductors, doctors, and blacksmiths, especially
wheelwrights. In a good day's journey, the traveler
passed six or eight of these post stations, at each of which
there were some forty beasts, with corresponding outfit of
rolling stock and other supplies, and probably with con-
veyances to hire on special demand.
The affairs of the entire post system as developed in the
Empire were under the control of a central office whose head,
a vehiculiSj the general manager, was responsible to the
494 GlUEATi£R ROME
emperor, and who had under him a number of inspectors
called cwriosi cursus pitblici, division superintendents.
From the fourth-century legislation on the post, it may be
seen that tickets were sold, diplomata; that in the case of
distinguished persons they might include lodging and meals,
tractoria; that there were first- and second-class tickets ; that
there were sleeping cars, carrucae; that there were fast and
slow carriages ; that there were stopovers ; that passes were
sometimes issued, good for one to five years or for the em-
peror's life, and that there was a freight service, ordinary
and express. There were even the familiar attempts to
defraud : by using tickets or passes which had run out, by
using tickets belonging to other parties, by misrepresenting
the ages of children, by exceeding stopover rights.
One feature of travel is missed by the modern reader in-
terested in ancient movement. The subject of hotels is so
rarely referred to that it is clear that the hostelries of antiq-
uity were not the luxurious places of to-day. Men of rank
depended on friends or business associates for lodging away
from their own towns, this relation being so frequent that
tokens of hospitality entitling the bearer to accommodations
were used. Ordinary travelers went to the usual inn,
which no doubt was not pleasant to persons of taste. Men
might also travel with tent arrangements, especially in case
of a long journey and a large retinue.
The speed of ancient Roman travel on land may be esti-
mated from Cicero's mention of the risium, the lightest
and most rapid carriage, as making 56 miles in 10 hours.
Horace's famous journey of 340 miles to Brundisium, about
37 B.C., took 15 days, an average of 22f miles per day, with
daily records of 10 to 36 miles ; but this was leisurely travel,
part on muleback, part by carriage, and one night by canal,
over occasional stretches of bad road at a speed sometimes
496 GREATER ROME
described as "crawling/7 and before the Augustan reforms.
To say that light travel could accomplish 60 to 75 miles on a
spring or autumn twelve-hour day would probably be not
far from the truth.
Such were the general features of the Roman road and
its life as they are known under the Empire. They were
different only in detail under the Republic, and they differ
only in detail from the life of the post road in after genera-
tions up to the coming of the railroad. Any reader of
Dickens will be able to see and hear in imagination on the
roads leading to and from Rome much that has not survived
in the formal evidence — the drivers and postilions in livery,
the cracking of whips and the rattle and thunder of hoof
and wheel on the hard and not always smooth basaltic pave-
ment, the gallant courier speeding by and disappearing over
the hill, the sun lighting up the bright colors of the coach and
glinting on its wheels, the grand arrival at the station, with
station master and travelers and crowd of curious idlers
waiting for the stage, the alighting of passengers to end the
journey or to "stretch their legs," the hostlers unhitching
and leading away the steaming horses, the bringing on of
fresh animals, the settling of seats and baggage, the slamming
of the doors, the mounting of some old Tony Weller and
the guard to their high seats, the blare of the horn, the
cracking of the whip — and away !
The principal function of the Roman road was in travel
movement. It served the aomy on the march, the emperor
and his agents on their administrative errands, the man of
affairs on his business missions, the commercial traveler
making his rounds, the student going to Athens to finish his
training, the rich man making the grand tour, the farmer
driving to town, the neighbor going for a visit, the family
out on a pleasure jaunt. Something should be said also of
BY LAND AND SEA 499
the Adriatic, 10 days ; from Africa, 20 days ; from Britain,
26 days ; from Athens, 46. The time from Athens no doubt
represents delay of some kind, and the variations in time
from other places, as 1 to 4 days in the case of Arpinum,
indicate that the means of transmission varied or that ac-
cident interfered.
To omit altogether the transportation of goods would be
to miss much of the reality in our thought of Roman life. The
routes of the Roman Empire by land and sea were alive with
commercial movement. The roads that led to Rome from
Gaul and Central Europe, or from the ports of Italy, whither
came the goods from other distant lands, were thronged
with laden carts and wagons and wagon trains. The sea
paths that crisscrossed the Mediterranean between cities
great and small were crowded by the single ships of traders,
the laden argosies of the importer, the great grain fleets
of the companies operating under Government, the heavy
transport ships that carried cattle and troops, and the fishing
fleets. The rivers of the Empire, the Rhine, the Danube,
the Nile, the Tiber, were busy in their way. The big ships
that in Augustus' time could no longer enter the Tiber be-
cause of the silt, anchored off Ostia, where lighters received
their cargoes and took them up the river to Rome. In the
times of Claudius and Trajan, they made for the near-by
harbors built by those emperors. There was not only the
trade in grain and cattle and the fisheries ; there was the
lumber trade, there were the mines in Spain and Central
Europe, there were the thousand luxuries of diet and cloth-
ing brought from the ends of the earth to Rome and the cities
of the West, there was the salt trade, there were the red coral
and sponge industries, there were the dyes — and there was
the trade in slaves. Nor should the desert routes of Africa
and Asia be left out of the picture, with the great caravans
500
GREATER ROME
bringing the spices and gold and ivory and woven splendors
of the tropics and the far-away Orient. Three continents
ministered to the needs of the Mediterranean Empire.
The sea seemed all the busier because the ancient ships
were small and numerous. The merchant ship, called
"round" in distinction from the ''long" ship of war, might
measure 200 by 50 feet, carry about 250 tons cargo, and be
A ROMAN GALLEY
(From " Ben Hur")
manned by sailors and oarsmen up to 200. The Vatican
obelisk, which with its base weighed 500 tons, was brought
from Egypt for the Circus of Caligula in a special ship whose
ballast consisted of 800 tons of lentils, making a cargo of
1300 tons, or displacement of about 3200 tons. If the entire
cargo had been of wheat, there would have been about
43,000 bushels. In Sicilian and South Italian waters, in
Greek waters, and off the Nile and the Red Sea passage,
BY LAND AND SEA 501
where their lines converged, the grain fleets, the fishing
fleets, and the navy squadrons must in times of special coin-
cidence have seemed to cover the sea. At Corinth, a device
for drawing warships and small freighters across the isthmus
was in constant use, and the Nile Canal and Red Sea route,
created by Darius and reconstructed by Trajan, was still
navigated in A.D. 710.
The ancient ship at best was slow and uncertain. It
was sailed without a compass, and "kept to the stars." It
was easily swept out of its course by storms, and was the more
liable to wreck because its course was preferably from island
to island or from point to point not distant from the land.
The sailing season began in early spring, and movement on
the sea was practically suspended in late autumn when the
rough and frequently starless weather arrived. "The clear
west winds will bring your Gyges back faithful to you at the
first of spring rich with Bithynian merchandise," Horace
consoles Asterie. "Forced to put in at Oricum after the
raging stars of the Goat, he is passing cold and sleepless
nights not without many tears." There were forty days of
etesian winds in midsummer. A wind on the route to the
Red Sea and India blew six months constantly in either direc-
tion. With favoring breeze and the aid of oars, the trader
made Crete from Egypt in 3 days, Sicily from Alexandria in
6 or 7, Puteoli from Alexandria in 9, Tauromenium from
Puteoli in 3, Rome from Tarraco in 4, Ostia from Gades in
7 to 10, Carthage from Gibraltar in 7, Rome from Carthage
in 3.
Compared with twentieth-century conveniences and speed,
it was a slow-moving and halting world. Its greatest speed
on land was that of the man on a horse ; on the sea, the speed
of a ship propelled by wind and oars. No man, no news
could travel faster than this. There was no telegraph, no
502 GREATER ROME
wireless ; there were no locomotives, no automobiles, no air-
planes, no liners making 500 miles a day. The Roman
governor traveled a little less than six weeks to reach the
last Roman outpost in Nubia ; the English civil service man
can reach the remotest parts of India from London in less
than two weeks by land and sea, by air can almost annihilate
the distance, and with the telegraph can communicate his
orders in an hour.
Yet it was neither an inexpert nor a backward world.
It went as far as it could with the means it possessed, and
the world that succeeded it did no better up to the time of
our great grandfathers. Says Professor Westermann : "No
additional force which was basically new could be evolved
by the Roman Empire, Nor was any new force brought in
until in recent times when steam, electricity, and gas were
applied as motor forces to vehicles in the transport of goods."
It may be added in conclusion that the long distances and
the long time required to cover them does not necessarily
mean that business was poorly done, or even slowly. All
phases of civilization settle to their own natural ways, and
have their relative standards. No doubt the ancients
talked of being busy and of being hurried, much as the
present age of swiftness talks. The streets of the capital
and many other cities were crowded, and had their traffic
rules restricting use in certain hours and areas. If business
was slow, it was at least deliberate, and probably safer than
that of a swifter age. If transportation and communication
were much less prompt than now, there was a measure of
compensation in the lack of the noise and nervous haste
which shatter the nerves of men to-day and rob life of its
calm.
XLI
THE ROMAN LAW
"Justice is the steadfast and perpetual will to render to every
man his right. Jurisprudence is the knowledge of things divine
and human, the science of the right and the not-right. The pre-
cepts of the law are these : to live honorably, to injure no other
man, to render to every man his own."
These are the opening sentences of the Institutes of Jus-
tinian, a beginners' book for students of law, published on
December 30, A.D. 533, as a part of the Emperor's great
legal reform. The conclusions expressed by them, at the
end of Rome's more than a thousand years of experience in
the living and the studying of law, are the base on which
all civilization rests. To us they seem commonplaces, and,
happily, among enlightened peoples they are commonplaces.
That they are, and that the world of ancient Roman times
and the world of to-day possessed and possesses the means of
translating them into life, is overwhelmingly due to the
Roman steadfast and perpetual will to render to every man
his right, and to Roman earnestness in pursuit of the science
of the right and the not-right.
We have seen the part played in the spread of Roman
civilization and in the unification of the ancient world by
the Roman road, the Roman army, the Roman navy, and
.by commerce; but without the working of Roman law in
the confirmation of conquest by regulation and reason, the
amalgamation and assimilation that "made of one blood aF
503
504 GREATER ROME
nations" would never have taken place. These facts, espe-
cially the fact that large parts of our world to-day are still
using the laws of Rome and are thus in that respect living
still the life of Rome, are of such importance that if we wish
to understand either ancient Rome or modern times we must
pay some attention to the subject of Roman experience in
the search for justice and the means of justice.
"And so,77 to use the words of Sextus Pomponius, author
of a manual in Hadrian's time, "it seems to us necessary to
set forth the beginnings of law itself and the course of its
development." There need be no fear in this case that an
historical account will be mere facts in chronological order.
The life of Roman law was full of movement and adventure.
"Indeed, when our State came into being," continues
Pomponius, "the people began at first without law either
in writing or in common custom, and everything was done
with the king as leader and at his discretion." The his-
torical sketch he then gives extends to the name of Salvius
Julianus of his own time, and is the basis of every subsequent
account of the rise of Roman law.
We begin the story of the law, then, in prehistoric and
even prelegendary times, when the chieftain or king in the
Latin land embodies or represents the law, and when the
law is unwritten and consists in common custom rather
than in what is called legislation. This is hard to imagine,
and we advance immediately to the time when the chieftain,
with the aid of his councilors, seizes on the habitual acts
and inclinations of the community and builds upon them the
rules that make his control of the people easier and less un-
stable. Use and custom are formalized and become the law,
though recorded nowhere but in the minds of those who
easily remember them because established by their own life
and practice.
THE ROMAN LA^W
505
When the laws begin to be written, the era of statutes has
arrived. This is recorded as already occurring in the time
of the Seven Kings. Romulus and the succeeding rulers,
with the Roman people, are said to have created laws which,
at first inscribed on tablets in the Forum, were finally
gathered together and published by Gaius Papirius, under
A BASILICA INTERIOR
The pagan basilica had an influence on the early Christian church, also called
basilica. This interior, if terminated by a semicircular apse, would have the church
form.
Tarquin the Proud or early in the Republic. The account,
of their authorship by various kings belongs to legend, and
the laws themselves were mostly concerned with religious,
observances.
With the famous Twelve Tables, Roman law becomes
historical. In 451-450 B.C., sixty years after the Republic
began, a specially appointed Board of Ten, the Decemviri,
composed the code of rules which Livy calls the fount of all
506 GREATER ROME
public and private law, and which was held in reverence and
not repealed until Justinian's code superseded every previ-
ous law. The code of the Decemvirs consisted, first, of the
approved laws hitherto in force, both those of statute and
of custom; second, of contributions of their own to meet
the need of the time ; and, third, of adaptations from the
laws of Greece. The people in assembly voted on the code
and it became their statute and was published for their use
on twelve tablets of stone or bronze. The reasons for its
compilation and publication were that the growth of the
State in size and complexity called for a restatement of the
laws, and that the common people demanded direct access
to the laws in order to protect themselves against abuses
by the ruling class. Hitherto, the expert knowledge of the
law was confined largely to the board of pontifices at the
head of the State religion, and to men of family in political
life. So much of the law was involved with religion that the
chief priests in the mastering of what concerned their office
mastered the law as a whole, and, as long as it remained
uncodified and unpublished, possessed it, whether they
would or not, as in some sort a trade secret.
But the Twelve Tables, even when published, were but
a clumsy and imperfect instrument. They did not contain
every detail of law, they were general rather than specific,
they needed interpretation, and they left much, especially
in the matter of procedure, to the magistrate and other
parties to their administration. Most important of all,
the society in which they functioned was constantly grow-
ing and constantly changing. From the day of their enact-
ment the Twelve Tables were in need of amplification, and
the increase in the need of experts for the interpretation and
application of the law outstripped by far the people's growth
in familiarity with it. Let us consider now the manner in
THE ROMAN LAW 507
which the body of law was amplified, and the manner in
which its use was facilitated.
The sources of new law from the Twelve Tables to the first
emperors were as follows. First, there was the lex proper,
affecting all the people. This was an enactment proposed
by a senatorial magistrate, such as the consul or the praetor,
with the approval of the Senate, and passed by the people
in the centuriate assembly. Second, there was the ple-
bistitum, also called lex, prior to 287 B.C. affecting only
plebeians. It was proposed by a plebeian magistrate,
usually the tribune, with approval by the Senate, before the
tribal assembly. The enactments of the tribal assembly
were likely to concern private law, that is, the affairs of
citizen with citizen ; the centuriate assembly legislated more
on governmental and foreign relations. Third, there were
ihe decrees or resolutions of the Senate. In theory, these
were advisory only, and had no power to make or un-
make a law ; in practice, they frequently had the force of
law, especially in matters outside control by the law as it
stood.
The three foregoing were direct sources. There were also
three which were indirect.
First, there were the praetor's edicts. The praetor was
created in 366 B.C. to lighten the burden of the consul by
assuming control of suits at law. In 242 B.C. a second
praetor was created to relieve his colleague of the cases in
which one party or both were alien. They were called the
praetor urbanus and the praetor peregrine, the urban and
the foreign. Their number was later multiplied, and their
importance always great. The urban praetor especially
was important to the growth of the law because of close and
varied contact with the life of the citizen in Rome and Italy,
and because of the power granted both praetors in 140 B.C.
508 GREATER ROME
to correct or amplify the operation of the law in cases where
its literal application caused injustice. The chief instru-
ment by which his modifications of the law became a part
of the law as a body was the praetor's edict. Any magis-
trate could issue edicts, and many an uncertain situation was
clarified by the act ; but the praetor's edictum perpetuum, the
edict written on white tablets and posted in the Forum, an-
nouncing at the beginning of his year of office the principles
or precedents he would observe in decisions during his tenure,
what old clauses in the law he would omit or alter, and what
new ones he would add, was of greater consequence than
others. There are two reasons why this was true. In the
first place, it contributed greatly to the certainty and peace
of mind of litigants for the year. In the second place, it
actually made additions to the law, whose weaknesses it
frequently remedied, and whose identity in the course of the
years it substantially modified. With good right the prae-
tor's edict was known as the "living voice of the law/7 viva
vox iuris civilis.
Second, there were the opinions delivered by the juris-
consults. In time, the pontifices lost the distinction of
being the only masters in the knowledge of the law. As
the great public offices, including their own, came within the
reach of plebeian candidates, and as the need of experts in-
creased, the number of those who interested themselves
in mastery of the law as incidental to career or with purpose
to profit also increased. The class of professional jurists,
ready to advise the magistrate or the party in a suit, came
into being. Some of them published their learning, and
became the first in a long line of brilliant writers on the law.
Whether oral or written, their learning and their conclusions
affected the praetor's thought and action, were manifest
in his edicts, and thus with them came to affect the law,
THE ROMAN LAW 509
They affected the structure of the trial system as well.
Their expertness in special fields was an encouragement to
the establishment of the standing courts for special offenses
that did so much for criminal law.
Lastly, long-continued and universally approved custom
might in the same indirect manner become embodied in the
law.
With the revolution that resulted in the Empire and its
absolutism, there was added to the statutes, plebiscites,
decrees of the Senate, praetor's edicts, and professional
jurist's responses, the last of which became now a contribu-
tion of greater dimensions than ever, one more very plentiful
and important source of law. This was the constitutiones
of the emperor, constitutions or enactments in various
forms, all of which might find a permanent place in the
statutes, though many did not. Their importance in the
course of the law is realized when we remember that the
decline of the republican law-making instrumentalities had
gone so far by the third century that the emperor's right to
make law was taken for granted, and by the fourth was the
only source of legislation. The praetor's edicts had been
edited into a final form, and nothing new could appear
unless by imperial sanction. The Senate no longer exer-i
cised the right to legislate allowed by Augustus and the
earlier emperors, and was little more than an ordinary city
council. The last statute enacted by the people in assembly
dated from the time of Nerva.
The constitutions or enactments took four forms. These
were the edict, the decree, the rescript, the mandate.
The edict was issued by the emperor in his capacity of
magistrate, and differed from the praetorian edict in being
valid for its author's life instead of one year, and for the
whole Umpire instead of a part. At first corrective and
THE ROMAN LAW 611
supplementary of existing legislation, by Hadrian's time it
could be the vehicle for entirely new law.
The decree was a judicial decision of the emperor as magis-
trate, or as he intervened in a case in answer to appeal or
of his own motion. It was usually a decision on some point
in existing law, for the purpose of clarification or for the
correction of an injustice wrought by literal application of
the law. Its use declined as the rescript came into use for
the same purpose.
The rescript was a letter to an inquiring official, such as
Trajan's answer to Pliny's inquiry regarding the Christians,
or an indorsement written on an application or petition and
returned with it. At first explanatory of the law, with the
praetor's loss of the power to initiate in the edict the rescript
came into use as the vehicle of the emperor's sanction, now
necessary to new rulings by the praetor.
The mandate was usually an instruction to a provincial
administrator, differing besides from the other three enact-
ments as operative in the official's territory for the em-
peror's life.
As time went on, all four of the constitutiones were fre-
quently referred to as leges, and distinctions between them
were largely lost.
To conclude without further mention of the Roman juris-
tic writers this account of the sources which made the Roman
law a living and changing organism constantly growing
toward maturity, would be to slight the greatest source of
all oxcept Roman living itself. The rise and perfection of
juristic literature was a natural movement. The experts
of the Republic who aided praetor and suitor and orator not
only developed soon into a learned profession, but by reason
of the demand for mastery in specific subjects and for clear
and accurate statement in writing soon began to produce
512 GREATER ROME
from their number the specialist and the author. From
about the end of the fourth century before Christ, when the
responses ceased to be the exclusive privilege of the pontifi-
ces and aristocrats, for upwards of four hundred years the
history of Roman letters and law is ornamented by impor-
tant names.
The recital of the chief of these names will in itself be in
brief a history of the development both of law and of legal
practice. It will show how it progressed not only from the
general to the special and from the unsystematic to the
organized, but also from the limited to the comprehensive,
and from the particular to the universal.
The line begins about 300 B.C. with Appius Claudius the
Blind, or possibly his secretary Gnaeus Flavius, and the first
publication of a court calendar, with the forms of bringing
action. Tiberius Coruncanius, the first plebeian pontifex
maximus, about 265 B.C., by offering the first public instruc-
tion for parties at law and for students of the law, completed
the process of making law a public possession. Aelius
Paetus, consul in 198 B.C., wrote commentaries on the Twelve
Tables in three parts: text and notes ; interpretation; forms
of action or suit. A Cato, about 160 B.C., composed fifteen
books on points of law and special cases. About 150 B.C.,
Marcus Junius Brutus published commentaries on the civil
law, Fabius Fictor an exposition of the pontifical law, and
Marcus Manilius a work on actions. Sempronius Tuditanus,
consul in 129 B.C., wrote a special work on magistrates, and
Marcus Junius Gracchanus, friend of Gaius Gracchus, wrote
on constitutional and social history.
The foregoing bring us to the golden age of jurisprudence.
Quintus Mucius Scaevola the pontifex maximus, consul in
95 B.C., to whom Cicero attached himself after the death of
Scaevola the augur, remaining with hi™ perhaps up to his
THE ROMAN LAW 513
murder by proscription in 82 B.C., and whom Cicero called
first of all ages and countries because of his abilities as ad-
ministrator, orator, and jurist, published in eighteen books
the first systematic presentation of the civil law. Sulla
and his advisers, 88-78 B.C., in their criminal-court reforms,
produced the first code in book form since the Twelve Tables-
Lucius Cincius, of Cicero's time, wrote concerning the calen-
dar, the assemblies, the consular powers, the office of juris-
consult, and war, and made a glossary of ancient words.
Servius Sulpicius, consul in 51 B.C., the friend of Cicero and
author of the famous letter of consolation on the death of
Cicero's daughter Tullia, published works on many special
themes, such as dowries, the praetor's edict, and the Twelve
Tables, and was a writer and teacher of great distinction.
Trebatius Testa, famous as a pupil and correspondent
of Cicero and a friend of Horace, wrote works called De
Religionibus and De Iwe Civili, and was an adviser to
Augustus.
The greater names of the Empire are Salvius Julianus,
Sextus Pomponius, Gaius, Aemilius Papinianus, Domitius
Ulpianus, Julius Paulus, and Herennius Modestinus. The
great work of Julianus, born in Africa and holding office
under Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, was his digest of the
praetorian edicts, so important that the Digest of Justinian
quotes it upwards of five hundred times. Pomponius, under
Antoninus Pius, wrote the short history of Roman law men*
tioned at the beginning of this chapter. The contribution
of Gaius, living in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and
Marcus Aurelius, was the Institutes, a very human treatise
discovered in 1816 in Verona written on a parchment which
served afterward for the letters of Jerome and had served
previously for a work on theology. Its four books dealt
with : law and its sources in the author's own times ; the
514
GREATER ROME
law in relation to persons, slave and free ; the law in rela-
tion to things, divine and human, corporeal and non-
corporeal ; heredity ; and processes. Papinian, praetorian
pre ,ct, or supreme judge,
under Septimius Severus
and murdered in Caracalla's
reign, wrote 37 books of
Quaestiones, or Cases, 19
books of responses, 2 books
of definitions, and 2 treatises
on adultery, was admired
for both learning and form,
and was quoted by the
Digest of Justinian in 596
extracts. Ulpian of Tyre,
a pupil of Papinian, and
meeting the same fate, was
praetorian prefect and ad-
viser to Emperor Alexander
Severus, and the author of
works on the edict and civil
law, a collection of regu-
lae, or rules, and numerous
other treatises. The Digest
of Justinian owed 2,462
extracts to Ulpian, or one
third of its total content
in pages. Julius Paulus, of
Padua, also a pupil of Pa-
pinian, and like hi™ ambitious to cover the whole field of
law, wrote 86 works in 319 books, and 2,083 extracts from
him compose one sixth of the Digest. His most celebrated
work was on the edict. Modestinus, the last of the im-
THB EMPEROK ANTONINUS Pius
This was the fourth of the Five Good
Emperors — Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian. An-
toninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius. Their
period was important in the history of
the law.
THE ROMAN LAW 515
portant jurists, was a pupil of Papinian and Ulpian, and a
member of the advisory council of Alexander Severus.
From his works, including one on Excusationes, there were
345 excerpts.
Such is a list of the greatest juridical authorities, both the
unofficial under the Republic and the appointees of the
throne in imperial times. Besides their enormous influence
as investigators, interpreters, compilers, editors, teachers,
and practical advisers, from the time of Hadrian, who ruled
that the opinions of authorized jurists, if unanimous, should
have the force of law, they became creators. In the year
426 their power was confirmed, and increased still more by
the Law of Citations, drafted under Theodosius II, which
established the authority of Gaius, Papinian, Ulpian, Paul,
and Modestinus, and ruled that on any point a majority
opinion of the five was to be decisive ; that, in case of only
an even number containing opinions on the point at issue
and being tied, the opinion of Papinian was to decide ; and
that, in case his opinion was lacking in the tie, the magis-
trate was to decide for himself in the ancient style. This
law, by making decisions to some degree mechanical, must
have detracted somewhat from the earnestness and original-
ity of the legal profession.
One century later occurred the ultimate and the greatest
usefulness of the jurists, when excerpts from the works of
thirty-nine of them, beginning with Quintus Mucius Scaevola,
consul in 95 B.C., and ending with writers of about A.D. 300
went into the making of the Pandects or Digest of Justin-
ian, the restatement finished in A.D. 529 and published
with the force of law on December 30, A.D. 533. Twelve
of these thirty-nine sources compose eleven twelfths of the
Digest, the chief of them being Ulpian and Paul, Papinian,
Gaius, and Modestinus ; Ulpian and Paul together furnish-
516 GREATER ROME
ing three fifths of the whole work. Justinian's Institutes, of
the same date and effect, was a students' treatise containing
large amounts of material from the Institutes of Gaius and
from Ulpian and others.
The great legal reform of Justinian consisted of four parts,
viz. : 1. The Institutes, A.D. 533 ; 2. the Digest, 533 ; 3. the
Codex, a compilation of the code of Theodosius, A.D. 438,
two previous imperial codes, and the imperial laws since
438, published April 16, 529, and in revision on December
29, 534 ; 4. the Novellae or Novels, his more recent, supple-
mentary laws. The compilation published in 533 and 534
constitutes what is usually called to-day the Corpus luris
Civilis or Code of Justinian, the great body of Roman law
which is still the instrument of civilization in large parts
of the Western world, and consequently our most direct
connection with antiquity.
It will lend reality to Justinian's enterprise and to the
subject of Roman law in general if we listen to an account of
the Code by an American lawyer. Professor William Her-
bert Page, of the University of Wisconsin School of Law and
the American Institute of Law, in an unpublished address
entitled The Restatement of the Law, comments as follows on
Justinian's restatement :
"Probably there was no period of history in which there was as
much powerful, fine, constructive juristic work as under the early
Empire.
"The growing despotism of the emperors finally crushed it out.
Juristic writing virtually ceases about the middle of the third
century. The emperor then was deciding questions of law ; and
his rescripta principis took the place of the responsa of the great
jurists as fax as bureaucratic despotism can take the place of free
individualism. By the end of the third century, the right of giv-
ing official responsa ends. The natural growth and development
of law is dead. Only imperial legislation keeps on.
THE ROMAN LAW 517
"Almost three hundred years later, a barbarian, perhaps a Slav,
came to the throne of the Eastern Empire ; a Roman Empire from
which Italy and the West had been torn by the barbarians. Per-
haps he translated his Slavic name, Uprauda, into the name by
which he is known to fame, Justinian. He is somewhat vaguely
known to the person of miscellaneous reading as the man who
wrote the Roman law. What he did was to make a restatement
of it in his own way.
"The problem which confronted him was this. Roman law had
ceased to grow. It was decaying ; and likely to be lost forever.
There were some two thousand volumes of it : the responsa, the
commentaries, and the general works on the subject. The lawyers
complained of its bulk. No library was anywhere near complete.
The sudden eclipse of juristic writing had left unsolved a number
of questions ; on some of which the ancient authorities wore sharply
at variance. Was it not possible to get the law into a shape in which
it could be used readily? The vigorous barbarian dospot, full of
plans for a great reconquest and revival of the Empire, had but
one answer to this. The job was to be done, and right promptly.
First, the ius novum, the imperial legislation, was brought together
into a sort of Revised Statutes. This was the so-called Code. Ten
commissioners, with plenty of assistance, no doubt, did this in
fourteen months, A.D. 529.
" His Majesty then moved on to attack the ius vetus, the writings
of the great jurists, where the wisdom of the ages lay embalmed,
with the doubts of the centuries.
"First for the doubts. Justinian had his experts work out the
most serious points in dispute. There happened to be fifty of
them. Being an autocrat, he settled these qmnquaginfa quaes-
tiones by his quinquaginta decisiones. He then took up the most
striking cases in which the law, which had stopped two centuries
before, now failed to fit the conditions of his time. Here, too, a
series of imperial constitutions brought the law up to date, sharply
and promptly, if not always scientifically.
"He then appointed an imperial commission; Tribonian at its
head, four law professors, and eleven practitioners, to revise the
ius vetus, and to do it quickly.
"The result seems queer enough to our eyes, for we expect some
kind of outline and system based on the nature of the different
618 GREATER ROME
legal rights and their relation to one another This did not seem
at all necessary to the Roman lawyer. Long before, each praetor
had made his own statement of the law, on taking office, declaring
in advance how he would decide cases. He generally followed
the statement of his predecessor, adding from time to time as omis-
sions became evident. This was the praetor's edict. The order
of topics was thus purely accidental. The Roman lawyers were
used to this haphazard arrangement; commentaries were often
based upon this edict. What more natural than to use the same
traditional, unsystematic, unscientific succession of topics in the
new collection of old law?
"But it was worse than that. Working under pressure, the
commissioners split up into committees, and worked through their
various sources. Then apparently, under each topic, the work of
the different committees followed in order, without the least
attempt to get together the statements of law in any arrangement
based upon the nature of the topic itself.
"The copyists, under instructions, copied extracts from the
writings of the earlier jurists. Those extracts were revised in the
light of the quinguaginfa dedsiones and of the other imperial con-
stitutions. Over nine thousand of them were selected, and each
tagged with the name of its author and a reference to the book
from which it was copied ; and they were then put together, with
the lack of system which I have described ; and thus, A.D. 533,
was made the great Digest or Pandects.
"Its acceptance was assured by another imperial edict, which
made it the law, repealed all law contrary thereto, forbade any
citation of any other writings of the jurists, even by way of illus-
tration, and even forbade any commentaries to be made upon the
Digest itself.
"A rough enough job, done at high speed, with the Byzantine
equivalent for scissors and paste, giving us only pitiful fragments
of the work of the great jurists of the classical period ; yet saving
for us almost all of their writings that have been saved; itself
being preserved by the merest chance, rising from its tomb to be
the center of the intellectual life of the Western barbarians as they
turned to study the culture of the past, and finally to displace the
laws of the West, save only where the English law was entrenched
in the mingled learning and obstinacy of tjig, Islanders/'
THE ROMAN LAW 519
Professor Page's wards are the more interesting because
he is taking part in a repeating of history. Like the Roman
law when Justinian came to the throne, American law is
becoming unmanageable, and needs a restatement. Not
all the great bulk of our law is in the regular statute books.
In an age of inventions and innovations, the courts are
constantly confronted with new problems, and "law must
answer every question that life puts to it. It will not do
for the courts to say: 'We do not know. This is a new
question. There is no law on it. We can do nothing.' If
there are no rules on the subject, the courts must make them
up, then and there, and give the best solution they can.
That is the way in which law grows ; and if it cannot do this,
it does not grow. Law, as it grows in this way, is found in
the writings of those who technically know the law."
The answer of the court to a new question constitutes a
precedent, and precedents in the American courts are of
great importance. There are at present some ten thousand
volumes containing the reports of perhaps a million ad-
judicated cases, in which there lies more or less hidden a vast
amount of potential law by precedent. The courts are the
jurisconsults and praetors of to-day, and their precedents are
the jurisconsults' responses and the praetors' edicts of ancient
times ; only, after the fact and not conveniently posted.
The law these precedents represent must be made acces-
sible. The American Law Institute, composed of 813 judges,
lawyers, and professors of law, with 33 members acting as
Council, is engaged in the solution of this problem. The
result will be the restatement of the law in a series of con-
venient volumes, one for each special topic, as contracts,
agency, torts, which will get their authority from the process
of their creation together with the approval of bench and
bar as they are used.
520 GREATER ROME
Let us conclude with a few observations as to some notable
features in Rome's thousand and more years of experience
with the making of law.
First, the law-making of Rome was the work of no one
man or group of men, but was the product of community
life from its beginning in a society of the humblest fashion
and on the lowest scale to its end in a highly sophisticated
State. The Empire did great things in the law, but, as far
as human living was concerned as a factor, the experience
was complete before the absolute regime arrived.
Second, the difficulties met by Roman law-making were
those belonging to a society in which the people ruled them-
selves and were their own teachers. They were problems to
be solved by experimentation in the laboratory of human
life. There was the problem of the disassociation of the
divine and human, which are always mingled and confused m
primitive society ; that is, the secularization of law. There
was the problem, always hard and never quite solved in any
society, of distinguishing between sin and crime, and between
crime and wrong. There was the problem of determining
what was really injurious, and the problem of deciding on the
punishment that was beneficial. There was the problem of
the death penalty. There was the problem of how far to
leave the settlement of personal grievance to private retal-
iation or revenge. There was the problem of separating
politics from law. There was the problem of system.
Third, the perfection of the working of Roman law re-
quired the autocracy. The principle of autocracy is the
unresponsible possession and exercise of authority by one
man. If he is a capable man and a conscientious man, the
result will be expert government and the welfare of the people
in all except the encouragement of the active qualities of
citizenship. If he is incapable or bad. the result will be the
XLII
ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER
Once the Roman State had reached the limit of its expan-
sion, the border became as nearly a definite and immovable
line as nature and man could establish. Desert, mountains,
rivers, ocean, and seas were nature's contribution ; the con*
tribution of man was the art of defense.
Of the defenses afforded by nature, only the ocean could
be regarded as final ; beyond it and on it were no foes. But
beyond the Rhine and the Danube, beyond the Two Rivers
in the remote East, and beyond the North Sea and the Black
Sea and the Red, there were ever watchful and sometimes
dangerous enemies. The defense afforded by river and sea
had to be supplemented by fleet and fort; their waters
could invite attack as well as repel it.
The desert was like the sea. Across its uninhabited
wastes of sand and rock might come at any time the mobile
hordes of nomad barbarians in the South or the armies of
ancient kingdoms in the East. As for the mountain bar-
rier, it had its passes to be defended.
Where neither mountain nor desert nor water lent its aid,
where the border ran through fertile populated country or
through the forest wilderness, no foot of the line was left
unguarded, and the Roman wall and ditch marked the legal
limit. Where neither nature nor art could be made to suffice,
as on the eastern border in Asia, diplomacy and the buffer
state supplied the lack.
523
7
ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER 525
During the four hundred years that elapsed from Augustus
to Alaric, it was only at the periphery of the Empire that the
military and naval arms of the Government were actively
employed ; and actual war even there was but the episode
in the long stretches of peace during which the legions ir
their camp cities wore away the quiet years of semicivic
garrison life. The visible presence of power in wall and fort
and men and equipment, with its occasional demonstration
in prompt and vigorous action, safeguarded the Roman
world in the ways of the Pax Romana. In the vast area
covered by modern Europe's battling nations, where war
and not peace is always a vivid possibility, the tread of armies
and the wash of the oar were rarely heard save on the
errands of peace.
Roman Africa began its history in 146 B.C., with the
destruction of Carthage and the annexation of the neighbor-
ing regions, but at the end of two hundred years had come
to include the entire north coast of the continent from
Carthage to the Libyan desert on the east and to the At-
lantic Ocean outside Gibraltar on the west. It thus com-
prised the provinces of the two Mauretanias, with capitals
at Tingis and Caesarea, represented to-day by Morocco and
its best-known city, Tangier, and Algeria, with the city of
Cherchell, a little west of Algiers ; the province of Numidia,
with its capital, Cirta, equivalent to eastern Algeria to-day
and Constantine; the province of Africa, with its capital,
Carthage, equivalent to Tunisia and Tunis ; and the strip
which bordered the Lesser and Greater Syrtes, including
Tripolitania and the Cyrenaica of to-day, with the ruined
ancient towns of Sabrata, Oea, Leptis, and Gyrene, and the
modern towns of Tripoli, Benghazi, and Cyrene.
In a word, Roman Africa in the time of Claudius was
roughly the equivalent of the Barbary States, which to-day as
526 GREATER ROME
Italian, French, and Spanish territorial spheres have largely
lost their Berber identity ; or, still more simply, it was the
south shore of the Mediterranean from the Atlantic to the
confines of Egypt, a fertile strip or fringe of 2,000 miles be-
tween desert and sea, with an average width of little more
than 125 miles, the distance from the coast to Timgad at the
Sahara's edge.
This far-extended strip occupied by Rome was everywhere
backed by the great African desert. From the Pillars of
Hercules to Carthage, the formation was much the same:
first, a narrow fringe of great fertility at the shore, sometimes,
as at Algiers, greatly resembling the European shore ; sec-
ond, the parallel band of the mountains, consisting of the
Tell Atlas on the north and the Sahara Atlas on the south,
with broad depressions between ; third, the descent into the
desert levels of the Sahara. From Carthage eastward, the
fringe at the shore was narrower, the mountains less promi-
nent, and the desert more immediate. The climate was
semitropical, with a two months' rainy season and a long
period of dryness and heat. With the aid of elaborate
irrigation, the coastal slopes and valleys, especially the
exuberant soil near Carthage and in parts of Numidia, were
rich in grain and oil and wine, the date, and other fruits.
Besides these products of the soil, there were dyes and
sponges from the sea, porphyry and onyx from Mauretania,
the creamy giallo antico and the richly mottled africano from
the marble mines of Numidia, and, from the desert and the
reaches beyond, the camel cargoes of ebony, ivory, and gold,
the lions and elephants of the amusement trade, and the
negro slave.
Carthage and Numidia, the richer, nearer, more civilized,
aad more accessible parts of Roman Africa, were the base
from which the province was founded, settled, and governed.
ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER
527
A colony of six thousand Italians, sent by Gaius Gracchus in
122 B.C. to replace Carthage as Junonia, soon declined. A
second settlement, in 35 B.C., was renewed by Augustus and
became in about 16 B.C. a colony with the Roman franchise,
ROMAN TEMPLE AT TEBESSA
This was Roman Theveste. The temple is now & museum.
and the residence of the proconsul of Africa. Cirta, the
capital of Nuinidia, high on its inaccessible thousand-foot
rock fifty miles inland, and rich in the memories of Syphax,
Masinissa, Micipsa, Jugurtha, and Juba, the native princes
who opposed Rome from Scipio Africanus to Marius, in
528 GREATER ROME
the second century before Christ, became a colony first
under Julius Caesar, to be firmly established by Augustus.
Caesarea, now Cherchell, 340 miles west of Cirta and 50
west of Algiers, and Tingis, modern Tangier, 500 miles
farther west, were made colonies under Claudius, and be-
came the two capitals of Eastern and Western Mauretania*
The civilization of the four provinces thus formed was less
advanced as the distance from Carthage increased ; Maure-
tania Tingitana was little removed from barbarism. East
of Carthage, Gyrene, formally added to Roman territory in
46 B.C. after the battle of Tbapsus, was a Greek foundation
already six centuries old.
Of the ancient inhabitants of Roman Africa, the basic
stratum was the original prehistoric stock known throughout
history as Berber. The next stratum was brought by the
Phoenician invasion which resulted in the founding of
Carthage and eventually the Punic control of the whole
coast, southern Spain, and a part of Sicily. The third
stratum was the Roman occupation just described.
A traveler in Africa in the time of Trajan or Hadrian
would have found there many thriving cities with Roman
architecture, Roman amusements, Roman religion, and
Roman customs in general predominant but not universal.
In these cities, and in the large villas near them, and on the
large estates or plantations farther removed, he would have
found the Roman ruling class, the Roman bankers, specu-
lators, and traders, and the Roman landowners. He would
have found among these gentry few of the Roman nobility,
but a great many middle-class people either directly come
from Italy or descended from the veterans who formed the
first Italian settlers. Next, the traveler would have noticed
the Punicized character of a great part of the country : the
Punic language and the Punic accent of the Latin; the
ON THE SOUTHERN BOEDER
529
Punic dress with its turbans and gowns; the temples to
Baal and Astarte and the half Roman and half Punic worship
in many temples ; the Punic control of a great deal of trade,
especially the small trade and the trade of small towns ; the
scents and colors of the bazaars in which were exposed the
SIDI OKBA
This little oasis town, in the Sahara near its northern border, is kept in order by
an agent of the French Republic, as towns in the far corners of civilization were by
the administrators of the Roman Empire.
perfumes and spices and rugs of the East and the wares of
the Punic handicraftsmen ; the Punic shipping in the har-
bors. In the country districts, he would have found that
the sT^ftll fanners and shepherds and the nonslave portion of
the workers on the Roman large estates also were of the
Punic stock. The smaller the towns, and the more remote
530 GREATER ROME
the farms, the fewer Romans he would have found. By this
time he would have been conscious of the basic stock of all,
the Berber, or African, or Libyan. Rare in the large cities
and confined to the poorer quarters, in the villages and in the
country these native inhabitants, gowned in rough material
and speaking a language separate from both Latin and
Punic, formed a larger part of the population ; in the remoter,
rougher, and desert regions, with their camels and horses and
flocks they were the ancient nomads, as shifting, and as
eternal, as the shifting desert sands.
The government of Roman Africa was chiefly in the hands
of four men : the proconsul at Carthage, appointed by the
Roman Senate for one year ; the praetorian legate at Cirta,
holding command of Numidia as long as the emperor pleased ;
and the procurators at Caesarea and Tingis, the two capitals
of Mauretania. Tinder them were the various officials and
secretaries necessary to the administration of the imperial
finances and other provincial business. The management
of more purely local interests was left in large measure to the
individual town, at whose head were the duoviri, or board of
two, and the decuriones, or council.
All this, which is based on the evidence left from Roman
times, to the modern traveler in Africa sounds much as if
written of the same lands to-day. In the French protector-
ate of Tunisia, established 49 years ago, with its population
of 2,159,000 in 1926, there are 173,000 Europeans, of whom
the French number 71,000, and the Italians, 89,000. If the
173,000 Europeans are thought of as a parallel to the ancient
Romans, the remaining 1,986,000, who are composed mostly
of Arabs and Bedouins, are to be thought of as the ancient
Punic population and the original Berber stock. Further,
in the modern capital, Tunis, there are 72,000 French and
Italians, and about 1] 4,000 Arabs and Berbers, the last form-
ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER 531
ing but a small part. That is, in Tunisia at large there is
about 1 European to 12 Arabs and Berbers ; in the capital,
there is 1 European to about 1£ Arabs and Berbers, the
latter hardly counting. In Algeria at large, now for one
century a protectorate, the proportion is 1 to 7 ; in Algiers,
1 to 4. There is no certainty regarding the proportions in
antiquity, but we shall not be far wrong in taking the modern
figures as a rough statement of the relative distribution of the
ancient Roman, Punic, and native stocks in country and city.
The noting of other details will help still further in the
understanding of Roman conditions. In the French resident-
general is to be seen the modern form of the proconsul of
Africa. The European population is predominantly mid-
dle class, and composed of official and commercial groups.
The Arab majority is disturbed as little as possible in its
laws, religion, and manners. The Berber farmers and
nomads away from the cities and out in the semidesert
wastes are hardly touched by the culture of Europe. It is
interesting to learn that the French highway and railroad are
a chief means of development and consolidation, and that
the country is held by comparatively small garrisons in few
posts. It may be observed that agriculture is the chief
industry; that the grain acreage of Algeria and Tunis is
about 9,000,000 and that of Italy more than 12,000,000;
that the wine product of Algeria and Tunis is 237,500,000
gallons, and that of Italy, 750,000,000 ; and that the French
are taking lessons from the ancient Romans in their con-
servation of water in tanks and reservoirs for use in the dry
season. It is also true that one reason for the development
of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, or Italian Africa, is the
crowding and poverty of parts of Italy, just as the crowding
and poverty of ancient Rome was a reason for the coloniza-
tion of Africa.
532
GREATER ROME
But both population and products of Roman Africa must
have greatly exceeded those of to-day. The indirect
evidence of literature alone would warrant this conclusion.
The power of Carthage, reduced by Rome in three wars
between 265 B.C. and 146 B.C., was based on a well-developed
and wealthy civilization. The Africa of the Empire was not
THE BTBSA, OB CITADEL, OF CVRTHAGE
The buildings at present on the hill are chiefly the Cathedral of St. Louis, the
Seminary of the Peres Blancs, or White Fathers, and the Mus£e Lavigerie, named
from the French cardinal who founded it in 1875. The ruins of Punic, Roman, and
Byzantine Carthage are abundant in both museum and landscape.
only a chief granary of Rome and the source of much of the
capital's distinction in beautiful building material, but came
to have so rich an individuality as to contribute to the Em-
pire in less material ways. Six emperors came out of Africa :
Pertinax, Septimius Severus, Alexander Severus, Macrinus,
Vibius Gallus, and Volusianus. Fronto, famous as rheto-
rician, man of letters, and beloved tutor of the young Mar-
ous Aurelius, came from Cirta. Caecilius Nat alls, who
ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER 533
speaks for paganism in the Octavius of Minucius Felix, was
probably a triumvir of Cirta. Sicca, a hundred and twenty-
five miles southward of Carthage, produced Eutychius Pro-
culus, another teacher of Marcus Aurelius, and a medical
writer named Caelius Aurelianus. Symmachus, orator and
writer of letters, one of the last defenders of paganism at
Rome, came from Carthage. Priscian, the gra.TnTTmri.an of
the fifth century, came from Caesarea. Perhaps the best
known of all the literary Africans is Apuleius of Madaura,
not far west of Carthage, author of the Metamorphoses, in
which is preserved the most delightful of stories, Cupid and
Psyche.
Of Christian writers, leaders, and martyrs, Africa pro-
duced a brilliant galaxy, most of them belonging to the
second and third centuries and to Carthage. First to be-
come famous was Tertullian, of Carthage, about A.D. 160-
230, the vehement defender of Christianity and assailant of
its foes, who finally was himself carried away by heresy.
There was Cyprian, bishop of Carthage in 248 or 249,
martyred in 258. There were Arnobius, about 300, a con-
verted pagan from Cirta, who like Tertullian took the offen-
sive against paganism, and his pupil Lactantius, about
250-330, sometimes called the Christian Cicero because of
his humanism. Greatest of all was Augustine, 354-430,
born at Thagaste near Madaura, the home of Apuleius;
teacher of rhetoric in Carthage, Rome, and Milan ; priest,
and bishop of Hippo ; author of the famous Confessions and
The City of God.
We need not depend, however, upon the indirect evidence
of history and letters. The most eloquent witnesses to the
prosperity and even splendor of Roman Africa are its ruins.
Their number and importance are always the surprise of the
traveler.
534 GREATER ROME
The most superficial visit to Roman Africa requires a
fortnight. If Tripolitania and the Cyrenaica are included,
longer time is necessary. From Naples to Tunis, with
stops at Palermo and Trapani, the ancient Drepanum of
Virgilian fame, takes about thirty-six hours. The hill of
Carthage, the Byrsa or citadel, is on the right as the ship
enters the gulf of Tunis. From Tunis, a city of one hundred
and seventy-five thousand, the electric train quickly reaches
the station of Carthage, ten miles away. Here by the shore, on
plain and hill and on the high Byrsa, are the remnants of the
Roman town which succeeded to what Polybius called the
wealthiest city of the world, the city said by tradition to have
been founded by Dido the refugee from Tyre and hostess of
Aeneas and the Trojans. They include the ruins of the
admiralty and the harbors, gigantic baths, the theater, the
amphitheater, in which is a memorial cross of Saints Per-
petua and Felicitas, martyred in 203, tombs in great num-
bers from both Punic and Roman times, reservoirs and roads,
temple foundations, and the wonderful collection of Punic
and Roman remains in the museum on the Byrsa named after
Cardinal Lavigerie, founder of the monastery of the P£res
Blancs which contains it. In the environs of Tunis is the
Bardo, the greatest of the African museums, in which are to
be seen the famous bronzes recovered in 1907 from the
bottom of the sea, where a cargo of them sank in ancient
times, a great display of the mosaics for which African villas
were noted, and the celebrated mosaic portrait of Virgil
writing the Aeneid, from Susa, or Hadrumetum. Not far to
the south of Tunis are the ruins, 66 feet high, of the 50 miles
of aqueduct capable of supplying ancient Carthage with
water at the rate of 6,000,000 gallons daily. In 1925, the
excavations of Professor F. W. Kelsey of Michigan and
Count Khun de Prorok at the west side of the commercial
ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER
535
harbor of ancient Carthage revealed 1,100 cinerary urns, 300
altar-shaped and shrine-shaped monuments, and many
dedications. All were in the temple area of the goddess
Tanit, and Professor Kelsey suspected that the children's
ashes contained in most of the urns represented the sacrifice
by fire with which the Carthaginians were charged.
THE TEMPLE OF DBA CAELESTTS, OB TANIT, AT DOUGGA
Twenty-one miles to the northwest of Tunis are the ruins
of Utica, where Cato took his life after the defeat by Caesar
in 46 B.C. at Thapsus. Forty-one miles to the southwest, up
the valley of the Medjerda, the ancient Bagrada, are the
sightly remains of Dougga, ancient Thugga: theater,
temples, Roman and Punic tombs, prehistoric dolmens, on
a height 1,970 feet above the sea, and among the best pre-
served in Africa.
536 GREATER ROME
Susa, or Hadrumetum, reached by train ninety-three miles
south of Carthage on the coast, with a fine museum of Roman
remains, is the port from which Hannibal left his native land
after Zama. Beyond it thirty miles are the cisterns, amphi-
theater, tombs, and quay representing Thapsus. Mehdia,
near which the shipload of statuary above referred to was
found, is ten miles farther on. At Sbeitla, a hundred and
twelve miles from Susa to the southwest, are the beautiful
Capitol and the triumphal arch of Constantine preserved
from ancient Sufetula. Forty miles south of Susa near
the coast is El Djem, once Thysdrus, now a little village
rendered inconspicuous by the gigantic Roman amphi-
theater, among the largest in existence. Near by are
extensive ruins of baths, reservoirs, a circus, and a smaller
and older amphitheater. Farther south a hundred and
thirty miles are Gabes, once Roman Tacape, and the island
of Djerba, thought to be Homer's land of the lotus-eaters.
From this place, called Meninx, came the Emperors Vibius
Gallus and Volusianus, A.D. 251-253.
A voyage of five hundred and forty-four miles by sea from
Tunis brings one to Tripoli, the ancient Oea, where Apuleius
met and married the widow and was charged with magic.
The name Tripoli is descended from Tripolis, meaning " three
cities," the name given by the ancient Sicilian traders to the
towns Oea, Leptis Magna, and Sabratha. They were the
means of communication between the riches of the Sudan and
the ports of Carthage, Sicily, and Italy. From here came
the Emperors Septimius and Alexander Severus, the latter
of whom is said to have learned Latin only after going to
Rome, and always to have retained an accent. Tripoli con-
tains a grand triumphal arch in honor of Marcus Aurelius
and Lucius Verus. Since the Italian occupation of Tripoli-
tania in 1911, the Italian Directorate of Fine Arts has
ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER 537
lestored this arch, founded an important museum, and
carried on the excavation of Sabratha and Leptis Magna.
Sabratha was the birthplace of Vespasian's empress, Domi-
tilla, and the scene of Lucius Apuleius7 trial before the
Proconsul Claudius Maximus in A.D. 157. Among the
monuments to be seen now where a few years ago everything
was buried in the sands are the amphitheater, the foundations
of the Capitolium with a colossal bust of Jupiter, a bathing
establishment, and many inscriptions. At Leptis, there
have come to light, from the forty feet of sand in which the
ages have safely kept them enveloped, numerous excellent
triumphal reliefs and statues, baths, a vast basilica, harbor
works, and an arch of Septimius Severus. The city was
twice the size of Pompeii, and its abundant stone and marble
ruins in the grand style have been preserved in a wonderful
freshness and splendor.
Gyrene, a long distance east of Tripoli, is another scene of
recent Italian achievement Here, in 1911, a downpour of
rain, loosening a bank of earth, disclosed the Venus of
Gyrene, now in the National Museum at Rome, one of the
most important sculpture discoveries of recent times.
Thus far we have been enumerating sites near Carthage
and farther east. The important sites to its west are chiefly
Le Kef, ancient Sicca Veneria; Bulla Regia; Tebessa,
ancient Theveste; Thibilis; Constantine, ancient Cirta:
Lambaesis ; Timgad ; Cherchell ; and Tangier. There are
few ancient remains at Le Kef, thougji it was famed for its
worship of Astarte and was of much strategic importance
both in Roman antiquity and in the wars of the French
occupation and, before that, the wars between the beys of
Tunis and Algeria. Bulla Regia, a hundred miles west of
Carthage, was the scene of a battle in 203 B.C. between
Scipio and the Carthaginians under Syphax and HasdrubaL
538 GREATER ROME
Its deserted site is rich in the ruins of a city equipped with
every means of comfort and culture. About fifty miles
farther west and a hundred and fifty-four miles from Tunis?
at Souk-Ahras, was ancient Thagaste, the birthplace in
A.D. 354 of the great churchman, Aurelius Augustinus, Saint
Augustine. Like Bulla Regia, it is at about two thousand
feet elevation. South of it about seventeen miles is Ma-
daura, the native city of Apuleius, and sixty-three miles
farther south is ancient Theveste, marked by a fine arch of
Caracalla, an almost perfectly preserved temple of Minerva,
now a museum, and an imposing early Christian basilica.
Hammam-Meskoutine, sixty-four miles west of Souk-
Ahras, is now and was in Roman times a sulphur bath resort,
Two or three hours7 walk to the southwest, through pleasant,
rolling uplands, leads to ancient Thibilis, on a hill at twenty-
three hundred feet elevation, an entire town laid bare by
excavation in 1905 and following years. A visit to these
thoroughly excavated though not especially important ruins
is an excursion long to be remembered for archaeological and
natural charm.
Constantine, the ancient Numidian and Roman Cirta,
whose modern name goes back to the Emperor Constantine,
is a city of about 60,000, surpassed in Algeria only by
Algiers and Oran. Situated on a rock twenty-one hundred
feet high, from the times of Masinissa and Syphax until
its capture by the French in 1837 Cirta has been an impor-
tant stronghold. The present bridge, four hundred and
seven feet above the Rhumel gorge, overhangs the ruins of
the Roman bridge. There are also remnants of the ancient
aqueduct and reservoirs. It was in Cirta that Sophonisba,
the sister of Hasdrubal, beloved by the young Masinissa, is
said to have taken poison at his bidding when the Roman
general Scipio ordered their separation. Philippeville, on
ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER 539
the coast fifty-four miles north, has the largest Roman
theater in Algeria.
Batna, seventy-three miles south of Constantine, is the
station for the motor excursion to Lambaesis and Timgad.
Forty-one miles farther south, on the line to Biskra, is the
famous Roman bridge, El Kantara. Biskra, thirty-five
miles farther and one hundred and forty-nine miles from
Constantine, is an oasis town south of the mountains on the
desert's edge, and was Roman Bescera.
Lambaesis, to-day Lambessa, is a perfect specimen of the
Roman camp city which had so much to do with the Roman-
ization of conquered lands. At an elevation of 3,875 feet at
the north side of the Aur&s Mountains, which border the
Sahara thirty miles away, this post was the key of this part
of Africa from the time of Trajan to its decline, when Con-
stantine was made the capital of the region. Abandoned as
an active camp, it was probably overwhelmed and destroyed,
Tike Timgad, by the Berbers from the wild Aur&s near by in
the raids of 535. Both lay deserted and buried until the
French occupation in 1830. The Roman camp at Lambaesis
is a maze of foundation walls and fragments covering an area
of about 1,600 by 1,300 feet, arranged on the regulation axes
of the cardo and decumanus, the two long streets which
crossed at right angles in the heart of the camp, and domi-
nated by a praetorium 75 by 100 feet and 49 feet high. The
post was meant for permanence, and not only possessed
offices, club rooms, forum, shrine, baths, and other civic
conveniences, but soon caine to be surrounded by so many
dwellings and places of business and amusement as to assume
the dimensions and partake of the character of an ordinary
city. More than one veteran, on receiving his discharge and
donation, invested his savings in a home and passed the
remainder of his life on the outskirts of the camp in which
540 GREATER ROME
for a score of years he had lived. The African legion, and
the only one, was the famous Third Augustan, and it was
stationed at Lambaesis upwards of three hundred years.
" No camp in any part of the world," says Alexander Graham
in Roman Africa, "has left so many indications of its existence, or
so many memorials of military life and administration, as the
camp of this Numidian legion. The inscriptions already discov-
ered and interpreted number more than 2500, and continued sys-
tematic exploration is constantly bringing others to light. They
are in the form of memorials of soldiers of all ranks who have
faithfully discharged their duty, of dedications to emperors for
just and benevolent rule, and of acts of munificence by residents
of wealth and renown. One and all they bear testimony to a long
period of tranquil enjoyment of life in a pleasant and fertile coun-
try, to the prevalence of respect paid by soldiers to their superiors,
and to loyal obedience to imperial authority."
Timgad, fifteen miles from Lambaesis, and excavated from
1880 on, was founded about A.D. 100 as Colonia Marciana
Traiana Thamugadi, and its abundant inscriptions prove that
the architects and engineers of the Legio Tertia Augusta at
Lambaesis were its chief planners and builders. Timgad is
the most perfectly excavated city of ancient times, and
ranks next to Rome and Pompeii as a document of Roman
life. Its ruins include eleven baths, two markets, forum,
library, public toilets, basilica, senate, theater, Capitolium
and other temples, colonnades, an arch to Trajan, shops,
and private houses in great number.
Cherchell, or Zerschell, the ancient Colonia Claudia
Caesarea, capital of Mauretania Caesariensis, is sixty miles
west of Algiers. High on the coast twenty-four miles before
reaching Cherchell is the remarkable tomb, over 100 feet
higfc and 200 feet square at the base, conjectured to be that
of Juba II, the enlightened ruler of Caesarea in 25 B.C.-A.D. 22.
Fourteen miles farther on, from side to side of a deep valley,
ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER
541
is the Roman aqueduct, 100 feet high in three stories. In
the town are the remnants of Roman fortifications, a fine
bathing establishment, a theater, and a good museum of
antiquities. Near by are the naval harbor, the ruins of an
THE RUINS OF TIMGAD
The Arch of Trajan is in the distance. The camp city of Thamugadi was about
400 yards square. Its excavation was begun in 1880 by the French Government.
amphitheater, and the usual reservoirs. The name Cher-
chell is composed of Caesarea and the earlier Punic name, lol.
Tangier, ancient Punic Tingis, 563 miles west of Algiers
and 1,140 miles from Tunis and Carthage, given the rights
of citizenship by Augustus and made a colony by Claudius,
was the capital of Mauretania Tingitana. The not very
plentiful remains of Tingis are an hour's walk from the
modern town.
542 GREATER ROME
This is but the briefest indication of the archaeological
interest of northern Africa. Lambaesis, Timgad, Tebessa,
Constantine, Carthage, and Dougga are the sites most
frequently and most easily visited, and even these few are
astonishing in their wealth of ancient interest ; but in them,
and in all the others here mentioned with them, the list is
far from complete. Nor have we paused to notice every
relic of interest. In the vicinity of Tebessa, one archae-
ologist knew of more than 260 ruins. In the Mateur neigh-
borhood, 40 miles to the northwest of Carthage, there are as
many as 300.
Yet even the imperfect exploration of Africa tells the
essential truth of the Roman occupation. The Indo-
European and the Semite, in parallel advances to the north
and south of the great sea, came into collision where Sicily
and Spain made contact unavoidable. The permanent
safety of the Roman required the defeat of the African and
the occupation of his shores. A decaying civilization along
the fertile coast and a benighted barbarism in the inland
wastes were lifted back into something like enlightenment.
The sea became a means of unity instead of separation.
The lifeblood of a universal commerce and a universal culture
was let into veins that were nearly emptied, and health and
vigor took the place of atrophy. The energy and patience
of a hardworking race crisscrossed and dotted the areas of
an almost rainless country with aqueducts and conduits and
reservoirs and cisterns, and made the desert blossom as the
rose. There were cities of thousands and scores of thou-
sands of people where now are villages and towns of hundreds.
There were comforts and amusements and luxury in city and
country which died with the Roman withdrawal and only
now are faintly coming to life again with the French employ-
ment of the ancient methods and means.
ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER
543
The Roman Empire in Africa declined, as it declined else-
where. The Vandals overran it in the fifth century, the
Byzantines recovered and held it in the sixth, and the Arabs
ran through its narrow length like fire in the seventh and
THE AMPHITHEATER AT CARTHAGE
The cross is in memory of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas, martyrs A.D. 203.
were at the gates of Spain by the eighth. The Roman cities
crumbled and sank, the winds and the sands covered them,
and for twelve centuries it was as if Roman Africa had never
been. It was the victory of nature over art. The parching
heat, the desiccating rainlessness, the mountains and rocks,
the wild beasts and desperate men from the barren hills and
the deserts and beyond, and, above all, the broad and deep
544 GREATER ROME
substratum of the native Punic and Berber population, were
the potent forces, elsewhere not so great, that made the
holding of Africa in the Roman tradition too much for human
strength. When the Arabs came, it was the taking up of the
old Semitic tradition.
Yet it would not be truthful to assume that everything of
Roman Africa disappeared. For three active centuries its
life was mingled in the life of the Empire and helped to form
its character. Not even the material contributions of its
planters and traders and builders may be said to have wholly
perished from the life of the world. Much less may we say
that what its men of letters and saints accomplished is not
a part of the heritage which descended through Christian to
modern times.
XLIII
ROMAN SPAIN
It has been seen how slight was the force required to pro-
tect the border in Roman Africa so long as the Empire con-
tinued in the ways of growth and prosperity, and how com-
plete, when the Empire had fallen, was the disappearance of
Rome and Europe from African shores. On no other border
was the pressure of barbarism so easy to withstand, and in no
other land of the Empire was the disappearance so complete
and lasting, the effect in the actual area so transient. The
truth of this will be clearer if we visit another border land.
When Carthage withdrew from Spain in 206 B.C., and the
Romans in 197 B.C. divided it into Hither and Farther Spain
with capitals at Nova Carthago and Corduba, they found
a country disunited both by physical nature and by race
diversity. Sharply divided by rugged and irregular moun-
tain ranges, its parts were isolated, communication was hard,
defiance of the pursuer easy. Diversity and division in race
were quite as sharp. There were the Tartessians or Turde-
tani in the south, highly civilized and rich, perhaps a remnant
of the Aegean migrants of the age of bronze ; the Iberians
in east and north and northwest, hardly removed from bar-
barism except in the coastal regions where they were touched
by navigation ; the Celtiberi in the high central plains of
Castile, a blend of native Iberians with original Celts from
Gaul ; the ever alien Basques in the Cantabrian valleys at
the northern limit ; Phoenicians on the coasts at the south ;
Greeks on the sea in the far northeast ; and, earlier than all
545
ROMAN SPAIN 547
the rest, the people who left the dolmens, the groups of up-
right stones called antas, and the great caves with painted
vaults and carvings of stone and bone. The early attempts
to subjugate these varied and stubborn peoples, especially
the Celtiberians and Lusitanians, cost many a Roman defeat,
and it was not until Augustus that the conquest was made
complete.
The progress of the Roman conquest during these one hun-
dred and seventy years was marked by notable episodes.
Tiberius Gracchus in 179 B.C. inaugurated the policy of
conciliation by means of improvements in agriculture and
industry, and the leaving of local government to native con-
trol. The suppression of the Lusitanians under Viriathus in
140 B.C. was a severe trial to Roman arms. The siege of Nu-
mantia in 133 B.C. by Scipio was among the famous military
events of the century, and its fall the destruction of Spanish
hopes of independence. Sertorius, the able friend of Marius,
exiled to Spain, erected a temporary state whose benefits in
wealth, culture, and civic instruction were a more effective
means of Romanization than all displays of force. Julius
Caesar as quaestor of Farther Spain in 69 B.C., as praetor in
61 B.C. in the same province, and in his two campaigns
against Afranius and Petreius in Hither Spain, north of the
Ebro, in 49 B.C., and against the Pompeians in 45 at Munda
near Coidova, acquired a familiarity with Spanish conditions
which no doubt had an effect on the relations of Augustus
with Spain.
When Augustus addressed himself to the Spanish problem,
he found still unsubdued the tribes on the southern slope of
the Pyrenees, and the Cantabrians and Asturians in the
northwest. Between 36 B.C. and 26 B.C. the vigor of the
Roman effort along the Pyrenees was such that six triumphs
were claimed by the generals of Augustus. Both sides of the
548 GREATER RCBIE
mountains were subdued, and the Roman arms were
with final results against the Cantabrians and Asturians by
Agrippa and Augustus himself.
The Spanish conquests were made permanent by the
transfer of hostile tribes to the plains, the creation of garrison
towns and forts, and the settlement of veteran soldiers in
military colonies. Cities were founded whose names ai-e
still to be detected in the Spanish tongue: Asturica in
Astorga, Bracara in Braga, Emerita in Merida, Pax Augusta
in Badajoz, and Caesaraugusta in Zaragoza. The Farther
Province was divided into Baetica, nearly all the south, with
Corduba as capital ; and Lusitania, the west and much of
the north, with Emerita as capital. Hither Spain, with
capital at Tarraco, modern Tarragona, instead of New
Carthage, was known thenceforth as Hispania Tarraco-
nensis. Three legions were sufficient to hold the country :
the Fourth Macedonian, the Sixth Victorious, the Tenth
Gemina. Two were in the neighborhood of the present city
of Le6n, whose name is descended from the word Legio,
and one near modern Santander on the north coast. The
legions before long were maintained by recruiting from Spain
itself.
The government of Spain, like that of Africa and other
provinces, was a combination of Roman and native rule.
The Roman authority in Baetica was the governor at Cor-
duba, with a quaestor to manage the tax collections and
other finances, and a legatus or commissioner residing at
Hispalis, the modern Seville. The governor of Lusitania,
ruling from Merida, had one legate whose post was probably
Olisipo, modern Lisbon. The governor of Hispania Tarra-
conensis made Tarraco his capital, and had at his service
three legates and the three legions allotted to all Spain.
Lusitania and Tarraconensis were imperial -provinces, and
ROMAN SPAIN
549
Baetica a senatorial province, according to the emperor's
policy of making the more difficult provinces directly
responsible to him. The title of the senatorial governor at
Corduba was proconsul; of the imperial governors at
Tarraco and Merida, praetorian legate. In either case the
THE AQUEDUCT AT SEGOVIA
The main stretch of this aqueduct is 900 yards lone, has 119 arches, and sometimes
reaches a height of 94 feet. It was repaired about A.D. 100, and first built much
earlier.
rule was autocratic and personal; the governor was im-
mediately responsible to the emperor or the Senate, the
commissioners were responsible to the governor, and the
numerous underlings who constituted the provincial bureau-
cracy were answerable to the commissioners.
Roman authority had to do with the keeping of the
550 GREATER ROME
country in order, the collection of taxes or tribute, and
improvements in public works or administration which
affected the general welfare of the province or provinces.
Outside this, it was native control that functioned. Matter?
of local import were left largely to individual communities.
These communities might be colonies, municipalities, Latin
or federate towns, or tributary villages and areas, according
to the measure of privilege granted by the Government at
Rome. In the Tarraconensis there were 293 communities, of
which 179 possessed constitutions, and the rest some sort
of autonomy. The government of the communities was
patterned after that of the Italian cities ; there were duoviri,
senate, and popular assembly, with assessors to manage the
tax rates. Once a year, these local senates elected from
their number delegates to the provincial assembly which met
under the presidency of the provincial priest to hold a cele-
bration in honor of the imperial cult, to approve or dis-
approve the retiring governor, to elect a patron to represent
the province at Rome, to send intercessors to the emperor,
and like measures.
The remoteness of Spain in the Roman mind and the
perils it offered are suggested by the Ode in which Horace
addresses Septimius, who is ready to be the poet's comrade
to the world's end and in any danger :
"Septimius, who with me would brave
Far Gades, and Cantabrian land
Untamed by Rome, and Moorish wave
That whirls the sand."
This was the Spain that still in part resisted. The effect
of Augustan conquest and the Roman pacification policy
may be seen in what Strabo says in Augustan times of the
thirty Spanish tribes near the Tagus :
ROMAN SPAIN" 551
"Notwithstanding the fertility of the country in corn, cattle,
gold, silver, and numerous other similar productions, the majority
of its inhabitants, neglecting to gain their subsistence from the
ground, passed their lives in pillage and continual warfare, both
between themselves and their neighbors. To this the Romans at
length put a stop by subduing them and changing many of their
cities into villages, besides colonizing some of them better."
Velleius Paterculus, of the next generation wrote, " These
provinces, so widely scattered, so numerous, and so fierce,
which never knew respite from wars of first-class magnitude,
Augustus brought to so peaceful a state that they were
free from even acts of brigandage."
More eloquent testimony still is the fact that within a
century of the Augustan occupation the number of legions
in Spain had been reduced from three to one, that no fleet
was maintained, and that no need for it was felt except when
the pirates of Mauretania harassed the southern shores.
The hundreds of colonies, municipalities, federated Latin
towns, and tributary communities, regulating themselves by
choice more or less in the Roman way, supplanted the hun-
dreds of petty tribes and chieftaincies. The judicial dis-
tricts, or conventus, of the Republic were reorganized —
seven in Hither Spain, four in Baetica, three in Lusitania —
and unified their neighborhoods. The old road from the
Rhone region down the coast to Tarraco and New Carthage
was improved and extended to Corduba and Gades, and
other highways, national and local, built by the emperor and
the communities. The use of Latin and the toga became
widespread, and signified the surrender of the barbarian
to Roman ideals. Extortionate governors were held to
account, and public spirit began to operate in civic
benefactions.
The six millions thought to be the population of Spain in
Augustan times became the probable twelve millions of
552 GREATER ROME
Hadrian's day when the signs began to indicate that the
peak was passed. It was a country rich in material re-
sources. Its metals, minerals, wool, cattle, fish, grain, wine,
honey, and oil formed a large part of the imports of Italy and
Rome. The gold which was found in its provinces was
acquired by the placer and hydraulic methods and by shaft
mining. " Nearly the whole of Spain," writes Pliny,
"abounds in mines of lead, iron, copper, silver, and gold.;;
"Baetica," he says again, " excels all the other provinces in
the richness of its cultivation and the peculiar fertility and
beauty of its vegetation." Strabo calls it "marvelously
fertile, abounding in every species of produce." It was a
country rich in human resources also. Trajan and Hadrian
were both natives of Spain. A hundred years of Spanish
letters included the two Senecas, Quintilian, Lucan, and
Martial. Pliny the Elder was one of its procurators, and
Roman administration brought to it many men of ability.
We may believe also that it did not lack even then the native
independence and charm of character which make it so
attractive to the visitor to-day.
The Roman ruins in Spain are not so abundant as those
of Roman Africa. They have been despoiled by Vandal,
Goth, Moor, and Christian ; they have had no desert sands
to protect them; wind and rain and frost and heat have
crumbled them. Yet Spain is rich in Roman archaeology.
At Tarragona and Segovia, it displays two of the mightiest
aqueduct ruins outside the Roman Campagna. Tarragona,
where Augustus lived in 26 B.C., has also two miles of Roman
walls, built by the early commanders in Spain and restored
by Augustus on the foundations of the prehistoric Iberian
wall ; and the city abounds in the more fragmentary remains
of theater, baths, temples, villas, tombs, and other buildings.
There was a circus five hundred yards long, and near it an
RCHMAN SPAIN
553
amphitheater, arid more than five hundred inscriptions have
been found. At Cartagena, the Spanish capital of the
Carthaginians, the two heights flanking the harbor entrance
were once crowned by a castle of the Barca family and a
temple to Aesculapius, The forum and amphitheater have
been explored, and a monument forty feet high in honor of
THE AMPHITHEATER AT ITALICA
It is about five miles from Seville. Founded in 205 B.C. by Scipio Africanus for
his veterans, Italioa was the native city of the Emperors Trajan, Hadrian, and
Theodosius.
the younger Scipio is preserved. New Carthage, the first
Roman capital, was succeeded by Tarraco.
Two of the most interesting sites are Italica and Emerita.
The former is reached by a pleasant walk of five miles from
Seville, the Iberian HispaJis. Both Italica, which was a
veterans7 colony of 206 B.C., and Hispalis were on the trade
route from Gades to Emerita and Salmantica, the modern
554 GREATER ROME
Salamanca. Trajan and Hadrian were natives of Italica.
The foundations of its temples, baths, and forum remain, and
its amphitheater is a large and impressive ruin. Emerita,
founded by order of Augustus about 25 B.C., is now Merida,
on the Guadiana, far inland at the borders of Portugal. The
ancient bridge and viaduct across the river, half a mile long,
is well preserved and still in use. The aqueduct remains are
very imposing, the theater is a ruin in the grand style with
fragments of ornament indicating great splendor, there are
many temple ruins, and parts of the circus and naumachia
remain.
Corduba, the home of the Senecas, Lucan, and the Gallio
of The Acts, who was the deputy of Achaea when "the Jews
made insurrection with one accord against Paul, and brought
hi™ to the judgment seat," was made a settlement of
veterans in 152 B.C. and figured in the civil wars as the enemy
of Caesar. It has a bridge over the Guadalquivir with
ancient piers and foundation, the remains of an aqueduct,
and other ruins, including some of the many hundreds of
columns which make the Great Mosque one of the world's
architectural wonders.
Gades the joyous, Cadiz la Joyosa of the Spaniards to-day,
the Gades locosae of the epigrammatist Martial, was one of
the oldest of the Mediterranean cities and probably the
most frequently mentioned Spanish city of ancient letters.
Said to have been founded by the Tyrians long before
Carthage, it was a city of so much dignity at the time of the
Second Punic War that at the close of hostilities the Roman
Senate admitted its claim to freedom. Always of great
commercial importance, its advantage at the meeting of
Mediterranean and Atlantic was increased by the fall of
Carthage in 146 B,C. In Augustan times it was reputed to be
among the first cities of the Empire in the number of its rich
ROMAN SPAIN
555
men; its census included five hundred members of the
money-marking rank in society, the equites, only Rome and
Patavium surpassing it. With the multiplication of good
land routes leading from new harbors on the east coast
through the peninsula to the west, Cadiz gradually sank, to
rise again when the Americas came into Spanish affairs and
the silver fleets returned from the Spanish Main to anchor in
its harbors.
THE HARBOR AT CADIZ, THE ANCIENT GADES
Little of Roman Gades remains. Its famous temple to the
Punic-Greek Melcarth-Heracles, in which Hannibal "dis-
charged his vows to Hercules and bound himself by new vows
in case the rest of his ventures were prospered," is now under
the sea, with most of the city's other buildings. One visits
it for the memories of the great Carthaginian leader; of
Balbus, the prefect of engineers and useful friend of Caesar
and client of Cicero ; of Caninius Rufus, the poet friend of
Martial and Pliny ; of Columella, the agricultural writer ; of
the merry dancers and singers whose kind survives in the
556 GREATER ROME
Cadiz of to-day ; and for the delight of the tall houses with
balconies commanding the streets and miradores looking
across the waters, for the freshness of the breezes that blow
from the sea on every side, for the flowers and marbles of its
patios, and for its clean and silent streets.
With the end of the second century and the beginning of
active decline, the Spains partook of the general decay.
Taxes and civic burdens increased ; freebooters grew bolder ;
in the reign of Gallienus, A.D. 260-268, the Suevi and Franks
came down the eastern coast, and defied authority for a
dozen years ; the reforms of Diocletian, A.D. 284-305, made
still heavier the already unendurable load of citizenship. In
the early fifth century the Vandals, Alans, and Suevi lodged
in the country, soon to be followed by the Visigoths. By
A.D. 484 no Roman garrisons were left in any part of Spain.
The authority of the Empire had vanished long before, as
far as force was concerned.
Aside from force, however, the Empire did not die in
Spain, and is living still. The six hundred years of the
Roman domination did not conclude, as in the case of
Roman Africa, with the total disappearance of all that was
Roman except the ruins of Roman buildings. In Spain, it
was only the formal authority of government that disap-
peared. The Latin language remained, except among the
Basques, who have defied the ages and still employ their own
tongue. The Roman law survived, and the Roman system
of town government was soon adopted by the Goths. The
ideals of architecture and the other arts remained. Greatest
of all for the preservation of Roman ideals and unity, the
Roman Church remained, with her authoritative bishops to
restrain their provincials and to keep alive the feeling of kin-
ship with other parts of Spain and with other lands that once
had been Roman soil.
XLIV
ON THE NORTHERN BORDER
The line between Rome and barbarism on the south was
drawn by the African desert. The line on the north, until
Claudius invaded Britain and Trajan carried the eagles into
Dacia, was drawn by the Rhine and the Danube. To the
west of Dacia, the Danube and the Rhine continued to be the
line.
At about the time of Hadrian, the three hundred and forty-
five miles between the upper Rhine at Rheinbrohl and the
upper Danube at Regensburg, hitherto a narrow protected
zone through the forest, became a palisaded defense, to be
converted after a hundred years into wall and moat, with
a hundred military stations at intervals on the Roman side,
with a thousand watch towers, and with military road. In
the time of Hadrian also, the tribes in the north of Britain
having proved unconquerable, the Roman line in the island
was made definite by the great wall between the Solway and
the Tyne, near what is now the border, between England
and Scotland.
Wall and sea and rivers thus marked the limit of Roman
rule from the Solway to the Black Sea. The length of the
Danube is 1,725 miles, of the Rhine, 700 ; allowing for the
fact that the limes, the limit or bound, left the former above
Regensburg and joined the latter below Coblentz, and
including the distance to the end of the Roman lines in
Britain, the entire northern border was over two thousand
mibs in extent.
557
558
GREATER ROME
To stand on the banks of the rolling Danube, or by the
poetic sister stream where
"The castled crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,
Whose breast of waters broadly swells
Between the banks which bear the vine/'
and to see in the steady, powerful rush of their currents the
line that marked the end of land redeemed from the wilds of
tribal barbarism, is an impressive experience ; but not until
RESTORED BEIDGE AND GATE OF THE SAALBXJRG
The Saalburg is the largest known fortress on the walled and palisaded line of
defense between Rheinbrohl on the Rhine below Coblentz and Hienheim on the
Danube near Regenaburg. It is about twenty miles north of Frankfort-on-the-
Main.
one visits the barrier that ran through forests and over hills
from sea to sea in Britain and from river to river in the heart
of Germany does he realize in all acuteness the fact of the
Roman Empire as an area set apart — an area one step from
which meant the leaving behind of the life of cultivated men ;
ON THE NORTHERN BORDER 559
an area which constituted a unity to be shielded against the
rough tribes of the forest and the desert while civilization
pursued its experiments in the greatest laboratory the history
of human relations has ever known.
In the Germanic Museum in Nuremberg are certain great
stakes from the palisade of Hadrian. The railway from
Nuremberg to Munich crosses the line of the Limes about
thirty miles to the south, and a few miles farther on comes to
Weissenburg, on whose western edge are the walls of the
military post of Biriciani, one of the hundred stations lying
within the boundary at points three or four miles apart.
Rising little above the soil of the cultivated fields, they now
form a pleasant, sod-covered path between gardens and
grain. The station was rectangular, occupied about an acre
and a half, had a gate in each of the sides, and contained
several buildings of size — including what was probably the
prefect's quarters, a grain magazine, a large central structure
with a spacious court surrounded by numerous rooms, and
perhaps baths, all of them with heating apparatus. Inside
the camp, and especially near the gates, were found many
spearheads, stone missiles, lances, and human bones. The
exploration of the place began in 1889. The field in which
the ruins lay had been known as the Kesselfeld, from Kastel-
feld, or Castlefield, a name which had lived on long after all
trace of the station disappeared.
The station at Weissenburg, like most stations, was five
miles or so to the south of the wall defense. The wall may be
seen with good effect near Wilburgstetten, a village about
thirty miles west of Weissenburg and forty southwest of
Nuremberg. A mile from the town, in a thick and rugged
evergreen forest, the German Limes Commission has laid
bare some hundreds of feet of the stone wall about three feet
and originally eight feet high, but now little above
560
GREATER ROME
ground level, which ran east to the Danube seventy miles
away at Hienheim, near Regensburg, and west forty miles to
Lorch on the Items, there to meet the earthen rampart
which ran over two hundred miles north and west to the
Rhine. This was the
barrier against which
again and again the
outer world, covetous of
a place in the Roman
sun, threw itself in vain,
and through which, in
the later and weaker
days of the Empire,
again and again it broke,
until at length barbarian
and Roman mingled
not only within the
Limes but south of the
Alps and within the
walls of Rome, and with
the new influx of wild
but fresh and vigorous
blood the outworn body
RESTORED TOWBB OF THE SAALBTTRG of the Roman Empire
began the new growth
which was to result in the Europe and Americas of modern
times.
And yet, impressive as are these and other remnants of the
German and Raetian lines, they are not to be compared in
either size or interest with the wall along the British border
from the Solway to the Tyne. Few places outside Italy are
so charged with meaning as this for the Briton or American
conscious of the Roman heritage of his race.
ON THE NORTHERN BORDER 561
The British aloofness from the Continent, so often spoken
of in modern times, was much more the fact in antiquity.
Horace's "Britons, the most remote of the world," "Britons
fierce to strangers," and "clouds and dropping rains/7 reflect
the Roman thought, Britain seemed to the Roman imagi-
nation more inaccessible than Spain, the African desert, or
even the wilds of Scythia. It was not until A.D. 83, when the
fleet of Agriccla reached the north end of Scotland, that the
country was definitely known to be an island.
With the exception of one Pytheas of Marseilles, who is said
to have made an exploratory voyage to Britain in 330 B.C.,
the first person of historical importance to set foot in the
island was Julius Caesar in the two invasions of the summers
of 55 and 54 B.C. The people whom he found in South
Britain were the Brythons, a Celtic race who had crossed into
England about 320 B.C., and were related to the Gaels who
settled in Ireland. Preceding the Brythons had been an
earlier wave of Celts, and before them a neolithic stock,
probably from Spain, and the original palaeolithic race. By
Caesar's time, the Celts had pushed their neolithic prede-
cessors out of the South, and the North was occupied by the
ruder and more primitive portion of the islanders.
All these peoples left behind them the traces of their
cultures : the palaeolithic race, their flints and the skull of
the Piltdown man, 100,000 to 300,000 years ago, the first
human being whose head-shape and brain-size have been
determined ; the neolithic men, their stone circles, such as
Stonehenge, their places of worship, such as Avebury with
its dike, ditch, and circles of monoliths, dating from 2000 B.C.
or earlier ; the Britons, their hill camps, such as Old Sarum,
aear Salisbury, and the frequent barrows representing their
burial.
The first invasion of Caesar, with some hundred ships
562 GREATER ROME
carrying the infantry and cavalry of the Seventh and Tenth
legions, was hardly more than a three weeks' reconnaissance.
The second, with five legions in eight hundred transports,
lasted four months, but carried the Roman arms hardly
beyond the Thames. It was ninety-six years before the next
attempt was made. In A.D. 43 the expedition of Claudius,
some fifty thousand men, effected a permanent occupation.
It was eight years before the British leader, Caractacus, was
defeated in Wales, fled to the north, was delivered up by the
Brigantes, and was taken to Rome ; where, in wonderment
as he looked on the glories of the city, he asked how the lords
of such palaces could be covetous of the poor huts of his
people. Ten years after this, when the Roman army was
engaged in an invasion of Mona, the island of Anglesey, the
chief religious retreat of the Britons, a general uprising
headed by the famous Queen Boadicea, whose capital was
Camalodunum, the present Colchester, caused the capture of
that city, Verulamium, Londinium, and other smaller places,
and the annihilation of the Ninth Legion. The Britons were
prevented from driving the Romans from the island only by
a fortunate battle at the last moment. In another ten years
the Silures, in Wales, the most obstinate in the defense of
their native land, were conquered by Frontinus, the general
of Vespasian, and in A.D. 78 Agricola subdued the island of
Mona. In A.D. 80, Agricola, with the aid of a newly created
fleet, reached the Firth of Tay. In A.D. 84, a great battle
with all the forces of the highlanders completed the conquest
of the island territory so far as it ever was completed.
Three reasons may be given for the halt of the Roman
arms without advancing into remote northern Scotland and
crossing into Ireland, which Agricola thought should be
conquered, "so that Roman arms should be everywhere,
and liberty, so to speak, removed from sight." First, the
ROMAN BRITAIN
Scale of Miles
0 20 40 gO 8Q
• Luge Fortwwci
• Small Forte
9 Ltrg* Towns
o Small Town*
. Definite Road*
— -Indefinite Roads
Forests
564
GREATER ROME
military capacities of the Empire were already being taxed
by wars along the Rhine and Danube. Second, the occupa-
tion of Britain was expensive, and had always been objected
to as an enterprise not worth the effort ; and the economic
disadvantage of adding Scotland and Ireland seemed quite
clear. "The masters of the fairest and
most wealthy climates of the globe," says
Gibbon, "turned with contempt from
gloomy hills assailed by the winter tem-
pest, from lakes concealed in a blue mist,
and from cold and lonely heaths over
which the deer of the forest were chased
by a troop of naked barbarians." Third,
the Romanization of these two regions
could be attempted with far less hope of
success. The Britons and other Celts in
the South were closely akin to the Gallic
Celts, and easily followed in their foot-
steps ; the Irish and the Scots were Gaelic
Celts, were a wilder race, spoke a language
so different from that of the Britons that
it could not be understood, and were in
general apart from them.
Agricola set up a line of defenses from
the Forth to the Clyde, the headquarters
of the Roman army were maintained at
Eboracum, York, and for thirty-five years
little is heard of British affairs. In the reign of Hadrian, 117-
138, it is generally agreed, the wall defenses from the Solway to
the Tyne were erected. That this was at first not meant as
an actual frontier wall is indicated by the building of a
similar but less elaborate wall by Antoninus Pius, 13&-161,
between the Forth and the Clyde, and its strengthening by
AI/TAR FOUND IN
SCOTLAND
The inscription reads :
To Jupiter Optimus
Maximus. Galus AT-
rius Domitianus, Cen-
turion of the Twen-
tieth Legion, Valeria
yictrix, willingly and
gladly has discharged
his TOW as he should.
ON THE NORTHERN BORDER 565
Severus, 193-211, who died in the camp at Eboracum, after
a vigorous campaign in the land of the Caledonians.
The second or northern wall was abandoned in the second
century. For the next hundred years there is little evidence.
At the beginning of the fourth century, a view of the border
shows that the line of Hadrian is actively occupied in pro-
tecting Romanized Britain south of the Tyne and the Sol-
way from the raids of the Picts and Scots ; the Picts being
the Caledonians, or "tattooed," and the Scots being the
warriors from Ivernia, or Ireland, always then, as now,
closely related with northern Scotland both in blood and
communication. The details of these exciting forays are
little known to us. Hardly more familiar are the details of
the last of the three centuries inside the wall that elapsed
from Hadrian's death to the end of the Roman occupation.
The end of Roman rule in Britain was due neither to
rebellion in Britain itself nor to the assaults of Pict and Scot
on the border. The Empire was falling apart. The North-
erners had long since made naught of the barrier between
the Rhine and the Danube, and Alaric and his Goths in 410
had broken through the gates of Rome itself. The legions
were needed in places nearer the center than far-away
Britain, and in many places at once. When the need for
men became acute, it was the most remote and the least
remunerative of the provinces that were first abandoned.
Already in the time of Honorius the last legions had been
withdrawn, and the British envoys entreating continued
protection had brought back the unwelcome news that their
native land must shift for itself.
For upwards of forty years it did so shift. The decreasing
momentum of Roman government, as represented by the
municipal system, the noble families, and the Church, still
kept the province in its course. The last useless appeal to
566 GREATER ROME
Rome was sent in 446. Unable now to withstand the bar-
barian pressure from the north, Roman Britain invited, as
the lesser evil, the aid of Angle, Saxon, and Jute. The
separation from the Empire was complete; the Roman
civilization of the island was overwhelmed by the Saxon, and
for the time disappeared.
The Roman remains in the British lands are scattered and
fragmentary. The Roman arms never crossed to Ireland,
and left few signs of their presence north of the barrier
erected by Antoninus between Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Roman building in Britain was never in the grand style, and
the Saxon invaders seem to have burned and pillaged what
they found.
The classical traveler in England will visit the ancient
remains of pool and chambers and water pipes at Bath,
whose waters were used in Roman times as they are to-day,
and whose ancient name was Aqua Sulis, the Waters of Sul,
in honor of the goddess Sul, the British Minerva. He will
find a Roman gate in Lincoln, the Roman camp Lindum ;
a tower in York, the Roman Eboracum ; and city walls at
Colchester, the Roman Camalodunum, and at Caerleon and
Caerwent, near Newport in Wales, the ancient Isca and
Venta, important legionary stations from earliest times. In
spots never again built upon after the Saxon invasion, he will
find the ruins of Verulamium, near St. Alban's ; of Calleva,
now Silchester,near Reading ; of Viroconium, now Wroxeter,
near Shrewsbury. He will find that ten forts on the south-
east or Saxon shore have been identified, and that some of
them, as Burgh, near Great Yarmouth, Pevensey, near
Hastings, and Porchester, near Portsmouth, have left many
fragments. He will find many remnants in the heart of
London and in smaller cities, and many more, especially the
ruins of country houses, here and there in the English fields.
ON THE NORTHERN BORDER 567
Multitudinous minute objects he will find in the British
Museum and in the local collections of numerous towns.
He will find many a town interesting for its name or associa-
tions : Gloucester, once Glevum ; Chester, once Castra, or
Camp, and the numerous towns ending in " Chester" which
once were occupied by soldiers ; and the equally numerous
towns ending in "wich" which once were vici or Roman -vil-
lages. The ruins usual in less rigorous climes and nearer the
Mediterranean — the theater, amphitheater, basilica, monu-
mental baths, aqueducts, and temple — he will find either
missing or much less frequent ; and he will find most of the
ruins of whatever sort either hard to find, or inconvenient, or
disappointing in their sise and condition.
One monument of Roman Britain in the grand style, how-
ever, still remains. The Great Wall of Hadrian, once reach-
ing from sea to sea, a distance of seventy-four miles, with its
western end at Carlisle and its eastern at Newcastle-on-
Tyne, is still to be seen in remarkable completeness for the
middle thirty-five miles of its length, and is traceable for the
twenty miles at either end which have in great part dis-
appeared under the assaults of local searchers for stone and
freedom for the plow.
The Great Wall was not alone by itself, but was the chief
part of a careful zone of defense and aggression. Ap-
proached from the south, it consisted of a series of parallel
lines : (1) two ramparts or dikes of dirt and stone ; (2) a
fosse or ditch ; (3) a third rampart ; (4) a space of open
ground varying from 90 feet to half a mile, and averaging
200 feet, threaded by a military road ; (5) the murus, or Wall
itself, 7 to 9 feet thick, of stone and mortar core faced with
stones about 9 by 11 inches, and 20 feet high, with battle-
ment, two turrets, and a small fort or castellum at every
mile, and a camp some 5 acres in extent at intervals of about
568
GREATER ROME
5 miles; (6) a fosse 40 feet wide and 20 feet deep. The
enemy coming from the north thus found himself confronted
by a mighty ditch beyond which, rising to 40 feet above its
bottom, was the battlemented, turreted, and fortressed wall,
in the rear of which were the legionaries dispatched by the
THE ROMAN WALL, m BRITAIN
It went straight across country, taking hills and valleys as they came.
convenient road from the not distant camps that were
kept in supplies and men from York over the two divisions
of the great highway later known as Watling Street.
The Wall was built, so inscriptions indicate, by the
Second, Sixth, and Twentieth legions, and the twenty-three
camps manned by troopers from every quarter of the world.
Nowhere is it preserved in its ancient height, and nowhere
are the moats and dikes at their original depth and height ;
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