No More Learning

a god, the laurels on either side its doorway, the chaplet of oak leaves above, seemed to designate the place for religious veneration. And notwithstanding all this, the household of Aurelius was singularly modest, with none of the wasteful expense of palaces after the fashion of Lewis the Fourteenth ; the palatial dignity being felt only in a peculiar sense of order, the absence of all that was casual, of vulgarity and discomfort. A merely official residence of his predecessors, the Palatine had become the favorite dwelling place of Aurelius ; its many- colored memories suiting, perhaps, his pensive character, and the crude splendors of Nero and Hadrian being now subdued by time. The windowless Roman abode must have had much of what to a modern would be gloom. How did the children, one wonders, endure houses with so little escape for the eye into the world outside ? Aurelius, who had altered little else, choosing to live there, in a genuine homeliness, had shifted and made the most of the level lights, and broken out a quite mediaeval window here and there, and the clear daylight, fully appreciated by his youthful visitor, made pleasant shadows among the objects of the imperial collection. Some of these, indeed, by reason of their Greek simplicity and grace, them selves shone out like spaces of a purer, early light, amid the splendors of the Roman manufacture.
Though he looked, thought Marius, like a man who did not sleep enough, he was abounding and bright to-day, after one of those pitiless headaches which since boyhood had been the "thorn in his side," challenging the pretensions of his philoso phy to fortify one in humble endurances. At the first moment, to Marius, remembering the spectacle of the emperor in cere mony, it was almost bewildering to be in private conversation with him. There was much in the philosophy of Aurelius — much consideration of mankind at large, of great bodies, aggregates and generalities, after the Stoic manner — which, on a nature less rich than his, might have acted as an induce ment to care for people in inverse proportion to their near ness to him. That has sometimes been the result of the Stoic cosmopolitanism. Aurelius, however, determined to beautify by all means, great or little, a doctrine which had in it some potential sourness, had brought all the quickness of his intelli gence, and long years of observation, to bear on the conditions of social intercourse. He had early determined " not to make business an excuse to decline the offices of humanity — not to
MARCUS AURELIUS AT HOME. 99
pretend to be too much occupied with important affairs to con cede what life with others may hourly demand ; " and with such success, that, in an age which made much of the finer points of that intercourse, it was felt that the mere honesty of his conversation was more pleasing than other men's flattery. His agreeableness to his young visitor to-day was, in truth, a blossom of the same wisdom which had made of Lucius Verus really a brother — the wisdom of not being exigent with men, any more than with fruit trees (it is his own favorite figure) beyond their nature. And there was another person, still nearer to him, regarding whom this wisdom became a marvel, of equity — of charity.
The center of a group of princely children, in the same apartment with Aurelius, amid all the refined intimacies of a modern home, sat the empress Faustina, warming her hands over a fire. With her long fingers lighted up red by the glow ing coals of the brazier, Marius looked close upon the most beautiful woman in the world, who was also the great paradox of the age, among her boys and girls. As has been truly said of the numerous representations of her in art, so in life, she had the air of one curious, restless, to enter into conversation with the first comer. She had certainly the power of stimu lating a very ambiguous sort of curiosity about herself. And Marius found this enigmatic point in her expression, that even after seeing her many times he could never precisely recall her features in absence. The lad of six years, looking older, who stood beside her, impatiently plucking a rose to pieces over the hearth, was, in outward appearance, his father — the young
Veristimus — over again; but with a certain feminine length
of feature, and with all his mother's alertness, or license, of
gaze.
Yet rumor knocked at every door and window of the
imperial house regarding the adulterers who knocked at them, or quietly left their lovers' garlands there. Was not that like ness of the husband, in the boy beside her, really the effect of a shameful magic, in which the blood of the murdered gladi ator, his true father, had been an ingredient ? Were the tricks for deceiving husbands which the Roman poet describes, really hers, and her household an efficient school of all the arts of furtive love ? Or, was the husband too aware, like every one beside? Were certain sudden deaths which happened there, really the work of apoplexy, or the plague ?
100 MARCUS AURELIUS AT HOME.
The man whose ears, whose soul, those rumors were meant to penetrate, was, however, faithful to his sanguine and optimist philosophy, to his determination that the world should be to him simply what the higher reason preferred to conceive it ; and the life's journey Aurelius had made so far, though in volving much moral and intellectual loneliness, had been ever in affectionate and helpful contact with other wayfarers, very unlike himself. Since his days of earliest childhood in the Lateran gardens, he seemed to himself, blessing the gods for it after deliberate survey, to have been always surrounded by kinsmen, friends, servants, of exceptional virtue. From the great Stoic idea, that we are all fellow-citizens of one city, he had derived a tenderer, a more equitable estimate than was common among Stoics, of the eternal shortcomings of men and women. Considerations that might tend to the sweetening of his temper it was his daily care to store away, with a kind of philosophic pride in the thought that no one took more good- naturedly than he the "oversights" of his neighbors. For had not Plato taught (it was not paradox, but simple truth of experience) that if people sin, it is because they know no better, and are " under the necessity of their own ignorance " ? Hard to himself, he seemed at times, doubtless, to decline too softly upon unworthy persons. Actually, he came thereby upon many a useful instrument. The empress Faustina he would seem at least to have kept, by a constraining affection, from becoming altogether what most people have believed her, and won in her (we must take him at his word in the " Thoughts," abundantly confirmed by letters, on both sides, in his correspondence with Cornelius Fronto) a consolation, the more secure, perhaps, because misknown of others. Was the secret of her actual blamelessness, after all, with him who has at least screened her name ? At all events, the one thing quite certain about her, besides her extraordinary beauty, is her sweetness to himself.
No ! The wise, who had made due observation on the trees of the garden, would not expect to gather grapes of thorns or fig trees : and he was the vine, putting forth his genial fruit, by natural law, again and again, after his kind, whatever use people might make of it. Certainly, his actual presence never lost its power, and Faustina was glad in it to-day, the birthday of one of her children, a boy who stood at her knee holding in his fingers tenderly a tiny silver trumpet, one of his birthday
MARCUS AURELIUS AT HOME. 101
gifts. — " For my part, unless I conceive my hurt to be such, I have no hurt at all," — boasts the would-be apathetic emperor : — "and how I care to conceive of the thing rests with me. " Yet when his children fall sick or die, this pretense breaks down, and he is broken-hearted : and one of the charms of certain of his letters still extant, is his reference to those childish sicknesses. — " On my return to Lorium," he writes, " I found my little lady — domnulam meam — in a fever ; " and again, in a letter to one of the most serious of men, " You will be glad to hear that our little one is better, and running about the room —parvolam nostram melius valere et intra cubi- culum discurrere. "
The young Commodus had departed from the chamber, anxious to witness the exercises of certain gladiators, having a native taste for such company, inherited, according to popular rumor, from his true father — anxious also to escape from the too impressive company of the gravest and sweetest specimen of old age Marius had ever seen, the tutor of the imperial children, who had arrived to offer his birthday congratulations, and now, very familiarly and affectionately, made a part of the group, falling on the shoulders of the emperor, kissing the empress Faustina on the face, the little ones on the face and hands. Marcus Cornelius Fronto, the "Orator," favorite teacher of the emperor's youth, afterwards his most trusted counselor, and now the undisputed occupant of the sophistic throne, whose equipage, elegantly mounted with silver, Marius had seen in the streets of Rome, had certainly turned his many personal gifts to account with a good fortune remarkable even in that age, so indulgent to professors or rhetoricians. The gratitude of the emperor Aurelius, always generous to his teachers, arranging their very quarrels sometimes, for they were not always fair to one another, had helped him to a really great place in the world. But his sumptuous appendages, including the villa and gardens of Maecenas, had been borne with an air perfectly becoming, by the professor of a philosophy which, even in its most accom plished and elegant phase, presupposed a gentle contempt for such things. With an intimate practical knowledge of manners, physiognomies, smiles, disguises, flatteries, and courtly tricks of every kind — a whole accomplished rhetoric of daily life — he applied them all to the promotion of humanity, and especially of men's family affection. Through a long life of now eighty years, he had been, as it were, surrounded by the gracious and
102 MARCUS AURELIUS AT HOME.
soothing air of his own eloquence — the fame, the echoes of it — like warbling birds, or murmuring bees. Setting forth in that fine medium the best ideas of matured pagan philosophy, he had become the favorite " director " of noble youth.
Yes ! it was the one instance Marius, always eagerly on the lookout for such, had yet seen of a perfectly tolerable, perfectly beautiful, old age — an old age in which there seemed, to one who perhaps habitually overvalued the expression of youth, nothing to be regretted, nothing really lost, in what years had taken away. The wise old man, whose blue eyes and fair skin were so delicate, uncontaminate, and clear, would seem to have replaced carefully and consciously each natural trait of youth, as it departed from him, by an equivalent grace of culture, and had the blitheness, the placid cheerfulness, as he had also the infirmity, the claim on stronger people, of a delightful child. And yet he seemed to be but awaiting his exit from life — that moment with which the Stoics were almost as much preoccupied as the Christians, however differently — and set Marius ponder ing on the contrast between a placidity like this, at eighty years, and the sort of desperateness he was aware of in his own manner of entertaining that thought. His infirmities never theless had been painful and long-continued, with losses of children, of pet grandchildren. What with the crowd, and the wretched streets, it was a sign of affection which had cost him something, for the old man to leave his own house at all that day ; and he was glad of the emperor's support, as he moved from place to place among the children he protests so often to have loved as his own.
For a strange piece of literary good fortune, at the beginning of the present century, has set free the long-buried fragrance of this famous friendship of the old world, from below a value less later manuscript, in a series of letters, wherein the two writers exchange, for the most part, their evening thoughts, especially at family anniversaries, and with entire intimacy, on their children, on the art of speech, on all the various subtleties of the " science of images," — rhetorical images, — above all, of course, on sleep and matters of health. They are full of mutual admiration of each other' ,3 eloquence, restless in absence till they see one another again, noting, characteristically, their very dreams of each other, expecting the day which will terminate the office, the business or duty which separates them — " as superstitious people watch for the star, at the rising of which
MARCUS AURELIUS AT HOME. 103
they may break their fast. " To one of the writers, to Aurelius, the correspondence was sincerely of value. We see him once reading his letters with genuine delight on going to rest. Fronto seeks to deter his pupil from writing in Greek. — Why buy, at great cost, a foreign wine, inferior to that from one's own vineyard ? Aurelius, on the other hand, with an extraor dinary innate susceptibility to words — la parole pour la parole, as the French say — despairs, in presence of Fronto's rhetorical perfection.
Like the modern visitor to the Capitoline and some other museums, Fronto had been struck, pleasantly struck, by the family likeness among the Antonines ; and it was part of his friendship to make much of it, in the case of the children of
I have seen the little ones," he writes to
Faustina. " Well !
Aurelius, then, apparently, absent from them : "
the little ones — the pleasantest sight of my life ; for they are as like yourself as could possibly be. It has well repaid me for my journey over that slippery road, and up those steep rocks ; for I beheld you, not simply face to face before me, but, more generously, whichever way I turned, to my right and my left. For the rest, I found them, Heaven be thanked ! with healthy cheeks and lusty voices. One was holding a slice of white bread, like a king's son ; the other a crust of brown bread, as becomes the offspring of a philosopher. I pray the gods to have both the sower and the seed in their keeping ; to watch over this field wherein the ears of corn are so kindly
I heard too their pretty voices, so sweet that, in the childish prattle of one and the other, I seemed somehow to be listening — yes ! in that chirping of your pretty chickens — to the limpid and harmonious notes of your own oratory. Take care ! you will find me growing independent, having those I could love in your place : — love, on the surety of my eyes and ears. '
alike. Ah !
" Magistro meo salutem ! " replies the emperor, " I too have seen my little ones in your sight of them ; as, also, I saw your self in reading your letter. It is that charming letter forces me to write thus : " with reiterations of affection, that is, which are continual in these letters, on both sides, and which may strike a modern reader perhaps as fulsome ; or, again, as having something in common with the old Judaic unction of friendship. They were certainly sincere.
To one of those children Fronto had now brought the birth day gift of the silver trumpet, upon which he ventured to blow
>
I have seen
104 MARCUS AURELIUS AT HOME.
softly now and again, turning away with eyes delighted at the sound, when he thought the old man was not listening. It was the well-worn, valetudinarian subject of sleep, on which Fronto and Aurelius were talking together ; Aurelius always feeling it a burden, Fronto a thing of magic capacities, so that he had written an encomium in its praise, and often by ingenious argu ments recommends his imperial pupil not to be sparing of it. To-day, with his younger listeners in mind, he had a story to tell about it : —
"They say that our father Jupiter, when he ordered the world at the beginning, divided time into two parts exactly equal : the one part he clothed with light, the other with dark ness : he called them Day and Night ; and he assigned rest to the night and to day the work of life. At that time Sleep was not yet born and men passed the whole of their lives awake : only, the quiet of the night was ordained for them, instead of sleep. But it came to pass, little by little, being that the minds of men are restless, that they carried on their business alike by night as by day, and gave no part at all to repose. And Jupiter, when he perceived that even in the nighttime they ceased not from trouble and disputation, and that even the courts of law remained open (it was the pride of Aurelius, as Fronto knew, to be assiduous in those courts till far into the night) resolved to appoint one of his brothers to be the overseer of the night and have authority over man's rest. But Neptune pleaded in excuse the gravity of his constant charge of the seas, and Father Dis the difficulty of keeping in subjection the spirits below ; and Jupiter, having taken counsel with the other gods, perceived that the practice of nightly vigils was somewhat in favor. It was then, for the most part, that Juno gave birth to her children : Minerva, the mistress of all art and craft, loved the midnight lamp : Mars delighted in the darkness for his plots and sallies ; and the favor of Venus and Bacchus was with those who roused by night. Then it was that Jupiter formed the design of creating Sleep ; and he added him to the number of the gods, and gave him the charge over night and rest, putting into his hands the keys of human eyes. With his own hands he mingled the juices wherewith Sleep should soothe the hearts of mortals — herb of Enjoyment and herb of Safety, gathered from a grove in Heaven ; and, from the meadows of Acheron, the herb of Death ; expressing from it one single drop only, no bigger than a tear one might hide. ' With this juice,' he said,
MARCUS AURELIUS AT HOME. 105
' pour slumber upon the eyelids of mortals. So soon as it hath touched them they will lay themselves down motionless, under thy power. But be not afraid : they shall revive, and in a while stand up again upon their feet. ' Thereafter, Jupiter gave wings to Sleep, attached, not, like Mercury's, to his heels, but to his shoulders, like the wings of Love. For he said, ' It becomes thee not to approach men's eyes as with the noise of chariots, and the rushing of a swift courser, but in placid and merciful flight, as upon the wings of a swallow — nay ! with not so much as the flutter of the dove. ' Besides all this, that he might be yet pleasanter to men, he committed to him also a multitude of blissful dreams, according to every man's desire. One watched his favorite actor; another listened to the flute, or guided a charioteer in the race : in his dream, the soldier was victorious, the general was borne in triumph, the wanderer returned home.
was drawn back ; and beyond it Marius gazed for a few mo ments into the Lararium, or imperial chapel. A patrician youth, in white habit, was in waiting, with a little chest in his hand containing incense for the use of the altar. On richly carved consoles, or sideboards, around this narrow chamber, were arranged the rich apparatus of worship and the golden or gilded images, adorned to-day with fresh flowers, among them that image of Fortune from the apartment of Antoninus Pius, and such of the emperor's own teachers as were gone to their rest. A dim fresco on the wall commemorated the ancient piety of Lucius Albinius, who in flight from Rome on the morrow of a great disaster, overtaking certain priests on foot with their sacred utensils, descended from the wagon in which he rode and yielded it to the ministers of the gods. As he ascended into the chapel the emperor paused, and with a grave but friendly look at his young visitor, delivered a parting sen tence, audible to him alone : Imitation is the most acceptable part of worship : the gods had much rather mankind should resemble than flatter them: — Make sure that those to whom you come nearest be the happier by your presence !
It was the very spirit of the scene and the hour — the hour Marius had spent in the imperial house. How temperate, how tranquilizing ! what humanity ! Yet, as he left the eminent company concerning whose ways of life at home he had been
Yes ! — and sometimes those dreams come true ! "
Just then Aurelius was summoned to make the birthday offerings to his household gods. A heavy curtain of tapestry
106 THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON THE EDGE OF DECLINE.
so youthfully curious, and sought, after his manner, to deter mine the main trait in all this, he had to confess that it was a sentiment of mediocrity, though of a mediocrity for once really golden.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON THE EDGE OF DECLINE. By CHARLES MERIVALE.
(From " History of the Romans under the Empire. ")
[Charlrs Merivale : An English historian and divine ; born at Barton Place, Devonshire, March 8, 1808. He was dean of Ely from 1869. His works are: " History of the Romans under the Empire " (latest ed. 1890), "General History of Rome" (1875), "Lectures on Early Church History" (1879), etc. He died at Ely, December 27, 1893. ]
The circumstances of the empire might indeed well inspire profound anxiety in the breast of one to whom its maintenance was confided. Hitherto we have seen the frontiers assailed in many quarters, and the energies of the bravest princes tasked in their defense. But these attacks have been local and desul tory. The Chatti on the Rhine, the Marcomanni on the Upper, the Samaritans on the Lower, Danube, the Roxalani on the shores of the Euxine, have often assailed and vexed the prov inces, but separately and at different times ; Aurelius had to make head against all these enemies at once. The unity of the empire imparted a germ of union to its assailants. Hence no champion of Rome had so hard a task ; hence Aurelius, far from making permanent conquests beyond his frontiers, stood everywhere on the defensive, and confronted the foe by his lieutenants in Gaul, Pannonia, Dacia, or Moesia, while he
planted himself commonly in the center of his line of stations, at Carnuntum, Vindobona, or Sirmium ; hence his wars were protracted through a period of twelve years, and though his partial victories gained him ten times the title of Imperator, none was sufficiently decisive to break the forces banded against him. The momentary submission of one tribe or an other led to no general result ; notwithstanding his own san guine hopes and the fond persuasion of his countrymen, his last campaign saw the subjugation of Scythia and the safety of the empire still distant and doubtful. The barbarians were stronger at this crisis than ever, — stronger in unity, stronger in arms and tactics, stronger possibly in numbers. Neither to Marius, we may believe, nor to Germanicus, nor to Trajan,
THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON THE EDGE OF DECLINE.
107
would they now have yielded as heretofore. But the empire was at least as much weaker. The symptoms of decline, in deed, were as yet hardly manifest to common observation; under ordinary circumstances they might still have eluded the notice even of statesmen ; but in the stress of a great calamity they became manifest to all. The chief of the state was deeply impressed with them. Against anxiety and apprehension he struggled as a matter of duty, but the effort was sore and hope less ; and from the anticipation of disasters beyond his control he escaped, when possible, to pensive meditations on his own moral nature, which at least might lie within it.
The brilliancy of the city and the great provincial capitals, the magnificence of their shows and entertainments, still re mained, perhaps, undimmed. The dignity of the temples and palaces of Greece and Rome stood, even in their best days, in marked contrast with the discomfort and squalor of their lanes and cabins. The spacious avenues of Nero concealed perhaps more miserable habitations than might be seen in the narrow streets of Augustus ; but as yet we hear no distinct murmurs of poverty among the populace. The causes, indeed, were al ready at work which, in the second or third generation, reduced the people of the towns to pauperism, and made the public serv ice an intolerable burden : the decline, namely, of agriculture and commerce, the isolation of the towns, the disappearance of the precious metals, the return of society to a state of barter, in which every petty community strove to live on its own im mediate produce. Such, at a later period, was the condition of the empire, as revealed in the codes of the fourth century. These symptoms were doubtless strongly developed in the third, but we have at least no evidence of them in the second. We
indeed, that there was a gradual, though slow, diminution in the amount of gold and silver in circulation. The result would be felt first in the provinces, and latest in the cities and Rome itself, but assuredly it was already in progress. Two texts of Pliny assert the constant drain of specie to the East ; and the assertion is confirmed by the circumstances of the case ; for the Indians, and the nations beyond India, who transmitted to the West their silks and
spices, cared little for the wines and oils of Europe, still less for the manufactures in wool and leather which formed the staples of commerce in the Mediterranean. There was still a great, perhaps an increasing, demand for these metals in works
may reasonably suppose,
108 THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON THE EDGE OF DECLINE.
of art and ornament, and much was consumed in daily use, much withdrawn from circulation and eventually lost by the thriftless habit of hoarding. But the supply from the mines of Thrace, Spain, and Germany was probably declining, for it was extracted by forced labor, the most expensive, the most harassing, and the most precarious. The difficulty of maintain ing the yield of the precious metals is marked in the severe regulations of the later emperors, and is further attested by the progressive debasement of the currency.
Not more precise is our information respecting the move ment of the population, which was also at this period on the verge of decline. To the partial complaints of such a decline in Italy, muttered, as they generally were, by the poets or satirists, I have hitherto paid little heed. In statements of this kind there is generally much false sentiment, some angry misrepre sentation. The substitution of slave for free labor in many parts of Italy may have had the appearance of a decline in population, while it actually indicated no more than a movement and trans fer. It was more important, however, in the future it fore shadowed than in the present reality. The slave population was not reproductive ; it was only kept at its level by fresh drafts from abroad. Whenever the supply should be cut off, the residue would rapidly dwindle. This supply was main tained partly by successful wars, but still more by a regular and organized traffic. The slaves from the North might be exchanged for Italian manufactures and produce ; but the venders from many parts, such as Arabia and Ethiopia, Central Africa, and even Cappadocia and other districts of Asia Minor, would take, I suppose, nothing but specie. With the contrac tion of the currency, the trade would languish, and under this depression a country like Italy, which was almost wholly stocked by importation, would become quickly depopulated. Still more, on the decline of the slave population, there would follow a decline of production, a decline of the means of the proprietors, a decline in the condition of the free classes, and consequently in their numbers also. That such a decline was actually felt under the Flavian emperors appears in the sudden adoption of the policy of alimentation, or public aid to impoverished freemen.
Nor was it in this way only that slavery tended to the de cline of population. Slavery in ancient, and doubtless in all times was a hotbed of vice and selfish indulgence, enervating the spirit and vital forces of mankind, discouraging legitimate
THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON THE EDGE OF DECLINE. 109
marriage, and enticing to promiscuous and barren concubinage. The fruit of such hateful unions, if fruit there were, or could be, engaged little regard from their selfish fathers, and both law and usage continued to sanction the exposure of infants, from which the female sex undoubtedly suffered most. The losses of Italy from this horrid practice were probably the greatest ; but the provinces also lost proportionably ; the imi tation of Roman habits was rife on the remotest frontiers ; the conquests of the empire were consolidated by the attractions of Roman indulgence and sensuality ; slavery threw discredit on all manual labor, and engendered a false sentiment of honor, which constrained the poorer classes of freemen to dependence and celibacy ; vice and idleness went hand in hand, and com bined to stunt the moral and physical growth of the Roman citizen, leaving his weak and morbid frame exposed in an unequal contest to the fatal influences of his climate.
If, however, the actual amount of population in Italy and other metropolitan districts had but lately begun sensibly to decline, for some generations it had been recruited mainly from a foreign stock, and was mingled with the refuse of every nation, civilized and barbarian. Slaves, freedmen, clients of the rich and powerful, had glided by adoption into the Roman gentes, the names of which still retained a fallacious air of antiquity, while their members had lost the feelings and prin ciples which originally signalized them. As late as the time of the younger Pliny, we find the gentile names of the republic still common, though many of them have ceased to recur on the roll of the great magistracies, where they have been supplanted by others, hitherto obscure or unknown ; but the surnames of Pliny's friends and correspondents, which distinguish the family from the house, are in numerous instances strange to us, and often grotesque and barbarous. The gradual exhaustion of the true Roman blood had been already marked and deplored under Claudius, and there can be no doubt, though materials are wanting for tracing it, that the flux continued to gather force through succeeding generations.
The decay of moral principles which hastened the disinte gration of Roman society was compensated by no new discoveries in material cultivation. The idea of civilization common to the Greeks and Romans was the highest development of the bodily faculties, together with the imagination ; but in explor ing the agencies of the natural world, and turning its forces to
110 THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON THE EDGE OF DECLINE.
the use of man, the progress soon reached its limits. The Greeks and Romans were almost equally unsteady in tracing the laws of physical phenomena, which they empirically ob served, and analyzing the elements of the world around them. Their advance in applied science stopped short with the prin ciples of mechanics, in which they doubtless attained great practical proficiency. Roman engineering, especially, deserves the admiration even of our own times. But the ancients in vented no instrument for advancing the science of astronomy ; they remained profoundly ignorant of the mysteries of chemis try ; their medicine, notwithstanding the careful diagnosis of Hippocrates and Galen, could not free itself from connection with the most trivial superstitions. The Greeks speculated deeply in ethics and politics ; the Romans were intelligent stu dents of legal theory and procedure ; but neither could dis cover from these elementary sciences the compound ideas of public economy. Their principles of commerce and finance were to the last rude and unphilosophical. They made little advance, at the height of their prosperity and knowledge, in the economy of labor and production ; they made no provision for the support of the increasing numbers to which the human race, under the operation of natural laws, ought to have at tained. We read of no improvements in the common processes of agriculture, none even in the familiar mode of grinding corn, none in the extraction and smelting of ores, none in the art of navigation. Even in war, to which they so ardently devoted themselves, we find the helmet and cuirass, the sword, spear, and buckler, identical in character and almost in form, from the siege of Troy to the sack of Rome. Changes in tactics and discipline were slight and casual, compelled rather by some change in circumstances than spontaneous or scientific. The ancient world had, in short, no versatility, no power of adapta tion to meet the varying wants of its outward condition. Its ideas were equal to the extension of its material dominion. A little soul was lodged in a vast body.
The Egyptian civilization, the Hindu, the Chinese, as well as the Greek and Roman, have all had their natural limits, at which their vitality was necessarily arrested. Possibly all civilizations are subject to a similar law, though some may have a wider scope and a more enduring force than others ; or possibly there may be a real salt of society in the principle of intelligent freedom, which has first learned to control itself,
THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON THE EDGE OF DECLINE. Ill
that it may deserve to escape from the control of external forces. But Roman society, at least, was animated by no such principle. At no period within the sphere of historic records was the commonwealth of Rome anything but an oligarchy of warriors and slave owners, who indemnified themselves for the restraint imposed on them by their equals in the forum by aggression abroad and tyranny in their households. The causes of its decline seem to have little connection with the form of government established in the first and second centuries. They were in full operation before the fall of the Republic, though their baneful effects were disguised and perhaps retarded by outward successes, by extended conquests, and increasing sup plies of tribute or plunder. The general decline of population throughout the ancient world may be dated even from the second century before our era. The last age of the Republic was perhaps the period of the most rapid exhaustion of the human race ; but its dissolution was arrested under Augustus, when the population recovered for a time in some quarters of the empire, and remained at least stationary in others. The cause of slavery could not but make itself felt again, and de manded the destined catastrophe. Whatever evil we ascribe to the despotism of the Caesars, we must remark that it was slavery that rendered political freedom and constitutional gov ernment impossible.
Slavery fostered in Rome, as previously at Athens, the spirit of selfishness and sensuality, of lawless ness and insolence, which cannot consist with political equality, with political justice, with political moderation. The tyranny
became no more than an ergastulum or barracoon on a vast scale, commensurate with the dominions of the greatest of Roman slaveholders. It is vain to imagine that a people can be tyrants in private life, and long escape subjection to a com mon tyrant in public. It was more than they could expect, more, indeed, than they deserved, if they found in Augustus, at least, and Vespasian, in Trajan and Hadrian, in Antoninus and Aurelius, masters who sought spontaneously to divest themselves of the most terrible attributes of their boundless autocracy.
I have elsewhere observed, only the tyranny of every noble extended and intensified. The empire
of the emperors was, as
112 THE WORLD AT AUCTION, a. d. 193.
THE WORLD AT AUCTION, a. d. 193. By MICHAEL FIELD.
[Pseudonym of Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, English ladies. Their joint publications under this name are — "Callirrhoe' and Fair Rosamund" (1884) ; " The Tragic Mary " and "The Father's Tragedy" (1885) ; "Brutus Ultor" (1886) ; "Canute the Great" (1887) ; "The Cup of Water," "Stepha- nia," "Underneath the Bough," and "Long Ago," (1889); "Attila, My Attila ! " (1895). ]
Didius — Stay a little.
The lady Marcia prayed to welcome you. So old a friend !
Clara — Gods, how I hate old friends ! And you, Cornelius ?
Cornelius — Tell me of your hatreds ;
They shall be mine. Clara —
Grow rich ! Cornelius —
I hate your poverty. I promise.
Clara —
Rome shall never say You sought me for my fortune. How I wish
Your uncle could be murdered ! Cornelius —
Your hand when I inherit ? Didius —
You will yield me Loveliest jewel,
You jest at murder! Clara —
Didius — Hush, child ! No bloodshed ! And do not rage at Pertinax : his sale
Of slaves has given me opportunity
Of purchasing a dwarf, a very gem,
The creature Commodus had cast in bronze. . . . Clara —
He cost you dear ?
Didius — Ah, child, he is a gift.
So are these pearls, this hyacinth-colored mantle, Once owned by an Augusta.
Yet, alas, While Pertinax is watchful, these must lie
Unworn within your press.
I instantly wish dead.
Who grows each day a little worthier still, More careful of the poor, more scrupulous, Can no one murder him ?
Every one I hate Old Pertinax,
THE WORLD AT AUCTION, a. d. 193.
Would he could go We must be married,
113
Clara —
The way of Commodus !
Cornelius —
For we are one already.
Manlia —
At last we welcome you.
Dearest Marcia,
Marcia —
I have no strength to utter, and a peril
I must not think of.
More terrible, is slain. Clara — —
Cornelius
They bless our wishes.
Manlia —
Is slain
Marcia, do not gasp . . .
Marcia —
by whom?
—
The good old man was butchered. Infamy !
Didius —I do not like this violence . . . Manlia —
[Enter Mabcia.
Hush ! There is news Pertinax is dead,
The gods be praised !
By his praetorian guard
Dear Marcia, calm yourself.
Didius —
Your husband !
Marcia—
He would not leave his emperor.
Didius —
Can such fidelity be possible,
But the issue ?
You spoke of peril . . . Is Eclectus safe ?
God knows 1 Loyal heart !
Do mortals knit so close ?
Marcia — They died together,
If he were in the palace.
Didius — Nay, I trust ——
At noon he crossed the Stadium leisurely
You are not yet a widow. [Reenter AsASOAimra.
Abascantus, There is a passion in your steps as if
The treasure vessels from your Syrian marts Had touched at Ostia : check your eagerness, For Pertinax is dead. When Caesar dies, He still is Caesar, and the throne is shaken As if an earthquake passed.
Abascantus — An hour ago
That was the talk of Rome. The corpse must cool Before the funeral-rites ; a yesterday
Must be of age, to interest. Noble patron,
The past is swept away, our policy
VOL. VII. —8
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Changed on the instant, and the loaded coffers I guard and with my watchfulness increase, Surrendered to your service, for the world
Is now at auction, and your price the highest That any Roman has the power to bid.
Come quickly to the camp.
Diditu — You break designs
As if they were accomplishment.
Abascantus — They are
When revenue conducts them.
Marcia — Rome for sale !
The Empire offered ! Didius, do not listen ; There is no verity behind this cry :
The world may be possessed in many ways,
It may not know its lord ; but, oh, believe me, It has its Caesar ; nothing alters that,
No howling of a little, greedy crowd.
Why should you rule this city ? Have you raised it
To higher honor ? Have you borne its griefs ? Will it remember you ?
Abascantus —
A safe, a graven memory.
On all the coins
(To Didius) Do you stoop
. . .
High in esteem, but not a lawful empress,
To justify yourself to
oh, a lady
A Nazarene and friend of slaves. More meetly You should desire the quickening approbation Of wife and daughter. An imperial beauty
Is at your side, a noble consort, wealth
To make all unaccustomed places smooth
As the floor's treading . . . and you hesitate ! Oome with me to the camp.
Didius —
This fortune crosses me.
Dearest husband, You have the very majesty of Jove,
Clara —
Marilia —stifle with impatience.
So suddenly
But claim father
So gentle, so urbane, that you will slip Into a throne nor note its quality.
All so smooth
Didius — Ay, in Olympus, smooth Among the happy gods, there could rule
But to contend . . . Go, treasurer, to the camp With large freedom. Bring me word again How you have prospered.
a
I is
I
;
!
it, j
!
THE WORLD AT AUCTION, a. d. 193. 115
Manlia — Say that he will rule Nobly at Numa.
Didius — That would damage me, That was the error of poor Pertinax.
Be lavish, Abascantus.
Abascantus — Come yourself.
Men do not win the world by sending stewards With liberty of purchase ; all is vain
Without the master's voice.
Didius — I will not come ;
I cannot. Do I ever choose the slaves,
Or look upon my treasure till 'tis wiped
Of blood and filthy contact ? Must I strive, All Plutus in reserve ? Do what you will, Take any means, but keep me from the forum, Men's faces ; there are murderers in the crowd : All men in mass are murderers. Stand aside, Mutter your promises ; if you can buy
A palace, paying honestly the price,
It is simply that . . .
Abascantus — (Aside to Clara) Work on him;
I fear that woman.
Didius — (To Marcia) Is Rome bought and sold ?
[Exit.
Alas, you see, she is a purchaser,
Is not ashamed to trade in noblest blood, If once a state of servitude is owned : We traffic in all creatures, and, if fate Allow the traffic, we are justified.
Marcia —
You are forbidden ; something holds you back. Rome to be bought !
(Showing the city) Look there !
But if I stood,
Marcia — It is the strong,
And they must be accoutered by the gods —
What helmets and what spears ! — who may prevail In circumstance so awful. Dare you call
The Mighty Helpers who have fought for Rome
To aid you in this enterprise ? I know
The day will come she will bear many evils,
And many kingdoms build their seat on her :
But touch her with a menacle for gold !
0 Didius, do not dream that what is done
Didius —
An army at my back to overwhelm, You would not interpose.
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Of foolish men can ever come to pass ;
It is the Sibyl's books that are fulfilled,
The prophecies — no doings"of a crowd ;
They are laid by as dust. If fate allow,"
You say, " the traffic ! " You may change the current And passage of whole kingdoms by not knowing
Just what is infamy : a common deed
It may be, nothing monstrous to the eye,
And yet your children may entreat the hills
To hide them from its terror. Be dissuaded :
I know what one may do, and what it is
To strike predestined blows : but this attempt
Will lead you to wide ruin.
Didius— Clara, child, You lay this dearest head against my shoulder, You clasp my arm as if to make entreaty ;
But for your sake, if this should prove a gift That secretly should blight you !
Clara— Give itme. You say I am the apple of your eye,
You say I am your idol, praise my beauty, And yet you shut it in the dark forever,
As you have shut away your murrhine vase, If now you let another rise more high, Another pass beyond me ; be most sure
I never shall have pleasure any more
From any gift you give, in any honor
You may attempt to win, if you refuse
My marvelous, full title. Indiscreetly
Cornelius let it drop into my ear ;
From him it has no meaning : you may breathe And with
Mardia —
—Husband, Clara
breathe of joy on all my youth. join my prayers.
For the great suit
Flushes benignant. Didius —
This That
There no need, won. know when Jove
Ah, Cornelius, see smile to win, and you have heard
alone can win it. Is so
[Reenter Abaacantus. Well, Abascantus, do we rule the world
Abaacantus —
You must appear in person. have bribed With promises, but still the soldiers shout,
I it ?
I
?
! is
I is a
I it is
it,
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" Let Didius come himself and raise the price
Sulpicianus bids. "
Didius — Sulpicianus!
It is unseemly he should leave the corse
Of a dear son-in-law unvisited . . . Abascantus —
His speech is artful, and your fluent lips Are needed with their generosity,
For he is winning power the thievish way Of subtle eloquence.
Cornelius — If you should speak, Most gracious sir, we cannot doubt the issue ; Your golden mouth and not your golden coffers Will earn you sovereignty.
Didius — — If I must speak ?
Why, so it is my gift ! Sulpicianus
Will scarcely there be master. You must leave me To ponder on my periods. By and bye,
If with security I can provide
These palaces and thrones.
(To Mabcia) Eclectus lives, Marcia, be sure of that, and if I rule
Shall be most dear to me in trust. Go in !
[Exeunt all but Abascantus and Gabba, who has been forgotten.
And treasurer, count my gold.
Abascantus — No counting now ;
You must appease the soldiers, or, inflamed, They lift Sulpicianus on their shields.
You lose the precious instant.
Didius — Face this Borne,
I never wanted words, They streamed up to my lips so fluently ; And now I am ashamed and cannot speak.
This populace !
But leave me — count my gold ; for if my treasure Lie not in solid heaps upon the floor
I will not stir a foot.
[Exit Abascantus.
If this delay
Should save me from my doom ! And yet Ifear . . .
His jaws locked on a sudden — treasurer
Of the imperial chests ! — while I must traverse Wide halls and palaces with no more right
Than if I were a ghost ;
Marcia said true ; and now this awful charge Is laid upon me, a strange emptiness
I am not Caesar ;
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Fills me with lassitude. How should I speak ? These Roman citizens, who were my neighbors, Who were my friends, are foreign to me now : If they will be my slaves, they may be happy ; But that is the condition, and to that
Will the praetorians yield ? I am struck dumb. The gold must speak ; for at whatever price Rome rate herself I am her purchaser,
And the great gods, the silent companies,
Must sit around and scoff. .