No More Learning

m Rome, and was imitated under Roman influence in all
the Latin communities
and precision of justice. These police-magistrates or aediles had, of course, certain jurisdiction at the same time assigned to them. On the one hand, they were the ordin ary civil judges for sales concluded in open market, for the cattle and slave markets in particular; and on the other hand, they ordinarily acted in processes of fines and
amercements as judges of first instance or—which was in Roman law the same thing—as public prosecutors. In consequence of this the administration of the laws impos ing fines, and the equally indefinite and politically import ant right of fining in general, were vested mainly in them. Similar but subordinate functions, having especial reference to the poorer classes, pertained to the three night- or blood- masters (ires viri nocturni or capitales), first nominated in
383, 452), secured greater speed
289. 465 they were entrusted with the duties of nocturnal police as regards fire and the public safety and with the superintendence of executions, with which certain summary jurisdiction was very soon, perhaps even from
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the outset, associated. 1 Lastly from the increasing extent of the Roman community it became necessary, out of re gard to the convenience of litigants, to station in the more remote townships special judges competent to deal at least with minor civil causes. This arrangement was the rule for the communities of burgesses sine suffragio (p. 49), and was perhaps even extended to the more remote communities of full burgesses,8 —the first germs of a Romano-municipal jurisdiction developing itself by the side of that which was strictly Roman.
In civil procedure (which, however, according to the Changes in ideas of that period included most of the crimes committed proce ur& against fellow-citizens) the division of a process into the settlement of the question of law before the magistrate
(ius), and the decision of the question of fact by a private
person nominated by the magistrate (judicium) —a division
doubtless customary even in earlier times — was on the
abolition of the monarchy prescribed by law 322) and
to that separation the private law of Rome was mainly
indebted for its logical clearness and practical precision. *
The view formerly adopted, that these tres viri belonged to the earliest period, erroneous, for colleges of magistrates with odd numbers are foreign to the oldest state-arrangements (Chronol. p. 15, note 12).
Probably the well-accredited account, that they were first nominated
in 465 (Liv. Ep. 11), should simply be retained, and the otherwise 289. suspicious inference of the falsifier Licinius Macer (in Liv. vii. 46), which makes mention of them before 450, should be simply rejected. At first SOI. undoubtedly the tres viri were nominated by the superior magistrates, as
was the case with most of the later magistrates minores; the Papirian pUHscitum, which transferred the nomination of them to the community (Festus, v. sacrament urn, p. 344, Mull. ), was at any rate not issued till
after the institution of the office of praetor peregrinus, or at the earliest towards the middle of the sixth century, for names the praetor qui inter
cives ius dicit.
This inference suggested by what Livy says (ix. 20) as to the re organization of the colony of Antium twenty years after was founded and self-evident that, while the Romans might very well impose on the inhabitant of Ostia the duty of settling all his lawsuits in Rome, the same course could not be followed with townships like Antium and Sena.
People are in the habit of praising the Romans as a nation specially privileged in respect to jurisprudence, and of gazing with wonder on their admirable law as a mystical gift of heaven presumably by way of speci-
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68 LAW— RELIGION— MILITARY SYSTEM book ii
In actions regarding property, the decision as to what constituted possession, which hitherto had been left to the arbitrary caprice of the magistrate, was subjected gradually to legal rules ; and, alongside of the law of property, a law of possession was developed — another step, by which the magisterial authority lost an important part of its powers. In criminal processes, the tribunal of the people, which hitherto had exercised the prerogative of mercy, became a court of legally secured appeal. If the accused after hearing (guaestio) was condemned by the magistrate and appealed to the burgesses, the magistrate proceeded in presence of these to the further hearing (anquisitio), and, when he after three times discussing the matter before the community had repeated his decision, in the fourth diet the sentence was confirmed or rejected by the burgesses. Modification was not allowed. A similar republican spirit breathed in the principles, that the house protected the
burgess, and that an arrest could only take place out of doors; that imprisonment during investigation was to be avoided ; and that it was allowable for every accused and not yet condemned burgess by renouncing his citizenship to withdraw from the consequences of condemnation, so far as they affected not his property but his person — prin
ally excusing themselves for the worthlessness of their own legal system. A glance at the singularly fluctuating and undeveloped criminal law of the Romans might show the untenableness of ideas so confused even to those who may think the proposition too simple, that a sound people has a sound law, and a morbid people an unsound. Apart from the more general political conditions on which jurisprudence also, and indeed juris prudence especially, depends, the causes of the excellence of the Roman civil law lie mainly in two features : first, that the plaintiff and defendant were specially obliged to explain and embody in due and binding form the grounds of the demand and of the objection to comply with it ; and secondly, that the Romans appointed a permanent machinery for the edictal development of their law, and associated it immediately with practice. By the former the Romans precluded the pettifogging practices of advocates, by the latter they obviated incapable law-making, so far as such things can be prevented at all ; and by means of both in conjunction they satisfied, as far as is possible, the two conflicting requirements, that law shall constantly be fixed, and that it shall constantly be in accordance with the spirit of the age.
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ciples, which certainly were not embodied in formal laws and accordingly did not legally bind the prosecuting magistrate, but yet were by their moral weight of the greatest influence, particularly in limiting capital punish ment But, if the Roman criminal law furnishes a remark able testimony to the strong public spirit and to the increasing humanity of this epoch, it on the other hand suffered in its practical working from the struggles between the orders, which in this respect were specially baneful. The co-ordinate primary jurisdiction of all the public
in criminal cases, that arose out of these conflicts 354), led to the result, that there was no longer any fixed authority for giving instructions, or any serious preliminary investigation, in Roman criminal pro cedure. And, as the ultimate criminal jurisdiction was exercised in the forms and by the organs of legislation, and never disowned its origin from the prerogative of mercy as, moreover, the treatment of police fines had an injurious reaction on the criminal procedure which was externally very similar; the decision in criminal causes was pro nounced —and that not so much by way of abuse, as in some degree by virtue of the constitution —not according to fixed law, but according to the arbitrary pleasure of the judges. In this way the Roman criminal procedure was completely void of principle, and was degraded into the sport and instrument of political parties; which can the less be excused, seeing that this procedure, while especially applied to political crimes proper, was applicable also to others, such as murder and arson. The evil was aggravated
the clumsiness of that procedure, which, in concert with the haughty republican contempt for non-burgesses, gave rise to growing custom of tolerating, side by side with the more formal process, summary criminal, or rather police, procedure against slaves and common people. Here too the passionate strife regarding political processes
magistrates
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overstepped natural limits, and introduced institutions which materially contributed to estrange the Romans step by step from the idea of a fixed moral order in the administration of justice.
We are less able to trace the progress of the religious conceptions of the Romans during this epoch. In general they adhered with simplicity to the simple piety of their ancestors, and kept equally aloof from superstition and
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LAW— RELIGION— MILITARY SYSTEM book ii
New gods, from unbelief. How vividly the idea of spiritualizing all earthly objects, on which the Roman religion was based, still prevailed at the close of this epoch, is shown by the new " God of silver " (Argentinus), who presumably came into existence only in consequence of the introduction of
269. the silver currency in 485, and who naturally was the son of the older " God of copper " (Aesculanus).
The relations to foreign lands were the same as hereto fore ; but here, and here especially, Hellenic influences were on the increase. It was only now that temples began to rise in Rome itself in honour of the Hellenic gods. The oldest was the temple of Castor and Pollux, which had been vowed in the battle at lake Regillus 438) and was
485. consecrated on 15th July 269. The legend associated with that two youths of superhuman size and beauty had been
seen fighting on the battle-field in the ranks of the Romans and immediately after the battle watering their foaming steeds in the Roman Forum at the fountain of Iuturna, and announcing the great victory, bears stamp thoroughly un- Roman, and was beyond doubt at very early period modelled on the appearance of the Dioscuri—similar down to its very details — in the famous battle fought about a century before between the Crotoniates and Locrians at the river Sagras. The Delphic Apollo too was not only con sulted—as was usual with all peoples that felt the influence of Grecian culture—and presented moreover after special successes, such as the capture of Veii, with tenth of the
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spoil (360), but also had a temple built for him in the city 394.
(323, renewed 401). The same honour was towards the 481. 858. close of this period accorded to Aphrodite (459), who was 295.
in some enigmatical way identified with the old Roman
garden goddess, Venus ; * and to Asklapios or Aesculapius,
who was obtained by special request from Epidaurus in the Peloponnesus and solemnly conducted to Rome (463). 291. Isolated complaints were heard in serious emergencies as
to the intrusion of foreign superstition, presumably the art
of the Etruscan haruspices (as in 326) ; but in such cases 428.
the police did not fail to take proper cognisance of the
matter.
In Etruria on the other hand, while the nation stagnated and decayed in political nullity and indolent opulence, the
of the nobility, stupid fatalism, wild and meaningless mysticism, the system of soothsaying and of mendicant prophecy gradually developed themselves, till they reached the height at which we afterwards find them. In the sacerdotal system no comprehensive changes, so far as we know, took place. The more stringent enact-
ments, that were made about 465 regarding the collection of the process-fines destined to defray the cost of public worship, point to an increase in the ritual budget of the state —a necessary result of the increase in the number of its gods and its temples. It has already been mentioned as one of the evil effects of the dissensions between the orders that an illegitimate influence began to be conceded to the colleges of men of lore, and that they were employed for the annulling of political acts 377) —a course by which on the one hand the faith of the people was shaken, and on the other hand the priests were permitted to exercise very injurious influence on public affairs.
complete revolution occurred during this epoch in
Venus probably first appears in the later sense as Aphrodite on occasion of the dedication of the temple consecrated in this year (Liv. x. 31 Becker, TopographTM, p. 473).
theological monopoly
Sacerdotal system-
289.
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Military "
the military system. The primitive Graeco-Italian military organization, which was probably based, like the Homeric, on the selection of the most distinguished and effective warriors — who ordinarily fought on horseback — to form a
special vanguard, had in the later regal period been super seded by the legio— the old Dorian phalanx of hoplites, probably eight file deep 118). This phalanx thence forth undertook the chief burden of the battle, while the cavalry were stationed on the flanks, and, mounted or dismounted according to circumstances, were chiefly em- ployed as reserve. From this arrangement there were developed nearly at the same time the phalanx of sarrissae
Macedonia and the manipular arrangement in Italy, the former formed by closing and deepening, the latter by breaking up and multiplying, the ranks, in the first instance the division of the old legio of 8400 into two legiones of 4200 men each. The old Doric phalanx had been wholly adapted to close combat with the sword and especially with the spear, and only an accessory and subordinate position in the order of battle was assigned to missile weapons. In the manipular legion the thrusting- lance was confined to the third division, and instead of the first two were furnished with new and peculiar Italian missile weapon, the pilum— square or round piece of wood, four and half feet long, with triangular or quadrangular iron point — which had been originally perhaps invented for the defence of the ramparts of the camp, but was soon transferred from the rear to the front ranks, and was hurled the advancing line into the ranks of the enemy at distance of from ten to twenty paces.
At the same time the sword acquired far greater im portance than the short knife of the phalangite could ever have had for the volley of javelins was intended in the first instance merely to prepare the way for an attack sword in hand. While, moreover, the phalanx had, as
Manipular ^on"
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were a single mighty lance, to be hurled at once upon the enemy, in the new Italian legion the smaller units, which existed also in the phalanx system but were in the order of battle firmly and indissolubly united, were tactically separated from each other. Not merely was the close square divided, as we have said, into two equally strong halves, but each of these was separated in the direction of its depth into the three divisions of the hastatt, prinapes, and triarii, each of a moderate depth probably amounting in ordinary cases to only four files; and was broken up along the front into ten bands (manipuli), in such a way that between every two divisions and every two maniples there was left a perceptible interval. It was a mere con tinuation of the same process of individualizing, by which the collective mode of fighting was discouraged even in the diminished tactical unit and the single combat became prominent, as is evident from the (already mentioned) de cisive part played by hand-to-hand encounters and combats with the sword. The system of entrenching the camp
underwent also a peculiar development The place where . f
Entrench- ment of camp,
the army encamped, even were it only for a single night,
was invariably provided with a regular circumvallation and
as it were converted into a fortress. Little change took Cavalry, place on the other hand in the cavalry, which in the mani-
retained the secondary part which it had occupied by the side of the phalanx. The system of officer- OfficeTM. ing the army also continued in the main unchanged ;
only now over each of the two legions of the regular army
there were set just as many war-tribunes as had hitherto commanded the whole army, and the number of staff-
officers was thus doubled. It was at this period probably
that the clear line of demarcation became established
between the subaltern officers, who as common soldiers
had to gain their place at the head of the maniples by the
sword and passed by regular promotion from the lower to
pular legion
/"'
Military discipline,
liberty
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the higher maniples, and the military tribunes placed at the head of whole legions — six to each — in whose case there was no regular promotion, and for whom men of the better class were usually taken. In this respect it must have become a matter of importance that, while previously the subaltern as well as the staff-officers had been uniformly
362. nominated by the general, after 392 some of the latter posts were filled up through election by the burgesses
Lastly, the old, fearfully strict, military discipline remained unaltered. Still, as formerly, the general was at
to behead any man serving in his camp, and to scourge with rods the staff- officer as well as the common soldier; nor were such punishments inflicted merely on account of common crimes, but also when an officer had allowed himself to deviate from the orders which he had received, or when division had allowed itself to be surprised or had fled from the field of battle. On the
other hand, the new military organization necessitated far more serious and prolonged military training than the previous phalanx system, in which the solidity of the mass
kept even the inexperienced in their ranks. If nevertheless no special soldier-class sprang up, but on the contrary the army still remained, as before, burgess army, this object was chiefly attained abandoning the former mode ofrank ing the soldiers according to property 116) and arranging them according to length of service. The Roman recruit now entered among the light-armed " skirmishers " (rorarii), who fought outside of the line and especially with stone slings, and he advanced from this step by step to the first and then to the second division, till at length the soldiers of long service and experience were associated together in the corps of the iriarii, which was numerically the weakest but imparted its tone and spirit to the whole army.
The excellence of this military organization, which became the primary cause of the superior political position
397)-
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of the Roman community, chiefly depended on the three Military great military principles of maintaining a reserve, of com- m^p^BIe bining the close and distant modes of fighting, and of legion, combining the offensive and the defensive. The system
of a reserve was already foreshadowed in the earlier employment of the cavalry, but it was now completely
developed by the partition of the army into three divisions
and the reservation of the flower of the veterans for the last
and decisive shock. While the Hellenic phalanx had developed the close, and the Oriental squadrons of horse
armed with bows and light missile spears the distant, modes
of fighting respectively, the Roman combination of the
heavy javelin with the sword produced results similar, as
has justly been remarked, to those attained in modern
warfare by the introduction of bayonet-muskets ; the volley
of javelins prepared the way for the sword encounter,
exactly in the same way as a volley of musketry now
precedes a charge with the bayonet. Lastly, the elaborate
system of encampment allowed the Romans to combine
the advantages of defensive and offensive war and to
decline or give battle according to circumstances, and in
the latter case to fight under the ramparts of their camp
just as under the walls of a fortress — the Roman, says a
Roman proverb, conquers by sitting still.
That this new military organization was in the main a Roman, or at any rate Italian, remodelling and improvement
of the old Hellenic tactics of the phalanx, is plain. If legion, some germs of the system of reserve and of the individual
izing of the smaller subdivisions of the army are found to
occur among the later Greek strategists,
Xenophon, this only shows that they felt the defectiveness
of the old system, but were not well able to obviate
The manipular legion appears fully developed in the war
with Pyrrhus when and under what circumstances arose, whether at once or gradually, can no longer be ascertained.
especially
Origin
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National economy.
The fanners.
In the national economy agriculture was, and continued
76
LAW— RELIGION— MILITARY SYSTEM book ii
The first tactical system which the Romans encountered, fundamentally different from the earlier Italo-Hellenic system, was the Celtic sword-phalanx. It is not impossible that the subdivision of the army and the intervals between the maniples in front were arranged with a view to resist, as they did resist, its first and only dangerous charge ; and it accords with this hypothesis that Marcus Furius Camillus, the most celebrated Roman general of the Gallic epoch, is presented in various detached notices as the reformer of the Roman military system. The further traditions associated with the Samnite and Pyrrhic wars are neither sufficiently accredited, nor can they with certainty be duly arranged;1 although it is in itself probable that the pro longed Samnite mountain warfare exercised a lasting influence on the individual development of the Roman soldier, and that the struggle with one of the first masters of the art of war, belonging to the school of the great Alexander, effected an improvement in the technical features of the Roman military system.
to j^ ^ soc;ai
community and of the new Italian state. The common assembly and the army consisted of Roman farmers ; what as soldiers they had acquired by the sword, they secured as
1 According to Roman tradition the Romans originally carried quad rangular shields, after which they borrowed from the Etruscans the round hoplite shield (clupeus, dawls), and from the Samnites the later square shield (scutum, Svpeos), and the javelin (veru) (Diodor. Vat. Fr. p. 54 ; Sallust, Cat. 51, 38 ; Virgil, Aen. vii. 665 ; Festus, Ep. v. Samnites, p. 337, MOIL ; and the authorities cited in Marquardt, Handb. iii. 2, 341). But it may be regarded as certain that the hoplite shield or, in other words, the tactics of the Doric phalanx were imitated not from the Etruscans, but directly from the Hellenes. As to the scutum, that large, cylindrical, convex leather shield must certainly have taken the place of the flat copper clupeus, when the phalanx was broken up into maniples ; but the undoubted derivation of the word from the Greek casts suspicion on the derivation of the thing itself from the Samnites. From the Greeks the Romans derived also the sling (funda from (r0e,'86ri;, like fides from aQISn), 393). The pilum was considered by the ancients as quite a Roman invention.
sta^ political basis both of the Roman
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77
colonists by the plough. The insolvency of the middle class of landholders gave rise to the formidable internal crises of the third and fourth centuries, amidst which it seemed as if the young republic could not but be destroyed. The revival of the Latin farmer-class, which was produced during the fifth century partly by the large assignations of land and incorporations, partly by the fall in the rate of interest and the increase of the Roman population, was at once the effect and the cause of the mighty development of Roman power. The acute soldier's eye of Pyrrhus
justly discerned the cause of the political and military ascendency of the Romans in the flourishing condition of
the Roman farms. But the rise also of husbandry on a Farming
estate*>
large scale among the Romans appears to fall within this period. In earlier times indeed there existed landed estates of—at least comparatively —large size ; but their manage ment was not farming on a large scale, it was simply a husbandry of numerous small parcels 245). On the other hand the enactment in the law of 387, not incom- 867. patible indeed with the earlier mode of management but
yet far more appropriate to the later, viz. that the land holder should be bound to employ along with his slaves proportional number of free persons 381), may well be regarded as the oldest trace of the later centralized farming of estates;1 and deserves notice that even here at its first emergence essentially rests on slave-holding. How
arose, must remain an undecided point; possibly the Carthaginian plantations in Sicily served as models to the oldest Roman landholders, and perhaps even the appearance of wheat in husbandry by the side of spelt 240), which Varro places about the period of the decemvirs, was con nected with that altered style of management. Still less
Varro (De S. R. a, evidently conceives the author of the Licinian agrarian law as farming in person his extensive lands although, we may add, the story may easily have been invented to explain the cognomen
(«W4
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Inland in Italy.
can we ascertain how far this method of husbandry had already during this period spread ; but the history of the wars with Hannibal leaves no doubt that it cannot yet have become the rule, nor can it have yet absorbed the Italian farmer class. Where it did come into vogue, how ever, it annihilated the older clientship based on the
precarium; just as the modern system of large farms has been formed in great part by the suppression of petty holdings and the conversion of hides into farm-fields. It admits of no doubt that the restriction of this agricultural clientship very materially contributed towards the distress of the class of small cultivators.
Respecting the internal intercourse of the Italians with eacn otner our written authorities are silent ; coins alone furnish some information. We have already mentioned
251) that in Italy, with the exception of the Greek cities and of the Etruscan Populonia, there was no coinage during the first three centuries of Rome, and that cattle in the first instance, and subsequently copper by weight, served as the medium of exchange. Within the present epoch occurred the transition on the part of the Italians from the system of barter to that of money and in their money they were naturally led at first to Greek models. The circum stances of central Italy led however to the adoption of copper instead of silver as the metal for their coinage, and the unit of coinage was primarily based on the previous unit of value, the copper pound hence they cast their coins instead of stamping them, for no die would have sufficed for pieces so large and heavy. Yet there seems from the first to have been fixed ratio for the relative value of copper and silver (250 and with reference to that ratio the copper coinage seems to have been issued; so that, for example, in Rome the large copper piece, the as, was equal in value to scruple (^¥ of pound) of silver.
circumstance historically more remarkable, that
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coining in Italy most probably originated in Rome, and in fact with the decemvirs, who found in the Solonian legisla tion a pattern for the regulation of their coinage ; and that from Rome it spread over a number of Latin, Etruscan, Umbrian, and east-Italian communities, —a clear proof of the superior position which Rome from the beginning of the fourth century held in Italy. As all these communities subsisted side by side in formal independence, legally the monetary standard was entirely local, and the territory of every city had its own monetary system. Nevertheless the standards of copper coinage in central and northern Italy may be comprehended in three groups, within which the coins in common intercourse seem to have been treated as homogeneous. These groups are, first, the coins of the cities of Etruria lying north of the Ciminian Forest and those of Umbria ; secondly, the coins of Rome and Latium ; and lastly, those of the eastern seaboard. We have already observed that the Roman coins held a certain ratio to silver by weight ; on the other hand we find those of the east coast of Italy placed in a definite proportional relation to the silver coins which were current from an early period in southern Italy, and the standard of which was adopted by the Italian immigrants, such as the Bruttians, Lucanians, and Nolans, by the Latin colonies in that quarter, such as Cales and Suessa, and even by the Romans themselves for their possessions in Lower Italy. Accordingly the inland traffic of Italy must have been divided into corresponding provinces, which dealt with one another like foreign nations.
In transmarine commerce the relations we have previ- Trans- ously described 256) between Sicily and Latium, Etruria ^^^^ and Attica, the Adriatic and Tarentum, continued to sub
sist during the epoch before us or rather, strictly speaking,
belonged to for although facts of this class, which as
rule are mentioned without date, have been placed together
for the purpose of presenting general view under the first
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80 LAW— RELIGION— MILITARY SYSTEM book ii
period, the statements made apply equally to the present. The clearest evidence in this respect of course, that of the coins. As the striking of Etruscan silver money after an Attic standard 257), and the penetrating of Italian and especially of Latin copper into Sicily 259) testify to the two former routes of traffic, so the equivalence, which we have just mentioned, between the silver money of Magna Graecia and the copper coinage of Picenum and Apulia, forms, with numerous other indications, an evidence of the active traffic which the Greeks of Lower Italy, the Tarentines in particular, held with the east Italian seaboard. The commerce again, which was at an earlier period perhaps still more active, between the Latins and the Campanian Greeks seems to have been disturbed the Sabellian im migration, and to have been of no great moment during the first hundred and fifty years of the republic The refusal of the Samnites in Capua and Cumae to supply the Romans
411. with grain in the famine of 343 may be regarded as an indication of the altered relations which subsisted between Latium and Campania, till at the commencement of the fifth century the Roman arms restored and gave increased impetus to the old intercourse.
Touching on details, we may be allowed to mention, as one of the few dated facts in the history of Roman commerce,
tOO. the notice drawn from the annals of Ardea, that in 454 the first barber came from Sicily to Ardea and to dwell for moment on the painted pottery which was sent chiefly from Attica, but also from Corcyra and Sicily, to Lucania, Cam pania, and Etruria, to serve there for the decoration of tombs— traffic, as to the circumstances of which we are accidentally better informed than as to any other article of transmarine commerce. The commencement of this import trade probably falls about the period of the expulsion of the Tarquins for the vases of the oldest style, which are of very rare occurrence in Italy, were probably painted in
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the second half of the third century of the city, while those 500-450. of the chaste style, occurring in greater numbers, belong to
the first half, those of the most finished beauty to the second 450-400. half, of the fourth century ; and the immense quantities of 400-350. the other vases, often marked by showiness and size but
seldom by excellence in workmanship, must be assigned as
a whole to the following century. It was from the Hellenes 350-250. undoubtedly that the Italians derived this custom of embel
lishing tombs; but while the moderate means and fine discernment of the Greeks confined the practice in their
case within narrow limits, it was stretched in Italy by bar
baric opulence and barbaric extravagance far beyond its
original and proper bounds. It is a significant circumstance, however, that in Italy this extravagance meets us only in
the lands that had a Hellenic semi-culture. Any one who
can read such records will perceive in the cemeteries of Etruria and Campania —the mines whence our museums have
been replenished —a significant commentary on the accounts
of the ancients as to the Etruscan and Campanian semi-
culture choked amidst wealth and arrogance 436, 457).
The homely Samnite character on the other hand remained
at all times stranger to this foolish luxury the absence
of Greek pottery from the tombs exhibits, quite as palpably
as the absence of Samnite coinage, the slight development
of commercial intercourse and of urban life in this region.
still more worthy of remark that Latium also, although not less near to the Greeks than Etruria and Campania, and in closest intercourse with them, almost wholly refrained from such sepulchral decorations. more than probable —especially on account of the altogether different character of the tombs in the unique Praeneste — that in this result we have to recognize the influence of the stern Roman morality or — the expression be preferred — of the rigid Roman police. Closely connected with this subject are the already-
mentioned interdicts, which the law of the Twelve Tables
VOL. 11
38
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82 LAW— RELIGION— MILITARY SYSTEM book 11
fulminated against purple bier-cloths and gold ornaments placed beside the dead ; and the banishment of all silver plate, excepting the salt-cellar and sacrificial ladle, from the Roman household, so far at least as sumptuary laws and the terror of censorial censure could banish it : even in architecture we shall again encounter the same spirit of hostility to luxury whether noble or ignoble. Although, however, in consequence of these influences Rome probably preserved a certain outward simplicity longer than Capua and Volsinii, her commerce and trade —on which, in fact, along with agriculture her prosperity from the beginning rested—must not be regarded as having been inconsider able, or as having less sensibly experienced the influence
of her new commanding position.
No urban middle class in the proper sense of that
term, no body of independent tradesmen and merchants, was ever developed in Rome. The cause of this was—in addition to the disproportionate centralization of capital which occurred at an early period —mainly the employment of slave labour. It was usual in antiquity, and was in fact a necessary consequence of slavery, that the minor trades in towns were very frequently carried on by slaves, whom their master established as artisans or merchants ; or by freedmen, in whose case the master not only fre quently furnished the capital, but also regularly stipulated for a share, often the half, of the profits. Retail trading and dealing in Rome were undoubtedly constantly on the increase; and there are proofs that the trades which minister to the luxury of great cities began to be concen trated in Rome—the Ficoroni casket for instance was designed in the fifth century of the city by a Praenestine artist and was sold to Praeneste, but was nevertheless manufactured in Rome. 1 But as the net proceeds even of
1 The conjecture that Novius Plautius, the artist who worked at this casket for Dindia Macolnia, in Rome, may have been a Campanian,
chap, vni ECONOMIC CONDITION—NATIONALITY
83
retail business flowed for the most part into the coffers of the great houses, no industrial and commercial middle- class arose to an extent corresponding to that increase. As little were the great merchants and great manufacturers marked off as a distinct class from the great landlords. On the one hand, the latter were from ancient times (L 261, 343) simultaneously traders and capitalists, and combined in their hands lending on security, trafficking on a great scale, the undertaking of contracts, and the executing of works for the state. On the other hand, from the emphatic moral importance which in the Roman commonwealth attached to the possession of land, and from its constituting the sole basis of political privileges— a basis which was infringed for the first time only towards the close of this epoch 396)— was undoubtedly at this period already usual for the fortunate speculator to
invest part of his capital in land. clear
also from the political privileges given to freedmen possess ing freeholds 396), that the Roman statesmen sought
this way to diminish the dangerous class of the rich who had no land.
But while neither an opulent urban middle class nor
strictly close body of capitalists grew up in Rome, was ment of constantly acquiring more and more the character of great city, great city. This plainly indicated by the increasing
number of slaves crowded together in the capital
attested the very serious slave conspiracy of 335), and 419.
still more by the increasing multitude of freedmen, which
was gradually becoming inconvenient and dangerous, as
we may safely infer from the considerable tax imposed on manumissions in 397 389) and from the limitation of 357.
the political rights of freedmen in 450 396). For not 804.
only was implied in the circumstances that the great
refuted by the old Praenestine tomb-stones recently discovered, on
which, among other Macolnii and Plautii, there occurs also Magulnius, «on of Plautius (/. . Magolnio fla. /. ).
Lucius
enough
Develop-
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Urban 90
majority of the persons manumitted had to devote them selves to trade or commerce, but manumission itself among the Romans was, as we have already said, less an act of liberality than an industrial speculation, the master often finding it more for his interest to share the profits of the trade or commerce of the freedman than to assert his title to the whole proceeds of the labour of his slave. The increase of manumissions must therefore have necessarily kept pace with the increase of the commercial and indus trial activity of the Romans.
A similar indication of the rising importance of urban life in Rome is presented by the great development of the urban police. To this period probably belong in great measure the enactments under which the four aediles
divided the city into four police districts, and made pro vision for the discharge of their equally important and difficult functions —for the efficient repair of the network of drains small and large by which Rome was pervaded, as well as of the public buildings and places ; for the proper cleansing and paving of the streets ; for obviating the nuisances of ruinous buildings, dangerous animals, or foul smells; for the removing of waggons from the highway except during the hours of evening and night, and generally for the keeping open of the communication ; for the unin terrupted supply of the market of the capital with good and cheap grain ; for the destruction of unwholesome articles, and the suppression of false weights and measures ; and for the special oversight of baths, taverns, and houses of bad
fame.
In respect to buildings the regal period, particularly the
epoch of the great conquests, probably accomplished more than the first two centuries of the republic. Structures like the temples on the Capitol and on the Aventine and the great Circus were probably as obnoxious to the frugal fathers of the city as to the burgesses who gave their task
84
LAW— RELIGION— MILITARY SYSTEM BOOK il
Building.
chap, vin ECONOMIC CONDITION—NATIONALITY
85
work; and it is remarkable that perhaps the most con siderable building of the republican period before the Samnite wars, the temple of Ceres in the Circus, was a work of Spurius Cassius (261), who in more than one 493. respect sought to lead the commonwealth back to the traditions of the kings. The governing aristocracy more
over repressed private luxury with a rigour such as the rule of the kings, if prolonged, would certainly not have dis
But at length even the senate was no longer able impulse to resist the superior force of circumstances. It was Appius glven t0 Claudius who in his epoch-making censorship (442) threw 312. aside the antiquated rustic system of parsimonious hoarding,
and taught his fellow-citizens to make a worthy use of the
public resources. He began that noble system of public
works of general utility, which justifies, if anything can
justify, the military successes of Rome even from the point
of view of the welfare of the nations, and which even now
in its ruins furnishes some idea of the greatness of Rome to thousands on thousands who have never read a page of her
history. To him the Roman state was indebted for its
great military road, and the city of Rome for its first aqueduct Following in the steps of Claudius, the Roman
senate wove around Italy that network of roads and
fortresses, the formation of which has already been described 39), and without which, as the history of all military states from the Achaemenidae down to the creator
of the road over the Simplon shows, no military hegemony
can subsist. Following in the steps of Claudius, Manius Curius built from the proceeds of the Pyrrhic spoil second aqueduct for the capital (482) and some years previously 272. (464) with the gains of the Sabine war he opened up for 200. the Velino, at the point above Terni where falls into the Nera, that broader channel which the stream still flows,
with view to drain the beautiful valley of Rieti and thereby to gain space for large burgess settlement along
played.
a
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86 LAW—RELIGION— MILITARY SYSTEM book 11
with a modest farm for himself. Such works, in the eyes of persons of intelligence, threw into the shade the aimless magnificence of the Hellenic temples.
The style of living also among the citizens now was altered. About the time of Pyrrhus silver plate began to make its appearance on Roman tables, and the chroniclers date the disappearance of shingle roofs
884. in Rome from 470. 1 The new capital of Italy gradually laid aside its village-like aspect, and now began to embellish itself. It was not yet indeed customary to strip the temples
in conquered towns of their ornaments for the decoration of Rome; but the beaks of the galleys of Antium were
displayed at the orator's platform in the Forum
and on public festival days the gold-mounted shields brought home from the battle-fields of Samnium were exhibited along the stalls of the market 480). The proceeds of fines were specially applied to the paving of the highways in and near the city, or to the erection and embellishment of public buildings. The wooden booths of the butchers, which stretched along the Forum on both sides, gave way, first on the Palatine side, then on that also which faced the Carinae, to the stone stalls of the
so that this place became the Exchange of Rome. Statues of the famous men of the past, of the kings, priests, and heroes of the legendary period,
and of the Grecian hospes who was said to have interpreted to the decemvirs the laws of Solon honorary columns and monuments dedicated to the great burgo masters who had conquered the Veientes, the Latins, the Samnites, to state envoys who had perished while executing
We have already mentioned the censorial stigma attached to Publius MO. 177. Cornelius Rufinns (consul 464, 477) for his silver plate (p. 64). The strange statement of Fabius (in Strabo, v. p. 338) that the Romans first became given to luxury [alvSfcSat -ou tXoi/tou) after the conquest of the Sabines, evidently only a historical version of the same matter for the
conquest of the Sabines falls in the first consulate of Rulinus.
money-changers;
462)
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chap, viii ECONOMIC CONDITION— NATIONALITY
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their instructions, to rich women who had bequeathed their property to public objects, nay even to celebrated Greek philosophers and heroes such as Pythagoras and Alcibiades, were erected on the Capitol or in the Forum. Thus, now that the Roman community had become a great power, Rome itself became a great city.
Lastly Rome, as head of the Romano- Italian con- Silver federacy, not only entered into the Hellenistic state-system, J^Sot but also conformed to the Hellenic system of moneys and
coins. Up to this time the different communities of northern
and central Italy, with few exceptions, had struck onlya copper currency ; the south Italian towns again universally had a currency of silver ; and there were as many legal standards
and systems of coinage as there were sovereign communities
in Italy. In 485 all these local mints were restricted to 269. the issuing of small coin; a general standard of currency applicable to all Italy was introduced, and the coining of the currency was centralized in Rome ; Capua alone continued
to retain its own silver coinage struck in the name of
Rome, but after a different standard. The new monetary
system was based on the legal ratio subsisting between
the two metals, as it had long been fixed 78). The common monetary unit was the piece of ten asses (which were no longer of pound, but reduced to the third of pound) — the denarius, which weighed in copper and in silver -fa, of Roman pound, trifle more than the Attic drachma. At first copper money still predominated the coinage and probable that the earliest silver denarius was coined chiefly for Lower Italy and for intercourse with other lands. As the victory of the Romans over Pyrrhus and Tarentum and the Roman embassy to Alexandria could not but engage the thoughts of the contemporary Greek statesman, so the sagacious Greek merchant might well ponder as he looked on these new Roman drachmae. Their flat, unartistic, and monotonous stamping appeared
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88 LAW— RELIGION— MILITARY SYSTEM book ii
poor and insignificant by the side of the marvellously beautiful contemporary coins of Pyrrhus and the Siceliots ; nevertheless they were by no means, like the barbarian coins of antiquity, slavishly imitated and unequal in weight and alloy, but, on the contrary, worthy from the first by their independent and conscientious execution to be placed on a level with any Greek coin.
Thus, when the eye turns from the development of constitutions and from the national struggles for dominion and for freedom which agitated Italy, and Rome in
from the banishment of the Tarquinian house to the subjugation of the Samnites and the Italian Greeks, and rests on those calmer spheres of human existence which history nevertheless rules and pervades, it everywhere encounters the reflex influence of the great events, by which the Roman burgesses burst the bonds of patrician sway, and the rich variety of the national cultures of Italy gradually perished to enrich a single people. While the historian may not attempt to follow out the great course of events into the infinite multiplicity of individual detail, he does not overstep his province when, laying hold of detached fragments of scattered tradition, he indicates the most important changes which during this epoch took place in the national life of Italy. That in such an inquiry the life of Rome becomes still more prominent than in the earlier epoch, is not merely the result of the accidental blanks of our tradition ; it was an essential consequence of the change in the political position of Rome, that the Latin nationality should more and more cast the other nationalities of Italy into the shade. We have already pointed to the fact, that at this epoch the neighbouring lands—southern Etruria, Sabina, the land of the Volscians, —began to become Romanized, as is attested by the almost total absence of monuments of the old native
dialects, and by the occurrence of very ancient Roman
particular,
chap, viii ECONOMIC CONDITION—NATIONALITY
89
inscriptions in those regions ; the admission of the Sabines
to full burgess-rights at the end of this period
betokens that the Latinizing of Central Italy was already at that time the conscious aim of Roman policy. The numerous individual assignations and colonial establish ments scattered throughout Italy were, not only in military but also in linguistic and national point of view, the advanced posts of the Latin stock. The Latinizing of the Italians was scarcely at this time generally aimed at on the contrary, the Roman senate seems to have intention ally upheld the distinction between the Latin and the other nationalities, and they did not yet, for example, allow the introduction of Latin into official use among the half- burgess communities of Campania. The force of circum stances, however, stronger than even the strongest
the language and customs of the Latin people immediately shared its predominance in Italy, and already began to undermine the other Italian
nationalities.
These nationalities were at the same time assailed from progress ol
government
another quarter and by an ascendency resting on another basis —by Hellenism. This was the period when Hellenism began to become conscious of its intellectual superiority to the other nations, and to diffuse itself on every side. Italy did not remain unaffected by it The most remark able phenomenon of this sort presented by Apulia, which after the fifth century of Rome gradually laid aside its barbarian dialect and silently became Hellenized. This change was brought about, as in Macedonia and Epirus, not by colonization, but by civilization, which seems to have gone hand in hand with the land commerce of Tarentum; at least that hypothesis favoured by the facts, that the districts of the Poediculi and Daunii who were on friendly terms with the Tarentines carried out their Hellenization more completely than the Sallentines
Hellenism
48)
is
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LAW—RELIGION— MILITARY SYSTEM book ii
who lived nearer to Tarentum but were constantly at feud with and that the towns that were soonest Graecized, such as Arpi, were not situated on the coast The stronger influence exerted by Hellenism over Apulia than over any other Italian region explained partly by its position, partly the slight development of any national culture of its own, and partly also perhaps its national ity presenting character less alien to the Greek stock than that of the rest of Italy 12). We have already called attention 456) to the fact that the southern Sabellian stocks, although at the outset in concert with the tyrants of Syracuse they crushed and destroyed the Hellenism of Magna Graecia, were at the same time affected by contact and mingling with the Greeks, so that some of them, such as the Bruttians and Nolans, adopted the Greek language by the side of their native tongue, and others, such as the Lucanians and part of the Campanians, adopted at least Greek writing and Greek manners. Etruria likewise showed tendencies towards kindred development in the remarkable vases which have been
discovered 80) belonging to this period,
those of Campania and Lucania and though Latium and Samnium remained more strangers to Hellenism, there were not wanting there also traces of an incipient and ever-growing influence of Greek culture. In all branches of the development of Rome during this epoch, in legis lation and coinage, in religion, in the formation of national legend, we encounter traces of the Greeks and from the commencement of the fifth century in particular, in other words, after the conquest of Campania, the Greek influence on Roman life appears rapidly and constantly on the increase. In the fourth century occurred the erection of the " Graecostasis "—remarkable in the very form of the word— platform in the Roman Forum for eminent Greek strangers and primarily for the Massiliots
rivalling
46).
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In the following century the annals began to exhibit Romans of quality with Greek surnames, such as Philipus
or in Roman form Pilipus, Philo, Sophus, Hypsaeus. Greek customs gained ground : such as the non-Italian practice of placing inscriptions in honour of the dead on
the tomb—of which the epitaph of Lucius Scipio (consul
in 456) is the oldest example known to us ; the fashion, 2*8. also foreign to the Italians, of erecting without any decree
of the state honorary monuments to ancestors in public places—a system begun by the great innovator Appius Claudius, when he caused bronze shields with images and
eulogies of his ancestors to be suspended in the new
temple of Bellona (442); the distribution of branches of 812. palms to the competitors, introduced at the Roman
national festival in 461 ; above all, the Greek manners and 293. habits at table. The custom not of sitting as formerly on Adoption benches, but of reclining on sofas, at table ; the postpone- habits at ment of the chief meal from noon to between two and three table,
o'clock in the afternoon according to our mode of reckon ing ; the institution of masters of the revels at banquets,
who were appointed from among the guests
generally by throwing the dice, and who then prescribed to the company what, how, and when they should drink ; the table-chants sung in succession by the guests, which, however, in Rome were not scolia, but lays in praise of ancestors — all these were not primitive customs in Rome, but were borrowed from the Greeks at a very early period,
for in Cato's time these usages were already common and had in fact partly fallen into disuse again. We must there fore place their introduction in this period at the latest. A characteristic feature also was the erection of statues to " the wisest and the bravest Greek " in the Roman Forum, which took place by command of the Pythian Apollo during the Samnite wars. The selection fell — evidently under Sicilian or Campanian influence —on Pythagoras and
present,
Rome
this epoch,
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LAW— RELIGION— MILITARY SYSTEM book 11
Alcibiades, the saviour and the Hannibal of the western Hellenes. The extent to which an acquaintance with
Greek was already diffused in the fifth century Romans of quality is shown by the embassies of the Romans to Tarentum — when their mouthpiece spoke, if not in the purest Greek, at any rate without an interpreter —and of Cineas to Rome. It scarcely admits of a doubt that from the fifth century the young Romans who devoted themselves to state affairs universally acquired a knowledge
of what was then the general language of the world and of diplomacy.
Thus in the intellectual sphere Hellenism made ad vances quite as incessant as the efforts of the Romans to subject the earth to their sway ; and the secondary nation alities, such as the Samnite, Celt, and Etruscan, hard pressed on both sides, were ever losing their inward
vigour as well as narrowing their outward bounds.
When the two great nations, both arrived at the height
friendly contact, their antagonism of character was at the same time prominently and fully brought out — the total want of individuality in the Italian and especially in the
Roman character, as contrasted with the boundless variety, lineal, local, and personal, of Hellenism. There was no epoch of mightier vigour in the history of Rome than the epoch from the institution of the republic to the
of Italy. That epoch laid the foundations of the commonwealth both within and without ; it created a united Italy ; it gave birth to the traditional groundwork of the national law and of the national history ; it originated the pilum and the maniple, the construction of roads and of aqueducts, the farming of estates and the monetary system ; it moulded the she-wolf of the Capitol and designed the Ficoroni casket But the individuals, who contributed the several stones to this gigantic structure and
Romans of of tneir development, began to mingle in hostile or in
subjugation
among
chap, vni ECONOMIC CONDITION—NATIONALITY
93
cemented them together, have disappeared without leaving a trace, and the nations of Italy did not merge into that of Rome more completely than the single Roman burgess merged
in the Roman community. As the grave closes alike over
all whether important or insignificant, so in the roll of the Roman burgomasters the empty scion of nobility stands undistinguishable by the side of the great statesman. Of
the few records that have reached us from this period none
is more venerable, and none at the same time more characteristic, than the epitaph of Lucius Cornelius Scipio,
who was consul in 456, and three years afterwards took 298. pan in the decisive battle of Sentinum 489). On the beautiful sarcophagus, in noble Doric style, which eighty years ago still enclosed the dust of the conqueror of the Samnites, the following sentence inscribed —
Cornlliiis Lucius —Sdpii Barb&tus,
Gnaivid patrl prognitus, —-f6rtis vir sapitnsqut,
Quoitls ffirma virtu—tH partsuma fiiit, Consdl censir aidilis—quel full aptid vos, Taurisid Cisaiina —SamniS cipit,
Subigit omni Loucinam —Spsidhqut abdotUit.
w
Innumerable others who had been at the head of the Roman commonwealth, as well as this Roman statesman and warrior, might be commemorated as having been of noble birth and of manly beauty, valiant and wise but there was no more to record regarding them. doubtless not the mere fault of tradition that no one of these Cornelii, Fabii, Papirii, or whatever they were called, confronts us in distinct individual figure. The senator was supposed to be no worse and no better than other senators, nor at all to differ from them. It was not necessary and not desirable that any burgess should surpass the rest, whether by showy silver plate and Hellenic culture, or by uncommon wisdom and excel lence. Excesses of the former kind were punished by the censor, and for the latter the constitution gave no scope.
a
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The Rome of this period belonged to no individual ; it was necessary for all the burgesses to be alike, that each of them might be like a king.
No doubt, even now Hellenic individual development asserted its claims by the side of that levelling system ; and the genius and force which it exhibited bear, no less than the tendency to which it opposed itself, the full stamp of that great age. We can name but a single man in connection with it ; but he was, as it were, the incarnation
807.
812. of the idea of progress. Appius Claudius (censor 442 ; 296. consul 447, 458), the great-great-grandson of the decemvir,
was a man of the old nobility and proud of the long line of his ancestors; but yet it was he who set aside the restriction which confined the full franchise of the state to the freeholders 396), and who broke up the old system of finance (p. 85). From Appius Claudius date not only the Roman aqueducts and highways, but also Roman jurisprudence, eloquence, poetry, and grammar. The
of table of the legts aciiones, speeches committed to writing and Pythagorean sentences, and even innovations orthography, are attributed to him. We may not on this account call him absolutely democrat or include him in that opposition party which found its champion in Manius Curius 395); in him on the contrary the spirit of the ancient and modern patrician kings predominated —the spirit of the Tarquins and the Caesars, between whom he forms connecting link in that
five hundred years' interregnum of extraordinary deeds and ordinary men. So long as Appius Claudius took an active part in public life, in his official conduct as well as his general carriage he disregarded laws and customs on all hands with the hardihood and sauciness of an Athenian till, after having long retired from the political stage, the blind old man, returning as were from the tomb at the decisive
Moment, overcame king Pyrrhus in the senate, and first
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formally and solemnly proclaimed the complete sovereignty of Rome over Italy 22). But the gifted man came too early or too late the gods made him blind on account of his untimely wisdom. was not individual genius that ruled in Rome and through Rome Italy was the one immoveable idea of policy —propagated from generation to generation in the senate —with the leading maxims of which the sons of the senators became already imbued, when in the company of their fathers they went to the council and there at the door of the hall listened to the wisdom of the men whose seats they were destined at some future time to fill. Immense successes were thus obtained at an immense price; for Nike too followed by her Nemesis. In the Roman commonwealth there was no special dependence on any one man, either on soldier or on general, and under the rigid discipline of its moral police all the idiosyncrasies of human character were extinguished. Rome reached greatness such as no other state of antiquity attained but she dearly purchased her greatness at the sacrifice of the graceful variety, of the easy abandon, and of the inward freedom of Hellenic life.
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ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
CHAPTER IX ART AND SCIENCE
The The growth of art, and of poetic art especially, in antiquity
was intimately associated with the development of national festival. festivals. The thanksgiving-festival of the Roman com
munity, which had been already organized in the previous period essentially under Greek influence and in the first instance as an extraordinary festival, — the ludi maximi or Romani 293), —acquired during the present epoch a longer duration and greater variety in the amusements. Originally limited to one day, the festival was prolonged by an additional day after the happy termination of each of
509. 494. the three great revolutions of 245, 260, and 387, and thus at the close of this period had already duration of four days. 1
The account given by Dionysius (vi. 95 comp. Niebuhr, ii. 40) and by Plutarch (Camill. 42), deriving his statement from another passage in Dionysius regarding the Latin festival, must be understood to apply rather to the Roman games, as, apart from other grounds, strikingly evident from comparing the latter passage with Liv. vi. 43 (Ritschl, Parerg. p. 313). Dionysius has—and, according to his wont when in error, persistently — misunderstood the expression ludi maximi.
There was, moreover, a tradition which referred the origin of the national festival not, as in the common version, to the conquest of the Latins by the first Tarquinius, but to the victory over the Latins at the lake Regillus (Cicero, de Div. 26, 55 Dionys. vii. 71). That the important statements preserved in the latter passage from Fabius really relate to the ordinary thanksgiving-festival, and not to any special votive solemnity, evident from the express allusion to the annual recurrence of the celebration, and from the exact agreement of the sum of the expenses with the statement in the Pseudo-Asconius (p. 14a Or. ).
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A still more important circumstance was, that, probably
on the institution of the curule aedileship (387) which was 367. from the first entrusted with the preparation and oversight
of the festival 383), lost its extraordinary character
and its reference to special vow made by the general,
and took its place in the series of the ordinary annually recurring festivals as the first of all. Nevertheless the government adhered to the practice of allowing the spectacle proper—namely the chariot-race, which was the principal performance —to take place not more than once
at the close of the festival. On the other days the multitude were probably left mainly to furnish amusement
for themselves, although musicians, dancers, rope-walkers, jugglers, jesters and such like would not fail to make their appearance on the occasion, whether hired or not But about the year 390 an important change occurred, which 364. must have stood in connection with the fixing and prolonga
tion of the festival, that took place perhaps about the same time. A scaffolding of boards was erected at the expense of The
the state in the Circus for the first three days, and suitable Roman T(j
representations were provided on for the entertainment of the multitude. That matters might not be carried too far however in this way, fixed sum of 200,000 asses (^2055) was once for all appropriated from the exchequer for the expenses of the festival; and the sum was not increased up to the period of the Punic wars. The aediles, who had to expend this sum, were obliged to defray any additional amount out of their own pockets and not probable that they at this time contributed often or considerably from their own resources. That the new
stage was generally under Greek influence, proved by its very name (scaena, 07071^). was no doubt at first designed merely for musicians and buffoons of all sorts, amongst whom the dancers to the flute, particularly those then so celebrated from Etruria, were probably the most
VOX* u 39
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distinguished ; but a public stage had at any rate now arisen in Rome and it soon became open also to the Roman poets.
There was no want of such poets in Latium. Latin " strolling minstrels " or " ballad-singers " (grassatores, spa- tiatores) went from town to town and from house to house, and recited their chants (saturae, i. 35), gesticulating and dancing to the accompaniment of the flute. The measure was of course the only one that then existed, the so-called Saturnian 289). No distinct plot lay at the basis of the chants, and as little do they appear to have been in the form of dialogue. We must conceive of them as re sembling those monotonous — sometimes improvised, some times recited—ballads and tarantelle, such as one may still hear in the Roman hostelries. Songs of this sort accord ingly early came upon the public stage, and certainly formed the first nucleus of the Roman theatre. But not only were these beginnings of the drama in Rome, as everywhere, modest and humble; they were, in remark able manner, accounted from the very outset disreputable. The Twelve Tables denounced evil and worthless song- singing, imposing severe penalties not only upon incanta tions but even on lampoons composed against fellow- citizen or recited before his door, and forbidding the employment of wailing-women at funerals. But far more severely, than such legal restrictions, the incipient exercise of art was affected the moral anathema, which was denounced against these frivolous and paid trades by the narrowminded earnestness of the Roman character. " The trade of poet," says Cato, " in former times was not respected any one occupied himself with or was
hanger-on at banquets, he was called an idler. " But now any one who practised dancing, music, or ballad- singing for money was visited with double stigma, in consequence of the more and more confirmed disapproval
98
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of gaining a livelihood by services rendered for remunera tion. While accordingly the taking part in the masked farces with stereotyped characters, that formed the usual native amusement 291), was looked upon as an innocent youthful frolic, the appearing on public stage for money and without mask was considered as directly infamous, and the singer and poet were in this respect placed quite on level with the rope-dancer and the harlequin. Persons of this stamp were regularly pronounced by the censors (p. 63 /. ) incapable of serving in the burgess-army and of voting in the burgess-assembly. Moreover, not only was the direction of the stage regarded as pertaining to the province of the city police — fact significant enough even in itself—but the police was probably, even at this period, invested with arbitrary powers of an extraordinary character against professional stage-artists. Not only did the police magistrates sit in judgment on the performance after its conclusion —on which occasion wine flowed as copiously for those who had acquitted themselves well, as stripes fell to the lot of the bungler—but all the urban magistrates were legally entitled to inflict bodily chastisement and imprisonment on any actor at any time and at any place. The necessary effect of this was that dancing, music, and poetry, at least so far as they appeared on the public stage, fell into the hands of the lowest classes of the Roman burgesses, and especially into those of foreigners and while at this period poetry still played altogether too significant part to engage the attention of foreign artists, the statement on the other hand, that in Rome all the music, sacred and profane, was essentially Etruscan, and consequently the ancient Latin art of the flute, which was evidently at one time held high esteem 291), had been supplanted foreign music, may be regarded as already applicable to this period.
There no mention of any poetical literature. Neither
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Roman historical composi tion.
Registers of magis trates.
100 ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
the masked plays nor the recitations of the stage can have had in the proper sense fixed texts ; on the contrary, they were ordinarily improvised by the performers themselves as circumstances required. Of works composed at this period posterity could point to nothing but a sort of Roman "Works and Days" — counsels of a farmer to his son,1 and the already-mentioned Pythagorean poems of Appius Claudius (p. 94), the first commencement of Roman poetry after the Hellenic type. Nothing of the poems of this epoch has survived but one or two epitaphs in Saturnian measure (p. 93).
Along with the rudiments of the Roman drama, the rudiments of Roman historical composition belong to this period; both as regards the contemporary recording of remarkable events, and as regards the conventional settle ment of the early history of the Roman community.
The writing of contemporary history was associated with the register of the magistrates. The register reaching farthest back, which was accessible to the later Roman inquirers and is still indirectly accessible to us, seems to have been derived from the archives of the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter ; for it records the names of the annual presidents of the community onward from the consul Marcus Horatius, who consecrated that temple on the 13th Sept. in his year of office, and it also notices the
vow which was made on occasion of a severe pestilence
under the consuls Publius Servilius and Lucius Aebutius 468. (according to the reckoning now current, 291), that thence
forward a nail should be driven every hundredth year into the wall of the Capitoline temple. Subsequently it was
> A fragment has been preserved :—
Hiberoo pulrere, verno Into, grandia farra Camille metes —
We do not know by what right this was afterwards regarded as the oldest Roman poem (Macrob.