No More Learning

On the other hand
farmers furnish the bravest men and the ablest soldiers ;
no calling is so honourable, safe, and free from odium as
theirs, and those who occupy themselves with it are least
'iable to evil thoughts. " He was wont to say of himself,
that his property was derived solely from two sources— agriculture and frugality; and, though this was neither
very logical in thought nor strictly conformable to the
truth,1 yet Cato was not unjustly regarded by his contem-
1 Cato, like every other Roman, invested a part of his means in the breeding of cattle, and in commercial and other undertakings. But it was not his habit directly to violate the laws ; he neither speculated in state-leasers — which as a senator he was not allowed to do — nor practised usury. It is an injustice to charge him with a practice in the latter respect at variance with his theory ; the fenus nautUutn, in which he certainly engaged, was not a branch of usury prohibited by the law ; it
system
70L. Ill
73
98 THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND book hi
poraries and by posterity as the model of a Roman landlord. Unhappily it is a truth as remarkable as it is painful, that this husbandry, commended so much and certainly with so entire good faith as a remedy, was itself pervaded by the poison of the capitalist system. In the case of pastoral husbandry this was obvious; for that reason it was most in favour with the public and least in favour with the party desirous of moral reform. But how
stood the case with agriculture itself? The warfare, which from the third onward to the fifth century capital had waged against labour, by withdrawing under the form of interest on debt the revenues of the soil from the working farmers and bringing them into the hands of the idly consuming fundholder, had been settled chiefly by the extension of the Roman economy and the throwing of the capital which existed in Latium into the field of mercantile activity opened up throughout the range of the Medi terranean. Now even the extended field of business was no longer able to contain the increased mass of capital ; and an insane legislation laboured simultaneously to compel the investment of senatorial capital by artificial means in Italian estates, and systematically to reduce the value of the arable land of Italy by interference with the prices of grain. Thus there began a second campaign of capital against free labour or—what was substantially the same thing in antiquity —against the small farmer system ; and,
if the first had been bad, it yet seemed mild and humane as compared with the second. The capitalists no longer lent to the farmer at interest — a course, which in itself was not now practicable because the petty landholder no longer aimed at any considerable surplus, and was moreover not sufficiently simple and radical—but they bought up the farms and converted them, at the best, into estates managed
really formed an essential part of the business of chartering and freighting Teasels.
chap, xii AND OF CAPITAL 99
by stewards and worked by slaves. This likewise was called agriculture ; it was essentially the application of the
capitalist system to the production of the fruits of the soil. The description of the husbandmen, which Cato gives, is excellent and quite just ; but how does it correspond to the system itself, which he portrays and recommends ? If a Roman senator, as must not unfrequently have been the case, possessed four such estates as that described by Cato, the same space, which in the olden time when small holdings prevailed had supported from 100 to
farmers' families, was now occupied by one family of free persons and about 50, for the most part un married, slaves. If this was the remedy by which the decaying national economy was to be restored to vigour, it bore, unhappily, an aspect of extreme resemblance to the disease.
150
The general result of this system is only too clearly obvious in the changed proportions of the population. It J^1 is true that the condition of the various districts of Italy
was very unequal, and some were even prosperous. The farms, instituted in great numbers in the region between
the Apennines and the Po at the time of its colonization,
did not so speedily disappear. Polybius, who visited that quarter not long after the close of the present period, commends its numerous, handsome, and vigorous popula
tion : with a just legislation as to corn it would doubtless
have been possible to make the basin of the Po, and not Sicily the granary of the capital. In like manner Picenum
and the so-called ager Gallicus acquired a numerous body
of farmers through the distributions of domain-land con sequent on the Flaminian law of 522—a body, however, 232. which was sadly reduced in the Hannibalic war. In
Etruria, and perhaps also in Umbria, the internal condition of the subject communities was unfavourable to the flourishing of a class of free farmers. Matters were
Develop
too THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND book in
better in Latium — which could not be entirely deprived of the advantages of the market of the capital, and which had on the whole been spared by the Hannibalic war — as well as in the secluded mountain-valleys of the Marsians and Sabellians. On the other hand the Hannibalic war had fearfully devastated southern Italy and had ruined, in addition to a number of smaller townships, its two largest cities, Capua and Tarentum, both once able to send into the field armies of 30,000 men. Samnium had recovered from the severe wars of the fifth century : according to the
326. census of 529 it was in a position to furnish half as many men capable of arms as all the Latin towns, and it was probably at that time, next to the ager Romanus, the most flourishing region of the peninsula. But the Hannibalic war had desolated the land afresh, and the assignations of land in that quarter to the soldiers of Scipio's although considerable, probably did not cover the loss. Campania and Apulia, both hitherto well-peopled regions, were still worse treated in the same war by friend and foe. In Apulia, no doubt, assignations of land took place afterwards, but the colonies instituted there were not successful The beautiful plain of Campania remained more populous; but the territory of Capua and of the other communities broken up in the Hannibalic war became state -property, and the occupants of it were uniformly not proprietors, but petty temporary lessees. Lastly, in the wide Lucanian and Bruttian territories the population, which was already very thin before the Hanni balic war, was visited by the whole severity of the war itself and of the penal executions that followed in its train ; nor was much done on the part of Rome to revive the agriculture there—with the exception perhaps of Valentia (Vibo, now Monteleone), none of the colonies established there attained real prosperity.
With every allowance for the inequality in the political
army,
chap, xil AND OF CAPITAL 101
and economic circumstances of the different districts and for Failing off the comparatively flourishing condition of several of them, —Ijatioa, the retrogression is yet on the whole unmistakeable, and it
is confirmed by the most indisputable testimonies as to the
general condition of Italy. Cato and Polybius agree in stating that Italy was at the end of the sixth century far weaker in population than at the end of the fifth, and was
no longer able to furnish armies so large as in the first Punic war. The increasing difficulty of the levy, the neces
sity of lowering the qualification for service in the legions,
and the complaints of the allies as to the magnitude of the contingents to be furnished by them, confirm these state ments ; and, in the case of the Roman burgesses, the num
bers tell the same tale. In 502, shortly after the expedition 252. of Regulus to Africa, they amounted to 298,000 men capable
of bearing arms ; thirty years later, shortly before the com mencement of the Hannibalic war (534), they had fallen off 220. to 270,000, or about a tenth, and again twenty years after that, shortly before the end of the same war (550), to 2 14,000, 204. or about a fourth ; and a generation afterwards — during which no extraordinary losses occurred, but the institution
of the great burgess-colonies in the plain of northern Italy
in particular occasioned a perceptible and exceptional increase—the numbers of the burgesses had hardly again reached the point at which they stood at the commencement
of this period. If we had similar statements regarding the
Italian population generally, they would beyond all doubt exhibit a deficit relatively still more considerable. The decline of the national vigour less admits of proof; but it is stated by the writers on agriculture that flesh and milk disappeared more and more from the diet of the common people. At the same time the slave population increased, as the free population declined. In Apulia, Lucania, and the Bruttian land, pastoral husbandry must even in the time of Cato have preponderated over agriculture; the half-
102 THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND book III
savage slave-herdsmen were here in reality masters in the
house. Apulia was rendered so insecure by them that a 185. strong force had to be stationed there ; in 569 a slave-con
spiracy planned on the largest scale, and mixed up with the proceedings of the Bacchanalia, was discovered there, and nearly 7000 men were condemned as criminals. In Etruria also Roman troops had to take the field against a band of
196. slaves (558), and even in Latium there were instances in which towns like Setia and Praeneste were in danger of 198. being surprised by a band of runaway serfs (556). The
nation was visibly diminishing, and the community of free burgesses was resolving itself into a body composed of masters and slaves ; and, although it was in the first instance the two long wars with Carthage which decimated and ruined both the burgesses and the allies, the Roman capital ists beyond doubt contributed quite as much as Hamilcar and Hannibal to the decline in the vigour and the numbers of the Italian people. No one can say whether the govern ment could have rendered help ; but it was an alarming and discreditable fact, that the circles of the Roman aristocracy, well-meaning and energetic as in great part they were, never once showed any insight into the real gravity of the situation or any foreboding of the full magnitude of the danger. When a Roman lady belonging to the high nobility, the sister of one of the numerous citizen-admirals who in the first Punic war had ruined the fleets of the state, one day got among a crowd in the Roman Forum, she said aloud in the hearing of those around, that it was high time to place her brother once more at the head of the fleet and to relieve the pressure in the market-place by bleeding the citizens afresh (508). Those who thus thought and spoke were, no doubt, a small minority; nevertheless this out rageous speech was simply a forcible expression of the criminal indifference with which the whole noble and rich world looked down on the common citizens and farmers.
chap, xii AND OF CAPITAL
103
They did not exactly desire their destruction, but they al lowed it to run its course , and so desolation advanced with gigantic steps over the flourishing land of Italy, where countless free men had just been enjoying a moderate and merited prosperity.
X Roman austerity
and Roman pride.
CHAPTER XIII
FAITH AND MANNERS
104 FAITH AND MANNERS BOOK IU
Life in the case of the Roman was spent under conditions of austere restraint, and, the nobler he was, the less he was a free man. All-powerful custom restricted him to a narrow range of thought and action ; and to have led a serious and strict or, to use the characteristic Latin expressions, a sad and severe life, was his glory. No one had more and no one had less to do than to keep his household in good order and manfully bear his part of counsel and action in
affairs. But, while the individual had neither the wish nor the power to be aught else than a member of the community, the glory and the might of that community were felt by every individual burgess as a personal possession to be transmitted along with his name and his homestead to his posterity ; and thus, as one generation after another was laid in the tomb and each in succession added its fresh contribution to the stock of ancient honours, the collective sense of dignity in the noble families of Rome swelled into that mighty civic pride, the like of which the earth has never seen again, and the traces of which, as strange as they are grand, seem to us, wherever we meet them, to belong as it were to another world. It was one of the characteristic peculiarities of this powerful sense of citizenship, that it was, while not suppressed, yet compelled by the rigid simplicity and equality that prevailed among the citizens to remain
public
chap, xin FAITH AND MANNERS
105
locked up within the breast during life, and was only allowed to find expression after death ; but then it was dis
played in the funeral rites of the man of distinction so conspicuously and intensely, that this ceremonial is better
fitted than any other phenomenon of Roman life to give to S us who live in later times a glimpse of that wonderful spirit
of the Romans.
It was a singular procession, at which the burgesses
A Roman were invited to be present by the summons of the public
crier : " Yonder warrior is dead ; whoever can, let him
come to escort Lucius Aemilius ; he is borne forth from his house. " It was opened by bands of wailing women, musicians, and dancers ; one of the latter was dressed out and furnished with a mask after the likeness of the deceased, and by gesture doubtless and action recalled once more to the multitude the appearance of the well-known man. Then followed the grandest and most peculiar part of the solemnity — the procession of ancestors —before which all the rest of the pageant so faded in comparison, that men of rank of the true Roman type enjoined their heirs to restrict the funeral ceremony to that procession alone. We have already mentioned that the face-masks of those ancestors who had filled the curule aedileship or any higher ordinary magistracy, wrought in wax and painted— modelled as far as possible after life, but not wanting even for the earlier ages up to and beyond the time of the kings —were wont to be placed in wooden niches along the walls of the family hall, and were regarded as the chief ornament of the house. When a death occurred in the
family, suitable persons, chiefly actors, were dressed up with these face -masks and the corresponding official costume to take part in the funeral ceremony, so that the ancestors— each in the principal dress worn by him in his lifetime, the triumphator in his gold-embroidered, the tensor in his purple, and the consul in his purple-bordered,
106 FAITH AND MANNERS BOOK in
robe, with their lictors and the other insignia of office—all in chariots gave the final escort to the dead. On the bier overspread with massive purple and gold-embroidered coverlets and fine linen cloths lay the deceased himself, likewise in the full costume of the highest office which he had filled, and surrounded by the armour of the enemies whom he had slain and by the chaplets which in jest or earnest he had won. Behind the bier came the mourners,
all dressed in black and without ornament, the sons of the deceased with their heads veiled, the daughters without veil, the relatives and clansmen, the friends, the clients and freedmen. Thus the procession passed on to the Forum. There the corpse was placed in an erect position ; the ancestors descended from their chariots and seated them selves in the curule chairs ; and the son or nearest gentile kinsman of the deceased ascended the rostra, in order to announce to the assembled multitude in simple recital the names and deeds of each of the men sitting in a circle around him and, last of all, those of him who had recently died.
This may be called a barbarous custom, and a nation of artistic feelings would certainly not have tolerated the continuance of this odd resurrection of the dead down to an epoch of fully-developed civilization; but even Greeks who were very dispassionate and but little disposed to reverence, such as Polybius, were greatly impressed by the naive pomp of this funeral ceremony. It was a conception essentially in keeping with the grave solemnity, the uniform movement, and the proud dignity of Roman life, that departed generations should continue to walk, as it were, corporeally among the living, and that, when a burgess weary of labours and of honours was gathered to his fathers, these fathers themselves should appear in the Forum to receive him among their number.
But the Romans had now reached a crisis of transition.
chap, Mil FAITH AND MANNERS
107
Now that the power of Rome was no longer confined to The new Italy but had spread far and wide to the east and to the
west, the days of the old home life of Italy were over, and
a Hellenizing civilization came in its room. It is true
that Italy had been subject to the influence of Greece, ever since it had a history at all. We have formerly shown how the youthful Greece and the youthful Italy — both of them with a certain measure of simplicity and originality — gave and received intellectual impulses; and how at a later period Rome endeavoured after a more external manner to appropriate to practical use the language and inventions of the Greeks. But the Hellenism of the Romans of the present period was, in its causes as well as its consequences, something essentially new. The Romans began to feel the need of a richer intellectual life, and to be startled as it were at their own utter want of mental culture ; and, if even nations of artistic gifts, such as the English and Germans, have not disdained in the pauses of their own productiveness to avail themselves of the miserable French culture for filling up the gap, it need excite no surprise that the Italian nation now flung itself with fervid zeal on the glorious treasures as well as on the dissolute filth of the intellectual development of Hellas. But it was an impulse still more profound and deep-rooted, which carried the Romans irresistibly into the Hellenic vortex. Hellenic civilization still doubtless called itself by that name, but it was Hellenic no longer ; it was, in fact, humanistic and cosmopolitan. It had solved the problem of moulding a mass of different nations into one whole completely in the field of intellect, and to a certain extent also in that of politics ; and, now when the same task on a wider scale devolved on Rome, she took over Hellenism along with the rest of the inheritance of Alexander the Great. Hellenism therefore was no longer a mere stimulus or accessory influence; it penetrated the Italian nation to the
Hellenism *^
io8 FAITH AND MANNERS book hi
very core. Of course, the vigorous home life of Italy strove against the foreign element. It was only after a most vehement struggle that the Italian farmer abandoned the field to the cosmopolite of the capital; and, as in Germany the French coat called forth the national Germanic frock, so the reaction against Hellenism aroused in Rome a tendency which opposed the influence of Greece on principle, in a fashion altogether foreign to the earliei centuries, and in doing so fell pretty frequently into down right follies and absurdities.
No department of human action or thought remained unaffected by this struggle between the old fashion and the new. Even political relations were largely influenced by it The whimsical project of emancipating the Hellenes, the well-deserved failure of which has already been described, the kindred, likewise Hellenic, idea of a common interest of republics in opposition to kings, and the desire of propagating Hellenic polity at the expense of eastern despotism —the two principles that helped to regulate, for instance, the treatment of Macedonia —were fixed ideas of the new school, just as dread of the Carthaginians was the fixed idea of the old ; and, if Cato pushed the latter to a ridiculous excess, Philhellenism now and then indulged in extravagances at least quite as foolish. For example, the conqueror of king Antiochus not only had a statue of him self in Greek costume erected on the Capitol, but also, instead of calling himself in good Latin Asiaticus, assumed the unmeaning and anomalous, but yet magnificent and almost Greek, surname of Asiagenus. "1 A more important consequence of this attitude of the ruling nation towards
1 That Asiagenus was the original title of the hero of Magnesia and of his descendants, is established by coins and inscriptions ; the fact that the Capitoline Fasti call him Asiaticus is one of several traces indicating that these have undergone a non-contemporary revision. The former surname can only be a corruption of 'Aeiayirip — the form which later authors substituted for it—which signifies not the conqueror of Asia, but as- Asiatic by birth.
chap, xiii FAITH AND MANNERS
109
Hellenism was, that the process of Latinizing gained ground
in Italy except where it encountered the Hellenes. The cities of the Greeks in Italy, so far as the war had not destroyed them, remained Greek. Apulia, about which, it is true, the Romans gave themselves little concern, appears at this very epoch to have been thoroughly pervaded by Hellenism, and the local civilization there
seems to have attained the level of the decaying Hellenic culture by its side. Tradition is silent on the matter ; but the numerous coins of cities, uniformly furnished with Greek inscriptions, and the manufacture of painted clay-vases after the Greek style, which was carried on in that part of Italy alone with more ambition and gaudiness than taste, show that Apulia had completely adopted Greek habits and Greek art.
But the real struggle between Hellenism and its national antagonists during the present period was carried on in the field of faith, of manners, and of art and literature ; and we must not omit to attempt some delineation of this great strife of principles, however difficult it may be to present a summary view of the myriad forms and aspects which the conflict assumed.
The extent to which the old simple faith still retained a The living hold on the Italians is shown very clearly by the j^^on
everywhere
admiration or astonishment which this problem of Italian piety
and excited among the contemporary Greeks. On occasion of the quarrel with the Aetolians it was reported
of the Roman commander-in-chief that during battle he was solely occupied in praying and sacrificing like a priest ; whereas Polybius with his somewhat stale moralizing calls
the attention of his countrymen to the political usefulness
of this piety, and admonishes them that a state cannot consist of wise men alone, and that such ceremonies are very convenient for the sake of the multitude.
But If Italy still possessed —what had long been a mere Religious antiquarian curiosity in Hellas — a national religion, it was economJr'
no FAITH AND MANNERS book hi
already visibly beginning to be ossified into theology. The torpor creeping over faith is nowhere perhaps so dis tinctly apparent as in the alterations in the economy of divine service and of the priesthood. The public service of the gods became not only more tedious, but above all
196. more and more costly. In 558 there was added to the three old colleges of the augurs, pontifices, and keepers of oracles, a fourth consisting of three "banquet-masters "
viri epulones), solely for the important purpose of superintending the banquets of the gods. The priests, as well as the gods, were in fairness entitled to feast; new institutions, however, were not needed with that view, as every college applied itself with zeal and devotion to its convivial affairs. The clerical banquets were accompanied by the claim of clerical immunities. The priests even in times of grave embarrassment claimed the right of exemp tion from public burdens, and only after very troublesome controversy submitted to make payment of the taxes in
196. arrear (558). To the individual, as well as to the com munity, piety became a more and more costly article. The custom of instituting endowments, and generally of undertaking permanent pecuniary obligations, for religious objects prevailed among the Romans in a manner similar to that of its prevalence in Roman Catholic countries at the present day. These endowments —particularly after they came to be regarded by the supreme spiritual and at the same time the supreme juristic authority in the state, the pontifices, as a real burden devolving de jure on every heir or other person acquiring the estate — began to form an extremely oppressive charge on property; "inheritance
without sacrificial obligation" was a proverbial saying among the Romans somewhat similar to our " rose without a thorn. " The dedication of a tenth of their substance became so common, that twice every month a public enter tainment was given from the proceeds in the Forum
(tres
chap, XHI FAITH AND MANNERS ill
Boarium at Rome. With the Oriental worship of the Mother of the Gods there was imported to Rome among other pious nuisances the practice, annually recurring on certain fixed days, of demanding penny-collections from house to house (stipem cogtre). Lastly, the subordinate
class of priests and soothsayers, as was reasonable, rendered no service without being paid for it; and beyond doubt the Roman dramatist sketched from life, when in the curtain-conversation between husband and wife he repre sents the account for pious services as ranking with the accounts for the cook, the nurse, and other customary
presents: —
Da mihi, vir, quod dan Quinquatribus Praecantrici, conjectrici, hariolae atquc haruspicat;
Tum piatrictm clementer turn potest quirt muncrem. Flagitium at, si nil mittetur, quo superrilio spirit.
The Romans did not create a " God of gold," as they had formerly created a " God of silver " 70) nevertheless he reigned in reality alike over the highest and lowest spheres of religious life. The old pride of the Latin national religion —the moderation of its economic demands—was irrevocably gone.
At the same time its ancient simplicity also departed. Theology. Theology, the spurious offspring of reason and faith, was
already occupied in introducing its own tedious prolixity
and solemn inanity into the old homely national faith, and
thereby expelling the true spirit of that faith. The cata logue of the duties and privileges of the priest of Jupiter, for instance, might well have— place in the Talmud. They pushed the natural rule that no religious service can be acceptable to the gods unless free from flaw — to such an extent in practice, that a single sacrifice had to be repeated thirty times in succession on account of mistakes again and again committed, and that the games, which also formed part of divie service, were regarded
a
it is
(ii. ;
a
irreligious spirit.
na FAITH AND MANNERS book hi
as undone it . he presiding magistrate had committed any alip in word or deed or if the music even had paused at a wrong time, and so had to be begun afresh, frequently for several, even as many as seven, times in succession,
This exaggeration of conscientiousness was already a symptom of its incipient torpor; and the reaction against it—indifference and unbelief —failed not soon to appear.
249. Even in the first Punic war (505) an instance occurred in which the consul himself made an open jest of consulting the auspices before battle—a consul, it is true, belonging to the peculiar clan of the Claudii, which alike in good and evil was ahead of its age. Towards the end of this epoch complaints were loudly made that the lore of the augurs was neglected, and that, to use the language of Cato, a number of ancient auguries and auspices were falling into oblivion through the indolence of the college. An augur like Lucius Paullus, who saw in the priesthood a science and not a mere title, was already a rare exception, and could not but be so, when the government more and more openly and unhesitatingly employed the auspices for the accomplishment of its political designs, or, in other words, treated the national religion in accordance with the view of Polybius as a superstition useful for imposing on the public at large. Where the way was thus paved, the
Hellenistic irreligious spirit found free course. In connec tion with the incipient taste for art the sacred images of the gods began as early as the time of Cato to be employed, like other furniture, in adorning the chambers of the rich. More dangerous wounds were inflicted on religion by the rising literature. It could not indeed venture on open attacks, and such direct additions as were made by its means to religious conceptions —e. g. the Pater Caelus formed by Ennius from the Roman Saturnus in imitation of the Greek Uranos —were, while Hellenistic, of no great importance. P. :t the diffusion of the doctrines of Epichar
CHAP. XIII FAITH AND MANNERS
113
mus and Euhemerus in Rome was fraught with momentous consequences. The poetical philosophy, which the later Pythagoreans had extracted from the writings of the old Sicilian comedian Epicharmus of Megara (about 280), or 470. rather had, at least for the most part, circulated under cover
of his name, saw in the Greek gods natural substances, in Zeus the atmosphere, in the soul a particle of sun-dust, and so forth. In so far as this philosophy of nature, like the Stoic doctrine in later times, had in its most general outlines a certain affinity with the Roman religion, it was calculated to undermine the national religion by resolving it into allegory. A quasi-historical analysis of religion was given in the " Sacred Memoirs " of Euhemerus of Messene
450), which, under the form of reports on the 800. travels of the author among the marvels of foreign lands, subjected to thorough and documentary sifting the accounts current as to the so-called gods, and resulted in the conclu
sion that there neither were nor are gods at all. To indicate the character of the book, it may suffice to mention
the one fact, that the story of Kronos devouring his children is explained as arising out of the existence of cannibalism in the earliest times and its abolition by king Zeus. Notwithstanding, or even by virtue of, its insipidity
and of its very obvious purpose, the production had an unde served success in Greece, and helped, in concert with the current philosophies there, to bury the dead religion. It
is a remarkable indication of the expressed and conscious antagonism between religion and the new philosophy that Ennius already translated into Latin those notoriously destructive writings of Epicharmus and Euhemerus. The translators may have justified themselves at the bar of Roman police by pleading that the attacks were directed
only against the Greek, and not against the Latin, gods ;
but the evasion was tolerably transparent. Cato was, from
his own point of view, quite right in assailing these tend-
(about
VOL. in
73
114
FAITH AND MANNERS book ill
encies indiscriminately, wherever they met him, with his own peculiar bitterness, and in calling even Socrates a cor rupter of morals and offender against religion.
Thus the old national religion was visibly on the decline ;
Home and
supeSi- and> *■ tne great trees of the primeval forest were uprooted
»>on-
the soil became covered with a rank growth of thorns and of weeds that had never been seen before. Native super stitions and foreign impostures of the most various hues mingled, competed, and conflicted with each other. No Italian stock remained exempt from this transmuting of old faith into new superstition. As the lore of entrails and of lightning was cultivated among the Etruscans, so the liberal art of observing birds and conjuring serpents flourished luxuriantly among the Sabellians and more particularly the Marsians. Even among the Latin nation, and in fact in Rome itself, we meet with similar phenomena, although they are, comparatively speaking, less conspicuous. Such for instance were the lots of Praeneste, and the
181. remarkable discovery at Rome in 573 of the tomb and posthumous writings of the king Numa, which are alleged to have prescribed religious rites altogether strange and unheard of. But the credulous were to their regret not
to learn more than this, coupled with the fact that the books looked very new ; for the senate laid hands on the treasure and ordered the rolls to be summarily thrown into the fire. The home manufacture was thus quite sufficient to meet such demands of folly as might fairly be expected ; but the Romans were far from being content with it The Hellenism of that epoch, already denationalized and pervaded by Oriental mysticism, intro duced not only unbelief but also superstition in its most offensive and dangerous forms to Italy ; and these vagaries moreover had quite a special charm, precisely because they were foreign.
Chaldaean astrologers and casters of nativities were
permitted
chap, xiii FAITH AND MANNERS
115
already in the sixth century spread throughout Italy ; but a Worship still more important event —one making in fact an epoch oiCy1*618, in the world's history-—was the reception of the Phrygian
Mother of the Gods among the publicly recognized
divinities of the Roman state, to which the government
had been obliged to give its consent during the last weary years of the Hannibalic war (550). A special embassy was 204. sent for the purpose to Pessinus, a city in the territory of
the Celts of Asia Minor ; and the rough field-stone, which
the priests of the place liberally presented to the foreigners
as the real Mother Cybele, was received by the community
with unparalleled pomp. Indeed, by way of perpetually commemorating the joyful event, clubs in which the members entertained each other in rotation were instituted among the higher classes, and seem to have materially stimulated the rising tendency to the formation of cliques. With the permission thus granted for the cultus of Cybele
the worship of the Orientals gained a footing officially in
Rome; and, though the government strictly insisted that the emasculate priests of the new gods should remain Celts iGaSi) as they were called, and that no Roman burgess should devote himself to this pious eunuchism, yet the barbaric pomp of the " Great Mother "—her priests clad in Oriental costume with the chief eunuch at their head, marching in procession through the streets to the foreign music of fifes and kettledrums, and begging from house to house—and the whole doings, half sensuous, half monastic, must have exercised a most material influence over the sentiments and views of the people.
The effect was only too rapidly and fearfully apparent. Worship"* A few years later (568) rites of the most abominable °86. aC character came to the knowledge of the Roman authorities ;
a secret nocturnal festival in honour of the god Bacchus
had been first introduced into Etruria through a Greek priest, and, spreading like a cancer, had rapidly reached
S
Repressive
Of course all rational men were agreed in the con demnation of these spurious forms of religion —as absurd as they were injurious to the commonwealth: the pious adherents of the olden faith and the partisans of Hellenic enlightenment concurred in their ridicule of, and indigna tion at, this superstition. Cato made it an instruction to his steward, "that he was not to present any offering, or to allow any offering to be presented on his behalf, without the knowledge and orders of his master, except at the domestic hearth and on the wayside-altar at the Compitalia, and that he should consult no haruspex, hariolus, or Chaldaeus. " The well-known question, as to how a priest could contrive to suppress laughter when he met his colleague, originated with Cato, and was primarily applied
to the Etruscan haruspex. Much in the same spirit Ennius censures in true Euripidean style the mendicant soothsayers and their adherents :
Sed superstitiosi vata impudentesque arioli,
Aut inertes aid insani aut quibus egeslas impcrat.
Qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam, Quibus divitias pollicmtur, at eis drachumam ipsi pltuni.
But in such times reason from the first plays a losing game against unreason. The government, no doubt, interfered; the pious impostors were punished and expelled by the police ; every foreign worship not specially sanctioned was
Il6 FAITH AND MANNERS book in
Rome and propagated itself over all Italy, everywhere
families and giving rise to the most heinous crimes, unparalleled unchastity, falsifying of testaments, and murdering by poison. More than 7000 men were sentenced to punishment, most of them to death, on this account, and rigorous enactments were issued as to the future ; yet they did not succeed in repressing the
180. ongoings, and six years later (574) the magistrate to whom the matter fell complained that 3000 men more had been condemned and still there appeared no end of the evil.
corrupting
chap, zill FAITH AND MANNERS
117
forbidden ; even the consulting of the comparatively innocent lot-oracle of Praeneste was officially prohibited in 512; and, as we have already said, those who took part in 242. the Bacchanalia were rigorously prosecuted. But, when once men's heads are thoroughly turned, no command of
the higher authorities avails to set them right again. How much the government was obliged to concede, or at any
rate did concede, is obvious from what has been stated.
The Roman custom, under which the state consulted Etruscan sages in certain emergencies and the government accordingly took steps to secure the traditional transmission
of Etruscan lore in the noble families of Etruria, as well
as the permission of the secret worship of Demeter, which
was not immoral and was restricted to women, may prob
ably be ranked with the earlier innocent and comparatively indifferent adoption of foreign rites. But the admission of
the worship of the Mother of the Gods was a bad sign
of the weakness which the government felt in presence of
the new superstition, perhaps even of the extent to which
it was itself pervaded by it ; and it showed in like manner either an unpardonable negligence or something still worse,
that the authorities only took steps against such ceedings as the Bacchanalia at so late a stage, and even then on an accidental information.
The picture, which has been handed down to us of the Austerity life of Cato the Elder, enables us in substance to perceive f,nn,t how, according to the ideas of the respectable burgesses of
that period, the private life of the Roman should be spent.
Active as Cato was as a statesman, pleader, author, and Cato's mercantile speculator, family life always formed with him ^~^ the central object of existence ; it was better, he thought,
to be a good husband than a great senator. His domestic
was strict The servants were not allowed to leave the house without orders, nor to talk of what occurred in the household to strangers. The more severe punish-
discipline
pro
n8 FAITH AND MANNERS book hi
merits were not inflicted capriciously, but sentence was pronounced and executed according to a quasi-judicial procedure : the strictness with which offences were punished may be inferred from the fact, that one of his slaves who had concluded a purchase without orders from his mastei hanged himself on the matter coming to Cato's ears. For slight offences, such as mistakes committed in waiting at table, the consular was wont after dinner to administer to the culprit the proper number of lashes with a thong wielded by his own hand. He kept his wife and children in order no less strictly, but by other means; for he declared it sinful to lay hands on a wife or grown-up children in the same way as on slaves. In the choice of a wife he disapproved marrying for money, and recommended
men to look to good descent ; but he himself married in old age the daughter of one of his poor clients. Moreover he adopted views in regard to continence on the part of the husband similar to those which everywhere prevail in slave countries; a wife was throughout regarded by him as simply a necessary evil. His writings abound in invectives against the chattering, finery-loving, ungovernable fair sex ;
it was the opinion of the old" lord that "all women are plaguy and proud," and that, were men quit of women, our life might probably be less godless. " On the other hand the rearing of children born in wedlock was a matter which touched his heart and his honour, and the wife in his eyes existed strictly and solely for the children's sake. She nursed them ordinarily herself, or, if she allowed hex children to be suckled by female slaves, she also allowed their children in return to draw nourishment from her own breast ; one of the few traits, which indicate an endeavour to mitigate the institution of slavery by ties of human
sympathy — the common impulses of maternity and the bond of foster-brotherhood. The old general was present in person, whenever it was possible, at the washing and
chap, xiii FAITH AND MANNERS 1 19
swaddling of his children. He watched with reverential care over their childlike innocence ; he assures us that he was as careful lest he should utter an unbecoming word in presence of his children as if he had been in presence of the Vestal Virgins, and that he never before the eyes of his daughters embraced their mother, except when she had become alarmed during a thunder-storm. The education of the son was perhaps the noblest portion of his varied and variously honourable activity. True to his maxim, that a ruddy-checked boy was worth more than a pale one, the old soldier in person initiated his son into all bodily exercises, and taught him to wrestle, to ride, to swim, to box, and to endure heat and cold. But he felt very justly, that the time had gone by when it sufficed for a Roman to be a good fanner and soldier ; and he felt also that it could not but have an injurious influence on the mind of his boy, if he should subsequently learn that the teacher, who had rebuked and punished him and had won his reverence, was a mere slave. Therefore he in person taught the boy what a Roman was wont to learn, to read and write and know the law of the land ; and even in his later years he worked his way so far into the general culture of the Hellenes, that he was able to deliver to his son in his native tongue whatever in that culture he deemed to be of use to a Roman. All his writings were primarily intended for his son, and he wrote his historical work for that son's use with large distinct letters in his own hand. He lived homely and frugal style. His strict parsimony tolerated no expenditure on luxuries. He allowed no slave to cost him more than 1500 denarii (^65) and no dress more than 100 denarii (^4 :6s. ) no carpet was to be seen in his house, and for long time there was no whitewash on the walls of the rooms. Ordinarily he partook of the same fare with his servants, and did not suffer his outlay in cash for the meal to exceed 30 asses {as. ) in time of war even
;
a
;
ir. a
i*> FAITH AND MANNERS book hi
wine was uniformly banished from his table, and he drank water or, according to circumstances, water mixed with vinegar.
On the other hand, he was no enemy to hospi tality ; he was fond of associating both with his club in town and with the neighbouring landlords in the country ; he sat long at table, and, as his varied experience and his shrewd and ready wit made him a pleasant companion, he disdained neither the dice nor the wine-flask : among other receipts in his book on husbandry he even gives a tried recipe for the case of a too hearty meal and too deep potations. His life up to extreme old age was one of ceaseless activity. Every moment was apportioned and occupied ; and every evening he was in the habit of turning over in his mind what he had heard, said, or done during the day. Thus he found time for his own affairs as well as for those of his friends and of the state, and time also for conversation and pleasure; everything was done quickly and without many words, and his genuine spirit of activity hated nothing so much as bustle or a great ado about trifles.
So lived the man who was regarded by his contemporaries and by posterity as the true model of a Roman burgess, and who appeared as it were the living embodiment of the— certainly somewhat coarse-grained — energy and probity of Rome in contrast with Greek indolence and Greek im morality ; as a later Roman poet says :
Sferne mores transmarine*, millc habent offucias.
Cive Romano per orbem nemo vivit rectius.
Quippe malim unum Caionem, quam trecentos Soeratas. 1
p In the first edition of this translation I gave these lines in English on the basis of Dr. Mommsen's German version, and added in a note that I had not been able to find the original. Several scholars whom I consulted were not more successful ; and Dr. Mommsen was ai . he time absent from Berlin. Shortly after the first edition appeared, I received a note from Sir George Cornewall Lewis informing me that I should find them taken from Floras (or Floridus) in Wernsdorf, Poetae Lot Min. vol. iii.
p. 487. They were accordingly given in the revised edition of 1868 from the Latin text Baehrens (Poet Lat Min. vol. iv. p. 347) follow* Lucian MUller in reading offucia. — Tr. ]
chap, xiii FAITH AND MANNERS 121
Such judgments will not be absolutely adopted by history ; but every one who carefully considers the revolution which the degenerate Hellenism of this age accomplished in the modes of life and thought among the Romans, will be inclined to heighten rather than to lessen that condemna tion of the foreign manners.
The ties of family life became relaxed with fearful New rapidity. The evil of grisettes and boy- favourites spread manner* like a pestilence, and, as matters stood, it was not possible
to take any material steps in the way of legislation against
it The high tax, which Cato as censor (570) laid on this 184. most abominable species of slaves kept for luxury, would
not be of much moment, and besides fell practically into
disuse a year or two afterwards along with the property-
tax generally. Celibacy —as to which grave complaints
were made as early as 520—and divorces naturally in- 284. creased in proportion. Horrible crimes were perpetrated
in the bosom of families of the highest rank ; for instance,
the consul Gaius Calpurnius Piso was poisoned by his wife
and his stepson, in order to occasion a supplementary
election to the consulship and so to procure the supreme magistracy for the latter—a plot which was successful (574). 180. Moreover the emancipation of women began.
According to old custom the married woman was subject in law to the marital power which was parallel with the paternal, and
the unmarried woman to the guardianship of her nearest male agnati, which fell little short of the paternal power ;
the wife had no property of her own, the fatherless
and the widow had at any rate no right of management. But now women began to aspire to independence in respect to property, and, getting quit of the guardianship of their agnati by evasive lawyers' expedients —particularly through mock marriages —they took the management of their property into their own hands, or, in the event of being married, sought by means not much better to withdraw
virgin
Lumry.
169.
laa FAITH AND MANNERS book hi
themselves from the marital power, which under the strict letter of the law was necessary. The mass of capital which was collected in the hands of women appeared to the states men of the time so dangerous, that they resorted to the ex travagant expedient of prohibiting by law the testamentary nomination of women as heirs (585), and even sought by a highly arbitrary practice to deprive women for the most part of the collateral inheritances which fell to them without testament In like manner the exercise of family jurisdiction over women, which was connected with that marital and tutorial power, became practically more and more anti quated. Even in public matters women already began to have a will of their own and occasionally, as Cato thought,
" to rule the rulers of the world ; " their influence was to be traced in the burgess-assembly, and already statues were erected in the provinces to Roman ladies.
Luxury prevailed more and more in dress, ornaments, and furniture, in buildings and at table. Especially after 190. the expedition to Asia Minor in 564 Asiatico-Hellenic
luxury, such as prevailed at Ephesus and Alexandria, transferred its empty refinement and its dealing in trifles, destructive alike of money, time, and pleasure, to Rome. Here too women took the lead: in spite of the zealous invective of Cato they managed to procure the abolition,
195. after the peace with Carthage (559), of the decree of the 215. people passed soon after the battle of Cannae (539), which forbade them to use gold ornaments, variegated
dresses, or chariots; no course was left to their zealous 184. antagonist but to impose a high tax on those articles (570). A multitude of new and for the most part frivolous articles
—silver plate elegantly figured, table-couches with bronze mounting, Attalic dresses as they were called, and carpets of rich gold brocade — now found their way to Rome. Above all, this new luxury appeared in the appliances of the table. Hitherto without exception the Romans had
chap, xiii FAITH AND MANNERS
123
only partaken of hot dishes once a day; now hot dishes were not unfrequently produced at the second meal
and for the principal meal the two courses formerly in use no longer sufficed. Hitherto the women of the household had themselves attended to the baking of bread and cooking; and it was only on occasion of entertainments that a professional cook was specially hired, who in that case superintended alike the cooking and the
(Jirandium),
Now, on the other hand, a scientific cookery began to prevail. In the better houses a special cook was
The division of labour became necessary, and the trade of baking bread and cakes branched off from that of cooking —the first bakers' shops in Rome appeared about
Poems on the art of good eating, with long lists of 171. the most palatable fishes and other marine products, found
their readers : and the theory was reduced to practice. Foreign delicacies — anchovies from Pontus, wine from Greece — began to be esteemed in Rome, and Cato's receipt for giving to the ordinary wine of the country the flavour of Coan by means of brine would hardly inflict any considerable injury on the Roman vintners. The old decorous singing and reciting of the guests and their boys were supplanted by Asiatic sambucistriae. Hitherto the Romans had perhaps drunk pretty deeply at supper, but drinking-banquets in the strict sense were unknown ; now formal revels came into vogue, on which occasions the wine
was little or not at all diluted and was drunk out of large cups, and the drink-pledging, in which each was bound to
follow his neighbour in regular succession, formed the leading feature —"drinking after the Greek style" (Graeco
more bibere) or " playing the Greek " (jpergraecari, congrae- care) as the Romans called it. In consequence of this debauchery dice-playing, which had doubtless long been in use among the Romans, reached such proportions that it was necessary for legislation to interfere. The aversion
baking.
kept.
583.
Increase of amuse ments.
to labour and the habit of idle lounging were visibly on the increase. 1 Cato proposed to have the market paved with pointed stones, in order to put a stop to the habit of idling; the Romans laughed at the jest and went on to enjoy the pleasure of loitering and gazing all around them.
We have already noticed the alarming extension of the popular amusements during this epoch. At the beginning of apart from some unimportant foot and chariot races which should rather be ranked with religious ceremonies, only single general festival was held in the month of September, lasting four days and having definitely fixed maximum of cost (ii. 96). At the close of the
this popular festival had duration of at least six days and besides this there were celebrated at the beginning of April the festival of the Mother of the Gods or the so-called
A sort of parabasis in the Curculio of Plautus describes what went on In the market-place of the capital, with little humour perhaps, but with life-like distinctness.
Conmonstrabo, quo in quemqut hominem facile inveniatis loco, Ne nimio opcre sumat operant, si guis convention veto
Vel vitiosum vel sine vitio, vel probum vel inprobum.
Qui perjurum convenire volt hominem, ito in comitium Qui mendacem et gloriosum, apud Cloacinae sacrum. [Ditis damnosos maritos sub basilica quaerito.
Ibidem erunt scoria exolela quique stipulari solent. Symbolarum conlatores apud forum piscarium.
Inforo infumo boni homines atque dites ambulant In medio propter canalem ibi ostentatorts meri.
124
FAITH AND MANNERS
Confidentes garrulique et malevoli supra locum.
Qui alteri de nihilo audacter dicunt contumeliam
St qui ipsi sat habent quod in se possit vere dicier.
Sub veteribus ibi sunt, qui dant quique accipiunt faenort. Pone aedem Castoris ibi sunt, subito quibus credos male. In Tusco vico ibi sunt homines, qui ipsi sese venditant. In Velabro vel pistorem vel Ionium vel haruspicem
yd qui ipsi vorsant, vel qui aliis, ut vorsentur, pratbeant. Ditis damnosos maritos apud Leucadiam Oppiam.
The verses in brackets are subsequent addition, inserted after the 184. building of the first Roman bazaar (570). The business of the baker (pistor, literally miller) embraced at this time the sale of delicacies and the
providing accommodation for revellers (Festus, Ep. v. alicariae, p. 7, Mull. Plautus, Capt. 160 Poen. a, 54 Trin. 407). The same was the case with the butchers. Leucadia Oppia may have kept • house of bad
epoch,
;
i.
a
a
;
;
;
a
;;
]
1
it, a
chap, XIII FAITH AND MANNERS
125
towards the end of April that of Ceres and
that of Flora, in June that of Apollo, in November the Plebeian games —all of them probably occupying already more days than one. To these fell to be added the numerous cases where the games were celebrated afresh —
in which pious scruples presumably often served as a mere pretext —and the incessant extraordinary festivals. Among these the already -mentioned banquets furnished from the dedicated tenths no), the feasts of the gods, the triumphal and funeral festivities, were conspicuous; and above all the festal games which were celebrated —for the
first time in 505—at the close of one of those longer 249.
which were marked off the Etrusco- Roman religion, the saecula, as they were called. At the same
time domestic festivals were multiplied. During the second Punic war there were introduced, among people of quality, the already-mentioned banquetings on the anniver
sary of the entrance of the Mother of the Gods (after 550), 204 and, among the lower orders, the similar Saturnalia (after 537)i Doth under the influence of the powers henceforth 217. closely allied —the foreign priest and the foreign cook.
A very near approach was made to that ideal condition in which every idler should know where he might kill time every day and this in commonwealth where formerly action had been with all and sundry the very object of existence, and idle enjoyment had been proscribed by custom as well as by law The bad and demoralizing elements in these festal observances, moreover, daily ac quired greater ascendency. true that still as formerly
the chariot races formed the brilliant finale of the national festivals and poet of this period describes very vividly
the straining expectancy with which the eyes of the multi
tude were fastened on the consul, when he was on the point of giving the signal for the chariots to start. But
the former amusements no longer sufficed there was
Megalensia,
periods
;
a
;
a
It is
a 1
;
by
(p.
126 FAITH AND MANNERS book hi
craving for new and more varied spectacles. Greek
athletes now made their appearance (for the first time in 186. 568) alongside of the native wrestlers and boxers. Of the
dramatic exhibitions we shall speak hereafter : the trans planting of Greek comedy and tragedy to Rome was a gain perhaps of doubtful value, but it formed at any rate the best of the acquisitions made at this time. The Romans had probably long indulged in the sport of coursing hares and hunting foxes in presence of the public ; now these innocent hunts were converted into formal baitings of wild animals, and the wild beasts of Africa — lions and panthers —were (first so far as can be proved in
186. 568) transported at great cost to Rome, in order that by killing or being killed they might serve to glut the eyes of the gazers of the capital. The still more revolting gladia torial games, which prevailed in Campania and Etruria, now gained admission to Rome; human blood was first
264. shed for sport in the Roman forum in 490. Of course these demoralizing amusements encountered severe censure:
268. the consul of 486, Publius Sempronius Sophus, sent a divorce to his wife, because she had attended funeral games ; the government carried a decree of the people prohibiting the bringing over of wild beasts to Rome, and strictly insisted that no gladiators should appear at the public festivals. But here too it wanted either the requisite power or the requisite energy : it succeeded, apparently, in checking the practice of baiting animals, but the appear ance of sets of gladiators at private festivals, particularly at funeral celebrations, was not suppressed. Still less could the public be prevented from preferring the comedian to the tragedian, the rope-dancer to the comedian, the gladiator to the rope-dancer ; or the stage be prevented from revelling by choice amidst the pollution of Hellenic life. Whatever elements of culture were contained in the scenic and artistic entertainments were from the first
chap, xiii FAITH AND MANNERS taj
thrown aside ; it was by no means the object of the givers
of the Roman festivals to elevate — though it should be
but temporarily —the whole body of spectators through the power of poetry to the level of feeling of the best, as the Greek stage did in the period of its prime, or to prepare
an artistic pleasure for a select circle, as our theatres endeavour to do. The character of the managers and spectators in Rome is illustrated by a scene at the triumphal games in 587, where the first Greek flute-players, on their 167. melodies failing to please, were instructed by the director
to box with one another instead of playing, upon which the delight would know no bounds.
Nor was the evil confined to the corruption of Roman manners by Hellenic contagion ; conversely the scholars
began to demoralize their instructors. Gladiatorial games,
which were unknown in Greece, were first introduced by
king Antiochus Epiphanes (579-590), a professed imitator 178-164. of the Romans, at the Syrian court, and, although they
excited at first greater horror than pleasure in the Greek public, which was more humane and had more sense of art than the Romans, yet they held their ground likewise there, and gradually came more and more into vogue.
As a matter of course, this revolution in life and manners brought an economic revolution in its train. Residence in the capital became more and more coveted as well as more costly. Rents rose to an unexampled height Extravagant prices were paid for the new articles of luxury ; a barrel of anchovies from the Black Sea cost
1600 sesterces (j£i6)—more than the price of a rural slave ; a beautiful boy cost 24,000 sesterces (,£240)— more than many a farmer's homestead. Money therefore, and nothing but money, became the watchword with high and low. In Greece it had long been the case that nobody did anything for nothing, as the Greeks themselves with discreditable candour allowed : after the second
128 FAITH AND MANNERS book hi
Macedonian war the Romans began in this respect also to imitate the Greeks. Respectability had to provide itself with legal buttresses ; pleaders, for instance, had to be prohibited by decree of the people from taking money for their services ; the jurisconsults alone formed a noble exception, and needed no decree of the people to compel
their adherence to the honourable custom of giving good advice gratuitously. Men did not, if possible, steal out right ; but all shifts seemed allowable in order to attain rapidly to riches — plundering and begging, cheating on the part of contractors and swindling on the part of speculators, usurious trading in money and in grain, even the turning of purely moral relations such as friendship and marriage to economic account. Marriage especially became on both sides an object of mercantile speculation ; marriages for money were common, and it appeared necessary to refuse legal validity to the presents which the spouses made to each other. That, under such a state of things, plans for setting fire on all sides to the capital came to the knowledge of the authorities, need excite no surprise. When man no longer finds enjoyment in work, and works merely in order to attain as quickly as possible to enjoyment, it is a mere accident that he does not become a criminal. Destiny had lavished all the glories of power and riches with liberal hand on the Romans ; but, in truth, trie Pandora's box was a gift of doubtful value.
CHAP, xi y LITERATURE AND ART
119
CHAPTER XTV
LITERATURE AND ART
The influences which stimulated the growth of Roman literature were of a character altogether peculiar and hardly paralleled in any other nation. To estimate them correctly, it is necessary in the first place that we should glance at the instruction of the people and its recreations during this period.
Language lies at the root of all mental culture ; and this was especially the case in Rome. In a community where ? {
so much importance was attached to speeches and documents, and where the burgess, at an age which is still according to modern ideas regarded as boyhood, was already entrusted with the uncontrolled management of his property and might perhaps find it necessary to make formal speeches to the assembled community, not only was great value set all along on the fluent and polished use of the mother-tongue, but efforts were early made to acquire a command of it in the years of boyhood. The Greek language also was already generally diffused in Italy in the time of Hannibal. In the higher circles a knowledge of that language, which was the general medium of inter course for ancient civilization, had long been a far from uncommon accomplishment ; and now, when the change of Rome's position in the world had so enormously increased
the intercourse with foreigners and the foreign traffic, such
VOL, III
74
Knowledge languages.
IJ»
LITERATURE AND ART book III
a knowledge was, if not necessary, yet presumably of very material importance to the merchant as well as the states man. By means of the Italian slaves and freedmen, a very large portion of whom were Greek or half-Greek by birth, the Greek language and Greek knowledge to a certain extent reached even the lower ranks of the population, especially in the capital. The comedies of this period may convince us that even the humbler classes of the capital were familiar with a sort of Latin, which could no more be properly understood without a knowledge of Greek than the English of Sterne or the German of Wieland without a knowledge of French. 1 Men of senatorial families, how ever, not only addressed a Greek audience in Greek, but even published their speeches —Tiberius Gracchus (consul
\Tl. 168. in 577 and 591) so published a speech which he had given at Rhodes —and in the time of Hannibal wrote their chronicles in Greek, as we shall have occasion to mention more particularly in the sequel. Individuals went still farther. The Greeks honoured Flamininus by compli mentary demonstrations in the Roman language 437), and he returned the compliment the "great general of the Aeneiades " dedicated his votive gifts to the Greek gods
A distinct set of Greek expressions, such as stratioticus, mathaera, nauclrrus, trapcrita, danista, drapeta, oenopoHum, bolus, malacus, morus, graphicus, logus, apologus, Uchna, schema, forms quite a special feature in the language of Plautus. Translations are seldom attached, and that only
in the case of words not embraced in the circle of ideas to which those which we have cited belong for instance, in the Trueulentus — in a verse, however, that perhaps later addition 1, 60)—we find the explana tion <pp6yijcit est sapientia. Fragments of Greek also are common, as in the Casino, (iii.
OpdyfULTd tun rapixut—Dabo fUya kokqsi, ut opinor. Greek puns likewise occur, as in the Baxchides (240)
opus est chryso Chrysalo.
Ennius in the same way takes for granted that the etymological meaning of Alexandras and Andromache known to the spectators (Varro, de L. L. vii. 8a). Most characteristic of all are the half-Greek formations, such aiferritribax, plagipatida, pugilice, or in the Miles Oloriosus (913):
euscheme herclt astitit sic dulice et comoedicel
Euge
I
is
is
:
6,
9) :
a
;
:
1
(i.
;
(ii.
chap, xiv LITERATURE AND ART
131
after the Greek fashion in Greek distichs. 1 Cato reproached another senator with the fact, that he had the effrontery to deliver Greek recitations with the due modulation at Greek revels.
Under the influence of such circumstances Roman instruction developed itself. It is a mistaken opinion, that antiquity was materially inferior to our own times in the general diffusion of elementary attainments. Even among the lower classes and slaves there was much reading, writing, and counting : in the case of a slave steward, for instance, Cato, following the example of Mago, takes for granted the ability to read and write. Elementary instruction, as well as instruction in Greek, must have been long before this period imparted to a very considerable extent in Rome. But the epoch now before us initiated an education, the aim of which was to communicate not merely an outward expertness, but a real mental culture. Hitherto in Rome a knowledge of Greek had conferred on
its possessor as little superiority in civil or social life, as a knowledge of French perhaps confers at the present day in a hamlet of German Switzerland ; and the earliest writers of Greek chronicles may have held a position among the other senators similar to that of the farmer in the fens of Holstein who has been a student and in the evening, when he comes home from the plough, takes down his Virgil from the shelf. A man who assumed airs of greater im portance by reason of his Greek, was reckoned a bad patriot and a fool ; and certainly even in Cato's time one who spoke Greek ill or not at all might still be a man of rank and become senator and consul. But a change was
1 One of these epigrams composed in the name of Flamininus runt thus:
Zyvbs lui KpaiirvaiaL yeyaOoTti InrooOvam Kovpoi, lui Zirdpraf TvvSaplScu /9a<rtX«>,
Aircddas Tiros Ofifuif viripTarov Cmaat owpor VyMjuur rnifat raivlf {\tv0tfla*.
13a
LITERATURE AND ART BOOK ill
already taking place. The internal decomposition of Italian nationality had already, particularly in the aris tocracy, advanced so far as to render the substitution of a general humane culture for that nationality inevitable : and the craving after a more advanced civilization was already powerfully stirring the minds of men. Instruction in the Greek language as it were spontaneously met this craving. The classical literature of Greece, the Iliad and still more the Odyssey, had all along formed the basis of that instruction; the overflowing treasures of Hellenic art and science were already by this means spread before the eyes of the Italians. Without any outward revolution, strictly speaking, in the character of the instruction the natural result was, that the empirical study of the language became converted into a higher study of the literature ; that the general culture connected with such literary studies was communicated in increased measure to the scholars; and that these availed themselves of the knowledge thus
acquired to dive into that Greek literature which most powerfully influenced the spirit of the age—the tragedies of Euripides and the comedies of Menander.
In a similar way greater importance came to be attached to instruction in Latin. The higher society of Rome began to feel the need, if not of exchanging their mother- tongue for Greek, at least of refining it and adapting it to the changed state of culture ; and for this purpose too they found themselves in every respect dependent on the Greeks. The economic arrangements of the Romans placed the work of elementary instruction in the mother-tongue —like every other work held in little estimation and performed for hire—chiefly in the hands of slaves, freedmen, or foreigners, or in other words chiefly in the hands of Greeks or half-Greeks ; 1 which was attended with the less difficulty,
1 Such, e. g. , was Chilo, the slave of Cato the Elder, who earned money ob his master's behalf as a teacher of children (Plutarch, Cato Mai. ao).
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because the Latin alphabet was almost identical with the Greek and the two languages possessed a close and striking
But this was the least part of the matter; the importance of the study of Greek in a formal point of view exercised a far deeper influence over the study of Latin. Any one who knows how singularly difficult it is to find suitable matter and suitable forms for the higher intellectual culture of youth, and how much more difficult it is to set aside the matter and forms once found, will understand how it was that the Romans knew no mode of supplying the desideratum of a more advanced Latin instruction except that of simply transferring the solution of this problem, which instruction in the Greek language and literature furnished, to instruction in Latin. In the present day a process entirely analogous goes on under our own eyes in the transference of the methods of instruction from the dead to the living languages.
But unfortunately the chief requisite for such a transfer ence was wanting. The Romans could, no doubt, learn to read and write Latin by means of the Twelve Tables ; but a Latin culture presupposed a literature, and no such literature existed in Rome.
To this defect was added a second. We have already The stage described the multiplication of the amusements of the Ro- SS man people. The stage had long played an important part influence, in these recreations; the chariot-races formed strictly the
principal amusement in all of them, but these races uni formly took place only on one, viz. the concluding, day, while the earlier days were substantially devoted to stage- entertainments. But for long these stage-representations consisted chiefly of dances and jugglers' feats ; the impro vised chants, which were produced on these occasions, had neither dialogue nor plot (ii. 98). It was only now that the Romans looked around them for a real drama. The Roman popular festivals were throughout under the influence of the
affinity.
Rise of a literatme.
Greeks, whose talent for amusing and for killing time natu rally rendered them purveyors of pleasure for the Romans. Now no national amusement was a greater favourite in Greece, and none was more varied, than the theatre; it could not but speedily attract the attention of those who provided the Roman festivals and their staff of assistants. The earlier Roman stage-chant contained within it a dramatic germ capable perhaps of development; but to develop the drama from that germ required on the part of the poet and the public a genial power of giving and receiv ing, such as was not to be found among the Romans at all, and least of all at this period ; and, had it been possible to find the impatience of those entrusted with the amuse ment of the multitude would hardly have allowed to the noble fruit peace and leisure to ripen. In this case too there was an outward want, which the nation was unable to satisfy the Romans desired theatre, but the pieces were wanting.
On these elements Roman literature was based; and its defective character was from the first and necessarily the result of such an origin. All real art has its root in indivi dual freedom and cheerful enjoyment of life, and the germs of such an art were not wanting in Italy but, when Roman training substituted for freedom and joyousness the sense of belonging to the community and the consciousness of duty, art was stifled and, instead of growing, could not but pine away. The culminating point of Roman development was the period which had no literature. It was not till Roman nationality began to give way and Hellenico-cosmopolite tendencies began to prevail, that literature made its appear ance at Rome in their train. Accordingly from the beginning, and by stringent internal necessity, took its stand on Greek ground and in broad antagonism to the distinctively Roman national spirit. Roman poetry above all had its immediate origin not from the inward impulse of
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the poets, but from the outward demands of the school, which needed Latin manuals, and of the stage, which needed Latin dramas. Now both institutions —the school and the stage —were thoroughly anti-Roman and revolutionary. The gaping and staring idleness of the theatre was an abomina tion to the sober earnestness and the spirit of activity which animated the Roman of the olden type ; and— inasmuch as it was the deepest and noblest conception lying at the root of the Roman commonwealth, that within the circle of Roman burgesses there should be neither master nor slave, neither miUionnaire nor beggar, but that above all a like faith and a like culture should characterize all Romans —the school and the necessarily exclusive school- culture were far more dangerous still, and were in fact utterly destructive of the sense of equality.