No More Learning

—The decree of the senate as to the translation of the treatise of Mago (iii. 3:2) belongs also to this class of measures.
bought
CHAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY
173
the “ Opimian wine” of 6 3 3, the Roman vintage “ Eleven,” 121. was long remembered after the last jar was exhausted.
Of trades and manufactures there is nothing to be said, Trades. except that the Italian nation in this respect persevered in
an inaction bordering on barbarism. They destroyed the Corinthian factories, the depositories of so many valuable industrial traditions-not however that they might establish similar factories for themselves, but that they might buy up
at extravagant prices such Corinthian vases of earthenware
or copper and similar “antique works” as were preserved
in Greek houses. The trades that were still somewhat prosperous, such as those connected with building, were productive of hardly any benefit for the commonwealth, because here too the system of employing slaves in every more considerable undertaking intervened : in the construc tion of the Marcian aqueduct, for instance, the government concluded contracts for building and materials simul taneously with 3000 master-tradesmen, each of whom then performed the work contracted for with his band of slaves.
The most brilliant, or rather the only brilliant, side of Money
Roman private economics was money-dealing and com merce. First of all stood the leasing of the domains and of the taxes, through which a large, perhaps the larger, part of the income of the Roman state flowed into the pockets of the Roman capitalists. The money-dealings, moreover, throughout the range of the Roman state were monopolized by the Romans; every penny circulated in Gaul, it is said in a writing issued soon after the end of this period, passes through the books of the Roman merchants, and so it was doubtless everywhere. The co-operation of rude economic conditions and of the unscrupulous employment of Rome’s political ascend
ency for the benefit of the private interests of every wealthy Roman rendered a usurious system of interest universal, as is shown for example by the treatment of
dealing and commerce.
Pntedli.
the war-tax imposed by Sulla on the province of Asia in 670, which the Roman capitalists advanced; it swelled with paid and unpaid interest within fourteen years to six fold its original amount. The communities had to sell their public buildings, their works of art and jewels, parents had to sell their grown-up children, in order to
meet the claims of the Roman creditor: it was no rare occurrence for the debtor to be not merely subjected to moral torture, but directly placed upon the rack. To these sources of gain fell to be added the wholesale traflic. The exports and imports of Italy were very considerable. The former consisted chiefly of wine and oil, with which Italy and Greece almost exclusively— for the production of wine in the Massiliot and Turde tanian territories can at that time have been but small —supplied the whole region of the Mediterranean; Italian wine was sent in considerable quantities to the Balearic islands and Celtiberia, to Africa, which was merely a corn and pasture country, to Narbo and into the interior of Gaul. Still more considerable was the import to Italy, where at that time all luxury was concentrated, and whither
most articles of luxury for food, drink, or clothing, orna ments, books, household furniture, works of art were imported by sea. The traflic in slaves, above all, received through the ever-increasing demand of the Roman mer chants an impetus to which no parallel had been known in the region of the Mediterranean, and which stood in the closest connection with the flourishing of piracy. All lands and all nations were laid under contribution for slaves, but the places where they were chiefly captured were Syria and the interior of Asia Minor (iii. 306).
In Italy the transmarine imports were chiefly concen trated in the two great emporia on the Tyrrhene sea, Ostia and Puteoli. The grain destined for the capital was brought to Ostia, which was far from having a good
r74
THE COMMONWEALTH nook W
CHAP- xl AND ITS ECONOMY
I75
roadstead, but, as being the nearest port to Rome, was the most appropriate mart for less valuable wares ; whereas the traflic in luxuries with the east was directed mainly to Puteoli, which recommended itself by its good harbour for ships with valuable cargoes, and presented to mer chants a market in its immediate neighbourhood little inferior to that of the capital~—the district of Baiae, which came to be more and more filled with villas. For a long time this latter traflic was conducted through Corinth and after its destruction through Delos, and in this sense accordingly Puteoli is called by Lucilius the Italian
“ Little Delos”; but after the catastrophe which befel Delos in the Mithradatic war (p. 34), and from which it never recovered, the Puteolans entered into direct com mercial connections with Syria and Alexandria, and their city became more and more decidedly the first seat of transmarine commerce in Italy. But it was not merely the gain which was made by the Italian exports and
imports, that fell mainly to the Italians; at Narbo they
in the Celtic trade with the Massiliots, and in general it admits of no doubt that the Roman merchants to be met with everywhere, floating or settled, took to themselves the best share of all speculations.
Putting together these phenomena, we recognize as the most prominent feature in the private economy of this epoch the financial oligarchy of Roman capitalists standing alongside of, and on a par with, the political oligarchy. In their hands were united the rents of the soil of almost all Italy and of the best portions of the provincial territory, the proceeds at usury of the capital monopolized by them, the commercial gain from the whole empire, and lastly, a very considerable part of the Roman state-revenue in the form of profits accruing from the lease of that revenue. The daily-increasing accumulation of capital is evident
in the rise of the average rate of wealth: 3,000,000 ses
competed
Capitalist oligarchy.
Mixture of the
impoverishment
and depopulation the provinces, whereal
176
THE COMMONWEALTH B00x rv
terces (£30,000) was now a moderate senatorial, 2,000,000 (£20,000) was a decent equestrian fortune; the property of the wealthiest man of the Gracchan age, Publius Crassus
181. consul in 623 was estimated at 100,000,000 sesterces
It is no wonder, that this capitalist order exercised a preponderant influence on external policy; that it destroyed out of commercial rivalry Carthage and
Corinth (iii. 2 5 7, 272) as the Etruscans had
destroyed Alalia and the Syracusans Caere ; that it in spite of the senate upheld the colony of Narbo (iii. 420). It is likewise no wonder, that this capitalist oligarchy engaged in earnest and often victorious competition with the oligarchy ot the nobles in internal politics. But it is also no wonder, that ruined men ofwealth put themselves at the head ofbands of revolted slaves (iii. 381), and rudely reminded the public that the transition is easy from the haunts of fashionable debauchery to the robber’s cave. It is no wonder, that that financial tower of Babel, with its foundation not purely economic but borrowed from the political ascend ency of Rome, tottered at every serious political crisis
nearly in the same way as our very similar fabric of a paper currency. The great financial crisis, which in con sequence of the Italo-Asiatic commotions of 664 f: set in upon the Roman capitalist-class, the bankruptcy of the state and of private persons, the general depreciation of landed property and of partnership-shares, can no longer be traced out in detail; but their general nature and their importance are placed beyond doubt by their results -—the murder of the praetor by a band of creditors
530), the attempt to eject from the senate all the senators not free of debt (iii. 53:), the renewal of the maximum of interest by Sulla (iii. 541), the cancelling of
75 per cent of all debts by the revolutionary party 70). The consequence of this system was naturally general
(£3,000,000).
formerly
(iii.
in
(p.
can. :u AND ITS ECONOMY 177
the parasitic population of migratory or temporarily settled Italians was everywhere on the increase. In Asia Minor Italian: 80,000 men of Italian origin are said to have perished abroad. in one day 32). How numerous they were in Delos,
evident from the tombstones still extant on the island and from the statement that 20,000 foreigners, mostly Italian merchants, were put to death there by command of Mithradates 34). In Africa the Italians were so many, that even the Numidian town of Cirta could be defended mainly by them against Jugurtha (iii. 392). Gaul too, said, was filled with Roman merchants; in the case of Spain al0ne— perhaps not accidentally—no state ments of this sort are found. In Italy itself, on the other hand, the condition of the free population at this epoch had on the whole beyond doubt retrograded To this result certainly the civil wars essentially contributed, which, according to statements of general kind and but little trustworthy, are alleged to have swept away from 100,000
to 150,000 of the Roman burgesses and 300,000 of the Italian population generally; but still worse was the effect of the economic ruin of the middle class, and 0f the bound less extent of the mercantile emigration which induced great portion of the Italian youth to spend their most vigorous years abroad.
compensation of very dubious value was afforded Foreigner! by the free parasitic Helleno-Oriental population, which in Italy. sojourned in the capital as diplomatic agents for kings
or communities, as physicians, schoolmasters, priests, ser
vants, parasites, and in the myriad employments of sharpers
and Swindlers, or, as traders and mariners, frequented
especially Ostia, Puteoli, and Brundisium. Still more
hazardous was the disproportionate increase of the multi
tude of slaves in the peninsula. The Italian burgesses Italian
by the census of 684 numbered 910,000 men capable slaves. [70. of bearing arms, to which number, in order to obtain
Vol. iv In
A
it is
a
a
(p.
is
(p.
I78
THE COMMONWEALTH BOOK Iv
Monetary system.
the amount of the free population in the peninsula, those accidentally passed over in the census, the Latins in the district between the Alps and the Po, and the foreigners domiciled in Italy, have to be added, while the Roman burgesses domiciled abroad are to be deducted. It will therefore be scarcely possible to estimate the free popu lation of the peninsula at more than from 6 to 7 millions. If its whole population at this time was equal to that of the present day, we should have to assume accordingly a mass of slaves amounting to 13 or 14 millions. It needs however no such fallacious calculations to render the dangerous tension of this state of things apparent ; this is loudly enough attested by the partial servile in surrections, and by the appeal which from the beginning of the revolutions was at the close of every outbreak addressed to the slaves to take up arms against their masters and to fight out their liberty. If we conceive of England with its lords, its squires, and above all its City, but with its freeholders and lessees converted into prole tarians, and its labourers and sailors converted into slaves,
we shall gain an approximate image of the population of the Italian peninsula in those days.
The economic relations of this epoch are clearly mirrored to us even now in the Roman monetary system. Its treatment shows throughout the sagacious merchant.
Gold and For long gold and silver stood side by side as general
silver.
means of payment on such a footing that, while for the purpose of general cash-balances a fixed ratio of value was legally laid down between the two metals (iii. 88), the giving one metal for the other was not, as a rule, optional, but payment was to be in gold or silver according to the tenor of the bond. In this way the great evils were avoided, that are otherwise inevitably associated with the setting up of two precious metals ; the severe gold crises-—
150. as about 600, for instance, when in consequence of the
CHAP- xr AND ITS ECONOMY
179
discovery of the Tauriscan gold-seams (iii. 424) gold as compared with silver fell at once in Italy about 33% per cent—exercised at least no direct influence on the silver money and retail transactions. The nature of the case implied that, the more transmarine traflic extended, gold the more decidedly rose from the second place to the first; and that it did so, is confirmed by the statements as to the balances in the treasury and as to its transactions; but the government was not thereby induced to introduce gold into the coinage. The coining of gold attempted in the exigency of the Hannibalic war (ii. 343) had been long allowed to fall into abeyance ; the few gold pieces which Sulla struck as regent were scarcely more than pieces coined for the occasion of his triumphal presents. Silver still as before circulated exclusively as actual money; gold whether as was usual, circulated in bars or bore the stamp of foreign or possibly even of an inland mint, was taken solely by weight. Nevertheless gold and silver were on par as means of exchange, and the fraudulent alloying
of gold was treated law, like the issuing of spurious silver money, as monetary offence. They thus obtained the immense advantage of precluding, in the case of the most important medium of payment, even the possibility of monetary fraud and monetary adulteration. Otherwise the coinage was as copious as was of exemplary purity. After the silver piece had been reduced in the Hannibalic war from 71-; (ii. 87) to E1‘ of pound (ii. 343), retained for more than three centuries quite the same weight and the same quality; no alloying took place. The copper money became about the beginning of this period quite restricted to small change, and ceased to be employed as formerly in large transactions; for this reason the ar was no longer coined after perhaps the beginning of the seventh century, and the copper coinage was confined to the smaller values of remi: G4. ) and under, which could
a
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it
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Token Money.
180 THE COMMONWEALTH BOOK Iv
not well be represented in silver. The sorts of coins were arranged according to a simple principle, and in the then smallest coin of the ordinary issue-—the quadranr
carried down to the limit of appreciable value. It was a monetary system, which, for the judicious principles on which it was based and for the iron rigour with which they were applied, stands alone in antiquity and has been but rarely paralleled even in modern times.
Yet it had also its weak point. According to a custom, common in all antiquity, but which reached its highest development at Carthage 3), the Roman government issued along with the good silver dmarii also denariz' of copper plated with silver, which had to be accepted like the former and were just token-money analogous to our paper currency, with compulsory circulation and recourse on the public chest, inasmuch as also was not entitled to reject the plated pieces. This was no more an oflicial adulteration of the coinage than our manufacture of paper money, for they practised the thing quite openly; Marcus
91. Drusus proposed in 663, with the view of gaining the means for his largesses of grain, the sending forth of one
denariur for every seven silver ones issuing fresh from the mint; nevertheless this measure not only offered dangerous handle to private forgery, but designedly left
the public uncertain whether was receiving silver or token money, and to what total amount the latter was in circulation. In the embarrassed period of the civil war and of the great financial crisis they seem to have so unduly availed themselves of plating, that monetary crisis accompanied the financial one, and the quantity of spurious and really worthless pieces rendered dealings extremely insecure. Accordingly during the Cinnan govern ment an enactment was passed by the praetors and tribunes,
the
plated
Marcus Marius Gratidianus 103), for
primarily
redeeming all ‘an’ token-money silver, and for that
by
by
(p.
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5I
(ii.
can. xi AND ITS ECONOMY
purpose an assay-oliice was established. How far the calling-in was accomplished, tradition has not told us; the coining of token-money itself continued to subsist.
As to the provinces, in accordance with the setting Provincial aside of gold money on principle, the coining of gold was money. nowhere permitted, not even in the client-states; so that
a gold coinage at this period occurs only where Rome had
nothing at all to say, especially among the Celts to the north of the Cevennes and among the states in revolt
Rome; the Italians, for instance, as well as Mithradates Eupator struck gold coins. The government seems to have made efforts to bring the coinage of silver
also more and more into its hands, particularly in the
west. In Africa and Sardinia the Carthaginian gold and silver money may have remained in circulation even after
the fall of the Carthaginian state; but no coinage of west. precious metals took place there after either the Cartha
or the Roman standard, and certainly very soon after the Romans took possession, the a’enariur introduced from Italy acquired the predominance in the transactions of the two countries. In Spain and Sicily, which came earlier to the Romans and experienced altogether a milder treatment, silver was no doubt coined under the Roman rule, and indeed in the former country the silver coinage was first called into existence by the Romans and based on the Roman standard 211, 386, iii. 87); but there exist good grounds for the supposition, that even in these two countries, at least from the beginning of the seventh century, the provincial and urban mints were obliged to restrict their issues to copper small money. Only in Narbonese Gaul the right of coining silver could not be withdrawn from the old-allied and considerable free city of Massilia; and the same was presumably true of the Greek cities in Illyria, Apollonia and Dyrrhachium. But the privilege of these communities to coin money was
against
ginian
Currency of the
(ii.
18: THE COMMONWEALTH BOOK IV
restricted indirectly by the fact, that the three-quarter denariur, which by ordinance of the Roman government was coined both at Massilia and in Illyria, and which had been under the name of m'atorz'atus received into the Roman monetary system (iii. 87), was about the middle of the seventh century set aside in the latter; the effect of which necessarily was, that the Massiliot and Illyrian currency was driven out of Upper Italy and only remained in circulation, over and above its native field, perhaps in the regions of the Alps and the Danube. Such progress had thus been made already in this epoch, that the standard of the denariu: exclusively prevailed in the whole western division of the Roman state; for Italy, Sicily—of which it is as respects the beginning of the next period expressly attested, that no other silver money circu lated there but the denarz'ur—Sardinia, Africa, used exclusively Roman silver money, and the provincial silver still current in Spain as well as the silver money of the
Massiliots and Illyrians were at least struck after the standard of the denariur.
It was otherwise in the east. Here, where the number of the east. of the states coining money from olden times and the
of native coin in circulation were very consider able, the denariur did not make its way into wider accept ance, although it was perhaps declared a legal tender. On the contrary either the previous monetary standard con tinued in use, as in Macedonia for instance, which still as a province—although partially adding the names of the Roman magistrates to that of the country—struck its Attic tetradrac/zmae and certainly employed in substance no other money ; or a peculiar money-standard correspond ing to the circumstances was introduced under Roman
authority, as on the institution of the province of Asia, when a new rlater, the a'rtoplwrur as it was called, was prescribed by the Roman government and was thenceforth
Currency
quantity
CHAP- X! AND ITS ECONOMY
183
struck by the district-capitals there under Roman super intendence. This essential diversity between the Occi dental and Oriental systems of currency came to be of the greatest historical importance: the Romanizing of the subject lands found one of its mightiest levers in the adoption of Roman money, and it was not through mere accident that what we have designated at this epoch as the field of the denariur became afterwards the Latin, while the field of the drachma became afterwards the Greek, half of the empire. Still at the present day the former field substantially represents the sum of Romanic culture, whereas the latter has severed itself from European civilization.
It is easy to form a general conception of the aspect which under such economic conditions the social relations must have assumed ; but to follow out in detail the increase of luxury, of prices, of fastidiousness and frivolity is neither
State (I
pleasant nor instructive. Extravagance and sensuous en Increased
joyment formed the main object with all, among the pamenur as well as among the Licinii and Metelli; not the polished luxury which is the acme of civilization, but that sort of luxury which had developed itself amidst the decay
extrava ganoe.
ing Hellenic civilization of Asia Minor and Alexandria,
which degraded everything beautiful and significant to the purpose of decoration and studied enjoyment with a laborious pedantry, a precise punctiliousness, rendering it
equally nauseous to the man of fresh feeling as to the man
of fresh intellect. As to the popular festivals, the importa— Popular
festivlll.
tion of transmarine wild' beasts prohibited in the time of Cato (iii. 126) was, apparently about the middle of this century, formally permitted anew by a decree of the burgesses proposed by Gnaeus Aufidius; the effect of which was, that animal-hunts came into enthusiastic favour
and formed a chief feature of the burgess-festivals. Several lions first appeared in the Roman arena about 65 I, the 10. .
184
THE COMMONWEALTH BOOK IV
99. first elephants about 655; Sulla when praetor exhibited a 98. hundred lions in 66 r. The same holds true of gladiatorial
games. If the forefathers had publicly exhibited repre sentations of great battles, their grandchildren began to do the same with their gladiatorial games, and by means of such leading or state performances of the age to make themselves a laughing-stock to their descendants. What sums were spent on these and on funeral solemnities generally, may be inferred from the testament of Marcus
187C 175. Aemilius Lepidus (consul in 567, 579 ; 602) he gave 152. orders to his children, forasrnuch as the true last honours
consisted not in empty pomp but in the remembrance of personal and ancestral services, to expend on his funeral not more than 1,000,000 arrer (£4000). Luxury was on the increase also as respected buildings and gardens; the .
01. splendid town house of the orator Crassus 663), famous especially for the old trees of its garden, wal valued with the trees at 6,000,000 sesterces (£00,000), without them at the half; while the value of an ordinary dwelling-house in Rome may be estimated perhaps at 60,000 sesterces (£600). 1 How quickly the prices of ornamental estates increased, shown by the instance of the Misenian villa, for which Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, paid 75,000 sesterces (£750), and Lucius
1‘. Lucullus, consul in 680, thirty-three times that price. The villas and the luxurious rural and sea-bathing life rendered Baiae and generally the district around the Bay
Games. of Naples the El Dorado of noble idleness. Games of hazard, in which the stake was no longer as in the Italian 115. dice-playing trifle, became common, and as early as 639
In the house, which Sulla inhabited when young man, he paid for the ground-floor rent of 3000 sesterces, and the tenant of the upper story a rent of 2000 sesterces (Plutarch, Sull. I); which, capitalized at two-thirds of the usual interest on capital, yields nearly the above amount. This was a cheap dwelling. That rent of 6000 sesterces (£60) in the
125. capital called a high one in the case of the year 629 (Veil. 10) must have been due to Special circumstances.
is
ii.
(1'
a
a
a
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can. x! AND ITS ECONOMY
185
a censorial edict was issued against them. Gauze fabrics, Drm. which displayed rather than concealed the figure, and silken clothing began to displace the old woollen dresses among women and even among men. Against the insane extravagance in the employment of foreign perfumery the sumptuary laws interfered in vain.
But the real focus in which the brilliance of this genteel The table life was concentrated was the table. Extravagant prices
as much as 100,000 sesterces (£rooo)—were paid for an
exquisite cook. Houses were constructed with special
reference to this object, and the villas in particular along
the coast were provided with salt-water tanks of their own,
in order that they might furnish marine fishes and oysters
at any time fresh to the table. A dinner was already
described as poor, at which the fowls were served up to the
guests entire and not merely the choice portions, and at
which the guests were expected to eat of the several dishes
and not simply to taste them. They procured at a great
expense foreign delicacies and Greek wine, which had to
be sent round at least once at every respectable repast.
At banquets above all the Romans displayed their hosts
of slaves ministering to luxury, their hands of musicians,
their dancing-girls, their elegant furniture, their carpets
glittering with gold or pictorially embroidered, their purple
hangings, their antique bronzes, their rich silver plate.
Against such displays the sumptuary laws were primarily
directed, which were issued more frequently (593, 639, 161, 115, 665, 673) and in greater detail than ever; a number of B9. 61. delicacies and wines were therein totally prohibited, for
others a maximum in weight and price was fixed; the
quantity of silver plate was likewise restricted by law, and
lastly general maximum rates were prescribed for the
expenses of ordinary and festal meals; these, for example,
were fixed in 593 at to and too sesterces (2r. and £1) in 161.
673 at 30 and 300 sesterces (6s. and respectively 8L.
Marriage.
186 THE COMMONWEALTH Book rv
Unfortunately truth requires us to add that, of all the Romans of rank, not more than three—and these not including the legislators themselves—are said to have complied with these imposing laws; and in the case of these three it was the law of the Stoa, and not that of the state, that curtailed the bill of fare.
It is worth while to dwell for a moment on the luxury that went on increasing in defiance of these laws, as respects silver plate. In the sixth century silver plate for the table was, with the exception of the traditionary silver salt-dish,
a rarity; the Carthaginian ambassadors jested over the cir cumstance, that at every house to which they were invited
they had encountered the same silver plate
Scipio Aemilianus possessed not more than 32 pounds (£120) in wrought silver; his nephew Quintus Fabius
121. (consul in 633) first brought his plate up to 1000 pounds 91. (£4000), Marcus Drusus (tribune of the people in 663) reached 10,000 pounds 40,000) in Sulla’s time there were
already counted in the capital about 50 silver state-dishes weighing 100 pounds each, several of which brought their possessors into the lists of prescription. To judge of the sums expended on these, we must recollect that the work manship also was paid for at enormous rates; for instance Gaius Gracchus paid for choice articles of silver fifteen times, and Lucius Crassus, consul in 659, eighteen times the value of the metal, and the latter gave for pair of
noted silversmith 100,000 sesterces (£r0o0). So was in proportion everywhere.
How fared with marriage and the rearing of children, shown by the Gracchan agrarian laws, which first placed premium on these (iii. 32o). Divorce, formerly in Rome
almost unheard of, was now an everyday occurrence; while in the oldest Roman marriage the husband had purchased his wife, might have been proposed to the Romans of quality in the present times that, with the view of bringing the name
cups by
153 f1).
is it
a
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; I
( ,6
CHAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY
187
into accordance with the reality, they should introduce marriage for hire. Even a man like Metellus Macedonicus,
who for his honourable domestic life and his numerous
host of children was the admiration of his contemporaries, when censor in 62 3 enforced the obligation of the burgesses 181. to live in a state of matrimony by describing it as an oppressive public burden, which patriots ought nevertheless
to undertake from a sense of duty. 1
There were, certainly, exceptions. The circles of the Hellenism
rural towns, and particularly those of the larger landholders, :11: had preserved more faithfully the old honourable habits of
the Latin nation. In the capital, however, the Catonian opposition had become a mere form of words 5 the modern tendency bore sovereign sway, and though individuals of
firm and refined organization, such as Scipio Aemilianus, knew the art of combining Roman manners with Attic culture, Hellenism was among the great multitude
’
with intellectual and moral corruption. We
synonymous
must never lose sight of the reaction exercised by these social evils on political life, if we would understand the Roman revolution. It was no matter of indifference, that
of the two men of rank, who in 662 acted as supreme OI. masters of morals to the community, the one publicly reproached the other with having shed tears over the death of a muraena the pride of his fishpond, and the latter retaliated on the former that he had buried three wives and had shed tears over none of them. It was no matter of indifference, that in 593 an orator could make 101. sport in the open Forum with the following description of
a senatorial civil juryman, whom the time fixed for the cause finds amidst the circle of his boon-companions. “They
1 “ If we could, citizens "-he said in his speech-"we should indeed all keep clear of this burden. But, as nature has so arranged it that we cannot either live comfortably with wives or live at all without them, it is proper to have regard rather to the permanent weal than to our own brief comfort. "
188 THE COMMONWEALTH AND ITS ECONOMY 1300! iv
play at hazard, delicately perfumed, surrounded by their mistresses. As the afternoon advances, they summon the servant and bid him make enquiries on the Comitium, as to what has occurred in the Forum, who has spoken in favour of or against the new project of law, what tribes have voted for and what against At length they go themselves to the judgment-seat, just early enough not to bring the process down on their own neck. On the way there no opportunity in any retired alley which they do not avail themselves of, for they have gorged themselves with wine.
Reluctantly they come to the tribunal and give audience to the parties. Those who are concerned bring forward their cause. The juryman orders the witnesses to come forward he himself steps aside. When he returns, he declares that he has heard everything, and asks for the documents. He looks into the writings he can hardly keep his eyes open for wine. When he thereupon withdraws to consider his sentence, he says to his boon-companions, ‘What concern have with these tiresome people? why should we not rather go to drink cup of mulse mixed with Greek wine, and accompany with fat fieldfare and good fish, a veritable pike from the Tiber island ” Those who heard the orator laughed; but was not very serious matter, that such things were subjects for laughter?
a it
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can. xn NATIONALITY, RELIGION, AND EDUCATION
189
CHAPTER XII ns'nomu'rv, RELIGION, AND EDUCATION
IN the great struggle of the nationalities within the wide Par-amount
circuit of the Roman empire, the secondary nations seem ascendency of Latlnism
at this period on the wane or disappearing. The most and
important of them all, the Phoenician, received through the destruction of Carthage a mortal wound from which it slowly bled to death. The districts of Italy which had hitherto preserved their old language and manners, Etruria and Samnium, were not only visited by the heaviest blows of the Sullan reaction, but were compelled also by the political levelling of Italy to adopt the Latin language and customs in public intercourse, so that the old native lan guages were reduced to popular dialects rapidly decaying. There no longer appears throughout the bounds of the
Hellenism.
Roman state any nationality entitled even to compete with the Roman and the Greek.
On the other hand the Latin nationality was, as respected both the extent of its diffusion and the depth of its hold, in the most decided ascendant. As after the Social war any portion of Italian soil might belong to any Italian in full Roman ownership, and any god of an Italian temple might receive Roman gifts; as in all Italy, with the excep tion of the region beyond the Po, the Roman law thence forth had exclusive authority, superseding all other civic and local laws; so the Roman language at that time became
190
NATIONALITY, RELIGION, noox rv
the universal language of business, and soon likewise the universal language of cultivated intercourse, in the whole peninsula from the Alps to the Sicilian Straits. But it no longer restricted itself to these natural limits. The mass of capital accumulating in Italy, the riches of its products, the intelligence of its agriculturists, the versatility of its merchants, found no adequate scope in the peninsula; these circumstances and the public service carried the Italians in great numbers to the provinces (p. 174). Their privileged position there rendered the Roman language and the Roman law privileged also, even where Romans were not merely transacting business with each other (p. 13 Everywhere the Italians kept together as compact and organized masses, the soldiers in their legions, the mer chants of every larger town as special corporations, the Roman burgesses domiciled or sojourning in the particular provincial court-district as “ circuits ” (:onventur a'vium
with their own list of jurymen and in some measure with a communal constitution; and, though these provincial Romans ordinarily returned sooner or later to Italy, they nevertheless gradually laid the foundations of fixed population in the provinces, partly Roman, partly mixed, attaching itself to the Roman settlers. We have already mentioned that was in Spain, where the Roman army first became standing one, that distinct provincial towns with Italian constitution were first organized—Carteia
I71. I88. in 583 (iii. I4), Valentia in 616 (iii. 232), and at later date Palma and Pollentia (iii. Although the interior was still far from civilized,—the territory of the Vaccaeans, for instance, being still mentioned long after this time as one of the rudest and most repulsive places of abode for the cultivated Italian—authors and inscriptions attest that as early as the middle of the seventh century the Latin language was in common use around New Carthage and else where along the coast. Gracchus first distinctly developed
Romanorum)
2 3
2
it 3).
a
a
a I).
CHAP- XII AND EDUCATION
:9:
the idea of colonizing, or in other words cf Romanizing, the provinces of the Roman state by Italian emigration, and endeavoured to carry it out; and, although the con servative opposition resisted the bold project, destroyed for the most part its attempted beginnings, and prevented its continuation, yet the colony of Narbo was preserved, important even of itself as extending the domain of the Latin tongue, and far more important still as the landmark of a great idea, the foundation-stone of a mighty structure to come. The ancient Gallic, and in fact the modern
French, type of character, sprang out of that settlement, and are in their ultimate origin creations of Gaius Gracchus.
But the Latin nationality not only filled the bounds of Italy and began to pass beyond them; it came also to acquire intrinsically a deeper intellectual basis. We find it in the course of creating a classical literature, and a higher instruction of its own; and, though in comparison with the Hellenic classics and Hellenic culture we may feel ourselves tempted to attach little value to the feeble hot house products of Italy, yet, so far as its historical develop ment was primarily concerned, the quality of the Latin classical literature and the Latin culture was of far less moment than the fact that they subsisted side by side with the Greek; and, sunken as were the contemporary Hellenes in a literary point of view, one might well apply in this case also the saying of the poet, that the living day labourer is better than the dead Achilles.
But, however rapidly and vigorously the Latin language Hellenism. and nationality gain ground, they at the same time recog
nize the Hellenic nationality as having an entirely equal,
indeed an earlier and better title, and enter everywhere
into the closest alliance with it or become intermingled with it in a joint development. The Italian revolution, which otherwise levelled all the non-Latin nationalities in the peninsula, did not disturb the Greek cities of Tarentum.
I92
NATIONALITY, RELIGION, BOOK IV
Rhegium, Neapolis, Locri (iii. 519). In like manner Mas silia, although now enclosed by Roman territory, remained continuously a Greek city and, just as such, firmly connected with Rome. With the complete Latinizing of Italy the growth of Hellenizing went hand in hand. In the higher circles of Italian society Greek training became an integral
181- element of their native culture. The consul of 623, the pontzfix maximur Publius Crassus, excited the astonishment
even of the native Greeks, when as governor of Asia he delivered his judicial decisions, as the case required, some times in ordinary Greek, sometimes in one of the four dialects which had become written languages. And if the Italian literature and art for long looked steadily towards the east, Hellenic literature and art now began to look towards the west. Not only did the Greek cities in Italy continue to maintain an active intellectual intercourse with Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, and confer on the Greek poets and actors who had acquired celebrity there the like recognition and the like honours among themselves; in Rome also, after the example set by the destroyer of Corinth
146. at his triumph in 608, the gymnastic and aesthetic recrea tions of the Greeks—competitions in wrestling as well as in music, acting, reciting, and declaiming—came into vogue. 1 Greek men of letters even thus early struck root in the noble society of Rome, especially in the Scipionic circle, the most prominent Greek members of which—the historian Polybius and the philosopher Panaetius—belong rather to the history of Roman than of Greek development. But even in other less illustrious circles similar relations occur; we may mention another contemporary of Scipio, the philosopher Clitomachus, because his life at the same time presents a vivid view of the great intermingling of
1 The statement that no “ Greek games" were exhibited in Rome before 146. 608 (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21) is not accurate: Greek artists (rexvf'rar) and I86. athletes appeared as early as 568 (Liv. xxxix. 22), and Greek flute-players, 167 tragedians, and pugilists in 587 (P01. xxx. 13).
can. an AND EDUCATION
r93
nations at this epoch. A native of Carthage, then -a disciple of Carneades at Athens, and afterwards his suc cessor in his professorship, Clitomachus held intercourse from Athens with the most cultivated men of Italy, the historian Aulus Albinus and the poet Lucilius, and dedi cated on the one hand a scientific work to Lucius Censorinus the Roman consul who opened the siege of Carthage, and on the other hand a philosophic consolatory treatise to his fellow-citizens who were conveyed to Italy
as slaves. While Greek literary men of note had hitherto taken up their abode temporarily in Rome as ambassadors, exiles, or otherwise, they now began to settle there; for instance, the already-mentioned Panaetius lived in the house of Scipio, and the hexameter-maker Archias of Antioch settled at Rome in 652 and supported himself 102. respectably by the art of improvising and by epic poems
on Roman consulars. Even Gaius Marius, who hardly understood a line of his carmen and was altogether as ill adapted as possible for a Maecenas, could not avoid patronizing the artist in verse. While intellectual and literary life thus brought the more genteel, if not the purer, elements of the two nations into connection with each other, on the other hand the arrival of troops of slaves from Asia Minor and Syria and the mercantile immi gration from the Greek and half-Greek east brought the coarsest strata of Hellenism-largely alloyed with Oriental and generally barbaric ingredients-—into contact with the Italian proletariate, and gave to that also a Hellenic colour ing. The remark of Cicero, that new phrases and new fashions first make their appearance in maritime towns, probably had a primary reference to the semi-Hellenic character of Ostia, Puteoli, and Brundisium, where with foreign wares foreign manners also first found admission and became thence more widely difi‘used.
The immediate result of this complete revolution in the
VOL xv
113
NATIONALITY, RELIGION, nook IV Mixture of relations of nationality was certainly far from pleasing.
People'
194
Italy swarmed with Greeks, Syrians, Phoenicians, Jews,
while the provinces swarmed with Romans; sharply defined national peculiarities everywhere came into mutual contact, and were visibly worn off; it seemed as if nothing was to be left behind but the general impress of utilitarianism. What the Latin character gained in diffusion it lost in freshness; especially in Rome itself, where the middle class disappeared the soonest and most entirely, and nothing was left but the grandees and the beggars, both in like measure cosmopolitan. Cicero assures us that about 660 the general culture in the Latin towns stood higher than in Rome; and this is confirmed by the litera ture of this period, whose most pleasing, healthiest, and most characteristic products, such as the national comedy and the Lucilian satire, are with greater justice described
as Latin, than as Roman. That the Italian Hellenism of
the lower orders was in reality nothing but a repulsive
National decomposi tion.
Egyptians,
tainted at once with all the extravagances of culture and with a superficially whitewashed barbarism,
is self-evident ; but even in the case of the better society the fine taste of the Scipionic circle did not remain the permanent standard. The more the mass of society began to take interest in Greek life, the more decidedly it resorted not to the classical literature, but to the most modern and frivolous productions of the Greek mind; instead of moulding the Roman character in the Hellenic spirit, they contented themselves with borrowing that sort of pastime which set their own intellect to work as little as possible. In this sense the Arpinate landlord Marcus Cicero, the father of the orator, said that among the Romans, just as among Syrian slaves, each was the less worth, the more he understood Greek.
This national decomposition like the whole age, far from pleasing, but also like that age significant and
cosmopolitanism
is,
czar. xu AND EDUCATION
195
momentous. The circle of peoples, which we are ac customed to call the ancient world, advances from an outward union under the authority of Rome to an inward union under the sway of the modern culture resting essen tially on Hellenic elements. Over the ruins of peoples of the second rank the great historical compromise between the two ruling nations is silently completed; the Greek and Latin nationalities conclude mutual peace. The Greeks renounce exclusive claims for their language in the field of culture, as do the Romans for theirs in the field of politics; in instruction Latin is allowed to stand on a. footing of equality—restricted, it is true, and imperfect— with Greek; on the other hand Sulla first allows foreign ambassadors to speak Greek before the Roman senate without an interpreter. The time heralds its approach, when the Roman commonwealth will pass into a bilingual state and the true heir of the throne and the ideas of Alexander the Great will arise in the west, at once a Roman and a Greek.
The suppression of the secondary, and the mutual inter penetration of the two primary nationalities, which are thus apparent on a general survey of national relations, now fall to be more precisely exhibited in detail in the several fields of religion, national education, literature, and art.
The Roman religion was so intimately interwoven with Religion. the Roman commonwealth and the Roman household—so thoroughly in fact the pious reflection of the Roman bur gess-world—that the political and social revolution neces
sarily overturned also the fabric of religion. The ancient Italian popular faith fell to the ground; over its ruins rose --like the oligarchy and the tyranm'r rising over the ruins of the political commonwealth—on the one side unbelief, state-religion, Hellenism, and on the other side superstition, sectarianism, the religion of the Orientals. The
germs
Greek philosophy.
I96
NATIONALITY, RELIGION, BOOK 1v
certainly of both, as indeed the germs of the politico-social revolution also, may be traced back to the previous epoch
Even then the Hellenic culture of the higher circles was secretly undermining their ancestral faith ;
Ennius introduced the allegorizing and historical versions of the Hellenic religion into Italy; the senate, which subdued Hannibal, had to sanction the transference of the worship of Cybele from Asia Minor to Rome, and to take the most serious steps against other still worse superstitions, particularly the Bacchanalian scandal. But, as during the preceding period the revolution generally was rather pre paring its way in men’s minds than assuming outward shape, so the religious revolution was in substance, at any rate, the work only of the Gracchan and Sullan age.
Let us endeavour first to trace the tendency associating itself with Hellenism. The Hellenic nation, which bloomed and faded far earlier than the Italian, had long ago passed the epoch of faith and thenceforth moved exclusively in the sphere of speculation and reflection; for long there had been no religion there—nothing but philosophy. But even the philosophic activity of the Hellenic mind had, when it began to exert influence on Rome, already left the epoch of productive speculation far behind and had arrived at the stage at which there not only no origina tion of truly new systems, but even the power of appre hending the more perfect of the older systems begins to wane and men restrict themselves to the repetition, soon passing into the scholastic tradition, of the less complete dogmas of their predecessors; at that stage, accordingly, when philosophy, instead of giving greater depth and freedom to the mind, rather renders shallow and imposes on the worst of all chains—chains of its own forging. The enchanted draught of speculation, always dangerous,
when diluted and stale, certain poison. The contem porary Greeks presented thus flat and diluted to the
(iii. 109-117).
it
is,
it
it is
it,
CHAP- xn AND EDUCATION
197
Romans, and these had not the judgment either to refuse it or to go back from the living schoolmasters to the dead masters. Plato and Aristotle, to say nothing of the sages before Socrates, remained without material influence on the Roman culture, although their illustrious names were freely used, and their more easily understood writings were probably read and translated. Accordingly the Romans be came in philosophy simply inferior scholars of bad teachers.
Besides the historico-rationalistic conception of religion, Leading which resolved the myths into biographies of various schools. benefactors of the human race living in the grey dawn of
early times whom superstition had transformed into gods,
or Euhemerism as it was called (iii. 113), there were chiefly
three philosophical schools that came to be of importance
for Italy; viz. the two dogmatic schools of Epicurus
and Zeno 491) and the sceptical school of Arcesilaus 268.
513) and Carneades (541-62 or, to use the school 241. names, Epicureanism, the Stoa, and the newer Academy. 218-129. The last of these schools, which started from the impos Newer
sibility of assured knowledge and in its stead conceded as possible only provisional opinion sufficient for practical needs, presented mainly polemical aspect, seeing that caught every proposition of positive faith or of philosophic dogmatism in the meshes of its dilemmas. So far stands nearly on parallel with the older method of the sophists; except that, as may be conceived, the sophists made war more against the popular faith, Carneades and his disciples more against their philosophical colleagues. On the other hand Epicurus and Zeno agreed both in their aim of ration ally explaining the nature of things, and in their physiolo gical method, which set out from the conception of matter. They diverged, in so far as Epicurus, following the atomic theory of Democritus, conceived the first principle as rigid matter, and evolved the manifoldness of things out of this
matter merely by mechanical variations; whereas Zeno,
Academy.
484) 270.
Epieum and Zeno.
a
(1'
it
it
(1'
a
a
(j-
5),
Concedes at Rome.
I98-
NATIONALITY, RELIGION, BOOK IV
forming his views after the Ephesian Heraclitus, introduces even into his primordial matter a dynamic antagonism and a movement of fluctuation up and down. From this are derived the further distinctions—that in the Epicurean system the gods as it were did not exist or were at the most a dream of dreams, while the Stoical gods formed the ever active soul of the world, and were as spirit, as sun, as God powerful over the body, the earth, and nature ; that Epicurus did not, while Zeno did, recognize a government of the world and a personal immortality of the soul; that the proper object of human aspiration was according to Epicurus an absolute equilibrium disturbed neither by bodily desire nor by mental conflict, while it was according to Zeno a manly activity always increased by the constant antagonistic efforts of the mind and body, and striving after a harmony with nature
in conflict and perpetually at peace. But in one point all these schools were agreed with reference to religion, that faith as such was nothing, and had necessarily to be supplemented by reflection—whether this reflection might consciously despair of attaining any result, as did the Academy; or might reject the conceptions of the popular faith, as did the school of Epicurus ; or might partly retain them with explanation of the reasons for doing so, and partly modify them, as did the Stoics.
It was accordingly only a natural result, that the first contact of Hellenic philosophy with the Roman nation equally firm in faith and adverse to speculation should be of a thoroughly hostile character. The Roman religion was entirely right in disdaining alike the assaults and the reasoned support of these philosophical systems, both of‘ which did away with its proper character. The Roman state, which instinctively felt itself assailed when religion was attacked, reasonably assumed towards the philosophers the attitude which a fortress assumes towards the spies of the army advancing to besiege and as early as
perpetually
it,
can. x11 AND EDUCATION
199
dismissed the Greek philosophers along with 'the 161. rhetoricians from Rome. In fact the very first dééut
of philosophy on a great scale in Rome was a formal declaration of war against faith and morals. It was occasioned by the occupation of Oropus by the Athenians,
a step which they commissioned three of the most esteemed professors of philosophy, including Carneades the master of
the modern sophistical school, to justify before the senate
The selection was so far appropriate, as the utterly 155. scandalous transaction defied any justification in common sense; whereas it was quite in keeping with the circum stances of the case, when Carneades proved by thesis and counter-thesis that exactly as many and as cogent reasons might be adduced in praise of injustice as in praise of justice, and when he showed in the best logical form that with equal propriety the Athenians might be required to surrender Oropus and the Romans to confine themselves once more to their old straw huts on the Palatine. The young men who were masters of the Greek language were attracted in crowds by the scandal as well as by the rapid
and emphatic delivery of the celebrated man; but on this occasion at least Cato could not be found fault with, when
he not only bluntly enough compared the dialectic argu ments of the philosophers to the tedious dirges of the wail ing-women, but also insisted on the senate dismissing a
man who understood the art of making right wrong and wrong right, and whose defence was in fact nothing but a shameless and almost insulting confession of wrong. But such dismissals had no great effect, more especially as the Roman youth could not be prevented from hearing philo sophic discourses at Rhodes and Athens. Men became accustomed first to tolerate philosophy at least as a necessary evil, and ere long to seek for the Roman religion, which in its simplicity was no longer tenable, a support in foreign philosophy—-—a support which no doubt ruined it as
593
(599).
300 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, BOOK IV
faith, but in return at any rate allowed the man of culture decorously to retain in some measure the names and forms of the popular creed. But this support could neither be Euhemerism, nor the system of Carneades or of Epicurus.
The historical version of the myths came far too rudely ism not an into collision with the popular faith, when it declared the
Euhemer
adequate support.
gods directly to be men; Carneades called even their existence in question, and Epicurus denied to them at least any influence on the destinies of men. Between these systems and the Roman religion no alliance was possible; they were proscribed and remained so. Even in the writings of Cicero it is declared the duty of a citizen to resist Euhemerism as prejudicial to religious worship; and if the Academic and the Epicurean appear in his dialogues, the former has to plead the excuse that, while as a philosopher he is a disciple of Carneades, as a citizen and
power of attraction over the Romans, and in particular produced only too deep an effect on the conventional history of Rome with its at once childish and senile conversion of fable into history; but it remained without material influence on the Roman religion, because the latter from the first dealt only in allegory and not in fable, and it was not possible in Rome as in Hellas to write biographies of Zeus the first, second, and third. The modern sophistry could only succeed where, as in Athens, clever volubility was indigenous, and where, moreover, the long series of philosophical systems that had come and gone had accumulated huge piles of intellectual rubbish. Against the Epicurean quietism, in fine, everything revolted that was sound and honest in the Roman character
pontzfex he is an orthodox confessor of the Capitoline Jupiter, and the Epicurean has even ultimately to surrender and be converted. No one of these three systems became in any proper sense popular. The plain
intelligible character of Euhemerism exerted doubtless a certain
so
emu’. xu AND EDUCATION so:
thoroughly addressing itself to action. Yet it found more partisans than Euhemerism and the sophistic school, and this was probably the reason why the police continued to wage war against it longest and most seriously. But this Roman Epicureanism was not so much a philosophic system as a sort of philosophic mask, under which—very much against the design of its strictly moral founder-—-thought less sensual enjoyment disguised itself for good society; one of the earliest adherents of this sect, for instance, Titus Albucius, figures in the poems of Lucilius as the prototype of a Roman Hellenizing to bad purpose.
Far different were the position and influence of the Stoic philosophy in Italy. In direct contrast to these schools it attached itself to the religion of the land as closely as science can at all accommodate itself to faith. To the popular faith with its gods and oracles the Stoic adhered on principle, in so far as he recognized in it an instinctive knowledge, to which scientific knowledge was bound to have regard and even in doubtful cases to subordinate itself. He believed in a different way from the people rather than in different objects; the essentially true and supreme God was in his view doubtless the world-soul, but every manifestation of the primitive God was in its turn divine, the stars above all, but also the earth, the vine, the soul of the illustrious mortal whom the
Roman Stun.
honoured as a hero, and in fact every departed spirit of a former man. This philosophy was really better
for Rome than for the land where it first arose. The objection of the pious believer, that the god of the Stoic had neither sex nor age nor corporeality and was converted from a person into a conception, had a meaning in Greece, but not in Rome. The coarse allegorizing and moral purification, which were characteristic of the Stoical doctrine of the gods, destroyed the very marrow of the Hellenic mythology 5 but the plastic power of the Romans,
people
adapted
202 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, BOOK IV
scanty even in their epoch of simplicity, had produced no more than a light veil enveloping the original intuition or the original conception, out of which the divinity had arisen—a veil that might be stripped off without special damage. Pallas Athene might be indignant, when she found herself suddenly transmuted into the conception of memory: Minerva had hitherto been in reality not much more. The supernatural Stoic, and the allegoric Roman, theology coincided on the whole in their result. But, even if the philosopher was obliged to designate individual propositions of the priestly lore as doubtful or as erroneous —as when the Stoics, for example, rejecting the doctrine of apotheosis, saw in Hercules, Castor, and Pollux nothing but the spirits of distinguished men, or as when they could not allow the images of the gods to be regarded as representations of divinity—it was at least not the habit of the adherents of Zeno to make war on these erroneous doctrines and to overthrow the false gods; on the contrary, they everywhere evinced respect and reverence for the
of the land even in its weaknesses. The incli- nation also of the Stoa towards a casuistic morality and towards a systematic treatment of the professional sciences was quite to the mind of the Romans, especially of the Romans of this period, who no longer like their fathers practised in unsophisticated fashion self-government and good morals, but resolved the simple morality of their ancestors into a catechism of allowable and non-allowable actions; whose grammar and jurisprudence, moreover, urgently demanded a methodical treatment, without possess ing the ability to develop such a treatment of themselves.
religion
So this philosophy thoroughly incorporated itself, as a influence of plant borrowed no doubt from abroad but acclimatized on Stolcism. Italian soil, with the Roman national economy, and we meet
its traces in the most diversified spheres of action. Its earliest appearance beyond doubt goes further back ; but
Wide
cum’. xn AND EDUCATION
:03
the Stoa was first raised to full influence in the higher ranks of Roman society by means of the group which
gathered round Scipio Aemilianus. Panaetius of Rhodes, Panaetius the instructor of Scipio and of all Scipio’s intimate friends
in the Stoic philosophy, who was constantly in his train
and usually attended him even on journeys, knew how to
adapt the system to clever men of the world, to keep its speculative side in the background, and to modify in some measure the dryness of the terminology and the insipidity of its moral catechism, more particularly by calling in the aid of the earlier philosophers, among whom Scipio himself had an especial predilection for the Socrates of Xenophon. Thenceforth the most noted statesmen and scholars fessed the Stoic philosophy—among others Stilo and Quintus Scaevola, the founders of scientific philology and of scientific jurisprudence. The scholastic formality of system, which thenceforth prevails at least externally in these professional sciences and is especially associated with a fanciful, charade-like, insipid method of etymologizing, descends from the Stoa. But infinitely more important
was the new state-philosophy and state-religion, which emanated from the blending of the Stoic philosophy and the Roman religion. The speculative element, from the first impressed with but little energy on the system of Zeno, and still further weakened when that system found admission to Rome—after the Greek schoolmasters had already for a century been busied in driving this philosophy into boys’ heads and thereby driving the spirit out of it— fell completely into the shade in Rome, where nobody speculated but the money-changers ; little more was said as to the ideal development of the God ruling in the soul
of man, or of the divine world-law. The Stoic philo sophers showed themselves not insensible to the very lucrative distinction of seeing their system raised into the semi-official Roman state-philosophy, and proved altogether
prc»
State
more pliant than from their rigorous principles we should have expected. Their doctrine as to the gods and the state soon exhibited a singular family resemblance to the actual institutions of those who gave them bread; instead of illustrating the cosmopolitan state of the philosopher, they made their meditations turn on the wise arrangement of the Roman magistracies; and while the more refined Stoics such al Panaetius had left the question of divine revelation by wonders and signs open as a thing conceiv able but uncertain, and had decidedly rejected astrology, his immediate successors contended for that doctrine of revelation or, in other words, for the Roman augural discipline as rigidly and firmly as for any other maxim of the school, and made extremely unphilosophical concessions even to astrology. The leading feature of the system came more and more to be its casuistic doctrine of duties. It suited itself to the hollow pride of virtue, in which the Romans of this period sought their compensation amidst the various humbling circumstances of their contact with the Greeks; and it put into formal shape a befitting dog matism of morality, which, like every well-bred system of morals, combined with the most rigid precision as a whole the most complaisant indulgence in the details. 1 Its practical results can hardly be estimated as much more than that, as we have said, two or three families of rank ate poor fare to please the Stoa.
Closely allied to this new state-philosophy—or, strictly speaking, its other side—was the new state-religion ; the essential characteristic of which was the conscious retention, for reasons of outward convenience, of the principles of the popular faith, which were recognized as irrational. One of the most prominent men of the Scipionic circle, the Greek Polybius, candidly declares that the strange and ponderous ceremonial of Roman religion was invented solely on account
1 Adelightful specimen may be found in Cicero dc Oficiir, iii. 12, 13.
204
NATIONALITY, RELIGION, soox rv
CHAP- XII AN D EDUCATION
:05
of the multitude, which, as reason had no power over required to be ruled signs and wonders, while people of intelligence had certainly no need of religion. Beyond
doubt the Roman friends of Polybius substantially shared these sentiments, although they did not oppose science and religion to each other in so gross and downright fashion. Neither Laelius nor Scipio Aemilianus can have looked on the augural discipline, which Polybius has primarily in view, as anything else than political institution yet the national spirit in them was too strong and their sense of decorum too delicate to have permitted their coming forward in public with such hazardous explanations. But even in the fol lowing generation the ,panlifix maxz'mur Quintus Scaevola
(consul 659 iii. 481 84) set forth at least in his oral 9L instructions in law without hesitation the propositions, that there were two sorts of religion—one philosophic, adapted to
the intellect, and one traditional, not so adapted; that the former was not fitted for the religion of the state, as con tained various things which was useless or even injurious
for the people to know and that accordingly the traditional religion of the state ought to remain as stood. The theology of Varro, in which the Roman religion treated throughout as state institution, merely further deve lopment of the same principle. The state, according to his teaching, was older than the gods of the state as the painter
older than the picture; the question related to making the gods anew, would certainly be well to make and to name them after manner more befitting and more in theoretic accordance with the parts of the world-soul, and to lay aside the images of the gods which only excited erroneous ideas,1 and the mistaken system of sacrifice; but, since these institutions had been once established, every
In Varro's satire, "The Aborigines," be sarcastically set forth how
the primitive men had not been content with the God who alone nized by thought, but had longed after puppets and effigies.
recog
is
I
is
it a
if
is
it
p.
a
in ;
a it
; a by ;
is
it
a
;
it,
Priestly colleges
206 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, BOOK rv
good citizen ought to own and follow them and do his part, that the “common man” might learn rather to set a higher value on, than to contemn, the gods. That the common man, for whose benefit the grandees thus surrendered their judgment, now despised this faith and sought his remedy elsewhere, was a matter of course and will be seen in the sequel. Thus then the Roman “ high church” was ready, a sanctimonious body of priests and Levites, and an unbeliev ing people. The more openly the religion of the land was declared a political institution, the more decidedly the poli tical parties regarded the field of the state-church as an arena for attack and defence; which was especially, in a daily-increasing measure, the case with augural science and with the elections to the priestly colleges. The old and natural practice of dismissing the burgess-assembly, when a thunderstorm came on, had in the hands of the Roman augurs grown into a prolix system of various celestial omens and rules of conduct associated therewith; in the earlier portion of this period it was even directly enacted by the Aelian and Fufian law, that every popular assembly should be compelled to disperse if it should occur to any of the higher magistrates to look for signs of a thunderstorm in the sky ; and the Roman oligarchy was proud of the cunning device which enabled them thenceforth by a single pious fraud to impress the stamp of invalidity on any decree of the people.
Conversely, the Roman opposition rebelled against the ancient practice under which the four principal colleges of priests filled up their own ranks when vacancies arose, and demanded the extension of popular election to the stalls themselves, as it had been previously introduced with refer ence to the presidents, of these colleges (iii. 57). This was certainly inconsistent with the spirit of these corporations ; but they had no right to complain of after they had become themselves untrue to their spirit, and had played
it,
can. x1: AND EDUCATION
:07
into the hands of the government at its request by fur nishing religious pretexts for the annulling of political proceedings. This affair became an apple of contention between the parties: the senate heat off the first attack in 609, on which occasion the Scipionic circle especially turned 145. the scale for the rejection of the proposal; on the other hand the project passed in 650 with the proviso already 104. made in reference to the election of the presidents for the benefit of scrupulous consciences, that not the whole bur
but only the lesser half of the tribes should make the election (iii. 46;) ; finally Sulla restored the right of co-optation in its full extent (p. 115).
With this care on the part of the conservatives for the Practical
usemado ofreliglon.
Hortensius for instance brought roast peacocks
into vogue. Religion was also found very useful in giving greater zest to scandal. It was favourite recreation of
the youth of quality to disfigure or mutilate the images of
the gods in the streets night (iii. 480). Ordinary love affairs had for long been common, and intrigues with married women began to become so; but an amour with
Vestal virgin was as piquant as the intrigues with nuns and
the cloister-adventures in the world of the Decamerone.
The scandalous affair of 640 r:y. well known, in which 114. three Vestals, daughters of the noblest families, and their paramours, young men likewise of the best houses, were brought to trial for unchastity first before the pontifical college, and then, when sought to hush up the matter, before an extraordinary court instituted by special decree
gesses
pure national religion, it was of course quite compatible that the circles of the highest rank should openly make a jest of The practical side of the Roman priesthood was
the priestly :uirine; the augural and pontifical banquets were as were the official gala-days in the life of Roman epicure, and several of them formed epochs in the history of gastronomy: the banquet on the accession of the augur
Quintus
it
by
is
a
a
it
it.
a
Oriental
208 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, soon rv
of the people, and were all condemned to death. Such scandals, it is true, sedate people could not approve; but there was no objection to men finding positive religion to be a folly in their familiar circle; the augurs might, when one saw another performing his functions, smile in each other’s face without detriment to their religious duties. We learn to look favourably on the modest hypocrisy of kindred tendencies, when we compare with it the coarse shamelessness of the Roman priests and Levites. The official religion was quite candidly treated as a hollow framework, now serviceable only for political machinists; in this respect with its numerous recesses and trap-doors it might and did serve either party, as it happened. Most of all certainly the oligarchy recognized its palladium in the state-religion, and particularly in the augural discipline; but the opposite party also made no resistance in point of principle to an institute, which had now merely a semblance of life; they rather regarded on the whole, as bulwark which might pass from the possession of the enemy into their own.