Chapter XXIII: The Return of the Emperor (2)

[145] He magnanimously allowed Agrippa’s name still to appear as the builder of the temple. The Pantheon apparently owed its preservation through the Middle Ages to the fact that it was early consecrated as a Christian church, and hence was exempt from profanation.

[146] At the end of his reign the Senate so disliked him that (although he had been in the main an excellent ruler) his successor Antoninus had much trouble in getting him voted a “_divus_,” as were all good Emperors.

[147] We have no copy of the Acta Diurna. We possess, however, what seems a pretty literal parody of its style and contents in Petronius, and can reconstruct part of an issue with some confidence.

[148] Both of these are actual cases from the reign of Augustus.

[149] Old Latin goddesses.

[150] The only important addition after Domitian was made by Septimius Severus, who, about 200 A.D., built the very lofty _Septizonium_, a new palace at the south-east corner of the hill.

[151] As is, of course, well known, such emperors as Tiberius, Nero, and Domitian were popular with the provinces, which were usually well governed under them. Their cruelties smote mainly upon the senatorial nobility.

[152] About 230 A.D. Alexander Severus caught a palace menial selling gossip, and had him executed by being burned in a fire of damp wood. “He is punished by smoke,” said the irate monarch, “who sold ‘smoke.’”

[153] The ceremony was not unlike that of the _levée_ of French kings like Louis XIV, under the Old Régime before 1789.

[154] The Empresses would give a similar reception, however, to the wives of their husbands’ “Friends.”

[155] Sometimes, with an affectation of democracy, almost any decently clad person would be admitted to present petitions or merely to pay respects. Servile prostrations before the Emperor were not encouraged under the Early Principate; once when a petitioner went through great bowings and scrapings while presenting a scroll to Augustus, the latter cried testily, “You act as if you were presenting some money to an elephant.”

[156] This was the form used by Augustus in announcing to Fabius Maximus the withdrawal of imperial favor.

[157] Polite chatter, as reported by Horace, such as was vouchsafed by Augustus and his great associate Mæcenas, to their social favorites.

[158] Hadrian, although not a bloody man, was so averse to being opposed in argument that the philosopher Favorinus, with whom he took issue on a point in etymology, promptly announced that “Caesar was correct,” and so ended the discussion amiably. “But _you_ were really correct,” protested Favorinus’s friends afterward. “Ah!” replied he with a laugh, “the master of thirty legions must be allowed to know better.”

[159] These old “Republican” officers, now six in number, retained a certain control of the public markets, baths, taverns, etc.

[160] As discovered by modern archæologists.

[161] For the attitude of provincials under Roman rule the student can with interest read the speech put in the mouth of King Agrippa, the descendant of Herod, by Josephus (“Jewish War”: book II, ch. 16) in which he tells the Jews of Nero’s day, (1) that on the whole the Roman rule is so reasonable and tolerable they have no real cause to revolt against it; (2) that all nations, including the most warlike such as Sparta, Macedonia, the turbulent Gauls and Spain, have long since submitted; (3) that these have not merely submitted but keep obedient with only a trifling local display of armed force; (4) that resistance to Rome is so hopeless in any case that a revolt would be impious suicide.

[162] About 200 A.D. they were raised to 33.

[163] Its site to-day is occupied by the chief railroad station of Rome, by which most foreign visitors enter the city and depart.

[164] An ever larger proportion of legionary troops had to be enlisted in the provinces, although preferably in the parts somewhat Romanized.

[165] In Hadrian’s time a change was taking place whereby the first cohort in a legion contained about twice as many men as there were in any of the other nine; but this alteration became only gradually effective.

[166] In the earlier Empire it was only 900 sesterces ($36).

[167] It might be added that Roman legions appear to have had a medical department under a _medicus legionis_, which cared efficiently for the health of the troops. Camp sanitation was well understood, and epidemics in the army were rare.

[168] The only materials for a crown assumed to be available in a rescued fortress.

[169] The distribution of the legions varied somewhat from one period to another according to the probable dangers on the exposed frontiers, but the largest armies were always stationed along the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates. In Hadrian’s time apparently the main forces lay thus:

Britain, 3 legions.

Germany (Rhinelands), 4 legions.

Danubian lands and Dacia, 10 legions.

Syria and Palestine, 5 legions.

Cappadocia, 2 legions.

In all the other provinces requiring legionary troops at all (_e.g._ Egypt, Spain, Numidia, etc.), only one legion.

Apparently in the second Christian century the greatest danger point seemed near the Danube, and the second greatest along the Euphrates, with the Rhinelands relatively more secure than earlier, when more legions had been stationed near them.

[170] Some legions were named for their organizers: Augustus, Claudius, etc.; some for real or alleged martial qualities, “Ferrata,” “Fulminata,” “Victrix,” and the like; one, the “Alauda,” from the lark’s wings worn on the helmets; several which were made by dividing existing legions were known as “Gemina,” and some from their place of original recruiting, “Gallica,” “Italica,” etc.

[171] The centurion to whom St. Paul’s custody was intrusted (Acts XXVII, 1) was of the “Augustan band,” _i.e._ one of the somewhat numerous cohorts named for Augustus--the special number not being given.

[172] Also we know from the by-laws of these soldiers’ benefit clubs that every member was entitled to a fine funeral, to an allowance for travel money if obliged to go on a long journey, and finally to a fixed sum as consolation money in case he was demoted!

[173] The process of demilitarizing the population went so far that Trajan even discouraged the organization of regular bands of firemen in cities of Bithynia “lest they become the prey of factions”--_i.e._ somehow start a movement against the government.

[174] The Roman Empire has been rightly called a “military monarchy,” but was such only because the disarming of the civilian population and the extreme efficiency of the professional army put the former at the mercy of the latter. The imperial army and navy hardly exceeded 350,000 men, and _may_ have been as small as 300,000. At the time this book was written the United States, with a population not greatly exceeding that of the Roman Empire, had a total of some 250,000 men in its standing forces (army, navy, and marine corps) not counting any organized militia. Almost nobody would have pretended that the addition of some 100,000 men to this force could have rendered a “military monarchy” possible in America except as very peculiar conditions favored it--as they did in the Roman Empire.

[175] Bad Emperors, _e.g._ Domitian, made it a practice to _speak first_ in the Curia; any senator who later opposed their opinions was liable to charges of disloyalty. If, however, an Emperor spoke last he also left the groundlings miserable because they might unwittingly have opposed him.

[176] The last avowedly constitutional “Princeps” was Alexander Severus (murdered 235 A.D.); then followed the military monarchy. Aurelian (270–275 A.D.) took on practically all the trappings of a despot, and with Diocletian (284 A.D.) the absolute monarchy existed without concealment.

[177] The law required, however, a minimum of certain specified numbers for the passing of various important kinds of decrees.

[178] He did this because as holder of the military power it was unlawful for him to come inside the consecrated city limits (_pomerium_); so he built a suburban Senate House outside of these confines.

[179] So called because, being last on the Senate list, and seldom called upon to speak, they could express themselves with their “feet” only--_i.e._ by voting when they walked out in divisions of the house.

[180] Under the later Empire this statue (originally set up by Augustus) came to be looked upon as the “Palladium” of Rome and its removal from the Senate House in 384 A.D. by Valentinian the Second, despite vigorous protests by the pagan party, was looked upon as an official announcement of the triumph of Christianity.

[181] The other consul in 134 A.D. was Gaius Julius Servianius. The consuls would settle as to their presidency from day to day either by mutual agreement, by taking turns in rotation, or by the casting of lots.

[182] This trial follows closely the account of the prosecution of Marius Priscus, proconsul of Africa, before the Senate by Pliny the Younger and Tacitus the historian; but in Priscus’s trial the mere oratory actually took three whole days! (See Pliny the Younger: Book II, 11.)

[183] Any student interested in the coarse and violent personalities permissible in speeches before the Senate, should read Cicero’s speech “Against Piso.”

[184] Short-hand reports of the Senate meetings were taken, and seemingly embodied everything said, including even the applause and the unfriendly interruptions. We do not know, however, whether they were taken by senators, or by reporters brought in for the purpose.

[185] Apparently men not of prætorian rank rather seldom got the floor, although in highly important cases the presiding officer had to call for _sententiæ_ down through the ex-quæstors.

[186] As did, of course, Cicero in his “Orations against Verres,” and in other orations.

[187] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 135.

[188] Very few civil cases involving merely private rights would be heard by the Emperor, although they might by his deputy, the Prætorian Præfect. Claudius sometimes seems to have sat on the tribunal, out of a pedantic sense of duty, but often falling asleep until the advocates bawled “O Cæsar!” loudly enough to wake him.

[189] “Eloquence” was looked upon as indispensable for everybody expecting any kind of a public career. Even in the army there was much speech-making prior to a pitched battle. Tacitus speaks of how an army was so utterly surprised that its general “could neither harangue his men nor draw them up in battle array”--two operations apparently equally necessary. (Tacitus, “History,” iv, 33.)

[190] Litigants were required by law to take oath that before the trial they had not promised any sum to their advocates or entered into any bargain with them. After the trial they were “allowed” to “offer” their lawyers not over 10,000 sesterces if they wished.

[191] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 138.

[192] Space lacks for a discussion of the formal training of the Roman lawyer-orators, or concerning those public recitations which sometimes were the means of winning even greater reputation than any ordinary successes in the courts.

Some of these recitations in hired halls, with the audience carefully sprinkled with a paid claque, were worse than pedantic and artificial. Pliny the Younger, although he denounced the use of a claque, repeated with pleasure how he gave a reading from his own works and plays which lasted two days, “necessitated by the applause of my audience”; and boasted how he “had not allowed himself to skip one word.”

[193] The Roman week, _nundinæ_, had eight days--seven working days, then a market day. The Jewish week of seven days (_hebdomas_) became known to the Romans by the time of Pompeius Magnus, but it was not generally adopted until Christianity became the state religion.

[194] Undoubtedly along with this incessant bathing there often went the presence of much squalor, dirt, obnoxious insects, etc. which seem inescapable in Mediterranean countries. Probably many persons injured their health by excessive and debilitating bathing.

[195] An actual inscription. From the small provincial towns we have other inscriptions, advertising bath-houses “in city style (_more urbico_) and fitted with every convenience.”

[196] The great Baths of Caracalla (built _circ._ 215 A.D.) and those of Diocletian (_circ._ 300 A.D.) were not in existence, of course, in the days of Hadrian. Their ruins are at present among the most imposing in Rome, and they were probably somewhat larger than the Baths of Trajan, which are to-day nearly demolished, but their aspect and general arrangement were hardly different.

[197] Houses near private baths were counted undesirable for residence or investment purposes on account of the noise, which, in private baths, often kept up late into the night.

[198] The famous group of Laocoön and his sons, now in the Vatican, was found in the ruins of these Baths of Titus and Trajan.

[199] Petronius’s “Satyricon” gives a vivid and informing picture of the amusements and horseplay in the thermæ.

[200] The tepidarium in the later Baths of Diocletian was about 300 feet long by 92 feet wide, but probably that in the Baths of Trajan was somewhat smaller.

[201] The Tomb of Hadrian was not actually completed until 139 A.D.--after his death.

[202] Under the Republic the ædiles had to preside over very expensive games. Augustus, however, turned the _Cura Ludorum_ (“supervision of the games”) over to the prætors, and the ædiles only gave spectacles voluntarily.

[203] In the later Empire we hear of the case of Symmachus, an office-holder whose games cost him 2000 pounds of gold, about $400,000.

[204] Italian audiences stowed very close. According to the marking upon the stone seats in the theater at Pompeii, only 16 inches were allowed for each spectator.

[205] High-flying tragedies were indeed ground out by Seneca and by many inferior literary dabblers, but these “dramas” were hardly intended to be genuine acting plays, but only to be read aloud.

[206] The ancient orchestra was of course for the dances of the chorus never for seating the spectators.

[207] This figure seems decidedly too high; but the present ruinous state of the Circus Maximus makes it very difficult to determine the number more exactly.

[208] As many as ten cars could contend at once in the greatest games.

[209] The description of the Roman-style chariot race in Lew Wallace’s famous novel “Ben Hur” is technically as well as rhetorically admirable and accurate. However, no high-rank Roman, such as Messala is represented to have been, would have driven a quadriga in the public circus. The drivers were nearly always low-born men of provincial if not of servile origin.

[210] The Spanish bull fights at their very worst were a relatively harmless imitation.

[211] The gladiatorial games were never introduced in Athens. Once when, in the local council, it was proposed to imitate Rome and build an amphitheater, a prominent philosopher quashed the whole project by moving “first to abolish the altar of Pity.”

[212] Actual epithets bestowed on gladiators in the Pompeiian wall inscriptions.

[213] Taken from the “Gladiator Gossip” at Trimalchio’s Dinner in Petronius’s “Satyricon.”

[214] As we know from paintings showing the surroundings of the Amphitheater at Pompeii.

[215] Ordinarily it is stated that there was room for about 87,000 persons in the Flavian Amphitheater. There were seats, however, for only some 50,000, although possibly 20,000 more could find standing room in the great upper sections.

[216] The regular gladiatorial oath.

[217] Augustus once protested against the custom of eating in the amphitheater as being undignified and said he would prefer to go away and return. “That is all right for _you_,” answered his hearer, “but _your_ seat is sure to be kept for you!”

[218] There were at least two other types of heavy-armed gladiators who are often mentioned--the “Samnites” and the “Myrmillones”; but it hardly seems profitable to examine the small particulars in which their arms differed from those of the “Thracians.”

[219] An actual Roman epitaph. The Epicurean theory was capable of statement in much more pleasing language than is given above, but the effect of such a philosophy upon the ordinary human viewpoint and conduct was inevitable.

At the Roman colony of Thamugade in Africa, a checkerboard was found scratched in the pavement of the Forum, and beside it this plebeian version of the Prætor’s inscription: “_To hunt, to bathe, to gamble, to laugh--that’s living!_”

[220] In all the extensive correspondence of Pliny the Younger there is hardly a single reference indicating that he had any religious beliefs, or took the least interest in religious matters save as they involved outward ceremonies or official policies.

[221] This apparently continued true until well into the fourth century, when the whole pagan system was swept away by Christianity.

[222] Janus had no Greek counterpart. It was one of the absurdities of the late Græco-Latin mythology that his wife Diana (_Dia Jana_ = “Madame Goddess Jana”) should have been confounded with Artemis.

[223] Under the later Republic these sacred colleges were filled according to the majority vote of 17 tribes of the people, selected by lot from the entire 35 tribes into which the Comitia Tributa was divided.

[224] In early times the Pontifex Maximus also kept a kind of dry annals of sacred and profane events (_Annales Maximi_), valuable for the preservation of many facts in early Roman history.

[225] A general in the field had to “take the auspices” to get good omens for his army, but of course he could not always have an augur present. Once in the first Punic War, Publius Claudius, a consul about to engage in a naval battle, was disgusted to be told, “The chickens will not eat.” “Very well then,” he retorted, “let them drink!” and flung them into the sea. To his own ruin and to the vindication of the official religion he was thereupon completely defeated by the Carthaginians!

[226] These plants (_verbenæ_) seem to have been grown within one special inclosure on the Capitol hill. They were carried by one of the fetiales known as the _verbenarius_.

[227] A rustic goddess sometimes also called Ops.

[228] For a translation of this “Song of the Arval Brethren,” see the author’s “Readings in Ancient History,” vol. II, p. 6.

[229] As is well known Tiberius in his ignoble retirement on the Isle of Capri surrounded himself with “Chaldæans” and other types of stargazers and magicians.

[230] There were a few isolated survivals in Italy of the practices of ancient savagery. For example at Aricia, in Latium about 16 miles from Rome, there was a holy grove of Diana wherein the priest was always a runaway slave who obtained his position by killing his predecessor. He was then safe from pursuit as long as he remained in the grove, until another fugitive slave in turn killed him--and so on through a succession of tragedies!

[231] Pigs were very common Roman offerings and were the regular victims in most of the rustic sacrifices.

[232] Slightly adapted from the form of prayer given in Cato the Elder’s “Handbook on Agriculture.”

[233] This qualification of patrician birth was sometimes waived under the Empire, when genuine old-line patricians had become extremely few, but great pains were taken as to all the other requirements.

[234] Alone of all the important buildings in Rome, the Atrium Vestæ had no piped water-supply; everything had to be borne in by the vestals or (for non-religious purposes) by their numerous attendants.

[235] This did not prevent Vestals from attending the arena spectacles. The gladiators and persons thrown to the beasts had in theory a chance for life.

[236] It was quite proper to play “April Fool” jokes at the Saturnalia: _e.g._ to present what seemed a platter of delicious food when all the viands were actually of clay.

[237] Substantially on the scale of “Christmas presents.”

[238] Owing to rough dealings with the Senate, Hadrian himself came near missing deification, but Antoninus won his title of “Pius” by his zeal for vindicating his adoptive father’s memory. Antoninus Pius himself and Marcus Aurelius after him were, of course, promptly deified.

[239] Much of what we know of these cults of the pagan Orient comes from early Christian writers who have no hesitation in betraying the “Mysteries,” but whose statements naturally are often biased and very incomplete.

[240] The quotations are from Apuleius, “The Golden Ass” (book XI, _passim_), and are given at greater length in the author’s “Readings from Ancient History,” vol. II (Rome), pp. 282–284.

[241] Technically he was the highest archangel under the one actual god Ahura-Mazda, but the Persian “magi” soon attributed to him practical divinity.

[242] Nearly all our evidence for Mithraism is archæological; we know little of either its doctrines or its ritual. Apparently it had a system of priests not unlike the Christian clergy and a ceremony resembling the Christian sacrament. It owed its success largely to the real nobility of its doctrines, but could not in the end maintain itself by appealing simply to a remote myth, while Christianity was able to appeal to a personal Founder.

[243] Mithras worship was only beginning to be important in the Age of Hadrian, and the Taurobolium was then still comparatively rare; by 200 A.D. it had become decidedly common; by 300 A.D. it was very frequent indeed.

[244] From the age of Augustus to that of Nero Judaism had a considerable popularity in Rome. Its austere monotheism coupled with the mysterious Mosaic law and ceremonies made a considerable appeal to public opinion, and many fashionable persons--including apparently Nero’s Empress, the notorious Poppæa Sabina--gave “Jewish doctrines” a superficial patronage. It was also somewhat the fad to treat the Hebrew Sabbath as a kind of “holy day.” All this favor collapsed after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. The Jews became a scattered and persecuted sect, without influence. As for Christianity, after 70 A.D. it lost nearly all its Jewish element and became pretty strictly a Gentile religion.

[245] Tacitus undoubtedly obtained his statement about Christ and Pilate from the official government reports in the Roman Record Office. There is no reason to suppose that he, any more than his friend Pliny, investigated Christian sources.

[246] The following are _some_ only of the reasons why the Roman government insisted on persecuting the Christians, despite its usual policy of religious tolerance:

1. The Christians persistently refused to sacrifice to the
deified Emperors and to the Genius of the reigning Emperor,
an act practically amounting in common opinion to a denial
of loyalty to the government, or at least capable of that
construction.

2. The Christians demanded the repudiation of the old gods,
including, of course, the official gods of Rome; they were not
content with simply worshiping “Christus” along with Jupiter,
Apollo, etc. as were for example the devotees of Isis.

3. The Christians maintained a tight interior organization,
separate socially from the pagans, under the control of its
bishops, presbyters, and deacons, and so far as possible judging
the disputes of its members. This seemed meddling with political
matters, a ticklish business with any Emperor.

4. The private meetings of the Christians, and the
misconstructions laid upon their ceremonies, gave rise to the
vilest possible stories.

5. The great proportion of slaves and of the lowest grade of
plebeians in the early Church seemed to justify the belief that
here was a subversive, degraded, and illicit movement.

[247] An actual wall-picture. For the charges here given against Christian assemblies and for many gross details, see Minucius Felix (“Octavius” VIII, 9.), who quotes the stories in order to refute them.

It seems needless in a book concerned strictly with pagan Rome, to discuss the actual tenets and liturgies of the Early Christians. The only point to be understood here is the vile character of the charges brought against them by the ignorant heathen.

[248] Probably the Roman carriages were more convenient than anything known later in Europe prior to 1800; and travel facilities in general were as good, the inns possibly averaging worse but the roads decidedly better, than at the dawn of the Nineteenth Century.

[249] The following is an abridgment of Pliny the Younger’s well-known description of his Tuscan villa.

[250] The Romans delighted in formal and highly artificial gardens such as were in vogue in the Italian Renaissance and the France of Louis XIV.

[251] Well known, of course, is the famous dictum of Gibbon (“Decline and Fall of Roman Empire”: vol. i, chap. 2. Bury edition, p. 78): “If a man were called to fix the period during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.” From the standpoint of a believer in aristocracy or monarchy this opinion is largely justifiable.

[252] Where according to firm Christian tradition St. Paul was beheaded in the days of Nero, having been rearrested after having once been set at liberty.

[252] Where according to firm Christian tradition St. Paul was beheaded in the days of Nero, having been rearrested after having once been set at liberty.

Transcriber’s Notes:

1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.

2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the original.

3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been retained as in the original.

4. Italics are shown as _xxx_.

5. Bold print is shown as =xxx=.