Chapter XXXVIII: Aspects of Civilisation of the First Two Centuries of (1)

THE EMPIRE

THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES

In the first century of the empire the political circumstances of the world were in a deplorable condition. Power was entirely concentrated in Rome and the legions, and there the most shameful and degrading scenes occurred. The Roman aristocracy which had conquered the world, and which, in fact, alone had a share in the government under the rule of the Cæsars, gave themselves up to saturnalian crimes of the most unbridled kind ever witnessed.

Cæsar and Augustus, when instituting the imperial office, had clearly discerned the needs of their times. The world was politically so corrupt that no other form of government would have been possible. Since Rome had conquered numberless provinces, the ancient constitution, founded on the privileges of the patrician families, who were a species of obstinate and malevolent Tories, could no longer continue. But Augustus in leaving the future to chance had entirely neglected his political duty. Without legitimate heirs, without laws of election, without proper rules of adoption, without constitutional limits, Cæsarism was like an enormous weight on the deck of a ship without ballast. The most terrible upheavals were inevitable.

Three times in one century, under Caligula, under Nero, and under Domitian, the greatest power that has ever existed fell into the hands of execrable or extravagant men. The results were seen in horrors which have hardly been surpassed by the monsters of Mongolian dynasties.[36] In the fatal succession of rulers, we are almost reduced to making excuses for Tiberius, who was wholly wicked only towards the end of his life, or Claudius, who was only eccentric, wanting in judgment, and surrounded by evil counsellors.

The most shameful ignominies of the empire, such as the apotheosis of the emperor and his deification when still living, came from the East and more particularly from Egypt, which was then the most corrupt country in the world. The true Roman spirit still existed. Human nobility was far from being extinct. There was still great traditional pride in some families, who came into power with Nerva, who rendered the age of the Antonines glorious. An epoch during which such absolutely virtuous people lived as, for example, Quintilian, Pliny the Younger, and Tacitus [are reputed to have been], is not an epoch of which one need despair. Outward debauchery did not touch the great foundation of honesty and sobriety which still existed in good Roman society; a few families were still models of good conduct, of devotion to duty, of concord and solid virtue. Admirable wives and admirable sisters were still to be found in the houses of the patricians. Was there ever a more touching fate than that of the chaste and youthful Octavia, daughter of Claudius and wife of Nero, who remained pure in the midst of all this infamy, and was put to death at twenty-two years of age, without ever having known happiness? Women who in inscriptions are called _castissimæ_, _univiræ_ are not rare. Wives accompany their husbands into exile, others share their heroic death. The old Roman simplicity was not entirely lost, children were wisely and carefully educated. The most aristocratic women were known to work in wool; the vanities of the toilet were almost unknown in the best families.

(In the British Museum)]

Those excellent statesmen who under Trajan seemed to spring from the ground were not the product of the moment. They had been in office during the preceding reigns, only they had had but little influence, being kept in the background by the freedmen and infamous favourites of the emperor. Men of the greatest merit thus occupied high places under Nero. The framework was good, and the rise of the bad emperors to power, although disastrous, did not suffice to change the general order of things and the principles of the state. The empire, far from being decadent, was in all the vigour of a most robust youth. The decadence was to come two hundred years later, and strange to say under far less wicked emperors.

Politically the situation was analogous to that of France, which since the Revolution has never enjoyed a direct succession of its ruling powers, and can pass through perilous fortunes without hopelessly damaging its internal organisation and national force. We naturally compare the first century of the empire to the eighteenth century, an epoch absolutely corrupt if we judge from the collections of anecdotes belonging to the times, and during which certain families nevertheless maintained their austere customs.

Philosophy made alliance with the honest Roman families and offered a noble resistance. The school of stoics produced such grand characters as Cremutius Cordus, Thrasea, Helvidius Priscus, Annæus Cornutus, Musonius Rufus--all admirable upholders of aristocratic virtue. The rigidity and exaggeration of this school were due to the horrible cruelty of the government of the cæsars. The one idea of a man of real worth was to accustom himself to pain and to prepare for death. Lucan with bad taste, and Persius with superior talent, expressed the highest sentiments of a great spirit. Seneca the philosopher, Pliny the Elder, and Papirius Fabianus kept up a high standard of learning and philosophy. All were not corrupted; there were some shining lights; but too often their only alternative was death. The ignoble portion of humanity from time to time got the upper hand. The spirit of frenzy and of cruelty then burst forth and turned Rome into a veritable hell.

The government, which in Rome was so uncertain, was far better in the provinces, and the shocks which disturbed the capital were hardly felt there. In spite of its faults the Roman administration was far superior to the monarchies and republics which had disappeared through conquest. The reign of sovereign municipalities had passed away many centuries before. The small states had been killed by their egotism, their jealousy, their ignorance, and their disregard of private rights. The old Grecian life, made up of struggles entirely external, no longer satisfied the people. It had been charming in its day; but that brilliant Olympus, a democracy of demi-gods, having lost its freshness, had become hard, unfeeling, vain, superficial, for lack of sincerity and real uprightness. This was the cause which resulted in the Macedonian domination, followed by Roman rule.

The evils of excessive centralization were yet unknown to the empire. Up to the time of Diocletian the towns and provinces were allowed great liberty. In Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Lower Armenia, and Thrace there were independent kingdoms under the protection of Rome. These kingdoms only became sources of danger from the time of Caligula onwards, because the great and far-sighted policy which Augustus had traced with regard to them had not been carried out. The free towns--and they were numerous--governed themselves according to their own laws; they had legislative power and administered justice as in a self-governing country; until the third century, municipal decrees were promulgated with the formula, “the senate and the people.” Theatres served not only for scenic pleasures, they were everywhere centres of agitation and public opinion. The favour of the Romans towards the human race was the theme of some adulatory orations which were not, however, devoid of all sincerity. The doctrine of the “Roman peace,” the idea of a great democracy organised under the protection of Rome, was the basis of all thought. A Greek orator displayed vast learning in proving that the glory of Rome ought to be regarded by all the branches of the Hellenic race as a sort of common inheritance. As far as Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt are concerned, it may be said that the Roman conquest did not destroy a single liberty. Those countries were either indifferent to political life or had never known it.

In spite of the exactions of the governors and the acts of violence inseparable from absolute government, the world, in many ways, had never been so happy. An administration coming from a centre far away was such an advantage, that even the pillage of the prætors of the latter end of the republic did not succeed in rendering it odious. Moreover, the _lex Julia_ had greatly limited the field of abuses and extortion. Excepting under Nero, the follies or the cruelty of the emperor did not go beyond the Roman aristocracy and the immediate surroundings of the prince. Never had those who wished to leave politics alone lived in greater peace. The republic of ancient times, where everyone was forced into party quarrels, was not pleasant to live in; supersession and exile were too frequent.

Now it seemed as if the times were ripe for wide propagandism, superior to the quarrels of little towns, to the rivalries of dynasties. Attempts against liberty owed their origin to the independence which still remained to the provinces and communities, rather than to the Roman administration. In those conquered countries where political needs had not existed for several centuries, and where the people were deprived only of the power of tearing each other to pieces by continual warfare, the empire was an era of prosperity and welfare until then unknown and, we may add without paradox, of liberty. On the one hand the freedom of trade, and industry, and that personal liberty of which the Greek had no idea, became possible. On the other hand the freedom which consists in liberty of opinion could only be benefited by the new régime.

This liberty always gains in dealing with kings and princes more than in dealing with a jealous and narrow-minded middle class. The Greek republics had no such liberty of opinion. The Greeks achieved great things without it, thanks to the unequalled power of their genius, but for all that, Athens was actually under an inquisition. The inquisitor was the archon, the holy office was the royal portico where charges of impiety were tried. Accusations of this nature were very frequent--it was the favourite theme of Attic orators. Not only philosophical offences, such as denying God or providence, but the slightest offence against the municipal doctrines, preaching a strange religion, the most puerile omissions of the scrupulous laws pertaining to the mysteries, were crimes punished with death. The gods whom Aristophanes scoffed at on the stage could sometimes slay. They slew Socrates, they all but slew Alcibiades; Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Theodorus the atheist, Diagoras of Melos, Prodicus of Ceos, Stilpo, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Aspasia, Euripides, were more or less seriously threatened.

Liberty of thought was, in fact, the fruit of the kingdoms which sprang from the Macedonian conquest. Attalus and Ptolemy were the first to give to thinkers a liberty which none of the old republics had ever offered them. The Roman Empire continued on the same lines. There existed, under the empire, more than one severe law against philosophers, but that was on account of their meddling in politics. One might look in vain, in the collection of Roman laws previous to Constantine, for a passage against liberty of thought, or in the history of the emperors for a lawsuit about abstract doctrines. Not a scholar was disturbed. Men who would have been burned in the Middle Ages, such as Galen, Lucian, Plotinus, lived peacefully, protected by the law.

The empire inaugurated a period of liberty, in the sense that it abolished absolute government in families, towns, and tribes, and replaced or modified such governments by that of the state. Absolute power is even more vexatious than usual when it exercises its power in a narrower circle. The ancient republics and feudalism tyrannised over the individual more than the state has ever done. Granted that the Roman Empire, at certain epochs, cruelly persecuted Christianity, at least it did not kill it. The republics would have made it quite impossible; Judaism, if it had not felt the pressure of Roman authority, would have sufficed to crush it. It was the Roman magistrates who prevented the Pharisees from destroying Christianity.

A broad idea of universal brotherhood, the outcome for the most part of stoicism, and a kind of general sentiment of humanity were the fruit of the less narrow form of government, and of the less circumscribed education to which the individual was subjected. A new era and new worlds were dreamed of. The public wealth was great, and, in spite of the imperfections of the economic doctrines of the times, comfort was widespread. Manners were not what they are often imagined to be. In Rome, certainly, vice vaunted itself with revolting cynicism. Theatres, above all, had introduced horrible depravity; certain countries, such as Egypt, had also fallen to the lowest depths. But in the greater number of the provinces there existed a middle class, amongst whom kindness, conjugal fidelity, domestic virtue, and uprightness were sufficiently common.

Does there exist a more charming and ideal picture of family life in the world of the honest middle class of small towns than that described by Plutarch? What good nature, what peaceful habits, what chaste and amiable simplicity! Chæronea was certainly not the only town where life was so pure and innocent. There still remained in the general customs, even beyond Rome, something cruel, either as a relic of ancient habits, everywhere equally sanguinary, or through the special influence of Roman austerity. But there was improvement in that respect. What sweet and pure sentiment, what an impression of melancholy tenderness there is in the writings of Virgil and of Tibullus! The world was taking shape and losing its ancient rigour, acquiring freedom and moral sensibility. Principles of humanity spread everywhere; equality and abstract ideas of the rights of man were loudly preached by stoicism. Woman, thanks to the system of dowries under Roman law, became more and more her own mistress; rules as to the treatment of slaves were made--Seneca dined with his. Slaves were no longer necessarily the grotesque and evil beings who were introduced into Latin plays to be laughed at, and of whom Cato urges that they should be treated as beasts of burden. Times had changed. The slave was his master’s moral equal, and admittedly capable of virtue and fidelity, of which he gave proof. Prejudice concerning nobility of birth was diminishing.

Humane and just laws were passed even under the worst emperors. Tiberius was an able financier; he founded a system of land tenure on a sound basis. Nero introduced into the system of taxation, until then iniquitous and barbarous, improvements which might shame even the present day. The progress made in legislation was considerable, although the death penalty was much too common. Love for the poor, charity, and universal sympathy were accounted virtues.

The theatre was one of the scandals which gave the greatest offence to virtuous people, and one of the first causes to excite the antipathy of Jews and Judaisers of all kinds against the profane civilisation of the time. These gigantic cauldrons seemed to them sewers in which all the vices simmered. Whilst the front rows were applauding, scenes of the greatest repulsiveness and horror were often taking place on the upper benches. In the provinces gladiatorial combats were only established with difficulty. The Hellenic countries, at least, disapproved of them, and kept for the most part to the ancient Greek exercises. In the East, cruel games always preserved a marked stamp of their Roman origin. The Athenians, wishing to rival the Corinthians, having one day discussed the subject of imitating their barbarous games, a philosopher got up and proposed that first of all the altar of Pity should be overthrown. The horror of the theatre, the stadium, the gymnasium, that is of all public places which were the essential elements of a Greek or Roman town, was thus one of the deepest sentiments of the Christians, and one of those which had the greatest results.

Ancient civilisation was of a public kind; everything took place in the open air, before the assembled citizens; in opposition to ours, where life is private and secluded within the precincts of the home. The theatre had succeeded the agora and the Forum. The anathema hurled against the theatres reflected upon the whole of society. A deep rivalry was established between the church, on the one hand, and the public games on the other. The slave, hunted from the games, took refuge in the church. One cannot sit down in these gloomy arenas, which are always the best preserved remains of an ancient town, without seeing in spirit the struggle between the two classes; here, the poor honest man, seated in the last row, hiding his face and going out indignant, there a philosopher getting up suddenly and reproaching the crowd with its depravity.

These instances were rare in the first century. Nevertheless protestations began to be heard, and the theatre fell into disrepute. The legislation and administration of the empire was still in a state of chaos. The central despotism, municipal and provincial liberty, the caprice of governors, the outrages of independent communities, jostled each other violently. But religious liberty gained in these conflicts. The perfected autocratic government which was established from the time of Trajan was to be far more fatal to the newly born religion than the state of disorder, fertile in surprises, and the absence of a regular police which characterised the time of the cæsars.

The institutions for public relief, founded on the principle that the state has paternal duties towards its subjects, only developed to any great degree from the time of Nerva and Trajan onwards. A few instances of it are however found during the first century. There already existed asylums for children, organised distributions of food to the needy, fixed prices for bread with indemnities to the bakers, precautions for provisioning, premiums and insurance for ship-owners, bread bonuses, which permitted the purchase of corn at a reduced rate. All the emperors, without exception, showed the greatest solicitude for these questions, minor ones, perhaps, but such as at certain epochs took precedence of all others. In remote antiquity, it might be said, the world needed no charity. The world was then young and vigorous, almshouses were useless. The good and simple Homeric ethics, according to which the guest and the beggar come from Jupiter, are the ethics of a robust and gay adolescence.

Greece, in her classical age, enunciated the most exquisite maxims of pity, of beneficence, of humanity, without a latent thought of social anxiety or of melancholy. Man in that epoch was still healthy and happy, evil could not be realised. With respect to mutual assistance the Greeks were far in advance of the Romans. No liberal and benevolent disposition came from that cruel aristocracy which exercised such oppressive sway during the republic. At the time of which we are writing the colossal fortunes of the aristocracy, luxury, the concentration of population in certain places, and especially the hardness of heart peculiar to the Roman and his aversion to pity, resulted in the birth of “pauperism.” The kindness shown by certain emperors towards the riff-raff of Rome only aggravated the danger. Bribery and the _tesseræ frumentariæ_ not only encouraged the vice of idleness, but brought no remedy to misery. In this particular, as in many others, the East was really superior to the Western world. The Jews had true charitable institutions. The temple of Egypt seemed to have possessed alms-boxes. The college of monks and nuns of the Serapeum of Memphis was also, in a manner, a charitable institution. The terrible crisis through which mankind was passing in the capital of Europe was little felt in remote lands, where everyday life had remained more simple. The reproach of having poisoned the earth, the comparison of Rome to a courtesan who has poured out to the world the wine of her immorality, was true in many ways. The provinces were better than Rome, or rather the impure elements from all parts, accumulating in Rome as in a sink, had formed an infectious spot where the old Roman virtues were stifled and where good seed germinated slowly.[b]

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS

But it is the life of the capital itself that must chiefly claim our attention here. Let us turn from the glowing generalities of Renan to a more specific consideration of some important phases of the everyday life of the people in the great centre to which all roads were said to lead.

In the early days of the empire, Rome was in the crisis of that transitional state which most great capitals have experienced, when a rapid increase in their population and in the transactions of daily life has begun to outstrip the extension of their means of accommodation. The increase of numbers must necessarily multiply the operations of industry, which cross and recross each other in the streets of a great city; and though neither the commerce nor manufactures of Rome were conducted on the scale to which our ideas are accustomed, the retail traffic which passed from hand to hand, and the ordinary affairs of business and pleasure, must have caused an ever increasing stir and circulation among the vast assemblage of human beings collected within its walls. The uninterrupted progress of building operations, and the extension of the suburbs simultaneously with the restoration of the city, must have kept every avenue constantly thronged with wagons and vehicles of all sorts, engaged in the transport of the cumbrous materials employed therein; the crush of these heavy-laden machines, and the portentous swinging of the long beams they carried round the corners of the narrow streets, are mentioned among the worst nuisances and even terrors of the citizen’s daily walk.

Neither of the rival institutions of the shop and the bazaar had been developed to any great extent in ancient Rome. A vast number of trades was exercised there by itinerant vendors. The street cries, which have almost ceased within our own memory in London, were rife in the city of the cæsars. The incessant din of these discordant sounds is complained of as making existence intolerable to the poor gentleman who is compelled to reside in the midst of them. The streets were not contrived, nor was it possible generally to adapt them, for the passage of the well-attended litters and cumbrous carriages of the wealthy, which began to traverse them with the pomp and circumstance of our own aristocratic vehicles of a century since;[37] while the police of the city seems never to have contemplated the removal of the most obvious causes of crowd and obstruction, in the exhibition of gymnastic and gladiatorial spectacles, of conjurors’ tricks and the buffoonery of the lowest class of stage-players, in the centre of the most frequented thoroughfares.

The noble never crossed his threshold without a numerous train of clients and retainers; the lower people congregated at the corners of the streets to hear the gossip of the day and discuss the merits of racers and dancers; the slaves hovered over the steam of the open cookshops, or loitered, on their masters’ errands, to gaze on the rude drawings or pore over the placards on the walls. The last century had filled the imperial capital with multitudes of foreigners, attracted from curiosity as much as from motives of business to the renowned emporium of the wonders of the world, who added to the number of idlers and loungers in the streets of Rome; men of strange costumes and figures and, when they spoke, of speech still stranger, who, while they gazed around them with awe and admiration, became themselves each a centre of remark to a crowd of wondering citizens. The marked though casual manner in which the throng of the streets is noticed by the Roman writers, shows, in the strongest way, how ordinary a feature it was of life in the city.

The streets, or rather the narrow and winding alleys, of Rome were miserably inadequate to the circulation of the people who thus moved along or thronged them; for the vici were no better than lanes or alleys, and there were only two viæ, or paved ways, fit for the transport of heavy carriages, the Sacra and the Nova, in the central parts of the city. The three interior hills, the Palatine, the Aventine, and the Capitoline, were sore impediments to traffic; for no carriages could pass over them, and it may be doubted whether they were even thoroughfares for foot passengers. The occurrence, not unusual, of a fire or an inundation, or the casual fall of a house, must have choked the circulation of the life-blood of the city. The first, indeed, and the last of these, were accidents to which every place of human resort is liable; but the inundations of Rome were a marked and peculiar feature of her ancient existence.

Augustus, with far-seeing economic sagacity, was anxious to employ all men of rank and breeding in practical business, while at the same time he proposed to them his own example as a follower both of the Muses and the Graces. The Roman noble rose ordinarily at daybreak, and received at his levée the crowd of clients and retainers who had thronged the steps before his yet closed door from the hours of darkness. A few words of greeting were expected on either side, and then, as the sun mounted the eastern sky, he descended from his elevated mansion into the Forum. He might walk surrounded by the still lingering crowd, or he might be carried in a litter; but to ride in a wheeled vehicle on such occasions was no Roman fashion.[38] Once arrived in the Forum, he was quickly immersed in the business of the day. He presided as a judge in one of the basilicas, or he appeared himself before the judges as an advocate, a witness, or a suitor. He transacted his private affairs with his banker or notary; he perused the public journal of yesterday, and inquired how his friend’s cause had sped before the tribunal of the prætor. At every step he crossed the path of some of the notables of his own class, and the news of the day and interests of the hour were discussed between them with dignified politeness.

Such were the morning occupations of a _dies fastus_, or working day: the holy day had its appropriate occupation in attendance upon the temple services, in offering a prayer for the safety of the emperor and people, in sprinkling frankincense on the altar, and, on occasions of special devotion, appeasing the gods with a sacrifice. But all transactions of business, secular or divine, ceased at once when the voice of the herald on the steps of the Hostilian Curia proclaimed that the shadow of the sun had passed the line on the pavement before him, which marked the hour of midday. Every door was now closed; every citizen, at least in summer, plunged into the dark recesses of his sleeping chamber for the enjoyment of his meridian slumber. The midday siesta terminated, generally speaking, the affairs of the day, and every man was now released from duty and free to devote himself, on rising again, to relaxation or amusement till the return of night. If the senate had been used sometimes to prolong or renew its sittings, there was a rule that after the tenth hour, or four o’clock, no new business could be brought under its notice, and we are told of Asinius Pollio that he would not even open a letter after that hour.

Meanwhile Rome had risen again to amuse and recreate itself, and the grave man of business had his amusements as well as the idler of the Forum. The exercises of the Field of Mars were the relaxation of the soldiers of the republic; and when the urban populace had withdrawn itself from military service, the traditions of the Campus were still cherished by the upper ranks, and the practice of its mimic war confined, perhaps, exclusively to them. The swimming, running, riding, and javelin-throwing of this public ground became under the emperors a fashion of the nobility: the populace had no taste for such labours, and witnessed perhaps with some surprise the toils to which men voluntarily devoted themselves who possessed slaves to relieve them from the most ordinary exertions of the day. But the young competitors in these athletic contests were not without a throng of spectators; the porticoes which bordered the field were crowded with the elder people and the women, who shunned the heat of the declining sun; many a private dwelling looked upon it from the opposite side of the river, which was esteemed on that account a desirable place of residence. Augustus had promised his favour to every revival of the gallant customs of antiquity, and all the Roman world that lived in his smiles hastened to the scene of these ancient amusements to gratify the emperor, if not to amuse themselves.

The ancients, it was said, had made choice of the Field of Mars for the scene of their mimic warfare for the convenience of the stream of the Tiber, in which the weary combatants might wash off the sweat and dust, and return to their companions in the full glow of recruited health and vigour. But the youth of Rome in more refined days were not satisfied with these genial ablutions. They resorted to warm and vapour-baths, to the use of perfumes to enhance the luxury of refreshment.

The Romans had, indeed, a universal and extraordinary fondness for the bath, which degenerated in their immoderate use of it into a voluptuous and enervating luxury. The houses of the opulent were always furnished with chambers for this purpose; they had their warm and cold baths as well as their steam apparatus, and the application of oil and perfumes was equally universal among them. From the earliest times there were perhaps places of more general resort, where the plebeian paid a trifling sum for the enjoyment of this luxury; and among other ways of courting popular favour was that of subsidising the owners of these common baths, and giving the people the free use of them for one or more days. Agrippa carried this mode of popular bribery to excess. Besides the erection of lesser baths to the number of 170, he was the first to construct public establishments of the kind, or thermæ, in which the citizens might assemble in large numbers, and combine the pleasure of purification with the exercise of gymnastic sports; while at the same time their tastes might be cultivated by the contemplation of paintings and sculptures, and by listening to song and music.

The Roman, however, had his peculiar notion of personal dignity, and it was not without a feeling of uneasiness that he stripped himself in public below the waist, however accustomed he might be to exhibit his chest and shoulders in the performance of his manly exercises. The baths of Mæcenas and Agrippa remained without rivals for more than one generation, though they were ultimately supplanted by imperial constructions on a far more extensive scale. In the time of Augustus the resort of women to the public baths was forbidden, if indeed such an indecorum had yet been imagined. At a later period, whatever might be the absence of costume among the men, the women at least were partially covered. An ingenious writer has remarked on the effect produced on the spirits by the action of air and water upon the naked body. The unusual lightness and coolness, the disembarrassment of the limbs, the elasticity of the circulation, combine to stimulate the sensibility of the nervous system. Hence the thermæ of the great city resounded with the shouts and laughter of the bathers, who, when emerged from the water and resigned to the manipulations of the barbers and perfumers, gazed with voluptuous languor on the brilliant decorations of the halls around them, or listened with charmed ears to the singers and musicians, and even to the poets who presumed upon their helplessness to recite to them their choicest compositions.

SUPPERS AND BANQUETS

The bath was a preparation for the _cæna_ or supper, which deserves to be described as a national institution; it had from the first its prescriptions and traditions, its laws and usages; it was sanctified by religious observances, and its whole system of etiquette was held as binding as if it had had a religious significance. Under the protection of the gods to whom they poured their libations, friends met together for the recreation equally of mind and body. If the conversation flagged, it was relieved by the aid of minstrels, who recited the gallant deeds of the national heroes; but in the best days of the republic the guests of the noble Roman were men of speech not less than of deeds, men instructed in all the knowledge of their times, and there was more room to fear lest their converse should degenerate into the argumentative and didactic than languish from the want of matter or interest.

It is probable, however, that the table talk of the higher classes at Rome was peculiarly terse and epigrammatic. Many specimens have been preserved to us of the dry, sententious style which they seem to have cultivated; their remarks on life and manners were commonly conveyed in solemn or caustic aphorisms, and they condemned as undignified and Greekish any superfluous abundance in the use of words. The graceful and flowing conversations of Cicero’s dialogues were imitated from Athenian writings, rather than drawn after the types of actual life around him. “People at supper,” said Varro, himself not the least sententious of his nation, “should neither be loquacious nor mute; eloquence is for the Forum, silence for the bed chamber.” Another rule of the same master of etiquette, that the number of the guests should not exceed nine, the number of the Muses, nor fall short of three, the number of the Graces, was dictated by a sense of the decorous proprieties of the Roman banquet, which the love of ostentation and pride of wealth were now constantly violating.

Luxury and the appetite for excitement were engaged in multiplying occasions of more than ordinary festivity, on which the most rigid of the sumptuary laws allowed a wider license to the expenses of the table. On such high days the numbers of the guests were limited neither by law nor custom; the entertainer, the master or father, as he was called, of the supper, was required to abdicate the ordinary functions of host, and, according to the Greek custom, a king of the wine or arbiter of the drinking, was chosen from among themselves by lot, or for his convivial qualities, by the bacchanalian crew around him.

Our own more polished but not unmanly taste must look with amazement and even disgust at the convivial excesses of the Romans at this period, such as they have themselves represented them to us. Their luxury was a coarse and low imitation of Greek voluptuousness; and for nothing perhaps did the Greeks more despise their rude conquerors than for the manifest failure of their attempts at imitating the vices of their betters.

The Romans vied with one another in the cost rather than the elegance of their banquets, and accumulated with absurd pride the rarest and most expensive viands on their boards, to excite the admiration of their parasites, not to gratify their palates. Cleopatra’s famous conceit, in dissolving the pearl in vinegar, may have been the fine satire of an elegant Grecian upon the tasteless extravagance of her barbarian lover. Antony, indeed, though he degraded himself to the manners of a gladiator, was a man of noble birth, and might have imbibed purer tastes at the tables of the men of his own class; but the establishment of the imperial régime thrust into the high places of society a number of low-born upstarts, the sons of the speculators and contractors of the preceding generation, who knew not how to dispense with grace the unbounded wealth their sires had accumulated.

(After De Montfaucon)]

Augustus would fain have restrained these excesses, which shamed the dignified reserve which he wished to characterise the imperial court; he exerted himself by counsel and example, as well as by formal enactments, to educate his people in the simpler tastes of the older time, refined but not yet enervated by the infusion of Hellenic culture.[39] His laws, indeed, shared the fate of the sumptuary regulations of his predecessors, and soon passed from neglect into oblivion. His example was too austere, perhaps, to be generally followed even by the most sedulous of his own courtiers. He ate but little, and was content with the simplest fare: his bread was of the second quality, at a time when the best was far less fine than ours; and he was satisfied with dining on a few small fishes, curds or cheese, figs and dates, taken at any hour when he had an appetite rather than at regular and formal meals. He was careful, however, to keep a moderately furnished table for his associates, at which he commonly appeared himself, though he was often the last to arrive, and the first to retire from it.

The ordinary arrangement of a Roman supper consisted of three low couches, disposed, horse-shoe fashion, before a low table, at which the attendant slaves could minister without incommoding the recumbent guests. Upon each couch three persons reclined, a mode which had been introduced from Greece, where it had been in use for centuries, though not from heroic times. The Egyptians and Persians sat at meat; so, till the Greeks corrupted them, did also the Jews; the poetical traditions of Hellas represented the gods as sitting at their celestial banquets. The Macedonians also, down to the time of Alexander, are said to have adopted the more ordinary practice; and such was the custom at Rome till a late period. When the men first allowed themselves the indulgence of reclining, they required boys and women to maintain an erect posture, from notions of delicacy; but in the time of Augustus no such distinction was observed, and the inferiority of the weaker sex was only marked by setting them together on one of the side couches, the place of honour being always in the centre.

Reclined on stuffed and cushioned sofas, leaning on the left elbow, the neck and right arm bare and his sandals removed, the Roman abandoned himself, after the exhaustion of the palæstra and the bath, to all the luxury of languor. His slaves relieved him from every effort, however trifling; they carved for him,[40] filled his cup for him, supplied every dish for him with such fragmentary viands as he could raise to his mouth with his fingers only, and poured water upon his hands at every remove. Men of genius and learning might amuse themselves with conversation alone; those for whom this resource was insufficient had many other means of entertainment to resort to. Music and dancing were performed before them; actors and clowns exhibited in their presence; dwarfs and hunchbacks were introduced to make sport for them; Augustus himself sometimes escaped from these miserable vulgarities by playing at dice between the courses; but the stale wit and practical humour, with which in many houses the banquet seems to have been seasoned, give us a lower idea of the manners of the Roman gentlemen than any perhaps of these trifling pastimes. The vulgarity, however, of the revellers of Rome was far less shocking than their indecency, and nothing perhaps contributed more to break down the sense of dignity and self-respect, the last safeguard of pagan virtue, than the easy familiarity engendered by their attitude at meals.

Some persons, indeed, men no doubt of peculiar assurance and conceit, ventured to startle the voluptuous languor of the supper-table by repeating their own compositions to the captive guests. But for the most part the last sentiments of expiring liberty revolted against this intolerable oppression. The Romans compounded for the inviolate sanctity of their convivial hours by surrendering to the inevitable enemy a solid portion of the day. They resigned themselves to the task of listening as part of the business of the morning.[c]

Banquets of a more pretentious order played a very important part in the life of the Romans of all classes. Anniversaries, religious festivals, the necessity also that those who belonged to the same college should treat common affairs together, or simply the desire of spending life more enjoyably, had multiplied them during the empire to an unlimited degree. Men of distinction especially sought at them the pleasure of conversing freely with their friends. During the endless and capricious conversations politics were not forgotten. What was said after dinner, when the heat of festivity had animated the guests and loosened their tongues was not always favourable to the imperial government. It was during one of these repasts that the prætor Antistius read those insulting verses concerning Nero which led to his banishment. As has just been said, however, the banquet-hall was not the place usually chosen for reading verses or other compositions. Freer scope for this and for the public promulgation of serious ideas in general was found in the so-called “circles.”

THE CIRCLES

It is not so easy to know what was meant by the circles. To form an exact idea of them, the habits of the ancient nations must be taken into account. In those delightful climates people do not remain shut up all day at home; on the contrary, the day is generally spent out of doors. The inhabitants of Rome when they were not at the theatre or the circus walked about looking at the perpetual sights the Eternal City offered to the curious of all nations. They went about the streets, they stopped in the public squares, seated themselves when they were tired, on the benches and _exedræ_, with which the public places were supplied. These groups of idlers, gathered together to look at something or to talk, were called _circuli_. They collected especially in the Campus Martius and in the Forum, around the quacks selling their remedies, the showmen with their rare or performing animals and those who performed feats of strength. Sometimes a miserable poet, unhappy at having no readers, took advantage of these groups to venture to spout his verses to the assembly. Very often they were gathered together only to listen to those people who posed as persons of importance, and professed to be well informed. There were a great number of such in Rome, and at times of crisis, in those moments of anxiety and expectation when men are anxious to hear what they tremble to know, they acquired much credit. After having listened to them, everybody gave his opinion. Blame or praise was gravely meted out to the generals, plans of campaign were made, and treaties of peace discussed. Towards the end of the republic and during the beginning of the empire these street politicians assembled together at the foot of the tribune reserved for speeches, which won them the name of _subrostrani_. Thence were spread gloomy rumours which alarmed Rome. It was said that the Parthians had invaded Armenia, that the Germani had crossed the Rhine, and the crowd that listened to this sinister news did not always spare the emperor and his ministers, who were not taking strong enough measures for the protection of the frontiers. The emperor had consequently taken steps to have these bold speakers watched. He sent disguised soldiers who mingled in these groups, and reported to their chiefs what they had heard.

These open-air discussions which the spies of the prince could hear, were thus not without danger. Those who did not care to run the risk of being ruined took care to say nothing there; they only spoke out in company in which they thought themselves safe. Besides, opportunities for speaking were not wanting. I do not doubt that there existed in Rome at that time something similar to what is nowadays called society, that is to say, meetings of people, usually unknown to each other, of different origin and fortune, who have no affairs to discuss, no common interests to debate, and who in collecting only seek the pleasure of being together. What is for us the peculiar characteristic of society, that the women freely associate with the men, was often found at Rome also. It was not forbidden to the women to appear at the banquets, even when strangers to the family were invited, and Cornelius Nepos tells us that nobody was astonished to see a Roman taking his wife with him when he went to dine out, a thing which would have greatly shocked the Greeks. Thus repasts were already social assemblies, but it may be safely asserted that there were many others although accounts of them have not reached us. I even believe that as early as the first century, the habit of living together had sometimes given rise to a certain gallantry between the two sexes, hitherto unknown in ancient society, and which at moments might resemble the customs of our seventeenth century. Here is the portrait which Martial sketches, of a dandy of his time: “A dandy is a man whose hair is nicely parted, who breathes perfumes, who hums between his teeth songs from Spain and Egypt, and knows how to beat time with his hairless arms; he does not leave the chairs of the ladies during the whole day, he has always something to whisper in their ears, knows all the scandal of Rome, will tell you the name of the woman with whom so-and-so is in love, whose society another person frequents, and knows by heart the genealogy of the horse Hirpinus.” It seems to me this dandy is not very different from Molière’s marquis, and like him he has the habit of not “leaving the chairs of the ladies.” There were some people at Rome whose assiduity took them far; and Tacitus tells us of a consul, a clever man, and a terrible banterer as well, who owed his political rank to the influence of women.

When men are alone together they discuss and discourse; in presence of ladies they are forced to converse. Seneca described wonderfully well these society conversations where everything was treated and nothing thoroughly discussed, and where one subject followed another so easily. In a few hours the conversation of these clever people wandered far from the starting-point. They talked doubtless much of themselves and other people. The habit of living together encouraged a taste for studying each other, and everyone’s passions and characteristics became thoroughly known. In that immense town, which might easily, as Lucan says, have contained the whole world, where so many bitter battles were waged daily to conquer power and wealth, subjects of study were not wanting to these worldly moralists. They collected amusing anecdotes of well-known people and came in the evening to relate them to their friends. Literature was also an absorbing topic. The whole of Roman society liked and cultivated it. As a rule Romans were orators by occupation; poets simply as a means of distraction. A little poetry flourished in those days which has not lived until our time; it did not deserve to live, being merely written to charm the elegant society of those days. As in the time of the Abbé Delille, games of dice or chess, fishing and swimming, dancing and music, the art of ordering a dinner or receiving guests, were all sung in verse. However agreeable this poetry might be, it could not always charm, and new subjects had constantly to be thought of to animate the conversation. It was thus that, when literature and scandal had been thoroughly exhausted, politics followed in the natural course.

It is quite conceivable that much raillery was indulged in by these clever people who above everything did not wish to appear fools, and would not take seriously all the comedies that were being played in the senate. Reserved and sharp lookers-on, little disposed towards any kind of enthusiasm, they must have smiled at the excessive flattery with which the prince was overwhelmed, and the deification of the dead or living emperor must have left them quite unmoved. Society generally develops a leaning towards irony; to know how to lash a neighbour agreeably is doubtless a very estimable quality, and probably it was valued still more when this neighbour was an emperor. A dangerous game it must have been, and raillery aimed so high might have cost dear, but danger was not a sufficient reason for stopping a joke when it was clever and appreciated. “I cannot be sorry,” said Seneca, “for those people who would rather lose their heads than a clever saying.” In this charming but frivolous society, nobody would miss uttering a clever repartee, even at the risk of losing his head. All had to compensate themselves for the restraint they had gone through in the senate, where they were forced to have smiling faces and to second the praises which were showered upon the prince by his friends. They always left dissatisfied with themselves and with others, their hearts filled with rage that must find vent. They expressed themselves freely directly they were sure of being amongst friends whom they could trust. In these secret meetings they above all liked to communicate news “which could not be spoken of or listened to without danger.”

Rome was then overrun by those bearers of news which newspapers and telegraphy have done away with. We met some just now in the clubs; they were still more numerous in society gatherings. They knew everything that was being talked of in the army and in the provinces, and gave the most precise information on whatever happened. When an important personage died, they related all the circumstances of his death, they said without hesitation who had held the dagger or poured out the poison. Such a number of wicked rumours had never circulated in Rome as since the right of free speech had been denied the people. The authorities in trying to find those who spread the rumours only gave them more credit than they deserved. Besides it is in nature with difficulty to believe what is openly told and to accept without a word what is whispered in the ear. Thus all measures taken by the government were used against itself. Everything became known; everything was believed; reasons were found for everything; and the most natural reasons were not those most readily believed; to be listened to it was necessary to imagine strange and improbable explanations for everything.

(In the British Museum)]

This opposition took many different forms and changed according to circumstances. Sometimes it was very much on the surface, at others it was hidden in the shade, but bold or timid, visible or hidden, it never died out, and it was this suppleness and obstinacy which composed its strength. Sometimes it dared to reveal itself to all through the medium of a pamphlet; one of those satirical testaments, for example, which it was the fashion to invent for important personages, in which the dead said exactly what they thought of the living. Sometimes it took the form of malicious verses which were whispered around, and after having travelled through every rank of this discontented population ended by being written, by an unknown hand, on the walls of the Forum. “Tiberius disdains wine,” they said, “now that he thirsts for blood; he drinks blood to-day as formerly he drank wine.” If this audacity seemed too risky, they fell back on malicious allusions which were easily grasped by wide-awake minds. When these allusions were followed up and punished, a few furtive words were exchanged by friends at meeting. If it became impossible to speak at all there was an eloquence in the people’s silence, which showed what they were thinking of, and means were found to render even silence seditious.

PUBLIC READINGS

Public lectures or readings became the fashion about the middle of the reign of Augustus--they were introduced by Pollio. They attained rapid success, which is not to be wondered at, taking into account the occupations and tastes of the people of that period. Literature was much liked, and if we believe Horace, nearly everyone cherished a belief in his ability to write. It is never customary to keep one’s writings for one’s self, seeming sin not to let them be known to the public. Unfortunately in antiquity books could not be so easily propagated as to-day. Those of celebrated writers spread quickly enough and went far, but the others ran the risk of remaining in obscurity. Thus the authors, to escape this sad destiny and to make themselves known in some manner, thought of reading their words in public, thereby saving their works from the death which threatened them. If these authors were poor they went where crowds were likely to gather, to the Forum, under the porticoes, in the public baths; they even stopped the passers-by and spouted their poetry to them at the risk of being hissed or torn to pieces, if the people were not in a humour to listen to them. If rich they invited their clients and friends to dinner, treated them well, and took advantage of their gratitude to cause themselves to be listened to and admired. Horace tells us the amusing story of a terrible creditor who gathered together his insolvent victims on the day of reckoning to read to them the very dull works he had written; they had to come or pay. In order to obtain leniency the unfortunate guests had to bend their backs as resigned victims and applaud.