Chapter XXXVIII: Aspects of Civilisation of the First Two Centuries of (2)

Pollio was not poor enough to have to resort to the public places nor foolish enough to be satisfied with bought praise. He wished particularly to have his tragedies and tales become known. This vain person who had helped Cæsar and Octavius to the first place was not satisfied with the second, and expected to obtain in literature the importance and place that he had failed to get in politics. This gave him the idea of choosing a room in a house, of arranging it like a theatre, that is, with an orchestra and galleries, and inviting by tickets people whom he knew or wished to know, to come to hear his works read. Soon others followed his example, and it was soon the fashion to do nothing else in Rome during the months of April and August but to assemble in these lecture rooms.

It is easy to form an idea of the sentiments brought by the guests to these literary festivals. Auditors and lecturers belonged, as a rule, to the best society, and shared in all the hates and prejudices of the upper class. Opposition, as it may be supposed, flourished in these public lectures. It was here that one could speak, when speech was not forbidden; here that Titinius Capito, after the death of Domitian, read the story of his victims. It was a duty to come and listen. “It seemed,” says Pliny, “that we were listening to the melancholy praises of the victims who had not been given funeral honours.” Under the harsh rulers caution was naturally necessary, yet nevertheless a way was found to speak. In the darkest times of the reign of Nero, Curiatius Maternus, the poet, dared to read a poem full of disagreeable allusions to the emperor. He continued, under Vespasian, his little war of epigrams. “He read one day of Cato, and forgot himself,” says Tacitus, “to think only of his hero.” Applause was not wanting to the bold tirades of the poet; the next day the whole of Rome spoke about his audacity and the dangers to which it would expose him.

The tragedies of Curiatius Maternus are lost, but those of Seneca remain, and give us an idea of what was allowed to be said in the lecture rooms. These works are second rate, and could be judged very severely if considered in the light of plays for the theatre, or if compared to the works of Sophocles and Euripides. It must be remembered, however, that they were not written for the stage, being destined for public reading. They are drawing-room tragedy, hence must not be treated as tragedy for the theatre. This order of play may seem unworthy or false; it can be severely condemned; it is a distinct order, nevertheless, and is not subject to the rules that govern others; also, having a different public, certain defects are necessary to enable it to please. Seneca, who was eager to succeed, submitted to these conditions willingly. His aim was to flatter the tastes of his audience, and he knew that he could interest them only by speaking of their times and their friends; he did this openly and without hesitation; it might be said from the way he expressed himself that he wished them to see for themselves that the present interested him more than the past; that he was always thinking of Rome even when speaking of Argos or of Thebes. This is why political allusions are so frequent in his works.[e]

LIBRARIES AND BOOK-MAKING

It must not be supposed, however, that the author in Rome depended solely upon verbal utterance for the circulation of his ideas. Nothing could be further from the fact. The publishing no less than the writing of books was a recognised form of business and one that apparently flourished.

Notwithstanding the entire loss of all the books produced in Rome in the early days, we are supplied with tolerably full information as to the making and use of books there during the later period of the republic, and throughout the empire.

The private library discovered at Herculaneum gives a perfectly clear idea of the way in which the books were kept in an ordinary house. This library contained seventeen hundred books. It was so small a room, however, that all its shelves could be reached from its centre. The books themselves, consisting of rolls, were contained in round cases called _capsæ_, and we have the further evidence of various statues and pictures, as well as written descriptions, to prove that this was the usual method of caring for manuscripts.

The books of this period were always in rolls, never folded after the modern method. This applies not merely to papyrus books, but to the parchment ones also. Generally the strip of papyrus or parchment was inserted at one end into a slit in a reed or cane about which the manuscript was rolled as written. Usually a corresponding cane was supplied at the other end after the book was completed, so that the book could be rolled either way, thus greatly facilitating the reading. Presumably the book as ordinarily kept ready for use would be rolled on the lower reed, so that anyone unrolling it began at once with the first column, the columns being arranged transversely. A tag or label was usually attached to the manuscript, and these tags are represented in the paintings on the walls of Pompeii as projecting from the cases in which the books are stored. The length of a papyrus or parchment strip varied indefinitely, but it appears to have been usual to write an entire book of any given work on a single strip. The relatively short books into which most classical works were divided facilitated this method; or perhaps it became customary to divide works into small books for the convenience of the scribe, rather than because of any logicality in the method itself.

It appears that in the later Roman times it was quite the fashion to have a library in every ordinary house, and some of these libraries attained very respectable proportions. Thus it is said that the grammarian Epaphroditus had a library of thirty thousand volumes, and that Sammanicus Serenus had one of sixty-two thousand volumes. The fact that Augustus confiscated two thousand copies of the pseudo-sibylline oracles testifies to the wide prevalence of the reading, or at least the book-buying, habit. No doubt this distinction between the buying and the reading of books should be clearly drawn in the case of the Romans as elsewhere. Still, it will not do to draw too sweeping conclusions from the sneers of Seneca and Cicero, which are so often quoted as implying that the Romans bought books as ornaments, rather than for their contents. Doubtless the reproach was true then as now of a large number of purchasers; still, the making and the selling of books must always imply the existence of a taste for books, and such a fashion could never have come into vogue unless a very large number of people were actually book readers. In point of fact, the book business in Rome assumed proportions that seem almost incredible. Book stores were numerous in the more frequented parts of the city, and, as far as one can learn, the trade flourished quite in the modern fashion. Within the shop the rolls were ranged on shelves for the inspection of the would-be purchaser, and outside on pillars were advertised the names of the authors represented.

Naturally enough, when private libraries were the fashion there were numerous public libraries as well. According to Publius Victor, there were no fewer than twenty-nine of these public libraries in Rome. Asinius Pollio, the friend of Cæsar, and the famous patron of literature of his time, who died in the year 6 B.C., was credited with being the founder of the first public library, although there is a tradition that Orielus Paullus, the conqueror of Macedonia, brought back with him to Rome a large collection of books in 168 B.C. Be that as it may, there probably was no very great taste for reading in Rome at that early period, and it was not until the time of Augustus that public libraries began to assume real importance.

Augustus himself, carrying out the intention of Julius Cæsar, founded two public libraries, one called the Octavian, and the other the Palatine. From that time the founding of public libraries became a fashion with the emperors, Tiberius, Vespasian, Domitian, and Trajan successively adding to the number, the most famous collection of all being the Ulpian library of Trajan. No available data have come down to us as to the exact size of these libraries, but the respectable proportions of some of the private collections make it a safe inference that some, at least, of these public libraries must have contained hundreds of thousands of books, since we can hardly suppose that a private library would be allowed to outrival the imperial collections.

When one reflects on this prevalence of books, the very natural query arises as to how they were produced, and the answer throws a vivid light on the social conditions in Rome. The enormous output of books, almost rivalling the productions of the modern press, was possible solely because of the great number of slaves in Rome. Book-making was a profession, but it was a profession apparently followed almost exclusively by slaves, who were known as _librarii_. These educated slaves were usually Greeks, and a large publishing house, of which there were several in Rome, would keep a great number of them for purposes both of making the materials for books, and of transcribing the books themselves.

It is known that shorthand was practised extensively in Rome, and it has been supposed that a very large number of the current books were written in this abbreviated hand. This supposition, however, appears more than doubtful, for it is hardly to be supposed that the general public took the trouble to learn the Tironian system, by which name the shorthand script was known; Tiron, the secretary of Cicero, being commonly, though no doubt incorrectly, credited with its invention. As to the latter point, there are various references in the Greek classical authors to the practice of shorthand in ancient times. It is said even that Xenophon took down the lectures of Socrates in this way, and whether or not that statement is true, the existence of the rumour is in itself evidence of the prevalence of the custom from an early day. Very probably Tiron developed a modified and greatly improved system of shorthand writing, and doubtless this became popular, since lexicons were written interpreting the Tironian script in terms of ordinary Latin. But, as has been said, all this does not make it probable that the average reader understood the script, and it seems much more likely that the popular authors were represented in the ordinary script, subject, however, to numerous abbreviations. The writers who were most in vogue in imperial Rome are said to have been Ovid, Propertius, and Martial among the satirists; Homer, Virgil, and Horace among the poets; and Cicero, Livy, and Pliny among prose writers. It is alleged that the works of most of these were in every private collection. Of all this great store of literary treasures not a single line has been preserved in the original manuscript, save only a few rolls from the library at Herculaneum, and most of these are charred and damaged beyond recognition.

Thanks to the use of slave labour, it would appear that the Roman publisher was able, not merely to put out large editions of books, but to sell these at a very reasonable price. According to a statement of Martial himself, a very good copy of the first book of his epigrams could be purchased for five denarii. This presumably must refer to the cheapest edition, probably a papyrus roll, though no definite data as to the relative cost of papyrus and parchment are available. Naturally, there were more expensive editions put out for those who could afford them. It was customary, for example, to tint the back of the parchment roll with purple; at a later day the inscribed part itself was sometimes tinted with the same colour, and this custom also may have prevailed as early as the Roman time. Certain books were illustrated with pictures, as appears from a remark of Pliny; but this practice was undoubtedly very exceptional. It may not have been unusual, however, to ornament or emphasise portions of the manuscript by using red ink, for the ink wells illustrated in the paintings of Pompeii are often shown to be double, and the presumable object of this was to facilitate the use of ink of two colours.

The pen employed by the Roman scribe was made of a reed and known as a _calamus_. It was sharpened and split, not unlike a modern quill pen. The question has been raised many times as to whether the Romans did not employ the quill pen itself. Certain pictures seem to suggest that the quill pen was used not merely by the Romans, but by the Egyptians as well. There seems little ground for this supposition, however, and the first specific reference to a quill pen was in the writings of Isidorus, who died in 636 A.D. This proves that the use of quills had begun not later than the seventh century, but it is extremely doubtful whether the Romans employed them, though the quill seems so obvious a substitute for the reed that its non-employment causes wonder. But the history of all simple inventions shows how fallacious would be any argument drawn from this obvious inference. Incidentally it may be noted that the reed pen held its own against the quill for some centuries after the invention of the latter. Even in the late Middle Ages the reed was still employed for particular kinds of writing in preference to the quill, and no doubt a certain number of people for generations continued to prefer the reed, just as there are people now who prefer a quill pen to the steel pens that were perfected in 1830. Every desk in the reading room at the British Museum to-day is supplied with a quill as well as a steel pen; and a fair proportion of the readers there seem to prefer the former.

It would not do to leave the subject of Roman books without at least incidental mention of the tablets which were in universal use. These were probably not employed in writing books for the market, but it is quite probable that many authors used them in making the first drafts of their books. The so-called wax tablet was really made of wood, quite in the form of a modern child’s slate, the wax to receive the writing being put upon the portion that corresponds to the slate proper. These tablets were usually bound together in twos or threes, and only the inner surfaces were employed to receive the writing, the outer surface being reserved for a title in the case of business documents, or for the address when the tablet was used as a letter. When used as business records or in correspondence, the tablets were bound together with a cord, upon which a seal was placed. It was quite the rule for a Roman citizen to carry a tablet about with him for the purpose of making notes. The implement used in writing was a pointed metal needle known as the _stylus_. It was almost dagger-like in proportions, and was sometimes used as a weapon. It was said that Cæsar once transfixed the arm of Cassius with his stylus in a fit of anger in the senate chamber itself. The other end of the stylus was curved or flattened, and was used to erase the writing on the tablet for corrections or to prepare the surface for a new inscription.[j]

Turning from the practicalities of literature to a yet more important phase of everyday life, let us witness

THE CEREMONY OF A ROMAN MARRIAGE

The solemn ritual of marriage was based on the virginity of the bride, and so appeared in a curtailed version when a widow married again, which, even in later times, was regarded as somewhat shocking and in the earliest period of antiquity was of rare occurrence.

Particular care was taken in choosing the wedding-day, because certain times of the year were, from a religious point of view, ill adapted for the wedding ceremony, particularly the whole month of May and the first half of June. For the Lemuria and the sacrifice of the Argei fall in May, and in the beginning of June come the _dies religiosi_, devoted to the holiness of Vesta, which come to a close on the 15th of June with the purification of the temple of Vesta. Other days to be avoided were the _dies parentales_ (from the 13th to the 21st of February), the first half of March, the three days on which the Nether World was open (_mundus patet_ on the 24th of August, the 5th of October, and the 8th of November), all _dies religiosi_, the calends, the nones, and the ides. But solemn marriages were not conducted on festival days chiefly because, in early times at all events, the participators in the marriage were hindered by the festival. Widows on the other hand did not exclude such days from their selection.

All that we are told of the decoration of the bride is again concerned with virgins. On the day before marriage the girl laid aside her virginal attire (_toga prætexta_), sacrificing it with her toys to the gods and perhaps originally to the Lares of her father’s house. As was the custom for a youth before taking the _toga_, she was invested (_ominis causa_) with a new garment suitable to her new condition before going to sleep, a _tunica recta_ or _regilla_, and upon her head was placed a red hair net. The bridal dress itself was a _tunica recta_, that is to say a garment woven according to ancient custom with vertical, not horizontal, threads, held together with a woollen girdle (_cingulum_) that was bound with a _nodus herculeus_; instead of the hair net she was provided with a red scarf (_flammeum_) with which she veiled her head (_nubit_, _obnubit_); its red colour only distinguished it from those scarfs which all women wore when they went out. Her hair was arranged in _sex crines_, that is, plaits or locks held together not with a comb but with a crisping pin bent at the end (_hasta cælibaris_) and separated by ribbons. Beneath the scarf on her head she wore a wreath of flowers gathered by herself, and at a later period the bridegroom himself also wears a wreath.

The ceremony of the marriage day falls into three parts: the handing over of the bride, her home taking, and her reception into the husband’s house; with regard to the disposition of the separate customs appertaining to these three acts we are to some extent left to conjecture.

The solemnisation of marriage began with _auspicia_, which were usually taken by proper _auspices_ in the silence of early morning, just as at the _sponsalia_ it was sought to inquire into the will of the gods by an omen before sunrise. In the earliest times the flight of birds was observed, this kind of divination being later on replaced in private life (as it already existed in public) by the easier process of causing a _haruspica_ to examine entrails. But the sacrifice made with a view of consulting the gods, the performers of which have also been called _auspices_, must not be confounded with the main sacrifice, for it took place before the handing over of the bride. The sacrificial animal was probably a sheep, the skin of which was afterwards used for the _confarreatio_.

On the assembly of the guests the _auspices_ entered to announce the result of their investigation. After this only is the marriage contract completed, and even in later times before ten witnesses such as were accustomed to be present at the ancient _confarreatio_; the bride and bridegroom then declare their consent to the wedding, and where there is a _confarreatio_ the former declares her will to enter into the _manus_ and thereby the family of her husband, originally announcing also her readiness to exchange her own name for that of her husband in the formula _quando tu Caius ego Caia_. After this declaration the bridal pair are brought together by a married woman (_pronuba_) and take each other’s hands (_dextras jungunt_), upon which, at the _confarreatio_, in accordance with the most ancient Roman sacrificial custom, a bloodless sacrifice is brought consisting of fruits and a _panis farreus_. It was dedicated to Jupiter and so was probably performed by the _flamen Dialis_ present; he pronounced the forms of prayer in which the gods of wedlock, especially Juno, and the rustic deities Tellus, Picumnus, and Pilumnus were invoked. During the sacrifice the bridal pair sat upon two chairs joined together, over which the skin of the sheep that had been slain was stretched; at the prayer they wandered round the altar from right to left; a _camillus_ lent his services, bearing a _cumerum_ in which _mola salsa_ and other requisites of the sacrifice were received.

Whether at the _confarreatio_ there was an animal sacrifice besides the sacrifice of grain, or not, we do not know; Ulpian seems to assume that there was. In later times the sacrifice of corn fell into desuetude, but for the rest the old ritual was maintained as far as possible, so that for instance there was always a prayer delivered, if not by a priest, by an _auspex nuptiarum_ and addressed to other gods. Also in these later times the celebration of marriage centred round the sacrifice of a calf or even of a pig, and the newly wedded pair set out this sacrifice themselves, not always in the house but sometimes before a public temple. Not only have we express witnesses to testify to this, but also pictorial representations in which partly the temple is sketched and partly the sacrifice in process of performance, which would have no sense if the sacrifice took place in the house. So it comes that sacrifice of animals could only be conducted in the house, as in the temple, under certain conditions, whereas it was quite common on the sacrificial altars erected especially for private sacrifice in front of the temples. The witnesses having expressed their congratulations (_feliciter_) in a shout of approval, the sacrifice was followed by the _cena_, which, like all earlier portions of the celebration, was usually held in the house of the bride’s father.

The guests having risen from this at fall of night, the _deductio_ begins. The bride is taken from the arms of her mother and conducted in solemn procession to the new house, the procession including not only the guests but also the interested public. Flute-players and torch-bearers lead the way, the procession sings a fescennine song and echoes the cry _talasse_; the boys bid the bridegroom strew walnuts as he is now taking leave of the games of childhood. The bride is accompanied by three _pueri patrimi et matrimi_, one of them bearing a torch in front, the other two leading the bride; after her are borne distaff and spinning-wheel. The bridegroom’s torch is not, like the others, made of fine resin, but of white thorn (_Spina alba_), which is sacred to Ceres and a charm against witchery; it is captured by the guests and carried away by violence. The procession having reached the new house, the bride anoints the door-posts with fat or oil and binds them with woollen fillets; then she is borne over the threshold of the house and received in the atrium by her husband into the common possession of fire and water; that is to say, she is made a partner in domestic life and the service of the gods. In the atrium, her future living room, opposite the door, the _lectus genialis_ is made ready by the _pronuba_; here she prays to the gods of the new home for a happy marriage. On the day after the wedding she receives relations at the feast of _repotia_ as a matron and presents her first sacrifice to the gods of the house.[f]

THE STATUS OF WOMEN

The restoration of the temples of Juno by Augustus and his consort indicated the interest the new government felt in the institution of marriage. Neither the history nor literature of Rome can be understood without clear ideas upon this branch of her social economy. All nations have agreed in investing marriage with a religious sanction; but religion and policy were closely connected through every phase of the social life of the Romans, and in none more closely than in this. Marriage they regarded as an institution hallowed by the national divinities for the propagation of the Roman race, the special favourite of the gods. Its object was not to chasten the affections and purify the appetites of man, but to replenish the curies and centuries, to maintain the service of the national temples, recruit the legions and establish Roman garrisons in conquered lands. The marriage therefore of Caius and Caia, of a Roman with a Roman, was a far higher and holier matter, in the view of their priests and legislators, than the union of a Roman with a foreigner, of aliens with aliens, or of slaves with slaves. Even the legitimate union of the sexes among the citizens was regulated by descending scale of confarreation, coemption, and mere cohabitation; and the offspring of the former only were qualified for the highest religious functions, such as those of the flamen of Jupiter, and apparently of the vestal virgins, on which the safety of the state was deemed most strictly to depend.

These jealous regulations were fostered in the first instance by a grave political necessity; but the increase of the power of Rome, the enlargement of her resources, the multiplication of her allies, her clients and dependents, had long relaxed her vigilance in maintaining the purity of her children’s descent. The dictates of nature, reinforced by the observation of foreign examples, had long rebelled in this matter against the tyrannical prescriptions of a barbarous antiquity. After the eastern conquests of the republic it became impossible to maintain the race in its state of social isolation. In his winter quarters at Athens, Samos, or Ephesus, the rude husbandman of Alba or the Volscian hills was dazzled by the fascinations of women whose accomplishments fatally eclipsed the homely virtues of the Latin and Sabine matrons. To form legitimate connections with these foreign charmers was forbidden him by the harsh institutions of a Servius or Numa; while his ideas were so narrowed and debased by bad laws, that he never dreamt of raising his own countrywomen by education to the level of their superior attractions. Gravely impressing upon his wife and daughters that to sing and dance, to cultivate the knowledge of languages, to exercise the taste and understanding, was the business of the hired courtesan, it was to the courtesan that he repaired himself for the solace of his own lighter hours. The hetæræ of Greece had been driven to the voluptuous courts of Asia by the impoverishment, and perhaps the declining refinement, of their native entertainers. They were now invited to the great western capital of wealth and luxury, where they shared with viler objects the admiration of the Roman nobles, and imparted perhaps a shade of sentiment and delicacy to their most sensual carouses. The unnatural restrictions of the law formed a decent excuse for this class of unions, which were often productive of mutual regard, and were hallowed at least at the shrine of public opinion.

Such fortunate cases were, however, at the best, only exceptional. For the most part, the Grecian mistress of the proconsul or imperator, the object of a transient appetite, sought to indemnify herself by venal rapacity for actual contempt and anticipated desertion. The influence of these seductive intriguers poisoned the springs of justice before the provincial tribunals. At an earlier period a brutal general could order a criminal to be beheaded at his supper table, to exhibit to his paramour the spectacle of death; at a later, the luxurious governor of a province allowed his freedwoman to negotiate with his subjects for the price of their rights and privileges, or carried her at his side in his progress through Italy itself. The frantic declamations of Cicero against the licentiousness of Verres and Antony in this respect were a fruitless and, it must be admitted, a hollow attempt to play upon an extinct religious sentiment.

The results of this vicious indulgence were more depraving than the vice itself. The unmarried Roman, thus cohabiting with a freedwoman or slave, became the father of a bastard brood, against whom the gates of the city were shut. His pride was wounded in the tenderest part; his loyalty to the commonwealth was shaken. He chose rather to abandon the wretched offspring of his amours, than to breed them up as a reproach to himself, and see them sink below the rank in which their father was born.

In the absence of all true religious feeling, the possession of children was the surest pledge to the state of the public morality of her citizens. By the renunciation of marriage, which it became the fashion to avow and boast, public confidence was shaken to its centre. On the other hand, the women themselves, insulted by the neglect of the other sex, and exasperated at the inferiority of their position, revenged themselves by holding the institution of legitimate marriage with almost equal aversion. They were indignant at the servitude to which it bound them, the state of dependence and legal incapacity in which it kept them; for it left them without rights, and without the enjoyment of their own property; it reduced them to the status of mere children, or rather transferred them from the power of their parent to that of their husband. They continued through life, in spite of the mockery of respect with which the laws surrounded them, things rather than persons; things that could be sold, transferred backwards and forwards, from one master to another, for the sake of their dowry or even their powers of child-bearing. For the smallest fault they might be placed on trial before their husbands, or if one were more than usually considerate in judging upon his own case, before a council of their relations. They might be beaten with rods, even to death itself, for adultery or any other heinous crime; while they might suffer divorce from the merest caprice, and simply for the alleged departure of their youth or beauty.

The latter centuries of the Roman commonwealth are filled with the domestic struggles occasioned by the obstinacy with which political restrictions were maintained upon the most sensitive of the social relations. Beginning with wild and romantic legends, the account of these troubles becomes in the end an important feature in history. As early as the year 330 B.C., it is said, a great number of Roman matrons attempted the lives of their husbands by poison. They were dragged before the tribunals, probably domestic, and adjudged to death. As many as 170 are said to have suffered. In the following century, after the promulgation of the Oppian law, which forbade women to keep more than half an ounce of gold, to wear robes of various colours, and to ride in the carpentum, they formed a new conspiracy--such at least was the story--not to destroy their husbands, but to refuse conversation with them and frustrate their hopes of progeny. This was followed at the distance of half a century by the _lex Voconia_, “the most unjust of laws,” in the judgment of the Christian Augustine, which excluded women from the right of inheriting. Of these laws, however, the first was speedily abrogated, the other was evaded, and, by underhand and circuitous means, women came to receive inheritances, to the great scandal, as afterward appeared, of the reformers under the empire. But the continued quarrel of the sexes was exaggerated by mutual jealousy, and at the outbreak of the Catilinarian conspiracy, it was currently reported among the men that the traitors obtained money for their enterprise from a multitude of matrons, who longed for a bloody revolution to exterminate their husbands.

In the primitive ages the state had not only regulated the forms of marriage, but had undertaken to enforce it. Among the duties of the censors was that of levying fines upon the citizen who persisted in remaining single to the detriment of the public weal. The censure of Camillus and Postumius, 403 B.C., was celebrated for the patriotic vigour with which this inquisition was made. In process of time the milder method of encouraging marriage by rewards was introduced, the earliest mention of which, perhaps, is in a speech of Scipio, censor in the year 199 B.C. At this time it appears, certain immunities were already granted to the fathers of legitimate, and even of adopted, children, which last the censor denounced as an abuse. But neither rewards nor penalties proved effectual to check the increasing tendency to celibacy, and at the period of the Gracchi an alarm was sounded that the old Roman race was becoming rapidly extinguished. The censor of the year 131 B.C., Metellus Macedonicus, expounded the evil to the senate in a speech which seems to have been among the most curious productions of antiquity. “Could we exist without wives at all,” it began, “doubtless we should all rid ourselves of the plague they are to us; since, however, nature has decreed that we cannot dispense with the infliction, it is best to bear it manfully, and rather look to the permanent conservation of the state than to our own transient satisfaction.” It is still more curious, perhaps, that above a hundred years afterwards Augustus should have ventured to recite in the polished senate of his own generation the cynical invective of a ruder age. But, so it was, that when the legislation of Julius Cæsar was found ineffectual for controlling the still growing evil, it was reinforced by his successor with an enhancement both of penalties and rewards, and the bitter measure recommended by the arguments and even the language of the ancient censor.

The importance attached by the emperor to this fruitless legislation appears from his turning his efforts in this direction from the first year of his return to Rome. When he took the census with Agrippa in 28 B.C., he insisted on carrying into execution the regulations of the dictator, which had been neglected during the interval of anarchy, and were destined speedily to fall into similar neglect again. Upon this one point the master of the Romans could make no impression upon the dogged disobedience of his subjects. Both the men and the women preferred the loose terms of union upon which they had consented to cohabit to the harsh provisions of antiquity. They despised rewards, and penalties they audaciously defied. Eleven years later Augustus caused the senate to pass a new law of increased stringency, by which the marriage of citizens of competent age was positively required. Three years grace was allowed for making a choice and settling preliminaries; but when the allotted interval was expired, it was found expedient to prolong it for two years more; from time to time a further respite seems to have been conceded, and we find the emperor still struggling almost to the close of his life to impose this intolerable restraint upon the liberty or licence of the times.

The consent of the fathers themselves, subservient as they generally were, was given with murmurs of reluctance, the more so, perhaps, as they alone were excepted from the indulgence, which was now prudently extended to every lower order of citizens, of permission to form a legitimate marriage with a freed woman. The measure was received indeed with outward deference, but an inward determination to evade or overthrow it. Even the poets, who were instructed to sing its praises, renounced the obligation to fulfil its conditions; while others, whose voices were generally tuned to accents of adulation, exulted openly in its relaxation or postponement.

The nature of the penalties and rewards assigned by this law shows that the views of Augustus were for the most part confined to the rehabilitation of marriage in the higher classes, and the restoration of the purest blood of Rome. On the one hand, celibacy was punished by incapacity to receive bequests, and even the married man who happened to be childless was regarded with suspicion, and mulcted of one-half of every legacy. On the other, the father of a family enjoyed a place of distinction in the theatres, and preference in competition for public office. He was relieved from the responsibilities of a tutor or a judex, and, as by the earlier measure of the dictator, was excused from a portion of the public burdens, if father of three children at Rome, of four in Italy, or of five in the provinces. Of the two consuls, precedence was given, not to the senior in age, according to ancient usage, but to the husband and the father of the most numerous offspring. It is clear that such provisions as these could have had little application to the great mass of the citizens, who lived on the favour of their noble patrons or the bounty of the treasury, and bred up a horde of paupers to eat into the vitals of the state.

(Naples Museum)]

The perverse subjects of this domestic legislation seem at first to have sought to evade it by entering into contracts of marriage which they afterwards omitted to fulfil. It was necessary to enact new provisions to meet this subterfuge. The facility allowed by the ancient usage to divorce formed another obvious means of escape; but again did the vigilant reformer interfere by appointing the observation of onerous forms for the legal separation of married parties. When a divorce had actually taken place, the parties fell again under the provisions of the marriage law, and were required to find themselves fresh consorts within a specified interval. Another mode of driving the reluctant citizens within the marriage pale was the infliction of penalties and disgrace upon unchastity beyond it; while now, for the first time, adultery, which had been left to be punished by the domestic tribunal as a private injury, was branded as a crime against the general well-being, and subjected to the animadversion of the state. But Augustus was not satisfied with directing his thunders against the guilty; he sought to anticipate criminality by imposing fresh restraints upon the licentious manners of the age. After the example of his predecessors in the censorship, he fixed a scale of expense for the luxuries of the table, and pretended to regulate the taste of the women for personal ornaments. At the gladiatorial shows, from which they could no longer be excluded, he assigned different places for the two sexes, removing the women to the hinder rows, the least favourable either for seeing or being seen, and altogether forbade them to attend the exhibitions of wrestling and boxing.[c]

PATERNAL AUTHORITY AND ADOPTION: THE SLAVERY OF CHILDREN

If the Roman custom in relation to marriage and the position of women generally is decidedly to be preferred to that of the Greeks, it cannot be denied that the reverse was the case as regards the relations of children, as the arbitrary power which the father had over them in Rome was a flagrant injustice: the freedom of an individual was thus limited in a most unjust manner, and the child held in an unnatural dependence on his father. The great mistake consisted in the Roman father considering the power which Nature imposes as a duty on the elders, of guiding and protecting a child during infancy, as extending over his freedom, involving his life and death, and continuing during his entire existence. The Grecian law differed in two respects from the Roman: first, that the father’s power ceased with the son’s independence, and this he attained either by arriving at a certain period of life, or by marriage, or by being entered on the list of citizens. Secondly, the Grecian father had merely the right of terminating the relation between child and parent, by banishing him from his house, or disinheriting him, without daring to injure either his liberty or life.

The _patria potestas_ of the Romans was in theory indeed very different from absolute possession (_dominium_), but in reality it approached very near to it, especially in ancient times; only the latter extended over things, the former over persons. Consequently this _potestas_ gave the father the right over the life and liberty of his child. This law, said to be as early as Romulus, but at any rate very ancient, was revived in all its severity in the Twelve Tables. The unnatural part of this decree was somewhat modified, in that the right of life and death belonged in fact to that of discipline and punishment, which was permitted by the state to the _pater familias_, and as the father could not act on his own judgment, but must, conformably to custom, summon a family council. This judgment is mentioned by Valerius Maximus,[k] where he says of T. Manlius Torquatus, _ne consilio quidem necessariorum indigere se credidit_, as his son had been accused by the Macedonians on account of extortion. The father sat in judgment for three days, hearing witnesses and so on, and at last banished his son from his presence, whereupon he killed himself.

Other examples are related, of sentence being passed on sons by their fathers, without mention of the family council, and probably because the official position of the father rendered such aid unnecessary, as in the harsh judgment of Brutus and T. Manlius Imperiosus. In capital offences, too, the father could by himself inflict punishment, as it is deemed more proper that he should himself condemn his son, than that he should come himself as his accuser. Valerius Maximus relates two instances of a father’s judgment in the time of Augustus. In the latter case the father condemned the son for parricide, letting him off with exile only. A solemn family council also preceded, to which the emperor was invited; there the kindness of the father openly prevailed, and whilst he made use of his right, he protected his son from the punishment which he would have found in the public court of justice. The second case proves the harshness and misuse to which this right could be applied. But after all, not one case of absolute death is mentioned, but only of cruel punishment. If a misuse of the _patria potestas_ occurred in earlier times, the censor could resent it. Orosius even speaks of a public indictment; in later days the emperor saw to it, as it is related of Trajan and Hadrian. In the two-hundredth year of the empire this power was taken away from the father by law.

Although the right of sale undeniably existed, and was recognised by the Twelve Tables, no recorded instance of it exists; and we may therefore suppose that it was early abolished, and used only as a form in the _emancipatio_. Numa even seems to have limited this right, according to Dionysius. In the form of _emancipatio_, the father had the right to sell the son three times; after the third time he did not again come into the _patria potestas_.

From the _patria potestas_ must be entirely separated the right with which we frequently meet in antiquity, of killing or exposing new-born children. In Rome it did not exist to so great an extent as elsewhere. Romulus is said to have interdicted sons and first-born daughters from being killed. On the other hand, it seems to have been commanded that the deformed should be put to death. That the exposure and murder of the new-born was not infrequent, even in the most important families, many instances show.

The son remained in the father’s power until his death, unless either of them had suffered a _capitis diminutio_. The _patria potestas_ ceased if the son became a _flamen dialis_. Other dignities made no difference. In the case of a daughter it ceased when she entered into marriage with _manus_, or became a vestal virgin. If a father wished to renounce the _patria potestas_ over his son, it must be done either by adoption (by which he passed into another _potestas_) or by the formality of emancipation.[l]

Created by nature or transferred by adoption, the paternal authority could be replaced, at the death of the father of the family, by guardianship (_tutela_) for the protection of children (_tutela impuberum_, _pupillaris_) and women (_tutela muliebris_), or it could even be revived after it had expired under the name of trusteeship (_cura_), for the protection of persons of full age but recognised as incapable of managing for themselves.

Jurisprudence concerning guardianship and trusteeship was first of all dominated by the principles of the ancient gentilitious law as sanctioned by the Twelve Tables.

At the death of a father the feminine portion of a family--the widow and grown-up but unmarried daughters, were looked upon as _sui juris_ in the sense that they could administer their own property, but as they could not bring actions (except in the case of the vestals), they needed for all legal acts which concerned them, the authority (_auctoritas_) of a guardian. The sons reached the age of puberty at fourteen; under that age they required a guardian. If the family had a new head over fourteen years old, he was the guardian of all those under age and of all the females of the family; in the contrary case the guardian came from outside the family.

The law of the Twelve Tables did not allow those interested the choice of their guardian; the legitimate guardian was the nearest relation (_agnat_) of the deceased, or, in default, one of the members of the gens. It was exactly the same for the trusteeship which came into operation when a citizen _sui juris_ was recognised as mad, or decreed by the interdictum of the prætor to be in the position of a maniac on account of prodigality. The trustee had the most unlimited powers over the person and property of the person so decreed.

The lawyers laboured to make the guardianship of the young secure and effective, to suppress the guardianship of women and to abolish the interference of the gentilitious customs in favour of natural relationship.

A first step had already been taken in the time of the Twelve Tables--the father of the family was permitted to choose and appoint by will the guardian of his children. The legitimate guardian according to the gentilitious law was called upon to replace the testamentary guardian in case the latter refused to undertake the guardianship. Later the law _Atilia_, about 190 B.C., empowered the prætor urbanus or the college of the tribunes of the plebs to nominate a guardian (_tutor atilianus_) in default of a legitimate or testamentary guardian in case the latter refused to undertake the guardianship. The custom was even introduced at this epoch of leaving to the widows, by will, the choice of their guardian (_tutor optivus_), either allowing them to change them once or twice (_optio angusta_), or as many times as it pleased them (_optio plena_). Women could even escape effective guardianship--especially with the object of acquiring the right to make wills--by tricks of procedure. For this purpose they made use of fiduciary co-emption. Co-emption substituted the co-emptionator for the guardian. The man who thus acquired the rights of a husband ceded the woman to a third person by mancipation. The latter emancipated the woman whose guardian he remained in form (_tutor fiduciarius_). This procedure was well known in the time of Cicero. It must be added that it was not applied in such an easy fashion when the guardian was the _tutor legitimus_ of gentilitious law; the latter could not be forced to give his consent to the fictitious marriage which began the work of deliverance.

Thus it was against the legitimate guardianship that the legists directed their efforts. Augustus released from ordinary guardianship all women having three children, and freed women who were mothers of four children. Claudius absolutely suppressed gentilitious guardianship for women. It was only kept up for children. There remained only ordinary guardianship to be annihilated. Hadrian rendered fiduciary co-emptions unnecessary by giving women the right of making wills with the consent of their guardians, and Antoninus in certain cases recognised the legality of wills made without this sanction. As women had already received the right of administration of their property, guardianship was from that time almost objectless as far as they were concerned. It disappeared of itself. The movement of emancipation continued; from the time of Diocletian women began to acquire the right of guardianship over their own children.

As to the guardianship of young boys the legists had tried to extend, not the liberty of the wards, but the responsibility of the guardians. They even thought good to extend the guardianship under another name beyond the age fixed by the ancient law, which declared male children to have attained puberty at the age of fourteen. From the commencement of the second century before Christ, a law Plætoria created a state of minority from fourteen to twenty-five; for fear the minors should be “circumvented,” it decreed that the loans agreed to by them should only be legal if they had been witnessed by a trustee named by the prætor. Marcus Aurelius made it a duty of the magistrates to give permanent trustees to all minors who requested them, and it was to the latter’s interest to do so, because otherwise they could not appeal to the law. The trusteeship of minors had, in spite of distinctions, a singular resemblance to that of madmen and persons interdicted, and to the guardianship of children. And, from the time of Constantine, it was much the same as the other kinds. There was however one difference; this was that the interdicted persons were reduced to a passive condition, and a ward was only allowed to act with authorisation of the guardian, whilst the minor could contract debts without the consent of his trustee.

Jurisprudence here became confused by its precautions; it hesitated between respect for individual liberty and the far more potent anxiety to safeguard the material interests of the family.[g]

It will be understood that the respect for individual liberty here referred to has reference only to a relatively small portion of the community. The larger number of the inhabitants of Rome had no individual liberty; nor, indeed, any other right that commanded respect. In a word, the mass of the population was made up of slaves; therefore, even a casual glance at the manners and customs of Roman society cannot disregard this unfortunate class.

THE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY

The slaves in a large Roman house sprang from two different origins: either they had been bought or they were born in the house of a slave father and a slave mother. These latter were called _vernæ_, and were more esteemed than the others. It is to them that their masters refer in the inscriptions with the greatest respect and tenderness. They were supposed to be attached to the family in which they had been born. Besides, they had not been branded by the humiliation of a public sale, and this meant a great deal. The bought slave had appeared in the market-place, his feet marked with white and a label round his neck, on which his merits and defects were inscribed; he had been set on a platform and had been made to jump, turn a somersault, walk, run, laugh, and talk. The slave born in the house had at least escaped this ignominious ordeal. It was as though his dignity as a man had been less entirely lost, and as though he must be more capable of noble feeling. The man himself was so proud of this title of _verna_ that in some instances it was retained even after liberation, and the freedman caused it to be inscribed on his tomb.