CHAPTER XIV. CIVILISATION AT THE END OF THE PERIOD OF CONQUEST

ORGANISATION OF THE GOVERNMENT

Now that we have seen Rome first become mistress of Italy, and then,

after a life and death struggle, rise superior to Carthage; now that we

shall have to follow her in her conquest of all the countries bordering

on the Mediterranean, so that this sea became what in modern phrase

may be called a Roman lake, we naturally inquire, what was the form

of government, what the treatment of the subject foreigners, what the

condition of the people?

About the time of the Punic Wars the framework of the Roman constitution

was complete. The only trace remaining of ancient severance was the

regulation by which, of the two consuls and the two censors, one must

be a patrician, one a plebeian. In a few years even this partition of

offices fell into disuse, and no political distinction remained, save

that persons of patrician pedigree were excluded from the tribunate of

the plebs.[64]

In correspondence with the advance of plebeian and the decay of patrician

families, a silent revolution had been wrought in most parts of the

constitution. The assembly of the curies had become a mere form. They

continued to meet even to Cicero’s time; but their business had dwindled

away to the regulation of the religious observances proper to the

patrician gentes. A few lictors, who were present as the attendants of

the presiding magistrates, alone appeared to represent the descendants of

the Valerii, the Claudii, and the Postumii.[65]

With regard to the executive government, the chief officers of state

employed in the administration of Roman affairs remained as they had been

settled after the Licinian laws. In Cicero’s time it is well known that

every Roman who aspired to the highest offices was obliged to ascend

through a regular scale of honours. An age was fixed before which each

was unattainable. The first office so held was the quæstorship, and the

earliest age at which this could then be gained appears to have been

about twenty-seven. Several years were then to elapse before a Roman

could hold the first curule office, that is, the ædileship. But between

this and each of the highest honours, the prætorship and the consulship,

only two complete years were interposed. To be chosen ædile a man must be

at least thirty-seven, to be prætor at least forty, to be consul at least

forty-three. But no settled regulations had yet been made. Many cases

occur, both before and after the Second Punic War, in which men were

elected to the consulship at a very early age, and before they had held

any other curule office.

There can be little doubt that the ædileship was the least acceptable to

an active and ambitious man. The chief duties of the ædiles related to

the care of the public buildings (whence their name), the celebration

of the games and festivals, the order of the streets, and other matters

belonging to the department of police. But the quæstors were charged with

business of a more important character. They were attached to the consuls

and prætors as treasurers and paymasters. The tax-gatherers (_publicani_)

paid into their hands all moneys received on account of the state, and

out of these funds they disbursed all sums required for the use of the

army, the fleet, or the civil administration. They were originally two

in number, one for each consul; but very soon they were doubled, and at

the conquest of Italy they were increased to eight. Two always remained

at home to conduct the business of the treasury, the rest accompanied the

consuls, and prætors, and proconsuls to the most important provinces.

The office of prætor was supplementary to that of the consuls, and

was at first chiefly judicial. The original prætor was called “prætor

urbanus,” or president of the city courts. A second was added about the

time when Sicily became subject to Rome, and a new court was erected for

the decision of cases in which foreigners were concerned: hence the new

magistrate was called “prætor peregrinus.” For the government of the two

first provinces, Sicily and Sardinia, two more prætors were created, and

when Spain was constituted as a double province, two more, so that the

whole number amounted to six. In the absence of the consuls the prætors

presided in the senate and at the great assembly of the centuries.

They often commanded reserve armies in the field, but they were always

subordinate to the consuls; and to mark this subordinate position they

were allowed only six lictors, whereas each consul was attended by

twelve. Of the consuls it is needless to speak in this place. Their

position as the supreme executive officers of the state is sufficiently

indicated in every page of the history.

To obtain any of these high offices the Roman was obliged to seek the

suffrages of his fellow-citizens. They were open to the ambition of

every one whose name had been entered by the censors on the register of

citizens, provided he had reached the required age. No office, except

the censorship, was held for a longer period than twelve months: no

officer received any pay or salary for his services. To defray expenses

certain allowances were made from the treasury by order of the senate.

To discharge routine duties and to conduct their correspondence, each

magistrate had a certain number of clerks (_scribæ_) who formed what we

should call the civil service.

But though the highest offices seemed thus absolutely open to every

candidate, they were not so in practice. About the time of the First

Punic War an alteration was made which, in effect, confined the curule

offices to the wealthy families. The ædiles, for the expenses of the

public games, had an allowance made them from the treasury. But at the

time just mentioned this allowance was withdrawn. Yet the curule ædiles

were still expected to maintain the honour of Rome by costly spectacles

at the great Roman games, the Megalesian festival, and others of less

consequence. Thus the choice of the people was limited to those who could

buy their favour.

THE ARMY

The Romans had no standing army. Every Roman citizen between the complete

ages of seventeen and forty-five, possessing property worth at least four

thousand pounds of copper, was placed on the military roll. From this

roll four legions, two for each consul, were enlisted every year, and in

cases of necessity additional legions were raised. But at the close of

the year’s campaign these legionary soldiers had a right to be relieved.

Nor were there any fixed officers. Each legion had six tribunes and sixty

centurions; but these were chosen, like the consuls and soldiers, fresh

every year. The majority of the tribunes were elected at the comitia of

the tribes, and the remainder were nominated by the consuls of the year,

the only limitation to such choice being that those appointed should have

served in the legions at least five campaigns. The centurions were then

nominated by the tribunes, subject to the approval of the consuls.

Hence it appears that the Roman system, both in army and state, was

strictly republican, that is, calculated to distribute public offices

to as many citizens as possible, and to prevent power being absorbed

by any single man or classes of men. There were no professed statesmen

or officers, but there was a large number of men who had served for a

time in each capacity. There was no standing army, but there was a good

militia. There was no regularly trained soldiery, but every citizen had

served in his time several campaigns, and every one was something of a

soldier.

But no republic, however jealous, can rigidly carry out such a system;

necessity will modify it in practice. During the Samnite Wars we find the

same eminent men repeatedly elected to the consulship, notwithstanding a

provision that no man should hold this high office except at intervals

of ten years. Valerius Corvus was chosen consul at three-and-twenty; he

held the office four times in fourteen years. So also Papirius Cursor,

Fabius Maximus, and others held the same sovereign office repeatedly

at short intervals. In the year 326 B.C. another plan was adopted to

secure permanency. From this time it became common to continue a consul

or prætor in his command for several successive years, with the title of

proconsul or proprætor. The proconsul also was allowed to keep part of

his old army, with his tribunes and centurions. The hope of booty and

the desire to serve out his campaigns (for after a certain number of

campaigns served the legionary was exempt, even though he was much under

forty-five years) kept many soldiers in the field; and thus the nucleus

of a regular army was formed by each commander. In the Punic Wars the

ten years’ law was suspended altogether, and proconsuls were ordered to

remain in office for years together.[b]

No more vivid picture of the Roman army could be given than that of

Polybius, who contrasts the Greek phalanx with the Roman arrangement as

follows:

POLYBIUS ON GREEK AND ROMAN BATTLE-ORDERS

Pyrrhus employed not only the arms but the troops of Italy; and ranged in

alternate order a company of those troops and a cohort disposed in the

manner of the phalanx, in all his battles with the Romans. And yet, even

with the advantage of this precaution, he was never able to obtain any

clear or decisive victory against them. It was necessary to premise these

observations for the sake of preventing any objection that might be made

to the truth of what we shall hereafter say.

It is easy to demonstrate, by many reasons, that while the phalanx

retains its proper form and full power of action, no force is able to

stand against it in front or support the violence of its attack. When

the ranks are closed in order to engage, each soldier, as he stands with

his arms, occupies a space of three feet. The spears, in their most

ancient form, contained seventeen cubits in length. But, for the sake of

rendering them more commodious in action, they have since been reduced to

fourteen. Of these, four cubits are contained between the part which the

soldier grasps in his hands and the lower end of the spear behind, which

serves as a counterpoise to the part that is extended before him; and the

length of this last part from the body of the soldier, when the spear is

pushed forwards with both hands against the enemy, is, by consequence,

ten cubits. From hence it follows that when the phalanx is closed in its

proper form, and every soldier pressed within the necessary distance with

respect to the man that is before him and upon his side, the spears of

the fifth rank are extended to the length of two cubits, and those of the

second, third, and fourth to a still greater length, beyond the foremost

rank. The manner in which the men are crowded together in this method is

marked by Homer in the following lines:

“Shield stuck to shield, to helmet helmet joined,

And man to man; and at each nod that bowed

High waving on their heads the glittering cones,

Rattled the hair-crowned casques: so thick they stood.”

This description is not less exact than beautiful. It is manifest, then,

that five several spears, differing each from the other in the length

of two cubits, are extended before every man in the foremost rank. And

when it is considered, likewise, that the phalanx is formed by sixteen in

depth, it will be easy to conceive what must be the weight and violence

of the entire body, and how great the force of its attack. In the ranks,

indeed, that are behind the fifth, the spears cannot reach so far as to

be employed against the enemy. In these ranks, therefore, the soldiers

instead of extending their spears forward, rest them upon the shoulders

of the men that are before them, with their points slanting upwards; and

in this manner they form a kind of rampart which covers their heads, and

secures them against those darts which may be carried in their flight

beyond the first ranks, and fall upon those that are behind. But when

the whole body advances to charge the enemy, even these hindmost ranks

are of no small use and moment. For as they press continually upon those

that are before them, they add, by their weight alone, great force to

the attack, and deprive also the foremost ranks of the power of drawing

themselves backwards or retreating. Such then is the disposition of the

phalanx, with regard both to the whole and the several parts. Let us now

consider the arms, and the order of battle, of the Romans, that we may

see by the comparison in what respects they are different from those of

the Macedonians.

To each of the Roman soldiers, as he stands in arms, is allotted the

same space, likewise, of three feet. But as every soldier in the time

of action is constantly in motion, being forced to shift his shield

continually that he may cover any part of his body against which a stroke

is aimed; and to vary the position of his sword, so as either to push, or

to make a falling stroke; there must also be a distance of three feet,

the least that can be allowed for performing these motions to advantage,

between each soldier and the man that stands next to him, both upon his

side and behind him. In charging, therefore, against the phalanx, every

single Roman, as he has two Macedonians opposite to him, has also ten

spears, which he is forced to encounter. But it is not possible for a

single man to cut down these spears with his sword, before they can

take their effect against him. Nor is it easy, on the other hand, to

force his way through them. For the men that are behind add no weight

to the pressure, nor any strength to the swords, of those that are in

the foremost rank. It will be easy, therefore, to conceive that while

the phalanx retains its own proper position and strength, no troops, as

I before observed, can ever support the attack of it in front. To what

cause, then, is it to be ascribed, that the Roman armies are victorious,

and those defeated that employ the phalanx? The cause is this. In war,

the times and the places of action are various and indefinite. But there

is only one time and place, one fixed and determinate manner of action,

that is suited to the phalanx. In the case, then, of a general action,

if an enemy be forced to encounter with the phalanx in the very time and

place which the latter requires, it is probable, in the highest degree,

from the reasons that have been mentioned, that the phalanx always must

obtain the victory. But if it be possible to avoid an engagement in such

circumstances, and indeed it is easy to do it, there is then nothing to

be dreaded from this order of battle. It is a well-known and acknowledged

truth, that the phalanx requires a ground that is plain and naked, and

free likewise from obstacles of every kind, such as trenches, breaks,

obliquities, the brows of hills, or the channels of rivers; and that any

of these are sufficient to impede it, and to dissolve the order in which

it is formed. On the other hand again, it must be as readily allowed

that, if it be not altogether impossible, it is at least extremely rare,

to find a ground containing twenty stadia, or more, in its extent, and

free from all these obstacles. But let it, however, be supposed that such

a ground may perhaps be found. If the enemy, instead of coming down upon

it, should lead their army through the country, plundering the cities,

and ravaging the lands, of what use then will be the phalanx? As long as

it remains in this convenient post, it not only has no power to succour

its friends, but cannot even preserve itself from ruin. For the troops

that are masters of the whole country without resistance will cut off

from it all supplies. And if, on the other hand, it should relinquish its

own proper ground, and endeavour to engage in action, the advantage is

then so great against it that it soon becomes an easy prey to the enemy.

But, further, let it be supposed that the enemy will come down into this

plain. Yet, if he brings not his whole army at once to receive the attack

of the phalanx; or if, in the instant of the charge, he withdraws himself

a little from the action, it is easy to determine what will be the

consequence from the present practice of the Romans. For we now draw not

our discourse from bare reasoning only, but from facts which have lately

happened. When the Romans attack the phalanx in front, they never employ

all their forces, so as to make their line equal to that of the enemy;

but lead on a part only of their troops, and keep the rest of the army

in reserve. Now, whether the troops of the phalanx break the line that

is opposed to them, or whether themselves are broken, the order peculiar

to the phalanx is alike dissolved. For if they pursue the fugitives, or

if, on the other hand, they retreat and are pursued, in either case they

are separated from the rest of their own body. And thus there is left

some interval or space, which the reserve of the Roman army takes care to

seize, and then charges the remaining part of the phalanx, not in front,

but in flank, or in the rear. As it is easy then to avoid the times and

circumstances that are advantageous to the phalanx, and as those, on the

contrary, that are disadvantageous to it can never be avoided, it is

certain that this difference alone must carry with it a decisive weight

in the time of action.

To this it may be added, that the troops of the phalanx also are, like

others, forced to march and to encamp in every kind of place; to be

the first to seize the advantageous posts; to invest an enemy, or be

invested; and to engage also in sudden actions, without knowing that the

enemy was near. These things all happen in war, and either tend greatly

to promote, or sometimes wholly determine the victory. But, at all such

times, the Macedonian order of battle either cannot be employed, or is

employed in a manner that is altogether useless.

For the troops of the phalanx, as must be evident, lose their strength

when they engage in separate companies, or man with man. The Roman order,

on the contrary, is never attended, even upon such occasions, with any

disadvantage. Among the Romans every single soldier, when he is once

armed and ready for service, is alike fitted to engage in any time and

place, or upon any appearance of the enemy; and preserves always the

same power, and the same capacity of action, whether he engages with the

whole of the army, or only with a part; whether in separate companies, or

singly man against man. As the parts, therefore, in the Roman order of

battle, are so much better contrived for use than those in the other, so

the success also in action must be greater in the one than the other.

If I have been rather long in examining this subject, it was because many

of the Greeks, at the time when the Macedonians were defeated, regarded

that event as a thing surpassing all belief; and because many others

also may hereafter wish to know in what particular respects the order of

phalanx is excelled by the arms and the order of battle of the Romans.[f]

[Illustration: ROMAN TROPHIES]

THE SENATE

The chief officers both in state and army were continually liable

to change, but there was a mighty power behind them, which did not

change. This was the senate. The importance of this body can hardly be

overstated. All the acts of the Roman republic ran in the name of the

senate and people, as if the senate were half the state, though its

number was but three hundred.

The senate of Rome was perhaps the most remarkable assembly that the

world has ever seen. Its members held their seats for life; once senators

always senators, unless they were degraded for some dishonourable cause.

But the senatorial peerage was not hereditary. No father could transmit

the honour to his son. Each man must win it for himself.[66]

The manner in which seats in the senate were obtained is tolerably well

ascertained. The members of this august body, all--or nearly all--owed

their places to the votes of the people. In theory, indeed, the censors

still possessed the power really exercised by the kings and early

consuls, of choosing the senators at their own will and pleasure. But

official powers, however arbitrary, are always limited in practice. The

censors followed rules established by ancient precedent, and chose the

senate from those who had held the quæstorship and higher magistracies.

In the interval between two censorships, that is in the course of five

years, the number of exquæstors alone must have amounted to at least

forty, and this was more than sufficient to fill the number of vacancies

which would have occurred in ordinary times. The first qualification

then for a seat in the senate was that of office. It is probable that to

the qualification of office there was added a second, of property. Such

was certainly the case in later times. A third limitation, that of age,

followed from the rule that the senate was recruited from the lists of

official persons. No one could be a senator till he was about thirty.

Such was the composition of this great council during the best times of

the republic. It formed a true aristocracy. Its members, almost all,

possessed the knowledge derived from the discharge of public office

and from mature age. They were recommended to their places by popular

election, and yet secured from subserviency to popular will by the

amount of their property. It was not by a mere figure of speech that the

minister of Pyrrhus called the Roman senate “an assembly of kings.” Many

of its members had exercised what was in effect sovereign power; many

were preparing to exercise it. The power of the senate was equal to its

dignity.

In regard to legislation, it exercised an absolute control over the

centuriate assembly, because no law could be submitted to its votes which

had not originated in the senate; and thus the vote of the centuries

could not do more than place a veto on a senatorial decree.[67]

In respect to foreign affairs, the power of the senate was absolute,

except in declaring war or concluding treaties of peace,--matters which

were submitted to the votes of the people. They assigned to the consuls

and prætors their respective provinces of administration and command;

they fixed the amount of the troops to be levied every year from the

list of Roman citizens, and of the contingents to be furnished by the

Italian allies. They prolonged the command of a general or superseded him

at pleasure. They estimated the sums necessary for the military chest;

nor could a sesterce be paid to the general without their order. If a

consul proved refractory, they could transfer his power for the time to

a dictator; even if his success had been great, they could refuse him

the honour of a triumph. Ambassadors to foreign states were chosen by

them and from them; all disputes in Italy or beyond seas were referred to

their sovereign arbitrament.

In the administration of home affairs the regulation of religious matters

was in their hands; they exercised superintendence over the pontiffs and

other ministers of public worship. They appointed days for extraordinary

festivals, for thanksgiving after victory, for humiliation after defeat.

But, which was of highest importance, all the financial arrangements of

the state were left to their discretion. The censors, at periods usually

not exceeding five years in duration, formed estimates of annual outlay,

and provided ways and means for meeting these estimates; but always under

the direction of the senators. In all these matters, both of home and

foreign administration, their decrees had the power of law. In times of

difficulty they had the power of suspending all rules of law, by the

appointment of a dictator.

Besides these administrative functions, they might resolve themselves

into a high court of justice for the trial of extraordinary offences.

But in this matter they obtained far more definite authority by the

Calpurnian law, which about fifty years later established high courts of

justice, in which prætors acted as presiding judges, and senators were

jurymen.

THE CENTURIATE ASSEMBLY

At some time between the decemvirate and the Second Punic War, a complete

reform had been made in the centuriate assembly, as organised by Servius.

When this was we know not. Nor do we know the precise nature of the

reform. This only is certain, that the distribution of the whole people

into tribes was taken as the basis of division in the centuriate assembly

as well as in the assembly of the tribes, and yet that the division into

classes and centuries was retained, as well as into seniores and juniores.

It may be assumed that the whole people was convened according to its

division into thirty-five tribes; that in each tribe account was taken of

the five classes, arranged according to an ascending scale of property,

which, however, had been greatly altered from that attributed to Servius;

and that in each tribe each of the five classes was subdivided into two

centuries, one of seniores, or men between forty-five and sixty, one of

juniores, or men between eighteen and forty-five. On the whole, then,

with the addition of eighteen centuries of knights, there would be 368

centuries. This plan, though it allowed far less influence to wealth than

the plan of Servius, would yet leave a considerable advantage to the

richer classes. For it is plain that the two centuries of the first class

in each tribe would contain far fewer members than the two centuries of

the second class, those of the second fewer than those of the third, and

all those of the first four together, probably, fewer than those of the

fifth. Yet these four classes, having in all 280 or (with the knights)

298 centuries, would command an absolute majority; for the question was

still decided by the majority of centuries.

THE ASSEMBLY OF THE TRIBES

While the centuriate assembly was becoming more popular in its

constitution, a still more democratic body had come into existence.[68]

There can be no doubt that when the centuriate assembly was restored by

the patricians after the expulsion of Tarquinius,[69] it was intended to

be the sole legislative body. The more recent legislative assembly of

the tribes was a spontaneous growth of popular will, not contemplated

by statesmen. The tribe assembly, originally intended to conduct the

business of the plebeian order, gradually extended its power over the

whole body politic; and its ordinances (_plebiscita_) became laws.

The tribunes were originally invested with political authority for the

purpose of protecting the persons of the plebeians from the arbitrary

punishments inflicted by the patrician magistrates. It was no doubt

intended that this authority should be only suspensive, so as to prevent

sudden acts of violence. But the tribunes soon assumed the license

of standing between plebeians and the law. Thus they established the

celebrated right of intercession, which in course of time they extended

to all matters. They forbade trials, stopped elections, put a veto on the

passing of laws. So far, however, their power was only negative. But when

the tribe assembly obtained legislative rights, the tribunes obtained a

positive authority. The power of the tribunes and of the tribes implied

each other. The plebeian assembly was dead without able and resolute

tribunes; the tribunes were impotent without the democracy.

[Illustration: ROMAN STATESMAN]

This relation was at once established when the election of the tribunes

was committed to the tribes themselves. The tribunes soon began to summon

the tribes to discuss political questions; and the formidable authority

which they now wielded appeared in the overthrow of the decemvirate

and the recognition of the tribe assembly as a legislative body. The

political powers then gained by the Valerio-Horatian laws were confirmed

and extended by the popular dictators, Q. Publilius Philo and Q.

Hortensius.

Thus the Roman constitution presents us with the apparent anomaly of

two distinct legislative assemblies, each independent of the other. Nor

were any distinct provinces of action assigned to each. This being so,

we should expect to find the one clashing with the other; to hear of

popular laws emanating from the one body met with a counter-project from

the other. But no such struggles are recorded. The only way in which it

can be known that a particular law is due to the more popular or to the

more aristocratic assembly is by looking to the name of the mover, by

which every law was designated. If the name be that of a tribune, the

law must be referred to the tribe assembly. If the name be that of a

consul, prætor, or dictator, the law must be referred to the centuriate

assembly.[70] What, then, were the causes which prevented collisions

which appear inevitable?

First, it must be remembered that, though the centuriate assembly had

been made more democratic, yet the tribe assembly was very far indeed

from a purely democratic body. In the latter, the suffrages were taken

by the head in each of the thirty-five tribes, and if eighteen tribes

voted one way, and seventeen another, the question was decided by the

votes of the eighteen. But the eighteen rarely, if ever, contained an

absolute majority of citizens. For the whole population of Rome, with

all the freedmen, were thrown into four tribes only, and if these four

tribes were in the minority, there can be no doubt that the minority of

tribes represented a majority of voters. Thus, even in the more popular

assembly, there was not wanting a counterpoise to the will of the mere

majority.

A still more effective check to collision is to be found in the fact

that all measures proposed to the tribe assembly by the tribunes, as

well as the centuriate laws proposed by the consuls or other ministers

of the senate, must first receive the sanction of the senate itself.

The few exceptions which occur are where tribunes propose a resolution

granting to a popular consul the triumph refused by the senate. But these

exceptions only serve to prove the rule.[71]

Our surprise that no collision is heard of between the two assemblies

now takes another form, and we are led to ask how it came that, if all

measures must be first approved by the senate, any substantial power

at all could belong to the tribes? It would seem that they also, like

the centuriate assembly, could at most exercise only a veto on measures

emanating from the great council.

That this result did not follow, is due to the rude but formidable

counter-check provided by the tribunate. The persons of the tribunes

were inviolable; but the tribunes had power to place even consuls under

arrest. By the advance of their intercessory prerogative they gradually

built up an authority capable of over-riding all other powers in the

state.

We are now better able to appreciate the position of the two assemblies

as legislative bodies. The tribe assembly was presided over by officers

of its own choice, invested with authority generally sufficient to extort

from the senate leave to bring in laws of a popular character. No such

power resided in the presidents of the centuriate assembly; for the

consuls were little more than ministers of the senate. The centuriate

assembly more and more became a passive instrument in the hands of the

senate. The tribe assembly rose to be the organ of popular opinion.

In elections, the centuriate assembly always retained the right of

choosing the chief officers of state, the consuls, prætors, and censors.

The tribe assembly, originally, elected only their own tribunes and

the plebeian ædiles. But in no long time they obtained the right of

choosing also the curule ædiles, the quæstors, the great majority of

the legionary tribunes, and all inferior officers of state. But as the

centuries were, generally, obliged to elect their prætors and consuls out

of those who had already been elected quæstors and ædiles by the tribes,

it is manifest that the elective power of the former was controlled and

overridden by the latter. In conferring extraordinary commands, such

as that of Scipio in Spain, the tribes were always consulted, not the

centuries.

JUSTICE

In regard to jurisdiction, it has before been noticed that Rome was

tender of the personal liberties of her citizens. Various laws of appeal

provided for an open trial before his peers of anyone charged with grave

offences, such as would subject him to stripes, imprisonment, or death.

Now the centuries alone formed a high court of justice for the trial of

citizens; the tribe assembly never achieved this dangerous privilege. But

the tribunician power offered to the chief officers of the tribes a ready

means of interference; for they could use their right of intercession to

prevent a trial, and thus screen real offenders from justice. But more

frequently they acted on the offensive. There was a merciful provision of

the law of Rome, by which a person liable to a state prosecution might

withdraw from Italian soil at any time before his trial, and become

the citizen of some allied city, such as Syracuse or Pergamus. But the

tribunes sometimes threw culprits into prison before trial, as in the

case of App. Claudius the decemvir and his father. Or, after a culprit

had sought safety in voluntary exile, they proposed a bill of outlawry,

by which he was “interdicted from fire and water” on Italian soil, and

all his goods were confiscated. Offending magistrates were also fined

heavily, without trial, by special _plebiscita_, which resembled the

bills of attainder familiar to the reader of English history.

These encroachments of the tribunes were met by other unconstitutional

measures on the part of the senate. To bar the action of the tribunes and

to suspend the laws of appeal, they at one time had constant recourse

to dictatorial appointments. These appointments ceased after the Second

Punic War; but after this, in critical times, the senate assumed the

right of investing the consuls with dictatorial power.

It must not here be forgotten that of late years circumstances had

greatly exalted the power of the senate and proportionally diminished the

power of the tribunes. In great wars, especially such as threaten the

existence of a community, the voice of popular leaders is little heard.

Reforms are forgotten. Agitation ceases. Each man applies his energies

to avert present danger, rather than to achieve future improvements.

The senate under the leading of old Fabius Cunctator ruled absolutely

for several years. Even elections to the consulate, which he deemed

inopportune, were set aside--a thing almost without example, before and

after, in Roman constitutional history. Fabius was at length superseded

by young Scipio, who in his turn became absolute, and at the close of the

war might have made himself dictator, had he been so pleased. At present,

popular spirit had fallen asleep. Constitutional opposition there was

none. The senate seemed likely to retain in peace the power which war had

necessarily thrown into their hands.

PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT

At the close of the Hannibalic War, Rome was in possession, nominally, of

five provinces, which were Sicily, Sardinia, the Gallic coast of Umbria,

with Hither and Farther Spain. But of these provincial possessions

Sardinia and the Spains were almost to be conquered again; and Gallic

Umbria was shortly after absorbed into Italy, while the magnificent

district between the Alps and the Gulf of Genoa became the province

of Gaul. Sicily was the only province as yet constituted on a solid

foundation. To Sicily, therefore, we will confine our remarks; a course

which is further recommended by the fact that we are better informed

with regard to Sicily than with regard to any other of the foreign

possessions of the republic.

We must call to mind that, in speaking of Sicily as of Italy, we are

not to think of the country as a whole, but as broken up into a number

of civic communities, each being more or less isolated from the rest.

At the close of the First Punic War, when the Romans had expelled the

Carthaginians from the island, the greater part of it was formed into a

province; while the kingdom of Hiero, consisting of Syracuse with six

dependent communities, was received into free alliance with Rome. But

in the Second Punic War, Syracuse and all Sicily were reconquered by

Marcellus and Lævinus, and the form of the provincial communities was

altered. The cities of Sicily were now divided into three classes. First,

there were those cities which had been taken by siege: these, twenty-six

in number, were mulcted of their territory, which became part of the

public land of Rome; their former citizens had perished in war, or had

been sold as slaves, or were living as serfs on the soil which they

had formerly owned. Secondly, there was a large number of communities,

thirty-four in all, which retained the fee-simple of their land, but were

burdened with payment of a tithe of corn, wine, oil, and other produce,

according to a rule established by Hiero, in the district subject to

Syracuse. Thirdly, there were eight communities left independent, which

were, like the Italians, free from all imposts.

These states were all left in possession of municipal institutions; they

had the right of self-government in all local matters, with popular

assemblies and councils, such as were common in Greek communities. But

all were subject to the authority of a governor, sent from Rome, with

the title of prætor, whose business it was to adjudicate in all matters

where the interests of Rome or of Roman citizens were concerned, and,

above all, to provide for the regular payment of the imposts. In Sicily,

which in those days was a well-cultivated and productive country, this

department was so important that the prætor was assisted by two quæstors,

one stationed at Syracuse, the other at Lilybæum.

Communities which, during the wars of conquest, had joined the invaders

at once or at a critical point in the war, were left free from all

ordinary and annual imposts. Cities that were taken by force became, with

their territory, the absolute property of Rome. Between these extremes

there was a large class, which retained full possession of their lands,

and complete local independence, but were subject to the payment of

yearly imposts to the imperial treasury, which were levied on the produce

of their land. All alike were obliged to contribute towards the expenses

of the prætor’s court and government.

TAXATION

The most important distinction between the Italian and provincial

dominions of Rome consisted in taxation. It was a general rule that all

Italian land was tax-free; and that all provincial land, except such as

was specified in treaties or in decrees of the senate, was subject to

tax. Hence the exemption of land from taxation was known by the technical

name of _Jus Italicum_ or the Right of Italy.

This last distinction implies that the imperial revenues were raised

chiefly from the provinces. We will take this opportunity of giving a

brief account of the different sources from which the revenues of Rome

were raised in the early period.

The imperial treasury was in the ancient temple of Saturn, situated at

the end of the Forum beneath the Capitol. Here the two quæstors of the

city deposited all the moneys received on account of the state, and no

disbursements could be made without an order from an officer authorised

by the senate. The sources of receipt were twofold, ordinary and

extraordinary.

The ordinary revenues consisted of the proceeds and rent of public

property, custom duties, tolls, and the like, and the tax levied on

provincial lands.

The property of the state was, as has often been noticed, very large.

Much of the public land, however, had been distributed to colonies, and

the rent received for the rest seems to have been small. Yet the quantity

of undistributed land in Italy and Sicily was so great that it must have

yielded a considerable revenue. Besides this, the fisheries, with all

mines and quarries, were considered public property. Even the manufacture

of salt was a state monopoly from the censorship of M. Livius, who

thenceforth bore the name of Salinator, or the salt-maker.

Besides these rents and monopolies, custom duties were levied on certain

kinds of goods, both exports and imports, and tolls (called _portoria_)

were demanded for passengers and goods carried by canals or across

bridges and ferries.

There was also an ad valorem duty of five per cent imposed on the

manumission of slaves. This was not carried to the account of the year,

but laid by as a reserve fund, not to be used except in great emergencies.

The revenue derived from the provincial land tax was only beginning to be

productive, but in a few years it formed the chief income of the republic.

It appears that for the civil government of the republic the ordinary

revenues were found sufficient. The current expenses, indeed, were small.

The Italian and provincial communities defrayed the expenses of their own

administration. Rome herself, as we have said, claimed the services of

her statesmen and administrators without paying them any public salaries.

In time of war, however, the ordinary revenues failed, and to meet

the expenses of each year’s campaign an extraordinary tax was levied

as required. This was the _tributum_, or property tax. Its mode of

assessment marks its close association with war expenses. We have seen

above that the whole arrangement of the centuriate assembly was military.

Not the least important of these was the census or register of all

citizens, arranged according to their age and property. It was made

out by the censors at intervals of five years, and served during the

succeeding period as the basis of taxation. The necessities of each year

determined the amount to be levied. It was usually one in a thousand,

or one-tenth per cent; but once, in the Second Punic War, the rate was

doubled. The senate had the power of calling for this payment.

At length it became necessary to call on wealthy individuals to furnish

seamen, and to advance money by way of loan; and contracts were formed

with commercial companies to furnish stores and clothing for the army,

in return for which they received orders on the treasury payable at some

future time. The obligations thus contracted were not left as a national

debt. The first instalment of repayment was made in the year 204 B.C.,

immediately after the submission of Carthage; the second and third at

successive intervals of four years.

At length, in the year 167 B.C., the payments exacted from the

provincials became so large that the senate was enabled to dispense

with extraordinary taxes altogether; and thus the ordinary revenues

sufficed for the expenses of all future wars, as well as for the civil

administration.

The allied communities of Italy, the municipia and colonies, were free

from all direct burdens, except in time of war. Then each community was

required, according to a scale furnished by its own censor, to supply

contingents of soldiery to the Roman army, such contingents bearing a

proportion to the number of legions levied by the Romans themselves

in any given year. The Italian soldiery were fed by Rome; but their

equipments and pay were provided at the expense of their own states;

and therefore it is plain that every Italian community was indirectly

subject to a war tax. But though these communities suffered the burdens

of war like Rome, they did not like Rome profit by war. The Roman

treasury repaid taxes raised for the conduct of war. But such repayment

was confined to Romans. The soldiers of the Latin and Italian towns

obtained their share of booty; but their citizens at home had no hope

of repayment. Moneys paid into the Roman treasury were applicable to

Roman purposes only. The Italians, though they shared the danger and the

expense, were not allowed to share the profit. Here was a fertile field

for discontent, which afterwards bore fatal fruits.

In the provinces, on the other hand, little military service was

required, but direct imposts were levied instead.

This system was itself galling and onerous. It was as if England were to

defray the expenses of her own administration from the proceeds of a tax

levied upon her Indian empire. But the system was made much worse by the

way in which the taxes were collected. This was done by contract. Every

five years the taxes of the provinces were put up to public auction;

and that company of contractors which outbid the rest would receive the

contract. The farmers of the taxes, therefore, offered to pay a certain

sum to the imperial treasury for the right of collecting the taxes and

imposts of Sicily, gave security for payment, and then made what profit

they could out of the taxes collected. The members of these companies

were called _publicani_, and the farmers-general, or chiefs of the

companies, bore the name of _mancipes_. It is manifest that this system

offered a premium on extortion: for the more the tax collectors could

wring from the provincials, the more they would have for themselves.

The extortions incident to this system form a principal topic in the

provincial history of Rome.[b]

SOCIAL CONDITIONS: THE ARISTOCRACY AND THE PEOPLE

Since the year 366 distinctions between the patricians and plebeians

had been legally waived, but the importance of the patrician class

still continued. The victory of the plebeians led to no democracy. The

patrician families who had stood alone in the highest dignities in

the state retained their prominent position; but a number of plebeian

families came forward who shared with them the state offices and joined

in their labours for the greatness of the country. Thus in the course

of years a new aristocracy was evolved, a kind of official nobility

(_nobilitas_) of the families whose forefathers had occupied such high

positions in the state as those of curule magistrates, ædiles, prætors,

and consuls, and whose distinctions descended from father to son.

For a long time there had been this sort of aristocracy of merit;

elevation being due to neither birth nor name, but to the merits and

brilliant achievements of ancestors, the sons zealously treading in the

footprints of their fathers.

In Rome the power of the family life was great. It exercised the same

potent influence upon the young men as public life did in Greece. The

sons conformed to the standard furnished by the life and teaching of

their fathers and elder relatives, and in their life at home and abroad

they acquired the knowledge and capacity which fitted them for the

government of the state and the leadership of armies. A youth of moderate

gifts could thus make himself a capable statesman and general, and could

easily attain to the same official rank as his father. But a man of the

lower class seldom succeeded. It was only by the greatest talent that a

new man (_homo novus_) could rise to any high office, unless his rise was

due to the democratic opposition, which from a feeling of spite to the

upper class insisted on seeing equality of power prevail.

It was under the government of this new aristocracy that Rome laid the

foundation of her new world-wide power. The subjection of Italy was

completed and the Roman dominion had been extended over the majority

of the countries of the Mediterranean Sea. But it was just this

ever increasing extension of the empire which forcibly impelled the

_nobilitas_ to unite themselves in an exclusive community and so to get

the reins of government into their own hands. Continual wars gave rise to

the necessity of having a group of men of more than ordinary reliability

who could devote themselves exclusively to state affairs.

Before the Punic Wars the aristocracy had to a certain extent formed

itself into a party against which the people soon gathered in opposition.

[Illustration: A ROMAN NOBLE]

The nobility used their influential position to appropriate the whole

administration of the state. In the senate the exclusive circle of noble

families ruled, and the highest official positions were given only to

men of their party. The censorship, a position of the greatest power and

consideration, was an important office in their hands; it was regarded as

the chief of all state dignities. Hence the aristocracy used every means

to prevent a man of the plebeian order from acquiring that position.

The duty of the censors was to keep the senate as free as possible from

all unaristocratic elements, for they were empowered to nominate the

members of the senate and to disqualify for admission to it. There was

another way of entering the senate besides that of nomination by the

censor; anyone who had occupied a curule chair was entitled to a seat and

a voice in the senate. But the choice of the higher officials was in a

certain degree in the hands of the consul, who generally belonged to the

aristocracy; and as president of the centuriate assembly he could reject

any candidate of whom he did not approve.

The censors also appointed the knights and therefore formed them into a

purely aristocratic body. As long as they cast the earliest vote in the

centuriate assembly, the nobility had a considerable advantage there.

Even after this ceased, the knights formed in the assembly a distinct

and distinguished party, and as the flower of the nobility they likewise

formed in the army a brilliant cavalry corps. As in this corporation the

nobility regarded itself as something quite distinct from the rest of the

people, the ruling class tried by other external signs to distinguish

themselves from the masses and to represent themselves as a superior

caste.

So from the year 194 the seats of the senatorial class were kept separate

from those of other people at the public festivals.

When the nobility got the government into their hands, they moulded it

in conformity with their own interests. In order to raise the position

of the officials as high as possible they only increased the number when

absolutely necessary, and never in proportion to the increase of business

consequent on the extension of the territories of the republic. It was

only from the most pressing necessity that in the year 242 the work of

a single prætor, the director of judicial business, was divided between

two, so that the town prætor (_prætor urbanus_) had the judicial business

of the Roman citizens, and the foreign prætor (_prætor peregrinus_)

settled questions between aliens or between aliens and Roman citizens.

After the conquest of Sicily, Sardinia, and the two Spains, four more

prætors were added for the management of those provinces.

But after the year 149 they remained as a rule in Rome during their year

of office to preside at the commission of inquiry respecting criminal

matters introduced during that time, and then they went in the following

year as pro-prætors to the provinces.

The choice of officials was, moreover, limited by the avoidance as much

as possible of the re-election to the consulate. From 265 the censor was

never twice the same, and the custom was made a law whereby the curule

(_lex annalis_ of year 180) officials were appointed in a certain degree

by grade and after a certain interval.

An ædile, as we have seen, must be at least thirty-seven, a prætor forty,

a consul forty-three. The right was therefore withdrawn from the voters,

in case of need, to take the most competent and serviceable man without

regard to seniority. The measure of worth for the selection of officials

was no longer competence but birth and seigniority, and the nobility

regarded office as its due right, not disdaining, however, to get from

the people all they could by the arts of flattery.

The government of this official nobility exhibited in foreign policy

all its time-worn energy, which was only too often united with unworthy

cunning and untrustworthiness, but the administration of internal affairs

became torpid and bad. The majority belied the claims of their office,

mostly careful on the one hand not to forfeit by any inconsiderate

or stern measure the favour of the people to whom they were indebted

for their posts and from whom they expected future favours, while on

the other hand they did not hesitate to run counter to such of their

colleagues as might occasionally wish to render the people reciprocal

service.

The late wars had shown the weakness of the generals and the consequent

lack of military discipline. In the wars of this period so much leave and

furlough had been granted for money that the forces were not ready for

any undertaking. Instead of fighting the enemy, generals and soldiers

laid their allies and friends under contribution.

When Scipio Africanus took the command against Numantia he sent away

from the camp not less than two thousand women, a number of sorcerers

and priests, and a whole tribe of traders, cooks, and other servants, so

sunk was the army in debauchery and effeminacy. Cowardice and idleness

were so deep-seated that it required many months and the most stringent

measures to make the army fit to take the field. The change in the spirit

of the government was also evident in the treatment of the Roman subjects

in Italy and beyond Italy. The Italian communities which had not the

full rights of Roman citizens--and they were the majority--were in a

bad plight. The communities which had joined Hannibal were almost all

condemned to slavery, and the rest were forced to render military service

whilst the Roman citizens profited by their labours and kept themselves

as distinct from them as the nobility did from the citizens and the rest

of the people. The Italian allies were almost excluded from the rights of

Roman citizens.

The foreign provinces which at first were treated with a certain

consideration were soon in a worse position than the Italians. The

governors, who had a royal position in their provinces, and were almost

uncontrolled by the senate, allowed themselves the greatest licence,

and used the short time of their office to enrich themselves. They

indemnified themselves for the expense they had been put to in Rome

in order to obtain their posts, and amassed the means for life-long

enjoyment.

As the governors were not paid, they had a claim upon all kinds of

services and supplies from the provinces, and this they abused in every

way. They robbed shamelessly when there was anything to get, and what the

governors did on a large scale their numberless subordinates did on a

small one. When a province had to support an army it had much to suffer.

Requisitions and levies were endless, and the people were often attacked

and plundered by the general and soldiers as if they had been the enemy.

To these evils were added the tax collectors and money changers who came

like a plague into the country, and plied their bloodsucking callings at

will under the protection of the governor. But the persecuted districts

revenged themselves on their oppressors. The great wealth taken by the

nobility from the provinces to Rome, the luxury and immorality of the

officials and the armies, which had such a pernicious influence on the

morality of high and low, became known in the uncivilised lands of the

East, in Greece, and in Asia. The rich nobility was steeped in debauchery

and love of pleasure, and displayed a boundless luxury against which the

laws repeatedly enacted strove in vain. And the people also, since there

was no country of which Rome stood in awe, began to lose its old energy

and to be gradually depraved by the love of enjoyment, recklessness, and

idleness.

Certainly there was always a party of honourable, independent citizens;

but a sunken, impoverished populace who pandered to the nobility

gradually gathered about them. The nobles took care to gain the favour of

the mob by flattery, festivities, donations of corn, and even by general

bribery, so as to rule in the comitium through them, and secure the

official posts. It was almost impossible now for a man who was not rich

to obtain office.[c]

SLAVES AND FREEMEN

The age of which we have been treating, from the Samnite War to the

close of the Punic Wars, was always considered by the Romans, and is

still considered by their admirers, to have been the golden age of the

republic. A people which handed down the legends of Cincinnatus, Curius,

Fabricius, Regulus, can hardly have failed to practise the thrift and

honesty which they admired. The characters are no doubt idealised;

but they may be taken as types of their times. In the Roman country

districts, and still more in the Apennine valleys, the habits of life

were no doubt simple, honest, and perhaps rude, of Sabine rather than of

Hellenic character, the life of countrymen rather than of dwellers in the

town.

It has been remarked that the Italians, like the Greeks, must be regarded

as members of cities or civic communities. But the walled towns which

were the centres of each community were mostly the residence of the chief

men and their dependents and slaves, while the mass of the free citizens

were dispersed over the adjoining country district, dwelling on their own

farms, and resorting to the town only to bring their produce to market or

to take their part in the political business transacted at the general

assemblies. Such was the case at Rome in early times. The great patrician

lords with their families dwelt in strong houses or castles on the

Capitoline, Palatine, and Quirinal hills, while their clients thronged

the lower parts adjacent. As the plebeians increased in wealth and power,

their great men established themselves at first upon the Cælian and

Aventine, and afterwards indiscriminately on all the hills.

In the country districts of Rome the greater part of the land was still

in the hands of small proprietors, who tilled their own lands by the

aid of their sons and sons-in-law. In the earliest times the dimensions

of these plebeian holdings were incredibly small, an allotment being

computed at not more than two jugera (about 1¼ acres). Even with very

fertile soil and unremitting labour, such a piece of land could barely

maintain a family. But to eke out the produce of their tilled lands,

every free citizen had a right to feed a certain number of cattle on

the common pastures at the expense of a small payment to the state;

and in this way even a large family might live in rude abundance. In

no long time, however, the plebeian allotments were increased to seven

jugera (about 4½ acres); and this increase of tilled lands indicates a

corresponding improvement in the habits and comforts of the people--an

improvement attributed, as all benefits conferred on the plebeians in

early times were attributed, to King Servius. And this long remained the

normal size of the small properties then so common in the Roman district.

The farm and public pasture produced all that the family required--not

only food, but flax and wool, which the matron and her daughters dressed

and spun and wove, wood and stone for building and farm implements,

everything except metals and salt, which were (as we have seen) state

monopolies.

But a golden age generally comes to an end with increase of population.

Mouths to be fed multiply; the yeomen sell their little farms and

emigrate, or become satisfied with a lower scale of living as

hired labourers. The Romans had a remedy for these evils in a home

colonisation. The immense quantity of public land in the hands of the

state, with the necessity of securing newly-conquered districts of Italy,

led to the foundation of numerous colonies between the Samnite and Punic

wars, and extended the means of material well-being to every one who was

willing and able to work; and this not only for Romans, but for Latins

and others, who were invited to become citizens of the colony.

If, however, the superfluous sons of families settled on lands in

Samnium, or Apulia, or Cisalpine Gaul, others must have lost these lands;

and the question naturally occurs: What had become of these people?

This question brings us to the worst point in ancient society--that is,

slavery.

It was the practice of ancient nations to regard all conquered persons

as completely in the light of booty, as cattle or lifeless goods. If

indeed the enemy surrendered without a blow, they became subjects. But

those who were taken after a struggle were for the most part sold into

slavery. In early times this evil was small. Nor was it to be expected

that the small proprietors could afford either to buy or to maintain

slaves. They were acquired by the rich patricians and plebeians, who held

large tracts of public land, or who had acquired large estates of their

own. Before the decemvirate, their debtors were their slaves. But this

custom had been long abolished, and it was conquest which supplied slaves

to the rich. After the conquest of Samnium, thirty-six thousand persons

are said to have been sold. After the reduction of Cisalpine Gaul and

Sicily, still larger numbers were brought to the hammer. These were the

wretches on whose lands the poorer sort of Roman citizens settled. The

slaves may generally be divided into two great classes, the urban or city

slaves, and those of the country. They had no civil rights; they could

not contract legal marriage; they had no power over their children; they

could hold no property in their own name; their very savings were not

their own, but held by consent of their master; all law proceedings ran

in the name of their masters. For crimes committed, they were tried by

the public courts; and the masters were held liable for the damage done,

but only to the extent of the slave’s value. To kill, maim, or maltreat a

slave was considered as damage to his master, and could only be treated

as such. No pain or suffering inflicted on a slave was punishable, unless

loss had thereby accrued to the owner.

But human nature is too strong always to fulfil conditions so cruel.

There is no doubt that the slaves of the household were often treated

with kindness; often they became the confidential advisers of their

masters. The steward or bailiff of a rich man’s estate, his _villicus_,

was a person of considerable power. Still the mass of the slaves,

especially the agricultural slaves, were treated as mere cattle. Some

poor drudges were the slaves of other slaves, such ownership being

allowed by the masters. Cato recommends to sell off old and infirm

slaves, so as to save the expense of keeping live lumber. Englishmen

feel a pang at seeing a fine horse consigned in his old age to the

drivers of public carriages; but Romans wasted no such sympathy on

slaves who had spent their lives and strength in cultivating their

lands. Notwithstanding the better treatment of the house slaves, the

humane Cicero reproached himself with feeling too much sorrow for one

who had been for years his tried and faithful servant. It was in the

next half-century, however, that slaves increased so much in Italy as to

produce great effect upon the social condition of the people. At present

the evil was only in its beginning.

Here it must be remarked that the practice of giving liberty to slaves

was very common. The prospect of freedom as a reward for good conduct

must have done much to prevent Roman bondsmen from sinking into that

state of animal contentment and listless indifference which marked the

negro slaves of later times.

The freedmen filled no mean space in Roman society. Among them were to

be found able and well-educated men, who had held a high station in

their native country, and often obtained great influence over the minds

of their masters. Freedmen exercised most branches of retail trade, and

formed the shopkeepers and petty traders and artisans of Rome; for Roman

citizens, however poor, could in early times condescend to no business

except that of agriculture. Rich men carried on trades by means of their

slaves and freedmen; in later times freedmen often worked as artists

under some patrician roof, and many of the early poets were freedmen.

Here, then, we trace the beginning of a great distinction, that

afterwards was more strongly marked, between the population of the city

and the population of the country--between the rustic and the civic

tribes.[b]

THE ROMAN FAMILY: WOMEN AND MARRIAGE

The Roman woman independent of the marriage tie was placed under the

authority of her father or of a guardian.

The father’s authority was absolute. All the members of an ancient

Roman family--father, mother, children, and daughters-in-law--made up

a close association under one ruler or head. All the wealth which came

to a family was thrown into a kind of common stock and formed but one

patrimony. The sole head of this association, the one master of the

common resources, was the father. Until now we have seen no difference

made between the children of the two sexes; paternal power presses

with equal weight on the son and on the daughter, and holds them both

down to the same level. Besides, the daughter like the son can sign a

legal contract; like him she has her share of the family patrimony, a

guaranteed share that only a formal disinheritance can take from her.

More liberal than the oriental or Greek law, Roman law granted equal

rights in the paternal inheritance.

But as soon as the paternal power has disappeared, the legal differences

between the two sexes begin to show themselves; the son, if he is of

age, becomes independent and master of his actions, the daughter, on the

contrary, whatever her age, remains under the power of a guardian.

[Illustration: A ROMAN WOMAN

(From a Statue)]

What was that perpetual guardianship of women which the Romans themselves

considered as one of the most fundamental institutions of their law?

Was it a protecting guardianship like that of minors? Was it a despotic

power like that of the father of a family? Neither one nor the other. To

grasp its real character, we must go back to the causes which led to its

establishment.

In the almost patriarchal constitution of ancient Rome, the preservation

of families was of great public importance and the laws were always made

to benefit it. The domestic ties, always so close whilst the head of the

family lived, were not broken at his death; the hereditary possessions,

whilst they were divided amongst the children, did not the less remain

the patrimony of the family; the perpetual worship due to the spirit

of the ancestors and to the household gods remained a common debt. But

supposing that amongst the children there was a daughter, the hereditary

share she was to receive would not be safe in her hands; it was to be

feared that one day she would try to enrich the family she had entered at

the expense of her own. It was to guard against this danger, it was to

perpetuate in each family, together with the preservation of hereditary

possessions, the memory of its ancestors and the glory or dignity of

the house, that the Romans deprived woman of the free possession of

her property and placed her under the perpetual guardianship of her

_agnates_. This guardianship was not, then, established in the interest

of woman, on account of her weakness and natural incapacity; it was

established against her and in the interests of the guardians themselves.

This view, we must admit, has received many contradictions even in

antiquity. Cicero, Ulpian, Isidorus de Sevilla, are unanimous in saying

if the law has placed women under guardianship, it is on account of

the weakness of their sex, their ignorance, their inexperience, their

frivolity.

But listen to Gaius, the only writer amongst the ancients who discusses

and sifts the question: “The vulgar opinion,” he says, “is that women

must be directed by guardians, because their minds are too shallow to

govern themselves. This guardianship has been established in the interest

of the guardians, so that the women, whose presumptive heirs they are,

can neither deprive them of their inheritance by a will, nor cripple it

by gifts or by debts.”

Is it necessary to add another proof to the authority of Gaius? Here is

one which seems irrefutable. Woman was placed under the paternal power,

and, as has been already said, could make a legal contract. Once placed

under a guardian, on the contrary, she can no longer contract debts

without her guardian’s permission. Why this strange contradiction? Why

should woman, capable of acting whilst she is under a father’s authority,

become incapable as soon as she is freed from that authority? In the two

cases, her frivolity, her weakness are evidently the same; here is the

only difference: the daughter under paternal authority has no wants,

and in indulging herself she only pledges herself; but the orphan or

emancipated girl has a patrimony; if she pleased herself she would engage

her patrimony and in this way compromise the inheritance of her family,

of her future heirs. This reveals to us the spirit of the law. Woman is

placed under a guardian because she has a fortune to leave behind her; it

is done to protect her heirs and not to insure her own protection.

It will now be guessed to whom the law gave the guardianship; perhaps

only to her next heirs, that is to say to her _agnates_, her nearest

relatives; if she were a freed slave, to her masters. For natural

guardians it was not an office, but a right--a family possession. They

had no accounts to render; if they were infirm, in a state of infancy,

idiocy, or insanity, they would still retain their rights to this

guardianship, except that in that case it would be executed by deputy.

But if they could not be deprived of this right they could resign it, and

give it to some one in their place; the legitimate guardian could dispose

of his ward by an _in jure cessio_, as he could dispose of his house or

field.

The guardian’s authority was not quite similar to the parental

authority. Its limits were rigorously determined by the very purpose of

guardianship. The guardian had all the power necessary to safeguard the

woman’s patrimony, nothing less--but nothing more.

Thus in the first case, his authority only extends to the fortune of

the woman, not to her person. He has no control over the conduct of his

ward, nor is it his prerogative to watch over her behaviour, or inquire

into those of her acts which only affect her personally, and do not touch

her fortune. For example, in the matter of marriage, all the pecuniary

agreements which so often accompany it have to be authorised by the

guardian; his consent is necessary, either to fix the dowry, or for the

_conventio in manum_, which involves, as will be seen, a kind of general

community of interest. But as for the marriage itself, how can it concern

or prejudice the interests of the guardian, since the _agnates_, and not

the children of the marriage, will inherit at the woman’s death? Thus

the guardian’s authority is not necessary, either for the celebration of

the marriage or in the choice of a husband. The woman herself chooses

her husband, assisted sometimes, according to her age, by the advice of

her mother and of her near relatives. Nor do all pecuniary transactions

need the intervention of the guardian. Ulpian has given us the list, and

we can separate the different proceedings that he enumerates, into two

classes, the informal and the formal. In the first class we only find the

alienations of _res mancipi_, either by direct or indirect covenants.

_Res mancipi_ were houses, lands, rustic servitude, slaves, beasts of

burden--in a word, the soil and what was necessary to cultivate it; these

were patrimonial property, and as the mainstay of the family, were placed

under the vigilance and care of the guardian, so that their preservation

was guaranteed. But besides this inalienable patrimony which she could

not touch, the woman still had a large field of administration; she could

acquire all sorts of property, dispose of the products of her fields and

farm them out, dispose of her money--and thus pay her debts, recover her

credit, lend, sell, bargain, and make free gifts.

For the formal proceedings, on the contrary, the law makes no

distinctions and the guardian’s authority is always necessary. This will,

at first sight, seem so little in harmony with the preceding that an

explanation has been sought in considerations foreign to the principles

of wardship. It has been said that the formal proceedings which usually

took place before the magistrate, or before the witnesses who represented

the Roman people, had too much resemblance to political proceedings to be

permitted to others than citizens, and since woman was excluded from the

comitia, she ought to be excluded from the Forum as well. But it is not

true that the law courts were always closed to women, even at the time

when all processes were under the form of a _legis-actio_; not only could

she appear before the judges accompanied by her guardian, but she could

even appear alone, either as a witness or as a representative of some one

else--that is to say, whenever her personal interest was not at stake.

She could also execute certain formal acts alone, as, for instance,

emancipation, when she was under paternal authority; here again, the act

could not touch her patrimony, as she had none. These are the cases in

which the guardian’s authority was not necessary, although the proceeding

was formal and these acts are just those which cannot touch or diminish

the patrimony. Is it not, then, permissible to conclude that where

the guardian can intervene in such cases, it is not on account of the

formalities which surround them, it is because of the alienation they

involve?

So far we have only spoken of natural guardians. But there are other

kinds of guardians, and the Roman lawyers place the testamentary

guardians first.

The father of the family, supreme in his own household, could, as we have

already seen, dispose as he liked of the domestic patrimony; a strong

reason, if he left a son and a daughter, for depriving the son of all

rights of control and of the care of his sister’s hereditary portion,

by taking the daughter away from his guardianship. How was this to be

accomplished? By making over in his will the guardianship of his daughter

to a stranger; this is testamentary guardianship. This guardianship

almost amounted to independence for the woman, the testamentary guardian

being a stranger to the family and having no right of succession to

his ward’s property. What interest would he have in preventing her from

disposing of her fortune as she pleased? To allow the father to choose

a guardian for his daughter was really to allow his daughter to be free

of all real and efficacious tutelage. We stop here, and will not tell

how testamentary guardianship served as a model to the other kinds of

wardships, how by the usurpation of these different nominal guardians the

real guardianship, that of the family, was little by little restricted

and undermined. We should be no longer describing this institution--we

should be telling of its decay and downfall.

No legislators have better defined marriage than have those of ancient

Rome. “It is the union of two lives, the blending of two inheritances, a

common interest in everything religious and temporal.” In this ancient

notion of marriage we find the two principles which are the foundation

of Christian and modern marriage--the indissolubility of the bond and

monogamy.

We found in Greece something of oriental polygamy. In Italy, on the

contrary, monogamy is as ancient as the foundation of Rome. It entered

so deeply into the habits of the Romans that when later they introduced

into the constitution a freer form of conjugal union, concubinage, they

considered it, like legitimate marriage, under the law of monogamy.

And this law could not be eluded, as at Athens, by the legitimisation

of natural children. The ancient Roman law always excluded the natural

children from the family circle. It admitted no legitimisation nor

recognition; and that illegitimacy might not be hidden under the mask of

adoption, such adoption was itself subject to an investigation by the

pontiffs and the ratification of the entire people.

The principle of monogamy had its natural complement in the

indissolubility of marriage, for marriage with a possible divorce is, as

has been said, but a progressive polygamy. Marriage in ancient Rome was

indissoluble. Doubtless this indissolubility is not written in the law.

Roman legislation would not, as we have seen, touch family independence,

nor tighten by legal constraint ties that natural affection had formed.

But if divorce is authorised by the law, it is forbidden by religion

and custom; the man who repudiates his wife is branded by the censor,

he is excommunicated by the priest, and can only atone for his fault

by sacrificing a portion of his worldly wealth at the altar of the

divinities that presided at his union. This moral sanction was much more

efficacious than the laws ever were. Divorce was not illegal, but morally

it was impossible; and all the writers of antiquity agree in saying that

they have only heard of one during five centuries.

It is sufficient to remember these two fundamental principles, which are

as old as Rome--namely, monogamy and the indissolubility of marriage--to

show the value of the vulgar opinion which represents marital power in

ancient Rome as the most odious of all tyrannies. It is difficult to

believe that the husband was a despot and the wife a slave, where an

inviolable fidelity was the reciprocal duty of the two; and a closer

study will convince us that a Roman marriage was a real union in which

the husband’s authority did not exclude the independence of the wife. But

to be certain in what this independence consisted, two kinds of marriage

must be distinguished. Sometimes the wife, though married, lived at home

under the authority of her father, or the guardianship of her _agnates_;

sometimes these ties were broken by marriage and the wife went, according

to the technical expression, _in manum mariti_, and had no other family

than her husband’s. This last kind of marriage is without doubt the more

ancient. The antiquity of its origin is revealed in the particular

customs that went with it, and which are found, almost identically the

same, in the most ancient legislations. It is then most probable that

during the first centuries of Rome, the _manus mariti_ was the inevitable

result of marriage. From the day the newly married couple had offered a

joint sacrifice to the divinities in the nuptial chamber, the wife had

no other family _agnates_ or heirs than her husband and his relatives.

What became of the wife’s former family ties, the rights of the _agnates_

to her guardianship and to her inheritance? Marriage had destroyed them

forever. But in this there was a danger to which the legislators had soon

to give their attention. The guardians of the wife cannot have been very

ready to consent to a marriage which deprived them of all their rights,

and without their consent marriage was impossible. Could they have been

compelled to give up their rights? But these rights were sacred to the

guardians of the family interest; for them it was a duty to prevent the

patrimony of their ancestors from passing into the hands of strangers. To

satisfy all conflicting claims, the ancient principle had to be entirely

altered. Two things had to be separated which until then had seemed

inseparable--marriage and the _manus_, that is to say, the change of

family. Side by side with the ancient marriage accompanied by the regular

formalities, a new marriage was devised which was contracted simply by

consent and left the wife in her family under the guardianship of her

_agnates_. The consent of the guardians was always necessary for the

ancient marriage with _manus_; but it was not required for the marriage

pure and simple, which left the rights of the _agnates_ intact. This

revolution in the family usage was already accomplished, or nearly so, at

the time of the laws of the Twelve Tables.

For the rest, the introduction of a new form of marriage did not insure

the abandonment of the old, for both could in diverse cases in turn

satisfy the same need. If the wife, at the time of her marriage, was

not under a guardian, but under the parental authority, that is to say

without patrimony, the _conventio in manum_ could only benefit the

_agnates_; for it was equivalent to the compact of renunciation, which,

in ancient French law, so often accompanied marriage contracts. Thus,

the same interest, that of preserving the patrimonial wealth, caused

the introduction for the heiress of the marriage without _manus_, and

maintained the marriage with _manus_ for the daughter who had not already

inherited.[d]

RELIGION

The religion of Rome was, as the legends show, of Sabine origin. Much

of its ceremonial, the names of many of its gods, were Etruscan; and

Hellenic mythology began, at an early time, to mingle itself in the

simple religious faith of the Sabine countrymen. The important question

in the history of all religions is, how far they exert power over the

lives of their professors. That the old faith of Rome was not without

such power in the times of which we speak is unquestionable. The simple

Roman husbandman lived and died, like his Sabine ancestors, in the

fear of the gods; he believed that there was something in the universe

higher and better than himself; that by these higher powers his life

and actions were watched; that to these powers good deeds and an honest

life were pleasing, evil deeds and bad faith hateful. The principles

thus established remained, as is confirmed by the weighty testimony of

Polybius, delivered in a later and more corrupt age. “If,” says he, “you

lend a single talent to a Greek, binding him by all possible securities,

yet he will break faith. But Roman magistrates, accustomed to have

immense sums of money pass through their hands, are restrained from fraud

simply by respect for the sanctity of an oath.”[b]

The primitive religion of the Italians, in its essential or fundamental

beliefs resembled that of other Indo-European nations. They adored the

forces of nature, favourable or otherwise, and imagined them animated

living beings, of different sexes, their rivality producing the struggles

of the elements, and their union explaining the external fecundity of the

world. This was also the basis of the Greek religion, but the Italian

religion bore the impression of the nations who had made it. These

nations were as a rule grave, sensible, prudent, and much absorbed by

the miseries of this life and the dangers of the future. As they were

inclined rather more towards fear than hope, they respected their gods

a great deal, but feared them more, and their worship consisted more

especially of humble petitions and rigorous mortifications.

Their imaginations wanted in richness and brilliance, they never

therefore created anything like the rich development of the poetic

legends so much admired in the Greeks. Their legends are poor and simple;

springing from the hard life of agricultural labour, their character

is often strangely prosaic; they are especially wanting in variety; in

different times the same stories are found applied to different gods. The

hero who founded or was the benefactor of the town was as a rule a child

of marvellous birth, son of the god Lar, and begotten near the family

hearth, sometimes by a spark from the fire. When he is young a miracle

reveals his future greatness. This miracle is everywhere the same; it is

a flame which burns around his head without consuming him. During his

life he is wise, pious, and good; he makes good laws and teaches men to

respect the gods and justice. After a few useful deeds he disappears

suddenly, “he ceases to be seen,” without it being possible to say how

he vanished. Doubtless he has gone to lose himself in the bosom of the

great divinity from which everything emanates here below, he becomes

part of this divinity, he loses his mortal name and from henceforth

takes the one of the god with which he is absorbed. Thus Æneas, after

his disappearance, was honoured under the name of _Jupiter Indiges_ and

Latinus as _Jupiter Latinus_.

Italy was thus not very rich in religious stories; the mixture of Italian

races, that gave birth to Rome, was poorer still. Rome was content to

accept the beliefs of the different nations which composed her by trying

to unite them and making them agree; it did not seem necessary to create

new ones. The only innovation which was made was inscribing on kinds of

registers, called _Indigitamenta_, the list of gods that are affected

by each event in a man’s life, from his conception until his death,

and those that look after his most indispensable needs, such as food,

dwelling, and clothing. They were placed in regular order, with a few

explanations as to their names and the prayers which had to be offered

up to them. The gods of the _Indigitamenta_ have an exclusive and entire

Roman character. Without doubt in other countries the need has been felt

of placing the principal acts of life under divine protection, but as a

rule gods are chosen for this purpose who are known, powerful, and tried,

in order to be sure that their help will be efficacious. In Greece, the

great Athene, or the wise Hermes, is invoked in order that a child may

be clever and learned. In Rome, special gods were preferred, created for

that purpose and for no other use; there is one who makes a child utter

his first cry, and one who makes him speak his first word, neither have

another use, and are only invoked for this occasion. They seldom have

another name but the one their special functions give them, as if to show

that they had no real existence besides the act over which they preside.

Their competency is very limited; the simplest action gives birth to

several divinities. When a child is weaned there is one who teaches him

how to eat, another to teach him to drink, a third makes him lie still

in his little bed. When he commences to walk, four goddesses protect his

first steps, two accompany him when he leaves his home, and two bring him

back when he returns. The lists were thus endless and the names became

indefinitely multiplied.

The fathers of the Catholic Church were much amused at “this population

of little gods condemned to such small uses,” and compare them to workmen

who divide the work amongst themselves in order that it may be more

quickly done. For all this it is curious to study them; they are, after

all, the original gods of Rome. Rome had not yet undergone the sovereign

influence of Greece when the pontiffs drew up the _Indigitamenta_, and

the remains that are left to us of the sacred registers can alone teach

us what idea the Romans had of divinity and how they understood religious

sentiment.

What is most striking at first is how all these gods seem without life.

They have no history attached to them and not even a legend has been

given them. All that is known of them is that at a certain crisis they

must be prayed to and they can then render service. Once that moment

passes, they are forgotten. They do not possess real names; those given

to them do not distinguish them individually, but only indicate the

function they fulfil. As a rule this name is in the form of an epithet;

from this it is probable that it was not always employed alone, and that

at first it was a simple emblem. It can be concluded with a great deal of

apparent truth that originally the name described a powerful divinity, or

even the divinity in general, the father all-powerful, as he was called

so long as he limited his action to a special purpose. Thus the two gods

Vaticanus and Fabulinas would be no other than the divinity itself, even

when it watches over the first cries and first steps of the child.

The gods were not quite so numerous in the first ages, and it was then

necessary to give each of them many more functions. These attributes were

expressed, as in Christian litanies, by epithets, the list of which, more

or less lengthy according to the importance of the god, followed after

his name. As each invocation appealed to one of the faculties, and not

to the power of the god, the epithet was practically much more important

than the name and was employed alone. Soon the relationship between the

name and the qualifications which existed primitively was forgotten or

lost and then the epithets became divine. Thus the different functions

of one god ended by being attached to independent gods. It was at the

time of these changes that the _Indigitamenta_ were drawn up. They are

interesting to us, as they make us grasp Roman polytheism just when it is

being formed, but they also show us that it is an unfinished polytheism.

After creating all these gods, Rome did not know how to make them

life-like. They remained vague, undecided, floating; they never attained,

as the Greek gods, precise forms with distinct features. This, besides,

is the general character of the Roman religion, and the gods of Rome

always resembled those of the _Indigitamenta_.

The Italian religion was always more respectful and timid than the

Greek. The Roman remained at a farther distance from his gods, he dared

not approach them, he would have been afraid to look at them. If the

Roman veiled his face when accomplishing religious duties, it was not,

as Virgil says, because he was afraid of having his attention taken

off what he was doing, but in order not to risk seeing the god he is

praying to. He solicits his presence, he likes to know that he is near

him, listening to his vows in order to grant them, but he would have been

frightened if he had seen him. “Deliver us,” says Ovid in his prayer to

Pallas, “from seeing the dryads or Diana’s bath, or Faunus when he runs

across the fields in the daytime”; and until the end of paganism the

Roman peasant was very afraid, when returning home in the evening, of

meeting a Faun in his path. The result of this timidity of the Italians,

who did not dare look at the gods in the face, is that they saw them

vaguely. They have not got clear outlines, and are represented rather by

symbols than by images; here Mars is adored under the form of a lance

struck in the ground, in another place a simple stone represents the

great Jupiter.

According to Varro, Rome remained 170 years without statues; the idea of

placing them in the temples came from abroad. It was to imitate Etruria

that a painted wooden Jupiter was placed in the Capitol; on the eve of

festivals they gave him a coat of paint for him to appear in all his

glory. These ancient customs were never quite lost, they were preserved

in the country, where the peasants honoured the gods by covering old

trunks of trees with bands, and in piously pouring oil on blocks of

stone. At Rome, even whilst all the temples were being filled by Grecian

masterpieces the antique Vesta would not allow a single statue in her

sanctuary; she was only represented by the sacred flame which was never

put out.

It is probable, then, that if Rome had not known Greece, anthropomorphism

would have stopped short. The Roman has an instinctive repugnance to

making his gods beings too much like us; to him they are not real

persons, having an individual existence, but only divine manifestations,

_numina_; and this name by which he calls them indicates perfectly the

idea he has of them. Every time the divinity seems to reveal itself to

the world in some manner (and as he is very religious, he believes he

sees him everywhere), he notes with care this new revelation, gives it a

name and worships it. These gods he creates every minute are nothing else

but divine acts, and that is why they are so numerous.

No other nation has ever possessed such a vast Pantheon; and these words

can be applied to the whole of Italy, that a writer of the imperial

epoch lends to a woman of the Campania: “Our country is so peopled with

divinities that it is much easier to meet a god than a man.” This is also

the reason why the Romans more than any other nation had a taste for

divinised abstractions. As in reality all their gods, even the greatest,

are only divine qualities or attributes and as they always preserve to

some extent their abstract character, it is not surprising that the habit

was soon formed of introducing simple abstractions in their company.

This is a custom as a rule only introduced into religions when they

become old, but in Rome we notice it from the most ancient times. Tullus

Hostilius built a temple to Fear and to Pallidness; and Salvation or

Prosperity of the Roman nation was early a divinity much worshipped.

Later many exaggerations were made in this manner. During the empire all

the ventures of the emperors were worshipped and statues were raised to

the Security of the Century and to the Indulgence of the Master. These

strange personifications, which would never have entered the mind of a

Greek, were the result of the manner in which the Romans of all times

conceived divinity. Polytheism was formed by them by way of an abstract

analysis and not, as in Greece, by a kind of outburst of imagination and

enthusiasm. They always remained faithful to this method, and to the end

placed in the sky abstractions rather than living beings.

This nation, so timid, scrupulous, scared, that to protect a man one felt

the need of surrounding him by gods from his birth to his death, that had

such a deep respect for divinity, thinking to meet it everywhere, seemed

to be the prey of every superstition.

The fathers of the Catholic Church have compared the institutions of

Numa, with their minute and multiplied proscriptions, to Mosaic law. The

Romans, who prided themselves on following them to the letter, could be

exposed to becoming absolutely like the Jews; and one asks how it is

that, amongst such a devoted people, religious authority did not end by

dominating over all others. What preserved them from this fate was their

great political instinct.

No other nation has ever been so taken up as have the Romans with the

importance of the rights of the state, and everything was sacrificed

to that--their oldest customs and their dearest prejudices. It was a

general belief amongst them that dead persons became gods and protected

those nearest to them, and were as close as possible to those they should

save; they were buried in the house and thus became good spirits. One

day, however, the law ordained, by reason of hygiene, that nobody should

be buried within the precincts of the towns, and everybody obeyed this

law. This example shows that in Rome nothing could resist civil power;

paternal authority, in spite of the extent of its rights, gave way before

it.

The father of the family is the absolute master of his children; he can

sell or kill his child, but if his son is in public office the father has

to obey him like the others, and when he meets him on his path he must

get off his horse to let him pass.

Roman religion, so powerful, so respected as it was, had to submit to

the same yoke. It was thus subject to the state, or rather was blended

to it. What most aided religion to attain this result was the manner in

which it recruited its priests. “Our ancestors,” says Cicero, “were never

wiser nor more surprised by the gods than when they decided that the

same persons would preside over religion and govern the republic. It was

by this means that the magistrates and pontiffs fulfilling their duties

with wisdom, agreed together to save the state.” In Rome, religious

functions were not separated from political ones, and there was nothing

incompatible between them.

Any one could act as pontiff in the same time as consul and for the

same motives. Those who wished to become such were never required to

possess any special knowledge; it was sufficient for attaining these

duties to have served his country in the deliberating assemblies or the

battle-field. Those that obtained them did not, whilst exercising them,

take a narrow and exclusive attitude, so common to sacerdotal castes;

they continued to mix with the world, they sat in the senate in the same

time as in the great colleges of priests of which they formed a member;

their new functions, far from taking them away from the government of

their countries, gave them more right to take part in it.

These soldiers, politicians, men of business in Rome, gave to religious

things that cold, practical sense which they gave to everything else. It

is thanks to them that a laic undercurrent always circulated in Roman

religion, that during the whole duration of the republic and of the

empire no conflict ever broke out between it and the state; and that the

government of Rome, in spite of all the demonstrations of piety which it

lavished, never threatened to become a theocracy.[g]

TREATMENT OF OTHER NATIONS

But while morality, good faith, and self-denial prevailed among

themselves, it is clear that the Romans laid no such restrictions upon

their dealings with other nations. This great defect is common to Rome

with all antiquity. The calmest Greek philosopher, Aristotle, regarded

barbarians as naturally the slaves of the Greeks. International law was

unknown, except in certain formalities observed in declaring war and

making peace, and in the respect paid to the persons of ambassadors. This

absence of common humanity and generosity to foreigners appears in many

pages of this history, in none more strongly than in that which records

the treatment of the Samnite leader C. Pontius. Gleams of better feeling

appear in the war with Pyrrhus; the chivalric character of the king

awakened something of a kindred spirit in the stern and rigid Romans. But

nothing could be more ungenerous than the conduct of Rome to Carthage,

after the Mercenary War; and still baser pieces of diplomacy occur in the

subsequent dealings of the senate with the Achæans and with Carthage.

THE FINE ARTS

If Hellenic forms of thought and speech invaded the domain of literature,

much more was this the case with the arts of design. There are not

wanting examples to show that before this time sculpture and painting

were held in honour at Rome. The consul Carvilius (in 293 B.C.) employed

part of the spoils taken from the Samnites in setting up a colossal

bronze statue on the Capitoline. A quadriga, executed in terra-cotta by

an Etruscan artist, is ascribed to the same date. Statues were erected

in the Forum to honour divers great men of olden time. Many temples

were built in thanksgiving for victories, most of which were adorned by

Etruscan or Greek artists. The temple of Salus was ornamented about 305

B.C. by paintings from the hand of that C. Fabius who adopted the name

of Pictor and transmitted it as an honour to his family. The Ogulnii,

in their ædileship (296 B.C.), set up in the Capitol a bronze group

representing the wolf suckling the twins. A painting of the battle in

which the Romans defeated Hiero in 263 adorned the walls of the senate

house.

Of these works, and others not recorded by history, no trace remains

except the famous wolf now preserved in the Capitoline Museum. The

twins are a later addition, but the animal is probably the original

work noticed by Cicero and Livy. It bears the well-known marks of the

archaic Greek art in the sharp, rigid forms of the limbs and muscles,

the peculiar expression of the face, and the regular knots of hair about

the neck and head. Here, then, we trace Hellenic artists at Rome. Others

of the works mentioned are expressly assigned to Etruscan artists; and

it may be remarked that Fabius, the only native artist of whom we hear,

belonged to a family always associated in history with Etruscans.

But when Rome had conquered southern Italy, she was brought at once in

contact with works of the finest Greek art. No coins of old Greece are

so beautiful as those of her colonial settlements in the west; and it

is in the coins of Rome, strange to remark, that we first trace the

indisputable effect of Greek art.

Up to the time when Italy was conquered, the Romans had used only copper

money of a most clumsy and inconvenient kind. A pound of this metal by

weight was stamped with the rude effigy of a ship’s prow, and this was

the original as or libra. Gradually the as was reduced in weight till,

in the necessities of the Second Punic War, it became only one-sixth of

the libra by weight; yet it retained its ancient name, just as the pound

sterling of silver, originally equivalent to a pound Troy-weight, is

now not more than one-third, or as the French _livre_ is a much smaller

fraction of that weight.[72] But even this diminished coin was clumsy for

use, as trade increased with increasing empire. After the conquest of

southern Italy the precious metals became more plentiful, and the coinage

of the conquered cities supplied beautiful models. The first denarius,

or silver piece of ten asses, was struck in the year 269 B.C., and is

evidently imitated from the coins of Magna Græcia. The Roman generals

who commanded in these districts stamped money for the use of their

armies with the old insignia of the conquered cities. The workmanship

is, indeed, inferior to the best specimens of Hellenic coins, but far

superior to anything Roman, before or after. Gold coins of similar model

were not struck till near the close of the Hannibalic War (205 B.C.). The

great mass of Roman coins which we possess belongs to the last century

of the republic. They usually bear the family emblems of the person who

presided over the mint, or of the consuls for whose use they were struck;

but the execution always remained rude and unattractive.

[Illustration: A ROMAN ORATOR

(After Hope)]

Afterwards, Roman conquest gave the means of supplying works of art by

the easier mode of appropriation. In the conquest of Etruria, years

before, the practice had been begun; from Volsinii alone we read that two

thousand statues were brought to Rome. In following years Agrigentum,

Syracuse, Corinth, and other famous cities, sent the finest works of

Hellenic art to decorate the public buildings and public places of the

barbarous city of the Tiber, or in many cases to ornament the villas of

the rapacious generals.

In the more intellectual even of the useful arts the Romans made no great

progress. The contrivances of Archimedes for the defence of Syracuse

struck them with amazement. In Cicero’s time they usually carried the

sciences of quantity and magnitude no further than was necessary for

practical arithmetic and mensuration. In 293 B.C. L. Papirius Cursor the

younger set up a sun-dial at Rome, and thirty years later another was

brought from Sicily by the consul M. Valerius Messalla; but no one knew

how to place them, so as to make the shadow of the gnomon an index of

time. A water-clock, resembling our sand-glass, was not introduced till

159 B.C.

Nor were the common conveniences of life in an advanced state. Up to the

year 264 the houses were commonly roofed with shingles of wood, like

the Alpine cottages of our days; then first earthen tiles began to

supersede this rude material. Agriculture must have been roughly carried

on by men who were as much soldiers as countrymen. The wine of Latium

was so bad that Cineas, when he tasted it, said--and the witticism was

remembered--“he did not wonder that the mother of such wine was hung so

high”; alluding to the Italian custom, still retained, of training the

vine up elms and poplars, while in Greece it was trained (as in France

and Germany) on short poles and exposed to all the heat of the sun.

A form of architecture called the Tuscan was mostly used, which bore an

imperfect resemblance to that early Greek style usually called the Doric.

But the existing remains of the republican period are too scanty to allow

of any precise statements. The true arts of Rome were, then and always,

the arts of the builder and engineer. It would not be wrong to call the

Romans the greatest builders in the world. Some of their mighty works,

works combining solidity of structure with beauty of form and utility of

purpose, still remain for our admiration, having survived the decay of

ages and the more destructive hands of barbarian conquerors. In every

country subject to their sway, roads and bridges and aqueducts remain

in sufficient number and perfection to justify all praise. We class the

roads among the buildings, according to their own phraseology,[73] and

their construction deserves the name as justly as the works upon our own

railways. The first great military road and the first aqueduct are due to

the old censor Appius Cæcus, and they both remain to preserve the memory

of the man, often self-willed and presumptuous, but resolute, firm of

purpose, noble in conception, and audacious in execution. Other aqueducts

and other roads rapidly followed; the spade and trowel were as much the

instruments of Roman dominion as the sword and spear. By the close of

the Punic Wars solid roads, carried by the engineer’s art over broad

and rapid streams, through difficult mountain passes, across quaking

morasses, had already linked Rome with Capua in the south, with Placentia

and Cremona in the north. Such were the proud monuments of the Appii, the

Æmilii, the Flaminii.

It may be said that these magnificent works, as well as the vast

amphitheatres and baths which afterwards decorated Rome and every petty

city in her provinces, were due to the invention of the arch. This simple

piece of mechanism, so wonderful in its results, first appears in the

Great Cloaca. It was unknown to the Greeks, or at least not used by them.

It may be that the Romans borrowed it from the Etruscans; the Cloaca

is attributed to an Etruscan king, and similar works are discovered in

ruined cities of Etruria. But if they borrowed the principle they used it

nobly, as witness the noble bridges still remaining, the copious streams

carried over the plain for miles at the height of sixty or seventy feet

from the level of the soil. If they had little feeling for beauty and

delicacy in the use of the pencil or the chisel, their buildings are

stamped with a greatness which exalted the power of the state while it

disregarded the pleasure of the individual.

Their attention to practical utility in draining and watering their city

is especially noted by Strabo in contrast with the indifference shown by

the Greeks to these matters. To the facts already stated may be added

their rule, established so early as the year 260 B.C., that no one should

be buried within the city--a rule scarcely yet adopted in London. From

this time dates the beginning of those rows of sepulchral monuments which

the traveller beheld on either side of the road as he entered the Eternal

City. It was a gloomy custom, but better at least than leaving graveyards

in the heart of crowded cities.

A striking proof of engineering skill is shown in the tunnels cut through

solid rock for the purpose of draining off volcanic lakes; this art we

may also believe to have been originally borrowed from the Etruscans.

The first tunnel of which we hear was that by which the Alban Lake was

partially let off during the siege of Veii, a work which was suggested

by an Etruscan soothsayer. Other works of like kind still remain,

though the time of their execution is not always known. Here shall be

added the notice of one work of kindred sort, which happens by a rare

coincidence to combine great utility with rarest beauty. The famous M.

Curius Dentatus, when censor in 272, cut a passage through the rock,

by which the waters of Lake Velinus were precipitated into the Nar. By

this means he recovered for his newly conquered Sabine clients a large

portion of fertile land, and left behind the most lovely, if not the most

sublime, of all waterfalls. The Falls of Terni, such is the famous name

they now bear, were wrought by the hand of man. “Thousands of travellers

visit them,” says Niebuhr; “how few know that they are not the work of

Nature!”[b]

LITERATURE

Rome during this period began to form the literature which has come

down to us; but unfortunately, instead of being national and original,

it was imitative and borrowed, consisting chiefly of translations from

the Greek. In the year after the end of the First Punic War (240), L.

Livius Andronicus, an Italian Greek by birth, represented his first play

at Rome. His pieces were taken from the Greek; and he also translated

the _Odyssey_ out of that language into Latin. Cn. Nævius, a native

of Campania, also made plays from the Greek, and he wrote an original

poem on the First Punic War, in which he had himself borne arms. These

poets used the Latin measures in their verse; but Q. Ennius, from Rudiæ

in Calabria, who is usually called the father of Roman poetry, was the

first who introduced the Greek metres into the Latin language. His

works were numerous tragedies and comedies from the Greek, satires, and

his celebrated _Annals_, or poetic history of Rome, in hexameters, the

loss of which (at least of the early books) is much to be lamented.

Maccius Plautus, an Umbrian, and Cæcilius Statius, an Insubrian Gaul,

composed numerous comedies, freely imitated from the Greek. M. Pacuvius

of Brundusium, the nephew of Ennius, made tragedies from the Greek;

L. Afranius was regarded as the Menander of Rome; and P. Terentius

(Terence), a Carthaginian by birth, gave some beautiful translations (as

we may perhaps best term his pieces) of the comedies of Menander and

Apollodorus. None of these poets but Plautus and Terence has reached us,

except in fragments; the former amuses us with his humour, and gives us

occasional views of Roman manners, while we are charmed with the graceful

elegance of the latter. It is remarkable that not one of these poets was

a Roman. In fact Rome has never produced a poet.

Q. Fabius Pictor, L. Cincius Alimentus, A. Postumius Albinus, M. Porcius

Cato, and L. Cassius Hemina wrote histories (the first three in Greek) in

a brief, dry, unattractive style. Cincius also wrote on constitutional

antiquities, and seems to have been a man of research; and a work of

Cato’s on husbandry has come down to us which we could well spare for his

_Origines_, or early history of Italy.[e]

FOOTNOTES

[64] [Both consular places were opened to the plebeians by the law of the

tribune Genucius, passed in 342 B.C.; cf. Mommsen[h] and Greenidge.[i]]

[65] [The reduction of the comitia curiata to a mere form belongs to the

fifth century B.C.]

[66] [The senators were chiefly men who had held the principal civic

offices; and as these offices were monopolised by a narrow circle of

wealthy families, the senatorial places must have been practically,

though not constitutionally, hereditary.]

[67] [By the Publilian law of 339 B.C. (cf. p. 185) the senatorial

control over the centuries was reduced to a formality. But the senate

still controlled the magistrates, and the magistrates controlled the

assemblies.]

[68] [In fact the tribal assembly came into existence before the comitia

centuriata began to grow more popular--the tribal assembly influenced the

development of the centuriate assembly in a democratic direction.]

[69] [According to some authorities, however, the comitia centuriata did

not come into existence before the end of the regal period.]

[70] [Rarely were laws passed by the tribal assembly under the presidency

of a consul.]

[71] [After the passing of the Hortensian Law, 287 B.C., the tribunes

were no longer constitutionally bound to gain the consent of the

senate to their bills; and occasionally a tribune, as Flaminius in 232

and Claudius in 218, availed himself of his constitutional freedom.

Generally, however, the tribunes were ministers of the senate, and more

subservient than the consuls.]

[72] When the pound of weight ceased to be the same with the pound of

currency, the former was usually designated _æs grave_.

[73] _Munire viam_, was their phrase.

[Illustration]