THE SOCIAL ORDERS: FREEDMEN, PROVINCIALS, PLEBEIANS, AND NOBLES
=116. Manumission of Slaves Very Common.=--A Roman slave’s legal
position may be miserable, but usually he is not under that fearful
stigma of race and color weighing upon the slaves of another era. His
complexion and his brain power do not differ essentially from his
master’s.[65] If he is a Greek or Levantine, often his mental acuteness
may be greater than that of his lord. An intelligent slave under not
too harsh a master will devote himself to the latter in every possible
way, expecting pretty certainly the great reward for faithfulness and
zealous service--freedom. Of course, many dull hardened wretches,
especially upon the farms, will die as the toiling chattels they have
lived; but freedom comes often enough to make manumission something for
which to hope eagerly.
Often the death of a master is the signal for a grand enfranchisement
of all the older members of his familia. It costs nothing thus to
reward faithful service at the expense of your heirs; and it is a fine
thing to have a long file of newly created freedmen, all wearing the
tall red caps of “liberty,” march in your funeral procession. Everybody
will praise your “generosity,” and the freedmen can be expected to
cherish their lord’s memory. Incidentally, also, there are few better
ways of punishing a generally incompetent slave than having him
ostentatiously _refused_ freedom when all his comrades go about
rejoicing.
=117. The Ceremony of Manumission.=--Nevertheless, many slaves need
not wait for their masters to die. They are perhaps suffered to work
at a trade, and accumulate their “peculium,” and then very likely
to purchase their own and their wives’ and children’s liberty. With
rich masters of the better sort, it is also a gracious act at certain
intervals to select a few extra-deserving slaves and say to them the
blessed words, “Come with me to the prætor!”
When they are all before the magistrate a solemn legal formality
is gone through. One of the official lictors steps forward, gives
a light tap with his rod upon the head of each slave and says
loudly, “I declare this man is free!” The master laying hold of the
slave and turning him around, replies, “And I desire that this man
should be free!” adding a slight blow on the cheek; whereat the
magistrate declares officially, “And I adjudge that this man is free.”
This completes the “manumission”; then home the happy “freedman”
(_libertinus_) goes to be greeted with the congratulations of his
former fellow-slaves, showers of sweet cakes, dates, and figs and all
kinds of humble rejoicings.
=118. The Status of Freedmen. Their Great Success in
Business.=--Henceforth, the ex-slave is the freedman of his former
master. He takes the first part of his master’s name; thus that
Cleander, manumitted a few years ago by Publius Junius Calvus, now
swells about proudly as Publius Junius Cleander. His children will
henceforth be Junii, no less lawfully than Calvus’s children; with a
result that the gentile names of some of the proudest houses in Rome
are now also borne by families perforce acknowledging swart Africans or
tow-headed Batavians as very near ancestors.
Once escaped from actual slavery a great career in life can open before
an energetic freedman. If his ex-master is a Roman citizen, he also
is now a Roman citizen without any naturalization process. True he
is under a social stigma. Not merely he, but his children also, are
excluded from the Senate and all the higher offices of the state; but
an ex-slave is not likely to suffer from thinness of skin. Compelled in
his youth to use his wits and put forth all his energies, he now often
possesses abilities, often not very refined or delicate, which carry
him far in trade, general business, and finance.
Usually before a master manumits a slave it is arranged that he shall
remain in the mansion as some kind of an invaluable “man of business”
for handling a large estate. Many a senator is like Cicero, in all
private affairs completely at the mercy of a confidential _alter
ego_, a freedman like Cicero’s able and beloved Tiro. Practically
every dignitary in Rome will refer his business matters to “my
freedman,” a shrewd consequential fellow, probably of Græco-Levantine
origin, who has the right to use his patron’s seal ring, and who knows
all the family secrets. Supple, obsequious, and indispensable, he is
certain of a great legacy when his patron dies; and if the patron is
childless, he often becomes his heir. There are, indeed, plenty of
cases where a slave-boy who entered a house as a valet, first earned
freedom, then became a general confidant, and ended not merely with
inheriting the house itself but with marrying the late owner’s widow.
=119. Humble Types of Freedmen.=--Of course, the bulk of freedmen
have no claim to such expectations. They are petty shop keepers or
skilled craftsmen. They make up the great bureaus of upper clerks in
the huge government offices on the Palatine. Everywhere they compete,
as a rule very successfully, with the free born, and, of course, they
add to the cosmopolitan multitudes in Rome.
An ex-slave cannot avoid becoming substantially the client of his
former master. He is supposed to show his patron and his patron’s
family constant respect and usually a certain amount of service
without compensation. Thus a while ago Calvus manumitted a very
faithful slave-physician. It was stipulated that he should continue
to physic the familia without charge. For a freedman to show himself
neglectful of these obligations, above all to do anything to injure
his ex-master, is the depth of depravity. The legal penalties for such
“ingratitude” are very severe, and in extreme cases the actual act of
manumission itself can be cancelled.
=120. Wealth and Power of Successful Freedmen.=--Nevertheless,
top-lofty freedmen abound. Their ready wits bring them riches--the
power before which all the Empire bends. Once more Juvenal describes
an obnoxious type: “Though I’m born on the Euphrates, a fact which
the little windows [holes for earrings] in my ears would prove if I
denied it--yet am I the owner of five shops which bring me in 400,000
sesterces [$16,000] per year. What better thing does a senator’s robe
bestow? Therefore, let everybody give way to one who but yesterday
with the chalked feet of a slave entered our city.” Freedmen, of
course, get ahead marvellously because nothing is too sordid if only
it promises gain. “He [a certain freedman],” says Petronius, “started
with an _as_ [large copper coin], and was always ready to pick a
_quadrans_ [farthing] out of the filthy mire with his teeth. So
his wealth grew and grew like a honey comb!”
Very probably, the ideal set before this species of persons is that of
becoming all-powerful imperial freedmen, such as that pair, Pallas and
Narcissus, who literally ruled the Roman Empire through their patron,
Claudius. Trajan and Hadrian have, indeed, greatly reduced the power of
freedmen around the Palace, turning the great secretarial offices over
to equites, but there are still ex-slaves in the service of “Cæsar,”
who have only a little less influence than that mighty Claudius
Etruscus who died of old age under Domitian after having served six
Emperors. He began life in Rome as a slave boy from Smyrna. Tiberius
manumitted him. He rose to become practically the head of the Treasury.
His wealth was great, but his integrity matched his vast power, and
few senators had such commanding influence in the government as he
possessed.
=121. Importance of Freedmen in a Roman Family.=--In such a house
as that of Calvus there are neither imperial ministers nor miserly
speculators. The freedmen are honored and trusted members not of the
slave familia but of the actual “family.” When they are sick Calvus and
Gratia are greatly concerned, as was Pliny the Younger over the illness
of his beloved reader, Zosimus. If there is any domestic crisis, their
counsel is sought and they take a zealous interest in the education of
their lord’s children.
On the other hand, on the nearby Flora Street spreads the huge garish
palace of the ex-slave Athenonius, who won his freedom by catering to a
foolish master’s worst passions, and then gathered enormous wealth by
speculating in Egyptian corn. “_Freedmen’s riches_” have become a
proverb. Not all freedmen are by any means wealthy, but enough of them
have risen to the seats of the mighty to make every toiling slave dream
dreams and see visions of something better than a dishonored, servile
grave.
=122. The Status of Provincials. The Case of Jesus.=--All freedmen
are Roman citizens, albeit citizens under a formal handicap, but in a
city like Rome there are always many free persons who are not citizens
at all--visiting provincials. Every year the Emperors issue some edict
granting the franchise to a new group of non-citizens, but the numbers
of the latter in all the provinces of the Empire is still great.[66]
At Rome their position is ordinarily comfortable enough, although if
arrested, they are liable to a more summary trial than Roman citizens
and in case of famine or public disturbance they are liable to sudden
expulsion from the city (as Claudius expelled the Jews) without any
redress. The real disadvantage which they endure is that they cannot
be appointed to any kind of public office under the Roman government.
They are also sometimes under a legal handicap in making and enforcing
commercial contracts; and last but not least in their own provinces
they cannot “appeal to Cæsar” (if in an “Imperial” province) or to the
Senate (if in a “Senatorial” province) against the decision, however
arbitrary, of the Roman governor.
If you search the public records at the great _Tabularium_ (Public
Record Office) by the Forum, you can find for example the report of the
trial of a certain Jew, one Christus, who was accused of sedition in
Judæa, about a hundred years before our visit to Rome. The procurator
Pilatus yielding to popular clamor had him executed ignominiously by
crucifixion. This was, of course, within Pilatus’s legal authority.
Christus was only a provincial and he could take no appeal.
The status of the provincials depends much on whether their communities
enjoy any treaty with or charter from Rome. Athens and a few other
favored places are nominally “equal allies” with full rights of
self-government, and their citizens can claim a favored position among
the mass of provincials. Other places possess charters giving great
privileges but revocable in case of gross abuse.
The bulk of the provincials are mere “stipendiaries,” often permitted
local self-government, but subject to Roman taxation, and to the
complete jurisdiction of the Roman governor. Under the Empire these
governors are only by exception corrupt and arbitrary, but their
decisions must usually be final.
=123. Great Alien Colonies in Rome.=--Apart from the great alien
slave population there are inevitably large groups of resident aliens
in various parts of the capital. There is a Little Syria, Little Egypt,
Little Spain, and a Little Greece as surely as in certain great cities
of a later civilization, but the most famous and conspicuous is the
great Jewish colony.
This exists mainly in the Trans-Tiber district under the shadow of the
Janiculum, although Jews are allowed to settle and to do business in
any section of the city. The total number of free Jews in Rome has been
set at 35,000 in Augustus’s day, and it received a great reinforcement
through the captives of Titus, many of whom regained their liberty. The
Jews are obliged to pay to the Capitoline Jupiter that tribute which
they formerly paid to their Temple in Jerusalem, but otherwise they
are not harassed by the government. For the most part, however, they
are very poor; few of them are great bankers or merchants, but nearly
all the rest are petty shopkeepers and peddlers--also a great many are
alleged to increase their living by fortune-telling and by like dubious
arts.
=124. The Roman Plebeians, the “Mob” (_Vulgus_).=--Greatly surpassing
the resident aliens in number are inevitably the ordinary Roman
plebeians. It is a fine thing in the provinces to boast, “_Civis
Romanus sum_,” but in the capital many a freedman, many an upper-slave
of a magnate even, looks down with scorn on a large fraction of this
“common herd” (_grex_) that still claims to form “the Roman People.”
However, if you are really a Roman citizen entitled to wear a toga,
and to share in the grain doles and other public distributions, you
can really live on very little. Somehow you must find means for the
rental of a sleeping garret in an insula, but the daytime you can spend
hanging around the fora, porticoes, or the entrances to the circuses
and gladiator schools, playing _morra_ and checkergames (see p. 205);
idling in the great public baths; frequenting every possible public
exhibition in the theater or amphitheater and often getting a bare
income by toadying most abjectly to the rich.
Everybody despises this Roman “mob,” and yet cringes to it. Its yells
across the circus send the blood from the cheeks of very tyrannous
emperors. The mild Italian climate renders an existence amid dirt and
sunshine, eked out by very little labor, decidedly tolerable.[67]
Assuredly very many of these “citizens” are simply honest thrifty
industrialists, trades people, or professional men, holding their
own stubbornly against the competing slaves, freedmen, and aliens.
Nevertheless, the proportion of undesirables is dangerously great. Many
of the idle plebeians are the sons of freedmen, who have inherited
their parents’ non-Italian vices but who have not been under their
necessity of hard work and faithfulness; and when one examines the
moral and social qualities of the alleged heirs of the virtuous
old-time plebeians the idea of “restoring the Republic,” still
sighed after by a few aristocratic philosophers, appears absolutely
laughable.[68]
=125. The Desirability of Roman Citizenship. The Case of St. Paul.=--It
is as contrasted with the status of provincials that Roman citizenship
still preserves its remarkable value. A citizen can, indeed, no
longer go to the Republican assemblies to elect magistrates and vote
on proposed statutes, but he has his personal and property rights
protected by the best kind of “Quiritian” law. The government is
never, indeed, iniquitous enough to enact that, as between Roman and
provincial, the judge must always decide for the former, nevertheless
the advantages of the citizen are great.
A Roman can command all sorts of protection not open to provincials.
The judge will almost inevitably be a little prejudiced in his favor.
If arrested, a citizen can ordinarily demand the right to give bail. It
is a gross outrage to “examine him by scourging.” He cannot be put to
torture. If he is finally sentenced to die, he cannot be crucified, but
ordinarily must be beheaded--a very merciful end. Particularly, unless
the case is extremely clear, in matters touching his life and status as
a citizen he can appeal from the decision of a provincial governor to
“Cæsar” or to the Senate (if in a province governed by that body).
If we visit the Record Office again, this matter is clearly
illustrated. About twenty-five years after the crucifixion of
Christus, one of his followers, a certain Paulus, was also arrested
in Jerusalem on much the same charges of attempted sedition and
inciting disturbance. But Paulus, when arrested, promptly pleaded his
Roman citizenship. Vainly the local mob clamored for his life even as
they had demanded that of Christus. When the local procurator Festus
hesitated to set him at liberty, the prisoner demanded to be sent to
Rome--and thither at great trouble and expense he had to be shipped;
to be tried ultimately before the Prætorian Præfect sitting as Nero’s
deputy; and the charges were dismissed and he was set at liberty.[69]
If he had not been a Roman, assuredly the weak-kneed governor of
Palestine would have sacrificed him “to please the Jews” just as
Pilatus sacrificed Christus.
=126. Clientage: Its Oldest Form.=--Between the poorest classes
of plebeians, sleeping within porticoes and despised by the superior
slaves, and those dignified well-to-do gentlemen who have almost the
means to pass as equites, there are, of course, an infinite number of
social strata. The most important section of the better plebeians is
undoubtedly to be numbered among the _clients_.
Clientage is a very old Roman institution. The kings and nobles of
Rome in the very twilight of history had their clients. Those were
the days when poor plebeians had little or no legal protection unless
they enlisted the patronage of a magnate. They entered his _gens_
(inner-clan), followed him in war, voted (when they obtained the vote)
in his interest, assisted him in certain money matters, in short,
became members of his household although very much better off than the
slaves. In return the patron was bound to defend their legal rights
in the courts and to protect them from all forms of outrage. Men were
proud to confess themselves as clients of a Fabius or an Æmilius. But
by the end of the Republic the institution had practically disappeared
in its original form. There was little legal discrimination then
against poor citizens, and about all the real clients who now remained
were freedmen, who, as just seen, were bound to be loyal and helpful to
their _patroni_.
=127. The New Parasitical Clientage: the Morning Salutation.=--Now,
however, a new and wholly parasitical clientage has come into being.
Early every morning the clients can be seen hurrying down Mercury
Street in their hastily donned togas. Sometimes a patron lives a great
distance across the city; sometimes a fawning myrmidon hopes to visit
_two_ patrons in the same morning and get a double reward. Calvus
does not rejoice in a great horde of clients, but being a senator his
dignity requires that he should maintain perhaps a score of them.
These clients are an assorted lot. Some are merely cheap hangers-on,
some are adventurers visiting Rome and expecting to prosper by earning
the favor of the great, there is also a mediocre poet who hopes for a
tidy gift some day because of laudatory verses about his “Rex” and the
latter’s family, there are several distant relatives of the Calvi, poor
relations to whom the doles are a form of pension; and finally there
are two or three men of good family and tolerable incomes who actually
dance attendance on Calvus just to get a little extra pocket money.
[Illustration: CLIENTS GATHERING IN THE RAIN, BEFORE
THEIR PATRON’S DOOR.
_After Von Falke._]
The clients gather in the vestibule at dawn, rubbing their eyes,
rearranging their hastily donned togas, and each trying to induce the
not very civil porter to permit him to enter first. At last the word
is passed to the door that, “The patron is ready.” The valves open;
the clients swarm inside together. Publius Calvus dressed for the
morning is standing in the rear of his atrium, just behind the pool of
the impluvium. At his elbow is his nomenclator, the slave who “knows
everybody,” to whisper a name in case he should not connect it promptly
with a face.
“_Ave, patrone, ave!_” cries each client coming up in turn. “_Ave,
Marce!_” or “_Sexte!_” or “_Lucie!_” answers Calvus with a more or less
formal smile.
If his mood is very gracious, each client is allowed to seize his hand,
and two or three in extra favor are suffered to kiss his cheek. The
nomenclator meantime prompts him in undertone, “Ask about his wife,”
“Congratulate him on his niece’s marriage,” etc. And if that evening
there are not more important guests in view, the senator will delight
the souls of several by saying affably, “Come to-night to dinner.” The
clients in any case congratulate themselves that their patron is not
like some of those very haughty parvenus, who simply hold out their
hands to be kissed and never speak a word, and who like to be called
“dominus,” as if their clients were merely slaves.
=128. The Dole to Clients (the _Sportula_).=--After the clients will
appear more pretentious visitors--equites and fellow senators--who
call to see Calvus on business. Their own clients are probably waiting
listlessly in the street, while Calvus’s dependents have to stand
respectfully near their lord until an upper slave beckons them toward
the office--the tablinum. He has a list in his hand and checks off all
present as might a master the pupils in his school, and then comes
the reward which brought all these toga-wearing gentry thither, a
distribution of money.
In former years every client had received an actual portion of
victuals, known as _sportula_ from the “little basket” which everybody
brought to bear the viands hence. But this custom of distributing
actual food was inconvenient, and far more pleasing is an actual
gift of money. Only regularly listed clients can receive this; and
no client, sick or lazy, can send a deputy.[70] He must appear in
person or stand his loss. At length, to every lawful retainer present
is carefully counted out a hundred _quadrantes_, small coppers (rather
under 25 cents), and besides the clients entertain a few hopes of a
fairly liberal present at New Year’s Day, and at some other festivals,
and as seen, in a kind of rotation they are invited at broad intervals
to dinner.
=129. Attendance by Clients in Public. Insults They Must
Undergo.=--After the sportula has been paid, the clients look anxiously
toward Calvus. Will he tell them, as he does about half of the time,
“Nothing more to-day,” and let them scatter down the streets? Not so;
“My litter” he orders. The clients are obliged to march before and
behind, along with the slaves, helping to elbow aside the crowd, while
the senator visits other senatorial houses, next his banker at the
Forum, and then the law courts for a consultation, and so goes his
round. If he detains the clients through the noon hour, he is obligated
to give them some kind of luncheon; but he can command the attendance
of them all even up to the tenth hour, when he may turn them loose to
refresh themselves in the public Baths of Titus, after they have left
him perhaps at the more select Baths of Agrippa.
As for the clients invited to Calvus’s dinner, if the fare is plainer
than on the night of a high banquet, there is at least no insulting
discrimination. A decent patron and patrona are bound to show
themselves “friends” of their clients and to keep up a pretence of
democratic manners. But as stated earlier (see p. 120), many a vulgar
plutocrat, feeling that he has paid good money to get a proper retinue
to follow him to the Forum, delights to insult his clients’ feelings
when he invites them. The host enjoys his fine white loaf, while the
client’s is almost too hard to break; the host a splendid lobster
garnished with asparagus, the client “a crab on a tiny plate hemmed in
by half an egg”; the lord “noble mushrooms,” the client “toadstools of
doubtful quality,”--and all other treatment is to match. Yet such is
the servility and pettiness of many that they will endure all this and
worse merely in order to boast the next day of “last night when I dined
with my friend the senator----!” “You think yourself a citizen and the
guest of a grandee,” cries the indignant poet. “_He_ thinks, and
he’s nearly right, that you’ve been captured by the fine smell from his
kitchen.”
Clientage then is a typical institution of imperial Rome--a means for
letting rich men flatter their desire for a huge company of obsequious
attendants by trading on the wretched ambition of so many to appear
to be on familiar terms with the great. It multiplies the horde of
shabby-genteel persons around the city, and the vast number of those
who flee from their greatest aversion--honest work.
=130. The Decurions: the Notables of the Chartered Cities.=--Above
the run of clients or even of the better plebeians is the actual
nobility. Strictly speaking only the senators and equites are reckoned
in this group, but always in Rome are sojourning a certain number of
other men who hold themselves decidedly better than any plebeians--the
_decurions_ from the enfranchised towns covering all Italy and
dotted over the entire Empire.[71]
The decurions are the notables of the smaller chartered cities. In
their own communities they are local senators and enjoy in a small way
the position of an actual Senator in Rome.[72] Nobody can be elected
decurion without a reasonable property qualification, in many cities
100,000 sesterces ($4000), and from their body of wealthy dignitaries
the local public assemblies still elect (even under the Empire) city
magistrates, duumvirs, ædiles, etc., who take the place in each
community of the old consuls and censors of Republican Rome.
Since the loyalty of the population and the popularity of the imperial
régime often depends on this very influential class of decurions, the
government makes much of them; allows them high-sounding titles and
tinsel honors, and any who visit Rome are given social precedence
directly behind the actual equites. Furthermore, many high Roman nobles
themselves are proud to be enrolled as patrons and _honorary_
decurions of the Italian towns, looking after the interest of their
client communities in the capital, and, if they visit the smaller
cities, being received as particular guests of honor. The number of
decurions, however, in Rome itself is always small, although their
importance everywhere else in the Empire is vast, and they virtually
form a third order of nobility.
=131. The Equites: the Nobles of the Second Class.=--Everywhere
around the metropolis you meet the second-class nobles--the
Equites.[73] This “Splendid Order” dates, of course, from the oldest
days when to keep a cavalry horse implied having considerable property.
The equites sank to unimportance in the prosperous era of the Republic,
but were revived to great power by Gaius Gracchus; they were later
reorganized and made an effective part of the new imperial régime by
Augustus.
The dividing line between Senators and Equites is not always sharp.
Young men of senatorial family who renounce a political career have to
“make narrow their purple stripe,” as did Ovid, and without disgrace
appear henceforth as second-class nobles. Supposedly no persons but the
sons of free-born men are eligible for enrollment as equites, but the
members of the old-line families fume vainly at the way the Emperors
(who have complete dispensing power) will grant “the right of the
gold ring,” not merely to the sons of freedmen, but sometimes even to
downright ex-slaves. There are in truth very few equites in Rome who do
not reckon a slave among their not remote grandparents.
The equites are all carefully enrolled in a public bureau under
imperial control, and one of the surest holds which the Emperor
possesses upon the government lies in the fact that he can refuse
enrollment arbitrarily to any young man and thereby practically exclude
him from any kind of high public office except in the municipal towns,
or from any military rank above that of centurion. The senators, all
the more important officials, and all the commissioned officers of the
army are equites, although their greater honors cause them to ignore
the lesser, while if the Emperor has an eligible son or heir, he is
often proclaimed the _princeps juventutis_ (“Chief of the Roman
Youth”) and is nominally the first member of the Equestrian Order.
=132. Qualifications and Honors of the Equites.=--To be enrolled
as an eques one must possess besides unstained birth (with exceptions
above noted), a good public reputation, and taxable property worth at
least 400,000 sesterces ($16,000); sufficient therefore to pass for
a tolerably rich man. The honor comes for life, subject to demotion,
however, for disgraceful conduct, or lapse into poverty. A son normally
inherits his father’s status, if his own share of the patrimony comes
to over 400,000 sesterces; and of course, to make up that magic figure
many plebeians pinch and slave.
The honors of an eques are great in any age laying such stress on
outward praise and glory. Besides the right to the plain gold ring,
the narrow purple stripe running down the front of the tunic proudly
proclaims the fact, “I am of the nobility.” The equites also enjoy
fourteen rows of seats in the public games and theater directly behind
the four front ones reserved for the senators. They provide a large
fraction of all the jurors in the great civil tribunals which handle
most of the litigation.[74] Very many of the great imperial ministries
and superintendencies are reserved for them, for the Emperor does not
like to trust the senators too implicitly, and some of the smaller
provinces have equestrian “Procurators” as their governors, as also
does the enormously wealthy province of Egypt.
The majority of the equites, however, are in private life. Senators
ought not (except through convenient middlemen) to engage in
commerce and trade. Not so the equites--the powerful bankers with
whom the imperial treasurer may confer; the owners of the peaceful
armadas that enter Puteoli or Ostia; the proprietors of the finer
retail establishments along the Sæpta Julia as well as of the huge
wholesale houses; the directors of the vast brickyards, and other
highly developed industries; the owners of so many of the squalid but
profitable insulæ--nearly all will show their “Angusticlave”--their
narrow purple stripe. Equites appear at banquets with senators
without the least awkwardness; and they like to be addressed by fine
booming titles: _insignes_, _primores_, _illustres_, or, if holding
high office, _eminentissimi_, but in most cases as _splendidi_; and
“splendid” they appear to the envious slaves and plebeians.
=133. Review of the Equites. Pretenders to the Rank.=--The equites
are still in theory a military body. Every 15th of July, unless the
review is deliberately omitted, all members who are physically able are
supposed to procure horses and take part in a grand parade before the
Emperor. Sometimes there are at least 5000 equites in the procession.
The Emperor still has the right of the ancient censors to brand a man
as a bad citizen by the public command, “Sell your horse!” as he rides
by the reviewing stand;[75] but the parade has now become merely an
unpleasant formality for portly men unaccustomed to horseback, and old
gentlemen are usually excused.
In so large a body of “gentry,” however, imposture becomes fairly
common. Nearly every Emperor issues an edict for the purging of the
order, and every now and then some adventurous nobody is divested of
his “narrow stripe.” Calvus came home lately from the Flaminian Circus
laughing heartily. Just behind his senatorial tier a perfumed and
beringed fellow set off with a splendid lacerna sat down saying loudly,
“Now at last, thanks to our Cæsar, due honors have come to the Roman
equites, and the vulgar are kept away”; but hardly had he spoken ere a
lynx-eyed usher identified him and amid the jeering of hundreds “forced
that very fine lacerna to get up!”
=134. The Senatorial Order. The First-Class Nobility.=--The first
class in the nobility is the Senatorial. The actual functioning of
the Senate which is still a most venerable and powerful council will
be told later (see p. 334); here we have to see its members merely
in social and unofficial life. They number six hundred and entrance
into their gilded circle comes usually by a kind of hereditary right.
The sons of a senator can almost always count on becoming senators
themselves if the family fortune is not too impaired and they have
not fallen under imperial disfavor. To win the honor you must either
be elected (by the Senate itself) to some one of the old Republican
offices--quæstors, ædiles, prætors, consuls, etc.,--which carried a
life seat in the Senate with them, or be appointed outright by fiat of
the Emperor. The latter, furthermore, is always pushing forward his
favorites by “inviting” the senators to elect them to office, and the
“Conscript Fathers” never disregarded such a broad hint from “Cæsar.”
=135. Social Glories of Senators.=--Senators alone are eligible
for the highest commands in the army, for the governorships for the
more important provinces, except Egypt, and for most of the other
exalted offices which do not involve a vulgar handling of money. The
Emperor himself ranks as the head of their noble body. Even when he
is at bitter odds with them, he must not forget that they share part
of his glory. Still is told the story of how one of Nero’s parasites
raised a laugh from the tyrant one day. “I hate you, Cæsar!” he
announced. “And why is that?” “Oh, just because you are a senator.”
All the senators are officially the “friends,” _amici_, of the
monarch.
These great nobles are entitled to visit the Emperor in the palace
somewhat as clients visit their patron. He is expected to extend his
hand to them; to treat them as a kind of social equals; and to allow
the more important of them to kiss him. They and their wives must be
invited to all the greater palace banquets. Finally all the better
monarchs are expected to take oath at the beginning of their reigns
that they “will never put any senator to death”--that is, that the
Senate shall be the supreme judge over its own members.
Although parvenus are promoted by even the best of emperors, the
senatorial families average much older than do the equestrian; and it
is still a very desirable thing to boast of “ancient blood and the
painted visages of one’s forebears.”
=136. The Senatorial Aristocracy Greater than the Senate.=--The
“Senatorial Aristocracy,” nevertheless, is something greater than the
actual membership of the great council itself. Not merely the sons
but all the male descendants of a senator to the third degree are
reckoned as equal socially to the actual “Conscript Fathers,” though
many such connections dress merely as equites with the narrow stripe.
This may be from “lack of ambition” or it may be from desire to engage
in trade. Gratia has two brothers. One is a senator, his wealth
invested in lands, and at present he is imperial legate over part of
Britain. The second is technically only an eques, busy with enormous
financial transactions with Alexandria; but the second is the richer
and probably the more influential man of the two. Of course, all the
wives of senators rank with their husbands, and every cousin, niece, or
nephew of the latter feels a reflected luster. The six hundred senators
are, therefore, the center of an upper aristocracy with at least six
thousand actual members.
=137. Insignia, Qualifications, and Titles of Senators.=--The actual
senators make no concealment of their honors. They have their special
shoes (see p. 95), and most important of all they have the broad
purple stripe running down the front of their tunics, the precious
_laticlave_, distinguishing them instantly from the equites. Nobody,
furthermore, can be enrolled as senator unless he possesses the taxable
fortune of at least 1,000,000 sesterces ($40,000); and this insures
that he is a passing rich man, above petty bribes and able to live with
the dignity becoming a Lord of the Empire.
The public glories of these dignitaries match their fortunes. At all
the public games and spectacles the senatorial tiers are directly
behind the Emperor’s loge. In the public feasts the senators are not
merely entitled to the seats of honor, but frequently to extra-generous
portions of the food. If a senator tours the provinces, he can command
every kind of servile attention, even if the Emperor refuses him
the “right of free legation”--the privileges of traveling with the
honors of an ambassador. Finally if he is arrested, not merely is he
ordinarily tried before his peers--in the Senate; he is subject to much
lighter penalties than the run of citizens in case of conviction.[76]
Finally the senators have a title of nobility which they are able to
command practically as a formal right[77]--_vir clarissimus_--“Very
distinguished Lord” or “Your Magnificence.” Gratia, like every
senator’s wife, is a _femina clarissima_; even her small sons can be
addressed pompously as _pueri clarissimi_. To the multitude who make
way for their litters, the rank of _clarissimus_ appears the acme of
attainable happiness.
The political power of the Senate has waned, but emperors are only
mortal individuals. They come and go; the existence of the great,
proud, wealthy, landed aristocracy seems to go on forever. Emperors
usually succeed so far as they win its loyalty and favor; they somehow
fail, and are branded across history as tyrants (often cut short by
dagger thrusts) when they earn its hate. In an Empire of nigh one
hundred millions the six thousand of the Senatorial Order form the
normal apex of the human pyramid. It is a fine thing to be a senator.