society, the number and condition of slaves. A large part of the
population belonged to this servile class. Originally brought in by
foreign conquest, it was increased by those who could not pay their
debts. The single campaign of Regulus introduced as many captives as
made up a fifth part of the whole population. Four hundred were
maintained in a single palace, at a comparatively early period; a
freedman in the time of Augustus left behind him forty-one hundred and
sixteen; Horace regarded two hundred as the suitable establishment for a
gentleman; some senators owned twenty thousand. Gibbon estimates the
number of slaves at about sixty millions,--one-half of the whole
population. One hundred thousand captives were taken in the Jewish war,
who were sold as slaves, and sold as cheap as horses. William Blair
supposes that there were three slaves to one freeman, from the conquest
of Greece to the reign of Alexander Severus. Slaves often cost two
hundred thousand sesterces, yet everybody was eager to possess a slave.
At one time the slave's life was at the absolute control of his master;
he could be treated at all times with brutal severity. Fettered and
branded, he toiled to cultivate the lands of an imperious master, and at
night was shut up in a subterranean cell. The laws hardly recognized his
claim to be considered a moral agent,--he was _secundum hominum genus_;
he could acquire no rights, social or political,--he was incapable of
inheriting property, or making a will, or contracting a legal marriage;
his value was estimated like that of a brute; he was a thing and not a
person, "a piece of furniture possessed of life;" he was his master's
property, to be scourged, or tortured, or crucified. If a wealthy
proprietor died under circumstances which excited suspicion of foul
play, his whole household was put to torture. It is recorded that on the
murder of a man of consular dignity by a slave, every slave in his
possession was condemned to death. Slaves swelled the useless rabbles of
the cities, and devoured the revenues of the State. All manual labor
was done by slaves, in towns as well as the country; they were used in
the navy to propel the galleys. Even the mechanical arts were cultivated
by the slaves. Nay more, slaves were schoolmasters, secretaries, actors,
musicians, and physicians, for in intelligence they were often on an
equality with their masters. Slaves were procured from Greece and Asia
Minor and Syria, as well as from Gaul and the African deserts; they were
white as well as black. All captives in war were made slaves, also
unfortunate debtors; sometimes they could regain their freedom, but
generally their condition became more and more deplorable. What a state
of society when a refined and cultivated Greek could be made to obey the
most offensive orders of a capricious and sensual Roman, without
remuneration, without thanks, without favor, without redress! What was
to be expected of a class who had no object to live for? They became the
most degraded of mortals, ready for pillage, and justly to be feared in
the hour of danger.
Slavery undoubtedly proved the most destructive canker of the Roman
State. It was this social evil, more than political misrule, which
undermined the empire. Slavery proved at Rome a monstrous curse,
destroying all manliness of character, creating contempt of honest
labor, making men timorous yet cruel, idle, frivolous, weak, dependent,
powerless. The empire might have lasted centuries longer but for this
incubus, the standing disgrace of the Pagan world. Paganism never
recognized what is most noble and glorious in man; never recognized his
equality, his common brotherhood, his natural rights. It had no
compunction, no remorse in depriving human beings of their highest
privileges; its whole tendency was to degrade the soul, and to cause
forgetfulness of immortality. Slavery thrives best when the generous
instincts are suppressed, when egotism, sensuality, and pride are the
dominant springs of human action.
The same influences which tended to rob man of the rights which God has
given him, and produce cruelty and heartlessness in the general
intercourse of life, also tended to degrade the female sex. In the
earlier age of the republic, when the people were poor, and life was
simple and primitive, and heroism and patriotism were characteristic,
woman was comparatively virtuous and respected; she asserted her natural
equality, and led a life of domestic tranquillity, employed upon the
training of her children, and inspiring her husband to noble deeds. But
under the Emperors these virtues had fled. Woman was miserably educated,
being taught by a slave, or some Greek chambermaid, accustomed to ribald
conversation, and fed with idle tales and silly superstitions; she was
regarded as more vicious in natural inclination than man, and was
chiefly valued for household labors; she was reduced to dependence; she
saw but little of her brothers or relatives; she was confined to her
home as if it were a prison; she was guarded by eunuchs and female
slaves; she was given in marriage without her consent; she could be
easily divorced; she was valued only as a domestic servant, or as an
animal to prevent the extinction of families; she was regarded as the
inferior of her husband, to whom she was a victim, a toy, or a slave.
Love after marriage was not frequent, since woman did not shine in the
virtues by which love is kept alive. She became timorous or frivolous,
without dignity or public esteem; her happiness was in extravagant
attire, in elaborate hair-dressings, in rings and bracelets, in a
retinue of servants, in gilded apartments, in luxurious couches, in
voluptuous dances, in exciting banquets, in demoralizing spectacles, in
frivolous gossip, in inglorious idleness. If virtuous, it was not so
much from principle as from fear. Hence she resorted to all sorts of
arts to deceive her husband; her genius was sharpened by perpetual
devices, and cunning was her great resource. She cultivated no lofty
friendships; she engaged in no philanthropic mission; she cherished no
ennobling sentiments; she kindled no chivalrous admiration. Her
amusements were frivolous, her taste vitiated, her education neglected,
her rights violated, her sympathy despised, her aspirations scorned.
And here I do not allude to great and infamous examples that history has
handed down in the sober pages of Suetonius and Tacitus, or that
unblushing depravity which stands out in the bitter satires of those
times; I speak not of the adultery, the poisoning, the infanticide, the
debauchery, the cruelty of which history accuses the Messalinas and
Agrippinas of imperial Rome; I allude not to the orgies of the Palatine
Hill, or the abominations which are inferred from the paintings of
Pompeii,--I mean the general frivolity and extravagance and
demoralization of the women of the Roman empire. Marriage was considered
inexpedient unless large dowries were brought to the husband. Numerous
were the efforts of Emperors to promote honorable marriages, but the
relation was shunned. Courtesans usurped the privileges of wives, and
with unblushing effrontery. A man was derided who contemplated
matrimony, for there was but little confidence in female virtue or
capacity, and woman lost all her fascination when age had destroyed her
beauty; even her very virtues were distasteful to her self-indulgent
husband. When, as sometimes happened, the wife gained the ascendency by
her charms, she was tyrannical; her relatives incited her to despoil her
husband; she lived amid incessant broils; she had no care for the
future, and exceeded man in prodigality. "The government of her house is
no more merciful," says Juvenal, "than the court of a Sicilian tyrant."
In order to render herself attractive, she exhausted all the arts of
cosmetics and elaborate hair-dressing; she delighted in magical
incantations and love-potions. In the bitter satire of Juvenal we get an
impression most melancholy and loathsome:--
"'T were long to tell what philters they provide,
What drugs to set a son-in-law aside,--
Women, in judgment weak, in feeling strong,
By every gust of passion borne along.
To a fond spouse a wife no mercy shows;
Though warmed with equal fires, she mocks his woes,
And triumphs in his spoils; her wayward will
Defeats his bliss and turns his good to ill.
Women support the bar; they love the law,
And raise litigious questions for a straw.
Nay, more, they fence! who has not marked their oil,
Their purple rigs, for this preposterous toil!
A woman stops at nothing; when she wears
Rich emeralds round her neck, and in her ears
Pearls of enormous size,--these justify
Her faults, and make all lawful in her eye.
More shame to Rome! in every street are found
The essenced Lypanti, with roses crowned;
The gay Miletan and the Tarentine,
Lewd, petulant, and reeling ripe with wine!"
In the sixth satire of Juvenal is found the most severe delineation of
woman that ever mortal penned. Doubtless he is libellous and
extravagant, for only infamous women can stoop to such arts and
degradations as would seem to have been common in his time. But with all
his probable exaggeration, we are forced to feel that but few women,
even in the highest class, except those converted to Christianity,
showed the virtues of a Lucretia, a Volumnia, a Cornelia, or an Octavia.
The lofty virtues of a Perpetua, a Felicitas, an Agnes, a Paula, a
Blessilla, a Fabiola, would have adorned any civilization; but the great
mass were, what they were in Greece even in the days of Pericles, what
they have ever been under the influence of Paganism, what they ever will
be without Christianity to guide them,--victims or slaves of man,
revenging themselves by squandering his wealth, stealing his secrets,
betraying his interests, and deserting his home.
Another essential but demoralizing feature of Roman society was to be
found in the games and festivals and gladiatorial shows, which
accustomed the people to unnatural excitement and familiarity with
cruelty and suffering. They made all ordinary pleasures insipid; they
ended in making homicide an institution. The butcheries of the
amphitheatre exerted a fascination which diverted the mind from
literature, art, and the enjoyments of domestic life. Very early they
were the favorite sport of the Romans. Marcus and Decimus Brutus
employed gladiators in celebrating the obsequies of their fathers,
nearly three centuries before Christ. "The wealth and ingenuity of the
aristocracy were taxed to the utmost to content the populace and provide
food for the indiscriminate slaughter of the circus, where brute fought
with brute, and man again with man, or where the skill and weapons of
the latter were matched against the strength and ferocity of the first."
Pompey let loose six hundred lions in the arena in one day; Augustus
delighted the people with four hundred and twenty panthers. The games of
Trajan lasted one hundred and twenty days, when ten thousand gladiators
fought, and ten thousand beasts were slain. Titus slaughtered five
thousand animals at a time; twenty elephants contended, according to
Pliny, against a band of six hundred captives. Probus reserved six
hundred gladiators for one of his festivals, and slaughtered on another
two hundred lions, twenty leopards, and three hundred bears; Gordian let
loose three hundred African hyenas and ten Indian tigers in the arena.
Every corner of the earth was ransacked for these wild animals, which
were so highly valued that in the time of Theodosius it was forbidden by
law to destroy a Getulian lion. No one can contemplate the statue of the
Dying Gladiator which now ornaments the capitol at Rome, without
emotions of pity and admiration. If a marble statue can thus move us,
what was it to see the Christian gladiators contending with the fierce
lions of Africa! "The Christians to the lions!" was the cry of the
brutal populace. What a sight was the old amphitheatre of Titus, five
hundred and sixty feet long and four hundred and seventy feet wide,
built on eighty arches and rising one hundred and forty feet into the
air, with its four successive orders of architecture, and enclosing its
eighty thousand seated spectators, arranged according to rank, from the
Emperor to the lowest of the populace, all seated on marble benches
covered with cushions, and protected from the sun and rain by ample
canopies! What an excitement, when men strove not with wild beasts
alone, but with one another; and when all that human skill and strength,
increased by elaborate treatment, and taxed to the uttermost, were put
forth in needless slaughter, until the thirsty soil was wet and
saturated with human gore! Familiarity with such sights must have
hardened the heart and rendered the mind insensible to refined
pleasures. What theatres are to the French, what bull-fights are to the
Spaniards, what horse-races are to the English, these gladiatorial shows
were to the ancient Romans. The ruins of hundreds of amphitheatres
attest the universality of the custom, not in Rome alone, but in the
provinces.
Probably no people abandoned themselves to pleasures more universally
than the Romans, after war had ceased to be their master passion. All
classes alike pursued them with restless eagerness. Amusements were the
fashion and the business of life. At the theatre, at the great
gladiatorial shows, at the chariot races, emperors and senators and
generals were always present in conspicuous and reserved seats of honor;
behind them were the patricians, and then the ordinary citizens, and in
the rear of these the people fed at the public expense. The Circus
Maximus, the Theatre of Pompey, the Amphitheatre of Titus, would
collectively accommodate over four hundred thousand spectators. We may
presume that over five hundred thousand persons were in the habit of
constant attendance on these demoralizing sports; and the fashion spread
throughout all the great cities of the empire, so that there was
scarcely a city of twenty thousand inhabitants which had not its
theatres, amphitheatres, or circus. And when we remember the heavy bets
on favorite horses, and the universal passion for gambling in every
shape, we can form some idea of the effect of these amusements on the
common mind,--destroying the taste for home pleasures, and for all that
was intellectual and simple.
What are we to think of a state of society where all classes had
continual leisure for these sports! Habits of industry were destroyed,
and all respect for employments that required labor. The rich were
supported by contributions from the provinces, since they were the
great proprietors of conquered lands; the poor had no solicitude for a
living, since they were supported at the public expense. All therefore
gave themselves up to pleasure. Even the baths, designed for sanatory
purposes, became places of resort and idleness, and ultimately of
intrigue and vice. In the time of Julius Caesar we find no less a
personage than the mother of Augustus making use of the public
establishments; and in process of time the Emperors themselves bathed in
public with the meanest of their subjects. The baths in the time of
Alexander Severus were not only kept open from sunrise to sunset, but
even during the whole night. The luxurious classes almost lived in the
baths. Commodus took his meals in the bath. Gordian bathed seven times
in the day, and Gallienus as often. They bathed before they took their
meals, and after meals to provoke a new appetite; they did not content
themselves with a single bath, but went through a course of baths in
succession, in which the agency of air as well as of water was applied;
and the bathers were attended by an army of slaves given over to every
sort of roguery and theft. Nor were water and air baths alone used; the
people made use of scented oils to anoint their persons, and perfumed
the water itself with the most precious essences. Bodily health and
cleanliness were only secondary considerations; voluptuous pleasure was
the main object. The ruins of the baths of Titus, Caracalla, and
Diocletian in Rome show that they were decorated with prodigal
magnificence, and with everything that could excite the
passions,--pictures, statues, ornaments, and mirrors. The baths were
scenes of orgies consecrated to Bacchus, and the frescos on the
excavated baths of Pompeii still raise a blush on the face of every
spectator who visits them. I speak not of the elaborate ornaments, the
Numidian marbles, the precious stones, the exquisite sculptures that
formed part of the decorations of the Roman baths, but of the
demoralizing pleasures with which they were connected, and which they
tended to promote. The baths ultimately became, according to the ancient
writers, places of excessive and degrading debauchery.
"Balnea, vina, Venus corrumpunt corpora nostra."
If it were possible to allude to an evil more revolting than the sports
of the amphitheatre and circus, or the extravagant luxuries of the
table, I would say that the universal abandonment to money-making, for
the enjoyment of the factitious pleasures it purchased, was even still
more melancholy, since it struck deeper into the foundations which
supported society. The leading spring of life was money. Boys were bred
from early youth to all the mysteries of unscrupulous gains. Usury was
practised to such an incredible extent that the interest on loans in
some instances equalled, in a few months, the whole capital; this was
the more aristocratic mode of making money, which not even senators
disdained. The pages of the poets show how profoundly money was prized,
and how miserable were people without it. Rich old bachelors, without
heirs, were held in the supremest honor. Money was the first object in
all matrimonial alliances; and provided that women were only wealthy,
neither bridegroom nor parent was fastidious as to age, or deformity, or
meanness of family, or vulgarity of person. The needy descendants of the
old patricians yoked themselves with fortunate plebeians, and the
blooming maidens of a comfortable obscurity sold themselves, without
shame or reluctance, to the bloated sensualists who could give them what
they supremely valued,--chariots and diamonds. The giddy women in love
with ornaments and dress, and the godless men seeking what they should
eat, could only be satisfied with what purchased their pleasures. The
haughtiest aristocracy ever known on earth, tracing their lineage to the
times of Cato and boasting of their descent from the Scipios and the
Pompeys, accustomed themselves at last to regard money as the only test
of their own social position. The great Augustine found himself utterly
neglected at Rome because of his poverty,--being dependent on his
pupils, and they being mean enough to run away without paying him.
Literature languished and died, since it brought neither honor nor
emolument. No dignitary was respected for his office, only for his
gains; nor was any office prized which did not bring rich emoluments.
Corruption was so universal that an official in an important post was
sure of making a fortune in a short time. With such an idolatry of
money, all trades and professions which were not favorable to its
accumulation fell into disrepute, while those who administered to the
pleasures of a rich man were held in honor. Cooks, buffoons, and dancers
received the consideration which artists and philosophers enjoyed at
Athens in the days of Pericles. But artists and scholars were very few
indeed in the more degenerate days of the empire; nor would they have
had influence. The wit of a Petronius, the ridicule of a Martial, the
bitter sarcasm of a Juvenal were lost on a people abandoned to frivolous
gossip and demoralizing excesses. The haughty scorn with which a sensual
beauty, living on the smiles and purse of a fortunate glutton, would
pass in her gilded chariot some of the impoverished descendants of the
great Camillus might have provoked a smile, had any one been found, even
a neglected poet, to give them countenance and sympathy. But, alas!
everybody worshipped at the shrine of Mammon; everybody was valued for
what he _had_, rather than for what he _was_; and life was prized, not
for those pleasures which are cheap and free as heaven, not for quiet
tastes and rich affections and generous sympathies,--the glorious
certitudes of love, esteem, and friendship, which, "be they what they
may, are yet the fountain-life of all our day,"--but for the
gratification of depraved and expensive tastes, of those short-lived
enjoyments which ended with the decay of appetite and the _ennui_ of
realized expectation,--all of the earth, earthy; making a wreck of the
divine image which was made for God and heaven, preparing the way for a
most fearful retribution, and producing on contemplative minds a sadness
allied with despair, driving them to caves and solitudes, and making
death the relief from sorrow.
The fourteenth satire of Juvenal is directed mainly to the universal
passion for gain and the demoralizing vices it brings in its train,
which made Rome a Vanity Fair and even a Pandemonium.
The old Greek philosophers gloried in their poverty; but poverty was the
greatest reproach to a Roman. "In exact proportion to the sum of money a
man keeps in his chest," says Juvenal, "is the credit given to his oath.
And the first question ever asked of a man is in reference to his
income, rather than his character. How many slaves does he keep; how
many acres does he own; what dishes are his table spread with?--these
are the universal inquiries. Poverty, bitter though it be, has no
sharper sting than this,--that it makes men ridiculous. Who was ever
allowed at Borne to become a son-in-law, if his estate was inferior?
What poor man's name appears in any will?"
And with this reproach of poverty there were no means to escape from it.
Nor was there alleviation. A man was regarded as a fool who gave
anything except to the rich. Charity and benevolence were unknown
virtues. The sick and the miserable were left to die unlamented and
unknown. Prosperity and success, no matter by what means they were
purchased, secured reverence and influence.
Such was imperial Rome, in all the internal relations of life, and amid
all the trophies and praises which resulted from universal conquest,--a
sad, gloomy, dismal picture, which fills us with disgust as well as
melancholy. If any one deems it an exaggeration, he has only to read
Saint Paul's first chapter in his epistle to the Romans. I cannot
understand the enthusiasm of Gibbon for such a people, or for such an
empire,--a grinding and resistless imperial despotism, a sensual and
proud aristocracy, a debased and ignorant populace, enormously
disproportionate conditions of fortune, slavery flourishing to a state
unprecedented in the world's history, women the victims and the toys of
men, lax sentiments of public and private morality, a whole people given
over to demoralizing sports and spectacles, pleasure the master passion
of the people, money the mainspring of society, a universal indulgence
in all the vices which lead to violence and prepare the way for the
total eclipse of the glory of man. Of what value was the cultivation of
Nature, or a splendid material civilization, or great armies, or an
unrivalled jurisprudence, or the triumph of energy and skill, when the
moral health was completely undermined? A world therefore as fair and
glorious as our own must needs crumble away. There were no powerful
conservative forces; the poison had descended to the extremities of the
social system. A corrupt body must die when vitality has fled. The soul
was gone; principle, patriotism, virtue, had all passed away. The
barbarians were advancing to conquer and desolate; there was no power to
resist them but enervated and timid legions, with the accumulated vices
of all the nations of the earth, which they had been learning for four
hundred years. Society must needs resolve itself into its original
elements when men would not make sacrifices, and so few belonged to
their country. The machine was sure to break up at the first great
shock. No State could stand with such an accumulation of wrongs, with
such complicated and fatal diseases eating out the vitals of the
empire. No form of civilization, however brilliant and lauded, could
arrest decay and ruin when public and private virtue had fled. The house
was built upon the sand.