household, in which they had ample occupation, but their labors did not
end there. [Footnote: Varro contrasts the later luxury with past
frugality, setting in opposition the spacious granaries, and simple
farm arrangements of the good old times, and the peacocks and richly
inlaid doors of a degenerate age. Formerly even the city matron turned
the spindle with her own hand, while at the same time she kept her eye
upon the pot on the hearth; now the wife begs the husband for a bushel
of pearls, and the daughter demands a pound of precious stones: then
the wife was quite content if the husband gave her a trip once or twice
in the year in an uncushioned wagon; now she sulks if he go to his
country estate without her, and as she travels my lady is attended to
the villa by the fashionable host of Greek menials and singers.] The
grinding of grain and the cooking was done by the servants, but the
wife had to superintend all the domestic operations, among which was
included the care of the children, though old Cato thought it was
necessary for him to look after the washing and swaddling of his
children in person, and to teach them what he thought they ought to
know. The position of the woman was entirely subordinate to the
husband, though in the house she was mistress. She belonged to the
household and not to the community, and was to be called to account for
her doings by her father, her husband, or her near male relatives, not
by her political ruler. She could acquire property and inherit money
the same as a man could, however. When the pure and noble period of
Roman history had passed, women became as corrupt as the rest of the
community. The watering-places were scenes of unblushing wickedness;
women of quality, but not of character, masquerading before the gay
world with the most reckless disregard of all the proprieties of life.
[Footnote: Cato the Elder, who enjoyed uttering invectives against
women, was free in denouncing their chattering, their love of dress,
their ungovernable spirit, and condemned the whole sex as plaguy and
proud, without whom men would probably be more godly.]
[Illustration: COVERINGS FOR THE FEET.]
The garments of Roman men and women were of extreme simplicity for a
long period, but the desire of display and the love of ornament
succeeded in making them at last highly adorned and varied. Both men
and women wore two principal garments, the tunic next to the body, and
the pallium which was thrown over it when going abroad; but they also
each had a distinctive article of dress, the men wearing the
_toga_ (originally worn also by women), a flowing outer garment which
no foreigner could use, and the women the _stola_, which fell over the
tunic to the ankles and was bound about the waist by a girdle. Boys and
girls wore a toga with a broad border of purple, but when the boy
became a man he threw this off and wore one of the natural white color
of the wool.
Sometimes the stola was clasped over the shoulder, and in some
instances it had sleeves. The _pallium_ was a square outer garment
of woollen goods, put on by women as well as men when going out. It
came into use during the civil wars, but was forbidden by Augustus.
Both sexes also wore in travelling a thick, long cloak without sleeves,
called the _pænula_, and the men wore also over the toga a dark
cloak, the _lacerna_.
On their feet the men wore slippers, boots, and shoes of various
patterns. The _soccus_ was a slipper not tied, worn in the house;
and the _solea_ a very light sandal, also used in the house only.
The _sandalium_ proper was a rich and luxurious sandal introduced
from Greece and worn by women only. The _baxa_ was a coarse sandal
made of twigs, used by philosophers and comic actors; the _calcæus_
was a shoe that covered the foot, though the toes were often exposed;
and the _cothurnus_, a laced boot worn by horsemen, hunters, men of
authority, and tragic actors, and it left the toes likewise exposed.
An examination of the mysteries of the dressing-rooms of the ladies of
Rome displays most of the toilet conveniences that women still use.
They dressed their hair in a variety of styles (see page 155), and used
combs, dyes, oils, and pomades just as they now do. They had mirrors,
perfumes, soaps in great variety, hair-pins, ear-rings, bracelets,
necklaces, gay caps and turbans, and sometimes ornamental wigs.
[Illustration: ARTICLES OF THE ROMAN TOILET.]
The change that came over Rome during the long period of the kingdom
and the republic is perhaps as evident in the table customs as in any
respect. For centuries the simple Roman sat down at noon to a plain
dinner of boiled pudding made of spelt (_far_), and fruits, which,
with milk, butter, and vegetables, formed the chief articles of his
diet. His table was plain, and his food was served warm but once a day.
When the national horizon had been enlarged by the foreign wars, and
Asiatic and Greek influences began to be felt, hot dishes were served
oftener, and the two courses of the principal meal no longer sufficed
to satisfy the fashionable appetite. A baker's shop was opened at the
time of the war with Perseus, and scientific cookery rapidly came into
vogue.
We cannot follow the course of the history of increasing luxury in its
details. Towards the end of the republic, breakfast (_jentaculum_),
consisting of bread and cheese, with perhaps dried fruit, was taken at
a very early hour, in an informal way, the guests not even sitting
down. At twelve or one o'clock luncheon followed (_prandium_). There
was considerable variety in this meal. The principal repast of the day
(_cæna_) occurred late in the afternoon, some time just before sunset,
there having been the same tendency to make the hour later and later
that has been manifested in England and America. There were three usual
courses, the first comprising stimulants to the appetite, eggs, olives,
oysters, lettuce, and a variety of other such delicacies. For the
second course the whole world was put under requisition. There were
turbots and sturgeon, eels and prawns, boar's flesh and venison,
pheasants and peacocks, ducks and capons, turtles and flamingoes,
pickled tunny-fishes, truffles and mushrooms, besides a variety of
other dishes that it is impossible to mention here. After these came
the dessert, almonds and raisins and dates, cheese-cakes and sweets and
apples. Thus the egg came at the beginning, and the apple,
representative of fruit in general, at the end, a fact that gave Horace
ground for his expression, _ab ovo usque ad mala_, from the egg to the
apple, from the beginning to the end. [Footnote: The practical side of
the Roman priesthood was the priestly _cuisine_; the augural and
pontifical banquets were, as we may say, the official gala days in the
life of a Roman epicure, and several of them form epochs in the history
of gastronomy: the banquet on the occasion of the inauguration of the
augur Quintus Hortensius, for instance, brought roast peacocks into
vogue.--Mommsen. Book IV., chap. 12.]
The Roman dinner was served with all the ostentatious elegance and
formality of our own days, if not with more. The guests assembled in
gay dresses ornamented with flowers; they took off their shoes, lest
the couch, inlaid with ivory, perhaps, or adorned with cloth of gold,
should be soiled; and laid themselves down to eat, each one adjusting
his napkin carefully, and taking his position according to his relative
importance, the middle place being deemed the most honorable. About the
tables stood the servants, dressed in the tunic, and carrying napkins
or rough cloths to wipe off the table, which was of the richest wood
and covered by no cloth. While some served the dishes, often of
magnificent designs, other slaves offered the feasters water to rinse
their hands, or cooled the room with fans. At times music and dances
were added to give another charm to the scene.
The first occupation of the Romans was agriculture, in which was
included the pasturage of flocks and herds. In process of time trades
were learned, and manufactures (literally making with the hand,
_manus_, the hand, _facere_, to make) were introduced, but not, of
course, to any thing like the extent familiar in our times. There were
millers and shoe-makers, butchers and tanners, bakers and blacksmiths,
besides other tradesmen and laborers. In the process of time there were
also artists, but in this respect Rome did not excel as Greece had long
before. There were also physicians, lawyers, and teachers, besides
office-holders. [Footnote: There were office-seekers, also, and of the
most persistent kind, throughout the whole history of the republic, and
they practised the corrupt arts of the most ingenious of the class in
modern times. The candidate went about clad in a toga of artificial
whiteness (_candidus_, white), accompanied by a _nomenclator_, who gave
him the names of the voters they might meet, so that he could
compliment them by addressing them familiarly, and he shook them by the
hand. He "treated" the voters to drink or food in a very modern
fashion, though with a more than modern profusion; and he went to the
extreme of bribing them if treating did not suffice. Against these
practices Coriolanus haughtily protests, in Shakespeare's play.
Sometimes candidates canvassed for votes outside of Rome, as Cicero
proposed in one of his letters to Atticus.]
When the Roman wished to go from place to place he had a variety of
modes among which to choose, as we have already had suggested by Horace
in his account of the trip from Rome to Brundusium. He might have his
horse saddled, and his saddle-bags packed, as our fathers did of yore;
he could do as one of the rich provincial governors described by Cicero
did when, at the opening of a Sicilian spring, he entered his rose-
scented litter, carried by eight bearers, reclining on a cushion of
Maltese gauze, with garlands about his head and neck, applying a
delicate scent-bag to his nose as he went. There were wagons and cars,
in which he might drive over the hard and smooth military roads, and
canals; and along the routes, there were, as Horace has told us,
taverns at which hospitality was to be expected.
The Roman law was remarkable for embodying in itself "the eternal
principles of freedom and of subordination, of property and legal
redress," which still reign unadulterated and unmodified, as Mommsen
says; and this system this strong people not only endured but actually
ordained for itself, and it involved the principle that a free man
could not be tortured, a principle which other European peoples
embraced only after a terrible and bloody struggle of a thousand years.
One of the punishments is worthy of mention here. We have already
noticed its infliction. It was ordered that a person might not live in
a certain region, or that he be confined to a certain island, and that
he be interdicted from fire and water, those two essentials to life, in
case he should overstep the bounds mentioned. These elements with the
Romans had a symbolical meaning, and when the husband received his
bride with fire and water, he signified that his protection should ever
be over her. Thus their interdiction meant the withdrawal of the
protection of the state from a person, which left him an outlaw. Such a
law could only have been made after the nation had become possessed of
regions somewhat remote from its centre of power. England can now exile
its criminals to another hemisphere, and Russia to a distant region of
deserts and cold, but neither country could have punished by exile
before it owned such regions.
XIX.
THE ROMAN READING AND WRITING.
In the earliest times the education of young Romans was probably
confined to instruction in dancing and music, though they became
acquainted with the processes of agriculture by being called upon to
practise them in company with their elders. It was not long before the
elementary attainments of reading, writing, and counting were brought
within their reach, even among the lower orders and the slaves, and we
know that it was thought important to make the latter class proficient
in many departments of scholarship.
The advance in the direction of real mental culture was, however, not
great until after the contact with Greece. So long as the Romans
remained a strong and self-centred people, deriving little but tribute
from peoples beyond the Italian peninsula, and looking with disdain
upon all outside that limit, there was not much to stimulate their
mental progress; but when contrast with another civilization showed
that there was much power to be gained by knowledge, it was naturally
more eagerly sought. The slaves and other foreigners, to whom the
instruction of the children was assigned, were familiar with the Greek
language, and it had the great advantage over Latin of being the casket
in which an illustrious literature was preserved. For this reason Roman
progress in letters was founded upon that of Greece.
The Roman parent for a long time made the Twelve Tables the text-book
from which his children were taught, thus giving them a smattering of
reading, of writing, and of the laws of the land at once. Roman
authorship and the study of grammar, however, were about coincident in
their beginnings with the temporary cessation of war and the second
closing of the temple of Janus. Cato the elder prepared manuals for the
instruction of youth (or, perhaps, one manual in several parts), which
gave his views on morals, oratory, medicine, war, and agriculture (a
sort of encyclopædia), and a history entitled _Origines_, which
recounted the traditions of the kings, told the story of the origin of
the Italian towns, of the Punic wars, and of other events down to the
time of his own death. [Footnote: See page 153. "Cato's encyclopædia...
was little more than an embodiment of the old Roman household
knowledge, and truly when compared with the Hellenic culture of the
period, was scanty enough."--MOMMSEN, bk. IV., ch. 12.] This seems to
have originated in the author's natural interest in the education of
his son, a stimulating cause of much literature of the same kind since.
The Roman knowledge of medicine came first from the Etruscans, to whom
they are said to have owed so much other culture, and subsequently from
the Greeks. The first person to make a distinct profession of medicine
at Rome, however, was not an Etruscan, but a Greek, named Archagathus,
who settled there in the year 219, just before the second Punic war
broke out. He was received with great respect, and a shop was bought
for him at the public expense; but his practice, which was largely
surgical, proved too severe to be popular. In earlier days the father
had been the family physician, and Cato vigorously reviled the foreign
doctors, and like the true conservative that he was, strove to bring
back the good old times that his memory painted; but his efforts did
not avail, and the professional practice of the healing art not only
became one of the most lucrative in Rome, but remained for a long
period almost a monopoly in the hands of foreigners. Science, among the
latest branches of knowledge to be freed from the swaddling-clothes of
empiricism, received, in its applied form, some attention, though
mathematics and physics were not specially favored as subjects of
investigation.
The progress of Roman culture is distinctly shown by a comparison of
the curriculum of Cato with that of Marcus Terentius Varro, a long-time
friend of Cicero, though ten years his senior. [Footnote: Varro is said
to have written of his youth. "For me when a boy there sufficed a
single rough coat and a single undergarment, shoes without stockings, a
horse without a saddle. I had no daily warm bath, and but seldom a
river bath." Still, he utters warnings against over-feeding and over-
sleeping, as well as against cakes and high living, pointing to his own
youthful training, and says that dogs were in his later years more
judiciously cared for than children.] Varro obtained from Quintilian
the title "the most learned of the Romans," and St. Augustine said that
it was astonishing that he could write so much, and that one could
scarcely believe that anybody could find time even to read all that he
wrote. He was proscribed by the triumvirs at the same time that Cicero
was, but was fortunate enough to escape and subsequently to be placed
under the protection of Augustus. Cato thought that a proper man ought
to study oratory, medicine, husbandry, war, and law, and was at liberty
to look into Greek literature a little, that he might cull from the
mass of chaff and rubbish, as he affected to deem it, some serviceable
maxims of practical experience, but he might not study it thoroughly.
Varro extended the limit of allowed and fitting studies to grammar,
logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, medicine, and
architecture.
Young children were led to their first studies by the kindergarten path
of amusement, learning their letters as we learned them ourselves by
means of blocks, and spelling by repeating the letters and words in
unison after the instructor. Dictation exercises were turned to account
in the study of grammar and orthography, and writing was taught by
imitation, though the "copy-book" was not paper, but a tablet covered
with a thin coating of wax, and the pen a stylus, pencil-shaped, sharp
at one end and flat at the other, so that the mark made by the point
might be smoothed out by reversing the instrument. Thus _vertere
stilum_, to turn the stylus, meant to correct or to erase. [Footnote:
See illustrations on pages 23 and 219.] The first school-book seems to
have been an Odyssey, by one Livius Andronicus, probably a Tarentine,
who was captured during the wars in Southern Italy. He became a slave,
of course, and was made instructor of his master's children. He
familiarized himself with the Latin language, and wrote dramas in it.
Thus though he was a native of Magna Græcia, he is usually mentioned as
the first Roman poet. It is not known whether his Odyssey and other
writings were imitations of the Greek or translations, but it matters
little; they were immediately appreciated and held their own so well
that they were read in schools as late as the time of Horace. This
first awakener of Roman literary effort was born at the time of Pyrrhus
and died before the battle of Zama.
A few other Roman writers of prominence claim our attention. With some
reason the Romans looked upon Ennius as the father of their literature.
He, like Andronicus, was a native of Magna Græcia, claiming lordly
ancestors, and boasting that the spirit of Homer, after passing through
many mortal bodies, had entered his own. His works remain only in
fragments gathered from others who had quoted them, and we cannot form
any accurate opinion of his rank as a poet; but we know that his
success was so great that Cicero considered him the prince of Roman
song, that Virgil was indebted to him for many thoughts and
expressions, and that even the brilliance of the Augustan poets did not
lessen his reputation. His utterances were vigorous, bold, fresh, and
full of the spirit of the brave old days. He found the language rough,
uncultivated, and unformed, and left it softer, more harmonious, and
possessed of a system of versification. He was born in 239 B.C., the
year after the first plays of Andronicus had been exhibited on the
Roman stage, and died just before the complete establishment of the
universal empire of Rome as a consequence of the battle of Pydna.
[Footnote: See Page 164.]
At the head of the list of Roman prose annalists stands the name of
Quintus Fabius Pictor, at one time a senator, who wrote a history of
his nation beginning, probably, like other Roman works of its class,
with the coming of Æneas, and narrating later events, to the end of the
second Punic war, with some degree of minuteness. He wrote in Greek,
and made the usual effort to preserve and transmit a sufficiently good
impression of the greatness of his own people. That Pictor was a
senator proves his social importance, which is still further
exemplified by the fact that after the carnage of Cannæ, he was sent to
Delphi to learn for his distressed countrymen how they might appease
the angry gods. We only know that his history was of great value from
the frequent use that was made of it by subsequent investigators in the
antiquities of the Roman people, because no manuscript of it has been
preserved.
Titus Maccius, surnamed, from the flatness of his feet, Plautus, was
the greatest among the comic poets of Rome. Of humble origin, he was
driven to literature by his necessities, and it was while turning the
crank of a baker's hand-mill that he began the work by which he is now
known. He wrote three plays which were accepted by the managers of the
public games, and he was thus able to turn his back upon menial
drudgery. Born at an Umbrian village during the first Punic war, not
far from the year when Regulus was taken, [Footnote: See page 133.] he
came to Rome at an early age, and after he began to write, produced a
score or more of plays which captivated both the learned and the
uneducated by their truth to the life that they depicted, and they held
their high reputation long after the death of the author. Moderns have
also attested their merit, and our great dramatist in his amusing
_Comedy of Errors_ imitated the _Menoechmi_ of this early play-wright.
[Footnote: Rude farces, known as _Atellanæ Fabula_, were introduced
into Rome after the contact with the Campanians, from one of whose
towns, Atella, they received their name. Though they were at a later
time divided into acts, they seem to have been at first simply
improvised raillery and satire without dramatic connection. The Atellan
plays were later than the imitations of Etruscan acting mentioned on
page 110.]
Publius Terentius Afer, commonly known as Terrence, the second and last
of the comic poets, was of no higher social position than Plautus, and
was no more a Roman than the other writers we have referred to, for he
was a native of Carthage, Rome's great rival, where he was born at the
time that Hannibal was a refugee at the court of Antiochus at Ephesus.
In spite of his foreign origin, Terence was of sufficient ability to
exchange the slave-pen of Carthage for the society of the best circles
in Rome, and he attained to such purity and ease in the use of his
adopted tongue that Cicero and Cæsar scarcely surpass him in those
respects. His first play, the _Andria_ (the Woman of Andros), was
produced in 166 B.C., the year before Polybius and the other Achæans
were transported to Rome. [Footnote: See page 164; and portrait, page
141] It has been imitated and copied in modern times, and notably by
Sir Richard Steele in his _Conscious Lovers_. Andria was followed
by _Hecyra_ (the Stepmother), _Heautontimoroumenos_, (the Self-
Tormentor), _Eunuchus_ (the Eunuch), _Phormio_ (named from a parasite
who is an active agent in the plot), and _Adelphi_ (the Brothers), the
plot of which was mainly derived from a Greek play of the same title.
This foreign influence is further shown in the names of these plays,
which are Greek.
Cato, the Censor, found time among his varied public labors to
contribute to the literature of his language. His _Origines_ and
other works have already been mentioned. [Footnote: See pages 153 and
239.] The varied literary productions of Cicero have also come under
our notice, [Footnote: See page 202] but they deserve more attention,
though they are too many to be enumerated. Surpassing all others in the
art of public speaking, he was evidently well prepared to write on
rhetoric and oratory as he did; but his general information and
scholarly taste led him to go far beyond this limit, and he made
considerable investigations in the domains of politics, history, and
philosophy, law, theology, and morals, besides practising his hand in
his earlier years on the manufacture of verses that have not added to
his reputation. The writings of Cicero of greatest interest to us now
are his orations and correspondence, both of which give us intimate
information concerning life and events that is of inestimable value,
and it is conveyed in a literary style at once so appropriate and
attractive that it is itself forgotten in the impressive interest of
the narrative. The period covered by the eight hundred letters of
Cicero that have been preserved is one of the utmost importance in
Roman history, and the author and his correspondents were in the
hottest of the exciting movements of the time.
When he writes without reserve, he gives his modern readers
confidential revelations of the utmost piquancy; and when he words his
epistles with diplomatic care, he displays with equal acuteness, to the
student familiar with the intrigues of public life at Rome at the time,
the sinuosities of contemporary statesmanship and the wiles of the wary
politician, and the revelation is all the more entertaining and
important because it is an unintentional exhibition. The orations of
Cicero are likewise storehouses of details connected with public and
private life, gathered with the minute care of an advocate persistently
in earnest and determined not to allow any item to pass unnoticed that
might affect the decision of his cause.