TRANSFORMATION OF LIFE IN ROME
=Greek and Oriental Influence.=--Conquest gave the Romans a clearer
view of the Greeks and Orientals. Thousands of foreigners brought to
Rome as slaves, or coming thither to make their fortune, established
themselves in the city as physicians, professors, diviners, or actors.
Generals, officers and soldiers lived in the midst of Asia, and thus
the Romans came to know the customs and the new beliefs and gradually
adopted them. This transformation had its beginning with the first
Macedonian war (about 200 B.C.), and continued until the end of the
empire.
CHANGES IN RELIGION
=The Greek Gods.=--The Roman gods bore but a slight resemblance to the
Greek gods, even in name; yet in the majority of the divinities of
Rome the Greeks recognized or believed they recognized their own. The
Roman gods up to that time had neither precise form nor history; this
rendered confusion all the easier. Every Roman god was represented
under the form of a Greek god and a history was made of the adventures
of this god.
The Latin Jupiter was confounded with the Greek Zeus; Juno with Hera;
Minerva, the goddess of memory, with Pallas, goddess of wisdom; Diana,
female counterpart of Janus, unites with Artemis, the brilliant
huntress; Hercules, the god of the enclosure, was assimilated to
Herakles, the victor over monsters. Thus Greek mythology insinuated
itself under Latin names, and the gods of Rome found themselves
transformed into Greek gods. The fusion was so complete that we have
preserved the custom of designating the Greek gods by their Latin
names; we still call Artemis Diana, and Pallas Minerva.
=The Bacchanals.=--The Greeks had adopted an oriental god, Bacchus,
the god of the vintage, and the Romans began to adore him also. The
worshippers of Bacchus celebrated his cult at night and in secret.
Only the initiated were admitted to the mysteries of the Bacchanals,
who swore not to reveal any of the ceremonies. A woman, however, dared
to denounce to the Senate the Bacchanalian ceremonies that occurred in
Rome in 186. The Senate made an inquiry, discovered 7,000 persons, men
and women, who had participated in the mysteries, and had them put to
death.
=Oriental Superstitions.=--Already in 220 there was in Rome a temple
of the Egyptian god Serapis. The Senate ordered it to be demolished.
As no workman dared to touch it, the consul himself had to come and
beat down the doors with blows of an axe.
Some years after, in 205, during the war with Hannibal, it was the
Senate itself that sent an ambassador to Asia Minor to seek the
goddess Cybele. The Great Mother (as she was called) was represented
by a black stone, and this the envoys of the Senate brought in great
pomp and installed in Rome. Her priests followed her and paced the
streets to the sound of fifes and cymbals, clad in oriental fashion,
and begging from door to door.
Later, Italy was filled with Chaldean sorcerers. The mass of the
people were not the only ones to believe in these diviners. When the
Cimbri menaced Rome (104), Martha, a prophetess of Syria, came to the
Senate to offer it victory over the barbarians; the Senate drove her
out, but the Roman women brought her to the camp, and Marius, the
general in chief, kept her by him and consulted her to the end of the
war. Sulla, likewise, had seen in vision the goddess of Cappadocia and
it was on her advice that he took his way to Italy.
=Sceptics.=--Not only priests and diviners came to Rome, but also
philosophers who scoffed at the old religion. The best known of these,
Carneades, the ambassador of the Athenians, spoke in Rome in public,
and the youth of Rome came in crowds to hear him. The Senate bade him
leave the city. But the philosophers continued to teach in the schools
of Athens and Rhodes, and it was the fashion to send the Roman youth
thither for instruction. About the third century before Christ
Euhemerus, a Greek, had written a book to prove that there were no
gods; the gods, he said, were only men of ancient times who had been
deified; Jupiter himself had been a king of Crete. This book had a
great success and was translated into Latin by the poet Ennius. The
nobles of Rome were accustomed to mock at their gods, maintaining only
the cult of the old religion. The higher Roman society was for a
century at once superstitious and sceptical.
CHANGES IN MANNERS
=The Old Customs.=--The old Romans had for centuries been diligent and
rude husbandmen, engaged in cultivating their fields, in fighting, and
in fulfilling the ceremonies of their religion. Their ideal was the
_grave_ man. Cincinnatus, they said, was pushing his plough when the
deputies of the Senate came to offer him the dictatorship. Fabricius
had of plate only a cup and a salt-cellar of silver. Curius Dentatus,
the conqueror of the Samnites, was sitting on a bench eating some
beans in a wooden bowl when the envoys of the Samnites presented
themselves before him to offer him a bribe.[133] "Go and tell the
Samnites," said he, "that Curius prefers commanding those who have
gold to having it himself." These are some of the anecdotes that they
used to tell about the generals of the olden time. True or false,
these legends exhibit the ideas that were current in Rome at a later
time regarding the ancient Romans.
=Cato the Elder.=--At the time when manners were changing, one man
made himself notable by his attachment to the "customs of the
fathers." This was Cato. He was born in 232[134] in the little village
of Tusculum and had spent his youth in manual labor. Entering the
army, according to the usage of the time, at the age of seventeen, he
fought in all the campaigns against Hannibal. He was not noble, but he
made himself popular by his energy, his probity, and his austerity.
He passed through the whole course of political honors--quaestor,
aedile, praetor, consul, and censor. He showed himself everywhere, like
the old Romans, rude, stern, and honest. As quaestor he remonstrated
with the consul about his expenses; but the consul, who was Scipio,
replied to him, "I have no need of so exact a quaestor." As praetor in
Sardinia, he refused the money that was offered him by the province
for the expenses of entertainment. As consul, he spoke with vigor for
the Oppian law which prohibited Roman women from wearing costly
attire; the women put it off, and the law was abrogated. Sent to
command the army of Spain, Cato took 400 towns, securing immense
treasure which he turned into the public chest; at the moment of
embarking, he sold his horse to save the expenses of transportation.
As censor, he erased from the senate-list many great persons on the
ground of their extravagance; he farmed the taxes at a very high price
and taxed at ten times their value the women's habits, jewels, and
conveyances. Having obtained the honor of a triumph, he withdrew to
the army in Macedonia as a simple officer.
All his life he fought with the nobles of the new type, extravagant
and elegant. He "barked" especially at the Scipios, accusing them of
embezzling state moneys. In turn he was forty-four times made
defendant in court, but was always acquitted.
On his farm Cato labored with his slaves, ate with them, and when he
had to correct them, beat them with his own hand. In his treatise on
Agriculture, written for his son, he has recorded all the old axioms
of the Roman peasantry.[135] He considered it to be a duty to become
rich. "A widow," he said, "can lessen her property; a man ought to
increase his. He is worthy of fame and inspired of the gods who gains
more than he inherits." Finding that agriculture was not profitable
enough, he invested in merchant ships; he united with fifty associates
and all together constructed fifty ships of commerce, that each might
have a part in the risks and the profits. A good laborer, a good
soldier, a foe to luxury, greedy of gain, Cato was the type of the
Roman of the old stock.
=The New Manners.=--Many Romans on the contrary, especially the
nobles, admired and imitated the foreigners. At their head were the
generals who had had a nearer view of Greece and the Orient--Scipio,
conqueror of the king of Syria, Flamininus and AEmilius Paullus,
victors over the kings of Macedon, later Lucullus, conqueror of the
king of Armenia. They were disgusted with the mean and gross life of
their ancestors, and adopted a more luxurious and agreeable mode of
living. Little by little all the nobles, all the rich followed their
example; one hundred and fifty years later in Italy all the great were
living in Greek or oriental fashion.
=Oriental Luxury.=--In the East the Romans found models in the royal
successors of Alexander, possessors of enormous wealth; for all the
treasure that was not employed in paying mercenaries was squandered by
the court. These oriental kings indulged their vanity by displaying
gleaming robes, precious stones, furniture of silver, golden plate;
by surrounding themselves with a multitude of useless servants, by
casting money to the people who were assembled to admire them.[136]
The Romans, very vain and with artistic tastes but slightly developed,
had a relish for this species of luxury. They had but little regard
for beauty or for comfort, and had thought for nothing else than
display. They had houses built with immense gardens adorned with
statues, sumptuous villas projecting into the sea in the midst of
enormous gardens. They surrounded themselves with troops of slaves.
They and their wives substituted for linen garments those of gauze,
silk, and gold. At their banquets they spread embroidered carpets,
purple coverings, gold and silver plate. Sulla had one hundred and
fifty dishes of silver; the plate of Marcus Drusus weighed 10,000
pounds. While the common people continued to sit at table in
accordance with old Italian custom, the rich adopted the oriental
usage of reclining on couches at their meals. At the same time was
introduced the affected and costly cookery of the East--exotic fishes,
brains of peacocks, and tongues of birds.
From the second century the extravagance was such that a consul who
died in 152 could say in his will: "As true glory does not consist in
vain pomp but in the merits of the dead and of one's ancestors, I bid
my children not to spend on my funeral ceremonies more than a million
as" ($10,000).
=Greek Humanity.=--In Greece the Romans saw the monuments, the
statues, and the pictures which had crowded their cities for
centuries; they came to know their learned people and the
philosophers. Some of the Romans acquired a taste for the beautiful
and for the life of the spirit. The Scipios surrounded themselves with
cultivated Greeks. AEmilius Paullus asked from all the booty taken by
him from Macedon only the library of King Perseus; he had his children
taught by Greek preceptors. It was then the fashion in Rome to speak,
and even to write in Greek.[137] The nobles desired to appear
connoisseurs in painting and in sculpture; they imported statues by
the thousand, the famous bronzes of Corinth, and they heaped these up
in their houses. Thus Verres possessed a whole gallery of objects of
art which he had stolen in Sicily. Gradually the Romans assumed a
gloss of Greek art and literature. This new culture was called
"humanity," as opposed to the "rusticity" of the old Roman peasants.
It was little else than gloss; the Romans had realized but slightly
that beauty and truth were to be sought for their own sakes; art and
science always remained objects of luxury and parade. Even in the time
of Cicero the soldier, the peasant, the politician, the man of
affairs, the advocate were alone regarded as truly occupied. Writing,
composing, contributing to science, philosophy, or criticism--all this
was called "being at leisure."[138] Artists and scholars were never
regarded at Rome as the equals of the rich merchant. Lucian, a Greek
writer, said, "If you would be a Pheidias, if you would make a
thousand masterpieces, nobody will care to imitate you, for as skilful
as you are, you will always pass for an artisan, a man who lives by
the work of his hands."
=Lucullus.=--Lucullus, the type of the new Roman, was born in 145 of a
noble and rich family; thus he entered without difficulty into the
course of political honors. From his first campaigns he was notable
for his magnanimity to the vanquished. Become consul, he was placed at
the head of the army against Mithradates. He found the inhabitants of
Asia exasperated by the brigandage and the cruelties of the publicans,
and gave himself to checking these excesses; he forbade, too, his
soldiers pillaging conquered towns. In this way he drew to him the
useless affection of the Asiatics and the dangerous hate of the
publicans and the soldiers. They intrigued to have him recalled; he
had then defeated Mithradates and was pursuing him with his ally, the
king of Armenia; he came with a small army of 20,000 men to put to
rout an immense multitude of barbarians. His command was taken from
him and given to Pompey, the favorite of the publicans.
Lucullus then retired to enjoy the riches that he had accumulated in
Asia. He had in the neighborhood of Rome celebrated gardens, at Naples
a villa constructed in part in the sea, and at Tusculum a summer
palace with a whole museum of objects of art. He spent the beautiful
season at Tusculum surrounded by his friends, by scholars and men of
letters, reading Greek authors, and discussing literature and
philosophy.
Many anecdotes are told of the luxury of Lucullus. One day, being
alone at dinner, he found his table simpler than ordinary and
reproached the cook, who excused himself by saying there was no guest
present. "Do you not know," replied his master, "that Lucullus dines
today with Lucullus?" Another day he invited Caesar and Cicero to dine,
who accepted on condition that he would make no change from his
ordinary arrangements. Lucullus simply said to a slave to have dinner
prepared in the hall of Apollo. A magnificent feast was spread, the
guests were astonished. Lucullus replied he had given no order, that
the expense of his dinners was regulated by the hall where he gave
them; those of the hall of Apollo were to cost not less than $10,000.
A praetor who had to present a grand spectacle asked Lucullus if he
would lend him one hundred purple robes; he replied by tendering two
hundred.
Lucullus remained the representative of the new manners, as Cato of
the old customs. For the ancients Cato was the virtuous Roman,
Lucullus the degenerate Roman. Lucullus, in effect, discarded the
manners of his ancestors, and so acquired a broader, more elevated,
and more refined spirit, more humanity toward his slaves and his
subjects.
=The New Education.=--At the time when Polybius lived in Rome (before
150) the old Romans taught their children nothing else than to
read.[139] The new Romans provided Greek instructors for their
children. Some Greeks opened in Rome schools of poesy, rhetoric, and
music. The great families took sides between the old and new systems.
But there always remained a prejudice against music and the dance;
they were regarded as arts belonging to the stage, improper for a man
of good birth. Scipio AEmilianus, the protector of the Greeks, speaks
with indignation of a dancing-school to which children and young girls
of free birth resorted: "When it was told me, I could not conceive
that nobles would teach such things to their children. But when some
one took me to the dancing-school, I saw there more than 500 boys and
girls and, among the number a twelve-year-old child, a candidate's
son, who danced to the sound of castanets." Sallust, speaking of a
Roman woman of little reputation, says, "She played on the lyre and
danced better than is proper for an honest woman."
=The New Status of Women.=--The Roman women gave themselves with
energy to the religions and the luxury of the East. They flocked in
crowds to the Bacchanals and the mysteries of Isis. Sumptuary laws
were made against their fine garments, their litters, and their
jewels, but these laws had to be abrogated and the women allowed to
follow the example of the men. Noble women ceased to walk or to remain
in their homes; they set out with great equipages, frequented the
theatre, the circus, the baths, and the places of assembly. Idle and
exceedingly ignorant, they quickly became corrupt. In the nobility,
women of fine character became the exception. The old discipline of
the family fell to the ground. The Roman law made the husband the
master of his wife; but a new form of marriage was invented which left
the woman under the authority of her father and gave no power to her
husband. To make their daughter still more independent, her parents
gave her a dower.
=Divorce.=--Sometimes the husband alone had the right to repudiate his
wife, but the custom was that this right should be exercised only in
the gravest circumstances. The woman gained the right of leaving her
husband, and so it became very easy to break a marriage. There was no
need of a judgment, or even of a motive. It was enough for the
discontented husband or wife to say to the other, "Take what belongs
to you, and return what is mine." After the divorce either could marry
again.
In the aristocracy, marriage came to be regarded as a passing union;
Sulla had five wives, Caesar four, Pompey five, and Antony four. The
daughter of Cicero had three husbands. Hortensius divorced his wife to
give her to a friend. "There are noble women," says Seneca, "who count
their age not by the years of the consuls, but by the husbands they
have had; they divorce to marry again, they marry to divorce again."
But this corruption affected hardly more than the nobles of Rome and
the upstarts. In the families of Italy and the provinces the more
serious manners of the old time still prevailed; but the discipline of
the family gradually slackened and the woman slowly freed herself from
the despotism of her husband.
FOOTNOTES:
[133] Another version is that he was sitting at the hearth roasting
turnips.--ED.
[134] 232 and 234 are both given as the date of Cato's birth. The latter
is the more probable.--ED.
[135] Nearly all Romans of Cato's time were husbandmen, tilling the soil
with their own hands.--ED.
[136] This taste for useless magnificence is exhibited in the stories of
the Thousand and One Nights.
[137] Cato the Elder had a horror of the Greeks. He said to his son: "I
will tell what I have seen in Athens. This race is the most perverse and
intractable. Listen to me as to an oracle: whenever this people teaches
us its arts it will corrupt everything."
[138] "Schola," from which we derive "school," signified leisure.
[139] Also to write and reckon, as previously stated.--ED.