THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT
THE TWELVE CAESARS
=The Emperor.=--In the new regime absolute authority was lodged in a
single man; he was called the emperor (imperator--the commander). In
himself alone he exercised all those functions which the ancient
magistrates distributed among themselves: he presided over the Senate;
he levied and commanded all the armies; he drew up the lists of
senators, knights, and people; he levied taxes; he was supreme judge;
he was pontifex maximus; he had the power of the tribunes. And to
indicate that this authority made him a superhuman being, it was
decreed that he should bear a religious surname: Augustus (the
venerable).
The empire was not established by a radical revolution. The name of
the republic was not suppressed and for more than three centuries the
standards of the soldiers continued to bear the initials S.P.Q.R.
(senate and people of Rome). The emperor's power was granted to him
for life instead of for one year, as with the old magistrates. The
emperor was the only and lifelong magistrate of the republic. In him
the Roman people was incarnate; this is why he was absolute.
=Apotheosis of the Emperor.=--As long as the emperor lived he was sole
master of the empire, since the Roman people had conveyed all its
power to him. But at his death the Senate in the name of the people
reviewed his life and passed judgment upon it. If he were condemned,
all the acts which he had made were nullified, his statues thrown
down, and his name effaced from the monuments.[145] If, on the
contrary, his acts were ratified (which almost always occurred), the
Senate at the same time decreed that the deceased emperor should be
elevated to the rank of the gods. The majority of the emperors,
therefore, became gods after their death. Temples were raised to them
and priests appointed to render them worship. Throughout the empire
there were temples dedicated to the god Augustus and to the goddess
Roma, and persons are known who performed the functions of flamen
(priest) of the divine Claudius, or of the divine Vespasian. This
practice of deifying the dead emperor was called Apotheosis. The word
is Greek; the custom probably came from the Greeks of the Orient.
=The Senate and the People.=--The Roman Senate remained what it had
always been--the assembly of the richest and most eminent personages
of the empire. To be a senator was still an eagerly desired honor; in
speaking of a great family one would say, "a senatorial family." But
the Senate, respected as it was, was now powerless, because the
emperor could dispense with it. It was still the most distinguished
body in the state, but it was no longer the master of the government.
The emperor often pretended to consult it, but he was not bound by its
advice.
The people had lost all its power since the assemblies (the Comitia)
were suppressed in the reign of Tiberius. The population of 2,000,000
souls crowded into Rome was composed only of some thousands of great
lords with their slaves and a mob of paupers. Already the state had
assumed the burden of feeding the latter; the emperors continued to
distribute grain to them, and supplemented this with donations of
money (the congiarium). Augustus thus donated $140 apiece in nine
different distributions, and Nero $50 in three. At the same time to
amuse this populace shows were presented. The number of days regularly
appointed for the shows under the republic had already amounted to 66
in the year; it had increased in a century and a half, under Marcus
Aurelius, to 135, and in the fourth century to 175 (without counting
supplementary days). These spectacles continued each day from sunrise
to sunset; the spectators ate their lunch in their places. This was a
means used by the emperors for the occupation of the crowd. "It is for
your advantage, Caesar," said an actor to Augustus, "that the people
engage itself with us." It was also a means for securing popularity.
The worst emperors were among the most popular; Nero was adored for
his magnificent spectacles; the people refused to believe that he was
dead, and for thirty years they awaited his return.[146]
The multitude of Rome no longer sought to govern; it required only to
be amused and fed: in the forceful expression of Juvenal--to be
provided with bread and the games of the circus (panem et circenses).
=The Praetorians.=--Under the republic a general was prohibited from
leading his army into the city of Rome. The emperor, chief of all the
armies, had at Rome his military escort (praetorium), a body of about
10,000 men quartered in the interior of the city. The praetorians,
recruited among the veterans, received high pay and frequent
donatives. Relying on these soldiers, the emperor had nothing to fear
from malcontents in Rome. But the danger came from the praetorians
themselves; as they had the power they believed they had free rein,
and their chief, the praetorian prefect, was sometimes stronger than
the emperor.
=The Freedmen of the Emperor.=--Ever since the monarchy had superseded
the republic, there was no other magistrate than the emperor. All the
business of the empire of 80,000,000 people originated with him. For
this crushing task he required assistants. He found them, not among
the men of great family whom he mistrusted, but among the slaves of
whom he felt sure. The secretaries, the men of trust, the ministers of
the emperor were his freedmen, the majority of them foreigners from
Greece or the Orient, pliant people, adepts in flattery,
inventiveness, and loquacity. Often the emperor, wearied with serious
matters, gave the government into their hands, and, as occurs in
absolute monarchies, instead of aiding their master, they supplemented
him. Pallas and Narcissus, the freedmen of Claudius, distributed
offices and pronounced judgments; Helius, Nero's freedman, had
knights and senators executed without even consulting his master. Of
all the freedmen Pallas was the most powerful, the richest, and the
most insolent; he gave his orders to his underlings only by signs or
in writing. Nothing so outraged the old noble families of Rome as
this. "The princes," said a Roman writer, "are the masters of citizens
and the slaves of their freedmen." Among the scandals with which the
emperors were reproached, one of the gravest was governing Roman
citizens by former slaves.
=Despotism and Disorder.=--This regime had two great vices:
1. _Despotism._--The emperor was invested for life with a power
unlimited, extravagant, and hardly conceivable; according to his fancy
he disposed of persons and their property, condemned, confiscated, and
executed without restraint. No institution, no law fettered his will.
"The decree of the emperor has the force of law," say the
jurisconsults themselves. Rome recognized then the unlimited despotism
that the tyrants had exercised in the Greek cities, no longer
circumscribed within the borders of a single city, but gigantic as the
empire itself. As in Greece some honorable tyrants had presented
themselves, one sees in Rome some wise and honest monarchs (Augustus,
Vespasian, Titus). But few men had a head strong enough to resist
vertigo when they saw themselves so elevated above other men. The
majority of the emperors profited by their tremendous power only to
make their names proverbial: Tiberius, Nero, Domitian by their
cruelty, Vitellius by his gluttony, Claudius by his imbecility. One
of them, Caligula, was a veritable fool; he had his horse made consul
and himself worshipped as a god. The emperors persecuted the nobles
especially to keep them from conspiring against them, and the rich to
confiscate their goods.
2. _Disorder._--This overweening authority was, moreover, very ill
regulated; it resided entirely in the person of the emperor. When he
was dead, everything was in question. It was well known that the world
could not continue without a master, but no law nor usage determined
who was to be this master. The Senate alone had the right of
nominating the emperor, but almost always it would elect under
pressure the one whom the preceding emperor had designated or the man
who was pleasing to the soldiers.
After the death of Caligula, some praetorians who were sacking the
palace discovered, concealed behind the tapestry, a poor man trembling
with fear. This was a relative of Caligula; the praetorians made him
emperor (it was the emperor Claudius). After the death of Nero, the
Senate had elected Galba; the praetorians did not find him liberal
enough and so they massacred him to set up in his place Otho, a
favorite of Nero. In their turn the soldiers on the frontier wished to
make an emperor: the legions of the Rhine entered Italy, met the
praetorians at Bedriac near Cremona, and overthrew them in so furious a
battle that it lasted all night; then they compelled the Senate to
elect Vitellius, their general, as emperor. During this time the army
of Syria had elected its chief Vespasian, who in turn defeated
Vitellius and was named in his place; thus in two years three emperors
had been created and three overthrown by the soldiers. The new
emperor often undid what his predecessor had done; imperial despotism
had not even the advantage of being stable.
=The Twelve Caesars.=--This regime of oppression interrupted by
violence endured for more than a century (31 B.C. to 96 A.D.).
The twelve emperors who came to the throne during this time are called
the Twelve Caesars, although only the first six were of the family of
Augustus. It is difficult to judge them equitably. Almost all of them
persecuted the noble families of Rome of whom they were afraid, and it
is the writers of these families that have made their reputation. But
it is quite possible that in the provinces their government was mild
and just, superior to that of the senators of the republic.
THE CENTURY OF THE ANTONINES
=The Antonines.=--The five emperors succeeding the twelve Caesars,
Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus, and Marcus Aurelius (96-180), have
left a reputation for justice and wisdom. They were called the
Antonines, though this name properly belongs only to the last two.
They were not descended from the old families of Rome; Trajan and
Hadrian were Spaniards, Antoninus was born at Nimes in Gaul. They were
not princes of imperial family, destined from their birth to rule.
Four emperors came to the throne without sons and so the empire could
not be transmitted by inheritance. On each occasion the prince chose
among his generals and his governors the man most capable of
succeeding him; he adopted him as his son and sought his confirmation
by the Senate. Thus there came to the empire only experienced men, who
without confusion assumed the throne of their adoptive fathers.
=Government of the Antonines.=--This century of the Antonines was the
calmest that the ancient world had ever known. Wars were relegated to
the frontier of the empire. In the interior there were still military
seditions, tyranny, and arbitrary condemnations. The Antonines held
the army in check, organized a council of state of jurisconsults,
established tribunals, and replaced the freedmen who had so long
irritated the Romans under the twelve Caesars by regular functionaries
taken from among the men of the second class--that is, the knights.
The emperor was no longer a tyrant served by the soldiers; he was
truly the first magistrate of the republic, using his authority only
for the good of the citizens. The last two Antonines especially,
Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius, honored the empire by their integrity.
Both lived simply, like ordinary men, although they were very rich,
without anything that resembled a court or a palace, never giving the
impression that they were masters. Marcus Aurelius consulted the
Senate on all state business and regularly attended its sessions.
=Marcus Aurelius.=--Marcus Aurelius has been termed the Philosopher on
the Throne. He governed from a sense of duty, against his disposition,
for he loved solitude; and yet he spent his life in administration and
the command of armies. His private journal (his "Thoughts") exhibits
the character of the Stoic--virtuous, austere, separated from the
world, and yet mild and good. "The best form of vengeance on the
wicked is not to imitate them; the gods themselves do good to evil
men; it is your privilege to act like the gods."
=Conquests of the Antonines.=--The emperors of the first century had
continued the course of conquest; they had subjected the Britons of
England, the Germans on the left bank of the Rhine, and in the
provinces had reduced several countries which till then had retained
their kings--Mauretania, Thrace, Cappadocia. The Rhine, the Danube,
and the Euphrates were the limits of the empire.
The emperors of the second century were almost all generals; they had
the opportunity of waging numerous wars to repel the hostile peoples
who sought to invade the empire. The enemies were in two quarters
especially:
1. On the Danube were the Dacians, barbarous people, who occupied
the country of mountains and forests now called Transylvania.
2. On the Euphrates was the great military monarchy of the
Parthians which had its capital at Ctesiphon, near the ruins of
Babylon, and which extended over all Persia.
Trajan made several expeditions against the Dacians, crossed the
Danube, won three great battles, and took the capital of the Dacians
(101-102). He offered them peace, but when they reopened the war he
resolved to end matters with them: he had a stone bridge built over
the Danube, invaded Dacia and reduced it to a Roman province (106).
Colonies were transferred thither, cities were built, and Dacia became
a Roman province where Latin was spoken and Roman customs were
assimilated. When the Roman armies withdrew at the end of the third
century, the Latin language remained and continued throughout the
Middle Ages, notwithstanding the invasions of the barbarian Slavs. It
is from Transylvania (ancient Dacia) that the peoples came from the
twelfth to the fourteenth century who now inhabit the plains to the
north of the Danube. It has preserved the name of Rome (Roumania) and
speaks a language derived from the Latin, like the French or Spanish.
Trajan made war on the Parthians also. He crossed the Euphrates, took
Ctesiphon, the capital, and advanced into Persia, even to Susa, whence
he took away the massive gold throne of the kings of Persia. He
constructed a fleet on the Tigris, descended the stream to its mouth
and sailed into the Persian Gulf; he would have delighted, like
Alexander, in the conquest of India. He took from the Parthians the
country between the Euphrates and the Tigris--Assyria and
Mesopotamia--and erected there two Roman provinces.
To commemorate his conquests Trajan erected monuments which still
remain. The Column of Trajan on the Roman Forum is a shaft whose
bas-reliefs represent the war against the Dacians. The arch of triumph
of Benevento recalls the victories over the Parthians.
Of these two conquests one alone was permanent, that of Dacia. The
provinces conquered from the Parthians revolted after the departure of
the Roman army. The emperor Hadrian retained Dacia, but returned their
provinces to the Parthians, and the Roman empire again made the
Euphrates its eastern frontier. To escape further warfare with the
highlanders of Scotland, Hadrian built a wall in the north of England
(the Wall of Hadrian) extending across the whole island. There was no
need of other wars save against the revolting Jews; these people were
overthrown and expelled from Jerusalem, the name of which was changed
to obliterate the memory of the old Jewish kingdom.
Marcus Aurelius, the last of the Antonines, had to resist the invasion
of several barbarous peoples of Germany who had crossed the Danube on
the ice and had penetrated even to Aquileia, in the north of Italy. In
order to enroll a sufficient army he had to enlist slaves and
barbarians (172). The Germans retreated, but while Marcus was occupied
with a general uprising in Syria, they renewed their attacks on the
empire, and the emperor died on the banks of the Danube (180). This
was the end of conquest.
IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION
=Extent of the Empire in the Second Century.=--The Roman emperors were
but little bent on conquest. But to occupy their army and to secure
frontiers which might be easily defended, they continued to conquer
barbarian peoples for more than a century. When the course of conquest
was finally arrested after Trajan, the empire extended over all the
south of Europe, all the north of Africa and the west of Asia; it was
limited only by natural frontiers--the ocean to the west; the
mountains of Scotland, the Rhine, the Danube, and the Caucasus to the
north; the deserts of the Euphrates and of Arabia to the east; the
cataracts of the Nile and the great desert to the south. The empire,
therefore, embraced the countries which now constitute England, Spain,
Italy, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Bavaria, Austria, Hungary,
European Turkey, Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and
Asiatic Turkey. It was more than double the extent of the empire of
Alexander.
This immense territory was subdivided into forty-eight provinces,[147]
unequal in size, but the majority of them very large. Thus Gaul from
the Pyrenees to the Rhine formed but seven provinces.
=The Permanent Army.=--In the provinces of the interior there was no
Roman army, for the peoples of the empire had no desire to revolt. It
was on the frontier that the empire had its enemies, foreigners always
ready to invade: behind the Rhine and the Danube the barbarian
Germans; behind the sands of Africa the nomads of the desert; behind
the Euphrates the Persian army. On this frontier which was constantly
threatened it was necessary to have soldiers always in readiness.
Augustus had understood this, and so created a permanent army. The
soldiers of the empire were no longer proprietors transferred from
their fields to serve during a few campaigns, but poor men who made
war a profession. They enlisted for sixteen or twenty years and often
reenlisted. There were, then, thirty legions of citizens--that is,
180,000 legionaries, and, according to Roman usage, a slightly larger
number of auxiliaries--in all about 400,000 men. This number was small
for so large a territory.
Each frontier province had its little army, garrisoned in a permanent
camp similar to a fortress. Merchants came to establish themselves in
the vicinity, and the camp was transformed into a city; but still the
soldiers, encamped in the face of the enemy, preserved their valor and
their discipline. There were for three centuries severe wars,
especially on the banks of the Rhine and of the Danube, where Romans
fought fierce barbarians in a swampy country, uncultivated, covered
with forests and bogs. The imperial army exhibited, perhaps, as much
bravery and energy in these obscure wars as the ancient Romans in the
conquest of the world.
=Deputies and Agents of the Emperor.=--All the provinces belonged to
the emperor[148] as the representative of the Roman people. He is
there the general of all the soldiers, master of all persons, and
proprietor of all lands.[149] But as the emperor could not be
everywhere at once, he sent deputies appointed by himself. To each
province went a lieutenant (called a deputy of Augustus with the
function of praetor); this official governed the country, commanded the
army, and went on circuit through his province to judge important
cases, for he, like the emperor, had the right of life and death.
The emperor sent also a financial agent to levy the taxes and return
the money to the imperial chest. This official was called the
"procurator of Augustus." These two men represented the emperor,
governing his subjects, commanding his soldiers, and exploiting his
domain. The emperor always chose them among the two nobilities of
Rome, the praetors from the senators, the procurators from the knights.
For them, as for the magistrates of old Rome, there was a succession
of offices: they passed from one province to another, from one end of
the empire to the other,[150] from Syria to Spain, from Britain to
Africa. In the epitaphs of officials of this time we always find
carefully inscribed all the posts which they have occupied;
inscriptions on their tombs are sufficient to construct their
biographies.
=Municipal life.=--Under these omnipotent representatives of the
emperor the smaller subject peoples continued to administer their own
government. The emperor had the right of interfering in their local
affairs, but ordinarily he did not exercise this right. He only
demanded of them that they keep the peace, pay their taxes regularly,
and appear before the tribunal of the governor. There were in every
province several of these little subordinate governments; they were
called, just as at other times the Roman state was called, "cities,"
and sometimes municipalities. A city in the empire was copied after
the Roman city: it also had its assembly of the people, its
magistrates elected for a year and grouped into colleges of two
members, its senate called a curia, formed of the great proprietors,
people rich and of old family. There, as at Rome, the assembly of the
people was hardly more than a form; it is the senate--that is to say,
the nobility, that governs.
The centre of the provincial city was always a town, a Rome in
miniature, with its temples, its triumphal arches, its public baths,
its fountains, its theatres, and its arenas for the combats. The life
led there was that of Rome on a small scale: distributions of grain
and money, public banquets, grand religious ceremonies, and bloody
spectacles. Only, in Rome, it was the money of the provinces that paid
the expenses; in the municipalities the nobility itself defrayed the
costs of government and fetes. The tax levied for the treasury of the
emperor went entirely to the imperial chest; it was necessary, then,
that the rich of the city should at their own charges celebrate the
games, heat the baths, pave the streets, construct the bridges,
aqueducts, and circuses. They did this for more than two centuries,
and did it generously; monuments scattered over the whole of the
empire and thousands of inscriptions are a witness to this.
=The Imperial Regime.=--After the conquest three or four hundred
families of the nobility of Rome governed and exploited the rest of
the world. The emperor deprived them of the government and subjected
them to his tyranny. The Roman writers could groan over their lost
liberty. The inhabitants of the provinces had nothing to regret; they
remained subject, but in place of several hundreds of masters,
ceaselessly renewed and determined to enrich themselves, they had now
a single sovereign, the emperor, interested to spare them. Tiberius
stated the imperial policy in the following words: "A good shepherd
shears his sheep, but does not flay them." For more than two centuries
the emperors contented themselves with shearing the people of the
empire; they took much of their money, but they protected them from
the enemy without, and even against their own agents. When the
provincials had grounds of complaint on account of the violence or the
robbery of their governor, they could appeal to the emperor and secure
justice. It was known that the emperor received complaints against his
subordinates; this was sufficient to frighten bad governors and
reassure subjects. Some emperors, like Marcus Aurelius, came to
recognize that they had duties to their subjects. The other emperors
at least left their subjects to govern themselves when they had no
interest to prevent this.
The imperial regime was a loss for the Romans, but a deliverance for
their subjects: it abased the conquerors and raised the vanquished,
reconciling them and preparing them for assimilation in the empire.
SOCIAL LIFE UNDER THE EMPIRE
=Moral Decay Continues at Rome.=--Seneca in his Letters and Juvenal in
his Satires have presented portraits of the men and women of their
time so striking that the corruption of the Rome of the Caesars has
remained proverbial. They were not only the disorders left over from
the republic--the gross extravagance of the rich, the ferocity of
masters against their slaves, the unbridled frivolity of women. The
evil did not arise with the imperial regime, but resulted from the
excessive accumulation of the riches of the world in the hands of some
thousands of nobles or upstarts, under whom lived some hundreds of
free men in poverty, and slaves by millions subjected to an
unrestrained oppression. Each of these great proprietors lived in the
midst of his slaves like a petty prince, indolent and capricious. His
house at Rome was like a palace; every morning the hall of honor (the
atrium) was filled with clients, citizens who came for a meagre salary
to salute the master[151] and escort him in the street. For fashion
required that a rich man should never appear in public unless
surrounded by a crowd; Horace ridicules a praetor who traversed the
streets of Tibur with only five slaves in his following. Outside Rome
the great possessed magnificent villas at the sea-shore or in the
mountains; they went from one to the other, idle and bored.
These great families were rapidly extinguished. Alarmed at the
diminishing number of free men, Augustus had made laws to encourage
marriage and to punish celibacy. As one might expect, his laws did not
remedy the evil. There were so many rich men who had not married that
it had become a lucrative trade to flatter them in order to be
mentioned in their will; by having no children one could surround
himself with a crowd of flatterers. "In the city," says a Roman
story-teller, "all men divide themselves into two classes, those who
fish, and those who are angled for." "Losing his children augments the
influence of a man."
=The Shows.=--In the life of this idle people of Rome the spectacles
held a place that we are now hardly able to conceive. They were, as
in Greece, games, that is to say, religious ceremonies. The games
proceeded throughout the day and again on the following day, and this
for a week at least. The amphitheatre was, as it were, the rendezvous
of the whole free population; it was there that they manifested
themselves. Thus in 196, during the civil wars, all the spectators
cried with one voice, "Peace!" The spectacle was the passion of the
time. Three emperors appeared in public, Caligula as a driver, Nero as
an actor, Commodus as a gladiator.
=The Theatre.=--There were three sorts of spectacles: the theatre, the
circus, and the amphitheatre.
The theatre was organized on Greek models. The actors were masked and
presented plays imitated from the Greek. The Romans had little taste
for this recreation which was too delicate for them. They preferred
the mimes, comedies of gross character, and especially the pantomimes
in which the actor without speaking expressed by his attitudes the
sentiments of the character.
=The Circus.=--Between the two hills of the Aventine and the Palatine
extended a field filled with race courses surrounded by arcades and
tiers of seats rising above them. This was the Circus Maximus. After
Nero enlarged it it could accommodate 250,000 spectators; in the
fourth century its size was increased to provide sittings for 385,000
people.
Here was presented the favorite spectacle of the Roman people, the
four-horse chariot race (quadrigae); in each race the chariot made a
triple circuit of the circus and there were twenty-five races in a
single day. The drivers belonged to rival companies whose colors they
wore; there were at first four of these colors, but they were later
reduced to two--the Blue and the Green, notorious in the history of
riots. At Rome there was the same passion for chariot-races that there
is now for horse-races; women and even children talked of them. Often
the emperor participated and the quarrel between the Blues and the
Greens became an affair of state.
=The Amphitheatre.=--At the gates of Rome the emperor Vespasian had
built the Colosseum, an enormous structure of two stories,
accommodating 87,000 spectators. It was a circus surrounding an arena
where hunts and combats were represented.
For the hunts the arena was transformed into a forest where wild
beasts were released and men armed with spears came into combat with
them. Variety was sought in this spectacle by employing the rarest
animals--lions, panthers, elephants, bears, buffaloes, rhinoceroses,
giraffes, tigers, and crocodiles. In the games presented by Pompey had
already appeared seventeen elephants and five hundred lions; some of
the emperors maintained a large menagerie.
Sometimes instead of placing armed men before the beasts, it was found
more dramatic to let loose the animals on men who were naked and
bound. The custom spread into all cities of the empire of compelling
those condemned to death to furnish this form of entertainment for the
people. Thousands of persons of both sexes and of every age, and among
them Christian martyrs, were thus devoured by beasts under the eyes of
the multitude.
=The Gladiators.=--But the national spectacle of the Romans was the
fight of gladiators (men armed with swords). Armed men descended into
the arena and fought a duel to the death. From the time of Caesar[152]
as many as 320 pairs of gladiators were fought at once; Augustus in
his whole life fought 10,000 of them, Trajan the same number in four
months. The vanquished was slain on the field unless the people wished
to show him grace.
Sometimes the condemned were compelled to fight, but more often slaves
and prisoners of war. Each victory thus brought to the amphitheatre
bands of barbarians who exterminated one another for the delight of the
spectators.[153] Gladiators were furnished by all countries--Gauls,
Germans, Thracians, and sometimes negroes. These peoples fought with
various weapons, usually with their national arms. The Romans loved to
behold these battles in miniature.
There were also, among these contestants in the circus, some who
fought from their own choice, free men who from a taste for danger
submitted to the terrible discipline of the gladiator, and swore to
their chief "to allow themselves to be beaten with rods, be burned
with hot iron, and even be killed." Many senators enrolled themselves
in these bands of slaves and adventurers, and even an emperor,
Commodus, descended into the arena.
These bloody games were practised not only at Rome, but in all the
cities of Italy, Gaul, and Africa. The Greeks always opposed their
adoption. An inscription on a statue raised to one of the notables in
the little city of Minturnae runs as follows: "He presented in four
days eleven pairs of gladiators who ceased to fight only when half of
them had fallen in the arena. He gave a hunt of ten terrible bears.
Treasure this in memory, noble fellow-citizens." The people,
therefore, had the passion for blood,[154] which still manifests
itself in Spain in bull-fights. The emperor, like the modern king of
Spain, must be present at these butcheries. Marcus Aurelius became
unpopular in Rome because he exhibited his weariness at the spectacles
of the amphitheatre by reading, speaking, or giving audiences instead
of regarding the games. When he enlisted gladiators to serve against
the barbarians who invaded Italy, the populace was about to revolt.
"He would deprive us of our amusements," cried one, "to compel us to
become philosophers."
=The Roman Peace.=--But there was in the empire something else than
the populace of Rome. To be just to the empire as a whole one must
consider events in the provinces. By subjecting all peoples, the
Romans had suppressed war in the interior of their empire. Thus was
established the Roman Peace which a Greek author describes in the
following language: "Every man can go where he will; the harbors are
full of ships, the mountains are safe for travellers just as the towns
for their inhabitants. Fear has everywhere ceased. The land has put
off its old armor of iron and put on festal garments. You have
realized the word of Homer, 'the earth is common to all.'" For the
first time, indeed, men of the Occident could build their houses,
cultivate their fields, enjoy their property and their leisure without
fearing at every moment being robbed, massacred, or thrown into
slavery--a security which we can hardly appreciate since we have
enjoyed it from infancy, but which seemed very sweet to the men of
antiquity.
=The Fusion of Peoples.=--In this empire now at peace travel became
easy. The Romans had built roads in every direction with stations and
relays; they had also made road-maps of the empire. Many people,
artisans, traders, journeyed from one end of the empire to the
other.[155] Rhetors and philosophers penetrated all Europe, going from
one city to another giving lectures. In every province could be found
men from the most remote provinces. Inscriptions show us in Spain
professors, painters, Greek sculptors; in Gaul, goldsmiths and Asiatic
workmen. Everybody transported and mingled customs, arts, and
religion. Little by little they accustomed themselves to speak the
language of the Romans. From the third century the Latin had become
the common language of the West, as the Greek since the successors of
Alexander had been the language of the Orient. Thus, as in Alexandria,
a common civilization was developed. This has been called by the name
Roman, though it was this hardly more than in name and in language. In
reality, it was the civilization of the ancient world united under
the emperor's authority.
=Superstitions.=--Religious beliefs were everywhere blended. As the
ancients did not believe in a single God, it was easy for them to
adopt new gods. All peoples, each of whom had its own religion, far
from rejecting the religions of others, adopted the gods of their
neighbors and fused them with their own. The Romans set the example by
raising the Pantheon, a temple to "all the gods," where each deity had
his sanctuary.
Everywhere there was much credulity. Men believed in the divinity of
the dead emperors; it was believed that Vespasian had in Egypt healed
a blind man and a paralytic. During the war with the Dacians the Roman
army was perishing of thirst; all at once it began to rain, and the
sudden storm appeared to all as a miracle; some said that an Egyptian
magician had conjured Hermes, others believed that Jupiter had taken
pity on the soldiers; and on the column of Marcus Aurelius Jupiter was
represented, thunderbolt in hand, sending the rain which the soldiers
caught in their bucklers.
When the apostles Barnabas and Paul came to the city of Lystra in Asia
Minor, the inhabitants invoked Barnabas as Jupiter and Paul as
Mercury; they were met by a procession, with priests at the head
leading a bull which they were about to sacrifice.
Cultured people were none the less credulous.[156] The Stoic
philosophers admitted omens. The emperor Augustus regarded it as a
bad sign when he put on the wrong shoe. Suetonius wrote to Pliny the
Younger, begging him to transfer his case to another day on account of
a dream which he had had. Pliny the Younger believed in ghosts.
Among peoples ready to admit everything, different religions, instead
of going to pieces, fused into a common religion. This religion, at
once Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Asiatic, dominated the world at the
second century of our era; and so the Christians called it the
religion of the nations; down to the fourth century they gave the
pagans the name of "gentiles" (men of the nations); at the same time
the common law was called the Law of Nations.
FOOTNOTES:
[145] Inscriptions have been found where the name of Domitian has thus
been cut away.
[146] Suetonius ("Lives of the Twelve Caesars," Nero, ch. lvii.) relates,
that the king of the Parthians, when he sent ambassadors to the Senate
to renew his alliance with the Roman people, earnestly requested that
due honor should be paid to the memory of Nero. The historian continues,
"When, twenty years afterwards, at which time I was a young man, some
person of obscure birth gave himself out for Nero, that name secured him
so favorable a reception from the Parthians that he was very zealously
supported, and it was with much difficulty that they were persuaded to
give him up."--ED.
[147] Italy was not included among the provinces.
[148] A few provinces, the less important, remained to the Senate, but
the emperor was almost always master in these as well.
[149] The jurisconsult Gaius says, "On provincial soil we can have
possession only; the emperor owns the property."
[150] "Great personages," says Epictetus, "cannot root themselves like
plants; they must be much on the move in obedience to the commands of
the emperor."
[151] A client's task was a hard one; the poet Martial, who had served
thus, groans about it. He had to rise before day, put on his toga which
was an inconvenient and cumbersome garment, and wait a long time in the
ante-room.
[152] Caesar gave also a combat between two troops, each composed of 500
archers, 300 knights (30 knights according to Suetonius; Julius, ch.
39), and 20 elephants.
[153] In an official discourse an orator thanks the emperor Constantine
who had given to the amphitheatre an entire army of barbarian captives,
"to bring about the destruction of these men for the amusement of the
people. What triumph," he cried, "could have been more glorious?"
[154] St. Augustine in his "Confessions" describes the irresistible
attraction of these sanguinary spectacles.
[155] A Phrygian relates in an inscription that he had made seventy-two
voyages from Asia to Italy.
[156] There were some sceptical writers, like Lucian, but they were
isolated.